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The Eridians seemed to treat Grace as something in between a god and an excessively pampered house cat. Yes, they gave him anything he asked for and treated him with a devotion that was well past manic and firmly into “cult” territory (at least in Yao’s opinion), but he also had a bedtime. Sometimes they’d even boop his nose. Several times a day, actually.
Ilyukhina had quickly appointed herself “High Priestess of Chaos”and the Eridians were enabling her with all five hearts. Tailor Beanie Baby had even made her a new jump suit with the words embroidered on it in Eridian writing.
Yao, on the other hand, quickly found himself well-acquainted with Eridian-made tums. This lasted for all of two weeks before he got too tired to be anxious all the time and thought to himself ‘you know what? Fuck it! If the reality-breaking aliens do decide to take over earth because they got it into their crystalline brains that it would make a nice present for Grace, it’s not like there’s anything I could realistically do to stop them. And how much worse could they realistically be at this than we already are, anyway? '
Thusly, he’d decided that he was now metaphorically as well as literally ‘along for the ride’. Dr. Grace could handle his own damn circus. The Eridians were his monkeys, not Yao’s, and besides, he’d saved two worlds the first time around, whereas Yao had died in the coma. He decided to accept his Eridian-assigned role of Grace’s emotional support Taikonaut and enjoy the hot-stone massages from Lotus of the Relaxation Thrum. Anything else was officially above his pay grade, thank you very much, and thanks to Dr. House for the xanax, it was doing its job admirably.
_____
“Glad he’s feeling better,” Olesya commented cheerfully, watching Yao shuffle by in a fluffy bathrobe.
“Yes yes yes, some humans just need more time to adapt to new environments, statement,” chuffed HAM, still with their radio on top of their carapace. “You-informal-second-degree-friendship are a bit of an outlier in that regard, High Priestess Gremlin.”
Apparently, she’d already had a Grace-given Eridian name in the first timeline, and it translated to “gremlin”. Yao’s translated to “wise captain.” Even before, even with the amnesia, he’d really known how to honor their legacies.
“Where is Gracie, question?” She asked, banging her jewelled ceremonial staff twice to punctuate the query.
“Mercy from Sol, Grace from the Skies, Courageous Squishy Angel Savior Friend, Bringer of Hope and Knowledge, Guardian of Life and He Whose Exoskeleton is formed of Our Dreams and Respected Architect, Human Scientist, They Who Waited Like Penelope, Defenestrator of Presumptuous Suitors, Family of Grace Adrian are listening to sleep cycle of Savior of Erid, Hope from Tau Ceti, He who Endured, Bringer of Erid’s Beloved Grace Friend Rocky,” HAM replied.
“Ahh, so we’ve got human side of the ship to ourselves for a while. Yao’s in cinema watching C-Dramas; he’ll be there all day,” Ilyukhina announced, once again banging the jewelled ‘priestess staff’ that Donatello had made for her. “Come, we check on moonshine, statement.”
She’d set up a still in Grace’s craft room, which had also been assigned as her bedroom for the return journey (with Grace’s permission and active encouragement; otherwise she was under no illusions that both her and Yao would be sleeping in the hallway somewhere). The Eridians had soundproofed it for her privacy, so she could safely brew her illicit ‘human stupid-poison’ without fear of having it confiscated by over-protective aliens worried about her jeopardizing the liver of their beloved Squishy Savior.
“HAM does not understand the appeal of human AL-KOH-HALL,” HAM confided, as she gave the mixture a sniff and a stir before returning it to its hiding place behind a few balls of yarn. “From research on portable Earth-Think Machine, HAM thinks HAM would prefer MARY-WANNA,” they whirred, voice coming through into the headphones that she had helped Rocky develop for her and Yao so that they had an easier way to receive translations without lugging around a laptop or using Mary’s voice over the intercom, which wouldn’t exactly be great whenever the two wanted to have private conversations with their Eridian friends.
Plus, this had the added benefit of letting them pick new human voices for their Eridian friends- by the time Grace got to Erid the first time, he hadn’t needed the translator any more, and thus Rocky was the only one who already had a pre-assigned voice. Grace had picked Meryl Streep for Adrian, but he’d left the rest on the default setting so that the Eridians could pick their own voices for the translator. HAM had picked the voice of Jerry Trainor, which fit well for the little guy.
“I bet we could figure out a way to get you some weed,” Ilyukhina mused, turning over her options. “Unfortunatley, all my edibles blew up with Mary, so we have nothing to start with, but Ramsey’s genius, and more importantly, totally not a narc.”
“Not the issue, Gremlin. Chef Ramsey already synthesized such things years ago for Mercy from Sol, Grace from the Skies, Courageous Squishy Angel Savior Friend, Bringer of Hope and Knowledge, Guardian of Life and He Whose Exoskeleton is formed of Our Dreams to help with arthritis pain. Human drug-snacks not safe for Eridians,” HAM whirred. “Even if safe, eating recreationally disgust! HAM not that kind of freak, statement.”
Olesya snorted. “Not that kind of freak, huh? What kind of freak are you, then? Are you and your mate having long-distance fun times over radio you carry around, question?”
HAM went still and let out a sound like a whistling kettle. “Change subject, request!”
“Request granted, because I am very generous High Priestess,” Olesya conceded, smiling widely. The gleam in her eyes let HAM know they were not fully off the hook. This one was much wilier and scarier than Erid’s beloved squishy star savior. She lived up to her name in every respect.
“What Gremlin have planned for rest of day-cycle, question?” Ham asked.
“Well, Gracie is busy, Yao’s in the cinema, and my moonshine’s not ready, soooo…”
Oh no, thought HAM, she’s bored. Bad bad bad. Redirect.
“Mario-karts, question?” they asked.
“Nahh, I’ve already beat whole crew,” she sighed. “It’s lost its charm.”
“Make Eridian jewellery with Donatello, question?” they offered.
“Nah, Donatello is way too judgy of my artistic process,” Ilyukhina replied, making a face.
“Because Gremlin ‘artistic process’ involves much combustion,” HAM reminded her.
“I am still learning how to work with xenonite as a medium; it’s normal,” she defended.
“Gremlin very good engineer; cannot fool HAM. Combustion not accidental.”
“Okay, fine, I wanted to see if I could make xenonite glitter,” Olesya admitted.
“Made mess; Donatello complained for +.I hours- then take HAM radio to complain to Michaelangelo further! Very annoying day for HAM.”
“Okay, fine, no explosions. But only as personal favor to you, HAM, because we are homies, as the American pebbles say.”
“HAM believes that is outdated slang.”
“Okay, maybe I will explode things, then!”
“HAM takes it back!”
“Good, good. Now come. Today we show Chef Ramsey how to make Me-Borscht!”
_______
Grace laid against Adrian’s carapace with a new Eridian novel that had come out while he was on Earth.
“Not as good as some of their earlier works,” he remarked, turning a xenonite page and running his fingers over the next sentence. He didn’t need to do it, but he liked the texture of the letters under his fingers as he read. “I really liked the ones from before I got to Erid.” The author was sort of an Eridian version of Stephen King (so much so that he’d named the guy Stephen when they’d met so that he could tell them how much he enjoyed their stories).
Their earlier works had included a lot of monsters that had sort of resembled humans in that they were upright, squishy, and made lots of noise, as well as being seemingly fragile but horrifically difficult to kill. Once he’d gotten to the planet, though, the author seemed to have decided to steer clear of any sort of antagonists that could even loosely be considered to resemble humans, and Grace was kinda bummed about it. He’d tried to tell Stephen he wasn’t offended by the comparison, but the author was aghast at the idea of writing an antagonist that had so much as the same number of limbs as Erid’s new savior.
“Yes, Stephen’s work has suffered ever since they hit their JELL-EE-FISH phase. But don’t worry; they will probably find a new muse in two to three novels.”
“The Earth-think machines really have done a lot for Eridian literature,” Grace replied, tapping the words out one-handed on the smaller version of his keyboard that he used when he was busy with something. It had fewer tones but made up for it with many ‘shortcuts’ for common words. He preferred his larger keyboard still, but this one was nicer for when he needed his other hand for something like holding a book or Rocky’s claw.
“Yes, many new ideas,” Adrian agreed. “Even if Rocky now an EYE-PAD KID.”
“Yeah, and smart enough to get around the parental controls,” Grace huffed fondly. Rocky plus those ‘Five minute craft’ channels on Youtube? A headache all around, and it really depended on the day whether he was going to complain about how stupid and impractical the ‘projects’ were or try to invent an even more impractical, Rube-Goldberg-esque nightmare machine to like, fold Grace’s socks or something. It never ended well; Armando was very territorial.
“Speaking of crazy engineers, where Gremlin, question?” Adrian asked, a slight trill of trepidation underlying the chords. “Ship too quiet.”
“The chords are right over there if you want to get a better listen,” Grace replied. The sets of chords to enable better echolocation and communication throughout the ship were very similar to the ones used in the original Blip-A. It was a nice compromise that allowed the ship to use slightly more sound-dampening materials so that the crew wasn’t hearing everything from each other all the time.
“Adrian feels so lazy, beloved. Cannot possibly move.”
Grace chuckled fondly and snuggled in further. “You and me both. She’s probably in her xenonite suit causing more trouble on the Eridian side of the ship. Someone will keep an ear on her.”
“Or enable her,” Adrian pointed out.
“Or that.”
“Eh, as long as she leaves Yao to his movie marathon, I think we’re good.”
_____
Yao sipped his vitamin-infused green tea and took another bite of popcorn. Audrey, the ship’s astronomer and a fellow movie-buff, did not overly mind the sound of his snacking, he’d been assured.
“Audrey loves human film!” they’d assured him. “Consumption of nutrients part of human film culture, Audrey not mind! Audrey very excited about the new genre!” They’d been marathoning C-dramas with Yao for three days now, and their Mandarin was getting pretty good (on account of the eidetic memory). Plus, it helped that Yao was willing to explain anything they didn’t understand.
“Mary, is Ilyukhina on the human side of the ship?” Yao asked, realizing that the atmosphere was entirely too tranquil.
“Engineer Olesya is in the kitchens on the Eridian side of the ship,” Mary replied.
Yao sighed in relief and pushed the button to recline the chair further- another thing that was not his problem. He could get used to this.
_______
Earth-Think Machine Engineer Linux stepped back from their workstation- finally, they’d achieved interstellar video chat! They were so excited to show Mercy from Sol, Grace from the Skies, Courageous Squishy Angel Savior Friend, Bringer of Hope and Knowledge, Guardian of Life and He Whose Exoskeleton is formed of Our Dreams. And since it was ahead of the deadline, they’d been promised by Savior of Erid, Hope from Tau Ceti, He who Endured, Bringer of Erid’s Beloved Grace Friend Rocky that they could be the third person to yell at Evil Murder Human Stratt, right after Rocky and Adrian!
______
“Yao!” Ilyukhina intruded on the captain’s hard-won peace as he loaded up another film. “Try my borscht!”
“Does it have you in it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow in a distinctly unimpressed manner. “Because if so, then no.”
“You’re so homophobic- would you refuse to eat my cloned meat if I was straight?”
“Emphatically yes,” he groaned.
She gasped. “So you’re Rusophobic!”
“That’s not even a word.”
“Yeah it is. I said it, so it’s a word- duh!”
“Gremlin shush now, command. Audrey trying to watch film, statement!”
Yao high-fived them as Ilyukhina left in a huff, muttering about her unappreciated culinary genius.