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Though not a linguist, Rocky couldn’t help but be fascinated by earthian sayings. How endless they seemed, with one for every conceivable occasion. How contradictory they were. How their connotations could evolve to the point where they sometimes ended up meaning the opposite of where they started.
There were a few in particular that sprung to Rocky’s mind, in this moment, while splitting attention between observing Grace’s sleep and performing a “walk of wiki”—which, in addition to entertainment, served as a means for Rocky to try and get a basic overview of as much earthian knowledge as possible so that, firstly, Grace wouldn’t feel too alone on a cultural level when the two of them reached Erid and, secondly, so Rocky had at least a basic overview of earthian perspectives and information on the dangers of space so it would be easier to explain what exactly happened to the rest of Rocky’s crew and what Erid would need to do to avoid such dangers the next time the planet sent up astronauts… which was an inevitability now there was proof that eridians weren’t the only sapient life in the universe and, in fact, had the exact address of their nearest sapient neighbors.
The first saying was “It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you,” and the second “It’s too good be true.” Rocky wasn’t entirely sure why those two were the most prominent… but Rocky did have a very good hypothesis: they summed up how this entire situation started—Rocky walking the wiki while Grace slept under careful and caring observance. …More or less.
The thing about being a long-lived species—even though, from the eridian perspective, their lifespans were completely average and normal and it was just that everything else simply had lifespans that were very short… which Rocky hated thinking about, considering what that meant for Grace—is that when slow, gradual changes and relative stability are the norm, any changes that are fast and dramatic are noticed immediately, and make it extremely easy to compare and contrast the before with the after.
And roughly 120 or so years before Rocky was hatched—Earth units, always Earth units, these days—Erid noticed a very quick and drastic change: Its people’s sleep quality got markedly better, all at once.
Eridians might be helpless during sleep, might not be able to notice any changes to themselves or their surroundings while unconscious, but their mental state preceding and directly after the act did have affect its, well, effectiveness. Feeling fear before sleep led to wasting an eridian’s already limited energy trying to push it off—which itself led to an even longer sleep cycle to try and recover that wasted energy. But the seamless slipping between states of consciousness meant that any fear present upon succumbing would persist into waking and cause the eridian in question to continue panicking before they finally realized sleep had already occurred and they’d—more than likely—wasted some of the energy they’d just gained by flailing their limbs around in panic.
The best way to alleviate the worst of the fear was to have someone nearby to observe the sleeper. Someone who could protect them, move them if needed, and then, upon waking, either assure the former sleeper that nothing horrible had befallen them while they were unconscious or explain the steps they’d taken to protect them if something bad had happened.
It was rare in modern times for an eridian to be without an observer. Societal rules, specific communal buildings, and the traditional “gap period” where eridian youths wandered the lands after finishing basic formal education so they could get a better sense of the “real world” and try to determine which career path would let them best fit into its harmony meant that even if one didn’t have a dedicated mate, observer, or familial or social circle, even if one was surrounded by strangers, there would still generally be someone nearby who could observe a sleeper.
But… being alone while sleeping did still happen on occasion.
Injury or illness leading to non-synced cycles between dedicated sleep-observer pairs… unexpected calorie deficits if sustenance was prepared incorrectly, or from a prey animal who hadn’t been quite as hale as they’d seemed… getting lost or delayed due to unexpected weather causing changes to the landscape, or due to simple carelessness on the traveler’s part… these were but a few things that could lead to an eridian finding themself alone when the need for sleep bore down relentlessly.
And it was these sorts of things that, those 120 or so years before Rocky’s hatching, led to eridians who’d been forced to sleep alone—in situations where it could be one hundred percent proven that they had, indeed, been alone—realizing that they hadn’t… felt alone. Not completely. And… not in a way they would have if they’d fallen asleep next to a thoughtless, harmless prey animal, or even a beloved pet.
There’d been… something, at the very edge of their perception. Someone, observing them. Not… actively, necessarily, or in a way that would be particularly helpful if a problem did occur, but… someone had been observing, nonetheless. Observing the way a thinking person would.
Which brought to mind that second saying: “It’s too good to be true.”
Because it felt like a boon, yes, that generations to come after that point—generations like Rocky’s, born almost immediately after the discovery—would never, ever know what it felt like to sleep without someone watching. Especially since the early inconsistencies of that “being observed while still alone” feeling vanished more and more with each passing year. Yet… there was no explanation for the source. Some thinking being or beings were observing… but they themselves could not be perceived. There was no sound of them for miles around.
Eridians were ambush predators. And as the years went by, the sensation started to feel increasingly like a trap preparing to spring.
Which brought to mind the first saying: “It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.”
The eridians refined their hearing. They knew some animals had senses different than their own—better than their own, in some ways—so they invented new and better technology that could mimic those senses or otherwise translate them into something eridians could perceive. Technology that could help them find out exactly who was observing them, and why they couldn’t be observed in turn.
Cameras were invented. Sensors that could detect heat and different types of wavelengths. Things that let eridians figure out that there was more to the universe than just Erid. Other planets existed, too, along with stars. Many stars.
Their star, Eridani.
Eridani, which, unknown to them until that point, gave their planet heat. Gave it life.
Eridani which, apparently, was losing its own life. Was being devoured.
At first, Erid assumed that the devourers—the astrophage—were also the unknown observers… but it became clear very quickly that was not the case. Not only was astrophage mindless—even more so than prey animals—it also became very evident very quickly that it was a far more immediate problem to solve than figuring out the identity of the unknown observers. If anything, the unknown observers continued to be a blessing, as the little boost in the feeling of safety they offered let the eridians tasked with saving their planet’s star work harder, longer, and with less time spent worrying about properly syncing everyone’s sleep schedules.
It made it easy enough to set that mystery aside in favor of figuring out how to build a spaceship to reach Tau Ceti and find out what made it so unappetizing to the astrophage.
It made it easy enough to… not forget, exactly, since eridians couldn’t forget the way other species could, but to simply… not think about the fact that the observers hadn’t always observed. That eridians existed who could clearly describe a before and after when it came to sleeping alone.
That Rocky had never known what it felt like to sleep completely alone.
But on that trip to Tau Ceti… Rocky got as close to that feeling as was possible, nowadays, and wondered how anyone in prior generations could have survived the absolute nothingness that would have felt without breaking completely.
Voices going silent as friends and family died all around… no one left who could be fully perceived, whose history and identity were known. No one focused on Rocky specifically—just that feeling of someone on the edge of perception who was there, but not really paying Rocky any sort of direct attention.
Until suddenly they were.
At first, Rocky thought the feeling was simply one of… getting used to it. The reality of being completely alone. That maybe it was something that did get easier with time, and Rocky was simply the first eridian who’d been forced to the edge, forced to bear it past that point and finally reached the territory where any eridian would be able to “get over it.”
Or that perhaps Rocky had reached the point of insanity where it looped back around to sanity again.
But then… the feeling changed. Swiftly, drastically, to the point of being immediately noticeable—the way Rocky’s parents and the entire prior generation must have felt when the observers were first perceived.
All attention was on Rocky, now. Or—perhaps not all, since Rocky still hadn’t been sure who was observing or how their senses worked, but… 10 or so years ago, someone, or perhaps a lot of someones, started paying very close attention. And then one year ago—or perhaps two, by this point—that saying about paranoia that Rocky hadn’t yet learned, then, nonetheless underwent an evolution. Had the connotations flipped.
Someone really was out to get them. Earthians, coming to Erid’s rescue. Grace coming to save Rocky many, many times while in Tau Ceti’s solar system.
Grace, with his ship and his cameras and his eyes that observed the stars. That observed the light from Rocky’s ship, leading him back when Rocky and Erid needed him the most.
Grace, who—along with other earthians working on Earth’s Project Hail Mary—constantly observed Tau Ceti, where Rocky orbited, with fanatical focus as they, too, tried to find out what made it so unappetizing to astrophage.
Grace, who taught his students every year about stars and constellations, and whose favorite topic segue between the science of their home and the science of space was to mention that Earth wasn’t the only place with rivers—there was one in the sky, too. The constellation “Eridanus,” also known as “The River.”
The constellation Eridanus, which contained the star Eridani.
The constellation Eridanus, which enveloped the planet Erid.
The constellation Eridanus, which Grace needed a telescope to see.
According to Grace, his telescope was “an older model.” The best he could afford on a teacher’s salary when “the budget” couldn’t justify giving him a better one when the unit for space learning was so short. He loved it, but it couldn’t help him observe things as far as newer ones could. As far as the ones used by the Hail Mary Project could, or the one owned by that “Hubble” earthian.
…But it could help him observe things a lot farther away than the first ever telescope could, back when it was invented in the Earth year 1608.
Roughly 120 years before Rocky hatched.
…
…Rocky paused in walking the wiki, observing that particular page even more closely. Double-checked the dates. The math. Considered how relativity fit in.
…A third saying came to mind. One which evolved in a rather humorous way thanks to a beloved earthian “cartoon” doctor/scientist/engineer, eventually becoming a “meme template” to share news of events that had surprising duplications.
Rocky could not draw and was currently too flabbergasted to figure out if either the portable Earth thinking machines or Mary had meme template manipulation programs installed, but if Rocky could do either and recreate the meme saying, the blanks would be filled in thusly:
“If I had a nickel for every time Grace provided the solution to a question plaguing eridian scientists, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s astounding that it happened twice.”
…
…Maybe Rocky would ask Grace or Mary about those programs later, to have an “inside joke” to share with Grace and participate in that little part of earthian culture with him. But for now…
The Hail Mary was still in Tau Ceti’s solar system and the earthians would stay focused observing it until the Beetles made it back to Earth. Not all of them, sure—some would be sleeping themselves, or be busy mitigating the issues caused by Earth’s rapid cooling, or be ardent fans of certain media that would draw their attention to other stars. But it would be enough of them that Rocky could shift a little bit of focus off of Grace’s sleeping form while still feeling the earthian had a comforting amount of supervision.
Enough of them that Rocky, now armed with this new piece of knowledge about earthian observation capabilities, no longer felt that Erid had a comforting amount of unperceivable observers.
But Rocky had a texture reader. And Rocky knew how to get Mary to turn on her cameras, external sensors, and telescopes and focus them in the proper direction.
So, Rocky knew exactly how to fix that.