the anxiety bed

Like, this mindset makes everything that happens in the story absolutely hilarious, in particular the whole first interactions bit.

From Rocky's point of view he sent a simple model of the local star systems to indicate where he was from hoping these new creatures would indicate where they were from. He put it in a protective cylinder and sent it over to the ship. Something enormous climbs out of a hole in the side of their ship... Wait, did one of the creature go OUTSIDE its ship in a a god damn plastic bag just to catch it??? I better aim it at where it came out of so it doesn't do that again. Then when the cylinder gets back, the creatures have indicated where they're from by attaching a lollypop stick with chewinggum to the model... which has mostly fallen off in the heat. Also they put distilled fire in the cylinder???

The creature then climbs outside its ship, again, chiseled a lump of its ship with a hammer so it can send you a sample so you can join to it and... its made of thin sheets of soft lead???

Then on finally talking to this large creature he realises it's incredibly delicate like a jellyfish, so god damn stupid, has essentially no memory, and cant do basic maths. And you're supposed to be saving you're entire civilisation with this squishy idiot. But then a while later it turns around and explains relativistic time dilation and background radiation like its something he should have figured out already.

Ive heard multiple people describing Rocky seeing Grace like the equivalent of a dog, but he's really is more like hes a three and a half year old blind jellyfish. Its living in a frozen semi-vacuum of highly explosive gas, can't remember anything, needs to nap constantly or it becomes noticeably more stupid, and it's here to save the world.

"Hate.... Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live...."

- Quote A.M. from Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream