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When the new human started asking for Grace, the Eridians did everything in their power to accommodate.
He was a particularly strange human. He was taller than Grace with more rough-textured skin, especially on his hands. He spoke the same human language, but upon seeing the Eridians, hummed and clicked in a rudimentary approximation of their language. He didn’t ask for a translator and seemingly understood them very well, although did not understand why Grace was not with them. The on-call biosphere handlers alerted their resident human to their strange new find as he was escorted through depressurization chambers.
Grace was waiting on the other side, flanked by a pair of Eridians he named Quartz and Ruby. He wrung his hands, an anxious tick that the handlers recognize, as the entourage with their new human entered.
The new human startled at seeing Grace. His eyes darted around the biosphere, but they always ended up right back on the other human, as if trying to understand what he was seeing.
“I know this is a lot,” Grace said, placating with his hands up and visible. Inhibiting human vision was seen as a threat, as Grace had once explained. “I’m Grace. I—Have we met before? I don’t think we have, but they said you were asking for me, so I’m not sure—“
The new human finally stopped examining his surroundings and frowned at him. “You’re not Grace.”
The Eridians surrounding them chattered in a low hum. It was Grace’s turn to frown. “I—Well, that’s my name. Who are you looking for, then?”
“Grace is an Eridian, not a human,” The man explained, now looking between the rocky aliens as if his friend was hiding among them. “We got separated.”
The hum around them grew louder. Grace held a hand up, a common gesture he displays to his students, one which many Eridians recognize now. The hum quieted.
“Do you guys know an Eridian named Grace?” He asked the others, who all replied in negative tones.
The man crossed his arms, displeased. “How do you not know Grace? He was sent to space to save your planet!”
Any humming and chittering came to a complete stop.
“Okay—“ Grace cut himself off with a deep breath. “Let’s start over. My name is Ryland Grace. I helped save Erid’s sun so they built me a biosphere to live in. What’s your name?”
The man looked away. The question made him noticeably uncomfortable, especially in the absence of idle musical tones. He frowned, then he lifted his chin to meet Grace’s eyes, a new sense of confidence in his expression.
“My name is Rocky.”
*
Okay, so. This is weird.
The immediate chaos following the new human’s name made the man’s frown turn into bewilderment and a little bit of fear. Grace’s brain had rebooted entirely.
A Rocky landed on Erid, looking for a Grace. It was too on-the-nose to just be a coincidence. When his brain went back online, it was flooded with an endless amount of questions that couldn’t have a simple answer. When did humans make contact with Eridians for a second time? Why didn’t anyone recognize an Eridian named Grace? How did this human man get here, and why is his name Rocky of all things?
Instead of bursting into an interrogation, Grace shushed the other Eridians. He politely asked them to go find his Rocky and escorted the new human to the house on the hill.
Now he was sitting across from this human named Rocky, sharing the last few grounds of instant coffee from the Hail Mary, and he couldn’t stop his leg from bouncing.
“Now, I’m still learning Eridian,” Rocky said, his fingers drumming on the table. This human, who claimed to be named Rocky, was taller than Grace, but several of those inches are from the volume of his black-and-grey hair. He had darker skin but not as much stubble. He had tattoo patterns on his arms that Grace vaguely recognized but couldn’t quite place. He wore a green jumpsuit, not unlike the orange ones provided on the Hail Mary, and a pair of goggles hung from his neck. “But it sounded like they didn’t believe me?”
Grace knew a decent bit of Eridian by now, but even he couldn’t discern the babbling tones and chirps when a group of them spoke at once. This guy has a better grasp of the language without ever stepping foot on this planet. “I think you just startled them, is all. Eridians don’t do well with…Uncertainty.”
Rocky shifted in his seat. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just—weird. I’m trying not to overwhelm you with questions and I want to wait until my friend gets here, but I can’t stop thinking about how weird this is. And I think you’ll agree once you meet him.”
Rocky shrugged. “I’m used to questions. Try me.”
“Okay, okay, okay.” Something about that made Rocky half-smile. Grace took a sip of his lukewarm coffee as he picked the right one to start with. “How did you end up in space?”
Rocky hummed. It wasn’t Eridian, as far as Grace recognized, so he assumed it was just a thoughtful human noise. “Our sun is dying. Some sort of organism was feeding off of it. I’m an engineer, I’ve worked on some space crafts in the past, so the United Nations reached out to me to build a remote-controlled probe to collect a sample from the Petrova line. After that, I developed astrophage containment, then a machine to breed it, then an engine, then a spaceship.”
Halfway through his explanation, Grace grabbed his laptop and typed rapidly. The theory that floated in the back of his mind became more prominent, pushing to be acknowledged, but Grace ignored it for now. Not until he knew more.
“You built the Hail Mary?” Grace asked, awe in his voice.
“Is that what they called it?” Rocky leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the table. The man was unable to keep still. “I built most of it, but they had the smarter people install the centrifuge and the robot and the computer system. Not that it mattered. I still knew the ship inside and out, so that put me on the roster.” His voice went soft at the end.
Grace reeled back and ran a hand over his face, knocking his glasses off his nose. “That’s incredible. How have I never heard of you before?”
If this man was so involved in the Hail Mary’s construction, it’s so unlikely they wouldn’t have crossed paths. Grace was certain of it. Stratt would have told him about this remarkable engineer that made Project Hail Mary possible. As much as he had complicated feelings about her and her choices, Grace can say now that every person involved was not a faceless individual to her. She saw their value, even his own.
Rocky tilted his head, eyes slightly narrowed, but not in an accusing way. More like he was assessing Grace. “You said you helped to save Erid’s sun. You volunteered for the mission, then?”
Grace looked down. “In a way. I’m a microbiologist who wrote a…dumb paper about water-based organisms, so I was asked to check out the astrophage. I discovered how to breed it, and so I guess I became the leading astrophage expert, and the…best choice for the job.” He really didn’t want to go into details right now. Please, not now.
Rocky hummed again. It was definitely just a thoughtful human noise, but he looked so skeptical while he did it. “Y’know, that’s funny, because I don’t remember seeing your name on the ship anywhere.”
Grace perked up. “What do you mean?”
“As far as I knew, only three people were chosen for the mission. Yao, Dubois, and me.”
They both stared at each other for a long moment. Grace had a feeling that Rocky was reaching the same conclusion he was, but neither of them were willing to admit it out loud. Grace was still fitting the pieces together. If he never got involved with the astrophage, if he didn’t exist, then maybe things played out differently. Yao was still chosen for his leadership, Dubois and Shapiro were never caught up in that explosion, and maybe….
Maybe their two engineering experts died in an accident, leaving them with one option left. Oh, Ilyukhina.
Rocky clicked his tongue. “We’re thinking the same thing, right?”
Grace opened his mouth to agree, and he wanted to ask about this Eridian-Grace, and also why his name was Rocky - it was a stupid spur-of-the-moment nickname and he hoped his poor choices didn’t have a ripple effect across timelines - but he never got a chance to ask. A telltale tapping of claws sounded at the front door.
Grace beamed. Rocky sunk in his chair, suddenly wary.
“Are you ready to meet my Rocky?”
*
Eridian-Rocky and Human-Rocky watched each other critically from opposite sides of the room.
Honestly, Grace thought they would have burst into cryptic engineer-talk by now, but he supposed they were all still wrapping their minds around the situation. In all honesty, it made Grace super giddy. The multiverse and timelines were all theoretical science that were largely considered pure science-fiction, but here Grace was, staring proof of it in the face.
“Branching timelines,” Grace said, drawing a line across the board in red marker. He had dragged his whiteboard out from his office for this demonstration. “Are the different outcomes and possibilities of a single universe.” He drew a single dot on the line. “We are here. This version of Erid and my version of Earth.” In blue marker, he drew a branching path from the same line and dotted it. He pointed to Human-Rocky, then back at the dot. “This is your timeline. Similar to ours, but with some obvious differences.”
“Differences like Grace Eridian, Rocky Human, question?” Eridian-Rocky couldn’t see the whiteboard, but got the gist from Grace’s motions.
“Yeah bud, exactly. Somehow you, from another universe, ended up here.” Grace drew a line connecting the two dots. He stepped back, tapping the marker on his chin.
“But where is my Grace?” Human-Rocky stood and paced, clicking his tongue in thought. “I got disconnected from my ship before I ended up here. We didn’t find the taumoeba like you guys did. Or, not yet, anyway. But he’s still out there. I have to go back for him.”
Eridian-Rocky hummed in agreement. “Yes, yes, yes. Eridians work fast. Grace smart smart smart in all worlds, will figure out how to return.”
Human-Rocky was nodding along and Grace suddenly felt his insides soften into something gooey and sentimental. How lucky did he get to have a best friend in multiple universes that have such faith in him? Are they destined to meet no matter the light years between them? Grace was hardly superstitious, but the thought made his vision blur anyway.
His Rocky chittered timely, “Grace leaking again.”
Grace wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Rocky has seen him cry enough now that he recognized it as a normal human function and not necessarily something to be concerned about. Still, his tone was slightly higher-pitched, almost posed as a question even if he didn’t state it as one.
“Sorry. Just—It’s nothing. Emotional, human things.”
Eridian-Rocky tilted his carapace towards Human-Rocky, like he was looking for his input. Human-Rocky put his hands up. “Don’t look at me. I’m not good at human things.”
“Rocky Human bad at being human, question?”
Grace frowned. “Rocky—“
“I mean, probably?” Human-Rocky shrugged, his arms crossed over his chest. Now beside each other, Grace can see the similarities between his tattoos and Rocky’s carapace carvings, and oooh that makes so much sense— “I must have been disposable since they sent me to die, right?”
Human-Rocky looked down at the floor, his eyes scrunched together as if trying to solve a puzzle. His fingers drummed on the couch, his foot tapped as he thought. Grace felt his stomach turn.
“You don’t remember?” It felt painful to ask. He hoped beyond anything that this version of Rocky didn’t experience what he did. That his version of Earth was somehow kinder.
“Nope. I know my skills, my achievements, I know the Hail Mary, but anything personal is just—“ Human-Rocky puffed his cheeks and made a poof noise. “I don’t even know my name. Grace had to name me.”
“He named you Rocky?” And okay, that was a bit hypocritical, but at least Grace named an actual rock alien and not a human man.
Human-Rocky laughed fondly. “He saw my hands first and they’re calloused to hell, so. I think the direct translation is something like shell-texture.”
Eridian-Rocky hummed a few experimental notes. Human-Rocky beamed. “Yeah, that was it!”
“Correct, word means hard shell. Rough texture like Eridian exterior.” Rocky paused. “All Grace plural give creative names.”
“Hey!” Grace felt the need to defend his Eridian-self, even as Human-Rocky descended into snickers. Eridian snark transcends universes, apparently.
“I like it,” Human-Rocky said, flashing Grace a smile. “And my best friend gave it to me, so I’m keeping it.”
Oh god, here comes the water works again. Grace felt the burn behind his eyes just before the tears gathered, and he opened his mouth to say something stupidly sentimental, when Rocky tapped a few claws on the xenonite floor with a chirp.
“What about Adrian, question?” Rocky’s notes were slightly higher-pitched. Anxious.
Human-Rocky frowned, his face pinching again. He looked at Grace. “I don’t know that word.”
“It’s a name. I call them Adrian. They’re—”
”Rocky Mate! Where is Rocky Mate, question?” Rocky’s notes were going shrill and harder to understand for Grace. He crawled closer to his counterpart, who pressed back into the couch.
“I don’t know! I don’t know who Adrian—” Human-Rocky paused, something complex passing over his features. His foot tapped the ground. “I don’t remember.”
Rocky chirped softly, low and sad. He curled his legs beneath him, just slightly on Human-Rocky’s lap, and hummed. “Human memory bad. Grace could not remember, but memories came back.”
“I think that’s a different situation, bud.” At least Grace remembered his name. That was one of his first memories after the coma, and the most vital when he couldn’t access the control room without verifying his name.
The purpose of Grace’s induced amnesia was to prevent him from sabotaging the mission. The effect was temporary, allowing him to realize the damage of his choices before he inevitably starved to death or enacted on one of the given suicide options. Allowing him to realize his shame.
Assuming it was the same for Rocky, what was the purpose of his long-term amnesia? Was it an accident? Was it permanent? Grace had a hard time believing Rocky would threaten the mission. He imagined Rocky as one of the many brave volunteers who knew exactly what they were getting into. Rocky would easily fit among Yao, Dubois, Ilyukhina, who had all accepted their inevitable deaths without looking back. Without running. Without cowardice.
“Rocky,” Grace said, and both looked at him. He adjusted his body to face the Eridian. “If Erid’s mission was one-way, like mine, would you have volunteered?”
Rocky stood defiantly. “Erid mission always planned to go home!”
“But if it wasn’t, and you had Adrian here, and you knew you were never going to see them again, would you have still left?”
Human-Rocky was watching them intently. His face was neutral, carefully blank, and Grace felt the same struggle as if he was reading Rocky’s carapace.
Eridian-Rocky visibly shrunk. “No. Would have stayed. Other engineers to take Rocky’s place.” He tilted his carapace. “Why, question?”
Grace ran a hand over his face. “Say there weren’t other engineers. An accident happened and all other options died. Time was running out. The person in charge had to make a hard choice. They took their only option left, even if he didn’t volunteer. Even if he refused to go. So they gave him an experimental amnestic so he could focus on the mission instead of the life he was missing out on.”
Human-Rocky was silent. Eridian-Rocky chirped.
“Like Grace, question?”
Grace nodded. “Except the amnestic didn’t wear off like it should. Or maybe it wasn’t supposed to wear off at all.”
Human-Rocky stared off somewhere past Grace, eyes distant and glossy. He was frowning, his throat working as he processed what Grace was suggesting. Then he cleared his throat and inhaled a sharp, shaky breath.
“Oh.”
*
The artificial ocean offered some sense of comfort to Grace when reality became a little hard to bear. The gentle fog and chilly breeze kept him grounded when his mind threatened to collapse on itself.
He hoped it offered the same comfort to Rocky, as the human version of his best friend sat on the sand alone.
Grace watched from the doorway of his bungalow, allowing the man to have some peace. It was a lot to process. It’s not even true, necessarily. Rocky still doesn’t remember anything. Grace could just be projecting his own trauma onto him. But something he said rang deeply to Rocky, and he asked to take a walk.
Grace’s Rocky stepped up beside him. “Rocky Human upset, question?”
“Maybe.” Grace wasn’t sure. This other version of his best friend was different in many ways. Maybe Grace was out of practice around humans, or grown too accustomed to Eridian body language, but he had a hard time understanding the other Rocky. “I think I said too much.”
Rocky shifted on his claws. “Is a lot. Painful for Rocky. But Rocky would want to know the truth. Even if it hurts.”
Grace set a hand on top of his xenonite suit. “Thanks, bud.”
Across the sand, he spotted the shuffling jade-color shape of Adrian. Human-Rocky broke from his distant stare to watch as Adrian passed by, then climbed the steps up to Grace’s house. Rocky met them halfway and nudged their carapace in greeting, before they both met Grace at the door.
“Hello Savior Grace,” Adrian greeted, their notes always a few tones lower than Rocky’s. “I have come with news.”
“Hi, Adrian.” Rocky’s mate has refused to speak the simplified Eridian that Rocky chooses, which is perfectly fine with Grace, even if it can be a challenge at times. “What’s up?”
“Meteorologists discovered space debris in Erid atmosphere,” Adrian begins, their claws clicking with either anxiety or excitement. “Small space craft sent to investigate and retrieve samples. Found much more. Found xenonite ship. Found Eridian.”
“You found an Eridian?” Grace glanced across the beach at Human-Rocky, who was watching them like he could hear every word. “Not anyone you know?”
“Unknown Eridian. Stuck in deep sleep. Hasn’t awakened yet, but is being watched.”
Grace let out a small breath of relief. Waking up alone as an Eridian was already a stressful ordeal, especially since he can guess what this particular Eridian has been through. Grace nodded to Human-Rocky. “I’ll let him know.”
*
The ‘unknown’ Eridian was similar to Rocky in size, if with slightly longer legs. They had a tan carapace with darker striations, similar to sandstone, with deep grooves carved in half of their legs. Rocky’s carvings were symbols of his achievements and commitment to Adrian, but these grooves didn’t look anything like Rocky’s.
“What’s with their legs?” Grace asked. He lingered just beyond the medical bay beside Human-Rocky, watching through the xenonite barrier.
“It helps him see,” Rocky said, pacing the length of the window. “He can’t pick up natural sounds like the others, so he has those to help him. He rubs them together, like…” Rocky slides his palms back and forth. “Made me think he was like a cricket or something.”
Grace took his glasses from where they hung from his ears. Fixed them back into place.
On the other side, the sandstone Eridian is tended to by what constitutes a doctor on Erid. A selenite-like Eridian tapped across the sandstone, assessing their internal workings, chirping notes to their assistant. As Grace watched, the Eridian’s leg twitched.
Rocky pressed his hands on the barrier, his nose practically squished against it. “Grace?”
Another leg twitched, as if Rocky’s voice was slowly pulling the Eridian to consciousness. His legs stumbled beneath him, wobbly and unsteady as he lifted himself up. Chirped a few warbled tones. The doctor greeted him in song, offering assistance until he could stand by himself. It reminded Grace of a baby deer.
The doctor was speaking. It was muffled through the barrier, but Grace believed he was explaining where the Eridian was and what happened to him. Slowly, sluggishly, the Eridian lifted his front legs. He dragged one over the grooves, creating a rumble that sounded like those frog-shaped instruments Grace had seen in Grover’s music room once. As if just noticing them, the Eridian’s carapace abruptly faced the barrier.
In a mess of unsteady legs and unbridled excitement, the Eridian rushed towards them. He came to a sliding stop, his carapace bumping the xenonite in his haste, and pressed his two front claws to the barrier. Rocky met him on the other side, pressing his forehead where the Eridian leaned on the other side. His voice was thick as he spoke.
“I missed you too, buddy.” Rocky sniffed. He drummed his fingers on the glassy xenonite. Grace wondered if his restlessness was his own born habit, or adopted for his companion’s sake. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”
The Eridian trilled the same notes that translated into Rocky’s name. “Grace saw Rocky’s tether snap! Thought Rocky dead dead dead. Squishy flesh burned in astrophage atmosphere, or small lungs blew up in space, or…or….” The Eridian tapped on the xenonite. He rubbed his legs together again. “New human, question?”
Grace knelt beside Rocky and mimicked his tapping on the barrier. “Hi, there. I’m Grace.”
The Eridian slowed its rumbling. “Name Grace, question?”
“Yeah. Just like you.” Grace pressed a hand on the barrier. After a pause, his counterpart held its claw on the other side. “We have a lot to talk about.”
*
Grace waited on the beach. He left Human-Rocky and Eridian-Grace in the airlock to have a moment together before they retired for the night. Rocky and Adrian were taking Eridian-Grace to their home and Human-Rocky was staying with Grace, until they had a more long-term solution.
The research team in charge of this debacle performed a very productive thrum while they were welcoming Eridian-Grace from his slumber. The consensus was that some cosmic anomaly briefly united their timelines, possibly a result of their ‘fishing trip’ in Adrian’s atmosphere. Rocky’s Hail Mary burned astrophage more efficiently and at higher temperatures, with spontaneous results. In fact, Rocky’s version of the ship had several improvements on Grace’s. Like a fully functional bathroom, for example.
Grace wasn’t jealous or anything. Nope, not at all.
Mimicking the same circumstances that led to their arrival will take some time, so Grace has a roommate now. A roommate who is an alternate version of his best friend. What could possibly go wrong?
The airlock’s whooshing of air announced him of Human-Rocky’s arrival. Grace waited for him in the doorway. Rocky was looking down at the ground, smiling softly to himself as he climbed the steps up to the bungalow. Grace watched him. It was nice to see him smile. Before now, it was only deprecating half-smiles or smirks, but now it was full lift of lips with a spread of white teeth and slightly-pointed canines.
Human-Rocky was nice to look at in general. There wasn’t time to appreciate this anomaly with so much happening at once, but now that the problem was basically solved, Grace found himself taking in the details of his best friend. His grey-and-brown gravity-defying hair and dark, analyzing eyes that never stayed in one place for too long. His broad shoulders, a patch of twisted skin peeking out from the collar of his jumpsuit. His sleeves rolled up, the expanse of muscles lined with intricate tattoos. Then his hands, marred with tiny scars and rough calluses. Distantly, Grace wondered what they would feel like against his palms. On his cheek. Across the soft expanse of his throat.
With a jolt, Grace realized that Rocky’s footsteps had stopped. He was standing just a few feet away, looking up at Grace with his mouth slightly open.
Grace cleared his throat. “Sorry. Uh, come inside.”
He stepped off the threshold to allow room for Rocky. The other man ducked his head as he passed, a bit of color dusting his cheeks. He disappeared inside.
Grace blew out of pursed lips. He had to pull it together. It’s just the first human he’s seen in years that Grace will be sharing close quarters with for the foreseeable future. The human version of his alien best friend.
With a body that Grace wants to see more of.
He thumped his head against the doorframe. He was so screwed.