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It’s just a few months more before we are within reach of Erid’s weird analog-signal. I haven’t quite gotten around to asking Rocky how it works, having an alien as a roommate and all. What matters is that he has a receiver for it so when we’re withing range he’ll let me know. I don’t even have access to it, that’s Rocky’s park ball.
I’ve been more preoccupied with getting as much knowledge on Eridian culture and biology as I can from Rocky, now that humanity can’t get in the way of my hobbies I can full dive into the rabbit hole that is figuring out an alien species. Yes yes yes!
Welcome to my podcast, and welcome my unwilling-calcified-spider-alien-cohost. I’ve been trying to create a little bit of an archive of papers to maybe send to earth. I’m sure I can ask Rocky to make a beetle, he’s seen one before, hell, he has tinkered with one before. I would just need to explain what I need it to do and do some math to account for the longer trip starting on Erid and send it on it’s merry way. Can’t be too hard and people on earth are probably wondering a thousand things about new my flatmate; if I can answer a couple of their questions so be it. Plus it gives me something to do with all this information I’m getting.
Maybe I can even get it peer reviewed by some of the scientists back on Erid! Would that be weird? I mean, weirder than an alien arriving at your planet? Probably not. But is it rude to ask them to peer review a paper on Eridian biology? Eating being taboo and all… Surely not. We’re all curious creatures by nature. For science! If they are anything like Rocky they’ll know I mean well.
All that to say, every couple of weeks I’ve been writing and researching a different aspect of Eridian biology or culture and writing all I can about it. I also plan on doing a couple of papers on radiation and my theories on how it affects Eridians, hopefully that will help Erid a bit for their future space missions. But radiation is a bit of a sensitive topic so I try to only ask one thing every now and then. I know Rocky would answer all my questions at once, specially if he knew what it was for but I don’t wanna put him through that. This also gives me the opportunity to develop my theories the more I know about the way his body works, and I really need to understand if I want my theories to be any help.
I suspect he’s been affected by the radiation too, 46 years in space will do that to you. Yes, his main space was with all the astrophage (That’s the only reason he’s alive really, it’s a miracle) but he moved around the rest of the ship too. I worry about what long term effects that is gonna have on him, I see he puts less weight on one of his legs which leads me to believe it hurts to stand on it, but I don’t know if that is from previous injury or not and he is very dismissive about it anytime I bring it up. Annoying annoying annoying.
So this is my long term project. Figure out how radiation affects the Eridian body and it’s possible long term effects, then hopefully Eridian scientists can come up with ways to treat it. I’m a biologist, not a doctor, well not that kind of doctor and much less an Eridian doctor. Once they know what they’re dealing, if they’re half as smart as Rocky, they’ll come up with a solution.
Speak of the devil. I hear Rocky walking through one of his tunnels towards the lab. The lab is not functional per say, since we’re back at 1.5Gs and not on centrifugal configuration but it is functional for what I need. I log the last of the data from the taumoeba farms, it’s busy work but it needs to be done.
Musical cords hit my ears from the other room. He’s out of sight but within my hearing range and knows it.
“All normal with the farms?”
“Yes. All normal” I answer without raising my voice. He can hear perfectly fine from anywhere in the Hail Mary, so the habit of speaking louder died down within the first months. He comes rolling in his xenonite ball “Pop quiz!” I take of my gloves.
“Okay. Pop me” He sings
I grab my pen and tap dramatically at his hamster ball as if I’m popping a bubble “What xenonite alloys allow infrared light through?” I tap my fingers twice against my thigh for the question, guess I’ve picked up some habits but you would expect that by now.
“What wavelenght?” He asks
“From 700 nanometers to a millimeter”
“Not many” Rocky rolls further into the lab “It depends on the materials and the thickness. But not many. Do you want a list?”
“Checks out. List later” Silly me, it’s probably a long list of It depends but it was worth a shot “What movie are we watching tonight?”
“Options are WALL-E 2008, The wizard of Oz 1939 or Top Gun 1986” He shifts his weight from one leg in what I recognize it as a happy wiggle.
“Rocky you don’t need to tell me the year, bud” I shut the laptop and disconnect it from the lab table.
“There are multiple movies with the same name, I give you the year so there is no confusion” He sings in a matter of factly mood.
The micro tones indicate moods. Like the timbre and tone, it’s odd to explain but after months of hearing him talk I can tell what he means even if I can’t quite describe what it sounds like. But I’ll try.
He has a slight variation to his song, the word itself is the same but it has different sounds superposed for things like certainty or intensity, kinda like how we use intonation in sentences. It changes the meaning of the word slightly, like now for example. He sings so there is no confusion and I hear some lower notes that sound like a duh which is to say the mood that this should be obvious. In a way it is like subtext or social cues, I guess.
“Yes, there are some movies with the same name but I know which one you mean. I showed them to you” I try to copy the intonation and tone he gave me.
He waves one of his front legs dismissively “You forget, I wanted to be sure”
“Okay, okay” I grab the laptop and head to the dont-go-crazy room “And for the record. There is only one WALL-E”