Chapter Text
“Is that a top hat?”
The musical chimes that signified Rocky’s excitement, along with his quick movements, paused and then Rocky swelled in pride.
“For the celebration! It looks good, right?”
“Yeah, sure does, buddy,” Ryland Grace confirmed as his Eridian friend chittered along. When he had been informed about the religious celebration, he hadn’t expected the alien to come visit him wearing something akin to a top hat, of all things. He had seen metallic decorations before, and various jewellery made of minerals that sounded like bells when they clinked together, but for some reason he hadn’t expected a— hat.
Maybe because Eridians didn’t have what he equated as heads? There was the torso and the five legs, and—
“Come, come, come,” Rocky repeated in his excitement, the xenonite ball encapsulating him repeatedly hitting Grace’s legs. “We give thanks today, come, come!”
It would be Ryland Grace’s first trip on Erid outside of the enclosure that had been built for him to survive. Months of recovery from his near-death period due to starvation, the Eridians banding together to find a solution for their resident human to not only survive but thrive on a planet extremely hostile to human physiology, and Grace was finally settled and deemed to be fully recovered by his overly excited Eridian doctors.
Thanks to all the media and knowledge aboard the Hail Mary, both Grace and Rocky had been able to transcribe a good majority to Eridian scientists for a crash course on both human biology, culture, and Earth norms.
(He had a team of scientists that tittered at him with excitement in hopes that he recovered enough to one day show them human gymnastics and synchronized swimming, despite him being 1. by himself, and 2. not a gymnast by any stretch of the imagination.)
The issue with most Eridian architecture, he found, was not merely that it matched the planet’s temperature and pressure, but also that things were built to Eridian sizes— a high contrast to the sheer scope of Blip-A, which Rocky later explained had been fitted with numerous redundancies and space for anything that might happen, because… why not? Their space elevator made it easy to transport parts, so they weren’t limited by weight the same way Earth was.
So while their buildings were massive in scale, the actual rooms could be… a little cramped for Grace.
At least, that was how Rocky explained it.
There was plenty of room to move, yes, but there were many places where a human wouldn’t be able to stand at full height. Many places were designed in a manner where Grace wouldn’t even be able to sit upright. It made sense. If it were Earth, no apartment or office building (or even hospital) would have twelve foot ceiling heights for no reason.
…No buildings except churches and cathedrals.
The greatest surprise might have been how that was the same on Erid.
He hadn’t even known they had religions, which prompted a discussion between himself, Rocky, and Adrian about the concept of a higher power and the God gene— if humans all over the world came up with religion on their own, then was it something buried within their DNA?
And if Eridians had the same impulse towards worship, then what did that say about intelligent life in general?
“Is not hard,” Adrian trilled thoughtfully back then, “Is mean there is ♫♪♬♪.”
Adrian was still working on matching Grace’s grammar, but often used words that the human never heard of before. However, it sounded a little like— real? With a lower intonation drawn at the end. Behind them, Rocky raised an arm and then lowered it in a familiar indication.
Ahh. Small. Subtle? Little.
“A grain of truth?” Grace guessed, and Rocky wiggled hard in agreement, having already heard Grace use that term before. “You think there’s really a god out there watching over us?”
“Is what brought us success,” Adrian had agreed, and then extended the invitation, “Grace should come. Give thanks to ♪♪♪♪ for coming home safe! For saving stars!”
At that, both Eridians moved with excitement, hopping side to side with their equivalent of jazz hands.
It surprised him to realize both Rocky and Adrian believed in a ‘god,’ especially as they were both ardent scientists. In all the years Grace had known Rocky, the other hadn’t mentioned god or worship or had any habits that might correspond to prayer. He assumed that like most avant-garde scientists, Rocky would be the type who saw the universe through the eyes of…
Science, perhaps? Cells and atoms and all the building blocks that made up the scale of life.
It surprised him more to realize that most Eridians actually believed in gods… as in plural. It wasn’t similar to human gods, either. Instead of a god of items or objects or tangible slash observational ideas, they were gods of— concepts. In particular, the one Adrian wanted them to visit was a minor deity in their pantheon, but one that ballooned in popularity the past century due to the monumental challenge with the Astrophage. It was the god of new beginnings; of leaps of faith, of embracing impossible odds.
Like the Hail Mary.
And honestly, Grace could get behind that.
Which led to the weeks of planning, the custom-made vehicle and hamster ball suit for him, and quietly chosen path that would draw the least amount of attention. It wasn’t that Grace had a bad rep on Erid, but most Eridians were still extremely curious about the lone human in their midst, and as personable as Grace could be on his best days (which wasn’t much), he found it near impossible to keep his wits about him while stared at (‘stare’ in a loose term, of course) by however many beings in the dark.
Yes. Dark. Outside of his human habitat, Erid was almost completely dark. The dense atmosphere meant that almost no light could get through, so it was darker than the darkest nights on early. Similar to hundreds of feet deep in the ocean, Grace once compared. At a point where it was useless for a species to develop eyes.
Along with the Eridians’ scuttling movements and the dark, there was something deeply instinctive that kept Grace from wanting to explore very far.
But he was even more determined to get past that feeling!
“Don’t worry,” Rocky chirped as their vehicle climbed over the Eridian equivalent of streets. Unlike human structures, even the roads were more… three-dimensional rather than two. On this occasion, both Rocky and Grace were wearing strings of lights on their persons that would better allow Grace to see the world around them. There were even lights shining out from the vehicle, illuminating a city of thousands moving about in a landscape that looked almost sepia-toned with faint glimmers of shiny greens and blues. “The ♫♪♫♪ have been informed about our arrival! They are very excited to meet Grace! Excited to ♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪.”
It was a tone repeated from the same title as before. A title that describes the job? Like a swimmer would swim, or a singer would sing, maybe.
“A little more context, Rock.”
Rocky waved an arm, and a wave of chimes echoed across the decorations that covered him.
“♫♪♫♪! The people in the church.”
And ‘church’ was certainly still a new word to Grace.
“They are the ones who follow the god. Talk to followers. Help people understand god.”
Grace stared out at the alien streets as his mind whirred, “…Priests? And they’re excited to… proselytize?”
The weak light washed over the city, unseen by its denizens. It wasn’t strong enough for Grace to see details… or he might need a stronger prescription on his glasses that wasn’t going to happen.
(The real miracle, he thought suddenly, might have been how his glasses stayed intact through all his misadventures. He had a hell of a time explaining them to Bones, his Eridian doctor who was quickly becoming the planetary human specialist.)
“Cannot confirm. Do not know human words.”
“Convince people their god is real,” Grace elaborated, and rubbed at his eyes underneath his glasses. He was staring so hard that he had been squinting the past few minutes, “Uh… convert them. Something, something, turn non-believers into believers.”
“Something, something,” Rocky mocked with a trill of a laugh, “Grace’s mastery of his own language is very strong.”
“I never looked that deeply into religion,” Grace admitted. He still hadn’t gotten a clear answer for ♪♪♪♪, either, and was hesitant to name a god without further context. People, sure. He could give individuals names and then see their reactions on whether they liked it or not. But gods? A god that both Rocky and Adrian seemed to care about, even?
He needed a little more context before he tried to translate that one into English.
“Grace can change that here! It will be a new experience.” Rocky’s torso bobbed a few times like a nod, and then he added, “Adrian will meet us later; have a meeting to attend.”
That made sense. Funny enough, Adrian happened to be busier than Rocky these days, micromanaging a slew of different things so their mate could enjoy time resting and bonding with the resident human.
“Doolittle will meet us at the church,” Rocky continued to say, and Grace groaned and slouched down in his seat. “They are very excited to hear your words!”
Grace had come to know a great many Eridians in his convalescence, and there was none more enthusiastic about all things human than the linguist he dubbed ‘Doolittle.’ Even amongst Eridians, that one had an impressive memory, and after getting a copy of Rocky’s light gun (“Stupid name,” Rocky chided), Doolittle proceeded to badger both Rocky and Grace about the English vernacular whenever possible— starting not with the spoken language, but the written one.
With a light gun, a tentative grasp of written English, and access to a laptop, the tall grey being who shook in excitement every moment Grace was within hearing range very quickly became the premiere expert in alien languages— much to the grumblings of Rocky, who claimed that title should go to him for having worked with Grace and figuring out how to solve an interstellar problem despite their alien-ness.
Grace understood Rocky’s gripes a little as Doolittle soon mastered English far better than himself, quickly trawling through Hail Mary’s expansive database of stories and poetry. Nowadays, they were starting to make their way into Russian for Ilyukhina’s documents, saving Yao’s for last. The only saving grace was how Hail Mary couldn’t yet respond to Eridian commands, so Doolittle was left attempting to record Grace’s voice in order to replicate human tones to speak with the Hail Mary computer in order to help other Eridian scientists reverse engineer this human thinking machine.
Grace was no computer programmer and was of no help there except to explain minor commands that apparently made sense to him and no one else on the planet.
But that also meant there was a daily barrage of a vibrating Eridian trailing behind Grace trilling, “Question, question, question!”
“Yes,” Rocky agreed with Grace’s slouch and subsequent hand over his eyes, “but necessary.”
And that was what made Rocky, and even Adrian, better human experts than Doolittle— Rocky understood his body language and emotions, and often mimicked him as well to better express himself to Grace. After spending years together, they often didn’t even need words to communicate. Adrian picked up on Rocky’s habits extraordinarily fast and came to share them as well.
Like his students would share catch-phrases.
“I’m going to pretend I can’t hear them,” Grace warned Rocky in advance as the alien laughed. Apparently human hearing didn’t even catch the majority of Eridian tones, which meant that when they first met, Rocky had to adjust and carefully modulate his own tone just so the silly space blob could hear him, even if he couldn’t understand him.
“Cannot,” Rocky claimed. “Doolittle already knows human modular.”
“Alright, alright,” Grace conceded. He would just have to make due with playing the human dictionary for a while longer. Eventually, he would run out of information to share. “So tell me a little more about this god of yours. What is an Eridian god like, anyway?”
It was better to focus on the inside of the vehicle and on Rocky than on the endless expanse of darkness outside. Maybe he’d be more excited about studying cities when he wasn’t currently in the middle of one with his nerves frayed. He hoped they could arrange more trips out like this later, after he acclimated to the world better.
It wasn’t that today was a bad day— merely that there were a great many firsts and his nerves were already on edge. Or perhaps it was the shift in gravity— he hadn’t noticed it before, but the Eridian scientists must have learned how to lighten the gravity in the human dome, because his bones felt heavy outside of the oceanfront area. The weight was giving him a headache, which felt weird to conclude as it should be everywhere else that ached. And no, he wasn’t going to admit the headache aloud.
“Beautiful!” Rocky exclaimed. “Majestic! ♪♪♪♪ is god of many, and god of why Rocky and Grace made it.”
Science and sacrifice were why they made it, but Grace didn’t say that aloud. Instead, he smiled.
“Human gods tend to be human shaped, so are Eridian gods Eridian-shaped?”
“No/yes,” Rocky responded, and wasn’t that confusing? That Eridians had a response for yes, no, no/yes, and yes/no. Guess that covered everything in between, then. “♪♪♪♪ somewhat Eridian shaped, but many more legs. And soft, like humans. At least, that is what the priests say to children.”
“You don’t have a picture— ah, a statue of them?”
“No, no. Statues of gods forbidden. Especially ♪♪♪♪. If Eridians know god too well, Eridians’ mind go crazy.”
Wait a minute. Soft, many legs, induces madness with knowledge…
Grace sat up sharply, startling Rocky into a chime of cursing.
“Your god is Cthulhu?!”
“Don’t know name,” Rocky groused. “Doesn’t sound right.”
Grace waved his arms as floppy as he could, trying to mimic tentacles. It was a move that would have made his students laugh, but right now he was dead serious about it. “Great big octopus monster, right? Sleep under the ocean? Brings about the end of the world? Older than civilization, and came from the stars?”
“Came from the stars, yes. Translation of stars not known until modern history, so it was a surprise to everyone. Older than civilization, likely. Have to ask priests about it. Otherwise, no. No, no, no. What is octopus monster?”
“It’s, uh.”
Given a few seconds to think about it, of course H.P. Lovecraft didn’t actually have some weird foreknowledge about an alien species’ god. Not to mention how much of an insult it might be to accuse an alien god of being similar to a human horror story.
“An octopus is an Earth animal,” Grace explained, deflating a bit as the theory died in his head, “an ocean creature with a soft body and eight legs. Really soft. No endo- or exo- skeleton for their legs at all, but they’re extremely strong for their size.”
“Eight legs,” Rocky trilled in excitement, bobbing in place, “must be able to do a lot at once!”
“…Yeah, well, as far as humans know, they’re not exactly a very sapient species.”
“Too bad. Shame.”
“Yeah, I think they’d be ruling over humans if they were,” Grace joked. “They’re shockingly smart creatures, too. Who knows? Maybe they really are ruling the Earth, just from underneath the oceans. Humans haven’t exactly mapped out our ocean floors yet.”
“Humans went to space before they explored their planet, question?”
“Space is less scary than the bottom of the ocean,” Grace quipped, and then grimaced, “…no, not true, but it’s what some people think.”
People who hadn’t been to space.
“People stupid.” Rocky agreed once more with the unspoken parts. Then he made an excited chirrup and bounced about, “Have present for Grace! Hat for Grace! Should have cooled down now, try it!”
He scrambled around his half of the transport and brought out a clear xenonite box that he pushed into the airlock. Grace stared in fascination as the airlock cleared out the ammonia and then replaced the space with cooled oxygen.
“Buddy. Rocky,” he started slowly, eying the contraption. The container looked like it held a black top hat, if hats were made of shiny metals. “Uh. It’s great. I love it. But I may have to take a rain check on that. Your gravity’s a little much, and I try not to wear anything that weighs me down more, especially on my head. Human necks are fragile, you know? And metal…”
“Is not heavy!” Rocky claimed, clicking his claws together. His own black top hat bounced as he moved. “I made light for Grace!”
…Well. Far be it for him to doubt anything Rocky made for him. They waited for the air to be changed out before Grace reached in to lift the box— surprised that it actually felt lighter than his expectations. Still a little heavy, but…
He lifted the hat out of the xenonite box and discovered it was more porous than it looked and weighed about as much as his glasses did.
And it was, for all intents and purposes, an honest to god black formal top hat, down to the slight curve of the brim.
Grace placed it carefully on his head. It fit perfectly.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Rocky moved in excitement, his own hat not as snug on his carapace, “Hat bros.”
It made Grace laugh.
“Hat bros,” he agreed, and then ran the side of his finger across the brim on the hat, tilting the hat down slightly in acknowledgement. He was already feeling quite dapper from the one accessory.
—
Another universal constant, it seemed, was how grand the places of worship were built.
Was it a subconscious intent to intimidate? To translate the might of a deity onto mortal soil to affect parishioners in such a way that they feel the grandeur and awe before they ever step into a church? Grace thought of gothic cathedrals and spires that stretched into the sky; he thought of the Sagrada Família and the Hallgrímskirkja, and all the Earth places of worship that employed gorgeous architecture next to the modern and ugly city buildings and domiciles. Stained glass and colored tiles; intricate archways and gold-plated decorations. Churches and cathedrals and mosques and temples and synagogues. All of them grand, all of them larger than life.
Even ancient civilizations and their worship built the most beautiful and long-lasting monuments. The pyramids of Giza to help their dead pharaohs ascend to the heavens, or across the world where the Mayan built the same step pyramids in their worship. All across Earth, in civilizations that had no prior contact with each other, they developed religion and worship. Not only did they develop it, it evolved in such a way that religion gained either equal or majority power to governments and nations before they were ever nations.
The belief in gods, in spirits, in an afterlife no one could see or touch or prove in any way at all— was so inherently human, so impossibly prevalent in human history, that scientists proposed the theory of the God gene: that there was something within our DNA which would inevitably lead to worship and belief in powers we could not perceive. That every culture, when stripped of spiritualism and religion, would unfailingly turn back to belief in gods within a few generations.
It was something that Grace originally theorized meant human beings needed faith in order to help them through difficult times. Even Eva Stratt, the most pragmatic woman, no, human— wait, no, being, he ever encountered— leaned into belief.
A whisper of a prayer. A long shot. A Hail Mary.
“So seeing this now…” Ryland Grace turned his eyes upward, awestruck, as Rocky circled him again and again to ensure that the suit built for him to withstand the pressure and temperature of Erid would hold.
“Not so human theory?” Rocky asked in-between checking all the xenonite seams.
“Not so human theory,” Grace confirmed. His eyes followed the dark and shiny spiral skyward until it disappeared up into the darkness of Erid’s atmosphere. There had to be at least a dozen spires that he could see under the lights he brought, but he couldn’t find the end of them. The building, too, was far larger than anything else he had seen through the roads. From what he understood, Eridian workplaces and areas of social gathering were rather small, while their homes were large and spacious. According to Rocky, this was due to privacy. Social places did not require as much privacy as homes did, and thus did not require the space to the end of what they could ‘hear.’
Besides outer walls, and the walls that enclosed rooms for them to eat in private, Eridians didn’t bother much with making walls for their rooms. After all, what was the point when they could hear right through them?
But here… the place was enormous.
“Amaze, amaze, amaze,” Grace muttered under his breath.
Not only was the building larger than life, the materials were beautiful— shining black framed by gold, of all things. Specks of color within transparent material that made it look like stained glass made it pleasing to the human eye as well.
As they came closer to the entrance, he couldn’t help but stop by one of the walls to raise a hand toward it— close enough to touch, even if he didn’t actually come into contact.
“Amazing,” he breathed out. “Is that— pyrite?”
“What is pyrite, question?”
Grace leaned in closer, squinting behind his glasses as he muttered, “Pyrite? Uh… It’s a mineral on Earth. Iron sulfate. Fool’s Gold, we call it. Because a lot of people thought it was gold, but it’s not.”
It looked like pyrite. Light gold in color with a reflective surface, formed in cube shapes that grew upward. A truly alien structure, and yet… was it something that could survive Erid’s pressure?
“Human friend Grace!”
There were several chittering tones around them, but Grace sighed as he recognized the familiar chords of Doolittle. Next to him, Rocky mirrored his sighing motion by slumping his carapace slightly.
Yet as Grace turned to look at the linguist, he was surprised to see the Eridian dressed only in the same manner as the others, no extra machinery or gadgets on him at all. A metallic necklace and a dark top hat only. Grace was used to seeing him with all sorts of gadgetry on him.
“Human friend Grace join ♪♪♪♪ to give thanks?”
Grace mentally rearranged the words in his mind, noting to ask Rocky later why that statement was grammatically different from what he had grown used to. Perhaps the divine participle required different phrasing for status reasons?
“Uh, yeah, sure. We were just…” Grace moved his suit to wiggle over, nudging Rocky forward, “we were gonna— wait for Adrian inside. Excuse us.”
Sixteen light-years away from Earth, and he still couldn’t escape the co-workers who came to bother him during his breaks—
“Oh! I wait with you. Would like to see your words for ♪♪♪♪ home!”
Damn it, he couldn’t exactly outrun Doolittle’s five legs, and if he moved that fast, the Eridians would stare at him. Now that they didn’t already stare, in all the ways he could feel them pay attention to him without eyes—
“Why ask now?” Rocky groused to Doolittle, stomping a foot. “Let Grace experience first. Ask later.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes. Better to have thought out experience!”
The grand doors of the church was at least three times Grace’s height, and wide enough to fit two cars. Why was it so large? Due to Erid’s atmosphere, most creatures were quite small and stout, the gravity pushing them down closer to the surface. It was certainly large enough that they all entered together, the darkness giving way under Grace and Rocky’s light.
It was—
Beautiful.
Strings like spider-silk dropped from the ceiling, however far up the ceiling was, shining opalescent under the light. Some strings dropped down and swayed with the movement from the Eridians coming and going, while other strings wound back up in a graceful curve. And within the church— the cathedral? Somehow that word fit better— there were glittering sparkles of luminescence, almost like floating embers.
However, that couldn’t be it— embers were fire and that would require oxygen. It was unlikely to survive in ammonia.
Grace raised a hand as if he could touch the floating, flickering embers, and said, “Wow.”
Along the walls were clear crystalline material that looked like grand windows, mixed with other colorful minerals that bounced Grace’s light back into a rainbow array.
“Wow,” he emphasized as aimed his light up and then around in a circle. “Rocky, are you sure that… are you sure all Eridians can’t see? Because— wow, the colors used to build this place...”
“What are colors, question?” Rocky asked, only to be shushed by Doolittle.
The ground, it looked like any other ordinary church… or perhaps a little too much like an ordinary church, because wouldn’t a church in an alien world look drastically different? There were pews and there were other Eridians sitting quietly, some quietly conversing with each other, some dressed up like he and Rocky and Doolittle were. Some seemed excited to see him there, while others ignored their resident alien entirely, much to Grace’s relief.
It all led to what looked like a podium at the front, lifted onto a stage. And behind it…
It was a symbol. Protruding from the dark stone behind it, the symbol consisted of several lines intertwined like vines falling to a narrow point. At the top it looked like an open, pupil-less eye staring down at them.
No statues, Rocky had said. No idols. But Grace felt goosebumps along his skin looking up at the symbol above the podium.
Not Cthulhu, he had to remind himself. Not some scary fictional malevolent outer deity. A god of new beginnings and hopeless endeavors. That certainly sounded like a kind god, to take on such a concept. It also didn’t look like some strange cosmic tentacle monster from space by any means of the imagination. In fact, from the stained glass to the opalescent strings to the ember-like flickers, Grace was starting to feel…
“Hey, Rocky,” he said, fumbling with his flashlight within his xenonite suit, “is there an off button for our lights? The ones we’re wearing?”
“But why, question? Grace cannot see without light.”
“Humor me a moment,” Grace said as Rocky shifted from leg to leg nervously. “There’s on and off, right?”
“Yes. Rocky can turn it off or on. But Rocky got special permission to bring lights into church, and prepared enough power for lights for a long trip. No need to turn it off.”
“Humor me,” Grace repeated.
Doolittle let out a low and questioning chime while Rocky took several steps from side to side before moving in a manner that Grace recognized as agreement.
“Okay,” Rocky relented, “tell me if Grace wants light back. No panic, okay?”
Grace flicked off his flashlight and waited for Rocky to fiddle with a switch he carried. He tensed in anticipation of the pitch dark, but there was something about the way everything shone in the church that whispered a theory to him. There were a small handful of creatures on Erid with bioluminescence, so light wasn’t an entirely alien concept to them. It was just that Eridians didn’t care for the bioluminescent plants and creatures, because they couldn’t see them.
A soft click, and then everything slid into darkness.
Grace breathed out through his mouth, suddenly blind.
One second. Two. Three.
Nothing.
He lifted his flashlight again, disappointment pooling in his chest. He didn’t know what he had been thinking, but—
And then.
A flicker.
The embers in the air flashed again, this time not merely reflecting the light. It was glowing all on its own, the light just bright enough to tease at the reflective strings hanging down. Slowly, ever so slowly, Grace could see embers quietly flickering to life. One, then two, then four, then eight…
Soon, the air was flickering with illusory embers, and Grace nearly dropped his flashlight.
“Oh my,” he breathed out.
“What, question? What is it, question? What Grace see, question?”
And then it was the materials of the walls. Large panels, the ones made from dark, shiny minerals, started glowing. Not like the glow-in-the-dark stickers that Grace had as a child, but like—
Like galaxies blooming before his eyes.
Like the clearest night sky on Earth. Like stars outside the window on the Hail Mary. An impossible view from Erid.
“Why Grace not answer, question?”
“Should have brought light gun,” Doolittle grumbled in a discordant tone. “If priests allow light devices for human, they should allow light gun for me! Human light receptors are so convenient—”
“It's the sky,” Grace breathed out. “Rocky, it's glowing in here like all the stars in the sky.”
And embers and glittering strings coming down from the cosmos. It almost scared him. It looked like cut puppet strings from a cosmic being. Or that the puppet strings were burnt away.
A god of new beginnings, Grace thought wondrously.
“Who,” Grace asked breathlessly, “designed this building?”
—
It made sense that something which started as a visit to a church ended up with him and Rocky poring over Eridian history, theology, and architecture.
Thankfully, they didn’t go too far. Eridians had a tendency to etch their history in whatever building involved, and in this case that meant the history of this church was etched into its very walls.
The hard part was meeting the priests and getting permission to read through that history.
There were two Eridians that Rocky and Doolittle were pleading with, both with top hats and— were those cloaks? Yegads, Grace needed to stop applying human lenses to non-human cultures. He really shouldn’t be thinking about how funny it would be to draw little monocles and mustaches underneath the top hats—
Good things Eridians weren’t telepathic.
They looked reluctant, moving to and fro in a manner that Grace easily picked up as a wordless ‘no’ to all of Rocky and Doolittle’s pleadings.
“We allow light device,” one of the priests said solemnly, “for human friend Grace, who is blind.”
And that’s right, he was ‘blind’ to them. It was funny to learn that Rocky, and subsequently all the Eridians Grace met, had very little close proximity object permeance. Because they ‘heard’ their surroundings constantly in a way that never turned off, they never quite trained their senses for spatial memory. While recording the range of sounds that Grace as a human wouldn’t be able to hear, he had once accidentally sent out the entire range of Eridian hearing on the Hail Mary speakers, effectively sending Rocky stumbling and flailing in a panic as he was ‘blinded’ by the noise.
(Grace apologized for nearly a full week for that, and disabled several speaker systems to ensure it would never happen again. He had initially laughed at how silly Rocky looked, bowled over by the noise, until Rocky explained that it felt not merely like the world went dark for him, but that everything disappeared because suddenly it was like the entire ship was an encapsulating solid wall from all directions. He didn’t know where he was, nor what happened, and ran into everything because he didn’t know it was there despite having skilfully navigated his xenonite tunnel mere seconds previous.)
It was why space scared them badly. No sane Eridian would attempt to venture out into the cold vacuum of space like humans did in their suits, because there was nothing there for them. They built amplifiers to ping objects in space, as Eridians themselves were blind in the cosmos. In fact, the Hail Mary’s low atmospheric pressure meant Rocky would be operating in ‘low-light’, as Erid’s pressure allowed them to extrapolate far more details about their surroundings.
Even their monitors were three-dimensional things— obviously not on a flat screen, but strung out around the room to sound chimes and cords constantly telling them information. Like a harp, or a spider’s web. For humans, if they didn’t turn their sight to a monitor, then details might be missed, so humans adapted to remember reading in-between glances of one thing and another. Eridians could ‘hear’ the readings all the time, and process multiple threads of information simultaneously.
(Similarly, after being badgered by Rocky for a solid month during their trip to Erid, Grace had to ‘sit’ his friend down to explain human sensory overload to him, and how humans could not process multiple things all of the time, because their senses get tired and then the human gets irritated and needs quiet time. Theirs was a slow build and could lead to a very grumpy Grace that might start throwing objects at Rocky.
In response to that, Rocky had given him a thumbs down and mimed zipping non-existent lips.)
“Yes, yes,” Rocky pushed the priests verbally, “and now Grace is interested in ♪♪♪♪ history! Success. Very interested in church and in ♪♪♪♪ and in when it all started and who built it.”
Rocky’s chimes became staccato in a manner Grace originally thought was rude, but was later explained to by Adrian just meant ‘business.’ Apparently there were different tones of words between speaking to a friend/family, speaking to casual acquaintances and coworkers, and then speaking to people you had no intention of forming a relationship with.
(“It’s romantic,” Adrian chittered with quiet laughter when explaining to Grace, “when a first meeting starts with ♬♬♪♬—”
“The third option,” Grace observed.
“Yes, yes, the third,” Adrian agreed, “and then eventually becomes ♬♪♬♬. The first option. Many apologize much for being rude at first meeting. Common Eridian mistake. Common Eridian romance story start.”
Grace laughed at that, “You mean a romantic trope, then!”)
Right now, his chords indicated the third, skipping through various conjunctions that Grace had painstakingly learned the past four years.
The two priests tittered at each other in a frequency Grace had no hope of hearing. They seemed hesitant.
“Church about faith,” the second squeaked, “separate from science. Separate from technology. Must stay separate-separate.”
“But not separate from history and archaeology, right?” Grace interjected, with Doolittle translating the words for him. Grace raised his arms to hopefully convey his helplessness. “I totally understand. I won’t bring science or technology into this. I just want to know about who built this place, and maybe how this religion started.”
…Okay, he might bring a little science into it. But that was really just a part of who he was.
The others were still in thought, claws moving in contemplation, so Grace added another nail to drive it all home.
“I want to learn,” Grace said plainly, and listened as Doolittle relayed his words. He shrugged. “Uh. I don’t know how I’m going to do that without, you know… learning.”
He learned early on that repetition and closed-loop logic made the best arguments in Eridian society. Far be it for him not to use that to his advantage. It led to a few funny thoughts about how Eridians would fry their poor brains over red tape and human bureaucracy. If only Earth jobs hired the people who pointed out that they needed a job to gain the experience that the job asked for—
The priest clicked their feet against the polished ground, and then clicked a few more times for good measure.
The emotional equivalent of a sigh.
“Half day,” the original priest conceded, “we watch.”
Grace had to prevent himself from pumping a fist in the air. Half an Eridian day! That was almost two and a half Earth hours, which was far more than enough for geniuses like Rocky and Doolittle! It was already longer than they expected his entire outing to be.
“Yes, yes!” Doolittle exclaimed in excitement, two arms up in a jazz hands gesture as he skittered around. “Will obey!”
“Only half day?” Rocky demanded, and Grace had to kick him slightly from his suit. The movement barely nudged Rocky, who made a three-part discord note before he relented, “…Okay. Will obey.”
“We do this for star savior Rocky and star savior Grace,” the second priest chirruped, using their formal titles. Then they shifted left, and right, and added, “Do not tell other church.”
…Grace hadn’t thought of the implication that there might be similar phenomenons with the other Eridian religions as well.
“Yes, yes,” Doolittle scuttled in excitement, “Secret!”
“No machines,” the priest stipulated. “Only light device for blind friend Grace. No recording!”
That made Doolittle droop with a sad little warble.
“Absolutely. Thank you.” Grace interjected before Rocky could push for more. He had a feeling they were already pushing the goodwill of the priests, and he brought his hands together in his xenonite suit and tilted his wrist forward. “We’ll take it. Promise we’re not going to deface anything. We’re just here to learn.”
No harm in a little reassurance and wheedling, in case they wanted to come back and do this again some time in the future.
The priest clicked their feet against the ground again.
“…Learn, okay. Be careful. Do not learn too much.”
And that was how Adrian found them nearly an hour later, with Rocky several feet up on the wall and Grace sitting cross-legged on the ground, bugging Doolittle to translate everything for him with the slate tablet and chalk-like substance in two claws.
The two priests had given them some space for privacy, although they stayed close enough to keep an ‘eye’ on them, so to speak. Because the area was behind the public space for parishioners, they had some semblance of peace and quiet, although those visiting the church would notice that there were people there.
“—But, see, the panspermia theory checks out in this scenario!” Grace rambled on to Doolittle, who stood entranced. It was the opposite of Rocky, who continued to scurry up the walls searching for any writing that might be important. It was also possible Rocky was ignoring him because he and Grace already had this very same conversation several times already, and Rocky tolerated it only because he understood just how leaky human memory was. Eridians didn’t need things repeated to them, but Grace always found repetition to be formulaic for basic memory building.
It also helped him untangle his ideas better. Sometimes, talking about something three or eight times meant that he would find an epiphany on the seventeenth time, and he was not above using Rocky (or other Eridians) as a sounding board.
“We don’t know how many planets with life we’ve missed just in our flight between Earth to Tau Ceti to Erid,” Grace rambled on, arms akimbo as he attempted to demonstrate the illusive concept. “But to find three planets with life only a handful of light years from each other? There’s a high chance there would be more! After all, if we never went to planet Adrian, we wouldn’t even have known there was life there. How many planets have we missed? How many planets are there with— bacteria, with protozoa, or even with multi-cell organisms just discovering themselves? After all, Rocky and I met only because our societies had similar levels of technology— enough to traverse the stars, but not enough to solve to Astrophage problem without going to Tau Ceti—”
“More than a ‘handful’ of light years,” Adrian corrected as they arrived in the room.
Grace paused, and then twisted his torso in an impressive lean and waved to her in acknowledgement. Adrian waved back, barely seen in the light of the flashlight reflected off the wall.
“But isn’t it interesting?” Grace gushed as Adrian made their way over to the small group. Above them, Rocky made happy noises seeing his mate, and started climbing down. “Life on Earth, life on Erid, life on planet Adrian, and life on Threeworld and, hopefully, Venus as well! What if we actually sampled other planets? How many planets would have life on them? And the two species developed enough for society and civilization— humans and Eridians— both carry the concept of god through their history!”
His fingers itched for a laptop, or some pen and paper. He felt torn between being a scientist and being a teacher at that moment.
“Is true,” Adrian responded, adding an additional note of greeting for Rocky at the same time, “Erid has religion from beginning of recorded history.”
“How many other developing civilizations turn to religion and the concept of god?” Grace picked up the thread from Adrian, aiming his flashlight up and up on the church walls where hundreds of impressions were etched. Writings that he couldn’t yet read. “How can societies so alien to each other, on worlds that aren’t biologically compatible at all, all form a similar state of mind and idea?”
“Grace is talking about God gene again,” Rocky complained to Adrian, who laughed. “We heard already.”
Instead, Adrian threw out another question, “How can worlds so far apart create species with feelings? Happiness and sadness, grief and nostalgia. Eridians and humans both laugh. We both develop languages. Some can say those are not necessary for life. Some can say those things are all necessary for development of society. Perhaps religion is also necessary for development of society.”
…That made sense. Grace sighed, and then plopped down onto his back, legs still crossed even as he stared upward with his flashlight aimed up, the ceiling height so far away that he couldn’t see it in the light.
“You’re saying religion is a necessary step for the development of sapient creatures,” he stated wearily, and then murmured, “I guess that’s true. I don’t think ducks have a religion, but who knows if dolphins do? They’re known to laugh, too.”
“Grace is rambling.” Rocky complained. “What is dolphin, question? You mentioned duck before.”
Grace ignored that.
“One day,” he said instead, “we’ll find life that isn’t water-based. A civilization without a history of religion. People who— I don’t know, don’t know what happiness or sadness is but experience drastically different things. Like shrimp colors.”
“Grace’s brain is leaky again. Time for Grace to sleep, question?”
“I’m not tired and I don’t have brain fog!”
Rocky made a five chord noise that Grace chocked up as ‘doubt,’ finally clicking down onto the ground level to stand next to Adrian.
“…Did you find anything interesting up there?” Grace asked Rocky, and knocked gently on the ground twice now that he was already lying down.
“Urg,” Doolittle finally interrupted, and he genuinely managed to say ‘urg’ almost like a human would. Grace didn’t know whether he should be impressed or if he should reconsider the amount of noises humans made in lieu of vernacular responses, “♫♬♪ dialect. Rocky has infected human friend Grace.”
“Huh? What does that mean?” Grace asked, knuckles rasping the ground even as Rocky froze a moment next to Adrian, and then stood high and raised two arms threateningly while letting out a string of angry chords.
“It’s a region on Erid,” Adrian explained diplomatically amongst the noise.
In response, Doolittle used two arms to write out on the slate tablet and bring it up to Grace’s vision. Grace swung his flashlight to see H I C K written in slightly shaky English.
“Human friend Grace can introduce word,” Doolittle said rather smugly.
“WOW,” Grace said instead, “no, I’m not saying that. That’s mean.”
Before he could finish his statement, Rocky was already barrowing between Doolittle and Grace as he demanded, “What, question? What that say, question!”
Any further words devolved into a smattering of musical chords as the two arms closest to Doolittle raised in a threat again. This time, however, Doolittle lowered the slate tablet and raised his own two arms in response, shaking his claws like jazz hands if it weren’t for the fact that he wasn’t moving the rest of his body.
….Grace wondered if that was like hissing to them. He certainly couldn’t tell, as the two started a discordant argument that was mostly out of the range of human hearing.
“So why is Grace searching history of church, question?” Adrian asked him, ignoring the other two arguing Eridians. They thumped very lightly on the ground at the end of the question, which prompted Rocky to aim a coo in their direction despite never ceasing the pitched argument with Doolittle. It was something they hadn’t done before, so Grace always thought that the habit was just a personal tick of Rocky’s. “Why priests standing right outside, question?”
They thumped again, just barely, and Rocky rushed over to his mate’s side with high squeaks of words that Grace couldn’t make out in the slightest due to the undercurrent of discordant notes still aimed at Doolittle. It blew his mind how Eridians could have more than one conversation at once, but the moment they did, he stopped being able to understand them entirely. All the sounds just mashed together and cancelled out all his tentative understanding.
“I can’t hear any of that,” Grace complained, and then sighed, pushing himself up from the ground. His bones groaned from the gravity. It was always daunting to realize just how slow and simple the Eridians had to speak in order to communicate with him. Knocking out all the words that human hearing couldn’t pick up, making sure to have one conversation at a time, even enunciating slowly just for him… “I can’t understand.”
“You will,” Adrian said confidently, physically unmoved by Rocky’s very obvious cooing and dancing around them. Instead, they moved to pick up one of the chalks that Doolittle dropped, holding it in such a way that it wouldn’t leave a mess on the shiny church ground.“So why researching church, question?”
“Oh, I can answer this!” Doolittle offered, breaking off the argument with Rocky. He swayed side to side as he said, “Human friend Grace discovered church may be built for beings with light receptors!”
Adrian dropped the chalk in shock.
“Wait, wait, that’s not yet a conclusion!” Grace interjected, arms stretched out between them to stop Doolittle’s too excited barrage. “It’s a theory! It’s a silly theory I have, and that’s why we wanted to do some research to see if it’s true or false. Actually, no, if there’s any hint of evidence to support that.”
“Is a good theory,” Rocky said, and then quailed under Adrian’s sharp trill. “…Of course, giving thanks to ♪♪♪♪ for success most important. Thank thank thank.”
“Thank ♪♪♪♪.” Doolittle repeated abashedly as well.
“Thank thank thank,” Grace repeated along with them, feeling strangely intimidated by Adrian’s silence.
Adrian deliberately turned away before trilling, “I will search as well.”
“Adrian—”
“I will search as well,” Adrian repeated, and stepped away into the darkness.
Rocky made a worried noise, but let his mate have some space. Doolittle fiddled with his claws nervously, and then turned to read through the etchings again. It was just Grace who felt like he was stuck in that moment, awkward with nothing to distract him. He couldn’t read the etchings, he couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and he was probably the cause of this weird mood to begin with.
Rocky nudged against his xenonite suit with a low noise.
“Not personal,” Rocky said to him quietly. “When Blip-A left, the families prayed to many different gods. God of completed missions, god of events to enter history, god of far away family… Only Adrian prayed to ♪♪♪♪. And then, only Rocky came back. Adrian thank thank thank ♪♪♪♪. It is like…”
Rocky moved back and forth to search for a proper translation, purposely throwing together the words grammatically in English for Grace to better understand.
“An answered prayer.”
“Oh.” Grace responded quietly. Of course Adrian would be able to hear their entire conversation, but… he slumped his shoulders. “…So this feels like heresy to them.”
“Is not,” Rocky clicked his claws. “Rocky was saved from radiation because of Astrophage. Because of Grace. We complete the mission because of each other, not ♪♪♪♪. But… still give thanks. Better than not to give thanks.”
For a moment, Ryland Grace recalled Eva Stratt’s tight smile when he asked whether she believed in God.
‘Better than the alternative,’ she responded. Better than believing there was no god there to help them.
His stomach twisted at the memory.
“Okay,” Grace said. “Let’s… let’s be a little more respectful, then. Just some light reading. I mean, it’s just history! What could we possibly do wrong?”
—
Despite his xenonite suit being completely airtight because he was definitely not crushed, on fire, or asphyxiated, Grace could swear he still smelled the smoke.
He coughed several times, and heaved slightly as the group of them came to a rest outside the church.
Doolittle collapsed into a pile of shock and disbelief, causing Rocky to run straight into him.
“Let’s,” Grace choked out his words as Adrian chittered with worry next to him, “never do that again.”