Actually, on the note of Eridians being natural multitaskers (capable of both fully engaged conversations and complex tasks simultaneously), while humans are... Not Like That, I think the human habit of going on "autopilot" would also be totally foreign to them.
Rocky is having a conversation with Grace while he's furiously typing at the computer, going "Uh huh. Mm. Yeah." every time Rocky pauses. What a good listener Grace is today, Rocky thinks happily! No arguing, how unusual!
Then he tries to bring the topic back up later and Grace has NO IDEA what he's talking about.
"Grace agreed when Rocky said this meeting was at a good time!"
"What?! No I didn't, you literally never talked to me about this!"
"ROCKY DID. THREE HOURS AGO. EARTH HOURS. GRACE MADE AGREEABLE HUMAN NOISES AND SAID YEAH. ROCKY OKAYED MEETING WITH GRACE PERMISSION. GRACE SETTING ROCKY UP, QUESTION?"
Rocky briefly thinks maybe human memories ARE that bad — but no, Grace has never forgotten a conversation they've had in such a short timeframe before.
He is NOT happy to learn that humans are capable of certain pre-programmed responses that we can just... automatically do when our brains are elsewhere.
What do you MEAN you can fake an entire conversation without absorbing any of it? How does that even work? Why?? GRACE DIDN'T EVEN COMPREHEND WHAT ROCKY WAS SAYING. HOW can Grace give such convincing responses???? And JUST TO TRICK ROCKY INTO THINKING HE WAS LISTENING????!??!? FOR WHAT BENEFIT??????????????? WHY WOULD HUMANS EVOLVE THIS??!!??!!!!!
It sends him into a brief rage of demanding to know why human brains can't just function completely consciously on several levels "LIKE NORMAL," before begrudgingly admitting at least it's not as fucking creepy as sleeptalking.
