Chapter Text
>Interplanetary digital archive
>Library of Earth
>Audiovisual archives
>Human-Eridian
>First contact transmissions:
-
>Direct transmissions from Cptn. First Engineer Rocky, Eridian.
>Introduction by Dr. Cptn. Ryland Grace
>First response by the Eridian "Blip-A" Thrum.
>Transmission of the Voyager I recording, abridged.
>Complementary introduction by Cptn. First Engineer Rocky, Eridian.
>Permission for first contact and docking.
>On-board camera feeds.
>Personal recordings.
>Post-contact recordings.
They touched down on the surface of Erid after three months of negotiations and brutal gravity acclimatization that sapped Grace's remaining energy, now that he was definitely in the red regarding food options.
Rocky assured him that everything about the landing was very cool and sci-fi thanks to the awesomest planet-to-space elevator in the galaxy, but sadly, Grace was asleep for most of it to preserve calories. And his sanity.
He would never say it out loud but, he was glad that his time in space was over. There was no way he would handle didn't have to fight off vertigo every time his body remembered he was floating in microgravity anymore. No elevators in space, his butt. The entire concept of a spaceship was one giant elevator.
On the other hand, Rocky was beside himself with joy when they were lowered into the waiting arms of Erid. Half of his too-fast chirping was about Adrian and how much he missed them and wanted to touch carapaces (whatever that meant), and the other was about all of the engineering advancements he was going to spread like some sort of technological overlord. It was the most excited Grace had seen his buddy since he boarded the Hail Mary for the first time. He honestly couldn't tell if it was post-first contact jitters or plain stress, but it was making them butt heads over the smallest things.
He really meant it when he said that privacy was at a premium. Fairly quickly into their five-year journey to Erid it had become apparent that Grace's existence was overstimulating for Rocky, and Rocky's nature was unnerving to Grace- him being an apex ambush predator and all. They were still the bestests of friends who had ever friended, but rules had to be established just to avoid the first interplanetary murder case.
Then... they got themselves put under quarantine.
Yay!
Yippee!
Fun times.
Grace hoped it ended soon.
He missed private peeing...
"Recording number... uh, thirty-two. Day forty-five of the quarantine. It's currently five in the morning, and I am out of my mind with boredom."
Meanwhile, he used his egregious amounts of free time to teach everything he knew to the eridian scientists. He was talking about a full crash-course in biology, physics, and almost everything in between they needed to breed the Taumoeba. Everything. As fast as possible, to as many people as possible. Was Grace a great teacher, or what?
He’s earned enough cool points to last him a lifetime. No other human had taught aliens about relativity in the entire history of the world. He could even say that it was a... relatively new experience.
“Ugh, you're not funny.”
“I so am.” Grace looked away from the camera to punt Rocky's xenonite ball with his foot. It did not move one bit, but it was fun to hear his buddy’s grumblings. “Shoo, I offered some memory for your recordings, and you refused. This is me time.”
“Me, me, me, you're always hiding. What's ‘me’ time?” His friend made an irritated chitter and rolled away from his reach. “Are you tired of me?”
“It means leave me alone. Rule number one, I need privacy. “
He turned in his bed. Some things hadn't changed at all. They were still in the Hail Mary, as they had been for the past five years, except this time the Mary was firmly on solid ground. Except that something about the promise of a whole planet just out of their reach shortened their tempers and drove them a bit cooky. Unlike Rocky, however, Grace was trying to be responsible with his mental health and this whole First Contact thing by keeping daily video-recordings. For that, he needed a little privacy once in a while, but he had forgotten that his friend had separation anxiety (Grace did too) and an unquenchable need for his attention.
“You can do it when I'm asleep,” Rocky said petulantly, starfishining on the floor from sheer despair. Maybe even boredom.
“No shot. Nu-uh. I can’t do everything with you, Rock. I’ll go crazy.”
They were both losing it already, but at least Grace was just normal starvation-bedbound rather than might-drop-dead-from-an-alien-virus-bedbound. There was room for nuance between the two situations- and also relief!- seen as nothing contagious to him could evolve on Erid.
Though his big mouth couldn't stop speaking faster than his brain. He had mentioned the distant possibility of cross-contamination to the biologists on the thrumline- which had gotten very quiet- before issuing concerns about the pathogens he could carry and disappearing with tissue samples.
Rocky thought he was the reason behind the prolonged quarantine and decided to be insufferable about it. Grace, on the other hand, thought Rocky was just being an annoying limpet, too bored for his own good. It's not like he was the one suffering from cabin fever here. His species had literally evolved to live in caves.
“You're a pain in my butt.” He muttered darkly at the camera and finished the recording.
“I'm a speck under the vents?!” Rocky asked incredulously. It was a high-pitched set of whistles that Grace could imitate easily for an explosive reaction. He grinned and puckered his lips. The blow was devastating to Rocky’s psyche, and it was well-deserved revenge.
“Stop it! You're so creepy!” Rocky creaked like a rusty hinge being forced open. His claws were in the air, pleading with the ceiling. One day he would realize that Grace did it just to provoke that exact reaction, and then Grace would suffer. But not today. Today the victory was his.
“I'm not creepy.” Grace cleared his throat pointedly. “Nice sweater, by the way.”
It was a very nice sweater, green and somehow very soft-looking despite being made with something chemically identical to frigging asbestos. It almost made Grace forget that Rocky was a nudist. A pervert. A naked little freak.
Rocky rumbled with discontent but offered no justification- no neat explanation about cultural differences that led to him being naked for five years while the rest of Erid were bundled in adorable little vests and flowy dresses. That was because Rocky was a freak, and he knew it. Grace almost lost his thrum privileges for pointing it out, but it needed to be said.
“I was alone in space,” He said, which sounded exactly like an excuse to Grace. “I'm free to do what I want in the privacy of my spaceship.”
“You were naked the day we met face to face, you little buttface.” He sputtered. They had a moment back there, not speaking a lick of the other's language but still grooving. Vibing, as the kids said. “We danced, and we had a moment. It was beautiful!”
“So why complain!?”
“You showed me your parts! The very first time we met!” Grace said, feeling himself redden at the memory. “That's incredibly hypocritical- seen as I can't even eat in front of you!
“It's not the same!” Rocky protested immediately. “It's definitely not the same thing, you're gross-"
“-It look beautiful, look at me-!“
“This conversation is gross!”
Rocky rolled to the foot of his bed, impacting the bottom with enough force to shake the whole thing. Grace scoffed, his back still turned in indifference. The menace retaliated by poking Grace's foot with a claw until he succumbed to his ticklishness. It was Rocky's way of telling him to shut up, and simultaneously check on his vitals. Grace took it for a second, then curled his toes and retreated with great difficulty. His every move felt heavy in the gravity of Erid, like he was pulling rocks with every twitch of his muscles.
“You're the only one who's disgusted, are you?” Grace asked, feeling vindicated for all the times he's been called gross or leaky. “Look at yourself, you're wearing a sweater. It's forest-green!”
“You sound so dramatic. Medium-rough texture is perfectly acceptable for an outfit.”
“Stop acting like I'm overreacting!”
“I didn't say you were.” Was Rocky's mild response back on his smug train as if Grace couldn't debilitate him with a burp.
“You implied it. You always do that, you imply, and then you leave me to dig my own grave- because you know I'll be bothered by it!”
Rocky made another whistle sound that wasn't anything translatable. Grace imitated it again just to be petty.
“Stop that!”
Grace laughed until he couldn't breathe, which was exhaustingly soon.
“Uh oh.” The fun mood disappeared into thin air as he let out a faint wheeze, followed by a cough. He lifted a hand to his chest with mild panic, looking at Rocky for help. Armando lowered from the ceiling with an alert of his vitals as soon as he started to gasp for air that simply refused to reach his lungs.
“Low oxygen concentration detected, please attach the breathing cannula, Dr. Grace.” The robot instructed. The equipment in question was produced from its supplies compartment.
"What the fuck is happening with your lungs?" Rocky's voice was soaked in worry despite the crass vocabulary. He skittered in one place before something seemed to click. "Oh."
Grace looked at him in between heavy breaths, then pointed at Armando. That was the first time that the machine had offered something like that, and it came in clutch. Dr. Lamai had really thought of everything.
Rocky reached for the tube hesitantly.
“It's connected to an oxygen concentration chamber.” Grace wheezed, letting Rocky work the adhesives with slow claws. “Whoa! I just remembered that...! High five!”
The high-five was a bit underwhelming between the solid xenonite between them and the ongoing medical emergency, but he had learned to enjoy the small victories when they presented themselves.
At this point, his best friend was also the closest thing Grace had to a doctor. Rocky knew more than he did about his own body, both through his senses and his research. It was a relief to have someone take care of that, except the knowledge seemed to turn Rocky into a fretter.
The engineer spent most of his time browsing medical journals without taking any meaningful pause between the horrible descriptions of human maladies. The rest of said time was spent hovering, sometimes literally, in the tunnel overhead. It wasn't healthy, and Grace didn't know how to make him stop when he was torn between keeping himself sane and dealing with his weak body.
“Here, put it on.” Rocky had poked out two of his arms from the xenonite barrier while Grace mused over his predicament. In his claws was the offered cannula, fully prepared for application.
“Okay.” He took a deep calming breath that did nothing for him and accepted the transparent tubes. The instructions were easy to follow and the effects, almost immediate.
“This will concentrate the oxygen near your airways. It will make inhalation easier,” Rocky said after a moment, arms still in the air as if he wanted to rest them over the bed. Or reach for Grace.
“Sure,” He concentrated on breathing. “In other words... My lungs are too weak to breathe in this gravity.” And they would weaken further as malnutrition took its toll. Laughing didn't make things better, which was a bummer because it was exactly what he needed to cope with all of this.
They stayed in companionable silence for a moment until his vitals were close to normal.
Rocky petted his ankle like he'd seen Grace do to the top of his ball. It honestly felt amazing to feel something warm and solid touch his skin again. The advancements eridians had made with xenonite lattice allowed for almost full flexibility applied on a very small window of the otherwise solid ball. Rocky could reach for him and try to touch him with gentle claws. That alone made the return to Erid worth it.
“There is a scheduled thrum in a day. The biologists want to discuss some things.” Rocky grumbled, still a solid presence by his right ankle. “Even though my instructions couldn’t be more simple.”
“Like Taumoeba breeding stuff?” He perked a little despite himself. Finally something to do! “What did you tell them?”
“That you're resting and that they can go kick rocks,” Rocky explained with an odd half-twitch of his fifth leg- the one furthest away from Grace. “It's been seventy years, and they still haven't invented ambulatory recorders! That's on them.”
Grace swallowed his disappointment, reminding himself of the methods Erid used for data storage instead. They were... diverse.
Books were a thing, of course, tactile and bulky for easy echolocation. Recording devices too, but they were large and impractically so, due to the complexity of eridian speech. Most researchers had modern devices resembling tablets, but those were highly experimental technology with high production costs. For now, that was. There was also the Wire, like a landline, well-connected but notably non-portable.
Of course, thrums were by far the method of excellence for communication. One could imagine his reaction when he learned that most eridians simply memorized the knowledge they needed, passing it down to others through thrums, aka verbally, which was completely and utterly bonkers.
Bonkers and also fascinatingly effective from what he had seen.
“I guess we have to wait until they finally fabricate your guns.” He said. “Then they can re-invent the wheel and stick it to a microphone.”
“Visualizer, not gun. Public schematics pending.” Rocky tapped his xenonite ball. “Many schematics are pending.”
“Maybe it wouldn't have worked either way." He mused. They were talking about recorders the size of rooms, after all. "Thrums are neat, though. The human alternative is to suffer through post-grad and cry. You guys can remember everything- hey, why don't you repeat what was said in previous thrums? Like a recap?”
“It's not magic, Grace. Don't be stupid, stupid, stupid. A thrum relying on the memories of another thrum is in poor form.” Rocky tilted his carapace in scholarly indignation. “Memorization is not understanding. Repeating without thinking is not real science.”
Someone should have told that to his biochem professor.
“So they are coming anyway?”
“I've been overruled.” If Rocky could sigh, he would.
Grace snorted.
“It's fine. I don't mind doing it anyway. It's basically my job to repeat stuff until I'm understood.”
"Mmm, they're not coming for another lecture." Rocky fiddled with his claws, evasive as he could be to a guy that could see his body-language in full.
Grace pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. That seemed about right. He hadn't wanted to say anything in the recording and much less in front of Rocky, but the thrums revolving around the Taumoeba had ended quite abruptly after what he thought was pretty intense interest.
It started with a lot of excitement and eager desire to do science together. The eridians he met in the beginning were friendly and sharp as tacks, but little by little they had stopped coming, having learned as much as they could from him. Their substitutes were much less nice the more they got into the details. Grace honestly didn't know what pissed them off so much about the history of astrophysics.
He hadn't made a fuss about it because they were genuinely trying to save the world at the word of a literal alien, but it felt less like a collaboration and more like a contest. His theories and proven methods were questioned during every thrum. No big deal. That was the scientific method, but eventually it felt as if they were trying to outsmart him with his own discoveries, which was weird and a bit childish?
He really, really didn't want to say anything about it.
"I haven't explained the breeding techniques we used to accelerate cell-division in the Taumoeba. It's necessary if they want to be quicker." He said, just to pretend he was fine with either option.
"These biologists are interested in you, Grace," Rocky explained patiently. "They're human biology experts I've been thrumming with for a while now. They're ready to meet you."
"Oh," He smirked crookedly. "I'm getting dissected."
"No!" Rocky screeched. "Bad, bad, bad, joke- you're not funny! No dissections- they are doctors! We want to ask more questions about your treatment only!"
"Okay!" He lifted his arms in a surrendering gesture, leaning back as Rocky honest-to-gosh hissed at him.
"Bad joke!"
"I'm sorry!" He squealed.
"You better be," Rocky's claw poked at his side, which drew a chuckle from him. Bad idea. Rocky seemed to remember his busted lungs, so he switched tactics and began to thump on his mattress. "It wasn't funny."
"Sorryyyy!" Grace repeated.
"I already told them everything. Scientists are always so stubborn. So..." Rocky chittered wordlessly.
"Maybe they want to hear whatever it is from the source." He shrugged. "It's fine."
His friend’s tilted carapace told him he was unconvinced, but there was nothing they could do about it anyway. Grace was willing to play along, since things could really be way, way worse. As in, they could want to dissect him for real.
“I’ll be fine, Rock. It’s good for me to see new- carapaces.”
“At least more people will get to know you.” Rocky concluded after a moment of silence, “An introduction or two by the end... Yes, we can do this. I believe in you.”
"Aw, buddy, thanks!"