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"What colour look like, question?"
I’m looking through the Wikipedia page for ‘crab’ when Rocky asks, pondering how his evolution might have mirrored Earth’s. It’s interesting to think about—I’m certainly not a zoologist but it’s curious how his biology seems so similar yet so different from life back home. Then again, crabs haven’t changed much over the past hundred thousand years or so. They must be doing something right.
“Grace, you not listening.” Rocky hits the xenonite wall closest to me, making me jump. He chitters at my reaction.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m listening.” I roll my eyes, setting my laptop down on the lab counter beside me, looking over at where Rocky’s watching me curiously. He’s been working away all morning, always tinkering on something, always keeping his hands busy, but he’s left it behind to listen fully to my response.
“You answer, question? What it look like?”
"That's a hard question to answer, buddy." I chuckle, scratching my chin. "Colours, uh.... don't really look like anything else. That's kind of their whole deal."
Rocky wiggles his carapace in a huffy gesture, one I've learnt expresses exacerbation. I grin.
"Grace explain. Use words. Stop changing topic when I ask."
I’ve always suspected Rocky is a little jealous of my ability to see—he’s repeated just how amaze it is that humans can see stars and planets all the way from Earth. Personally I think it’s far more incredible that Eridians made an elevator to the limits of their atmosphere and managed to locate Tau Ceti without eyes to perceive it, but you know. To each their own.
Colours are something I’ve never been able to explain very well to Rocky, though. I’ve tried the usual ‘red is hot, blue is cold’ schtick, but it doesn’t really work for him. He can feel changes in temperature but Erid doesn’t have as extreme a climate as Earth; he says any oceans that exist aren’t made of water, since nowhere on Erid is cool enough for it to condense. Eridians don’t like bodies of liquid anyway, since they’re not buoyant for most of them and have to keep away. He didn’t believe me when I said humans evolved from aquatic creatures.
“Well colours are just different wavelengths of light. We can differentiate them fairly well, but it’s easier to tell lighter from dark—it’s the same for you, right?”
“Yes. Already know this.” Rocky confirms. “Green of planet Adrian is medium-rough. Red is high-rough. All just texture. Contrast makes difference clearer." He taps on the ground with one hand for emphasis. His camera lets him decipher most different colours when he wants to, but he still struggles with reading labels on smaller vials or telling the difference between yellows and oranges. “But what it look like, question?”
“That’s the hard part to explain. We have ways of describing it to other humans who’re blind, which means they aren’t able to see. But it isn’t the same.”
Rocky shifts at the mention of blindness, clearly curious, but he doesn’t ask. He’s seen me fumbling around when the lights malfunctioned—he’s curious to ask how a person might survive in such a state. But he knows I’ll get sidetracked by the question, eager to hear more about colours.
“We usually describe them by comparing them to other senses. Different tactile sensations, like I’ve said before, or by saying they’re like different music or emotions. People say yellow is happy, because the sun is yellow and it makes us warm and comfortable.”
“…Understand. Partially. But answer is vague.”
“Yeah, most answers are. It’s hard to explain it. It’s just… another sense you just have to have, I guess. There’s nothing else like it.” I chew my lip. “But colours can be very pretty sometimes. You remember when I was doing the EVA outside Adrian?”
“Yes. You were ‘having a moment’. Say it was beautiful.”
“Exactly. It was overwhelmingly pretty. Mostly because of how big Adrian was. I felt very small. But also because of the colours—Adrian was such a bright green colour. I haven’t seen a green like that in a long time.” It reminded me of home, in an odd kind of way.
Rocky falls quiet as he considers my words, tapping his claws together slowly.
“So colour is special when stand out, question? Contrast?”
“Yeah, some colours look nicer together. Every colour stands out against black or white, as long as it’s dark or light enough, and some colours are complementary.” I’ve never been the artsy type, I don’t remember much beyond the colour wheel in the art classroom in my old school. “There’s a lot of theory behind it, but I don’t know much of it. I just know it when I see it. Colours are pretty cool, I guess. Really saturated colours can hurt your eyes, though.”
“Not know word.”
“Saturated. Highly intense. Can be used in scientific circumstances.”
“♬♫♪♫” Rocky trills his own equivalent.
“Adrian was a really bright green–so green we don’t really get it naturally back on Earth. It was a bit overwhelming. I guess I was a bit stunned.” I lean back in my chair, running my tongue over my gums as I think. “It was soothing. I liked the swirling patterns. They reminded me of soup.” I chuckle at the thought. God, how I’d kill for a nice warm bowl of chicken soup. “But the green was really nice. It felt very conclusive. Like…. final. Stable.”
Rocky tips his body to the side. “Not understand word. Not understand sentence. Explain.”
“Like…” I gesture vaguely with my hands, knowing I’m losing him as things become more abstract. “Like a circle. Or an ouroboros. Forget that—I can’t explain that one to you, it’ll take forever. The green just looked…. final. You know?”
“I not know.” Rocky says bluntly. I exhale a laugh through my nose.
“It just felt right.” I say with a shrug. “Not particularly because of the fact it was Adrian. Just because of the colour.”
“Why? Why colour mean circle, question?” Rocky presses me, irritated he isn’t following. “If sun mean warm mean happy, why green mean circle, question?”
I shake my head, unsure of what to say, giving him an unreadable expression. “I… don’t really know. It just is. For me, anyway.” I suck my teeth, watching him tap his claws on the floor of the ship. “I have a condition, though. It makes colours and different things all connected for me.” I tap my temple. “Since I was small.”
“Grace have brain problem?!” Rocky pushes himself against the xenonite wall, shoulders tense. “Why you not tell me?! Grace okay, question?”
“No, no,” I chuckle, “not a brain problem. Just a condition… although that makes it sound more serious than it is. Some people are just born with it, it doesn’t cause any problems usually. I’m okay.”
Despite not having eyes, Rocky definitely glares at me. He lets out an irritated chord. I laugh.
“You worry me. Mean human.”
“Sorry. Not my fault you jump to conclusions.”
Rocky squawks at that but seems to know better than to egg me on. “I not make quick conclusion. You not talk efficiently. Use incorrect words. This why we need more language lessons!”
That makes me groan. There’s only so much of learning Eridian syntax order I can handle in a day before Ilyukhina’s vodka starts to call my name.
“Now explain again. Clearly. Tell me why you brain is weird.”
I scoff at that, eyes crinkling at the sides. “My brain is weird because it makes connections that other people’s brains don’t. We don’t really know why it happens, but it makes people connect different senses together. Not every person experiences it the same way. It might be something to do with how you grow up. Or maybe you’re born with it, I don’t know.”
“Need word for it.”
“Synaesthesia. The word literally means ‘united sensation’ or ‘combined sensation’. There’s different names for ones that affect different senses.”
"Is normal for humans?"
"Not completely, no. Not everyone has it." I hum. “It’s just a quirk some people have, I guess. It’s—” I reach for the laptop again, typing away for a moment, “—around four percent of us have it, apparently.”
“What is purpose, question? Is good or bad?”
I just shrug. “I don’t know. People who have it tend to be good at music or art, so I guess it helps with that. But some are scientists and mathematicians, so I guess it can’t matter much either way.”
Rocky hums quietly. “…What it mean then? What you feel, question?”
“Well…” I sigh, pushing out my lips, shrugging. The topic reminds me of when my kids asked the same question a few years back—it was right back when I first started teaching and I didn’t know how to leave well enough alone. We’d spent all lesson talking about different numbers and characters and what colours and sounds we thought should be attributed to them. It’s interesting to see how people who don’t have it feel about it when actively asked to make those connections.
“The number three to me feels like a bright, neon green. It’s not like any other digit or letter. It’s completely unique.” I explain slowly, glancing over to him. He’s listening intently. “It’s the one that comes to mind when you ask. It’s… I don’t know. It’s just the one. It feels circular to me because it’s so perfect. It’s the only prime triangular number and the smallest odd prime. It’s the fewest amount of points you need to define a two dimensional plane. It’s the only number that’s that shade of green. No letter or word or anything else is that kind of green.”
Rocky listens silently. His carapace twitches as he considers my words, mulling over them. I worry I’ve lost him as he tries to understand what I’m rambling on about—I know it doesn’t make much sense. It’s hard to articulate something so conceptual.
“You remember numbers with digit three more often.” Is all he says in response.
“What?” I tilt my head.
“You remember numbers with three in them. You forget numbers often but remember when three is digit in number when using human base ten.”
Now it’s my turn to pause. That… would make sense.
“Do I?” I frown curiously.
“Yes.” Rocky repeats for the third time. “When working on project, you remember digit three more often. You are stupid and forget when I tell you number many many times, but you more likely to remember three.”
“…Ah.” I just nod slowly. “Guess I never realised.”
Rocky shifts on his feet. “You make connection without realise, question? Strange. Need word. Doing action without realise. Like not awake. Brain remember but you not realise.”
“Subconscious.” I say. “Doing something subconsciously. And yeah, that would make sense. I didn’t realise I was quicker with threes, but that checks out.”
“♩♫♪” Rocky translates for me. "Is amaze. Brain remember thing even when think it forget." Rocky croons understandingly. His own neurology seems so different yet so endearingly similar. We’re not that different, aside from Rocky’s incredible head for numbers. “All digit have colour, question? Have shape and sound, question?”
“…Most of them. Some are duller, like they’re further away.” I sit up straighter, my eagerness making Rocky perk up as I realise something. “Like the stars! They’re far away—and although they look white to us on Earth from so far away the light is actually more of a red or yellow. Some letters and numbers feel like that to me. Like if I focus really hard and squint then I can make out what colour they’re meant to be, but things like the number three just come way easier.”
Rocky thinks about that for a moment, letting my words settle in. “Strange brain. Odd.” He chitters. “But I like.”
That makes me smile. “Thanks, buddy. I guess that’s what colours look like to me. They remind me of other things, yeah, and those connections aren’t always because of the synaesthesia, but that’s what makes them stick out. I remember green things more vividly because green is so strong with connections. Other stuff like dark blue or the letter ‘M’ or the number eight isn’t quite as strong.”
“So all colour look like this to you? All connection and different shape and number?”
“Most colours, yeah. I can ignore it usually, but sometimes it’s strong.”
“…Glad I not have eyes. Sounds tiring.”
I chuckle at that, scratching my neck. “Yeah, it can be tiring. I’m lucky I don’t have it in a way that can be irritating—some people have it where certain words make them taste something bad. That sounds awful.”
“Gross. Bad bad bad. Enough gross already. Not need colour to make more gross thing.”
“Yeah?” I laugh, watching him pull away from the wall as though I’ve disgusted him, moving like a spider sprayed with something it doesn’t like. “Well I’m sorry, I’ll keep my gross colours to myself.”
“Good.” Rocky shakes his carapace as he pushes himself up confidently, acting as though he didn’t just curl up in repulsion. “Humans can keep colours. Erid has much better way of seeing anyway.” He knows he’s making me laugh, so he pushes himself up a bit more for emphasis.
“…But you share nice colour with me. Tell me nice connection.” He adds more gently, his voice an octave lower.
“Yeah, of course. I’ll keep the nasty bits to myself. I’ll tell you about the nice stuff.”
“Good. Nice friend Grace.” He wiggles gently. “Kind. Thank.”
“You’re welcome, Rocky.”