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“Grace is sick, question?”
Robotic arms inspected his form. Measuring the width of his shrinking body, holding tight where his ribs sat snug against his skin.
The robot– Armando, don’t forget it again, his name’s Armando– brushed against his cool body, he shivered at the sensation, thousands of nerves set alight by the mockery of human touch.
“Can Grace hear Rocky, question?”
He took in a shuddering breath and felt the bones of his chest rise, each pressing against pallid skin.
He thought of grass and earth and all things with softness. He thought of feeling carpet beneath his toes.
Armando offers water. He places the straw in his mouth and sips slowly, the water trickling down his throat and settling thick at the bottom of his gnawing stomach.
He smacks his lips together. They’re dry. Trust Stratt to pack him all of humanity’s knowledge and forget some good old fashioned Vaseline.
“I can hear you, bud.”
“Why is Grace checking Armando again, this is the third time today, Grace is sick, question?”
“I’m… I don’t know. I just feel like something is wrong. Probably paranoia. Definitely paranoia. And Armando says it’s fine.”
Armando didn’t say it was fine. Armando said his teeth were weakening, brittle like chalk.
“No big whoop, just a few extra checks.”
Rocky shifted his weight between his limbs in suspicious regard. He didn’t believe him.
That’s alright. Grace didn’t believe himself either.
“Grace should eat TauSlurry.”
His stomach growled at the suggestion. Stupid stomach– have you already forgotten the torment we endured over the toilet last time?
He considered the coma-slurry-tauomeba mix he had been subsisting off for six months, and would for another six more– unless he starved first.
The “food” looked like a mix of curdled milk and frog eggs, thick clumps that made the difference between it going down and inevitably climbing its way back up his throat near imperceptible.
“Help me out, Rock”
It was routine that Grace would lean on Rocky’s ball as he navigated across the room to the slurry. In part, it helped Grace expend less energy, and placed less strain upon his weakening joints. But the primary benefit of the activity came from the proximity, the thought that they were supporting one another. And so Grace would shut his eyes tight, and lean too heavy over the edge of Rocky’s ball, enough to feel the Xenonite edges form pink pressure marks. Together, they navigated around clothes and papers and impromptu boardgames strewn across the floor, artifacts of a time where their greatest challenge was boredom.
Grace dutifully scooped up a serving of the mixture with a beaker. Alright, you can do this, take it like a shot.
He threw his head back and tipped the mixture straight down, wrapping his arms around his torso to keep his body from heaving as it limped toward his stomach. Completely flavourless, and entirely disgusting.
He gasped in the air loudly. The slurry a swirling tempest of nausea in the pit of his stomach.
“Words of motivation! Grace can keep it in. Swallow!”
Halfway through a wheezing breath he snorted loudly.
“At least–”
He giggled with a vigour that shook his entire frame.
“At least buy me a drink before you order me around like that!”
He continued laughing, feeling his body ache with effort.
Rocky chittered.
“Joke! Grace made joke!”
Rocky scuttled toward him with a bittersweet eagerness. Tapping at the edge of the Xenonite in excitement.
“Alright, alright. It’s staying down for now, help me back.”
Rocky rolled closer, happily thudding over the dirty floors.
“You move like a trundle wheel," Grace observed.
“Only because ball. Grace should see Rocky without the ball.”
Grace slowly lowered his body back over the ball, feeling its edges dig into his skin pleasantly.
“Oh, yeah?” they rolled over a loose sock
“I’m sure you’re fast– actually, how fast can you get?”
Rocky paused.
“Silly human. Asked Rocky this question last week. Rocky reaches speeds of 40km/hr. Stupid leaky brain.”
A wave of ice water washed over Grace’s heart. His memory had become horrendous, even around topics that had once interested him– still interested him.
“Right.
Sorry, you know humans.”
“Grace’s memory extra bad bad bad for the past 1.577e+7 seconds, statement.”
They both knew why, empty shelves where foil soldiers once sat and the guttural growls his body emitted spoke to a reality Grace was hesitant to confront.
He was running out of food.
Even the coma-slurry was stretched thinly.
He glanced out the porthole window and met the impassive gaze of an infinite night sky.
“I know Rock, I know.”
When Rocky fell asleep– his heart falling silent and his body eerily still like a rock (good lord, he still had a bit of meat left, why was his brain going first?) Grace shuffled awkwardly over to Armando.
“Armando,” he whispered.
The mechanical arm swiveled toward him, tilting sideways like a confused dog.
“C’mere”
The bot rolled over, and through Mary’s sound system spoke:
“Good evening, Doctor Grace. What seems to be the problem?”
Everything, Armando. Everything.
Grace wet his lips.
“I need you to scan me again, something’s wrong with my body, not the nutritional stuff.”
“Physical ailments are consistent with nutritional deficiencies. The small bruise on the left kneecap is unrelated.”
Grace looked down, well he’ll be damned, a little purple mark had blossomed over his knee since he last checked. He had no idea how he got it. That at least, wasn’t unique to space, between clumsiness, biking through busy San-Fran streets, and what he would term “mysterious causes”, Grace frequently woke to find bruises littered over his body.
“Would you like an ice pack, Doctor Grace?”
Oh pickles. Armando had the treatment style of a school nurse.
“No, Armando, I don’t want an ice pack.” He replied shortly.
“Listen, I think there’s something seriously wrong, maybe the killer space radiation and the unstudied alien materials finally caught up to my cells. Let’s draw some blood, ‘mando.”
“It is ill advised to draw blood twice in the span of 48 hours. Results from the previous test did not note abnormalities in white blood cell count. Vitamin C and Vitamin D levels measured dangerously low.”
Grace sighed, long and annoyed.
“Yadda yadda my body’s eating itself, whatever. I don’t believe you, Armando.”
“I apologise. Would you like an ice pack for your knee?”
Grace groaned.
The next “morning” found him lying supine on his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. Rocky started to produce the horrid creaking noises of his body waking up.
He couldn’t feel his left hand. He knew it was there, logically, but attempts to move it proved futile.
He could move his right hand, and when he dragged his right hand over his left he could feel the sensation of his rough, dry skin, but he could not feel the touch. Not the light tingle that bleeds through pins and needles. Not the pressure. No sensation at all.
As if his body ended at the wrist and disappeared into an empty void of numbness.
“Good morning, Grace.”
“Hey, Rock”
He continued trying to wiggle his fingers. Expectedly, nothing happened. Oh well, what was he to do today anyway? The loss of one hand hardly made a difference.
Perhaps the bot– what was its name again? Could log it as another symptom. But that would probably involve leaving his bed, hmm, no thank you.
Rocky had begun silently weaving Xenonite into an intricate puzzle, folding layers that formed beautiful, complex shapes. Grace watched as his limbs moved fluidly in practiced expertise.
Slowly, his world began to blur. As if he were watching life through a keyhole.
Sometimes he heard the clatter of Rocky’s tools hitting the ground.
He floated. Slipped into a heavy limbo.
He inhaled and felt the air enter his lungs viscerally, felt the organs expanding in their cavity and deflating once more.
The bot brought water to him and he probably drank it. His lips are wet.
His world filled with thick fog.
He liked fog.
It would be nice to see it again.
The back of his eyes are lined with coldness.
They’re dry. He probably should rub them; but his hand isn’t working, silly thing.
“Grace?”
He felt himself turn toward Rocky. His project sat finished on the ground. It looked impressive.
“Watch Grace sleep now.”
“Okay.” He replied around a mouth stuffed with cotton.
He turned his head back toward the ceiling, and slipped seamlessly from the abyss of waking into the silent void of sleep.
And the stars outside kept an unwavering, uninterested vigil.
When Grace awoke, his eyes felt more steady in their sockets. He could feel his feet on the ground and his body against the bed.
Alas, his hand remained immobile. Paralysed.
He dragged his limp wrist over the edge of the bed.
“Rock” he called.
His friend straightened, and placed another intricate, woven figure on the floor.
“Is Grace really in there, question?”
Huh?
Grace blinked groggily, and candidly asked:
“Whas that suppose’ t’ mean”
Upon hearing his reply, Rocky relaxed, and cheerfully rolled toward Grace.
“Hello Grace. Hello Grace friend. You are back. Grace said Rocky many many times.”
“I did?”
“Yes. Grace hearing Rocky now?”
“Yeah, yeah I am” Grace pet him with his right hand placatingly.
“Was I awake earlier?”
“Grace awake for a long, long time. Stared. Forgot to put lids over meat-socket organs.”
This should frighten him, memories lost. Like before.
But he finds it hard to care, he hasn’t the energy to expend in panic.
“Right.”
“Well sorry about that, bud. I need your help with some science.”
Rocky bounced excitedly between his legs, not about the science– no, the engineer had dealt with enough of the stuff for an Eridian lifetime thank you very much. This was the most Grace had spoken for the past 176400 seconds, perhaps this time he would be able to eat without the assistance of Armando.
“Big science! What does Grace need, question?”
“I need you to ram yourself into my left hand.”
“No.”
Grace groaned, throwing his head back against his pillow.
“But Rocky” he whined, “I can’t move my hand, I wanna see if anything will make me feel it.”
Rocky made a soft clicking noise– a sound not dissimilar to the distress of Pebble’s whose parent had just dropped to sleep.
“Don’t want to hurt Grace. Rocky has hurt enough.”
Grace’s arm– the one he couldn’t move– was covered in a gruesome texture that was starkly visible in Eridian vision.
Grace turned to his side, resting his head against his functional arm like one of DiCaprio’s French girls.
“No, no. I promise you won’t hurt me Rock. Actually, it’ll make me feel better, I need to know.” Grace’s eyes glinted uncomfortably, bright like the green incandescence of a supermarket.
Rocky chirruped, rapid and fluttering.
“No, bad, bad, bad. Don’t want to hurt Grace. Stupid idea. Rocky not hurt Grace again.”
“Hey, it’s alright. I want you to. I need you to hurt me.”
Rocky began to retreat backward. This wasn’t right.
“No, statement. No, declare.”
Grace’s pupils turned to pinpricks, eyes widening. Primal and afraid.
“You need to!” He cried, slapping his working hand against the bed.
“Hurt me” thud. “Hurt” thud “me” thud.
His face reddened as his frail chest constricted.
“Please” he choked, voice straining with effort.
Rocky trembled, moving further away from the barrier.
Grace’s breath quietened to short, fast wheezes.
Rocky stood back fearfully. He had seen this before. Cries from the last of his crewmates, their brothers already dead, and the survivors weakening by the day. And Rocky. Healthy through it all.
Always the one who stayed healthy.
Grace coughed, body jerking with the movements.
He focused his pinprick pupils on Rocky.
“Why won’t you fucking help me?” He howled, teeth gritted and jaw trembling.
“Not going to hurt you!” Rocky cried.
“You need to! Because if you don’t hurt me then how can I know this is happening? How can I know this hand is frozen? How can I know that this–” he threw his head around wildly, “that any of this is real”
“It is happening! Look at the ship, look at the damn controls, look at Rocky! Real, real, real.”
Grace deflated, fight draining from his body.
“See”
Grace stayed silent.
“Grace?” Rocky scurried back toward the barrier, concern twisting with fear.
“Grace can hear me, question?”
Grace was awake. His chest expanding and deflating. His eyes open.
But Rocky knew by now that he was not there. Gone. As if cold death had taken him whilst his skin was still warm.
His heartbeat slowed to a rhythmic thud.
It wasn’t sleep. Rocky would still watch.
Grace returned to his body and found himself cold. He drew his patchwork blanket over his head, a burial shroud. He rubbed his feet together like a cricket and thought persistently of “warm, warm, warm.”
His body shivered and his hair stood on edge. Muscle constriction, his brain provided, rapid expenditure of energy to generate body heat.
Because that’s what he needed right now, rapid expenditure of what little energy he had left.
A nagging voice, one that sat quietly at the back of his mind and grew louder by the day, began to fill the silence of the dormitory.
What if this wasn’t happening?
What if he died– did he truly have any proof he was alive?
What if everything, rescuing Rocky, the ship, the Tauomeba, everything, was some desperate hallucination colouring his consciousness’ slow seep toward the abyss?
He drew his shivering hand over his paralysed arm.
Was this the afterlife? Hell?
No, no. There was no use guessing. He had to know.
Grace stood slowly, ignoring the shake of his calves and the blue tinge to his toes.
He dragged his body toward the lab. Staggering, holding on to the walls of the ship for support.
This would prove it.
He set up a Bunsen Burner. Thinking of little hands that recited safety protocols before turning the gas tap on, thinking of the safety quiz they did beforehand, the one year he gave out “Bunsen Burner Licenses" and the kids burned them in protest.
He chuckled. How did the phrase go? “Do as I say, not as I do?”
He flicked on a lighter, and watched a small blue flame sprout from the opening.
Here it goes. Either he’s alive, and his hand is working, and he will feel an excruciating burn. Or he’s dead and– no, he won’t be dead. This is stupid. Rocky would kill him.
Grace took in a deep breath, and used his right hand to guide his left into the flame.
Nothing.
No pain. No heat.
Just the acrid smell of his skin burning.
He gagged, feeling his empty stomach swirl from the smell of burnt flesh, like overcooked meat
And how disgustingly perverse he was that his mouth watered at the scent, miasmic as it was.
He pulled his arm out. Hand blanched white in the centre, bordered by an angry, weeping perimeter of raw red.
Breath returned to him in a rush.
Oh God, what had he done.
Oh good lord. Oh. Oh shit. Shit shit shit.
“‘rmando!” he yelled, feeling blood rush sickeningly to his head, tempting unconsciousness.
Cheese and crackers what had he done to himself?
“‘Armando!” he called again.
Why did he do that? What the hell, brain. He looked again at his hand, sweltering crimson, blotchy and uneven from the shape of the flame.
He turned, staggering back to the dormitory as beads of sweat began to dot the edge of his hairline.
Armando was twisting mechanically, algorithms searching the room for the source of distress.
“What seems to be the problem, Doctor Grace?”
“My skin was on freaking fire!” he squealed.
The bot’s programming restored itself to “emergency” mode, he felt its arms maneuver him onto the bed, and a thin needle pricked his neck.
Rapid mechanical whirring and blistering skin were consumed by darkness as the anesthetic took hold, Grace sunk into unconsciousness. It felt like coming home.
Rocky would like it noted that Grace had been behaving when he fell asleep.
Waking to find his best friend unconscious as a machine wrapped his grisly, scorched hand in cotton bandages had not delighted the alien.
He had screamed, at first, to deaf ears. Called his friend a brainless, foolish, ♩♫♫ of a human. He had stomped over the floor and thrown his body against the xenonite panels separating them in rage.
But Grace continued to sleep, dead to the world as Armando changed his bandages and shoved what little food they had left down his throat.
Grace’s still body felt like losing his world again. Felt like carapaces blossoming with cracks. Felt like limbs being rejected to spare energy. Felt like an empty spaceship in an infinite abyss.
Grace couldn’t leave him, not when he was all that he had.
And so Rocky restrained his anger– his deep, simmering anger, that made him tremble with hopelessness– and stood vigil at Grace’s bedside, watching the bot change and feed and water him and knowing he could do nothing. Like before.
And when Grace awoke, eyes slowly creaking open in misery and guilt, Rocky said nothing.
He looked at his friend, and wished so very sorely that he could touch him. Sit upon his chest and feel it rise so he knew, with certainty, that he was alive.
Rocky pushed himself against Grace as best as he could, felt his friend’s arm wrap around him, and listened to his desperate wailing.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.” He hiccuped, smearing mucus and tears over the barrier keeping them apart.
“I–” Grace cut off with a loud cry.
“I don’t know why I did that. It was just this trance. And nothing felt real and I thought I was dead and I thought I had to prove it.”
Armando unwrapped his hand. It was swollen and bumpy, his fingers like fat balloons. Bubbled blisters forming a yellowed, round mountain rage over his hand. Grace felt nauseous looking at it.
When he closed his eyes and focused hard he could almost feel it tingle with a faint echo of pain.
“I’m so sorry, Rock.”
Rocky sat still, silent.
“Rocky is sorry too. Rocky is so sorry for Grace's pain.
But Rocky is angry. How could Grace hurt himself knowing that Rocky was asleep, that Rocky couldn’t do anything to help, that Rocky cared for him more than he cared for himself.”
“I. I didn’t think about that at the moment. I wasn’t like mysel–”
“Rocky not finished.” He rolled right up to Grace and straightened himself stiff.
“Rocky woke up confused, alone.
Grace that Rocky knows would never do that.”
It was that, which finally broke Grace. Sent him crashing over the top of the ball, crying unrestrained and uncontrollable. Not the romantic tears that meander soft and slow over cheekbones. Not the watery eyes that reflect the suffering of the soul. No, the tears that crash. The tears that are felt in the heaviness of the lips and the tightness of the lungs. The tears that flush your cheeks tomato red, that scrunch your face and draw loud, keening cries from your throat.
“I’ll be better, Rock, I swear.”
Rocky chittered, and pressed against Grace.
“Grace does not need to be better, just needs to get better.”
Grace nodded his head through tears.
“I will. I promise. Let’s eat some more.”
And so Grace leant over Rocky’s ball, and felt as his friend dragged him toward the TauSlurry.
He choked the glumpy mixture down, and ignored the nagging voice insisting that he didn’t need it– after all, the dead do not eat.
Grace had been better recently.
A year ago, to distract themselves from the grimness of their fate, Grace and Rocky had taken up art.
They used pens and xenonite-sheet indentation respectively to create their works. Grace had never been artistic, he was the kind of teacher who would warn his students of this fact before he drew on the whiteboard. Going to space did not change this, actually, it had arguably gotten worse.
“That is supposed to be a pineapple, question?”
“Clearly” Grace shook the sheet of paper in Rocky’s “face”.
“Not clear. Look less like pineapple, more like a hot air balloon.”
Grace gasped, offended.
“You haven’t even seen a pineapple, or a hot air balloon for that matter!”
Rocky shook his carapace in disapproval.
“Yet Rocky still knows that is not what it looks like. Tauslurry time.”
Grace harrumphed, and swallowed a large gulp of Tauomeba-slurry, far more heavy on the Tauomeba portion.
Armando rolled over,
“Are you ready to change your bandages, doctor Grace?” The robot asked.
Grace waved him off with a hand.
“Not now, Armando. I need to see what this genius made first.”
Rocky turned around his indented sheet of xenonite.
For fluff’s sake it actually looked decent.
The lines were fine and precise, they created the impression of a mountain range, maybe, he’s 90% sure this is a mountain range.
“Rocky drew the ♫ mountains.”
Dammit. He was right.
Grace looked between Rocky and the artwork.
“How?”
“Easy. Rocky has many skills.”
Grace rolled his eyes, and turned to Armando in protest– who was far better company for small talk.
“Let’s change the bandages, come on.”
His hand was unveiled. It was looking better, still grisly and red, but far less swollen. The blanched, gaping wounds healing over with raised ridges of his skin reconstructing.
“Rock” Grace called.
“When you have a second can you just check the structures on the ship? It’s stupid but I don’t want anything to go wrong, just look for any loose panels or bolts, it’s human so righty-tighty.”
Rocky shot him a thumbs down in confirmation.
“Will look; Rocky will check incorrect human screws and bolts for Grace.”
Grace sighed in relief, watching the wound disappear beneath cloth once more.
“No structural issues, Rocky checked twice like the fat morality man.”
“Awesome, and I told you Rock, just call him Santa Claus, not that.”
Rocky chirped a mischievous laugh.
“Armando, buddy, when can we draw blood again? You know what I’m going to ask, don’t you?”
“I will take blood today, doctor Grace. Based on historical requests I will complete a comprehensive check of your health, any alterations to this request, doctor Grace?”
“None at all, now give me a little stab.” He thrust his scarred arm toward the robot, and awaited the blood test with a psychologically unsound level of excitement.
The good days came, between passes of staring at the ceiling in limbo.
And the good days went. Fleeting, like sand rushing through his fingers, only felt, never grasped.
When the back of his eyes felt cold, and he swore that his body was empty of blood, he knew that they had left again.
Rocky knew too. The long periods of a slow, steady heartbeat, the unresponsiveness to sound, the unwillingness to eat. Rocky knew he had fallen back again. And on those days, Rocky grew quiet, reserved.
The days were bad more than they were good.
Bedsores began appearing over his immobile, thin limbs. Weeping windows into flesh and bone.
When Grace was present, he would ask Rocky to check the ship for cracks and damage.
Until 30 days out from Erid, when he simply declared:
“This ship is going to cave in on itself.”
He stated it plainly, like a fact.
Rocky argued, but it was no use.
“I’m pretty sure I’m already dead, Rock. So it’s not like it will hurt me or anything. It’s alright, it will last until you bring my body to Erid.” He coughed, wracking his thin form: skin stretched over bones gruesomely, a tooth already lost to scurvy.
“I just hope you’re not too upset, the real version of you, the one bringing back my carcass.”
“This is the real you. This is the real Grace” Rocky would beg.
Grace rarely responded to such insistence, occasionally he would deny Rocky, but mostly he would return to staring, fall back down the rabbit hole and feel himself leave his body, absent of the gripping pain of his body cannibalizing what little it had left to devour.
Grace knew he was rotting.
He saw the garish, decomposing wounds blossoming upon his skin, eating away his flesh. There was never the smell of rot, but he supposed that the dead hadn’t the olfactory skills for perfume.
He always thought death would be kinder. Less despondent.
Sometimes, when his eyes worked, when they weren’t leaking from the cavernous holes of his sockets, he caught glimpses of Rocky. He held himself lower to the ground than he remembered, as if a heavy weight burdened his carapace.
When he could hear him, Rocky insisted he wasn’t dead.
That couldn’t be true. He felt no heartbeat, no pulse. He had no food. Life was simply implausible.
Mechanical arms held down his corpse. He thrashed wildly, he screamed.
He couldn’t free himself. Powerless again. Phantoms of arms pushing him into the dirt. Dirt that his body would never return to.
He felt fabric on his cold, pale hand.
He had thought– foolish, naive, hopeful– that in death, he would finally have control of his body, of his life.
Rocky watched Grace fight against Armando. It was happening again, he tried to sing soothingly toward him. A song of comfort he had imagined for himself when the infinite dark sea outside the ship bled through the walls of his lonely vigil.
He sang, and sang, and Grace continued to twitch and jerk with energy Rocky knew he didn’t have.
His Grace was gone. His Grace had been eaten, all that was left was a palimpsest of the beautiful, kind, human he knew.
The perfection of Eridian memory was a curse. He knew exactly how much Grace had changed.
Erid was on the horizon, he had so little a distance to withstand.
Grace continued to thrash, emitting a hoarse, desperate whisper.
Rocky didn’t know if they could wait that long.
Olesya brushed his hair, thin fingers twining through brittle golden strands. Her eyes were bright. Her cheeks were pink.
“Oly?” Grace whispered.
“I’m here Grace, took you long enough”
His eyes watered. A smile stretched his gaunt face.
He cupped her cheek with his hand.
“I missed you”
Olesya smiled, pink gums and white teeth.
“We both did, Grace” Yao stood behind him.
His cheeks were full, his skin firm. His hair was ashy grey.
Grace looked between them, death had granted him a small mercy, he had them back again.
“I’m so sorry you weren’t there on the mission.”
Olesya wrapped her arms around him. He wished he was alive to feel it.
“You didn’t need us, Grace. You had all the strength you needed, right here” she placed a hand over his heart.
“And you found Rocky, you found each other. It turned out alright.”
The bliss of the moment soured.
Rocky. He was leaving behind Rocky. Rocky who had lost everything, and had to lose again.
“Oh, Rock. Poor, Rock. This would have destroyed him.” Grace despaired.
“Grace?”
Yao’s eyes had crow's feet. Olesya’s face had smile lines.
“Grace can hear Rocky, question?”
He hadn’t looked in a mirror for a while. Did he get old enough to form those indents?
“Grace?”
He turned his head from side to side, searching for the source of the noise.
Rocky stood in the corner.
This wasn’t right. Rocky couldn’t be dead. If Rocky died, so would Erid.
“No, no, no, Rocky, you can't be dead. No. How did you die? Rocky no.”
“Rocky is not dead. Rocky and Grace are alive.” His friend moved toward him trepidatiously.
“I can’t be alive. I had my crew again.” He turned in search of Yao and Olesya.
They were gone.
“Grace is alive. Hear heartbeat, Armando, display Grace heartbeat, command.”
The bot began to beep, an ECG reading showing steady lime mountains.
“This can’t be real. I can’t be alive.”
“Grace is alive. Alive, alive, alive. Grace is with Rocky. Three days from Erid, just a little bit longer, Grace. Then the Eridians will help, Rocky contacted the space tower, already trying to help.”
Grace’s face scrunched in anguish.
If he was alive, he had spent the past months in turmoil, and pulled Rocky down with him. If he was dead, then the afterlife was a cruel loop of love and loss.
He didn’t know which was worse.
“Armando, show Grace’s medical readings from last blood test.”
The bot displayed a screen, his nutrients were abysmally low, but enough. Just barely enough to exist.
“I’m alive.” He sobbed.
“Grace is alive.”
Rocky rolled toward him.
“Say it again.”
“I’m alive.”
Rocky, for the first time in weeks, straightened again.
“Grace is alive. Grace is living. Grace is strong.”
He pushed against the barrier, wishing desperately that he could hold him.
“I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m here.” He gasped, voice rising to drown out his brain’s stubborn insistence of the contrary.
“Yes, yes, yes!”
Grace wrapped his arms around Rocky’s ball, feeling the pressure marks the hard edges left, definite proof of life, proof that his blood was flowing through his body and reacting to stimuli.
He was alive. Please, please, let him be alive.
Rocky chittered excitedly, jazz hands abound as the imprints of his Grace– the one he knew in memory– grew stronger.
And as the swirling rings of Erid encompassed the porthole window, the impassive, starry abyss was swallowed by the quiet chance of hope.
The hope that maybe, just maybe, Doctor Ryland Grace would feel food– food that he chewed– in his stomach, and cool fog against his warm skin, and carpet beneath his toes.
Feel sand run through the ridges of his scarred hands, feel sickness that came from overindulgence, stay present with Rocky, stay out of that horrible sanctuary of limbo.
The hope that maybe, just maybe, Doctor Ryland Grace would feel alive again.