Chapter Text
It had started with tiredness.
Sleep didn’t come naturally on the Hail Mary. Despite the ship being high-tech – literally the culmination of best engineering effort of all humankind – it was still a ship. It still hummed with activity, lights blinking, machines begging for attention, screens waiting with anticipation to be activated, reflecting black but still glowing somehow, as if they were pretending to be turned off. And of course, Rocky would not be frozen like he was when he slept – he would watch, doing some other task to pass the time, the occasional dull clunk of claw on xenonite bouncing across the metal walls. I had never been a deep sleeper anyway. So sleep could be fretful at times. Especially in the weeks and months since I had gone back to rescue Rocky after the Taumoeba had leaked, leaving him stranded in deep space. The shrill beeping of my makeshift alarm was the most fearsome sound on this ship, even if I had contained the leak before I had even constructed it. I tested it every day, and it never failed to pierce through my chest like a spear, penetrating my mind, making me nauseous thinking of the possibilities, of how Rocky had felt before I got to him. I would wake up panicked, halfway to the cockpit before I would notice the sudden silence.
It took a long time to explain the concept of nightmares to Rocky, although he tried his best. He mentioned that sometimes Eridians would hear dissonant sounds just before waking up; no one could really figure out what caused it, and it didn’t sound like language. I reckoned it was more like when you feel like you’re falling off a cliff and you suddenly jolt awake.
Myoclonic jerks, some deep crevice of my mind told me. Don’t know why I know that. I’m no sleep expert. Maybe one of my students asked me about it sometime.
Despite all this, I used to wake up fairly refreshed, bouncing around the Hail Mary as much as one can when they are post 40, living alone in space except for a sassy rock alien, recovering from a traumatic head injury, living off of nothing but another alien life form that didn’t provide anywhere close to the number or range of nutrients a human man requires.
Starving.
Rocky had been letting me sleep for longer and longer, then eventually nudging me awake with his hamster ball, impatient to talk or experiment with something. Most mornings now I stumble around, yawning, muscles like marshmallow fluff, taking ages to wake up properly. It wasn't long until he began to pick up on it.
“…question?”
“Huh?” I had been thinking about something else. Food, actually. I couldn’t stop thinking about garlic and all its different applications. My mouth is watering a little. “What’s that, buddy?”
“Grace tired, question?”
“Yeah, a bit, sorry,” I blink sleep from my eyes as I sit down in the lab. There isn’t really much to do, so we just invent our own experiments. I mean, there’s all this cool lab stuff here, we wouldn’t want it to go to waste, now would we? Stratt had it made specially.
“Why Grace tired, question?” The translation remains robotic as ever, but I had come to learn the lowered frequencies of his tune as frustration.
“I don’t know,” I grumble, my brain kicking into gear about as successfully as a rustbucket 70s Peugeot.
“Grace tired all time. Sleep better now. Sleep all time. Still tired. No understand. Sleep no help Grace, question?”
“No, it does.” I rub a hand over my face, trying to fathom how to explain what was happening with such limited language. I had had easier teaching periods with raging hangovers. “It’s the food, Rock. I have no food. I’m hungry.”
“Eat Taumoeba. Grace eat Taumoeba. Have lots.”
“No, it’s not…how do I-? Taumoeba isn’t enough-“
“Eat more. Have Taumoeba spare. Grace stupid when tired.”
“No. I need…uh…different food. Lots of different food. Meat and fish and vegetables and-”
“No no no no," Rocky's voice rises insistently. "Grace talk about food all time. No more talk about food.”
A lump forms in my throat. It’s been all I can think about for months. At first, I had simply chatted about it to Rocky, explaining as much as I could, all my favourite foods, supermarkets and my many, many failed (but frankly hilarious) attempts at cooking. An insight into Planet Earth, into the unique and diverse human experience that was taste, the community that came from eating together. It was a twinge of hunger alongside a sort of nostalgia for the place I would never see again.
Then, the flavourful tubes of baby food ran out. Then the coma slurry. Suddenly, the air in my mouth became infinitely too light compared to the memory of bread and rice and doughnuts and anything that tasted like anything. I would bite down on nothing. I would sit in the laboratory in front of a microscope and drift off without realising until Rocky said something, and even then I would carry out each task in a monotonous funk, only ever thinking about the next opportunity to sit and think about eating. It hurt, too. I know reminiscing is the worst idea – there’s no going back, it’s so much easier to leave Earth behind and focus on my new life aboard the Hail Mary, with my awesome alien best friend and my very own spaceship and lab and being the first human to land on another planet (well, they might have reached Mars now, but who knows? Not me! So I’m sticking with it). But I can’t help it. I miss food most of all. I curse Stratt every day for not giving me more supplies. Did she not foresee that I might meet a cool alien who invites me back to his place? Why not include a bottle of wine in case I needed a polite gift? So inconsiderate. Or some cheese, people bring cheese round for dinner, right? What I wouldn’t give for a mature cheddar, on a cracker maybe, oh God, or some kind of melt-in-your-mouth-
“Grace leaking. Grace leaking! Is blood, question?” Rocky squeaks.
“What? Oh-“
In the absence of anything solid - the Taumoeba is a thick liquid, which I have to swallow as quickly as possible because it tastes so disgusting – I’ve developed a nasty habit of chewing on my tongue and my cheeks and my lips when I’m not concentrating. It doesn’t hurt, so I don’t really realise I’m doing it, but this is the first time my lip has bled, and it stings in that horrid way cuts on the lip do.
“Yeah, it’s blood. Sorry, bud, one sec,” I get up, my words muffled by my hand and then a tissue over my mouth.
“Grace hurt, question? Why Grace hurt, question?”
“No, not really. I’m fine, it’s tiny.”
“No understand last word.”
“It’s been months, I never taught you tiny? Small. Very small.”
“Grace hurt because small, question? No understand.”
“No, the cut is small. I just bit my lip. It happens sometimes. Sharp teeth, thin skin. It’s common - ugh - common with humans.” I can’t stem the bleed while talking, and every movement really freaking hurts. I will the alien to stop fussing for just a moment, but he’s literally rattling around back there. I’m reminded of the feeling of a classroom full of rowdy children.
“Do on purpose, question?”
“Hang on, bud, let me just- no, I didn’t-“
“Grace leak, Grace leak. Stop leak. Grace die, question?”
“Leave it, Rocky, just a second.”
“Grace die! Grace die, question?”
“ROCKY! I said leave it! Calm down!” I explode. I know my voice can’t echo in here – it’s a small room and there are plenty of textiles to dampen the sound – but I hear the glass test tubes rattle slightly. Rocky shrinks away from me.
When I received my qualification for teaching, my first thought should have been the people I loved, the people who helped me. My parents, my friends, my tutor who let me break down in his office while I mourned the loss of my place in the scientific research community, struggling to accept my new future. It wasn’t. My first thought regrettably went to the worst woman I knew - my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs Lovebird. Cutesy name, but she haunted my nightmares for years, long after I escaped elementary school. I could handle strict teachers, mean teachers, the ones who clearly hated kids. I could sit up straight and stay absolutely silent and hand my homework in on time and walk not run in the corridors. I didn’t, but I knew if I did I would get in less trouble. Mrs Lovebird was different. She was downright cruel. She loved punishing the whole class for one child’s misbehaviour - I guess she thought we would all hate the one kid, but everyone was a target, someone new got picked on every day, because no one could ever do anything right in her classroom. If you asked a question, you obviously weren’t listening to the lesson; if no one asked any questions, it was because we were ignoring her. If your chair creaked or your pen clattered or you couldn’t hold a cough any longer, you were being disruptive. God forbid you broke any real school rules, like wearing white socks.
The worst part was her discipline, which was twofold and equal no matter your crime: one, scream in your face; two, act like nothing happened if you ever complained about it. I don’t think any parent truly understood what went on in that classroom, but I swear I developed a faint tinnitus that year. She would swear at us, call us names, take away our breaktimes. She would consistently tell us that she hated shouting, and it was our fault she was losing her voice forever because we wouldn’t stop misbehaving. We were blamed for every complaint, calling us wusses for not being able to handle being at school – we were ten! One kid started wetting himself again because he was so scared to ask for the restroom. Another started homeschooling. When I think about it, I don’t know how I ended up in academia. I hated her for decades afterwards – she set me back so far by making me scared of learning.
I stood with a brand-new certificate in my hand, now a teacher myself, thinking of Mrs Lovebird, and I made a vow. And I stuck to it. If I need to be loud, I use instruments (I brought them in when my ‘no shouting’ rule nearly ended in a skull split open – bad teacher moment), I give one of the nicer kids a chance to stand on a chair and shout instead (adult man shouting – scary, kid your age shouting – interesting, different, ooh, I might get to do that next!). I have never, ever yelled at my kids. I don’t want to frighten them, ever. What’s the point? I want them to love being in my classroom. Wanted. Whatever. It worked. They love me. Loved. They’re excited to learn. Were. No, hopefully they’re still excited to learn, wherever they are now. I hope I gave them that much. I hope I gave them excitement and not fear. I guess that’s true with the Hail Mary mission too.
I look over at Rocky, who is still backed against the xenonite wall, his little claws clenched in a defensive position, and my hand covers my mouth, as if I can physically stop any more sound coming out. I can still feel blood sticking to my skin.
“Sorry. Sorry, Rocky,” I kneel down like I’m on the playground with someone’s scraped knee.
“Grace loud, shout, Grace-“ his melody forms an unknown tune. A new word.
“What’s that, bud? Need a word.”
The alien thinks for a moment. “Not happy. Not sad. Different.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Angry. Not anymore. I just had a- a moment. I’m fine now. Sorry for yelling.”
“Grace angry because Rocky, question? Rocky trying to help.”
“No, no, I know. It’s not you. I’m just…exhausted." Hungry, I realise a second after the words come out. It’s not the stomach rumbling kind of hunger that comes when you haven’t eaten for hours and you finally get a minute to crack open your favourite Pot Noodle. It’s a weight around every limb, chained to my shoulders, my head, my eyelids. It’s the craving something that I can’t have. Salt, flavour, texture, volume, carbs and proteins. I’m reaching for it all the time, but all I swallow is air. It’s not enough. Taumoeba gives me calories. I have the energy for my heart to beat and my lungs to breathe, but the body requires so much more, and its survival mechanisms mean I will only hyperfocus on it until I satisfy what I need. I guess on Earth, that would be the drive that forces you to the supermarket, or to fight a woolly mammoth. Out here, on the Hail Mary, it’s just emptiness. I’m empty. My muscles, my bones, my brain, they all feel like there’s no substance to them anymore. Like they're made of jell-o - oh man, I don't even like jell-o, but I could murder a whole bowl. I put my head in my hands and feel the ache in my jaw. We're not even close to Erid. I have another several years of this. I could have a gaping hole in my stomach right now and I wouldn't notice the difference.
“Grace angry because need different food.”
“I think so, Rock. I think it's starting to get to me.”
The air hangs silently between us for a long while.
“Rocky cannot fix.”
“It’s okay, buddy.”
“Grace shout if need. Understand.”
I chuckle. “What does ‘angry’ mean for Eridians?”
Rocky emits a low note, lower than I’ve ever heard him, and raises his carapace, shaking. I laugh even harder.
“Is not funny.”
“No, no I know-“
“Need word. Scary but quiet. Not scary yet.”
“I think intimidating-“
“Grace scared. Grace no laugh.”
“Right.” I have a very good poker face. Kids do funny stuff all the time, but you can’t laugh because they’re in trouble, so I’ve developed it over the years. I straighten my mouth with much effort.
Rocky relaxes again, approaching the glassy surface. “Grace and Rocky do science now.”
“Yup, come on,” I say, pushing the urges of hunger deep down. I have taught classes on no sleep before. I have been tired. I must not get angry at Rocky. I have calories, plenty to keep me going. That’s enough. I will get to Erid. I will not starve.