I love all mah spiky sons

Rocky’s gift to Grace immediately reminded me of the Voyager Pulsar Map

When Rocky gives him that little model with all the connected points and lines, Grace somehow catches on almost instantly that Rocky is from 40 Eridani. And at first i was like how the hell did he recognize that pattern so fast???

And then it clicked for me...

It visually mirrors the pulsar map placed on the Voyager probe. I'm aware they work differently because the Voyager Pulsar Map is about locating Earth in the galaxy using fixed pulsar landmarks, while Rocky’s model is just mapping local star distances from 40 eridani to systems like Tau Ceti, but it’s just cool because they’re alike in the way they both use spatial patterns instead of language to show where something is from and how to get there.

The concept is so similar that your brain immediately associates it with “location,” “origin,” “this is where i am from”

If you don't know, the pulsar map on Voyager was basically humanity trying to leave behind an address in space. If extraterrestrial life ever found the probe, the map could theoretically help them trace where it came from. It was humanity saying: hey, you found our probe. Please return to Earth!

I like to think that is why Grace understood it so quickly. Because even without language, the idea behind it is strangely universal. Every intelligent life form wants to know the same things:

And now Rocky and Adrian equally love Grace. They always argue over who gets to bring him to their work (Adrian likes to have him for feedback for the bio-dome and Rocky likes to have someone to talk to while he tinkers). They both watch over him when he sleeps and Grace wakes up to two Eridians very, very close to his face.

They’re the couple with the third wheeling friend, except they are all equally happy about the arrangement. Rocky and Adrian go on a date, just the two of them, one time and get asked by no less than six people if Grace is okay.

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??!!??!!!!!

Random Scientist: [insert physics talk]

Stratt: “please excuse me Doctor, I don’t speak nerd.”

*turns round to Grace expectantly