Work Text:
“Greetings, you have reached the contact services for Grace Rocky Save Stars, the interstellar rescue and recovery service.
“If you are calling to enquire about our express taumoeba deliveries, please press one.
“If your sun or planet is being threatened by hostile external forces, such as a death ray or mutant star goat, please press two.
“If you are suffering from a globally-threatening situation which does not fall under any of the above, please press three.
“For more general, non-urgent, enquiries, please press four.
“To repeat the options, press five.
“Have a nice planetary rotation!”
~~~
This is really not what I expected to be doing with my life.
But, then, the same could be said for almost everything I’ve done, ever since spectacularly failing at the concept of ‘inside thoughts’ and tanking my original career. Besides, the whole star-saving gig is really just a side-hustle, anyway. My heart’s still in teaching and I think it always will be. There’s something about watching a love of knowledge grab hold of people - of whatever species - and pull them into the dizzying waltz of trying to understand the universe, which sparks absolute joy. Something about helping them, both to understand a specific topic, and to develop tools for lifelong learning, which is satisfying on a deep, personal level.
Plus, there’s the bonus that I, too, am constantly learning. You can’t be a good teacher, if you don’t stay curious, informed and adaptable; nor if you don’t listen to, and respect, your students. Also, it does wonders for your papier-mâché skills.
So I still have my classes, three to four days a week, teaching science and human studies and learning the Eridian versions of teenage slang and ‘the dog ate my homework’.
And, the rest of the time, I sort of, kind of, co-run an intergalactic star-saving service.
I’m blaming Rocky for that.
Because the thing about being a genius engineer, a category in which Rocky very much qualifies, is that you always want to do more, do better, find new challenges. I might have made some passing remark about other potential life out there, and whether they might be suffering similarly to Earth and Erid, but it was Rocky and his engineering team, plus a series of extremely enthusiastic thrums, which actually followed up the idea and made our first tentative expedition possible.
The Hail Mary, it turned out, was extremely receptive to tinkering, once you had access to all of Erid’s resources, and, as soon as he got the go ahead, Rocky leapt on her with unholy glee, about ten tons of xenonite and a hefty spanner. Considerable improvements were, therefore, made on the speed and safety front, even before we encountered the Laradinians, who ...
But that’s leaping ahead. Initially, our efforts were focused on simply making contact with anyone within range and getting word out about the taumoeba. And I say ‘our’ efforts, because I was officially drafted in, as one of the only two experts on Erid on making first contact with intelligent life.
(Though Rocky, of course, claims that, at that point, I was, technically, the only one of the pair of us who had got to actually meet intelligent life. Because he thinks he’s hilarious).
Once we had a more efficient ship and a wider range of travel, it was actually rather surprising how many other sapient species we discovered, even within the first few shortish hops. There were some serious communication issues to overcome, of course, but me and Rock had already gone back over our own missteps and hiccups, a few times, as well as discussing what had been most successful and helpful for each of us (with Rocky’s first answer always being ‘puppet show’). It didn’t completely prevent us from making mistakes, but the process seemed to come easier and easier with every species.
Our lack of making assumptions about everyone having the same sensory apparatus, for example, was a real boon. And the medium of ‘goofy dance moves’ continued to be an excellent way of both bonding and demonstrating peaceful intent. Even in the one culture we found where the Macarena coincidentally resembles a traditional threat display, I, apparently, somehow managed to look like the equivalent of a kitten pretending to be a lion; which neatly prevented an interstellar war, but did cause a few of their diplomats to almost hospitalise themselves, from laughing.
And, hey, if my particular skills lie less in diplomacy and linguistic expertise and more in making people too amused (or mildly baffled) to be scared - see also: the fine art of clumsiness, and the way that my, very sincere, attempts to speak other languages are apparently comedy gold - then I think I can live with that.
Rocky’s much better at all this. Okay, maybe not at the diplomacy part, but he’s an excellent problem solver and with so much personality, bursting from every spidery joint, that he stuns whole planets with it. Then, the next thing they know, he’s pointing out all the metaphorical socks, strewn across their metaphorical bedrooms, and getting snarky about their math skills, and the poor saps can’t help but be charmed by it.
Ask me how I know.
Anyway, we ended up in the habit of making regular short trips, every few weeks or so, to establish, or maintain contact with our neighbours, and spread taumoeba wherever necessary.
And then we met the Laradinians.
Being far more technologically advanced than either Earth or Erid, they had already long since solved their own infection, by essentially treating their Petrova line as a breeding farm and harvesting the astrophage directly, thereby keeping the numbers down to manageable levels.
They also lived on nearly the other side of the galaxy from Erid, which meant that we would never have actually encountered them, if they hadn’t sent out an SOS about a whole different problem they were having with their sun.
Their technology gave us a huge head start, both in speedily getting to their planet and in the matter of communication. They didn’t quite have a universal translator, but it was about as close as you could get without breaking a few laws of physics and the general law of ‘whatever can be misconstrued, will be misconstrued’.
We ended up hanging around with them for a few days, while trying to troubleshoot the whole sun issue (it turned out that a very different, though equally wildly advanced, species was stealing fuel from their sun, because they hadn’t realised it was supporting life, so our main role in that whole mess was tapping a foot meaningfully, and crossing our arms, until the other people apologised and made amends).
Despite not actually doing much, in the end, simply being willing to help out was apparently good enough for the Laradinians to declare eternal friendship.
This involved taking part in some sort of complicated ceremony, to apparently put the ‘eternal into eternal friendship’, whatever that means. Rocky seemed happy about it, anyway, even though it involved us both drinking in public, from the ceremonial ‘cup of forever’, and feeling really weird for three days afterwards.
Their gratitude also led them to bestow on us a vessel capable of crossing galaxies in literal seconds (which was incredibly thoughtful); and to contact all of their friends, across several solar systems, to urge them to get in touch with us for any given star or planetary emergency (which was significantly less so).
Given my track record, I felt a bit awkward about trying to argue the role we’d been unwittingly thrust into, but Rocky was a little less … reserved, about his feelings.
Unfortunately, by the time we realised what was going on, we had already accidentally saved three star systems and a galaxy, and it was far too late to just ask to be deleted from the galactic equivalent of Yellow Pages.
So, instead, we just kinda … leaned into it.
Nowadays, our ship has the ‘Grace Rocky Save Stars’ logo and an answerphone system which caters for billions of languages, including those which rely on things like vibrations, light pulses, or even smell (you might think you want to know about the logistics of that one, but believe me, you don’t. Making nightmarish quantities of chain was an absolute delight, compared to the tediousness of putting that in place).
We do fewer taumoeba deliveries, these days, as the astrophage is mostly under control, but it’s astonishing how much trouble the average sun can get into. Let’s just say, the mutant star goat thing? Not a joke.
On the plus side, we’ve made a whole lot of friends and I also have the ability to pop back to Earth, any time I like.
Not that I’ve actually done that in any official capacity, yet, because the one time I did stop by (using our cloaked shuttle, so as not to freak anyone out, or deal with the whole … you know … everything) I almost walked slap-bang into an alarmingly huge statue of me - oozing gravitas and heroism, from every cold, granite pore - and immediately noped right off the planet.
There is no way in which I can come back to a world that sees me like that and not be a raging disappointment.
But it’s still nice to have the option. Someday.
And it’s good to know it’s there; that humanity is still alive and kicking and just as human as it’s always been, for better and worse.
Maybe, someday, they’ll reach out a little further into the stars and be bewildered to find that at least a dozen solar systems love science pun t-shirts and have strong opinions on the Rocky movies.
Now that’s a legacy I can get behind.