Chapter Text
It’s been months, since the museum’s opening. I think almost a year.
I’m told that it still receives thousands of visitors a day. The sculpture of me has now been joined by one of Rocky, depicting our first meetings. Many exhibits have been updated, tweaked, or added. I get to visit pretty much any time I like- every ten Eridian days (Eridian days are only about 5 hours long, so that’s every two days or so for me) they close the museum for maintenance anyway, so Rocky can always wheel me around then. You don't know how much it KILLS me seeing their little updated section on Earth computers knowing no other human will get to see it. Did you know the Hail Mary contained a bunch of archived crap from the Internet? Oh, god, it's embarrassing. Now the aliens can see all our memes. Humor is fascinating to them because while Eridians are playful they don't seem to experience quite the same thing in the same way, so the things the xenosociologists come asking me to explain every day- don't even get me started.
I am happy to report that I was discharged from the xenohospital a while back. I still need to go frequently for checkups, but now that I’m not in starvation mode anymore, they’ve let me out into my very own biodome. I have my own luxurious beachfront property- well, it will be a beachfront property. The pool around the edge that will one day be a simulated shallow ocean’s edge is empty as of right now. But they’re making good progress, and soon they’ll start pumping water in, I’m told.
They built me a really nice house, complete with a bed with my blankets and clothes from home- and drawings and letters my middle schoolers back on Earth gave me that were taken with me on the Hail Mary. Not a day goes by where I don’t spend at least an hour looking at them.
ARMando, the surgery bot that was once in the Hail Mary, then in the xenohospital, now lives with me here. Thanks to Rocky’s genius engineering intellect, he’s probably still capable of doing repairs on my little squishy human body should the need arise, but he was never built to last this long. His systems are delicate and prone to sudden malfunction. Honestly, by now, I trust the xenodoctors more. Should I get hurt or sick, I’d rather go to them.
I’ve learned a lot of Eridian. My memories still aren’t completely back, and maybe they never will be, but I’m definitely learning Eridian faster than I would’ve if I’d been truly starting from scratch, so my brain has retained more than a complete void. I feel a lot of it is still in layers under my unconscious, especially my procedural memory. When I think about the mission, which Rocky has finally allowed me to learn about, I can vaguely remember the same emotions I experienced as it happened- including feelings I’d definitely rather forget- though actual episodic details still elude me.
… I know that my memory loss is still killing Rocky. And I feel bad. Only the two of us have experienced the events that lead to saving of our worlds- and now it must feel like he’s completely alone in it. But, given how my memory seems to be improving slowly over time, maybe one day, that’ll change.
Astronaut Grace still doesn’t quite feel like me-me. But he doesn’t feel like such a stranger anymore. I recognize him as part of myself, even though for a long time it was still so hard to get myself to buy. The more I spend time with Rocky, the more easily I believe it- even a coward like me would do anything for this guy. He’s my best friend, probably the greatest friend I’ve ever had- with or without memories of us saving each other in insane life-or-death situations out in space.
Every morning Rocky reads me the “newspaper”. It’s actually a “program cylinder” in an “information tool”- or that’s how he described it. It’s one of the ways information gets around Erid. Sort of like an automatic printing press, but in your hand. The newspaper goes over latest events. I hear about myself a lot. Almost every little thing I do gets reported on, because almost every little thing I do is noted in publicly accessible scientific documents by the Area 40 crew. I stub my toe and all of Erid knows about it. Though Rocky reassures me that I can ask for things not to be released, I almost never do. Given how much I mean to this world, I don’t mind the lack of privacy from it.
But I also hear about Erid planet news. Their oceans are recovering steadily from the climate issues they suffered during the astrophage problem. They’re making a lot of progress inventing their own version of Earth computers- Rocky is most eager to tell me about that, given a lot of that is his work.
That’s all the big and important stuff. But I also insist on hearing about the dumb small stuff- the stuff that Eridians seem hesitant to tell the alien who saved their planet. Maybe they think it's beneath me, but I want it all. I make the personnel of Area 40 tell me about their everyday lives.
One of the scientists, who I call Emerald because they’re- (oh, yeah, Eridians are unisex and have no concept of gender, so I like rolling dice to find out if a new Eridian I’m making friends with is gonna be a ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘they’) they’re a deep shade of green- they get a kick from me pretending I get all the complex cultural nuances of their Eridian drama. Like I don’t know what it means that someone “𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥𝅗𝅥𝅗𝅥 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅗𝅥” during a mating ceremony of a pod member they attended, but at the tone they used when talking about it, I gasped all the same. No she did-nnn’t!!!
And Granite, one of my xenodoctors, she has some crazy stories; in her 100s she was an volcanologist. She nearly died several times on expeditions to Erid’s hardcore volcano ranges. The stories she's told me had me so hooked even though I only halfway understand the language. Since those times she’s been a microbiologist (like me!) and a chemist- comparatively dull, but now I suspect she gets a thrill from tending to the biology of a gross leaky blob creature she physically can't interact with without dying immediately.
The farming is going well. It’s been a long slow fight, especially earlier on. But they’ve been able to scale up and improve their operation. The plants are grown in staggered schedules to ensure that by the time I get through one batch of food, the next is ready for harvest. The operation is extremely complex, with a lot of intricate and redundant systems that need intensive observation to ensure any failures are caught before they become catastrophic; at least 50 workers are solely dedicated to maintaining the farm. Cultivating alien lifeforms is no joke.
Sure, I don’t have many options, but I’m lucky in that years of living on a teacher’s salary on Earth have taught me how to be creative with my food. Right now I’m on a ‘cereal’ kick. We have soybeans, so we have soy milk. I like pouring it on a bowl of lentils and pretending it’s Rice Krispies.
I feel a lot healthier. The gravity will always be a problem, but exercise regimens help keep me in the best shape I can be despite the consequences of severe malnutrition still wracking my body. I’m eating enough by now, and I’m getting almost all the nutrients I need, but nearly starving to death takes a long time to recover from, and I’ll probably be feeling the effects for the rest of my life. My heart is always going to be weaker than it should be. Yeah, no mountain-climbing or skydiving for me, unfortunately. Luckily, I live in a cushy dome with my every need attended to.
It’s been such a long fight, but there’s an atmosphere of hope in the chiming hums of the aliens that follow me behind the walls as I’m heading into the xenohospital for my next check-up. First order of business is weighing me.
The numbers jumping out from the scale don’t startle me anymore. In fact, as I step on, I don’t think I’ve ever held it in as much anticipation.
I should weigh enough by now. I should.
I don’t think Eridians can hold their breath. But if they could, I bet they would be, as the scale ticks up, computing my weight.
The numbers pop out.
Behind the wall, Rocky squeals something with glee. I don’t know exactly what number he said- base 6 and Eridian units still don’t always agree with me, but it’s definitely higher than the last one.
“Am I good?! Are we good?!” I demand to know, as if I don’t already.
“Good weight!!!” Rocky answers with a squeal of excitement from behind the wall. “Grace healthy!!! Grace healthy!!!”
I can feel the Area 40 scientists’ joy vibrating in my feet even more than I can hear it.
“You guys! We did it!- No, you did it! You worked so hard! You saved my life!” I exclaim, throwing my arms into the air to jazz hand at them harder than I ever had. I can’t see them, but I can hear them jumping around in their excitement with me. “Jeez!! I could kiss you all!”
“No kiss! Kiss so gross!” Rocky squeals playfully. “Gross alien mouth! Gross!”
“Oh-ho-ho, you’re lucky I can’t come into your atmosphere! My gross alien mouth would be on all of you sooo much!”
I’m left with a question. A very exciting question.
“Sooo, does this mean…?”
I don’t have to finish the sentence. “Yes!! Grace can be ‘Bill Nye’!!!” Rocky cheers.
I launch my arms into the air and spin my way to the bed with a joy that cannot be contained. “I CAN BE BILL NYE!”
“Relax! Not so excite! Grace’s heart may try explode again!”
…
I’ve only been teaching for a few days, but let me tell you: these kids are the best.
I admit, I got a little nervous beforehand. It’s enough of a tricky thing to get kids on Earth to like you- alien kids are a whole different thing. I only understand the language to an intermediate degree, and Rocky couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me much about what Eridian children are like. I worried I wouldn’t make a good first impression.
But I was right- Eridian kids are wonderful.
I’m taking lessons to learn how to use an organ-like instrument to mimic the language, but for now I still need the help of a translator- nonetheless, those little pebbles seem to love me. Their favorite thing is teaching me to say the hot new Eridian kid slang with my organ. I don’t know what any of it means! But somehow I can always figure out just enough to weaponize it to cause what I think might be something like the Eridian equivalent of cringe. Man, it’s just like home.
I love hearing them squeal and trill with excitement whenever I do something cool- which might be something like demonstrating liquid nitrogen, or the properties of light translated in a way Eridians can experience, or it might be juggling. They really like my juggling- apparently it’s a very rare skill on Erid. I break out the balls of Eridian yarn when I ask them to focus on something hard- Eridians prefer multitasking, it turns out, so doing their work while also getting to watch the funny alien monkey toss balls around helps.
Also, it’s awesome being able to teach without school boards and an ironclad curriculum mandate. The Erid equivalent of schools are really freeform, and I love embracing that, and the kids' chaotic spirits. I may have only known them a few days, but I’m already confident in saying my students are probably some of the most awesome kids in the world. I’ve said that about every class of kids I’ve had so far, and I can’t imagine I’ll stop saying it, even though the world I’m referring to has changed.
I can’t believe I ever even considered suggesting euthanasia to Rocky. To think I could’ve missed out on all this- jeez, I’m so glad I didn’t. The circumstances that got me here may be very tragic, but I'm so grateful for the choices Astronaut Grace made. And I've made peace with it.
(Rocky says the last time I said that, I was lying. Maybe that's another thing Astronaut Grace was that I'm not- the type of guy to lie about stuff like that. Trust, when I say something like that, I really, really mean it).
Sure, it’s not Earth. And I still miss Earth- my old life, humans, the biosphere, being able to go outside, everything- so much, every day.
And sure, I may be confined to a relatively small zoo animal habitat. Sure, I have, like, five things to eat, total. Sure, if any Earth human saw how I was living, their first thought would be that my life is unbearably sad.
But it’s far from it.
Yeah, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, don’t get me wrong. Though I bear the medical issues and the nutritional discomfort with a grin, sometimes I still wake up crying with the grief that never really lets me out of its orbit. Sometimes the weight of my planet’s potential extinction still sits so heavy on me I feel like I can barely breathe.
But I'm not alone. I’ve got all of Erid holding me up.
And on Erid, my life is really, really good.