Chapter Text
Rocky and I were two months into our 3 years and 10 months journey back to Erid, Rocky’s home. With our mission to save our stars complete, Rocky and I now faced our biggest challenge yet. Free time. Endless amounts of free time.
“Grace must stop,” Rocky said.
“Stop what?” I ask innocently, throwing my ball against the wall so I could catch it when it bounced back. I threw it again, and it hit the xenonite wall with a loud thunk. It bounced back to me, and I threw it again.
“Grace know what,” Rocky said, annoyance in his pitch. “Grace throw ball for many hour.”
“Is it bothering you that much?” I ask, looking at Rocky.
“Yes,” Rocky answers, turning his attention towards me. I threw the ball against the wall once more, and instead of catching it, I let it bounce away into the ship. I purposefully take an exaggerated inhale and exhale, maintaining my eye contact with Rocky. “Grace bored, question?”
“Grace very bored,” I replied. “Bored bored bored.”
“Rocky bored also,” Rocky said. “But Rocky don’t make loud loud annoying noise because bored.”
“Well, you haven’t experienced the joys of a rubber ball and a wall yet,” I shrug. “What are you doing?”
“Rocky side messy. Too many boxes,” Rocky spoke, turning back to the stacks of boxes on his side of the wall. “Rocky will 🎶.”
“What was that last word?”
“Take many object and make smaller.”
“Ah. Condense.”
When Rocky had permanently boarded the Hail Mary with the one-way express ticket to Erid, he had brought along all twenty-three (Rocky's box included) of his crew’s individual boxes filled with their possessions. It made sense to return the deceased crewmates' items to their loved ones, but it made the Hail Mary a lot harder to fit in.
I scooched forward so I was now leaning against the xenonite wall, looking into Rocky’s space. Rocky opened the first large metal box and began gently removing items.
I couldn’t do much to help Rocky other than sit supportively on my side while he went through his dead crewmates' belongings and tried to consolidate all their items into five or six boxes instead of the twenty-three they had come in.
Watching him, I thought amusedly, that Rocky would clearly be the world’s best Tetris player if he ever decided to play Tetris. Or be on Earth.
As Rocky was gently pulling out belongings from Bart’s box– I had been giving each of Rocky’s crewmates Earth names per Rocky’s request– Rocky had pulled out a large stone box. He evaluated it for a moment before moving to put it in a different container.
“Wait,” I called out, sitting up. There was something itching in the back of my mind as I looked at the stone box in Rocky’s hands. Something set this item apart from all the other items I had seen today. Then, I realised. “Wait. Rocky, that box is painted!”
“Repeat,” Rocky requested, turning his attention towards me.
“The box! It’s painted!” I exclaimed, tapping the glass.
“No understand,” Rocky replied.
I huffed, realising that a creature who only heard in sounds would never have a word for something that actively involved colours and the light spectrum.
“New word,” I begin. “Paint. On Earth, there are special pastes that have all the different colours, and humans can use these pastes to create or design something onto an object.”
“Use light spectrum pastes to design onto object, question?” Rocky repeated.
“Correct,” I nodded.
“Understand,” Rocky hummed, turning his attention to the box. “Box Rocky is holding has light-spectrum pastes on it, question?”
“Paint,” I corrected. “And yes. Like, there’s an actual design.”
“But...why box have paint on if Eridians can not observe paint?”
“That’s the million-dollar question right there,” I stated, pressing myself against the xenonite for a better look at the box. “What was your buddy Bart up to?”
“Friend Bart was scientist like Grace,” Rocky informed. “Friend Bart liked collecting things. Strange things.”
“And, where’d he get this from?”
“Rocky not know,” Rocky responded, putting the box on the floor and scuttling off. A few seconds later, Rocky returned with his light translator and pointed it at the box. “Huh.”
“What?” I asked.
“Rocky not see paint design through translator,” Rocky informed curiously. “Grace sure box have paint, question?”
“Yeah, I’m sure, bud,” I nodded. “There’s a blue circle on either side of the box and a squigly rainbow line connecting them.”
“Rainbow is many colours, yes, question?” Rocky inquired.
“More or less,” I confirmed. “The colours are really vivid too.” Rocky turned to look at me pointedly. “The colours are loud.”
“Ah! Understand!” Rocky exclaimed, turning his attention back to the box. “Still can’t see loud paint design. Grace help Rocky see, question?”
“How’d you want me to do that?” I frown.
“Make texture. Design of box more important than colour of box. Rocky want see design.”
“Uhh, sure, Rock,” I began, looking around the ship. “Let me find the tape.”
“No! Not tape! Grace tape texture is messy,” Rocky refused, stomping one of his feet on the ground. “Want precision texture. Use wire and melty metal stick!”
“Melty metal st– You mean my soldering iron?”
“Affirmative.”
Pulling out the soldering iron for arts and crafts seems more trouble than it’s worth.
“And you’re not going to be satisfied if I just describe it to you?” I press.
“Would Grace be satisfied by that if Rocky did that?”
I push my glasses up my face as I rub my eyes and sigh. The things I do for friendship.
“Okay, fine,” I give in, raising my hands up. “Bring the box to my side while I go get my ‘melty metal stick’.”
Rocky chittered happily as I turned away to grab my tools, and I could hear him place the stone box into the airlock drawer and pass it over to my side of the wall.
“Rocky curious where friend Bart got box,” Rocky said as I walked back over, tools in hand. “Did Box originate from Eridani or from somewhere else?”
“It seems unlikely it would come from your planet, not gonna lie,” I hum, opening the airlock drawer. A thick stench of ammonia plumed from the drawer, and I had to blink a few times to keep myself from overreacting. Powering through the smell, I grab the box and bring it over to my table. “I mean, your species lives in total darkness and uses echolocation to see. No Eridian would have painted this.”
“Hmmm. True,” Rocky hummed. “Box must come from other place. But when did friend Bart get box? Rocky with friend Bart entire time they travel in space. Much suspicious.”
“Too bad we can’t ask him,” I sigh sadly.
“Sad sad sad.”
I take my spool of wire and stretch it out across the wavy line painted on the box. I add some extra length to the wire before cutting it off from the spool. Then I grab my pliers and begin bending the wire to match the design's curves. After a few minutes of doing this, I realised I had made the wire too short.
“Crap,” I muttered, staring at the wire. “I cut the wire too short.”
“Grace have one job,” Rocky deadpans.
“Hey,” I called out, looking up at Rocky. “That tone of voice is not helpful for me.”
“Grace too sensitive,” Rocky complained. That comment stung a little more than I was willing to admit.
“I don’t have to do this,” I say, setting the wire down and crossing my arms.
“Rocky is sorry,” he apologises. I can hear in his tone of voice that he definitely isn’t sorry, but I’ll take what I can get.
“Thank you,” I nod, unspooling a bit of wire and cutting it off. I finish the length of the wave and then solder the two pieces of wire together. Now, for the circles.
“What taking Grace so long, question?” Rocky asked, tittering about on his side of the room.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” I mumbled, not looking up from what I was doing. Trying to match these near-perfect circles with a bit of wire and only my pliers to shape it was tedious.
“Rocky cannot look. Gace knows this,” Rocky reminded pointedly. I looked up at my friend with a raised eyebrow.
“You know what I meant.”
“Rocky want know on box.”
“And you will soon enough,” I hummed, looking back down at my work. “I’m going as fast as I can.”
“Not fast enough,” Rocky grumbled, lowering slightly.
“Look, you can have me do it fast and clumsy or slow and precise. Take your pick.”
“Fast and precise!” Rocky answers, raising his arms up and clicking his fingers together.
“That wasn’t an option,” I groan. I finished the first circle and moved on to the second.
“Rocky make option. Fast and precise.”
“Why don’t you go see if your buddy Bart has anything else interesting in their box?” I propose.
Rocky turned his attention to Bart’s box and scuttled back to it. I nodded satisfactorily to myself, grateful I would be free of Rocky hovering even if it was just for a few minutes. Though, as soon as I looked back down at what I was doing…
“Grace observe any paint on rocks, question?” Rocky calls out to me. I sigh, looking up to see Rocky standing back in front of the xenonite wall, holding two large rocks in his hands.
“No,” I shake my head. Rocky hums satisfactorily and leaves. Ten seconds later, he’s back again with two new rocks.
“Grace see any paint, question?” Rocky asks. I don’t acknowledge him, hoping he’ll get the hint and let me work. He doesn’t. “Grace see any paint, repeat, question?”
“No,” I say, glancing at the rocks. Rocky moves away. The pads of my fingers begin to ache the longer I try to make this stupid wire circle.
I hear Rocky approach again, I’m sure with more rocks for me to check, but I pretend not to notice him. Rocky doesn’t call out to me; he knows I know what he wants. But, I’m not–
BANG!
I jump so badly that my glasses, which had been balancing rather precariously on my nose, fall off into my lap. I scramble to pick them up, with a deep-rooted fear of accidentally breaking my only pair of glasses, since my optometrist is 11 light-years away.
I look up to see that Rocky had pressed both rocks he was holding against the xenonite glass.
“Grace see paint, question?” Rocky inquires innocently. I rub my hand across my face with exhaustion.
“Rocky,” I begin gently, mustering all my patience. “You asked me to make a model of the design on the box, and I can’t do that and check Bart’s rocks for paint at the same time.”
“Oh,” Rocky realises, lowering his hands. “Understand understand understand. Grace do design for Rocky first, then help Rocky check for paint on rocks.”
“I’m almost finished,” I say, evaluating my wire circles and nodding happily at them. Rocky stands quietly by the wall as I solder the three pieces together. “Done!”
“Amaze amaze amaze!” Rocky exclaims, doing the Eridian jazz hands.
“Okay, I’m pretty sure the solder will melt in your atmosphere, so...” I lean back in my chair and grab a roll of tape from behind me. I rip off a few pieces of tape and use them to fix the metal wire design onto the xenonite wall. “Can you see that okay?”
“Rocky see design fine,” he says, his attention drawn to my mini sculpture. He’s silent for a moment and then speaks up. “Is boring. Grace could’ve just described design.”
“Are you serious?!” I shout. I hold my face in both of my hands and groan loudly. “Oh my god, I just spent 25 minutes on this...”
Rocky must have sensed I was close to losing it, and he quickly began to backtrack.
“Rocky appreciate friend Grace for making paint design!” Rocky praises. “Grace very good at making wire melty metal design, statement!”
I uncover the top half of my face to look at him and sigh loudly. After a moment, I look over to the painted stone box and frown at it.
“Have we tried opening it yet?” I ask.
“Negative.”
I reach over and drag the box so it sits in front of me. The box doesn’t have a lid, per se... it seems to function more like a cabinet with two doors. Pursing my lips, I dig my fingers under the lip of one of the doors and open it.
“Oh, wow,” I say.
“What?!” Rocky asks. “What Grace see, question?!”
“Nothing,” I answer blandly, peering into the box. “At least on this side. There’s a divider between the doors. Hang on one second...” I jam my fingers under the other door and try to open it. It doesn’t budge. “It’s stuck.”
“Stuck how, question?”
“I dunno,” I grunt, trying to yank the door. “It’s glued or something.”
After a solid thirty seconds of trying to open it with my hands, I grab a flathead screwdriver and stick it as far into the door lip as I can. Hopefully, the leverage will finally pop it open.
“Don’t break box,” Rocky warns.
“I’m not gonna break the...wha- are you kidding me?! That’s not even possible!”
I pull back, holding up my flathead screwdriver, so Rocky can see it now bent at a 30-degree angle.
“Oh, wow,” Rocky chirps.
“I know for a fact that this is one of the strongest and most expensive screwdrivers out on the market because Earth pulled out no stops in supplying the Hail Mary with nothing but the best equipment. There’s no way I was just able to bend that.” I wave my screwdriver angrily in front of Rocky.
“It still bent, though,” Rocky countered.
“No, no,” I say, dropping the screwdriver onto the table and scooting away with my hands raised in surrender. “This is xenon being a solid all over again.”
“Rocky will fix screwdriver. Give,” he orders. “And give box back. Rocky will open too.”
“It doesn’t open,” I say, grabbing the box and the bent screwdriver and dropping them into the airlock drawer. Rocky moved over and opened the drawer on his side, took the items, and moved to his workstation. I follow after him.
“Rocky will open.”
He sets aside the screwdriver and turns his attention to the box, and moves to get a finger under the lip of the closed door.
“It’s not gonna–” With zero resistance, the door opens. I gape at the box before clearing my throat and mumbling. “I loosened it.”
“This side empty too,” Rocky says disappointingly. “Empty disappointing box.”
“And destroyer of screwdrivers,” I yawn, leaning against the wall. I’m suddenly feeling exhausted.
“Grace yawn. Grace tired, question?” Rocky asks, stumbling a bit as he makes his way towards the wall. I slide down the wall, so I’m now sitting on the floor.
“Mmm,” I reply. My eyes felt so heavy. In my peripheral vision, I could see Rocky struggling to stay standing. I frown. “You tired?”
“Rocky tired,” he confirmed. “Rocky won’t sleep. Rocky watch Grace sleep.”
I can feel myself teetering on the edge of consciousness, and I know Rocky is facing the same issue. Whatever is happening, we’re both losing to it. Badly.
I don’t have the energy to do anything, and I can feel the muffled panic in my mind as my body shuts down. I hear a thunking sound and look to see Rocky collapsed on the ground, unmoving. Panic jumps up to my throat, and it gives me a small amount of adrenaline to sit up straight.
“R...ock...y!” I slur, weakly banging my fist against the glass. I could feel my energy from my adrenaline get sucked out of my body, and with no more strength, I collapsed to the floor.
I’m pretty sure that as soon as I lose consciousness, I’m not going to wake up again. I’m afraid to give in. From where I’m lying, I can see Rocky, and I feel comforted by his presence. I’m lucky to have known him.
I close my eyes.