AtAnyCost

Research

Dissertation (piss off your entire field)

Teach middle-schoolers

Be the first person to be in contact with alien life (non-sentient)

Have your dissertation (also what killed your career) be proven wrong

Kill and also breed alien life

Become expert in said life

Become first person to be in contact with alien life (sentient)

Successfully communicate and solve the universe’s biggest problem with sentient alien life

Grace discovers at some point on or after the journey to Erid that the word he's translated to 'watch' is closer to 'guard' in this context, and that while it's just a social norm nowadays, technically in doing it he's agreeing to fight off any prehistoric Eridian beasts that might attack while Rocky's sleeping.

Beasts that were the same size/bigger than Grace, were adapted for Eridian gravity and didn't need a xenonite suit to breathe.

Rocky has a lot of fun coming up with wilder and wilder explanations as to how Grace could theoretically defend him from these creatures using a combination of ingenuity and Science.

(His suggestions get a lot more elaborate after they both watch Home Alone.)

One night before bed Grace gets curious and asks how Rocky thinks he'd defend him against some Earth predator like a bear.

Rocky pauses.

“Bear is Earth creature with no carapace, internal skeleton like Grace question?”

“Yeah.”

“… If bear attack while you sleep, I hit it once and it instantly die because inefficient internal skeleton breaks into small pieces. Demonstration!”

Do you think she felt a pitching, gut-wrenching horror when she realized that he was alone?

Do you think she thought back to that day that she forced him to go, soothing herself with the reminder that he at least wouldn't be alone, and realized that, no, she not only sent him to his death but she sent him utterly alone with two corpses?

Do you think that she remembered the fact that Grace had always been forcibly alone: ostracized from his communities, humiliated into silence, and realized she was only compounding on that?

Do you think that, upon hearing about Rocky for the first time, she felt a wash of relief rather than wonder or awe or surprise?

Part 1

Part 2

They’re best friends but by both Earth and Eridian standards everyone is like “Oh wow, they’re… close-”

Like little to no cares about privacy around each other because, well, fuck you aren’t getting much of that on a spaceship for multiple years now are you?

Wherever one goes there’s a 50% chance the other will be there too.

Whenever Grace talks to another Eridian he uses some sort of portable instrument to communicate but with Rocky they just speak in two separate languages at each other. It’s like seeing someone speak to someone in only Chinese and the other person only responds back in English.

Would be funny if Eridians aren’t very touchy but Rocky is basically clingy as fuck when it comes to Grace. Always tugging on his pants like a toddler to get his attention and stuff.

Grace just using Rocky in either his ball, enclosure or his xenonite suit as a backrest while he’s grading or doing work or something, Rocky fully absorbed in his own thing. Sitting as close together as physically possible while having zero interaction with each other. Parallel play at it’s best.

These two come in a pair. Do not separate.

All of this and more, fully platonically, people wonder if they’re the world’s first weird inter solar system couple and if they’re in some weird polycule with Adrian but no, they’re just like that.

It’s just Rocky and the human he adopted as a permanent part of his family that he will spend every possible second of the rest of his short life with because he won’t be here forever and he’s not going to waste any of his time for the world.

Uber drivers can be suspended at 4.6 stars.

Lyft drivers risk suspension under 4.8 stars.

Even for apps where they don’t have a publicly stated minimum, their algorithms will bury you.

4 stars does not mean 4 stars. It means 1.4 stars.