hi

rites of passage

closeups:

1. academia

2. teaching

Eridian music??? Can you imagine what a MASSIVE part of their culture it would be. It wouldn't be music in the way we know it, not really, but things that create interesting textures blended together for an effect. Running the line between music and art.

I imagine Rocky always has something on whilst tinkering, like a noise machine. All Grace can hear is lots of static because its quiet, but he thinks sometimes he can pick out a melody. For a species so reliant on noise, it would be comforting to have something in the background to wash over you if you're alone.

HOWEVER

it is so important to me that colt introduces ryland to jody with the twin prank?

he'd call up ryland on the weekend and be like "you know that favour you owe me? do you wanna meet jody?" and ryland would grumble about it but then show up at colt's apartment later in the afternoon.

colt would make him put on some of his clothes, and the whole time ryland is just trying to convince colt that "there's no way this is going to work, this literally hasn't worked once since we were ten, we don't even have the same haircut anymore" and colt's like "i'm all over it, i texted jody earlier that i got a haircut, this will totally work" and they bicker about it until there's a knock on the door.

ryland hands colt his glasses and colt DIVES behind the couch (ryland does not like how flippant he's being with his glasses considering he has to drive home later) to watch without arousing suspicion (be so fr colt).

okay so from what I can guess, twins aren't really a thing on Erid.

The way twins work in human biology is one of two ways. Either one egg is fertilized and it splits into two (identical twins) or two eggs are released and then fertilized (fraternal twins).

In the book, Grace describes that mating on Erid is basically laying eggs next to one another, and then one of the eggs absorbs the other. Then you can have a baby eridian in about forty two Earth Days. The book doesn't specify the number of eggs they lay at once. I guess, technically, you could have two Eridians born on the same day, if the mated pair had more than one set of eggs. Those could be fraternal twins. Two sets of eggs where one absorbs the other.

But identical twins? Like Colt and Ryland? Absolutely mind boggling.

Let us assume for a moment that Rocky could ever meet Colt. And let's skip over the part where he would definitely freak out because oh my gosh an alien, and oh my gosh my brother is alive and is friends with an alien. No, Rocky can't see that they both have those blue eyes or that blond hair, but he could sense the bone structure, probably. Hear the identical voices.

"Grace is not wearing his glasses. Grace dumb dumb dumb Grace dumb. Grace wear glasses."

"Actually, I don't need glasses..."

"Grace need glasses. Grace eyes not work. Human eyes good Grace's eyes bad."

"I'm not Ry- Grace, I'm not Grace."

"Grace crazy. Grace is Grace. Grace tall and squishy. Sound like Grace."

And then Ryland actually enters the room and Rocky reacts like those babies who have never seen their dads with their twin brothers in the same room

just utter confusion and panic

(an octave higher than normal) "TWO GRACE!!!"

"No- buddy, that's Colt, remember, I told you-"

"TWO GRACE!! GRACE CLONE! CLONE GRACE BAD"

Ryland already explained to Rocky how little humans are made, though we don't see him do so. He just says he did. But I can imagine he'd have to have a do-over lesson with him just to explain the concept of identical twins.

"Egg merge. But then split. Now have Colt and Grace"

"Yes. Exactly. Thank you."

"Colt dumb dumb dumb like Grace question?"

"No. Why does he keep saying that?"

"Colt do science like Grace, question?"

"No. I'm a stunt man."

"Not know that word."

"He works with explosions and stuff so that other people don't get hurt."

"For science question?"

"Entertainment. Movies and stuff."

first you have stratt dragging him in front of that stacked audience and making him explain his process for HIS SAKE. she didn't have to do that. at all! by the time he arrives they've reproduced his results and acquired a more in-depth, refined understanding of the process than HE has! his plywood box is yesterdays news. SHE DOES THAT FOR HIM! she makes him get up there and take credit, then takes off the pressure because the point was never the information at all. the point is that she knows a) he left his field with his reputation in shambles and a significant chip on his shoulder, and b) if she's going to keep him on the vat, she needs to integrate him into its intellectual ecosphere. and to make sure that happens, as many before me have pointed out, she puts herself in his corner and makes them acknowledge his expertise.

and then grace more or less does the inverse of this during the "what is project hail mary" scene, phrasing his questions such as though stratt were defending her thesis statement and he's there to uncover argumentative weak points and logical leaps. and the thing is, THEY needled him with questions because stratt INVITED them to acknowledge his expertise; he turns around and needles them because now he's testing their collective expertise. he's questioning their methods and outright going (smug guy voice): "you can't just build an interstellar spaceship." he could rephrase that if he cared to, but he doesn't. he hasn't yet made the leap from we're having a debate to we're trying to solve a problem together, so he's going back to being a contrarian because this is a setting where that's his default. you can't be pushed into defense if you're actively attacking theirs, can you? EXCEPT. stratt doesn't even blink because she's given this presentation a hundred times, probably more, and the final blow completely disarms him: "it's what you americans would call a- long shot?"

and he says, finally, "i get it." because oh! turns out this is not a test and nobody is actually fighting him. the sun is dying and also he lives on a boat now.

The base idea is that you learn your soulmates native language at the same rate they do. So if you have a soulmate that speaks the same language as you, you both learn the language faster. If your soulmate speaks a different language than you, then you randomly understand a different language growing up.

This is true for humans, and this is true for Eridians, but Eridians don't know they have soulmates because (as far as I know) all Eridians speak the same language so they just think they're all very quick at learning language. That's why when Rocky is slower than everyone else, people think it's a little odd but oh well, he's just picking up on the language a little slower than everyone else no big deal.

Rocky doesn't even know he understands English. Not until he meets Ryland Grace, that is.

But what about Grace? Well, everyone on Earth assumes he doesn't have a soulmate. He doesn't learn English twice as fast, nor does any language his parents plop down in front of him make any sort of sense. They think maybe he's just older than his soulmate, that happens sometimes (and familial soulmates exist, sometimes your soulmate is your child and they are able to understand your language just as well as you do).

But Grace never settles down, never has kids (unless you count his students), and never learns any other language or pick up on slang that the younger generation is using any faster than the rest of his fellow teachers. So he probably doesn't have a soulmate, which doesn't bother him that much. No, really, he's fine with it. Besides, he is really good with music, so it feels like a fair trade-off.

Grace since the moment he was plopped in front of an instrument (a drum set most likely or a xylophone) he was able to play it expertly. He was also very insistent that all instruments were really words and he could understand what they were saying. He learned his first curse word in music class because Hot Cross Buns is very vulgar, actually.

He also cannot stand most music with lyrics, as the instrumentals and the lyrics are often contradictory and don't flow well together. He likes music without any lyrics, but absolutely loathes AI music and is always able to tell because AI music is always just a bunch of nonsensical words, whereas other music always tells some sort of story (even if it's sometimes a silly one).

But yeah, Grace doesn't have a soulmate but he has a thing where he can hear words in music and can pick up any instrument really quickly, so he feels like it's a fair trade-off in life. He was never interested in a soulmate anyway, the idea that he would love someone in that way made him uncomfortable (he knows platonic soulmates are a thing but that doesn't mean that's what he expected to get, or at least he wasn't supposed to hope for that).

So Grace lives his life, helps with the Project Hail Mary Project, goes to space, loses his memory of anything, and meets an alien who he understands immediately and who also understands him back. And Grace doesn't understand at first, gets a flashback of soulmates and that he didn't have one, but then has to explain to this alien lifeform what soulmates are when he barely understands it and...

- Grace wandering around buck ass naked, singing Dancing Queen by ABBA and drinking Ilyukhina's vodka a couple days after he works out where he is.

- Grace making his first official report to announce the deaths of Yao and Ilyukhina. He apologises to their families and explains he gave them a space burial. He says he wishes he could remember them better.

- Grace floating past the camera, legs pinwheeling in the air, right after he goes into zero-g. You can hear several heavy thunks as he hits walls out of camera frame.

- Grace, very nearly hyperventilating, explaining that there's another goddamn ship out there oh my god its aliens I'm about to make first contact.

- Grace showing the camera the xenonite package, grinning like an idiot. They sent me a present!

- the general chaos of Rocky's arrival in the ball, bangs and crashes from out of frame. Where is my room, question? Rocky!

- Grace arguing with Mary, purely for the love of the game about various matters, including but not limited to: basketball, Golden Girls and frozen peas.

- An official report with Rocky in the background, making incorrect but enthusiastic movie references and waving at the camera.

Grace doing a handstand against the wall after ages of sitting down to get his blood pumping again. Ilyukhina used to do this all the time on Earth when they were in the Vat to "get the brain working again" and he picked it up. Rocky is surprised, nay horrified that humans can do that, balance their weight just so to keep themselves up. Yeah, Eridians can climb up walls with handholds but this is different.

There isnt space to run in the Mary, not really, so Grace takes up more gymnastics. He learns how to do a wonky cartwheel, half a backflip, and Rocky is amazed.

That is, until Grace shows him videos of ballerinas and gymnasts from Earth, whereupon Rocky is like "I thought you were good, but you are terrible, statement"

Rocky cannot understand smells, a concept:

- Eridian scientists and doctors doing their best to help him when they first get to Erid. A few weeks in, he's in and out of consciousness but doing better, a doctor (in a xenosuit obviously) comes in to check on him, sees he's asleep, so goes to examine him closely, because, you know, alien. Grace, who was only dozing, jerks away so fast it gives poor Dr Limestone a heart attack.

Imagine, after decades of your world becoming colder and colder, you are saved. A single Eridian, the only one of twenty three to survive, arrives in an alien ship, accompanied by a creature you can barely conceive.

Everything about the alien is so loud, hinges formed from tissue thumping and stretching in constant movement, even while unconscious. Completely organic, reliant of oxygen and hydrogen. Instead of a protective carapace, it regrows its damaged tissues. It has senses you do not, and technology so unlike your own, both able to utilise a force you have never heard of. The same force that killed almost your entire mission team. Highly adaptable, able to teach itself how to fly its ship in under a week, able to become fluent in the engineer's dialect in less than four years.

And if Erid's best engineer is correct (and there's no reason it wouldn't be), this creature not only managed to breed a predator of the warmth-taker to survive in various atmospheres, including Threeworld's, but also turned around to provide aid when it discovered that the predator could escape xenonite.

And you think: Surely, this creature which protects itself without a carapace, which sleeps so lightly and knows so much and learns so quickly, which saved two planets at the cost of ever returning to its thrum, surely, a creature so extraordinary must have a name to match

And you think: Perhaps it is strength, Mountain-Base or Lonsdaleite-Carapace. Perhaps it is intellect, Diamond-Claw or Lockpick-Mind. Perhaps it is courage, Song-Through-Silence or Path-Carver

And you think: None of these names hold the true weight of what this creature is to them. How do you describe something like that, which aids without expectation of anything in return, which risks its own life for the sake of a species it cannot touch, which performs miracles simply because it was asked.