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“Nope,” Ryland said stubbornly, Faust perched on his shoulder as he drank a cup of decaf coffee (he’d already hit his caffeine limit for the day) from his old “World’s Best Teacher” mug. “I went to space for you. I got poked by the cancer specialists for you. I went to the stupid immunologists for you. In ten days, I’m getting an open-heart surgery to get the new ICD put in for you. But there has to be a line.”
“Please, Sternchen,” Eva sighed. “He’s annoying me constantly about it. Just take the honorary knighthood.”
“I am busy, Eavie. I’m working on my lesson plans for the fall, and I’m publishing papers, and I’m trying to make up for almost three decades of burger deficit. Not to mention, I finally have new yarn and this house doesn’t have nearly enough throw blankets yet. I don’t have time to get a knighthood.”
“But you have time to use your anonymous youtube account to get into fights with science-deniers in comments section of old Bill Nye videos,” Ilyukhina pointed out.
“It’s cultural enrichment for Rocky,” Grace argued back.
“Rocky very good at rage-bait, Rocky superior troll!” Rocky declared cheerfully. “Rocky gets to fight with mouth-breathers about how evolution real!”
“Okay, who taught him that insult?” Yao sighed, looking at Ilyukhina. Surprisingly, it was his biological daughter that raised her hand sheepishly.
“I suppose I should have known,” he sighed to Xiùyīng Yí. “It’s your favorite English insult. Olesya usually just goes straight for the Russian profanities.”
“I really wish you hadn’t taught him that,” Ryland agreed. “I mean, it’s fairly tame in English, but Eridians don’t have mouths, so the equivalent he came up with is positively filthy.”
Rocky chittered his musical laughter.
“The point is that you have time for a quick trip to London to get knighted so that old William the Bald gets off my back about it.” Stratt attempted to steer the conversation back in her preferred direction.
“I don’t care if my alternative is staring at a wall all day, I’m not going to waste my time getting a dumb title from a man whose inbreeding coefficient is higher than his IQ,” Grace contested. “Besides, Sir Dr. Ryland Grace is a dumb name, as if the doctorate didn’t already make me sound pretentious enough.”
“Nothing about you says pretentious, don’t worry,” Ilyukhina teased, motioning to his hot pink Barbie sweatpants, his mismatched-fuzzy socks, his T-Shirt with the molecular structure of Glucose, picture of Caroline from Stardew Valley and the words “BUM BUM BUM!”, all topped off with a cardigan made from fuzzy, baby-blue boucle yarn.
“You know what?” He turned to Eva. “Fine, he can knight me over zoom, but I’m not changing my outfit, and you have to take me out for Indian food tonight, and you have to let me get it at my preferred spice level.”
“Your preferred spice level triggers your arrhythmia, we’re not doing it. But yes to the zoom, the stupid outfit, and you can get your samosas at white-people medium spice level,” she bargained.
“Fine, but he has to knight Faust too.”
Thirty minutes later, ‘Sir Fausty-Wausty the precious pumpkin baby-boo’ (as Ryland often called him in a high-pitched baby voice, usually while kissing his fuzzy belly) was cleaning his rear end in front of the camera as the king of England cut the Zoom call looking mildly traumatized.
“Show some class, Sir Dr. Captain Ryland Grace,” Ilyukhina teased.
“Okay, you are not allowed to call me captain just because I adjusted our course one time while 爸爸 was concussed from tripping and falling over the tools that you left out on the floor of the ‘don’t go crazy’ room, and if you ever call me ‘Sir’ again, I’m shoving you into Rocky’s atmosphere,” Grace threatened her. “I swear to Chandra Bose, I have too many flippin’ names. I should get to just be ‘Grace.’ If Cher can do it, why can’t I?”
“Cher didn’t save two planets, Schatzen,” Eva told him.
“Come on Carl, we’re going to the lab,” Ryland groaned, pulling his bodyguard by the hand. “I’m going to teach you how to use the electron microscope.”
Carl didn’t particularly want to learn to use the electron microscope, but Grace survived a suicide mission and kept them all from a long slow death by freezing and/or starvation, so in Carl’s book, Grace got what Grace wanted. Plus, if the man was going to keep putting his name first on all the scientific papers he wrote just because he bounced ideas off of him, Carl figured he should know at least a few sciency things.
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“The surgery went well,” the cardiologist told them. The surgery was done in a locked-down military hospital to ensure the greatest possible security, and so that Rocky could be with him when he woke up. “And the good news is that, unlike the models 26 years ago, today’s ICD batteries can be recharged using solar-power and software updates can be downloaded remotely if desired as better technology comes out. So he won’t have to undergo the procedure again.”
“Future is very cool,” Olesya said, already planning to get her hands on the blueprints and user manual for the thing.
“Ooooollllyyyyy,” Ry chirped, coming out of the sedation. “You’re such a pretty gremlin. Best sister ever.”
“Wow, that didn’t hurt at all,” huffed Xiùyīng Yí.
“Hey, I had him first, lady,” Olesya growled.
“Girls, please,” Yao scolded, but it was half-hearted at best. Those two went from being best friends to sworn rivals at least 8 times a day. Ting Yí patted his hand consolingly.
“Where’s Rocky?” Grace demanded. “Wan’ my Rocky.”
“Rocky here, Rocky here!” the Eridian declared, hoisting himself up onto the bed. “Rocky watched Grace sleep through observation window of surgery theater!”
“You shoulda le’ Rocky do the s’rgry,” Grace slurred, glaring at the cardiologist. “Bet he’d be better at it. He’s the best.”
“Don’t worry Doctor Grace, you were in very good hands,” the cardiologist defended. “I have been doing surgeries like this nearly daily since I got my MD from Stanford thirty years ago.”
“Pfft, loser,” Ryland replied, as a proper UC Berkeley alum ought to.
“Ooohhh, devastating burn,” Olesya told the man. “You’re devastated right now. Did your Stanford degree teach you to work in burn unit? Because you need treatment for that third-degree.”
Ryland smiled brilliantly at her and attempted to raise his hand for a high-five. It was the hand with the IV-line, though, so Rocky gently patted it down and Oly came over to meet him at his level.
“Where’s Carl?” Grace demanded. “Wan’ my teaching ‘ssistant.”
“He’s your security agent, not your teaching assistant, Sternchen,” Eva reminded him. “His job in your classroom will be to protect you, not to make baking soda volcanoes.”
“Thass’an element’ry school ‘speriment,” Grace corrected her. “My kids do h’rder stuff. My kids are smar’, smar’, smar’, st’tment.” He was already falling back to sleep. Rocky scuttled closer and arranged himself over Grace’s chest, carefully not applying any weight as he prepared to guard his best friend during his rest.
“We’re all here, Grace,” Carl assured the man. “Get some rest. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Know that,” Grace drawled, barely audible as he drifted off. “Truss’you. Good f’mly.”
“We are a pretty good family,” Yao agreed as his eyes drifted shut. Eva rolled her eyes.
“You’re pretty good squatters, is what you are,” she huffed, but her voice was fond as she took Grace’s other hand.
“She can’t actually expect us to pay rent when we saved world,” Olesya grumbled in Russian.
“Shut up, Olesya. I’m still in charge of the world until I resign next week, so I could if I wanted to,” Eva replied, using her free hand to type something on her laptop.
“What rent, question?”