Chapter Text
The “sun” in the dome is muted today. After years of me living under the care of the Eridians, they’ve mastered weather patterns in my little habitat. No true clouds or blue skies, but winds, fog, and rain are not strangers to my corner of Erid. The ocean waves lapping at my shore are a soft grey. Today, like any other day, I make the trek from my home on the hillside to the classroom across the beach, enjoying the feel of fresh air on my face. I know this atmosphere is artificial, but it smells real.
My students are filing into their seats when I arrive at the xenonite barrier. I’m teaching yet another cohort of Eridian children, as I have for the past many rotations around 40 Eridani. It’s been a long time since I kept track of time in Earth units, but I’d roughly estimate just over a decade of my years have passed since Rocky brought me to Erid. I know I have a while left if I’m lucky. But I’d rather not dwell on it.
Today’s lesson is atom structure, which is great for the kids. They love models as much as Rocky did while we orbited Tau Ceti, and I’ve become far more adept at making three dimensional objects for them to hear (thanks, in no small part, to Rocky). A large model atom is set up by my desk, and I can hear the excited humming of my pupils before I’ve even reached the center of my half of the classroom. I lean my cane against the desk and turn to face them. One of the children, a small green Eridian with a pink shift to their carapace, already has a claw raised. It’s not unusual for this particular pebble to come prepared to class with a hundred different questions.
“Yes, Tourmaline?” I expect them to ask about the model, or something about the subatomic particles we’ve been discussing for the past few lessons. Instead, their question hits me like a gut punch.
“How long do humans live?”
I recover quickly, but I know they heard my heart stutter. Darn human startle response. “Is this question relevant to today’s lesson?”
Tourmaline deflates a little. “It’s just you’ve been teaching us for a long time. My parents say humans don’t live long. Is it true?”
I chew on the inside of my cheek, debating how to answer. The lifespan of a human is not some big secret; the Eridian science community has access to every piece of human knowledge I brought along. Rocky was helpful in translating the numbers for them. As a whole, Erid knows I’m over halfway to my expiry date. But, like on Earth, I don’t expect death to be a common household topic for most Eridian schoolchildren. Of course they’d be curious. And I’ve made it a rule that no scientific question is off limits. This would fall under that category.
“VI∀ years,” I finally answer. Tourmaline shifts in their seat, and I hear a soft hum rise from my students. It’s not a word, but relays a feeling: sadness.
“That’s not a long time,” Jasper, another pebble, says.
“For my species, it is,” I answer. “It’s all in how you look at things.”
“So you’ll be dead before we grow up?” This question comes from Bismuth. Ah, the bluntness of children. The same in every species.
“Yes,” I answer simply. The humming spikes again. They don’t like it—but of course they don’t. I try to lighten the mood with a smile. “But I’m here now, and that means you all are here to learn. So: can someone to tell me what the center of an atom is called?”
And just like that, we move on. The sad hum tapers off. The kids are happy to keep learning. And I’m content to teach them, for however long that is.
“I hear death came up during your class today,” Rocky says as he shifts a xenonite chess piece on the board. My last pawn faces down his rook. He has the brain for strategy and it didn’t take him long to start absolutely demolishing me at the game after I taught him.
“It was bound to come up sometime,” I say with a shrug. I go to move my pawn but hesitate. That would leave my king in check. I make a frustrated noise and, with no other options, sacrifice my knight to Rocky’s queen. This game is a slaughter.
“You told them you will live for VI∀ years.”
“Yup.”
“Grace, are you aware that it’s been λ∀ years since arriving on Eridani?” Rocky knocks my pawn over.
I frown. I’m in checkmate, but I suddenly don’t care. “That’s not right. That can’t be right. I’d be sixty years old by now.”
“Yes. You are approximately sixty Earth years.”
I look over at the shiny piece if aluminum hanging above a chest of drawers that I use for a mirror. I look…not sixty. Maybe a few years older than when I’d arrived at Erid, with horrible posture due to the higher gravity, but not sixty. Had it really been so many years? I run a hand through my still-blonde hair.
“Rocky, I can’t be sixty. Humans don’t look this good at sixty.”
Rocky is amused by that. “You are the best looking human on Erid.”
I’m confused now. I stand, my humiliating chess loss forgotten, and touch my face. It’s slightly more weathered—there are smile lines at the corners of my eyes, maybe a freckle or two that has popped up along my cheeks, and streaks of grey in my hair. But I don’t look anywhere near sixty.
“I’m telling you,” I say. “This isn’t normal.”
That catches Rocky’s attention. “Bad?”
“I just look…young. I haven’t aged hardly at all. Are you sure I’m sixty?”
Rocky stomps one of his legs on the ground. “I would not forget your age.”
No, no of course Rocky wouldn’t. Even if he didn’t want to keep track, the perfect memory of Eridians wouldn’t let him not remember. Which leaves me puzzled. I am undoubtedly sixty. I don’t look sixty. And yet…
I don’t readily have access to the Hail Mary’s science equipment. She is in orbit, her oxygen atmosphere maintained by Eridian scientists in xenonite suits for study. I’m sure all I’d have to do to have access to her instruments is ask. But can I ask that?
“Grace, you’re quiet.” Rocky shifts away from the chessboard.
I jut my lip out, thinking. “Do you think I could go up to my ship?”
Rocky trills in surprise. “Why? What on your ship do you need?” He’s anxious, and I do my best to put him at ease.
“I don’t think anything’s wrong. But I also don’t think this is right.”
“Because you don’t look older?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Yes. I want to know why.”
Rocky ponders that. “The space elevator closest to your dome is undergoing maintenance. It might be some time before we are able to get you to the Hail Mary.”
“Do you think your human specialists could run a few tests for me?” I look away from the mirror, down at my hands. I know what the hands of an old man look like. My hands are not old man hands. The skin is taught, elastic, unblemished. Something is definitely going on.
Rocky walks up to me. “It could be arranged. What tests?”
“I need to know if the ends of my DNA—telomeres—are degrading, for one. Maybe measure cellular unfolded protein load and inflammatory markers in my blood.”
“These will all tell you…what?”
I drop my hands. “If I’m aging normally.”
Rocky is silent for a beat. Then he dips his carapace in an approximation of a nod. “I will speak with Doc about this.”
Doc is an ancient (by human standards) Eridian, clocking in at over 500 Earth years old. She was a leading expert on Eridian biology when Rocky and I returned, and was all too eager to have an alien to study and learn from. She quickly became the leading expert on human biology as well. Unlike most Eridians I’ve met, who have no concept of gender and weren’t too fond of the many different human pronouns, Doc was thrilled by them and eagerly requested she be referred to as “she.”
She meets me by the dome’s main airlock Iℓ hours later. My “sun” is dimming for the night, but I want to know what’s going on as soon as possible, and I sometimes have to remind myself that low light doesn’t affect the Eridians. I’m not too fond of the medical supplies she has with her (old traumas die hard, as they say), but I’m also eager to see what she can find out.
“Rocky says you suspect you are not aging normally,” she says as she readies a needle and tourniquet. The dexterity she has in her xenonite suit is remarkable.
I drop heavily into the chair that sits by the airlock and let my cane fall across my lap. “The higher gravity of Erid might have slowed down my aging some, but to be sixty years old and still looking as young as I am? I should be well into my senior years. I don’t feel it.”
Doc hmms. “What is your hypothesis?”
I hold out my arm and she ties the tourniquet above my elbow. “Maybe gravity has a greater effect on aging than my species anticipated. We thought that, due to relativity, the higher gravitational pull of larger planets might cause us to age slower. Erid’s gravity is much greater than Earth’s. But other than that, I don’t really have any idea.”
The blood draw proceeds without a hitch. Since she can literally hear the veins beneath my skin, Doc never misses. That helps my anxiety around needles somewhat. She inverts the collected sample three times before tucking it into a pressurized and temperature-controlled sample box. I press a small strip of sterile cloth to the puncture wound.
“We’ll have the results to you as soon as possible,” Doc assures me.
“If you need help with anything, let me know.”
The sound Doc makes reminds me of wind chimes, her equivalent of a laugh. “Your kind is still so alien to us. I’m sure we will have plenty of questions. Whether or not they lead to relevant answers remains to be seen.”
“I really appreciate your help.”
“It’s the least we can do, Doctor Grace,” Doc answers. And then she’s gone through the airlock, and the dome is almost completely covered in darkness. Distant “stars” twinkle down at me from my “sky.” I pocket the cloth and run my thumb over the puncture wound in my arm, lost in thought.
I’m sixty years old. I’ve spent almost half my life somewhere other than Earth. I know Sol has returned to it’s standard brightness, which means at least one of the beetles made it back. I know at least some of humanity survived. I wonder if Stratt lived up to her promise and made statues of the Hail Mary crew and I. I wonder if we’re heroes. I wonder if the governments of the world told their citizens about extraterrestrial life. And I wonder if, someday, I won’t be the only human the Eridians know.