Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Earth. Berlin Women’s Penitentiary.

-

A guard yanked the heavy gunmetal grey door open and shoved a middle-aged woman inside. She tripped on her oversized prison jumpsuit and managed to catch herself on her handcuffed palms.

“What’s the deal?! Why did you move me?” She shouted. Her eyes darted around her new cell behind loose, greasy hair. She smelled stale tobacco.

“Because I requested it,” came a voice from the corner. The woman looked up, her shoulders stiffened. A small barred window let in a thin streak of pale moonlight. In the segmented shadows it cast, there was someone else. Another prisoner sitting calmly on the single cot. Sheets neat and crisp.

“You.”

“You,” the other woman responded. Her voice was neutral, almost robotic. “I have been looking for you for a long time. I appreciate you making this meeting easier on my part by getting yourself incarcerated.”

“Those were bullshit charges,” the prisoner on the floor grated out. “I should have known it was you orchestrating all of it. You still have connections everywhere. Why not just escape yourself and find me? Why bring me here?”

“I’ve accepted my place here,” the woman on the cot explained. She wiped invisible dust off of her prison-issued pants. “This is where the world wants me to be right now. It also happens to be where you belong, too.”

“If only for the things you made me do, Stratt.”

“I didn’t make you destroy Doctor Lamai’s life work.” The comment shuts the other prisoner up. She swallows and looks away from Stratt. “You very nearly drove her to–”

“I didn’t want to hurt her!” the woman cried. “She was my mentor, she knew what she was doing! But you corrupted her work. It was never supposed to be used to– to force someone–”

“What it was meant to do,” Eva Stratt said in a harsh, low tone. “Was keep three passengers alive and cognizant so that they could carry out their mission when they woke up. Now they may never get that chance, and neither will the rest of humanity have a chance at survival.”

The prisoner glared up at Stratt, eyes red and wet. “I heard you talking to Doctor Grace in his cell,” she said. Her breathing came fast and uneven. “He said he was going to sabotage the mission. So you said you would drug him, and wipe his memory.”

“And in turn, you took it upon yourself to sabotage the mission for him. You caused irreparable damage to the life support system.”

“I made sure he wouldn’t wake up out there alone and out of his mind!”

“No, you disregarded every failsafe, every carefully programmed protocol, and every manhour of work that was put into the mission. You did not consider the consequences.”

Stratt stood up. She was older now, her light hair gone grey and her face more lined. She looked like stone in the pale moonlight.

The girl on the floor shrunk. Hid her face in shadow.

“If Doctor Grace were still alive, he would not be thanking you. But he might show more mercy than me.”

Outside, the guard yawned and considered what to do with the generous bribe she’d been provided to ignore the cell for the rest of the night.

✰

Tau Ceti System, 16 lightyears away.

-

How long was a question I try not to ask myself very often.

How long have I been out here? How long have I been out here alone? The math is too simple, and I know the answer as soon as I ask it, and the result is nothing useful. I have to keep working towards my goal. I am Erid’s only chance at survival. Anything less would be admitting failure.

But I can’t help myself from asking it now: How long has that ship been there?

Because it is a ship. Has to be. The design is so… alien. There’s an alien ship out here!

I whistle in excitement. Sure, there’s a chance it could be dangerous. But really, why else would an alien ship come here? The same reason we did. The same reason I’m here.

The only real sense of concern I feel is that there might be more similarities between my situation and the one on that ship. It’s not moving at all. Without a star-sickness signature, it didn’t appear on my ship’s sensors until I happened to sweep the area it was orbiting around the star. The last time I had gathered data here was 44 million seconds ago. 

Maybe I just hadn’t spotted it last time? Maybe I was imagining it now? 

There’s another question I avoid asking as much as possible: Is it finally happening to me?

No. It is definitely there on every readout I have at my disposal. Small, asymmetrical, and streamlined. Idle.

I tapped my claws, thinking. I should do something, but what? The captain would have declared a strong course of action. My commanding engineer would have known exactly how to execute it. The scientists aboard would have learned six times the amount of data I could scrounge up. 

Thinking wouldn’t solve this. I just needed to continue doing what I had been for all these years: collect more data. To do that, I would need to get closer.

With familiar ease, I hoisted myself from the sensor array towards the ship controls. I barely touched the handholds across the walls, pulling myself along through zero-G. It was second nature to move this way, only becoming as disorienting as it had been at takeoff when I was pulled in and out of sleep. I know my way around every system on this ship now, to the extent of my engineer’s understanding of their workings. That is to say, every piece of equipment was well maintained, and I couldn’t use any of it to find a cure to my dying star.

As I got closer, took more readings, my curiosity grew. Surely by now whatever sensors the aliens had would have noticed me, so why were they still doing nothing?  Not even an adjustment of their orbit when I circled dangerously close. I just couldn’t help myself.

Okay, so no response for proximity. That’s okay. No clear signs that the aliens noticed me, or even knew I was there. No problem.

I would make them notice me. I would make them hear me.

The only way I can hear what’s outside the ship is with the light-sensing cameras that interpolate microscopic wavelengths into something I can hear on a screen. Maybe they could only hear what was inside their ship. That would be pretty stupid of them, but you never know. There was a whole lot of things you couldn’t know about the void of outer space until you actually went there. And if their planet was anything like mine, they didn't have a lot of time to prepare for the voyage.

Again, I thought, if they were anything like us…

No. First, I would test out the stupid theory– that I just needed to bang on their door to get their attention. If that didn’t work… well, I would try something else. Until they did hear me.

I crawled toward the hull robot controls. There, I loaded a fist-sized ball of semi-dense xenonite into the claw-arm robot and paused.

Would it be rude to throw something at them? Would it be dangerous? I didn’t even know what their hull was made out of. It sounded smooth, but there was no telling how thick it was. I tapped my claws together.

What was better than the equivalent of throwing rocks at someone’s house?

Knocking on their door.

I clicked, sharpening my hearing of the camera readout. The ship was close now. I was matching its trajectory exactly at one ship’s length away– the length of the alien ship, not mine. I had more than enough xenonite to make a bridge.

I would be able to touch it, hear it, really hear it and not just the shape of it through a screen. It would become real. Once I realized that was an option, it was impossible to convince myself not to do it. With nothing pressing to delay me, I immediately got to work constructing a tube. The hull bots I programmed to install the tunnel in segments, and then I would flood the interior with my atmosphere. While the bots got the installation going on one side of the ship, I tinkered with designs for a smaller robot arm that could sample the alien ship’s hull in as delicate a manner as possible.

I finished that faster than expected, and waited for the tunnel to be completed while fiddling with my weaving gloves. I made a model of the alien ship.

When the tunnel was finally finished, I drifted down to the very end to install my sampling device. I couldn’t hear it yet, but just knowing I was an arm’s length from the other ship made me vibrate with anticipation. I only had one chance at this though, so I went about collecting a hull sample with every precaution. 

Even as it warmed in the little airlock I’d made, I could tell it was some sort of pliable metal. It was still cold to the touch when I picked it up and easily pressed a dent into it with a squeeze of my claws. I didn’t need to test it to know it was aluminum. What a strange metal to construct a spaceship out of! Maybe it was only the outermost layer?

All I knew now was that I could attach the tunnel directly to the surface of the ship. I could touch it. And from there, learn more, I desperately needed to know more. This was the first new thing I’d heard in a very long time.

The hull robots got to work at my command again, and finally I could hear– really hear! The ship. The outline was as I expected, with some parts sounding dense, others hollow. The hull had layers to it, but I couldn’t make out the material.

Floating back to the edge of the tunnel, I listened to the aluminum wall. I had picked a spot in the middle of the ship, and not much stood out on this piece of the hull other than some lines of a thin coating (decoration?) and what looked like handholds– large ones. I could have grabbed it with all five of my limbs and there would still be space. And why were they on the outside of the ship?

I hadn’t put much thought into what the aliens might look like yet. As an engineer, I was mostly interested in the design of the ship.

And I still was. So I let go of the tunnel wall with one of my claws and raised it to tap the hull.

Tap, tap.

With the lightest touch, I got a clear picture of an entire room.

It was filled with texture and echoes, thousands of different surfaces reflecting sound in different ways. There were items I had never heard before, tools I couldn’t even guess the purpose of. And I could swear I heard things moving. I knocked again, louder.

There was definitely something– maybe even someones– further down the ship. Some of the noise sounded mechanical, but there was this steady rhythm I could just about pick up that had to be a living thing. It sounded like the lowest reverberations of a massive thrum. A pounding that kept you focused and driven through everything.

I hit the ship again and again, unable to stop listening to the inside. The more I listened, the more I was certain I needed to get inside. There was a creature in there, but I wasn’t making myself noticed, somehow. We were too different. Or it was just stupid. I preferred that theory, because it meant I wasn’t the one ruining first contact.

First contact with aliens! What would Adrian think of–

There it was again. Something I wasn’t supposed to ask myself. What was it about this ship that triggered all of these racing thoughts? I’d been so good for a while now, just collecting data and thinking of nothing else but carrying on until… until this. Maybe it was a sign that I finally could think about Adrian again, because I would be able to see them again soon.

I didn’t really believe in miraculous things like that (Adrian does). I’m an engineer, I like practical solutions and things that have a clear answer. I like a problem to solve. That’s why I volunteered.

Problem: I was going crazy on my ship.

Solution: Find a way to get inside this one.

✰

There were a lot of things I took into consideration: The ship would have a different atmosphere inside. The pressure, air temperature, and composition would all be different. I would need to somehow sample it without compromising the integrity of either ship.

I would have to be able to traverse the interior in zero-G. Easy enough on my ship because I knew every detail, but worrying on a vessel that sounded so fragile.

With some adjustments, I moved the tunnel to connect to a part of the ship I was fairly certain was an airlock. It was a smaller room with two heavy hinged doors on either side and some thin, brittle, circular panels that seemed like a bad design choice. If I bored into this room, the rest of the ship might be fine. Probably. Most likely. Definitely.

I didn’t want to damage it if I could help it, but I was hitting a wall (a joke! ha!) with what information I could gather from the exterior. And there was still no tangible response from the living thing inside. Anything sentient would have noticed me by now, surely. What kind of aliens sent a ship all this way just to drift and do nothing? It was like it was just waiting for someone to come inside and…

That was not something I had taken into consideration yet. All of my eagerness naively had me assuming they would be friendly aliens if I managed to communicate. What if they weren’t? What if they weren't here because their star was also dying, but because this was part of a larger trap? Drawing others in with the promise of a solution to their stellar crisis, only to capture them for study or something more sinister– my sudden fears were being pulled straight from a horror radio show.

Then something slightly more reasonable occurred to me: What if the possibly living thing inside was another victim, captured who knows how long ago and unable to call for help or return to where it had come from? Maybe I needed to save it.

My determination renewed, impossible to slow down at this point, I used the sampler robot to drill into the alien airlock. The escaping atmosphere filled a smaller chamber I’d enclosed the area in. Testing it revealed an extremely thin oxygen atmosphere. At nearly freezing temperatures. Horrifying. And an interesting challenge.

After resealing the hole in the alien ship, I returned to my workshop. I intended to keep working, but my body began to protest. I needed sleep, again. And probably a meal while I was at it.

I wasn’t entirely alone anymore, though. I may have been more vulnerable than ever before, falling asleep connected to the alien ship. But I could just make out the steady living rhythm from here.

I woke up with a jolt. Disoriented and confused to find nothing but the empty ship around me. I hit an arm against the nearest wall until the reverberations of the alien ship came back to me, and relaxed enough to get back to work.

✰

I tried a ball first. It would keep my atmosphere enclosed and give me free movement within, but was impossible to maneuver. Adding some arm attachments on the outside helped, but along with the star-eater cooler it was getting bulky. Some of the passageways I could hear in the ship were small, and the narrow corridors were filled with things I didn’t want to break.

There was something I noticed in the airlock. Strange bundles of fabric with tubes extending out the sides. It almost sounded like a soft shell, and those tube things must be for arms and claws. If I was right that they were some sort of suits, it gave me a vague idea of what the aliens looked like. And the realization that they must use the suits to leave their atmosphere, go out the airlock, and use those exterior handholds. Why? How, when they didn't seem to be doing anything in there at all?

Those were questions I might be able to answer later, once I got inside. I would take inspiration from the ship itself and make myself something more form-fitting.

It took a long time to get it right. I slept three more times and ate twice before it was ready to test. The whole time listening for the slightest change within the alien ship, and shirking the maintenance of my own. Nothing happened. The other ship continued to sit idle, and mine continued to work in perfect condition with nobody around to use it.

The suit was made of small but reasonably thick panels of xenonite– the strongest blend I had for structural integrity. They all hinged between weaves of flexible, airtight adhesive. The joined parts where my arms would go had xenonite swivel-points, and I could attach and detach them from the main suit like gloves. The panels along my claws were as thin as I could possibly get them for fine motor control.

I felt ridiculous. I was like an overdressed old royal, wearing my finest to meet some alien delegates. 

I already knew not to expect any real greeting. But I was getting closer. Literally.

To prepare the area, I made a larger airlock on my side of the tunnel, allowing the side touching the alien ship to be in its own atmosphere. Getting through that one was easy enough, if nerve-wracking. Once I was sure things were stable, and I wouldn’t slowly freezerburn to death, I maneuvered closer to the alien airlock. I could get an even clearer image of the interior now, and could make out the mechanisms that held the door in place. I tapped along the door’s seam and experimented with a handle.

It had a straightforward, in some ways elegant design that my mind easily puzzled out. I undid the locks and the door opened with a ka-THUNK.

A chirp of surprise escaped me. I pulled myself away from the door as it swang open, inertia letting it sway gently on its thick hinges. There was nothing stopping me from going inside. I could just… crawl into an alien spaceship right now. There were plenty of reasons not to, and plenty of reasons I should. Nobody else was here to decide for me, though.

The steady beating noise was louder and undeniable with the door open. I had to find it, to confirm my hopes that I was no longer alone out here.

Entering the ship properly wouldn’t reveal anything I didn’t already know was there, just bring it more into focus. The first things I was curious to study up-close were the–

“▓ ⣿░⣕⩸⧛⢎⧛░▓⧚ ░ ░⧛⣿▌⣕⧛”

I screeched and scrambled back towards the airlock. What was that?! The noise was harsh, coming through an array of speakers embedded in the walls. An automatic computer response? Was that supposed to be its language?

It sounded awful. I crept in again, bracing for the sound. It didn’t come again, even as I reached the second airlock door. The ship wasn’t making any noise of protest, and the atmosphere inside was stable, so I shouldn’t have any trouble… 

My thorough preparation rewarded me with another satisfying ka-THUNK.

There must have been just a slight shift in air pressure, because the first airlock door, swinging loose, sucked in and slammed shut. The ship I had lived in for a sixth of my life became muffled. Less real than the place I now found myself in.

I tapped the wall to get my bearings again. From this perspective, the ship wasn’t just a curiosity I had drawn closer and closer to: it had finally swallowed me.

✰

There were secrets on this ship.

That’s what I figured. There was no way this place was even meant to make complete sense to its intended crew. Even as I got used to the walls talking, I was unable to figure out why, or what it was meant to be saying. There was a lot less idle noise than I expected– most of the mechanical things inside were off or running with very little power. It was like the whole place was asleep.

How long would I have to wait for it to wake up? The crew must have already been asleep for the journey here– a terrifying prospect, to be thrown out into space in your sleep only to wake up somewhere else, but it would feel like a very short trip. That did have some appeal.

As I roamed the silent corridors, I thought back to the alien, sleeping just like its ship. It was the first thing I had studied after getting my bearings. The machines surrounding it were the loudest but did little to muffle the grotesque form of the alien. Its entire body plan was laid out in gory detail. Seemingly at the complete mercy of the robot arms entering it at points all across its long, flat body.

It made a lot of noise for something I assumed to be sleeping. But it made no reaction when I gathered the courage to poke it through my suit. I shivered, it was so squishy it nauseatingly made me think of my last meal.

At the very least, it was alive. That couldn’t be said about the other two aliens in that room. I was all too familiar with death to assume they were anything but. The machines around them were silent. They were hollow, desiccated, and did not have that pulsing rhythm going in their thoraxes.

I think the machine is keeping the alien alive, and if the machine goes down like the other systems on the ship, it will go the way of its crew.

If I can figure out how to wake the ship, maybe the alien will wake. And then I won't be alone anymore.

✰

I have to return to my ship to sleep and eat. The suit in its current iteration can only hold enough star-eaters to keep my body temperature regulated for a day. I make some time to work on improvements, but most of the time I’m wearing the suit and studying Hail Mary.

That’s what it’s called, I think. The more I study, the more I learn about the ship. The biggest breakthrough came when I went through every scanning device in my workshop to see what they would pick up. The light refractor made my texture reader jump with hidden messages on every surface: written language. It worked in some spots better than others, depending on the light emitted from electronics embedded in the walls alongside the speakers.

These aliens could detect light. They used it to read and navigate. And I realized the purpose of those thin panels dotted around the ship and airlocks: they allowed light through. These creatures were able to perceive the light from the star we orbited! If they were awake, that is.

Language was by no means my speciality. I knew even less about translating an alien language than I did about the biology of star-eaters. But it was something to occupy my time, and get me closer to understanding the mechanics of the ship. If I could read the schematics, I could figure out what was broken and fix it.

This was good! I was getting somewhere. I pieced together enough of the written language to determine the meaning of things like on and off, airlock seal active, and deceased.

Hail Mary was glazed onto many surfaces, including the outside of the ship. It must have been the name of the ship. There were also designations beside the displays marked deceased. I think they might have been the names of the dead aliens. Which meant R. Grace was the name of my new friend.

The language might have been harder to decode without the gold tablets inside Hail Mary. They were similar to the mission tablets on my own ship, now entirely inaccurate in the information it shared about the number of crew aboard. The alien tablets were actually deeply similar to ours. They were engraved, so I could read them before anything else, and attempted to condense the entirety of their culture into five small displays. 

They did want to communicate. Why else would those be here? 

When we were constructing the ship, I thought the mission plaques were redundant. We all had our mission carvings engraved; if on the extremely off chance we met anyone out here, we could just tell them why we were there, show them our arms.

If the situation was reversed, would these aliens be able to figure out what went wrong? When I managed to wake R. Grace up, I would ask.

Did they expect to meet others here? Is that why the plaques have a map of their star system and descriptions of their planet? If they expected anyone to wake up the ship and crew, the directions weren’t on here.

I rumble with frustration. The more I learn, the more questions I have. I’m supposed to be getting closer to an answer, now that I have new information to work with. I still don’t know how to wake R. Grace up and I feel more alone than ever.

Right now I’m tinkering with the suit, putting off sleep. I’m testing different xenonite blends, trying to find something thinner but still strong. On a whim, I collect a few samples into a satchel holding the usual assortment of tools I’ve taken to bringing with me on my trips to Hail Mary.

I pull my suit back on and make the now familiar journey back into Hail Mary. I head for the far end of the cockpit that has the largest viewing window. Last sleep cycle, I angled my ship, and Hail Mary along with it, so that the light from the star projects directly through this window. The room now reflects every detail through my light reader.

Some xenonite formulas block light rays. Others allow a little through, with some distortion. There are a few that do let it pass through freely, to my pleasant surprise. They all share the same chemical additive- I think I could refine it into something even clearer without compromising the structural integrity. I could make a suit out of that for Grace to sense me properly. 

Not really thinking, I continue deeper into the ship. The handles are a little slippery in my suit, but I’ve had some practice and deftly make my way into the nesting room (‘medical bay’ in their language). Grace’s heart, because I think that’s what it must be, is still beating. That’s good. I worry I’m taking too long to wake the ship up, but all this time Grace has been unchanging. Still, the other two dead aliens are a constant reminder that its life support could fail at any time.

Unless it’s like me? Maybe we share some quirk of nature that leaves us untouched by the inescapable death that permeates the rest of space. Maybe we’re not as different as we sound.

I shouldn’t fall asleep in the suit. It’s reckless, and stupid. I can’t help it though, as I wrap my arms securely through the rungs of the handholds and let unconsciousness take me. I barely hear a skip in Grace’s heartbeat between falling asleep and waking up, but I do feel my blood burning inside me and my suit straining against the pressure. For once, I’m glad Grace is still asleep so it can’t hear me screaming like a pebble all the way back to my atmosphere.

✰

Necessity is the mother of invention.

This is a phrase I have learned from the very intelligent thinking machines aboard Mary (I shortened the name, just like I did for R. Grace. Nicknames for my new ship and crew!). This was my next leap in understanding. The light-emitting screens could be given inputs that led to information being displayed. The other way Mary shared information was through the speakers in spoken language. Using the computers, through trial and error, I began to get a better grasp of English. There was also Russian and Chinese ‘characters’ displayed across the ship, but I noticed that the things associated with Grace were mostly in English. Its personal items, which I had rummaged through, some of the scientific equipment, and hundreds of data entries in the computer composed by the human: Grace was a scientist. 

Not only that, Grace was a scientist that knew everything there was to know about astrophage- that’s what it called the star-eaters. Apparently it meant the same thing in English. (Something I noticed early on: their language had a lot of redundancies and misnomers. Nowhere near as precise as Eridian!)

When– not if, when I can communicate with Grace, we are going to figure this out. Together,

That’s why I’m working on a better suit that Grace will be able to see me in, one that I can spend even longer in. And when I have to take it off, I’m building an enclosed ammonia atmosphere near the laboratory (that I can always expand later if needed). And finally, I’m working on configuring Mary to not only interpret commands from me, but to translate my voice into English.

All of this is taking a long time. But it does feel like progress is being made. Real, tangible progress for possibly the first time since I left Erid. All thanks to my saving Grace!

(Okay, sometimes I like the double-meanings in human language.)

✰

There’s something I want to test.

The controls in the cockpit reference something called a centrifuge. There’s equivalent scientific instruments on Erid, but the schematics I found indicate that this is a function of Mary.

I’ve been slowly getting systems up and running on the ship, but it’s less of an engineering problem than I first thought. Nothing is broken, really, just inactive. The process of turning systems on bit by bit has been one of three steps forward, four steps back. I’ve been patient, though. More time has passed now since I first discovered Mary. I’ve ignored dozens of my scheduled scans of the system– what would be the point of those, anyway?

I think I’m finally ready to try the centrifuge, but that means I would need to disconnect from my ship.

It worries me less than I thought it would. To be fair, I’ve practically moved in to Mary. I sleep in the extended atmosphere I built into the medbay, next to Grace. It can’t exactly watch me but... It’s company. And I’m always here to watch Grace. 

“I’ll be right back, Grace,” I call.

Me soon here Doctor Grace, the speakers repeat back. I’m still working on the translator. It gets things mostly correct, especially if I simplify my speech to help the computer parse through my language. It’s never heard anything like me before. But talking helps me catch what needs improvement, even if nobody’s really listening. 

“Mary is getting better at translation!”

Hail Mary is improvement translation, exclamation.

I float towards the airlock and tunnel, humming to myself. 

While gathering some things from the workshop, I try to listen closely to the architecture of my old ship. Once I detach, I won’t be able to hear it anymore, and all of this will be a blank space in my mind. The only way to remember it will be through my experiences here. As terrifying as the prospect is of losing this place… It’s still not a hard decision.

Even if I fail to learn how to properly pilot Hail Mary and fail to reattach the ships, what am I really losing? The only resource of significance would be the fuel, because for some incomprehensible reason, Mary has very little astrophage fuel stores remaining. There was enough for the journey here, and little else (why, why, why?). But if I can’t find a solution working with Mary and Grace, then there really is no need for fuel to go anywhere. I would just continue on here as I have been, with a ship and a heartbeat to keep me company.

I only stand to gain progress the more I learn about Hail Mary and Grace. The questions that now seem to grow and duplicate like cells at every new insight only fuel my interest in humanity.

I do a few trips moving things I need and things I might need, and then stuff another satchel full of things I want to take just in case. I consider prying one of the tablets from the central hall, but decide against it while tracing a claw over the outline of my planet. Whatever happens, it should stay a complete set. If another alien ship happens to come by in another millenia, they may only question why the plaque names twenty three crewmembers when only twenty two bodies are interred inside.

Back on Mary, I disconnect the tunnel. Immediately, my old ship is gone. I can’t hear it anymore unless I check one of the cameras pointed in its direction, but hearing its outline on a texture reader isn’t the same as listening to the metallic echoes off the halls. It’s jarring for it to disappear like that, but the place is still ingrained in my memory. Every unchanging detail is still etched into my brain. 

Blip-A detected, Mary announces. One screen displays an outline of my ship. Now that it’s moving again, Mary’s now operational sensors have picked it up. Weird thing to call my ship, but okay. Good to know I can keep track of it from here.

After confirming the hull robots completed their remote undocking program, I start the sequence to engage the centrifuge. I keep my focus on my ever-growing array of texture readers I installed in the cockpit. Centrifuge cables extending, Mary says. The hull reverberates. I grab onto a handhold with another claw so that I have four arms steadying me against a shaking, pulling sensation taking effect. My one arm hovering over the centrifuge controls starts to pull to the side involuntarily. 

I knew what would happen, but wasn’t sure it would actually feel like gravity. The spinning gently pulls me down onto what is now the floor, and some of my tools clatter onto the metal grates. Hm, I may need to rearrange my tunnels based on this new layout. The gravity is only half of the force on my home planet, but more than I’ve felt for all my time in space.

Centrifuge engaged.

Amazing!

I trill with delight, then immediately trip on my arms. Refamiliarizing myself with the ship now that it has an up and a down is just another new thing to get used to. New and different is good.

✰

I dig through the ship’s computer to learn more about my new home. The soft-whirring machinery that fills the walls of Mary seems to store every piece of information one could ever want to learn. A terminal at the edge of the laboratory has become my best point of reference for understanding everything on the ship. Any query, as long as you know how to ask it, has an answer. 

Some things I have learned so far:

Hail Mary is from a planet called Earth.

Earth, like Erid, sent a ship to this star (that they call Tau Ceti) in the hopes of finding a way to stop the astrophage infecting their star– The Sun, they call it.

This is not the first spacecraft humans have made. They began experimenting with space travel around the time Erid first discovered the star-sickness and began work on our first and only spaceship. In that time, they’ve sent dozens of craft out into the void. Mary was built with a much deeper understanding of space travel than anything Erid could have known.

Doctor Ryland Grace was a leader in the efforts to build and launch Hail Mary, and is Earth’s leading expert in astrophage biology. It makes sense that they sent him (that’s how the computer refers to Grace and some of the other humans I have learned about, not exactly sure what that refers to… some sort of human title or designation?). If anyone can figure it out, it’s Grace. 

Because of the angle of Earth’s orbit and its thin atmosphere, they have weather that varies wildly over the course of a year and within different regions. They have rain made of liquid water!

Earth is much colder than Erid, and is already running out of time before their world is inhospitable. They went to great lengths to produce enough astrophage just to fuel the journey out here. The rest of the scant fuel they could produce is lining the hull, and in four smaller robot ships ready to deliver the solution as quickly as possible.

L. Yao, O. Ilyukhina, and Grace were always going to die out here. They all knew this, and still went, in the hopes of saving their people.

Humans like singing, too. They do it differently than us, but they do it for the same reasons. There are a lot of recordings of singing in the computer.

Human sleep, as I suspected, is very different. Normally, they can be woken easily and their bodies are much more active the entire time. The type of sleep Grace is doing is called an induced coma. He and the others were supposed to wake up when they arrived. For whatever reason, they did not. But there is a way to wake Grace up.

Something must have gone wrong with the medical robot. Humans know a lot about space travel, but they also had very little time to build Mary. It’s very lucky that I was here, or else Grace would have nobody here to help.

And, it’s very lucky that Grace survived for me to find him. Otherwise there would be no scientist here to help me. I was going nowhere until Grace appeared. 

I ask the computer to show me all its information on human medicine.

✰

It’s worse than I imagined.

Not only are these aliens riddled with holes, but every one of them has a variety of fluids constantly leaking out or being pumped in– that’s what all the tubes are for. Grace has been eating while sleeping. Gross, gross, gross!

And their internal workings are even more complex than an Eridian’s. In equal measure, they’re also delicate. One of the functions of the medical robot dutifully looking after Grace is to gently move him in his sleep. It startled me the first time I listened to the regular sequence, but it’s since become commonplace. Now I know it’s to keep his exterior flesh from getting damaged just laying there.

It’s like caring for a very young pebble. You have to do the feeding and waste disposal for them, keep their limbs from flopping all over the place, and watch over their erratic sleep. Grace may as well be a pebble he’s so young! I couldn't believe the lifespan of humans– I thought somehow I had done the calculations based on their units of time wrong at first, but no, Grace hasn’t even been alive as long as I’ve been out here. That realization delayed my work for over a day– I just sat there and watched Grace continue to sleep his life away.

The humans had so little time. I had it by the engine-full and had been thoroughly wasting it for 46 of their years (coming up on 47 now). Erid can survive the wait a little longer, but Earth can’t. I needed to stop operating on the idea that time didn't exist out here and wake Grace up. Soon.

Before I go about waking Grace up, I want to try to understand why the coma system failed L. Yao and O. Ilyukhina. My first guess is the same thing that killed my crew, whatever that is. But they exhibit none of the same horrible symptoms. That could mean the cause just affects our species in different ways, but in the grand scheme of things, we’re not actually that different. Humans and Eridians are both made up of cells, and the dead cells of these humans are still intact. I carefully dissect the equipment surrounding the dead humans. Just the monitoring equipment from their individual nests, not the robot that is now focused solely on Grace.

I find nothing obviously wrong– and I would, I’ve read all the schematics. It could be something with the computer’s programming, which I’m less familiar with but getting better, at least when it comes to programming Mary to understand my voice. It’s all just ones and zeroes, really. Easy, easy, easy.

I don’t touch the bodies. Listening to them this close is enough. I’m no human doctor anyway, there’s nothing I could learn from them.

I have a deep-rooted instinct to move them. It gnaws at me every time I check on Grace. I can’t listen to his proof of life without simultaneously being reminded of the presence of death. They would be out of the way in that room near the cockpit covered in light display panels. But that would be wrong– I don’t need to weigh any number of unknown alien customs to know that’s wrong.

(On a side note: I get that humans can perceive the lights, but they already have so many screens displaying information! Why have a whole entire room dedicated to light displays? Considering the type of things Eridians do in full-sensory sound baths, I bet it’s some really freaky alien stuff.)

I move on to study the still-functioning systems around Grace. Here, I do find something curious. There’s a store of vials containing a variety of substances in the wall panels behind him. They all have some medical use that’s easy to learn in the computer. Opiates, antihistamines, antacid, Vitamin C.

There’s only one I can’t find any information on, and it’s the only one I’m really curious about at the moment because the vial for this one is broken. The seal was damaged at some point, and the tube that would run it into the fluid injection tube piercing Grace’s arm is disconnected.

I check to see if this vial is labeled for L. Yao and O. Ilyukhina’s supplies, but they don’t seem to have an equivalent. Their neat line of vials ends before the spot the mystery drug would go. I consider that this might be what kept Grace alive, but there’s no evidence any of the drug made it into his system. Maybe, its failure to inject is keeping him asleep.

I’m no scientist, though. There’s absolutely a machine in the lab that could figure out the chemical makeup of the substance, but it would take a long time for me to even figure out which one, let alone how to use it. I don’t have that time– Grace doesn’t have that time!

I also find Grace’s food source in the walls. It’s a fine powder that gets mixed with water before being fed through a tube directly into his stomach, and from the sound of it, there used to be a  lot more. Like the fuel, it’s running out. The humans probably expected their mission crew to have woken up ages ago and gotten straight to work on finding a solution– and then they would have all the time in the world to starve.

It’s awful. I think of the food stores I brought onto Mary. Maybe Grace could eat that, too? I have even more on my ship (the Blip-A, as I suppose the humans would call it), more than enough.

I have more than enough fuel, too, because of our baffling miscalculation in the energy needed to travel to Tau Ceti. 

I don’t even know this creature, and I still want to offer it precious resources so that it can get home. How would Grace, or any other human for that matter, react to an offer like that? Would they refuse and commit to the one-way mission they accepted back on Earth? Or would they be as overjoyed as I am even imagining it?

✰

“What’s a schoolteacher doing in space?”

What is unknown word working in space, question, Mary translates. I reach over to make corrections to the translation with one arm while still mostly focusing on the texture screen currently showing Doctor Ryland Grace’s project file. It says nothing about being an astronaut– a human whose job it is to go to space. Grace’s job before coming to space had been teaching children. Did humans often change careers so drastically?

I came here to research his medical history, but admittedly got a little sidetracked. Anyways, Grace’s blood type is A positive, whatever that means, he is allergic to pollen, whatever that is, and he, like the other two astronauts, have a resistance to the negative effects of being in an induced coma, something apparently very rare. The astronauts were selected for this trait above all else.

Still nothing about the mystery drug. It’s tempting to let it be the answer to every unknown variable I still have to decode. But I know I’m operating on a lot of assumptions– everything I’ve learned so far about humans could be wrong! The most definitive way to know anything about humans would be to ask one.

And I think I will finally be able to. Pentobarbitol is one of the drugs that is being dripped into Grace’s body. This is what is inducing the coma, and from what I have learned, if it stops being given to him he will wake up!

Based on the levels still left in the others’ supplies, it may not be as simple as that. They stopped receiving it at some point, and didn’t survive. At some point in the revival process, there may be a point of failure. I’ll have to keep a careful watch over Grace the whole time (not that I was planning to do anything else), rely on the medical robot, and what little understanding of alien biology I’ve managed to glean.

Will that be enough? What if I end up killing him in the process? I don’t even want to consider that possibility- the possibility of that particular failure ever again.

As driven as I’ve been since finding Hail Mary, this thought freezes me. I just listen to Grace’s heartbeat from the next room over. I have grown very used to that sound.

I settle into the newest section of tunnel I’ve built above Grace’s nest, and work on improving one of my cameras. There’s more than enough things I’ve found on Mary to keep me busy indefinitely. I can keep exploring the alien mechanics of the ship until I’m able to decide if I want to go through with this.

Eventually, time makes the decision for me.

I’m in the cockpit, doing a rare check-in on the status of Blip-A (still there!) when an incessant beeping starts up– coming from the medical robot. I scramble down the corridors, frazzled but not missing a single step. 

“Mary, status!” I shout.

Eye movement detected.

Eye– those are the light sensing organs. Usually they’re covered by some thin little flaps of flesh that seriously cannot be enough to protect the squishy little balls from damage. I gently tugged one of Grace’s eyelids a while back. It didn’t move at all, but I studied the concentric discs layered inside the complex organ for a while.

Grace is moving? Is it involuntary, like the rest of the little jolts that sometimes shoot through his musculature? Why would Mary announce it?

Now that I’m really listening, I notice for the first time that Grace’s steady heartbeat is faster than before. Only slightly, but it’s increasing. I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad development.

I click and tap the walls to get a better view of the room, and what the robot is doing underneath its metal shell. This is when I notice that Grace’s supply of pentobarbitol is empty. It’s run out, which means he is no longer being held forcefully asleep in a coma.

He’s waking up all on his own. Do I let him?

There’s still pentobarbitol in the other astronaut’s supplies; I could remove one and install it in Grace’s IV. Or… I could let him wake.

It would be as if I wasn’t here. Grace’s supply would have run out in this moment regardless of my other intrusions on Hail Mary. Why not just let it play out as it naturally would have, and hope for the best?

But– if there’s anything I can do to help– I’ll stick around just to make sure everything goes smoothly. I pace around the robot as it moves more than I’ve ever observed, shifting its joints in jerky motions to prod at Grace’s various tubes.

I consider the broken vial. Does Grace need that before he wakes? After? At all? I took it out of the machine, but I could repair the lid and reinstall it.

If I wasn’t here, the drug wouldn’t be used. So I hold onto it. 

I run through the things I do know for certain about human biology. They leak a lot, they can sense light… oh, the lights! 

“Mary, turn lights in crew quarters on.”

Certainly, ♩♬♪♫♩♪.

I titter with satisfaction. It’s only a recording of me saying my own name, but the response is nice and fast. From the readout on the cameras I have installed here, it looks like the lights turned on just as requested.

Eye movement detected. Heart rate increasing.

The updates to Grace’s status come gradually. It takes an hour before the robot starts to do more than hover, though somehow it looks hesitant to do so. It pulls back the thin cover surrounding Grace and pulls at small adhesives dotted along his body. Some pull away easily, like they were barely stuck on in the first place, while others stay attached to the small little growths of dead cells Grace is covered in (ew). The skin and muscle around those points twitch– a reaction to the stimulus.

Next, the robot removes some of the tubes going into Grace. Not all of them, just a few. I don’t understand the logic determining which ones stay and which ones go. Maybe the rest will be removed eventually, when Grace is fully awake. Which is taking longer than I expected.

I’m running out of time in the latest version of my suit, which can keep me cool for eight human hours before needing to be reset. I hurry back to my tunnels, bringing the cooling unit to refill with astrophage while I curl up to watch Grace from above.

I hear a noise I’ve never heard before. Not ever, not even on this ship.

“Mmmmnnnn…”

It came from Grace’s vocal cords. I understood the anatomy, but actually hearing it is an entirely new thing. He made a noise! Does that mean he’s awake?

“Grace? Can… can you hear me?”

Doctor Grace can can you hear me, question?

“Mmm… Mnnn.” His head moves a little this time, tugging on the things covering and inserted into his head-holes. One arm twitches.

Hand movement detected. What’s two plus two?

I chirp at Mary. It’s never asked a question like that before. Is it asking Grace? I don’t think he’s going to be able to answer that at the moment.

“Four,” I reply. The speakers make an aborted, buzzing noise before Mary responds again.

C-c-correct. What’s the cube root of eight?

“Two!”

Cor-Correct.

This is fun. What’s next? The robot pulls some more things off Grace, leaving only three lines still inserted. Two on one end, and the other on his head. The robot starts for the one on his face, but seems to stall. A clicking noise comes from one of its joints, and with a couple incessant taps at my xenonite wall I can hear there’s a piece inside that’s been worn down and is now stuck.

Grace starts to move more, and make more sounds. Its eyes are still covered, but the skin around them flexes and pinches in on itself. He’s spasming.

Please hold still, Mary instructs. Grace keeps trembling, either not hearing or ignoring the ship. Something leaks out of one of the tubes that was removed– that one connects to the supply of drugs. Was that supposed to still be connected to Grace?

“Do not move, Grace. Mary is trying to help you wake up.”

Do not move Doctor Grace Hail Mary is try helping concious.

“Ghchhk,” Grace replies. The tube sounds like it’s at a strange angle, half-removed from his throat. It presses against the more solid (relatively, it’s still all very soft) parts of his neck. That must be uncomfortable, likely even painful if my interpretation of his reactions are anything to go by.

I don’t think Mary is helping. 

Heart rate increasing.

It’s a nonstop thumpthumpthumpthupthumpthump–

Please hold still

Mary’s request is at odds with the stalling motions of the robot arm. It’s like the medical bot is the one being told to back off and hold still, even though it should be completing whatever steps necessary to finish waking Grace up. The idea that there are steps to waking up and not just starting awake is strange, but clearly the process is overly complicated for humans. Borderline ridiculous, but maybe necessary with the differences in its biology. They must be careful about everything they do (except the construction of the ship carrying their only hope at survival, apparently!).

“Ghk– ch-” Grace is still struggling to wake. There’s liquid leaking from the sides of his eyes now.  I let out a whine and tap my claws together uselessly.

I could continue to let this play out ‘naturally’-- even though nothing about this feels natural or right. Or, I could help. I may not know exactly what to do, but anything would be better than continuing to stand here and watch this happen.

Again.

My suit is reset. Mostly. It will last me long enough to help. I pull it back on and climb through the airlock in the lab, then back down to Grace’s nest. His whole body is shaking now, and the noises coming through are faint, wheezes of air escaping between the half-out tube more than anything else. At some point one of his arms fell out of the coverings and now it hangs limp over the side of the nest.

I take stock of Grace’s body splayed out and the robot arm twitching above it uselessly. There’s enough space for me to get between him and it if I push it out of the way just a little. I worry I might damage it, but either way I’m going to have to learn how to repair it. I climb onto the table, very careful not to touch Grace, and not so careful in shoving the robot away.

M-movement-t-t de-de-detect -tected

Okay. I maneuver three legs to grab onto the edges of the nest by Grace’s arms, and the other two hover over the tube.

“Hmm,” I mumble. “Stay as still as you can, Grace. I’m going to help you.”

Stay very very unmoving Doctor Grace         ♩♬♪♫♩♪ going to help you

Please st-st-stay still.     W-what is your -is your name?       H-hand movement detected.

The computer speaks over itself. It’s so loud, I can barely hear Grace’s heart. Or maybe his heart is getting quieter.

I curl my claws around the tube, and through it feel in more detail than ever the inner workings of Grace. It sounds like it’s torn into the even softer flesh inside. I’m both terrified for and disgusted by Grace, and as much as I want to help, I also want to get this over with as quickly as possible.

There’s a slipping, squelching noise as I pull the tube out. Various viscosities of sludge stick to the plastic and I hold it above my carapace, not really sure what to do with it now. There’s still a consistent gust of airflow flowing through the equipment. It controlled and regulated Grace’s breathing in the coma, because humans need to constantly refresh the oxygen in their blood. 

Grace heaves in air. Its ragged throat grates out a noise like a popped vocal bladder, and his lungs inflate so much that his chest rises up to touch the base of my carapace. I lean back, surprised at the reaction.

Eye movement detected.

Really, that’s all you have to say, Mary?!

The ship is correct though, Grace’s eyes are moving again, and this time so are his eyelids. They flutter as unsteady as his heart had been a few minutes ago, then pull back to let the little organs take in light.

Unlike before, the little holes in the middle react to the light. They shrink into pinpoints. The lids react a second later, pinching shut again. 

Grace continues to intake air irregularly, which concerns me, but the rest of his body is relaxing back to how it was before the robot began to stall. His head moves, and he opens his eyes again.

This time, I think the eyes sense me. I lower the tube and lean in closer to Grace’s eyes, curious and hopeful.

“Are you okay, Grace?”

Are you alright Doctor–

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”