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They're sitting side by side, separated by a xenonite wall, weaving link after link of that god-forsaken chain. Neither of them have spoken in an abnormal amount of time, at least for the two of them. Grace fumbles a link and groans in frustration.
“How humans become dominant species on Earth, question?”
“Wh-- Rocky! I told you, you really need to stop insulting my entire species like that.”
Rocky honks in frustration. “Not insulting! Am genuinely asking.”
“Oh! Well, I’d assume for most of the same reasons Eridians are the dominant species on your planet,” Grace replies eagerly, grateful for the distraction. “We have big brains, we make and use tools, and we form communities.”
“Yes, but Eridians are strong too, durable. Know for fact that Earth has many big-strong-scary predators, can eat many humans easily.” Ever since Grace taught him how to use the laptop with voice commands, Rocky had been obsessed with learning everything he could about Earth wildlife. He said it was for science and cultural understanding, but Grace could tell that he really just liked watching big cats stalk their prey and herds of bison thunder across open plains.
“Our brains make up for it, mostly. Also, big predators like that usually hunt solo, and they know better than to try and take on a group of humans. We just don’t make very good prey, I guess.”
Rocky makes a noise of understanding. “Not ideal prey, yes yes yes. Humans too much hassle, not enough meat. Not worth effort.”
Grace turns away from his work, opening his mouth to try and argue, but he thinks better of it. He vaguely remembers taking a few classes on the early stages of humanity in college, and decides to put that information to good use.
“Humans aren’t good prey, you’re right, but we are really good predators,” he says smugly, egging Rocky on. He leans back in his seat on the floor, crossing his arms as he speaks. “You wanna know how we really became the top of the food chain? Ranged weapons.”
Rocky seems unimpressed, continuing his weaving like he wasn't even really listening. “Yes, Eridians have too. Put large object in basket on stick, use counterweight to send flying. Very inefficient.”
Grace pauses. “No, like, smaller handheld weapons, throwing spears and bows and arrows. Do you guys really not have those?”
“New words! Do not understand. Throwing from hand not do much damage. Good for playing games, not useful for hunting.”
“Y’know what? Here, grab your screen-reader and I’ll show you,” Grace says, already making his way to the don’t-go-crazy room.
“But-”
“Oh, come on, Rocky,” Grace pouts. “We could both use a break.”
Rocky folds easily, as always, and rolls his ball after Grace to settle on the floor in front of the huge screens. Grace fiddles with the settings so only the two screens directly in front are active, and then pulls up a video of someone recreating and testing early human weapons.
The man in the video makes a spear. He already has a long, straight piece of wood and a sharp flint point prepared, but he demonstrates using animal sinew and tar to affix the spearhead to the shaft.
“See?” Grace says as the man in the video proudly shows off his finished spear. “Like that!”
“Am confused. Looks good for poking, but not throwing.”
“Just you wait,” Grace replies, leaning back on his hands as the man in the video takes his position a few yards back from his target.
The man hefts the spear onto his shoulder, cocks his arm back, and throws it, stepping forward and extending his arm out to follow the motion. He hits the ballistic gel target dead on, and the spear pierces clean through it. The flint spearhead pokes out of the other side of the block of gel, and it’s obvious (to Grace, at least,) that a hit like that would do some serious damage to any Earth animal.
Rocky’s fallen unnervingly quiet beside Grace, and he pauses the video and looks over at him.
“...Understand now. Very effective weapon. But, one time use only, question? So much time spent on one projectile. Inefficient.” He’s grasping at straws a little. Grace can tell his Eridian pride doesn’t want to let him admit this is something humans are just better at.
“Well, once you kill the animal, you can take your spear back. Provided it doesn’t snap, or something. We have more efficient weapons, too,” he explains, pulling up another video of someone demonstrating the capabilities of a bow.
The person in the video strings the bow with practiced ease, bending their straight piece of wood into an unnatural curve. They have a quiver on their hip, and they explain the construction of their arrows as they hold one up to the camera.
“Is like tiny spear!” Rocky exclaims.
“Yeah, basically. But the bow lets you shoot it farther, more accurately, and with less effort than just throwing it.”
The person in the video is clearly a practiced archer, and they effortlessly hit bulls-eyes from double the distance of the spear throw. They fire multiple arrows in quick succession, and Rocky makes a little squeaking noise with every thunk they make into the target. Some stats get displayed on screen, average velocity of the arrows, how many pounds of force is required to pull back the bow, the force of each impact, and the accuracy. Rocky clicks his fingers as he does conversions in his head.
“Weapon is… very powerful.”
“Yeah, it certainly can be, but it takes a lot of practice to be able to shoot like that. Archery is more of a sport these days, but some people still hunt with a bow and arrows.”
Rocky falls silent again. Honestly, Grace is relishing in having the evolutionary upper hand for once. He’s put up with so much teasing from Rocky about being leaky, fragile, and stupid, and while it doesn’t really bother him it’ll be nice to have something to tease him back about. He can already picture himself clapping back to a Humans so squishy and weak with a Your species couldn’t even figure out slingshots!
He’s pulled out of his daydream by Rocky tapping on the inside of his xenonite ball, asking him to rewind the video to when the person showed off their arrows.
“How have sharp points every time, question? Are many rocks on Earth shaped like that, question?”
“Of course not! We shape them like that ourselves.”
“But how, question? We do this too, on Erid, but Eridians are strong, can easily split stone. Human weapons are powerful, but humans are still weak and squishy.”
“We kinda just… hit the rock with another rock until it makes the shape we want? It’s a whole process. Here, I’ll show you,” Grace says, pulling up a video of someone knapping a flint arrowhead.
He pauses the video before it can start. “Wait, is this gonna, like, freak you out? Y’know, the rock getting…?”
“Grace think Rocky stupid, question? Know difference between rock and Eridian. Obvious!”
“Okay, okay, sorry! I just didn’t wanna accidentally show you your equivalent of gore, or something.”
“New word, what mean, question?”
“Um… later. Just watch the video,” Grace says, exasperated, as he presses play.
The woman in the video has a sizable chunk of flint resting on a leather pad draped over her thigh. She hefts a stone in one hand, turning the flint over a few times to get a good look at all the sides before she swiftly brings the stone down to strike the flint. The flint shatters, small, razor-sharp flakes breaking off the larger core. She sweeps the flakes to the ground and repeats the motion, changing her angle slightly with each hit. The hits are controlled and calculated, and more and more flakes fall off the core as the misshapen chunk of flint is slowly refined into a sharp point.
The woman replaces the heavy stone in her hand with a blunted deer antler, chipping away shallowly at the sides of the point to hone the edges. She carves notches into the base as well, creating the signature arrowhead shape. Once she’s satisfied with her work, she demonstrates the effectiveness of the arrowhead by stabbing it into a piece of meat. The sharp point tears through the flesh effortlessly, and the ridged blades catch against the muscle fibers as she pulls it out.
“Amaze, amaze, amaze!” Rocky trills from beside Grace, wobbling side to side in excitement. “Very interesting process, enjoyable to see object take shape. Is almost Eridian-like!”
“It is pretty satisfying, isn’t it? Now do you get why we’re the dominant species?” Grace had almost forgotten the reason they had come here in the first place. He was having so much fun sharing the history of humanity with Rocky, and he really didn’t want to go back to working on the chain.
Rocky hummed in thought. “Human weapons are very impressive. But human bodies are still soft, weak, slow. Inefficient. Many earth creatures are fast fast fast and strong strong strong, even without tools.”
“That’s true! But humans are persistence hunters, so we have better stamina than most other things on Earth. You haven’t actually seen me move to my full potential, there’s not enough room for it on the ship.” Grace makes a mental note to show Rocky videos of the Boston Marathon or the Tour de France someday.
“New word. How human stamina help hunt, question?”
“Well, we- hm. Actually, I have a better way to explain this. Be right back,” he says, rushing to grab some of Rocky’s xenonite figurines.
Rocky trills in excitement when he comes back, spinning in a circle inside his ball. “Yes yes yes, do puppet show!”
“Okay, so this,” he holds up the little model of himself Rocky made when they first met, “Is a human. Humans usually hunt in groups, but I only have one model, so…” he shrugs. “And this,” he holds up the model of the Hail Mary, “Is a mammoth.” He sets the figures down to pull up a picture of a mammoth on the screen, finding one that compares its size to an average human.
“One of these!” He points to the picture on the screen.
“Big creature! Is like Earth elephant, but more texture,” Rocky chimes, “Humans really hunt these, question?”
“We hunted them to extinction, actually,” Grace replies smugly. Rocky makes a noise that Grace has roughly equated to him raising his eyebrows in intrigue. He sets up the models, the mammoth stand-in positioned in front of the human. Rocky leans his carapace forward to listen closer.
“So,” he starts, settling comfortably into the process of teaching, “The mammoth is very big and strong, so it would be stupid for a human to get close to it. It could easily trample us, so we stay behind it instead.” He starts to slide the Hail Mary model forward, pushing the human model along at the same pace as it trails behind.
“The mammoth is actually a prey animal, so it runs from humans instead of trying to fight them. However, its body is so big and it requires so much energy that it can’t run for very long. Humans, however, can run for hours at a time with proper training.” Rocky straightens up a little in surprise at this fact. He’s fallen eerily quiet again, totally focused on Grace’s explanation.
Grace starts to push the model ship along slower, and the human model catches up to it quickly.
“We’d chase the mammoth until it got too tired to run, and at that point it wouldn’t have the energy to fight back either. Then, we’d use our spears or bows and arrows to kill the mammoth from a distance so it couldn’t hurt us.” He uses a finger to mime the arc of a spear, and topples the Hail Mary figurine on its side.
“And that’s it! Human hunting 101. Thoughts?”
Rocky pauses for a moment before speaking. He looks a little horrified, like Grace just told him a ghost story instead of teaching him about ancient mammoth hunting practices. Grace tried to imagine how all of this must sound from Rocky’s perspective. If an alien told Grace that they usually hunted by chasing their prey down like some kind of slasher villain until it couldn’t run away anymore he’d probably be pretty freaked out, too. Hopefully Rocky understood that this was before the invention of things like agriculture and complex societies (and guns), and that humans don’t really work that way anymore.
“Understand human capabilities better now. With weapons and unique hunting tactics, can see how humans became dominant species on Earth. But still no match for Eridian!”
“Of course, of course,” Grace laughs. That’s definitely true. Eridians can be pretty quick, and they have such raw strength that any Eridian could easily tear a human into a million tiny pieces.
“And this was all before we invented agriculture and more complex societies, herding livestock and things like that. Humans still hunt like that in some parts of the world, but generally it's fallen out of practice.”
Rocky does his best impression of a sage nod. “Understand. Will not tell Erid all humans are tricky stalking-hunters with powerful distance weapons. Grace would be bad example, anyways.”
“Hey!” Grace smacks Rocky's ball indignantly. “Okay, well, I'll be sure to tell Earth that all Eridians are absolute garbage at basketball!” He huffs, crossing his arms and turning away in mock offense.
“New word!”
“Oh, basketball? It's a human sport, here, let me-” he reaches to pull up a video to show Rocky, but Rocky stops him by rolling the ball into his side.
“No! Can explain later. Grace Rocky must get back to work! No more distractions!”
“But Rockyyyyy,” Grace whines, pulling a ridiculously pathetic looking pout, "It's an important aspect of human culture!”
“Can explain in detail while making chain,” Rocky rebuttals over his shoulder, already rolling his ball out of the room.
“Fine,” Grace grumbles under his breath, pushing himself up to follow.