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I’ve started to keep a written log of certain activities because I’m a coward and I don’t want Rocky to hear me.
A guy wants some privacy from his best friend who hears everything on the ship. Sue me.
It’s not like any of this is a secret, for the record. He’s around for literally everything so it’s not like I’m keeping anything from him. It’s just harder to say some things out loud when I know he’s hearing it all.
I suppose if you - and by you, I mean the scientific community of Earth at large - ever find this ship or I ever come back, these will be on the Hail Mary. There’s probably some psychological value to seeing how the only human to ever be this far out with only an Eridian and a robot arm for company fares with space.
Which is not great, by the way. I’m doing better than I thought I might be, given the starvation and the isolation and the knowledge that we’re headed to Erid, where I’ll probably die, all while never seeing another human again. But it’s getting to me.
Eating is becoming a struggle.
For me and Rocky, both, I guess. We’ve managed to bump up my calorific intake using a mix of the remaining coma slurry and the Taumeba (the name stuck!) but between my stomach struggling to digest the new food source and the fact that it’s absolutely disgusting, I’m doing a pretty poor job of keeping it down. I puke a third of the time and it’s getting to the point where I don't want to eat it. I know I’ll die if I don’t, so I force myself to swallow it when I can, but it gets harder every day.
I'm starving. I’m going to get a long list of awful nutrient deficits and diseases and, worst of all, I know Rocky’s going to have to watch with no way of fixing it. I already feel awful about it, but I can’t talk to him because he’ll freak out if he knows just how bad it’s going to get. So I’m typing, instead.
He's already been a big help. When the slurry gets too hard to choke down, he offers to sit with me at meal times (which is a huge deal for Eridians - he hates seeing me eat) and talk about whatever scientific projects we’re working on, just so I have something to think about that isn't how gross my meal is.
Even if no-one on Earth sees these logs, I’d like to state something for the history books anyway: Just because Eridians eat via their anus, it doesn't make it weird that Rocky talks me through eating my coma slurry.
The chats help. Mostly because it staves off the other important issue I’m tackling: boredom. Routine is great for the brain, and I love maintenance as much as the next evolved monkey, but humans start to crave diversity after a while. I thought I’d at least have a lot of fun science stuff (technical term) to do on the journey to Erid, but it turns out there are only so many theoretical papers you can write knowing they’ll never be read or peer reviewed before it starts to drive you crazy. Rocky can engineer to his heart’s (we discussed this part of his biology by the way, he does have a big physical heart alongside the ginormous metaphorical one) content, so once again, the human is proving to be the problem. Sometimes I can’t help but feel the imbalance in our relationship as Rocky bears my food related tantrums, my malnourishment, my nightmares - all while trying to keep me entertained like the universe’s most over-qualified nanny.
I try to be helpful. Besides doing maintenance and being the only one who can do EVAs, I try to help myself so Rocky doesn’t have to. I read, I watch movies, I organise nights where I choke down a pouch of coma slurry and we swap cultural information on a given topic. Last week was religion. This week might be religion again, but way, way less technical after the disaster that was last week.
But as much as I want to help, I’m smart enough to know that some conditions are literally defined as human torture. Isolation, monotony, spaces without real light or time or gravity - spaceships, really. I have Rocky, but things like touch starvation were never supposed to be a problem. I was never supposed to be the only human for millions of miles.
I’m depressed. I know it, I’m fighting it and I’m aware that the odds of me winning with it are slim to none. I could maybe pull myself out with enough effort but, ha. Effort. It's getting to the point where Rocky has to verbally goad me out of bed to do lifesaving Mary things. Part of it is lethargy and part of it, which I’d never tell him, is that it’s getting harder to care if the hull suddenly split apart and I was sucked into space. At least then I might feel something. But that would kill my only friend too, so I get up and trudge through my day while trying not to let him see how bad I’m getting. It’s a weird, enforced anti-suicide pact.
I mean, Rocky knows. He hasn’t said anything, but he checks in more often and lets me sleep for longer than usual. I thought he was just worried about malnutrition at first, but he’s literally the smartest guy I know; he can tell when something’s wrong with his roommate. But how am I supposed to explain it to him? I’m not even sure if Eridians have a concept of depression. It’s the opposite of a survival instinct. How do you tell a guy that you’ve just beaten interplanetary destruction with, that you’ve admitted to gross cowardice to save your own skin in the past, that you’re starting to think it might all have been too much of a fuss just to keep living? It makes no sense, least of all to me. But I can’t keep him in the dark about it (I suppose he is always in the dark, he has no perception of light, but I’ve made that joke before and he didn’t laugh). If it was Rocky suffering, I’d be mad that he didn’t tell me about it before it got bad. Especially with how much the guy loves to fix things.
I’ll tell him tomorrow. Or whatever we call our sleep cycles these days. I’m too tired to keep track.
Rocky has to raise his voice to rouse me. I think I hear him, his pitch low but volume high, shouting my name through the post-nap sludge. I’m treading water, exhausted before I even surface.
“Grace no wake when Rocky calls,” Rocky grumbles, “Grace ignores Rocky.”
“Not ignoring you, bud. Just didn’t hear you.”
“Rocky was shouting.”
Nothing I can say to that, really. I sigh and sit up. I feel gross. I can’t remember the last time I had a proper wash and my hair hangs greasily on my forehead. I try to imagine myself as Astronaut of the Year on the cover of People Magazine and grimace. They don’t even have that title and I still wouldn’t want me to win it looking like this. I don’t need a mirror to know that I’m going to need a shave today and I don’t have the energy for it.
“I might nap for another hour,” I say, “You don’t need to watch me.” I know he has things to do that isn’t watching his pathetic human friend fail to function. Ouch. We have hit the self-loathing portion of my mental programming, I realise.
“Rocky always watch Grace sleep. But Grace has slept for long time now. Do humans hibernate, question?”
We’d discussed hibernation during one of our topic nights. I’d shown him a David Attenborough documentary. He’d told me about a kind of oversized beetle on Erid that eats its young. Good times all round.
“No, I’m just tired buddy.”
The old ‘ just tired’ ploy? I don’t even believe it, so it’s no wonder that I get a disbelieving chirrup from Rocky.
“Pull off other limb,” he says.
“Pull the other one,” I correct, but he’s already talking over me. Human idioms are a work in progress.
“You sleep for long time already! More than normal. Something is wrong. Are you sick, question?”
I hesitate. Yes, I’m sick. Brain sick in a way I don’t think he can fix, and it might kill me faster than the malnutrition if I keep having to live the same day over and over again. But the words don’t come. It feels monumentally ungrateful to complain when Rocky has done so much to keep me alive. Most of the time he's the only bright spot of my day. I genuinely love talking to him about pretty much anything, so it feels awful to admit that I’m cracking up with only the pair of us rattling around this tin can.
“Grace not answer,” Rocky says. I’m not sure if he’s just pointing out the silence or if he doesn't need me to answer, because he already knows.
“It’s… kind of a hard thing to explain.” I say.
“Try. I am good at understanding. Grace has told me many things about human culture that Rocky understands.”
True. I had hiccups not long ago and he’d been patient as heck trying to figure those out. I sigh.
“Alright. Just don’t freak out, okay?” That one was already in our vocabulary, mostly because one of us has to be reminded during a crisis at some point.
“Rocky will not be freak.”
I pick at the blanket pooled in my lap. Thinking about it all at once feels overwhelming, so I figure I should take it a step at a time. Start with the overview, work more personally from there. If I go straight in with how I’m really feeling, it will get out of hand fast.
“You know how I said that taste is important to humans? We need different flavours to be happy with our food?”
Rocky chirps a yes. “Humans needs variety and good tastes. This is about Taumoeba, question?”
“Not just that, but a bit.” God knows I've complained to him enough about eating that nasty, gluey paste. “The variety thing applies to all of human life, not just food. If we’re stuck in the same place for a long time without change, our brains stop producing the chemicals that keep us happy. We sort of go into… shutdown mode. The brain tries to conserve energy by making us sleepy and slow and we don’t produce serotonin, which is what lets us feel happiness. The whole thing is called depression. Do you understand? Do Eridians have an equivalent?”
It strikes me that, if they do, Rocky must have experienced it on the Blip-A. There’s no chance he lost all his crew, slept alone for so many nights, and didn’t get depressed. I think about him drifting helplessly alone on his ship before I turned up. I suddenly hope against hope that Eridians are spared feeling this way. I don’t know what I’m going to do if he tells me that he’s felt the same, because I’m already too close to crying as it is.
He makes a thinking noise. “Eridians do not need change like humans,“ he says, “But sometimes, yes. Eridians sad. But never stop making chemicals we need. Brain always looking for ways to survive sadness.”
That’s something at least. I know Rocky experiences sadness and grief and loss, I’ve seen all of that, but depression as we experience it seems new to him. It makes sense. Eridians are survivalists to their core, even chemically, they’re hardwired to optimise for life. It sounds like they could be depressed about events, but never incapable of feeling joy again once the event had passed. Rocky suffered after his crew died, but he’d been able to kick back after meeting me, because his brain could process the light at the end of the tunnel.
My light feels far, far away, even with Rocky on the ship. I feel guilty for that, like I’m telling him he isn’t enough.
“Closest word is grief,” Rocky says, confirming my theory. We’d talked about grief and, while it was similar and often tangled up with our depression, it wasn’t quite the same diagnosis. I nod.
“For humans, it can also happen without any triggering event,” I say. Rocky cocks his carapace and makes a sound I hadn’t heard before, a low grumbling chord that ended on a lilting waver.
“I make new word for human depression,“ he says, “Word mix of self-grief. Grieving for self.”
It’s apt. I make a mental note to ask him to repeat it to the computer later.
“Well, that’s what’s happening to me,” I say, “I… don’t have any energy. I can’t get out of bed or do chores or want to do anything because my brain just wants to hibernate. And everything feels… blurry. Sad, all the time. I don’t want to eat or drink, or-”
I’m crying. One second I’m fine and the next, my cheeks are wet. It happens against my will as I speak, throwing me off as my throat gets choked up. My heart hurts. I feel panicked, like I’m an animal in the nature documentary I showed Rocky, and a predator has crept up behind me.
“Grace needs to eat or Grace will die,” Rocky says simply.
“I know that!” It’s not fair to yell at him but I feel like a pot bubbling over with pressure. I know I have to eat. I have to live, because Rocky can’t pilot the ship without me and I can’t strand him out here before we reach Erid, but god I can’t do this. I can't live like this anymore.
““I’m telling you that I can’t,” I snap, “My brain is broken, it won’t make the things it needs to make because this whole situation was never meant to happen! I’m not supposed to have lived this long. Even if we make it to Erid, they might not be able to fix my food and then I’m just going to starve to death anyway.”
“No. Eridians make safe place for Grace on Erid. Grace a hero, we make food so Grace not die.”
“Buddy, they might not be able to.”
“We make Grace happy and safe because Grace is friend. I make anything for Grace.”
What started as a few tears becomes a full-on sob. I can hardly catch my breath and I can see myself reflected in the clear xenonite surface, breaking down like one of my kids when they get overstimulated. Rocky shuffles, surprised by the extra leaking.
“Grace does not believe Rocky, question? Rocky will fix Grace. We start on fixing today. No more self-grieving for Grace.”
I do believe him, which is maybe the problem. I believe he really would build anything for me, if I asked. I know he’d do whatever it takes to get me healthy again, because I’d do the same for him. I’m crying because I’m not sure it’s enough.
Rocky starts with the ship environment. It’s the easiest thing to start with, I think, and something he can do while I lie in bed. I exhaust myself by crying and Rocky pressures me to lie down, boarding his little ball to nudge me back to bed. He offers a hug, quoting something about my heart rate, and I really can’t argue because it does make me feel momentarily better. Even if it’s just wrapping my arms around the xenonite, I know he’s got his carapace pressed to the wall because he wants me to know he’s there. Which is like 95% of the battle, I guess.
I drift rather than sleep, which is probably what Rocky was hoping for anyway. He doesn’t need to watch me when I’m just laying in the bed, staring at the ceiling, and I get an approximation of rest while he’s able to bounce around the ship doing god knows what. When I finally decide I’ve been horizontal for long enough, I roll off the bed and into the lab.
The Hail Mary is the tidiest she’s ever been. I’m not sure how Rocky has managed to shunt most of the carp from the floor into storage but it can’t have been easy. I also bang my hip on a chair that’s been moved too close to the door.
I realise that a table has moved, too, in the far corner. A trolley rolls past me, test tubes tinkling as Rocky uses his ball to push it across the floor.
“What are you doing?” I ask. Rocky chitters happily.
“Make new lab! Furniture in different places means new environment for Grace, not same same same.”
He’s re-arranging my enclosure like I’m a goldfish in a bowl. I’d be offended if it wasn’t actually kind of sweet. And, while the rearrangement hadn’t done much for my mood besides giving me a bruised hip, the effort kindles warmth in my chest. He’s willing to try anything and, I suppose, it’s only fair that I do too.
“Come on then,” I say, “I’ll help you move the table.”
We spend most of the day moving things around. The ship was already pretty optimised, so we don't get much extra real estate, but it feels productive. Rocky gets excited about the chance to add some new xenonite travel routes and I laugh more than I have in weeks when he starts spitballing ideas on how we could redecorate.
“More ♪♬♪♫♫! Happy sound, much more festive!” It sends us into conversations about the translation of ♪♬♪♫♫, which, as far as I can gather, is a catch-all for noisy metal trinkets used in celebration, kind of like the things Rocky wears for special occasions. Bells or wind chimes are the closest equivalent but Rocky insists I will enjoy the sound of the Eridian ones better.
“Made for listening, will make Grace happy,” he insists.
We bicker about his quarters encroaching more on my space, but there's no real bite to it. If I could, I'd have Rocky as close as possible at all times. Gone are the days when I cared about privacy. The guy can hear through walls, it's pointless to feel prudish about anything.
I realise only when we're done that it's the most activity I've done in weeks. I'm tired in a way that feels foreign, almost satisfying. The heaviness is still there, but I feel like I've earned the rest and I actually don't mind slurping down a pouch of slurry. All the movement has made me hungry and my stomach growls for more.
“Grace eats!” Rocky exclaims. He makes jazz hands and I give him a thumbs up, straw still in my mouth. I know I'll feel like I got hit by a bus tomorrow morning, but it's worth it.
At least, mostly worth it. I still stub my toe on the newly relocated food cabinet.
The warm fuzzies last all of twelve hours. I logically know that one fun day won't cancel out the monotonous depression that had been building for months now, but I was hopeful for a bit more respite.
Rocky takes a sleep cycle after me and the silence is agonising as I watch him sleep. I try reading a book on the tablet library but give up after reading the same sentence six times and retaining nothing. The thoughts creep back in, cruel and quiet.
Remember that time Rocky nearly died saving you? My brain decides to take me on a joyride down memory lane, like it had run out of things to beat me with in the present. He might not wake up, one day. You'd be alone. You let him move all that xenonite yesterday, knowing that one mistake could kill you both.
I'm being ridiculous. I don't need another human being around to tell me that. I trust Rocky's engineering more than I trust anything in my life, I know he'd never mess up something so simple, but depression never listened to reason. I bury my head in my hands and try to ignore myself.
When Rocky wakes up, I check the clock to realise four hours have passed and I've wasted three of them staring at the wall. I flush, hurrying to stand and look like I'd been busy doing... something. Functioning. Rocky trills sleepily.
“Grace is okay?” He tilts his carapace at me.
“Yeah. Fine. Just... just watching you sleep, buddy.”
I feel like trash lying to him. My brain takes it out on me for the rest of the day.
“Grace not okay,” Rocky says. It's been a couple of days since the spring clean. A week? I have no idea. Rocky has brought me to the Don't Go Crazy room because seeing the sea fog rise over the waves once in a while is the only thing that gives me any kind of feeling. Usually crushing, painful homesickness and longing, but feeling nonetheless.
“I'm okay.”
“Not question. Grace not okay, statement.”
I hate making him worry. I hate feeling like this. I hate that this ever happened to me and I'm not on Earth, where I was supposed to be all my life, and I hate that I think that when I love Rocky more than I've loved anyone. I want to be here, with him, on the Mary or on Erid. But I also miss Earth so much it hurts. I hate the coma slurry and the dirt taste of the Taumoeba and the tenderness forming in my gums. I hate feeling empty.
“We talked about it,” I sigh, “It's just how I feel now. It won't kill me.” Probably.
Rocky crouched low, making a displeased sound. “Beach helps?”
We're watching the gulls circle the cliffs. I know the loop so well that I turn my head to catch the precise moment a cormorant dives into the water to catch a fish. I feel emptied out onto the sand.
“A real beach maybe,” I say, “This is nice but... it's not real.” I wonder if he can hear the homesickness in my voice. I hope he doesn't feel offended, given how kind it is that he's making a home for me on his planet.
He wiggles in response. “When Grace reaches Erid, we make beach.”
I blink at him. “What?”
“Yes. Eridians make whatever Grace want. Will take time but we make Grace happy on Erid.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting from my new home. I suppose I haven't thought much beyond the crushing lack of food and the even more crushing atmosphere, and had just assumed I’d be living in something like the Hail Mary, with maybe a touch more comfort. I’m grateful enough that the Eridians might synthesise food that won’t leave me with scurvy. But now Rocky is talking about beaches and outdoors like it’s possible. My throat closes with emotion.
“I don’t - that’s… that’s too much..”
“Not too much. Happy to make Grace happy.”
“No, that’s - they’d need to make sand and a lot of sea water, Rocky. And temperature, tides, it’s a whole ecosystem -”
“Yes. Eridians make for you. Grace deserves happy place to live. If Grace cannot live on Earth, we make Earth on Erid for Grace. Earth, with Rocky.”
Earth with Rocky.
I think about the day I asked Stratt if she believed in God. I think heaven, if I believed in it, or that I’d get there after all my cowardice, sounds like my favourite place on Earth with my best friend in the whole universe. My eyes get hot with tears. Rocky hums a low sound, understanding and warm.
I know he’s read up on depression while I’m not around. How would he know otherwise that hope was the best way to help me?
The days are still long. Rocky watches my sleep schedule carefully, sing-songing to me when I can’t sleep and asking the computer to play godawful disco music when I struggle to leave the bed on a morning. It’s not perfect, but it works more often than not.
He shows me a dance from Erid and I show him the Macarena when he asks if there were any cultural Earth dances. I catch him doing the steps when he thinks I’m not looking.
At some point, I go through a phase where eating becomes a harder struggle. I can’t face swallowing down the Taumoeba slurry without gagging, to the point that I start to think I’d developed an intolerance, until I realize it’s simply deep, psychological repulsion. It never stops tasting like battery acid and warm, wormy dirt.
Rocky sits me down one day and nudges a metal trolley my way. It has four sample dishes of Taumoeba slurry lined up.
“Rocky-” I start.
“Grace not eat in three days,” he interrupts.
“I can’t. Rocky, I can't, not today. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“Grace eats today.” I can hear in his tone that he’s trying to keep it light, but there’s a reediness to the notes. It kills me that I’m scaring him, but the thought of choking down another slimy, grey meal makes me want to scream myself hoarse.
“Do you want to watch me throw up again?” I ask. It’s a low blow. If he hates watching me eat, seeing me throw up is so much worse. I feel bad using it against him, especially knowing how much it frightened him, but I’m willing to play dirty if it means I don’t have to face eating again. It’s slowly killing me, but I can’t help wanting to drag out the days between disgusting meals.
Rocky shudders. It’s less of a Grace being silly again movement and more of a I’m choosing not to hear that. Fair. I’m being a bad friend, I know. The sight of the Taumoeba repulses me enough not to backtrack.
“Rocky will watch Grace throw up if needed,” Rocky says primly, “Or Grace prefer Rocky watch Grace die? Like Rocky watch crew friends die?”
Oof. Okay, so we’re both aiming below the belt today. I wince, because I know he’s got me. The only thing I can think that’s worse than forcing another meal down my throat is asking Rocky to watch another friend fade away. I feel like the worst person in a million miles.
He gives me the grace of not waiting for my response, or my apology.
“Rocky make game,” he says. I frown. Game?
I look at the dishes lined up neatly, each one no bigger than the palm of my hand. Enough liquid to constitute a light lunch of tiny organisms. A memory appears in my mind, perhaps more an amalgamation of movies I’d seen on the Hail Mary than my own, of red plastic cups and college essay submission sites at midnight.
“Is this - Rocky, did you make a drinking game?”
“Yes yes yes! The speaking computer gave idea!”
“You read the Wikipedia page for drinking customs?”
Rocky bowed up on his legs, clearly proud of himself. I laugh out of shock more than anything. I can’t believe this ridiculous, wonderful, caring alien would do something so… I struggle to describe it. I wonder if the Eridians have a word for desperate that lacks the negative connotations. This was the kind of left-field, odd thinking that only comes out of desperation, in situations where your best friend hasn't eaten in days and is slowly starving to death. Love to the point of invention, engineer style.
“You made a drinking game to get me to eat?”
“Yes, good game. Called never ever ever,”
It’s a genuine laugh this time. “I think you mean ‘never have I ever’,” I correct him, “You say something and, if the other person has done it, they have to drink.”
I can see where this is going and I'm not sure I like it, but I can't deny that it’s a lot more fun than trying to slurp dirt through a straw on my own.
“Yes! Rocky will say things, statement.”
“Usually you take it in turns.” I know he won’t agree to eat in front of me. I wouldn’t wish the slurry on him, anyway, so I expect it when he makes a snorting noise and sets me straight.
“Next game, Rocky say statements this game.”
Which is how I choke back four dishes of slurry in one sitting. I barely mind, which is monumental in itself, and I even find myself laughing when Rocky pointedly gives me statements he knows I’ll have to drink to.
“Grace is only human to visit Adrian,” he says. I grin.
“That’s not - you have to say ‘never have I ever’ and then something you think the other person might have done.”
Rocky grumbles. “Fine, never has Rocky ever been outside ship in suit,”
I scowl playfully but pick up a dish. It still tastes like the end of a battery, but it feels weirdly easier. I could knock the sludge to the back of my mouth and pretend the taste was the sharp, brittle bite of alcohol. I consider finding Ilyukhina’s vodka but I’m enjoying Rocky’s company so much that I don’t want to.
“Never has Rocky ever used two legs to walk,” Rocky says.
And so it goes, until I manage to finish off all of the dishes. My stomach still feels like rebelling and there’s a dire taste on my tongue, but my cheeks hurt from smiling and Rocky is still firing off ridiculous never-have-I-evers.
“Thanks buddy,” I tell him, leaning back in my seat with a warm ache in my ribs, “I needed that.”
“No thank, Rocky glad Grace has eaten. Grace needs more food to be happy healthy.”
“Yeah. But thanks for, you know. For looking out for me. Think I needed that more than the food.”
He chirps warmly, rocking his ball a little. “Rocky needs Grace too, needs for a long time.”
I smile, even if I groan internally, resigning myself to a long, long time of Taumoeba slurry. I mean, how can a guy say no to something like that?