Bee's Rambles

You can hate Stratt, but just remember she was also chosen to be a sacrifice.

She was chosen to be the face and voice of a project Earth would vilify in the 30 years it took to get word back if the long shot even worked.

She knew this, and stepped up.

She knew this, and chose the good of humanity over her own good name, reputation, and freedom.

Beatles come to Earth, humanity learns about taumoeba and discovers that they accidentally made first contact! With friendly rock-spider aliens! They have a little English-Eridian vocabulary, great new material, coordinates of their planet and the best fuel for spaceships, so why not make the second contact?

It takes time, but finally four or five astronauts in coma (scientists found the reason for Yao's and Ilyukhina's deaths) go to Erid.

And upon arrival they discover that Eridians' English is muuuch better than they thought and that their idol, the Earth's hero, the savior of humanity Ryland Grace is still alive!

Wtf??? He has no food??? We have posthumous memorials???

And they decide to meet with him and suddenly he:

had been eating nothing but space unicellular slime for four years,

lives in some weird place that's half zoo, half science center,

now eats human flesh burgers (his own flesh but...),

hasn't interacted with another human being in almost 30 years

hasn't had sex in over 30 years (dude, are you asexual???)

spends his days teaching little blind rock-spider aliens physics and human science and experimenting with astrophage and eridian things...

and he is totally happy about it!

He doesn't want to go back to Earth. All that he wants is to grow some of their plants on Erid! They tell him about his heroic status, about memorials and statues, and he is HORRIFIED. Ok, he saved Earth, but statues???

Crazy man.

Then they ask him how he and Rocky didn't kill each other on the way back. Like... Soviet experiments, you know?

And he looks at them as if they're the ones eating human flesh burgers and starts to list for like an hour what you can do with your best rock-spider friend and a computer with all Earth media ever created.

Bonus: Grace is autistic. It's okay, but after almost 30 years without any human contact he doesn't mask. It takes time for poor astronauts to realize that his oddities didn't caused by Erid. He's just like that.

“shhhh dw” i say as i infect you with my aroace grace propaganda

he takes a picture of yao and ilyukhina’s name patches that he’s pulled from their flight suits. another picture of the empty control room. two more pictures of the view from outside the airlock — the vastness of space and the twinkle of stars.

when rocky shows up, he’s found a much more interesting subject to photograph. he’s got some pictures of the alien tinkering with something, giving him a thumbs “up” (“no, that’s down”) or jazz hands. rocky can see him holding something up, can hear the click of the shutter and the whir of the internal components that spit out the photo, but grace has to explain the entire concept to him.

“we take photos to remember things,” he says.

“human brain weird,” rocky replies. “can remember some things, but not all. eridian remember all.”

grace’s collection grows. pictures of rocky in his enclosure, goggles and gloves drawn on the clear xenonite. rocky sleeping and grace in the corner, holding up a peace sign. rocky moving across the tunnel in the lab so quickly he’s just a brown blur.

he’s still got some film by the time they make it to erid. he documents the progression of his ecosphere on the alien planet, from tiny bubble to full on habitat. he’s got a picture of him and rocky, standing proudly in his new and improved life support suit. rocky and adrian, standing by the water. his first class of students, standing behind him in their celebration clothing for the first eridian-human graduation ceremony.

rocky will occasionally sneak away his favorite photos to transcribe them onto small stone slabs that line the walls of his home with adrian. in each of the pictures, there are noticeable changes to grace — more grooves in his face, a dip to his posture.

when grace’s eyes can no longer see light, rocky gifts him with one of these slabs. it’s a picture of grace flanked by rocky and adrian. in front of them is a smaller eridian, half the size of its parents, its carapace made up of marbled grey and brown stone. grace is laughing, watching as the young eridian tries to find its footing in the life support suit.

grace traces the grooves of the stone with his fingers.

“it’s us,” he says. “it’s a picture of us.”

“it is memory,” rocky replies. “for grace.”

They get to Erid and they finally have a chance to get some much needed space from each other, but they realize very quickly that they Don’t Want That. It’s scary to leave your favorite leaky space blob alone because he’s so soft and fragile and he has zero self preservation instincts and you feel this need to be with him at all times to fix something if it goes wrong. And it’s scary to watch your best friend walk away from your dome and disappear into the darkness of his planet cause the last time you two parted ways he came dangerously close to dying a slow and painful death. But Rocky can't be with Grace in his dome 24/7 and it's not exactly easy for Grace to follow Rocky around outside, so I feel like there’d be a big struggle with that, at least at first.

Grace sleeps too often for Rocky to be there to watch every time, and that Stresses Rocky Out. And Grace, far too often, wakes up from nightmares and has to remind himself through shaking breaths and a heaving chest that Rocky not being there doesn’t mean something bad happened. Grace can’t help but be filled with disproportionate relief when Rocky comes to visit, and vice versa. They spend as much time together as possible, and it’s a balancing act for Rocky, dividing his time between Grace and Adrian.

And then Grace and Rocky managed it WHILE Grace was slowly dying of malnutrition.

I know if rocky could sweat he would be DRENCHED as they got closer to Erid, trying to come up with a polite way to tell Grace that he's been trolling him on Eridian culture this entire time

Grace only recently got food that tastes okay. the dome is as comfortable as the eridians could make it, but its not a hyper-realistic recreation of earth. the gravity of Erid hurts grace. there's still a literal wall between him and the people (person) he cares about.

the chapter title is notated in eridian numbers

grace fully thinks in eridian numbers now actually

IT'S BEEN 16 YEARS. HE'S 53.

he eats his own cloned muscle tissue and calls it a meburger. hannibal lecter who. (i'm gonna be honest my dad told me this one as we walked out of the theater and i fully thought he was lying)

cane user grace. he means everything to me

he's fully fluent in eridian so rocky speaks to him completely fluidly. and also swears.

after SIXTEEN YEARS eridian scientists discover that sol has returned to full luminosity