Lurking and Reblogs

Lesson #4 buoyancy

For those interested specifically it is:

• Freshwater: ~ 1.00 g/cm3

• Seawater (Saltwater): ~ 1.025 g/cm3

• Average Human Body: ~ 0.985 g/cm3

Lesson #1 Prervious Lesson

Thank about it. Rocky's a spitfire and bounces off the walls at baseline and they looked at that little autistic, bossy ball of energy and went 'yes. that's them. the creature I want to spend the next 500+ years with'. They have to at LEAST match their energy somewhat. And if you think you wouldn't be a fucking ball of PTSD and bitterness at your culture and society after fifty plus years of not knowing they were alive or dead, you're fucking operating on moon logic. Honestly, Adrian and the other families were probably begging for a rescue mission that never happened for various political and logical reasons; and while it probably would have ended in mass fatalities as well, so thank goodness that figurative and literal ship never got off the ground, the fact that it didn't happen probably burns more than a little, reasonable or unreasonable.

So one day Adrian gets some Eridian diplomat on their doorstep, and they're expecting the formal condolences at long last, but instead they go into this whole spiel of ' so. So! Turns out twenty two of the original crew died, but your mate survived! When did they die? Oh, early on, so your mate was submerged in crippling and literal deafening loneliness for over four decades; and now he's back and acting weird, and he's become codependent with this weird fragile squishy human being that's the only reason he came back at all, and he's refusing to send down the cure unless we make the blob an aquarium. Could you come to the space elevator and tell him to stop being so unreasonable?' If that were MY mate? I'd fucking lose it.

Just throwing things at this poor messenger and shrieking like " Oh! Oh!! So it's somehow Rocky's fault that you're refusing to take a few months out of the several hundred Eridian years we have left to ship the cure we already have to Threeworld before things actually become problematic to make sure one of the two saviors of our entire species doesn't die?! To give the sole survivor of the mission--my mate, who's been alone and in silence, with no one to watch him sleep, for hundreds of years--some sort of solace and peace?! And you're wondering why he's acting erratically?! Maybe you wouldn't be in this position at all if you'd sent the rescue mission for which we've pleaded for years at every single thrum! I don't care if this Grace thing is a literal giant space amoeba; get the fuck out of my house and tell the powers that be to give it literally everything it wants and needs!" And they're all 'be reasonable' and Adrian's like " I've been reasonable for hundreds of Eridian years, and you would not be in this situation if you'd actually sent a rescue mission and not simply wrung your claws and hoped for the best, so fucking live in the nest you made. All I'm going to do if you get me on the radio with Rocky right now is tell him he's doing amazing and give him advice on how to properly parboil the Taumoeba so that you can't even recover even the slightest scrap of DNA if you don't give the flesh blob that saved his life and saved OUR lives PLURAL goddamn vitamins." Like, they think it's bad that Rocky basically stands over Grace's sleeping body and hisses? Wait until they get the MUCH LARGER ERIDIAN doing that for Grace and Rocky. Wait until the much large Eridian leads the families of the dead twenty-two crewmates to the space elevator to riot because this sure sounds like a coverup to them!! This sure sounds like the deflection of blame on the sole survivor!! This sure sounds like the same paralysis that left them to die alone in space because you didn't want to admit failure!! Yes, I know, I'm weaving some sort of political intrigue plot that probably doesn't exist in canon. All I'm saying is that you all are missing the delicious implications of a mission that went radio silent for fifty plus earth years with no word from the government and no obvious attempt at rescue, followed by your partner coming home with the only being that's been around to watch him sleep since the rest of the crew died forty-some years ago, and people are calling him weird and changed. You'd be horrified. You'd be sick.

Ryland's first class is about to graduate from "primary" education, and they're all headed to specialization. Some will come back to study with him at a graduate level, essentially, but most need their secondary education with their peers as a focus.

It's also common that they all started acquiring "human" nicknames as they were in his class. Almost immediately on Day 1, they scrambled home to tell parents about Teacher Grace and the cool things he showed off. What they have been nicknamed and what the meanings are.

They're his first class, and he wants to sends them off well.

After trying to figure out what to do, he gets an idea from Eridian culture combined with some Earth classics. He recruits Rocky and gets to work.

On the last day of class, the students show up to find thread and little bowls of beads all about. Eridian letters carved into the surface of some, English letters in others. Stars, moons, mathematical symbols, and more.

Ryland explains the concept of friendship bracelets. He knows Eridians have special jewelry often as part of their culture (courtship, marriage, birth, major life events) and wanted to give them a human version of it. He made sure that each get a packet with their human names as beads, but he leaves the rest to them.

The class adores it, and they make Teacher Grace make one with them. They pick out the Eridian letters for his name and he adds a "year 1" to the necklace. Everyone leaves the class with the coveted gifts.

It becomes tradition. Every class that graduates makes a Charm Necklace with, at minimum, their Human Nicknames on the strands. Ryland makes a new one each year, with later years bringing chips from molted carapaces as beads for Ryland to add.

(When Ryland passes, all of his students come to his memorial wearing their necklaces, tracing out worn and new beads with reverence and love.)

(It continues to be tradition, old students stepping in where Ryland left off. Students who never knew Ryland still find Nicknames along the way, and they make their necklaces as their predecessors had.)

(And, years on, when humans and Eridians bridge the gap of space, humans are a little surprised to see the envoy wearing a necklace with a human word on it. The Eridians have a more advanced version of the translator, thanks to continued work, but, they explain, it was a tradition. Those of Ryland's class and beyond created these necklaces, and they wear them now in honor of him as they meet more of his species.)

(And then, at the end of the talks, once humans and Eridians make their bond official, the Eridians offer necklace and bead supplies and packs of Eridian letters. Just as Grace taught them before, as a token of friendship and care, so, too, do the Eridians do now - bestowing their new friends with Eridian names, carrying them in the form of Friendship Necklaces.)

And, to everyone's utter astonishment, it kind of works. Because he's stupid. Because someone points out something that's not working—there's a park on Fortieth Street that got closed down because of broken glass, for example—and instead of understanding the system, which mostly says, "So sad, but we can't do anything about that," he starts talking about it.

"We should clean that up and reopen it." Very nice thought, Mayor Wayne, but the budget isn't there. "Well, we subtract money from here and move it over here." That's the police department, Mayor Wayne, we can't do that. "It's just a little bit, they'll never miss it, and anyway, if teens have somewhere to shoot hoops—do kids say that these days, shoot hoops?—they won't break anyone's windows and the police will have less trouble anyway." Mayor Wayne, that's just one stop from the Narrows, the young men in question are more likely shooting rival gangs, and anyway, cars coming by will throw glass there anyway.

For a bare moment, Mayor Wayne suddenly seems—sharp. Knife sharp. "Kids."

"What?" the city council member says, startled.

"If they are fifteen and sixteen and seventeen, they are children."

"I think the police that they take shots at would disagree, sir."

"We'll look at that next."

It really shouldn't seem like a threat, and yet.

Back to vacuous. "We can build a fence," Brucie Wayne says, "to make it harder to throw bottles into the park. Not too big, we don't want it to be forbidding, but just enough to stop it from looking like a target. And put more trash cans in, recycle too—there weren't trash cans to start with? Well, there's your problem!" He beams, as if he's solved something. "We can put together a community initiative to keep it cleaned, maybe have the Parks people bring some snacks or things for everyone who participates. Make a party out of it! And if we're transferring more money, which we'll have to, we might as well renovate it too. New paint on the things that are still within code, new equipment with new materials for the stuff that isn't, and we might as well put some things for the older kids—we can hire someone to draw up a proposal, I don't know what kids do these days but it has to be more than just one basketball hoop with out a net. Tiddlywinks?" For an instant, it looks like his eyes might cross from that lone, bouncing neuron being stuck in a corner, which entirely distracts the council member from the fact that Brucie Wayne is too young for tiddlywinks also. "And some sun protection and trees, that'd be nice too, don't you think. We can do it! This is Gotham, it's the City of Opportunity. John, it's been lovely talking to you, but I had a peek at your calendar and I think you've got something at twelve—unless you can think of more stuff to spend money on?"

John cannot.

Six months later, the local gangs claim that the fucking Bat came out of retirement to tell them that Willow Park (it still doesn't have any willows, but it has saplings that may at least become trees) is neutral territory, on pain of pain. The truce seems to be holding. There is new equipment, new paint, a new cleanup day, and new foliage.

Bruce Wayne's closest confidants are hopeful, but weirded out by the fact that he seems to be smiling—not Brucie smiling, but actual smiling.

the procedure to remove me is medically and legally a late term abortion. i was aborted, and it saved my life. if they hadn’t aborted me, my mother and i would both be dead, my siblings would have been left with a dead mother, and i would have never even gotten a chance to live a single day. and now, people are being denied this procedure and dying because it’s literally an abortion!! mothers and their babies are being killed because their doctors are not allowed to perform life-saving abortions.

on the same note, my sister was recently denied an abortion. which is to say, cleaning out the already dead fetus after she had a miscarriage from a wanted pregnancy. they refused treatment unless the DEAD fetus was actively killing her, because the procedure to remove it is medically and legally an abortion. they basically said to her “come back when you’re dying of an infection or sepsis or something, until then you just have to bleed out.” my sister could have died from this, people HAVE died from being denied abortions after having a miscarriage. if she was one of these people, my sister would have been dead, my mother would have to live the rest of her life without her daughter, and my nephew would have had to live the rest of his life without a mother.

read it, now read it again.

this procedure is an abortion from a legal and medical standpoint. laws that target "abortion" include this and more.

miscarriages are abortions ffs

and Shirley Exemptions are no way to protect anything

They straight up do not care that people have, will, and continue to die. Especially the 'wrong' kinds of people.

And keep in mind the people signing these bills, rich mfs that they are? They'll always ALWAYS have access to getting their mistresses, daughters, anybody THEY want, to get an abortion.

They had a woman come in maybe 2 months after Roe v Wade was overturned. She was a day or so post-miscarriage. It was her 2nd miscarriage. She and her husband had been trying for YEARS. They were paying THOUSANDS for fertility treatments and thought it would work this time. She was sobbing. Her husband was sobbing.

But more importantly... they came in because she had just collapsed and was having bouts of dizziness.

An ultrasound my friend performed confirmed 2 things:

She had had an incomplete natural evacuation. There was still a fair amount of tissue in her uterus, which would definitely be decomposing by that point (the uterus is not a sterile environment).

There was no heartbeat. None. Not a single contracting cell.

They called Legal, because they knew exactly what was going to happen. This woman, unless given an artificial evacuation (aka... an abortion), would become septic. Legal said, "You can't until her vitals drop. In the eyes of the law, if she could technically pass the tissue naturally until the moment before you intervene, you have performed a medically unnecessary abortion. Anyone who assists will be stripped of their medical credentials and put on trial for murder, and the hospital cannot defend you and will not be held responsible."

There was nothing the woman or the family could sign. There was no loophole. My friend went over the vitals collected by her nurse all night, but she hadn't crashed yet. Just slowly became more and more delirious from the infection spreading from the dead tissue. The only medications they could even give to ease her suffering were meds/doses approved for actively pregnant women.

Her husband could only sit there and watch.

When the woman's blood pressure suddenly dropped, they rushed her into the OR for the evacuation/abortion, which they'd had prepped for her. At that point, my friend's line of care was over. The doctors who took over the case said she was being recommended to internal surgery because her uterine tissue has started going necrotic as well, and would need to be removed.

This meant her chance to have her own baby would drop to almost nothing.

Before Roe v Wade was overturned, this would have been an upsetting in-and-out trip to the ER after a terrible, terrible day. My friend barely would have batted an eye after the 5 minutes of sympathy she could have afforded before moving to the next patient.

But because it happened after, this woman lost her baby, nearly lost her life, and permanently lost any ability to carry a child to term in one long, shitty, horrific weekend. Infections like that are extremely damaging to the body as well; she may have permanent side effects.

FOR DEAD TISSUE. Dead. The baby was dead already. It was already gone. It was so dead and gone that it was ROTTING inside her.

While much less damaging, my friend and her team were permanently scarred by this event. She'd been in this small town ER for almost a decade by that point, she went through the COVID shutdown in that hospital, she's seen UGLY, haunting things and told me the HIPPA versions with a completely straight face.

She could barely get the words out on this story. She choked on the guilt. She cried, and she'd never cried over a medical story to me before.

I told a Pro-Life woman this story once. I told her, "If your daughter has complications with her pregnancy, you have to get her to [state where abortion is legal] immediately, no matter what it costs. This is what is happening here."

She cried. She cried just hearing about it, third-hand. Because of course she did. It's horrifying. It's undeniably WRONG.

And when she claimed that this must have been some cruel twist of a law taken too far, some unfortunate, unforeseen side effect... I reminded her that this is what was happening before Roe v. Wade, and in living memory of the Supreme Court and sitting members of congress. Because Roe v Wade was ruled on in 1973. And those old fucks all remember 1972.

They just don't care about making exceptions, because exceptions mean loopholes to them, and what's the trauma of a few unknown nobodies to politicians when they have their pearls to clutch and votes to secure?

(Longish read, spoilers for Project Hail Mary under the cut)

I wanted to make a gifset ... but nothing would do this scene justice.

--

I looked at the readout for my latest blood test and sighed.

"New problem, question?" Rocky asked. We were about ninety days out from 40-Eridani's heliopause, and it seemed like new nutritional problems were popping up every day. Probably from me mixing more taumoeba into the coma slurry to make it last longer.

"Yes," I said. "Apparently I'm becoming anemic."

"New word, question?"

"Anemic. Means my body isn't getting enough iron."

"♪♫♪♩♩♬!" he said, his carapace shooting up. "I fix!" He scampered off down toward the dormitory.

I stared at where he disappeared into the floor. That... sounded a lot like him giving me his word for "anemic". But that couldn't be it. We haven't discovered any overlap of nutritional needs of humans and Eridians, besides a base need for glucose and proteins. And what did he mean by "I fix"?

In retrospect, I really should have seen what was about to happen. However, the brain fog from my various nutritional deficiencies was really starting to settle in, so I just continued to stare in confusion.

I was startled out of it by Rocky yelling. "Grace! Come to airlock! Grace!"

He continued to call my name and pester me even as I moved toward the ladder, and I know he can see me moving. "Alright, alright! I'm coming!"

As I got down the ladder, Rocky became even more frantic, tapping on his side of the airlock. Inside was what looked like some sort of pouch. "Take, take!"

"It has to cool down first!"

"Is cold. You take!"

How long was I staring at the wall, that whatever it was had already cooled nearly two hundred degrees? "Alright, I take!"

I took the pouch from the airlock, and opened it. Inside was a bunch of... metal chips? Each one was about the size of the tip of my pinkie finger. "Rocky, what is this?"

He tilted his carapace in a way I've come to recognize as pride. "Is Eridian supplement. Cannot make you vitamins on Hail Mary, but have iron. Eat, before react with oxygen in you air!"

It took a second before things clicked into place. "Wh- Oxidation doesn't happen that quickly-" I shook my head, dislodging the errant thought. "Rocky, I can't eat this."

"Why not, question? Does not have thallium, or mercury, or any other 'heavy metals'," — yes, he did the air quotes, with three hands — "is just iron."

"Just because it won't poison me, doesn't mean my body can use it. It needs to be in... certain salts... I think." That sounded right, but information recall was becoming extremely difficult these days. I picked up one of the chips; it's very thin. "I might even have to worry about this cutting up my intestines..."

Rocky was uncharacteristically silent for a moment, so I looked back up at him. He was staring at me (don't ask how I know he was staring, I just do) in disbelief. Then he threw up two arms in exasperation. "Human body useless!"

But for a few years (cough, decades, cough), a baby pebble is about as hard as a soft-shelled turtle—or a normal turtle, if they're a bit older. Disadvantages aside, there is an advantage to being able to see your offspring's internal functions. And until their vocal bladders form and they're capable of making multiple complex sounds, being able to see what is hurting is absolutely helpful.

It's a universal experience among parents to lament the day they can no longer hear their pebbles' heartbeats.

That is to say, Rocky knows Grace is an adult, okay? He isn't someone who anthropomorphizes, and he isn't going to start now. Statement.

But when he first heard Grace in all his squishy glory— heart pumping away, lungs filling and deflating, organs digesting food— his brain went full baby-fever mode. Frankly, he was white-knuckling the urge to find the nearest hypothetical cave, bundle him up into a proper nest, and wait for his skin to absorb the surrounding minerals and start hardening properly.

But because Rocky is sensible and proper and not going to infantilize his best friend (he swears to God, stupid fucking instincts, shut the fuck up!!), he won't.

But sometimes the urge to squish his best friend is overwhelming. He just pinches at him through the permeable mesh of his ball. And Grace will screw up his face (so soft) and go what’s up bud? I piss you off or something? (He learns what bruises are and sulks for half a day afterward.)

All of that aside, once again, Rocky has gotten used to Grace's heartbeat, his clumsiness, and his one-tone voice. That's his best friend, and he's smart and just as capable as any other adult. He is also the cutest fucking thing to Eridian hearing. Is he also disconcertingly alien, definitely— His size, the limbs, the head protrusion (and other protrusions), the leakiness detracted maybe. But his cluster-sibling once cooed at and brought home a pet sulphur slug because, oh my spirits, hear his squishy respiratory system and you tell me that's not the cutest thing on the planet! It blurbles, Rocky! It fucking blurbles!

So, as Erid draws closer and Rocky/Grace become more excited and stressed. (The food has yet to run out, and as good as Erid is, they need substantial help from the human side to figure out how to make proper human nutrition. And finding the right informational packs in all of human knowledge is a very big undertaking.)

Grace goes swimming! Rocky is not thrilled.

Eridians cant "hold their breath" like humans do, their vents dont close completly so water can still get in, if they fall in water they drown and die. safe to say rocky is not a fan of when grace does it for fun xD

(i got the inspo for this from this fic: Enrichment by alatarmaia4, please check it out it is so funny)

A Plot: It’s Grace’s first day teaching in an Eridian classroom! Will the students respond well to his human teaching style?

no its one of my fancy pencils :)