#phm scribbles

The strange woman—Eva Stratt—is waiting for an answer. Inviting him, apparently, to… Be the first person to look at the Arclight sample from the Petrova line—to take the first human glimpse of the space dots that everyone had seen broadcast worldwide.

Grace has to admit… He is tempted. Proving that the space dots are not water-based lifeforms—that he was right? That is catnip to the bitter animal that still lives in Denmark, circa 2018.

But that is the problem, isn’t it? Grace isn’t that person anymore.

After a minute more of hesitation, he sighs. “No,” he says, finally. “I—Look, I don’t—I’m not the right person for this. Get someone more qualified to make first contact.”

He unlocks his bike. Stratt looks at it, then looks back at him

“I’m sorry, Dr. Grace,” she says, in a way that makes him feel like maybe she isn’t sorry at all, actually. “I wasn’t… Really asking.”

It is that moment that Grace’s situational awareness finally kicks in. Boy, there’s a lot of black SUVs in the school parking lot today! Idiot. He turns and realizes that there are big guys in suits—he knows Secret Service when he sees them—and uniformed Marines standing at his back, and at every nearby door. There’s the gleam of a sniper on the roof.

Grace turns back slowly to look at Stratt. She shrugs, half-smiles. “I need you to come with us.”

“Who are you, anyway?” Grace says from the backseat of the SUV he was ever-so-politely herded into. Stratt is sitting in the front passenger seat—from what he can tell, she is on a laptop. Ain’t no rest for the wicked, he supposes, but come on. If she’s going to kidnap him, she may as well pay some attention to him.

She turns slightly to look at him. “Eva Stratt,” she says, lifting her tone a little at the end like he is asking a question so stupid she doesn’t even know how to respond. “I’m with the Petrova Taskforce?”

Great. Thanks for the new information.

Grace sighs dramatically and pulls his phone out of his pocket. The agent sitting next to him doesn’t seem bothered by it, so he keeps going. Awesome. He has enough autonomy still to use Google.

“Eva… Stratt…” he says aloud as he types. Stratt stays turned around enough to watch him. He thinks she might be… Bemused? Her expression doesn’t really give much away. “Aaand… Search.”

“Are you googling me?” Stratt lifts one thin eyebrow. Grace decides that if she won’t answer his questions, he doesn’t have to answer hers.

The very first result is an article from The Atlantic, nine days old. Grace reads its title aloud. “Who is Eva Stratt, the newly announced…” He looks up at her, both of his own eyebrows comically raised, then holds his phone up to show her. “Who is Eva Stratt? Let’s find out!”

Stratt rolls her eyes and turns back to her laptop. Grace turns his phone back to himself.

“Look,” he says. “If you’re going to sweep me off in a car to the middle of nowhere, California, then I’m going to entertain myself on this—what, two hour car ride?”

“Do whatever you want,” Stratt says, unbothered. Grace frowns and looks down at the article.

“Chair of the Petrova Taskforce,” he says aloud. “Wow, you really undersold that. With, Eva?” Stratt says nothing. Grace keeps reading. “Former Director-general of the European Space Agency, that’s pretty cool. Architect of the Arclight probe…” He trails off.

His eyes jumped ahead too far. The next paragraph helpfully informs him that Eva Stratt and Eva Stratt alone commands a level of global authority never seen before in human history—the military might (and budgets) of at least 27 nations, including the U.S., China, and Russia—and full legal authority and immunity of the United Nations.

“Wow,” he says faintly. “You’re, uh, pretty powerful, huh?” He laughs, and she does not. She doesn’t answer him, either. For goodness sakes, he made a knock-knock joke at her. “Elected by secret vote… Uh. Wow.”

“So,” Grace says one day, laying on the floor in the lab. There are many useful things he could be doing with his time, but he is not. Rocky does not understand completely, but Grace has earned some inefficiencies, at this point. “Can you explain Eridian names to me, now?”

Rocky recalls their conversation when they were breeding Taumoeba. He had been short; the near-death experience they had both had was too near in mind, he had not wanted to speak about it then. But things were different now; now it was information that Grace would need.

“Eridians have many names,” he says after a moment. Grace sits up to pay full attention. “Name based on speaker, name based on audience, name based on deeds, name based on story. Have short-name and long-name. Long-name change as context change, short-name stay the same.

“We first meet, Rocky call Grace—” He hesitates. Fuck it. “Rocky call Grace stupid, because Grace was frustrating. Did not know Grace short-name is noun. Now call Grace Grace for short-name.

“Rocky is Rocky short-name. Short-name is not adjective rock-like, but have no translation, so Rocky okay. I do not mind.”

“What about long-names? Do I have a long-name?”

Rocky scuttles in a little turn. “Ahh… Long-name hard to explain. Is… Personal. When we get to Erid, Rocky will call Grace to other eridians Grace-friend-hope-of-Sol-savior-of-Erid.”

“You don’t need to—” Grace starts, waving a hand in a very human display.

Rocky cuts him off with a firm stomp. “Is important. Rocky will be Grace first introduction to eridians. Long-name has lots of meaning. I must make the right name to make the right impression.” It is like mechanics, but worse. Linguistic, cultural mechanics. Not Rocky’s strong suit.

He vents a little sigh. “Adrian would be better.”

“Your mate?” Grace folds his limbs under himself. Criss cross, he calls it. “Why would they be better?”

“Adrian is… Need word. Someone who helps with cultural exchange, knows much of many cultures and languages.”

“Anthropologist,” Grace says. “Though, I guess it wouldn’t really be anthro-anything.”

“Doesn’t matter. Works. Adrian is anthropologist. Much experience translating long-names. Rocky is engineer, has no experience.”

Grace is quiet for a minute. Then he says: “What about Adrian? Do they have a long-name?”

“Have many,” Rocky insists, stomping again. “Grace pay attention.”

“Okay, okay! Well, what do you call Adrian?”

“I call Adrian many names,” Rocky says, then pauses. His next words, after a moment, are a little lower. “But I like to call them… Adrian-life-partner-with-grace-and-kindness.”

“I hear my name!” Grace’s body language shifts up. This means excitement. Rocky vents again, but his carapace raises too.

“Yes, Grace name is noun.”

The Tau Ceti team needed a mechanic. The only reason Rocky who-is-useful is here is that; he is not the smartest person on this ship and he is not the most useful. He spends most of his time alone with only Astrophage for company, though he ventures more forward along the ship when he needs to sleep or watch.

His crewmates fall very ill. The doctor aboard the ship falls ill as well, and Rocky listens carefully to the weak thrum between doctor Maebh who-lets-no-problem-go-unsolved and the scientists Xiva who-is-friendly-and-kind and Everett who-enjoys-the-company-of-small-things. They rule out the possibility of food contamination; they rule out all viruses they can think of. The whole time, Rocky's focus remains the slow leak of blood from tiny pinpricks in their carapaces, from the underside. He can hear their organs begin to liquefy and flood their crystal brains.

One by one, they fall asleep and drop out of the thrum. One by one, Rocky drags his still crewmates back to the biggest room outside his workshop (too small to fit twenty two eridians; barely big enough to fit Rocky and his equipment). He listens to them whisper their lives to him, that he may remember.