Chapter Text
Despite knowing full well how stressful today was going to be, Grace couldn’t suppress the wide smile on his face as he waited for the pebbles to emerge from the airlock.
Field trips were always a hassle, but there was something rewarding about seeing the kids let off steam and the wonder on their faces at whatever new and unfamiliar place they were visiting.
The fact that today was the first ever eridian school field trip into his dome, Grace was feeling much more excitement than dread. And thanks to atmospheric differences, it was Rocky who was doomed to get the kids ready to go, not Grace. He had already slotted in a half an hour window after the trip to let Rocky rant about how horrifying it was to get a class of 31 hyperactive preteens into their xenonite balls and through the airlock.
The familiar chime of the airlock opening echoed through the dome. Not even a second later, the first bunch of pebbles burst out, balls shooting across the sand at almost unsafe speeds.
“I told you I’m faster!”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Yah-uh!”
“Woah, hey, slow down!” Grace called, the portable translation device around his wrist echoing him. “We wait until everyone is through.”
Chirping and giggling and bumping into each other, Pinecone, Mercedes, Honeybee and Steve thankfully remained close to him.
In groups of four, the kids continued to trickle in until all 31 were in the dome. Grace could see Rocky banging his carapace against the wall on the other side of the airlock. Barely able to stifle a smug grin, Grace raised his hand in thanks. Rocky knocked his fist against his carapace twice before pointing it in Grace’s direction – the eridian equivalent of the middle finger.
Swallowing a laugh, he turned to his rowdy students. After about a minute of asking them to settle down and having to call out a few individual names, he got them to be mostly quiet.
“I know you’re all excited to explore,” he started, immediately having to shush the resulting trills and whistles, “but we need to go over some important ground rules first.”
He went through all the usual field trip bullet points – like: don’t run off, if you want to explore always ask and always go with at least two others, so on – and the additional ones specific to the dome environment – like: don’t ram your xenonite balls together, yes I am looking at you two. After answering three valid and about fourteen redundant questions, they set off on their trip.
First stop was the water. After a lecture on temperature, pressure and states of matter, followed by another safety lecture, he waded into the still water up to his waist. He’d asked the dome team to switch off the wave generator for today, and had decided to wear his shorts for the first part of the field trip for this very reason.
Then, one by one, he let them roll towards him, their balls floating on the water. Between the loud giggles and jumping that managed to get his entire upper body wet as well, he tried to explain buoyancy to them. They all seemed to get behind the concept of their gas filled balls being able to float despite their own weights, especially when he Fermi-problemed his way through the numbers, but broke out into disbelieving shouts when he claimed that he could float without an air filled sphere of his own.
The rioting that occurred on the beach when Grace abandoned his T-shirt and let himself float on his back might’ve been the highlight of his class interactions so far.
After that, he had them all accompany him to his house, leaving them down in the sand for a few minutes as he made his way up the short windy path to quickly dry off and change, fetching both a chair and his portable Eridian keyboard.
Grace put the chair next to his door, overviewing the beach with the chattering hamster balls from the about six feet higher vantage point of his porch. He put his cane up against the wall before settling down into his chair, keyboard on his lap and turned up all the way. Most of the kids would probably still hear his small wrist translator from this distance, but for one, distracted kids were notoriously selective in their hearing, and for another, he had a hard of hearing kid in the class.
He flexed his left hand, his still slightly pruny skin pulling on his scarring just a tad less than usual.
“Alright, you get about IIℓℓℓ seconds of break time!” he played and called down at the same time. “Don’t wander off!”
And of course, some of the kids immediately began to ram their balls together.
“Hey, what did I say?!” he snapped, harshly playing out the notes. “You break your xenonite ball, you could die! Play gently!”
They of course didn’t stop, but they thankfully toned it down to lighter bumping. Grace’s heart rate slowed down a couple of notches, and he leaned back in his chair.
God, these kids were going to drive him into an even earlier grave. That scheduled half an hour Rocky rant was going to get a half an hour Grace rant appended to it.
He had to give them credit though, they had been very attentive and kept the crazy to a minimum up to now. They even seemed to be playing a game all together. The pebbles had split into two teams, some on either side of an imagined playing field, some racing across to the other side and relatively gently, thank God, bumping against each other.
No, wait, not all of them. Prism had just rolled away from the group, sitting down in their ball near the shoreline a good distance away from everyone.
His heart sank. Not again.
He wasn’t usually around the kids on their break time. Only one time had he had to substitute because there had been construction in their usual break room in the school and the teacher who would otherwise have kept an eye on them in their own classroom had had a family emergency. The pebbles had stayed with him after science class that day, and he’d made the discovery that a) due to the shape of Prism’s carapace, they were hard of hearing, and they had been sitting in the back of the class those previous weeks, barely able to keep up, and b) the other kids actively excluded them from the games they played during recess. He hadn’t gotten too much information out of the pebbles as their break had almost been over, but the gist had been that because Prism’s fragile carapace was prone to injury, they couldn’t play as rough. He’d started a speech on differences and inclusion and asked them to just play some less rough games so Prism could participate, but they’d all scuttled off to their next class before he’d been able to see the situation rectified. The next week, he’d immediately moved Prism to the front, and seeing their performance and enthusiasm rapidly grow the following lessons had made him naively believe that the exclusion during recess had resolved itself as well.
Apparently not.
Putting his keyboard aside and picking up his cane, he made his way down the three sharp turns of the little road down to the beach, walking past the large group playing and having fun and towards the lonesome sphere by the water.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said softly, and Prism jumped, slightly rocking their ball.
“Oh, hi, Teacher Grace!” they said cheerfully, almost convincing him it was genuine.
“Can I sit with you?”
“Yes yes yes,” they said, loafing down again. He lowered himself onto the sand, resting his cane across his legs. He sighed. No reason to beat around the bush.
“Have the other pebbles been picking on you again?”
Prism stilled before their fingers began to fumble and tap against the bottom of their ball.
“Yes,” they said quietly.
“Care to tell me about it?” he asked carefully, prepared to backtrack if Prism wasn’t ready to get into this right now.
“They say…” they began, “that I have a weird shape. That I’m fragile too, I can’t play rough with them. That I am not normal. Wrong. That I am…ugly.”
Grace closed his eyes. Kids could be so sweet sometimes, so untouched by prejudice and hatred and could genuinely be so kind. But they could also sniff out the tiniest insecurities and deviations and start a whole campaign just to put you down.
“That’s not true,” Grace said. He wanted to continue his point but Prism shot up, cutting him of.
“Is!” they exclaimed. “I’m almost as ugly as Teacher Grace. Ugly ugly ugly.”
Wow, okay, thanks.
In all seriousness though, how could they possibly compare Prism’s beautifully intricate carapace to his squishy leaky blob of an alien body with all his organs loud and on display?
“Well,” he said, “anyone who says that clearly doesn’t know you. I for one can confidently say that you are the most colourful young eridian I have ever seen.”
Prism tapped the side of their ball a few times.
“I am full of light-frequencies?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “I can see every colour of the rainbow on your carapace, Prism. That’s why I chose a material that produces a rainbow as your human name. You are the whole rainbow. Rainbows are very very very beautiful. Those other pebbles aren’t seeing that.”
They considered this for a moment, before: “I can’t see it either.”
Shucks, yeah. That was fair.
“Well, um, no,” he stammered, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck, “it’s kind of a metaphor. You are awesome just how you are. Being unique is good. Who wants to fit in anyway? I sure don’t, do I?”
“No,” they said, and Grace’s heart swelled when they raised their carapace a bit.
Just then, angry shouts echoed across the beach, followed by a “Teacher Grace, they’re cheating!”
Fantastic.
“Ah, sorry, looks like I need to go break up a fight,” he said with a sigh, pushing himself back up and patting the coarse grains off his pants.
“Do you want me to tell them to include you in their game?”
“No,” they mumbled after a pause. “I don’t want to play anymore.”
“Alright,” he said softly. “You can tell me who was mean to you after the trip, I’ll give them and their parents a stern talking-to.“
“Thank,” they said, their subdued tone marginally lighter. With a sad smile and a pat on their xenonite ball, he trudged back over to the screaming kids.
One upside to a fight breaking out here: they couldn’t start a physical fight. Despite tempers rising high, they actually weren’t smashing their balls together all too roughly.
After dragging the two at the core of the drama apart, he delivered yet another lecture, this time on team work with the very unsubtle implication to not exclude anyone because you can’t be bothered to change your usual playing style even a little bit.
He spent the rest of the break back in his chair, watching as the pebbles splintered into groups to play their own smaller games, and Prism not attempting to rejoin despite some of them seeming tame enough for them to handle. He supposed getting called ugly by he-didn’t-know-how-many of your classmates didn’t leave you too eager to interact with any of them again.
When the hour was up, he went back inside to fetch the box of items he had prepared to show the kids. Taking his chair with him, he slowly made it down the sloping path until he arrived at the bottom and set everything down. He sent Willow, one of the more shy kids of whom he was reasonably confident that they didn’t participate in the bullying, to go fetch Prism.
With the rainbow pebble up and close so they could properly hear every item he showed, he went through his box. The kids oh-ed and ah-ed at his toothbrush, mug, disco ball, and other generic items. It took them almost two full hours to get through everything he’d brought, every question he got leading to more questions and even longer answers.
By the time he had returned everything to his house and made his way back down to the beach, there was only half an hour left to the planned excursion time, so he made them all trek back to the airlock such that they could continue to play around in their balls there until their parents showed to pick them up.
With a wave and a thumbs up to Rocky on the other side of the xenonite, Grace settled into one of the comfy chairs in his little nook next to the airlock where there was a large transparent wall to a meeting area, Rocky’s second workshop and the med bay. One by one, parents arrived and called for their kids, the herd already having considerably thinned by the time the field trip was officially over. And all the while, Prism was once again sitting much further out, alone.
Within another ten minutes, the last handful of kids trickled out until only Prism was left. Excluded by classmates and late parents. Great. With a heavy sigh, he made his way back over to them. He shuffled his feet a bit more as he approached, making sure they heard him this time.
“Hey,” he said, getting down onto the sand again. “You wanna wait for your parents in your own atmosphere?”
“Not yet,” they said, slightly pleading. “Mom will fetch me at school in about Iλℓℓℓ seconds. I don’t want to wait there that long.”
Come on, really? Grace understood full workdays and not being able to show up to everything single one of your kid’s activities perfectly on time, but this had been the first ever trip into his dome. His alien dome filled with freezing cold highly flammable gas. Every parent had signed three different safety wavers, had shown up to drop off their pebbles at the dome’s entrance gate and had equally come to pick them up. Except for Prism’s, apparently.
Still, family situations could be complicated, so he wasn’t going to push.
“Isn’t this usually the time you kids take your extracurriculars and internships?” he tried instead. “Do you have a class you could still catch the last part of?”
“I don’t have any,” they whispered so quietly Grace almost hadn’t picked it up. He frowned.
“How come?”
“I still haven’t been accepted for an internship and I either don’t like or can’t attend any of the extracurriculars. Usually I do my homework in this time, but I already finished it.”
Grace thought back to the course he’d had to take on eridian education to get his teaching license, about how kids were encouraged to get an internship – basically the same concept as on Earth, part-time work in an entry position mainly to gain experience – which counted as a part of their grade. There were only a limited amount of school board approved intern positions, so not everyone got one every year, but the system was intended to work in a way such that eventually, every student completed at least one internship by the end of their middle school graduation. Prism’s class was one of the older ones in the school, in a few weeks reaching their second to last semester before graduation. By this point, most students should’ve completed at least one internship, if not multiple.
“Why haven’t you been able to get an internship position?” he asked. Prism shrank together, fingers running over the rectangular structures on their arms.
“They invite us to try out and then they pick the best from those who haven’t done an internship before,” they explained, “I’m never chosen. Too slow. Don’t pay attention. Too fragile. Even though I try try try. There’s always someone else who does better.”
Grace’s heart sank. Bullied by classmates, late-working parents and let down by the system. Fan-fudging-tastic.
He really ought to have looked further into the nitty gritty details on the curriculum when it had first been presented to him. He knew all the levels of progression, the rules for grading and homework, the basics on school norms and etiquette and the general conduct of a teacher. He was of course aware that for example PE-like exercise classes existed, what internships were and he had even visited the main school building on several occasions, but he moved mostly on the periphery of these matters. He wasn’t just any staff member who could chat with their colleagues in the teacher’s lounge, the stark differences in physiology were kind of a limiting factor there.
Speaking of the teacher’s lounge though, he did just remember that the last time he’d gotten together with all the other science teachers, some of them had mentioned the lab assistant internships they occasionally offered.
“I have an idea,” he said after a pause. “Helping your alien teacher set up experiments and cleaning up after class sounds like work experience to me, doesn’t it?”
Prism perked up, carapace tilted in cautious hope.
“Teacher Grace offers an internship?”
“Not yet,” Grace said, stroking his chin, “but I can talk to the school board. If they accept, and you’re interested, you could spend your otherwise empty Tuesday afternoons helping me out and gaining the credits you need.”
At this, Prism fully jumped up in their sphere, arms chittering with excitement.
“You do this for me?!” they squeaked disbelievingly. Grace chuckled, reaching out to put his hand on the xenonite.
“Well, I can’t stand by when the system fails one of my students,” he said, and Prism broke out into a flurry of thankful chirps and overjoyed jazz-hands.
Grace’s heart lifted. At least something good had come of this trip for Prism.
“I can put in the request to focus on older kids who haven’t been able to get a position yet,” he added. “Heck, I can put in a general request to change their selection process because the current one clearly promotes ableism.”
“Thank thank thank!” Prism continued, still fluttering about in their ball. “You are the best teacher, Teacher Grace! So kind!”
“Alright, alright,” he said, but he was still smiling. “First I have to convince the board, but if I do, you’ll have yourself an internship.”
“Thank thank thank!” they kept going with busy jazz-hands, and Grace copied the gesture, beaming.
He’d actually still wanted to address the earlier bullying and ask for some names so he could sort this out, but he wasn’t going to ruin Prism’s improved mood. He’d file it away for next class.
The chime of the airlock opening up rang through the air, and Grace turned just in time to see Rocky roll out onto the sand in his ball.
“Grace!” he called, “The dome team wants to do the maintenance check on the xenonite balls, all students need to come through.”
“We’ll be there in a minute!” he called back, pushing himself to his feet with his cane. “I’m sorry, you’ll need to wait for your mom on the other side.”
“Is okay, I can wait, no problem!” Prism exclaimed, already scrambling towards Rocky waiting in the open airlock. “Thank again, Teacher Grace! Thank thank thank!”
“No problem, kiddo,” he said, watching as the two let the air cycle and Rocky first stepped out of his ball before helping Prism out of theirs. After some more expressions of gratitude with a bouncy carapace and enthusiastic jazz-hands, Prism made their way down the hall that lead to the classroom, presumably to take the specially built tunnel connecting the dome’s classroom to their school.
Grace went to sit down in one of his chairs, Rocky coming into his workshop to sit across from him a few minutes later, fiddling with a small panel of clear xenonite.
“Alright, lay it on me,” Grace said, having switched off his translator now that it was just him and Rocky.
“I heard what you plan to do for your student,” he said instead of the expected griping, his tone unusually soft. “The first internship I ever applied to in school rejected me because ‘I wouldn’t be able to operate the controls properly with only four functional hands’, even though I completed the task they gave me perfectly.”
Grace’s face slackened.
“Of course I immediately got hired by the second one I applied to, I was obviously the best applicant,” he continued, but the attempt at levity fell flat. His carapace dropped a little. “Anyways. I just wanted to say I appreciate what you’re trying to do.”
“Rocky, I-” Grace began, swallowing a lump in his throat. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said, waving his hand dismissively as he secured the xenonite with a clamp, digging a tool out of his desk to poke and prod it in more detail. “You learn to deal with the comments. It gets easier when you have someone on your side. Susan helped a lot in getting people to back off when I first joined my work thrum. It’s nice seeing you be there for your student Prism like that.”
If Grace had expected to cry today, he would’ve put his money on a stress response after his kids had tried to actively break their balls one too many times, not on an emotional conversation with his best friend about accidentally becoming a disability advocate.
He tapped the xenonite with a sniffle, Rocky reaching over to tap back.
“I guess-” he said, quickly wiping at his eyes, “I guess I haven’t really thought about accessibility and ableism on Erid that much with everyone literally catering to my every need.” He held up his cane and gestured to the dome around him. “I knew Prism had been sitting in the back before I found out about their hearing difficulties, but I hadn’t really considered it being a broader issue.”
“It depends,” Rocky said. “Some schools are better, some teachers are better. Some kids grow up used to being accommodated while others don’t. My work thrum is pretty accepting, it was just a few assholes in the beginning. It’s not completely horrible all the time, mostly just smaller things that pile up. Not that I know what it’s like for Prism, but you tend to get used to it.”
“That’s exactly my point,” Grace said, leaning back. “You shouldn’t have to get used to it. When I asked Prism why they hadn’t said anything sooner about not being able to hear me properly, they said they didn’t want to make a fuss. They shouldn’t have to feel like asking to hear is a fuss.”
“That’s why I said I appreciate you doing this for your student,” Rocky said. “You’re definitely not the first who’s brought this up at a school. It’s gotten a lot better since I’ve been a student, but you heard Prism. It’s still not where it needs to be. But maybe the great leaky space blob Saviour Grace will be able to change some minds.”
“Hardy-har,” Grace said, but he was smiling. If his status as the resident alien and co-saviour of the planet could help improve the safety and comfort of his students, then he was gladly going to pull his rank, no matter how uncomfortable it usually made him feel.
“Thanks for telling me,” he said softly, putting his hand against the xenonite. Rocky did the same.
“Okay, the λλλλ.λ seconds begin now. How the fuck did you manage to herd this many human children around on trips multiple times a year?!”
Grace let out a bark of laughter. He turned in his chair to offer Rocky his full attention as his best friend continued his anticipated rant.
Despite the sour turn halfway through, today’s field trip had so been worth it.