Unrepentant Fandom Trash

I mean, NASA keeps tracks of what's happening on the other planets. They know which planets are infected with the astrophage.

So they probably know that Erid is NOT infected with it anymore, which means they can come to the conclusion that Grace must have suceeded in finding Rocky.

I mean, shoot, Grace didn't even think the Eridians would pull it off. His last message was, "totally going to starve for this, bye."

(And to be fair -- the Eridians almost didn't pull it off in time.)

The presumption on Earth is probably that Grace starved saving Erid in addition to starving to save Earth like he was supposed to.

That being said, if Yao and Ilukhina hadn't died in a coma, the three of them alive wouldn't have had enough food to be sent back to Earth. Grace is only able to make it that long on the food he has because it's three people's worth. Which means the three of them either would have been not given the astrophage that Grace used to save Rocky; or else the three of them would have been packed up on Rocky's ship and waiting for Grace to magic Eridiian food into edibility (no pressure) when the whole taumoeba escape went down. Earth would have been fine, they still would have sent the beetles, but Erid would have been fucked.

Ryan Gosling as Dr. Ryland Grace

⚠️𝖶𝖠𝖱𝖭𝖨𝖭𝖦⚠️ 𝖫𝖮𝖶 𝖠𝖫𝖳𝖨𝖳𝖴𝖣𝖤

i love rocky having no natural desire or drive for touch, and i love the thought of him developing one during the trip to erid. humans need touch and rocky will move heaven and earth to give grace whatever he needs.

i can see rocky coming to resent the xenonite barrier because the lack of direct contact hurts grace. getting frustrated with himself because he knows it's not rational and that grace is being stupid stupid whenever he bumps the panels and sighs that he wishes they weren't there. want grace rocky to die painful, question?! but even after he waves grace off he sits and ponders how to make the panels thinner, more flexible, pushing the limits of eridian technology.

i can see him starting to yearn for closeness so he can cure grace's "touch starvation." the form-fitting suit was built so nothing like what happened on adrian will ever happen again and so when the hail mary starts to complain about her old age he can patch her up. but of course the moment the suit's passed rocky's stress tests grace is throwing his arms around him and rocky has a long long long long long to-do list but he'd rather rip his carapace in half than end the hug a second before grace is full.

he doesn't care about touch. it does nothing for him and means nothing to him. touch is also the single most important problem he has to solve. eridians can make food, eridians can replicate earth, but eridians can never press their carapace against human flesh.

listening to grace waste away, listening to him curl up against the xenonite, listening to him trying to hide his tears as he warbles about how he wishes things were different makes him want to break through the airlock again.

touch has no significance to eridians, but rocky still scoots closer.