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So I haven’t told Rocky about the therapist. Sue me.
I mean, there’s no point: first of all, it was four sessions, and I’ve been to the DMV more times. Jesus, I can’t imagine trying to explain the DMV to an alien. He knows what therapy is — Erid has an equivalent, sort of — but then I’d also have to explain insurance and why it took me so long to find a provider. Because most therapists are women, and I wanted to see a man. That’s already a can of worms for a cosexual species. Like, Basically, Rock, I’m a guy, and it’s weird for me to talk to anyone about my problems but marginally less weird if that person is also a guy. But there also aren’t a lot of men who are therapists. Or men who go to therapy, for that matter. Why? Just trust me when I say that humans have weird hangups. No, I don’t get it either.
And then I’d have to think about the one I saw, this objectively very friendly-looking guy who looked around my age and had a very soft voice and let me talk way for too long about way too much, including stuff that genuinely had nothing to do with why I was supposed to be there in the first place. The guy who was listed as a “marriage and family” counselor, which made me, a single dude sitting on a futon with no back pillows, feel like an idiot. Who called me Ryland. And I don’t have anything against being called Ryland, it’s my name, but people don’t call me that. I didn’t even properly break it off with him. I made up something about “life circumstances” and asked if we could put the sessions on hold for a bit, and he said Of course, Ryland, just let me know if there’s anything I can do to help in the meantime, and then I deleted his number.
Cringe, cringe, cringe.
At least now I have a decent excuse for ghosting.
Rocky tells me Eridian therapists are less common than human ones, but they make bank, insofar as “bank” exists on Erid. If Eridians think and work in harmonies, then an Eridian therapist is like… a piano tuner. Or maybe that’s an Eridian psychiatrist? The point is that their job, more or less, is to help Eridians who struggle to harmonize. There’s an end goal. A fix-me point. Human therapists are frustratingly evasive about those. Anyway, Rocky says you can always tell a discordant Eridian apart. They have wrong notes, he says. Bad tempo. I’m not a music guy but when your best friend speaks in whale song, you start thinking in different terms.
Rocky sounds really, really grave when he talks about discordance. It’s bad news for everyone: they can’t thrum because it’s uncomfortable, even painful, to accommodate a discordant Eridian. And if you’re constantly making everyone’s life harder, who’s going to stick around? Who’s going to watch you sleep? That’s why there’s a fix-me point. Because there aren’t really “alternative lifestyles” — not like that. Rocky says if there is an alternative, it’s not better than death.
He tried to explain what happens to Eridians who aren’t trying, or straight up refuse, to fix it. The closest I could get was ostracization, but I have a feeling the Eridian sentiment is stronger than that. That’s evolution for you — ingroups, outgroups, et cetera. I’ll admit I was hoping that humanity’s alien neighbors had managed to figure out all the bigotry and such, but I guess life relies on pattern recognition everywhere.
In turn I explain to him things like autism, ADHD, the special needs class at Grover Cleveland Middle, the sensitivity training modules for teachers, the quiet kids at the back of the classroom. (Humans are very accommodating, Rocky says.) He still thinks that basing judgments on arbitrary visual observations is stupid (tell the planet Earth, not me, bud!), but I also manage to eke out of him that Eridians can have ungenerous thoughts about certain accents. Alien civilizations: they’re just like us. Those poor Erid-equivalent West Virginians.
And of course we talk about physical disabilities; for Rocky’s sake I focus on the external stuff for humans, limb differences and mobility issues, because the concept of autoimmune diseases scares the carapace off him. Eridians just die, he says. They can be born with malformations and other features missing, so there are Eridian prostheses and other devices to help — he makes me models, to demonstrate — but their internal organs are very delicate, and pebbles are born so small that, well… that part is a downer. I tell him humans are the same and he says, Humans are fragile always, no surprise.
But ultimately we’re from two societies that take care of their sick and injured, which is a nice cosmic lift.
We had to have conversations he really, really didn’t like in our last year aboard the Mary. The long-term effects of cramped quarters and zero-G on the human body. Caloric deficit. Muscle atrophy. I won’t starve, I told him; that wasn’t a risk until we made it to Erid. (He didn’t want to talk about that either.) But the health complications could catch up to me any day.
I wish I had been honest with myself then too. Because I’m cresting forty, right? I knew my body wasn’t bouncing back the way it would in my twenties. I just figured that with the nutrient-rich coma slurry; the muscle I had to start with; opportunities to rehabilitate under the watchful, genius eye of my best friend… maybe I wouldn’t bounce back, but I’d bounce, you know?
Anyway, there isn’t a therapist on Erid who could work on me without a seminar. And even after a curriculum, a thesis, and a defense, it’d still be impossible to explain why I feel so goshdarn weird about the wheelchair.
“Grace make me look stupid,” Rocky says.
He’s using the simplified Eridian today, which means he can tell I’m tired. Well, the guy hears my insides in 4K, so he knows a lot of things. He says my heart pumps harder, I’m quicker to run out of air, my muscles sound “thin”, and I make more “Grace noises”, which are usually grumbles, groans, and the like. I asked Rocky why a Grace noise couldn’t be, for instance, a sort of rah-rah rallying hero sound, but apparently those don’t come out of me half as much as the complaining does.
Whatever. I’m calling all his know-bettering “Rocky noises” to get him back. The point is he knows I’m too fatigued to conjugate, and to put subjects and objects and verbs in the wrong places. No, correction — the Eridian places. Not wrong, just different. God, I can sound like such an idiot in my own head sometimes.
Speaking of being in my head.
“Grace won’t try,” Rocky says, tapping the wheel spokes. “Something wrong with mobility device, question?”
It’s beautiful. He’s outdone himself. “No, no, no. ’S perfect.”
I wish he’d climb up on the bed already. I get that this is rich coming from an overgrown ape in an enclosure, but the way he’s standing in the middle of my bedroom makes me feel like a zoo animal. Instead he’s fussing over the wheelchair like he’ll find a flaw on his hundredth once-over. I’ve never seen Rocky, my brilliant friend, catch anything later than the first time.
“Uncomfortable?”
That’s a fair question, looking at it. Xenonite doesn’t have the most welcoming appearance. But it comes from an expert touch: fit to the curve of my back, the armrests sloped so I can rest my elbows where I like, a console fit to my hand with the steering and, repurposed from the Mary, a button-activated flashlight. (So Grace doesn’t steer my hard work into a wall, says Rocky.) It rolls and turns so smoothly that when I hit corners, or break one of the lovely ceramic pots in my window, it’s only ever my fault. Better by an Eridian mile than the tank-style power chairs I saw struggling to get up hills in San Francisco.
“Nah, it’s great.”
There’s nothing wrong with it. Absolutely nothing.
“I’m just tired,” I say to Rocky, and smile. “Don’t feel like driving.”
He tap-taps his fingers, which makes me feel like the worst person in the world. “Grace can say. [My designs] — ” he uses the possessive, a little nervous slip out of our Eridian-to-English pidgin — “not perfect. Very very very important to Grace health.”
I am such a jerk. Just get in the chair, Ryland! Go to the appointment! Or say hey, I know this has worked for everybody else in human history, but it turns out it’s actually not going to work for me! Sorry!
“I know, buddy,” I say. “Always. There’s nothing wrong with the chair, I promise. I think I just need to stay in bed today.”
Rocky fidgets and hums, but if I say it like that, he won’t question it. Sure enough, a moment later, he takes the steps to my bed and folds up next to me. I have his screen reader set up next to where the laptop rests on my thighs. It runs pretty hot, but he’s warmer. “You pick the game today,” I tell him.
He shifts in the EVA suit. There are thicker strips of insulation along his limbs, cradling his underside, to support his cat-loaf shape and preserve my quilt. “Grace promise, Grace would say if chair was not working.”
“You know I would.”
“Stardew Valley.”
I sigh heavily and look over my glasses at him. “Are you gonna yell at me?”
“No,” says Rocky, unconvincingly.
“If you say a word about optimization, we’re switching to Splatoon.”
“Not my fault if Grace refuse to [***].”
That one slips by me. It’s not often that I miss words anymore, but when I do — well, I know him well enough, I get the idea. I waggle my head at him (he has trouble with my faces unless I’m holding very still, so the waggle is so he knows I’m sassing him) and he chirps a laugh, and then I boot up Stardew and try not to think about whenever it was I started lying to him.
We last an hour, and yes, Rocky yells at me, but that’s not why — I spend two precious in-game days chasing villagers around before he catches the tremors running down my wrist and says, “Bored now. Grace rest.” I grumble back at him, but even if it weren’t for my shredded nerves acting up, my eyes hurt. Even my neck aches from holding my head upright.
So I push the laptop to Rocky and scoot down under the quilt to become Jell-O (side note, I’d kill for some Jell-O), and he puts on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I try to watch for a bit. But my eyes really, really hurt.
It can turn into hours like this: laying in the dark, the biodome light casting a red tint through my eyelids, Rocky weighing the bed and occasionally cooing at me when I stir. That’s when I really start to hate it here. The mattress is so perfect and firm, and the quilt scratches pleasantly at my chin, and the sheets scrape and settle in my angles and I want to rip it all off me and start clawing my skin off. After that I’ll kick the love out of that stupid wheelchair. Yell a bit. Throw something.
Hell, I’d be happy to stand. But I’ve done enough of this to know that the cure is rest, and that “rest” has to be absolute stillness. My body burns with the effort to breathe and blink and hold atoms together. It’ll be hours. I’ll fall asleep eventually.
Rocky can hear the difference between my frustrated simmering and dreamland, and I’ve told him he doesn’t have to stay, but it makes him anxious to leave me alone even when everything is hunky-dory. Adrian has said, a little curtly, that he rests an hour for every ten he spends with me. Sorry, Adrian. I mean, I’m not gonna tell the guy to go see an Eridian therapist, because that’d make me a hypocrite. Nothing’s wrong with Rocky anyway. It’s just hard to supplement a need that nothing else replaces.
It takes all I’ve got to turn, but it’s worth it to feel Rocky’s heat against me — a familiar bloom at the base of my spine.
I’m not better, and I have class today.
Get in the chair, Ryland. It’s a matter of minutes until Rocky comes breaking the door down for our morning walk. I can get dressed on the bed, brush my teeth on the floor, but teaching facedown in my own sweat is a no-go — trust me, I’ve tried. I know the chair is comfortable, I know it’s practical, and I know it maneuvers like a dream. I know a lot. I have a PhD, and it happens to be in absolutely none of the things that matter.
I decide not to think about it. I get up and walk to the chair, then sit down. For a guy who’s walked maximum five steps, it feels better than it should. It’s common sense: if I’m malfunctioning and the chair is working, and the chair will always be working, because it’s Rocky we’re talking about, and I have access to the chair, and the chair can get me out of that frigging bed, well!
It’s a chair that moves! I think back to every time in my college dorm I tried using the Force to grab something from across the room. Who wouldn’t want a chair that moves? I hit the power and twiddle the joystick — it’s at Mark 2 speed, after the test drive that ended in a broken pot — and feel all of my muscles clench as it scoots forward. It’s not weirder than zero-G, but that’s a high bar to clear. No swinging, shifting force when I move. I feel strange and floaty.
Then I turn in place, which is pretty fun. Like a teacup ride. Keep going; get to the door.
I push the joystick again and scoot. Push, scoot. Mark 2 seems more manageable, at least. Tuuuuuuuurn. I get to the door, and the chair whacks the frame, chips the wall, and completely frays my nerves.
“God!” I snap, and push myself out of the chair and onto the floor. Then my house rattles, again.
My cane is leaning by the door. Armando, in the living room, tweaks a concerned arm at me. I grit my teeth and push down on the floor and watch my arms quake, actually quiver so badly that veins appear, as I force myself to my feet. I’m trying not to get all back-in-my-day but, like, there was a time when I was carting relatively full crates around the Mary with only forehead shine to show for it. This is pathetic. I can’t rattle the word out of my head. It’s pathetic.
THNK-THNK-THNK goes the four-hundred-pounds’ worth of alien on my doorstep. I put a hand on the wall and then on the dresser, doing a dogged little shuffle. Armando gives me a boost to walk the few unsupported feet to the front door. It’s cool. I got this. I scoop up my cane just in case.
I open the door and say, “Morning, pal!”
“Late late late,” says Rocky.
“Yeah, I know. Couldn’t get out of bed. I’m fine,” I add, when he clicks at me. “Tired. I’m ready now, don’t worry.”
I super haven’t brushed my teeth or had breakfast, but he doesn’t need to know that. Of course, then Rocky says, like someone who is very deliberately ignoring the conversations we’ve had about boundaries, “You [***] eat [***].”
Uhh — imperative and negation? He’s saying I haven’t eaten. Holy guacamole, I am fried. “Yeah, I wasn’t hungry. I’m ready to go.”
Rocky clicks and then taps the stoop. Right in front of me! “Grace eat eat eat. Class [***] wait.”
“I can eat later,” I tell him.
He huffs. “You are so stubborn for no reason.”
“I know.”
It’s a rare day that Rocky doesn’t argue, but we take the path down to the beach without incident. Well, I say “without incident”. It’s a workout. I’m an object in motion, so I’ll stay in motion unless acted upon by my enormously uncooperative body, but the laws of physics aren’t much comfort when I’m sweating and twitching. I’m actually surprised Rocky hasn’t said anything. He does stay conspicuously close to me, keeping pace with me and my cane, the top of his carapace level with my knees.
Finally we get to the shore and sit. Sand. God, I love sand. Anakin Skywalker can suck it. It’s soft and shifty and my legs feel like two carbonated sodas that someone shook up.
“Let me observe today,” says Rocky, making me jump.
“The class?” I tweak the handle of my cane back and forth. It’s funny, the new fidgets you develop when you get yourself a new limb. “I mean, I’d love that. The kids would love it. But aren’t you busy?”
“Not really. Home is boring. It makes me — ” He says a word we translated as itch, but the way Rocky described it sounded more intense than that. A sort of claustrophobic buzz under the carapace shortly before molting. “Lately [***] can’t.”
Dude, I tell myself, you gotta focus. “Driving you crazy, huh?”
“Crazier every [***] minute.”
Well, that one was a bad word.
“Adrian told me to get out,” says Rocky, “so…”
I turn my whole head to look at him, which feels extraneous; he’d told me once he can hear when my eyes move. But I like keeping human habits. “They told you to get out?”
Rocky warbles. “Not like that. Adrian said I need more to do. Like [***] savior agenda isn’t [***].” (That’s an Eridian curse word. Something like buried alive.) “Just meetings on meetings on meetings. So long and boring I thought I’d die and oxidize.”
“That sounds dire, bud.”
“Savior of Erid is a [***] tedious job. Anyway. Let me hang out with pebbles and my best friend for a day. Adrian needs quiet and I can’t be.”
“You’ll still be a Savior of Erid,” I say, grinning at him. “Think you’re up to the task?”
“I can be a fun Savior of Erid,” says Rocky. “I’m fun.” He pauses and says, “Can you get up?”
“Aw, yeah,” I tell him. And I can! If I roll onto my hands and knees first, and then push to kneeling, then to advanced marry-me kneeling, then put my hands on my knees and push again for all I’m worth. It’s not pretty. Rocky shuffles closer and whistles at me.
“It’s hard to watch, old man,” he says.
My stomach is in one of those terribly-made, endlessly charming parachutes from the start-of-school egg drop. “Yeah, yeah.”
Yolk oozing everywhere.
I push my cane into the sand.
After class, which I teach sitting down and spend half of fielding questions the kids have for Rocky, my voice feels like it’s leaking out of my throat. At least he gives me downtime with his own rambling answers on xenonite and the Blip-A. It’s cute — Rocky’s a natural at many things, but talking to kids isn’t one of them. Luckily the kids in question also have eidetic memories and, like human kids, get very, very loud about what they don’t understand.
Finally I walk to the barrier and stretch indulgently against the heat. I look over at my friend, who spent the last hour of class knitting. “Whatcha makin’?”
“Upgrades,” says Rocky, mysteriously.
“Ooh, very mysterious.”
“A new wheelchair,” he says, “maybe.”
My chest goes cold. He goes on weaving, but I can tell (most of) his attention is on me now. “Rock, there’s nothing wrong with the current one.”
“You’re acting like there is. You sounded out of control today, just walking. Of course you had to go to class anyway.” His notes are a brutal staccato.
“You don’t have to be a jerk about it,” I mutter, and it comes off a little sharper than I mean. “The chair can’t get down the path anyway.”
“That’s what I mean. I fix.” He punctuates it in the pidgin cadence. So, there. Now you can’t misunderstand me. “Maybe limbs like an Eridian’s. Just a matter of balance differentials. It’s bio-engineering, a little different, but machinery works on the same principles.”
“Rock,” I say. God, I love him, and God, he is exhausting sometimes. “There’s no problem. I had my cane and now I’ll go back and rest.”
“And do the same tomorrow?”
“That’s the plan, yeah.”
“And make me listen to [***] you sound [***] like die?”
Either he’s getting advanced or I’m getting too upset to conjugate. And, yes, my heart is in my ears. “You’re being dramatic.”
Rocky’s fingers stop over the xenonite. His leg, the horned one, hits the ground one-two. “You don’t ever rest right, and now this. You’re shaking [***]! Like prey! Sit down, Grace!”
“I know,” I snap, “I know, chill, dude, jeez,” as my own voice is getting further from the inside of my head. Again Rocky says, “Grace?!” and then I sort of trip on nothing and fall. I will concede that I should’ve eaten. But at least I didn’t cancel class.
At this point I’d need both my hands to count the number of times I’ve collapsed for stupid fragile human reasons. I’m used to the protocol by now. Rocky isn’t.
He paces and clicks and hums until the med team has me settled back in my room with an IV. I keep telling them, Guys, it’s fine, I’m just tired, but I’ll also be honest — having a gurney ride back to the house, instead of braving the beach with my cane, is pretty sweet.
I lay on my back and listen to a choral buzz and try and fail to translate a lot of it, and then in the end Rocky comes up and sits in the crook of my knee. It’s just his voice now. He says, “Sleep, please, Grace.”
“’M sorry,” I slur. I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for. Existing, maybe. Refusing to use the logic centers in my brain.
Thank God, he doesn’t dignify it with a response.
Rocky doesn’t build a new wheelchair, but the guy’s an engineer. He’s gonna make upgrades.
Today we’re testing “beach mode”. They’re tire replacements: simple treads locked around gears with a small, powerful motor. I have to hold on for dear life down the path, but the treads take the stairs, true to Rocky’s word. They grind down the little rocks beneath me as I do my best sand-donuts next to the cliffs.
“What do you think?” I call to Rocky, who scrapes into the ground with two hands as he observes me. He makes an approving titter that I privately translate as Radical! My legs are tensing and twitching with every turn — they’re still functioning, and itching to spring me from my xenonite throne — but I promised Rocky I’d try to stay put for a while.
After another minute, when I can feel myself getting dizzy, I brake mid-donut and roll over to Rocky. I’m being positive, I am, but trying to get close to him is so darn frustrating. Either I clip him (he insists it doesn’t hurt, but I feel bad) or I end up at least a foot away from him, and then he has to shuffle over to me. Which also makes me feel annoying and bad. This time I do a sort of clumsy roll-stop-roll-stop until I’m a little behind him, my wheel dimpling the ground next to his horned leg.
“You have found a way to make human movement look even sillier,” he says, without turning his face-facet to me. Something hot and terrible pinches in my gut, but no, of course that’s not it — he’s talking about the donuts. “Very impressive.”
“Thank you, thank you.” I drum my fingers on the chair arm. It feels like getting the concept of fidgeting wrong. “So, you’ve been quiet. Penny for your thoughts?”
“Need word.”
“Oh, it’s like…” Have we never watched something where someone said Penny for your thoughts? “What’re you thinking about?”
“We should do more tests after this,” says Rocky, scooping a handful of small stones and letting them fall. “I can make a mechanism. Something that changes the treads for you. We’ll have to make room in the house, you’re not tracking beach on the carpets.”
“I’m not an animal, jeez.” I wait for him to say something about the general state of the Hail Mary, but he doesn’t. The pinching returns to my stomach. “Anyway, I… thought you were going home.”
It’s been two days, and he’s only been gone twice, for an hour at a time — presumably to get some fresh air and refresh his EVA suit. Eridians are a hearty people, but fifty-some hours in a hot, cramped xenonite suit? He’s gotta be at least a little uncomfortable. And I know him; he’s due a sleep cycle and probably a meal, too. The pinching is getting worse. Like a flesh-rending. Two days of me sloughing around on low battery and Rocky fussing over me, and making treads for the stupid wheelchair…
“Don’t you need to sleep?” I say, dumbly.
“No, no, I’m good for a bit.”
He is so lying. I can’t even say what it is specifically; I just know. “Okay, well, maybe you should go sleep anyway. I’ll probably just chill when we get back to the house, play more games.” I think about name-dropping Splatoon again — he despises the soundscape — but that feels too pushy.
But Rocky says, “Just say if you want to be alone, Grace.”
“Dude, what? This is not my problem. Seriously,” I say, “you’ve been acting weird. Is something going on at home?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t believe you.”
“It’s not Adrian,” Rocky snips. His vents push up like a bird’s feathers cockling, preparing for liftoff. “I’m busy. Can’t go attend thrums when Grace needs things done for the biodome. And you do need them. I don’t care if the others don’t understand, they can deal with it.”
“Are you…” I flounder. “Have you been skipping stuff? Important stuff? Because I don’t want to get in the way of — ”
“You’re not in the way!” He gets shrill, and it sends a spike through my eardrums. I wince and immediately Rocky hunches, pressing closer to the ground.
“Sorry. Sorry, Grace.”
“It’s fine, pal.” All my petty, full-body bristling has turned to guilt. He’s been upset. Two days, maybe more? I would’ve noticed sooner if I hadn’t been a slab of flesh on the bed. Again, my legs twitch with the impulse to push out of the stupid chair and sit on the ground with Rocky instead.
I lay a hand on his suit, and he pushes up into me. “You wanna talk?”
“That is the [***] problem.” A bit of steam clouds the xenonite under my hand. “Busy busy busy.”
“It’s just us now.”
I watch Rocky’s fingers click and stammer where the layer of xenonite bars them. He’s refined the suit, too. There was a time he couldn’t articulate that well, and a time before that when he was tripping around almost as badly as me. I try to think back to when that was and realize I’m not sure. Sometimes Rocky just shows up with things. New appliances. Revised suits. The wheelchair.
“I have been in and out of thrum,” he says. “This one that Adrian and I went to… I told myself I was imagining it. No one said anything, but do you know how it sounded? You can’t imagine. I couldn’t listen to myself. Like a [***] [***] in [***].”
“Whoa,” I say, “uh — ”
“Means [***],” says Rocky, and then huffs. “It means like — means close to…”
His leg drills anxiously into the ground. “Discordant. I sound discordant. Adrian said the [***] wasn’t so terrible. But it is — sounds [***] [***], and I can’t… keep up.” There’s a quaver there, a little wobble that breaks my heart. “I got overwhelmed. Had to leave and sit in a booth. You don’t do that. You don’t do that, ever.”
Oh, Rock. “Oh, Rock.”
“So then there was another,” says Rocky, “because there is always another, [***] forever, and I didn’t go. Yesterday. You had good timing.”
That stings in a very strange way. Whatever, it’s not about me right now. “Everybody knows you’re dealing with a lot, right? They can’t… they can’t possibly judge you for being a little off. If they do, screw ’em.” I fling my hand in the air. “What do they know?”
“No, no, no.” Rocky’s vents pop for emphasis. “No, you definitely don’t understand. This isn’t like an awkward human. This is like if you came back to Earth on all fours and started to scream if anyone touched you. This is like — ” More steam flushes beneath my hand, just a pulse through the suit — “like I’m not…”
Yeah, screw the chair. I scoot down and crowd myself next to him, putting my head atop his carapace, listening to the loud and painful rush against my ear. I hum. He shrinks behind his crest and hisses like he’s trying to push the steam as far from him as possible.
Crying your heart out in an EVA suit. Been there, buddy.
“Not Eridian,” he chokes, between sobs.
“It’s okay,” is all I can say. “Hey, it’s okay.”
I can’t tell him what I’m thinking right now. It almost bowls me over: spite, resentment for an entire species and the way they’re making my best friend feel. It’s not their fault, but Jesus, they can’t understand that what happened to Rocky has never happened to any other Eridian, ever? That you might come back a little messed up from all that? That you might need some quiet alone time once in a while?
Like, I know that’s not how they work, and I’m applying human standards where they shouldn’t be, but — dang it, they’re making him cry!
Because I am trying very hard not to make more unfair comparisons in my head, I say instead, “Has anyone said anything to you?”
“Not directly.” He curls inward a bit more. “I just know.”
I’m getting an ache through my whole body that feels like chewing on a canker sore. I shouldn’t, but I want to bite down. I should tell him that it doesn’t matter what people think and the whole planet is grateful, should be grateful, to have him at all. That his insights are crucial; he’s a Savior of Erid, for Pete’s sake. That they should work around him and/or put up with it. Instead, like an alien invader feeling a little big for his britches, I say, “You can stay here as long as you want.”
He shudders. “I haven’t slept.”
“Then go do a suit check, come back, and I’ll watch you sleep. S’okay. I need time to practice my turns in this thing — ” I pat the chair — ”without you giving me your judgy side.”
“I judge because we go outside just so you can turn in circles.”
At least he’s sassing me again. I really, really hate seeing Rocky cry. “Check in with Adrian too, okay? It’s been a while.”
“I will. I’ll stretch.”
“Good,” I say. “And, hey, you…”
No, I really can’t ask him if he’s considered therapy. That’s not the same thing. That’s like if I looked at another human and said, Hey, have you considered self-admitting? “You wanna go back?”
“Mmm… if you don’t shriek like an animal going back up the stairs,” says Rocky. “It’s like you don’t trust me.”
“Gravity and I are not on the best of terms, you know this.”
He puffs out his chest as much as a guy with no chest can. Already trying to make me laugh, or forget about his moment of weakness, or both. “Then gravity can take that up with me.”
It all feels so unimportant then. I’m lightyears away from anyone who would care to comment on the contraption I’m hauling myself into, struggling with my very much un-atrophied arms, in front of my friend the rock-crab-spider who feels that “bipedal” is an enormously inefficient thing to be anyway. I’m not trying to chew on the sore, but it feels good to hear Rocky out like this and remind him that I’m a safe place. I’m an anchor. I’m reliable. I’m not going anywhere.
I’m not going anywhere.
My whole body is ringing like a bell. I blink and groan just to prove to myself that I can, and then roll so my nose and mouth aren’t compressed into pleasantly-cooled tile.
I was in the bathroom, and I still am. My toothbrush is laying a foot or so away from me on the floor. Yuck. Well, more importantly, I’m on the floor. My hair is plastered to my head and my mouth is dusty with sleep; I haven’t even changed out of my pajamas.
I run it back: I’d slept in a bit, got up, walked purposefully to the bathroom, and then the world started centrifuging.
There’s a sort of cold hissing in my ears and the back of my head, a gray halo around the view I have out the door, and a tingling in my fingers and a select few toes. My first thought is I know this feeling. Every doctoral student is a little bit anemic. You stand up too fast, you get woozy, then you steady yourself with a hand on the doorframe and move on. Your blood only takes a few seconds to come back around. So, fine, I’m down and on my stomach, which means now my heart is level with everything else. Human bodies are pretty smart in that way.
Except I am also absolutely, totally, completely exhausted. Like all the ATP has evacuated my body. Like my mitochondria went on break and didn’t come back. Rocky’s worker cells do that sometimes; surely there’s no chance that my cells are trying to do things the Eridian way? No, nope, organisms don’t mutate that fast.
But then why can’t I get up?
For God’s sake, I can’t even move a finger. I can feel the neurons firing and then it’s like the impulse just… gets lost. For a second I wonder if I’ve had a stroke. No, I’d have impaired cognition. Numbness. Think, Ryland. It’s like the fatigue that puts me down sometimes, just times a thousand, or whatever that is in base six. Wait, I can’t even convert to base six? Is that impaired cognition?
Oh God, am I having a stroke?
THNK-THNK-THNK.
Right. Jesus. Right. I’d slept in. Rocky’s here. No class today; that’s something. I can get to the stupid chair and to the door and tell him I’m a little off, that it’s not urgent, that I’ve probably been pushing myself anyway. Whatever that even means. Going outside? Walking with him in the surf? Shadowboxing with Armando? I try to think back on the past day, but it’s just a day. I haven’t done anything. I barely do anything.
No, that doesn’t matter right now. I go to bring my arms under myself and brace for the tremors, the dizzy barrel-rolling from my brain and my stomach…
… and I just can’t do it.
I’m so tired. I am so, so tired. I’m more tired than my worst hours with Stratt. More tired than I was waking up from the coma. It’s not the full-body weakness of starving, and honestly that makes it worse, because I’m in decent shape now. We did months of physical therapy, the both of us, months. Rocky cares for me, feeds me well. It’s not him. I’m not poisoned. Not lacking. Energy is what makes the meat mechanisms move and I just don’t have it; I’m not low battery, I’m just… dead.
Well, not dead. I am definitely not dead.
THNK-THNK-THNK. I can hear Rocky’s inquisitive croak through the door, only because it’s a little less soundproofed than the rest of the house. “Grace?”
Screw my life, screw everything, he is going to freak out so bad. I swallow and try to force air over my vocal cords. What comes out is “rrroouhh.”
“Grace, get your lazy ass up!”
I’M TRYING, I want to scream. This is asinine. Mind over matter, right? If I envision myself getting to my feet, it’ll happen. The brain is mightier than the body. The pen is mightier than the sword. Something-something clap if you believe. Oh my God, this is getting me nowhere.
“Grace?” Rocky’s voice pitches with concern.
“aaiiimrh,” I attempt. “unggghh.”
A second later I hear him tapping at the door. I push a breath out as far as I can, my chest caving over the tile, and say “innnherh. can… cantuh…”
“Grace? Grace!” He sounds panicked now. The tapping worries my door on its hinges. Rocky says something else, but I can’t make it out; I’ve depleted my reserves just making these stupid sounds and my brain really wants to turn me back into unmoving gray matter. “... wait! Okay? Grace?”
“mmmmmn,” I say.
About thirty seconds later — counting is the most advanced I can get right now — an alien breaks my door down. I hear it swing into the wall and Rocky’s limbs skittering, and then he appears over the threshold in a loud, frightened squall. “Okay?!” he squeals. “Okay?! Grace! Okay? What happened? What happened, question?!”
I want to give him a thumbs-up, but folding my fingers under my palm sounds like hell right now, so instead I tweak a smile at him. I’m very, very still. He’ll see it. “Ok-uh.”
“Grace.” Rocky says it like something subvocal. “Can sit, question? Want to sit, question?”
“Ok-uh.” It’s a very forgiving sound.
He gets his limbs under me like a cradle, helps me roll onto my back and then lifts me, my head lolling uselessly. I’m heavier than I ever thought I could be. I lay my cheek against the wall and sit in a slump of limbs. It’ll definitely be terrible for my spine, but Erid’s gravity wasn’t doing it any favors to begin with. “Thssanks.”
Rocky crowds in close and tucks his carapace under my arm, so I have him like an armrest at my elbow. I know it’s taking everything in him not to go holler orders at the med team right now. As if he can hear me thinking it, he says, “Need go medbay.”
“Insec.” I press my side to his. “Sorry. Sorry. Okay.”
“No sorry. Grace okay, most important.”
I feel my eyes start to boil. God, not now. It’s not even that; I know he loves me, I know he’ll worry no matter what I do. It’s that I was just laying there. Like a… what can I even say? Invalid is antiquated. There’s another word that is very, very cruel, that I would tell students off for using. And I can’t say cripple. It’s just rude. Even if it’s — well, it’s kind of true, isn’t it? I was laying there, couldn’t move or speak, literally couldn’t lift a finger. My head goes light again at the thought.
“Usetuh…”
I push another breath out. Rocky chirrs and tenses beneath my arm.
“Used.” The muscles in my jaw flinch with effort. “Tuhride. A b… bike.”
Did I give Rocky the word bike? We’ve talked about my life before, right? I stutter and hitch and say, “Cando — can’t. Do. Annthing now.”
“Grace sick, question?” says Rocky, unsteadily.
“No. Nnno.” I can’t get enough air, not here, not ever. “So… fffu… busted.”
If the wall could swallow me up right now.
Rocky pipes a few more notes, pensive and uneven, and then says, “Human body fragile. Trouble adapting. Grace is… slow, tired. Not getting better.”
“No,” I say, as my eyes get hotter.
“I’m grateful.”
The most I can do is twitch my chin towards him, but I do. “Hm?”
“Grateful,” Rocky reiterates. So I hadn’t misheard him. “If I am broken Eridian, and Grace is broken human. Not alone.”
Broken human really lays it all out there. Like, of course he knows I’m not the pinnacle of my species. He has access to the Internet and he knew me back when I had muscle that worked, when I tripped everywhere because I was klutzy and not constantly dizzy, when I could spend eight hours on chalky bits of xenonite chain and then get up to do it all over again. The guy reads my medical reports; he was terrified when I started losing mobility because for some humans, that’s the beginning of the end. That’s how I described it to him, mostly. Something that happens to old people. Dying people.
Of course, I met him after the worst had already happened for him. It was a while before he’d let me find him during his panic attacks. He didn’t want to scare me, he said. It’ll pass.
But what could I do? Sit there and put my hand on the xenonite and hum.
“Yeah, well…” My words are still running together, but at least I can squeeze some more space between them now. “You can help me. I can’ help you fix.”
“Not fix. If could fix, I would.” Rocky’s hand, enclosed in the suit, taps gently at my thigh. “I fix [***] everything for Grace, change the rest. I change anything. Moving chairs, new cane, mechanisms in the house, change the beach, the air and light. I change it for you.”
Sometimes he says things that make my atoms want to respond. No, it doesn’t make any sense. Like a pull, maybe. Like the matter that made us was bonded at Tau Ceti. “I can’ change ’em either. Everyone saying the… no respecting you.”
“Don’t need,” says Rocky. “Just need Grace.”
That’s not true. It literally can’t be, for an Eridian. But I’m also on a cold bathroom floor right now and I want to believe it, that everyone on Erid is wrong about Rocky and that my old therapist was wrong about me. That he should’ve shooed me out of his office the second I got there. Said, Hey, man, just get to 40 Eridani, you’ll understand when you’re older.
“Jus’ need you,” I slur.
“I know.” He burrows closer. “Grace Rocky okay. Okay, okay.”
“The chair is…”
“Don’t care. I carry you.”
“Don’ embarrass me,” I rasp, and then, “an’ fix my door, dude, jeez!”
“Later later later.”
“Later, later, later.”
His warmth comes through my ribs and cozies into my chest cavity. I close my eyes, feel my eyelashes slip against the wall of the house he made for me.
He sings, and I’d never know if it’s out of tune.