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“Before we had astrophage, conserving fuel was a much bigger deal, so missions to Mars were timed for when both planets' orbits are closest together, about every eight years. Probes and orbital missions don’t have as much mass, but rovers are big, so they were only ever launched in that window.” Now that the taumoeba is safe and secured and there isn’t much Rocky and I can be doing to save our planets other than wait to arrive in the Eridani system, we’re faced with a challenge perhaps more difficult than saving two worlds: finding a way to stay occupied and not kill each other during the universe’s longest road trip. Stratt’s insistence on pirating every piece of media or software ever to exist has been our salvation. With that archive as my resource, I’ve taken to spending my time teaching Rocky about everything on Earth that might be interesting to an alien, and he does as best he can to do the same for me without a library of information or any teaching experience to draw from. This week’s unit has been the history of human space exploration.
“By the time I left Earth, we’d sent six rovers to Mars. Sojourner, Opportunity, Spirit, Curiosity, and Perseverance were all sent by NASA, and the Chinese sent Zhurong.” Rocky raises a claw in an imitation of a human student. I find it ridiculously endearing, but maybe I just miss teaching. “What’s up?”
“Humans give names to things eridians do not. Spaceships, probes, rovers all have names. Some names are words I understand, some are not. What do the names mean, question? And why give ships names?”
“Humans have been making ships for longer than we’ve been travelling to space. We built ships to travel across our oceans, and we even built ships to fly through our atmosphere. Earth’s gravity is less than Erid’s, so it’s much easier for us to create enough thrust to leave the ground, and humans have much less mass than eridians, so it requires less thrust to lift a lot of us in one ship. Once we found ways to make all of that possible, flying over land and oceans was the fastest way to travel long distances across the whole planet. So humans have had a lot of ships for a long time, and we need ways to differentiate them in conversation. That’s what names are for.”
“But why names, question? ‘The ship going to that place from this place’ could work.”
“It’s… more complicated than that. For airplanes – those are the ships that fly through the atmosphere – we mostly just use numbers instead of names because there’s so many that it’s hard to come up with names. But for big, important ships, we still like to give them big, important names. Exploring Earth’s oceans, and later exploring space, is important. Humans could see the light from nearby stars and even some planets for generations before we knew what they were or how to get there. Looking up at the sky and wondering what’s out there is part of what makes us human. When we finally had the power to go see for ourselves… it’s important. It deserves an important name. Like Curiosity and Perseverance, two of the values humanity considers most important, and two of the characteristics that got us to space.”
“Understand. Amaze, how humans can see stars from Earth. Curiosity and perseverance are important to eridians as well. Good names for important things. But what about other names, question?”
“Well, sojourner is a word in English. It means a person who stays in a particular place, which is sort of fitting, because rovers… stay on Mars. It’s also the name of an important human; we often name things after important humans. Opportunity, spirit, curiosity, and perseverance are all words you already know. All of them represent big, important ideas. Zhurong is in human language I don’t speak, so I’ll have to look it up, but these things follow patterns so it isn’t hard to guess-” I pull up Wikipedia on the laptop in front of me to find the page for “Zhurong (rover).”
“Right, Zhurong is a figure in Chinese mythology. Most of the things sent to space are named after something from mythology.”
“Many new words. Explain.”
Duh. Of course Rocky doesn’t know what “mythology” means, it’s not like it’s ever come up. All my lessons about Earth’s biosphere and humanity’s history have been focused on science and engineering, because that’s where both my expertise and Rocky’s interest lay. But how am I supposed to explain the whole concept of “religion” to an alien? Do eridians even have religion? If they don’t, this is going to be even more difficult.
I sigh and try to begin. “Okay, Rocky, this is going to take a lot of new words, and keep in mind that this isn’t something I know a lot about. I can tell you the basics, but if you want more specifics, I’m going to need to take the time to research so I can do the topic justice.”
“Understand. Continue.”
“We should probably start by figuring out what we have in common. Eridians have a society and a culture and a system of morals, obviously. But did eridians ever think or talk about where those things come from? I don’t mean in a scientific sense, the evolutionary pressures that incentivize cooperation. I mean in a culture sense, why individual eridians think it’s best to act a certain way. What about other questions, like why life exists in the first place? I don’t mean how, this isn’t about science, I mean why. Does life exist for a reason, beyond reproduction? Do eridians think about what happens to an individual’s consciousness after their body dies?”
“Yes. Evolution hates death. Life that fears and avoids death survives. Intelligent life that fears and avoids death thinks about death often. Humans and eridians are both intelligent life with instincts to survive, otherwise we would not be here. Humans and eridians both think about death and after death, to cope with fear and grief.”
“Okay, great, if we have that in common it makes explaining easier. Good theory about evolution; that makes sense. The human word for thinking about these questions and developing theories is ‘philosophy.’”
“Understand. Eridian word is ***.”
“Right. So, humans have been asking these questions for a long time. We’ve also always been curious about the world around us, but we didn’t always have the science to explain it. But we still see patterns and want to explain them. So, when you combine all those factors, humans start trying to invent ways to explain the world and to explain philosophy all at once. Answers that can’t be proven with science, but still feel true on an emotional level.”
“Eridians do the same. Before we had the tools to explain nature, we had stories. Some more close to science than others, but all with emotional value.”
I’d love to learn more about that, but I don’t want to lose my train of thought. “Right. The human word for telling and believing in stories like that is ‘religion.’ There are many different groups of stories told by many different cultures on Earth. The word for a specific story is a ‘myth,’ and groups of myths all connected and shared in one culture is a ‘mythology.’ Most mythologies involve figures called 'gods' that are… like humans, sort of, but older and more powerful. These figures are usually the ones responsible for creating the universe.”
“Eridian word for telling stories is *****. A particular story is ***. Powerful intelligent beings in ***s is ****.”
“Most myths don’t just explain the natural world, they also explain something about morality, or how to live a good life, or they’re just good stories. That’s the real reason they’re so important to our culture even though we have more science now. Some humans don’t believe in any myths at all and reject religion. Some humans believe the myths instead of science. Most humans are somewhere in the middle: they understand that even if some parts of a myth aren’t true on a scientific or historical level, they still have meaning and importance for morality, and there are still questions that human science can’t answer, that people still use myths to explain.
"But back to where we started. Humans have been looking up at the sky for as long as we’ve existed. What stars are and why they move across the sky are some of the questions myths were created to answer. Most of the stars and planets we could see from Earth were named after people or places from mythology, and the things humans send to space are named after related things from mythology to fit the theme. For example, Zhurong is a figure from Chinese mythology associated with fire. The planet Mars looks red like fire, so it’s often connected with fire in human cultures. If a human spaceship has a name you don’t understand, it’s probably named after something related to mythology.
“Understand. This explains many names. Not interested in learning the myth behind all of them, but am curious about one. What is ‘Hail Mary,’ question?”
Duh, of course that’s what he’d ask about. “Okay, so, I’m probably not the right person to explain this. I’m not one of the humans who believes in religion really deeply, but other humans do, so it feels disrespectful to them to talk about it without doing a good job. One of the most popular modern religions is called Christianity. In the Christian mythology, Mary was a human woman known for being especially kind and merciful. She was so virtuous that she was chosen to bare the child of the Christian god, who grew up to become one of the most important figures in human culture. But since Mary is particularly known for mercy, it’s common for humans, especially Christian humans, to… invoke her when seeking mercy. When you’re in trouble or trying to escape a terrible fate, you might recite the Hail Mary, a specific set of words meant to invoke her mercy. So in human culture, ‘Hail Mary’ means a desperate last-minute attempt to escape a terrible fate. Which is… pretty appropriate.”
“Understand. Blip-A was… similarly created to invoke **** in desperation, but not using names or words. Humans use specific words to invoke ****?”
“Yeah. In most mythology, gods are so powerful that they can hear or otherwise perceive humans from wherever they are, so humans try to communicate with them by speaking out loud or performing certain actions. A set of words meant to invoke a god is called a prayer. Prayers are usually specific phrases that have been passed down for generations. I don’t know a lot, but the Hail Mary is a pretty popular one.
“It goes: ‘Hail Mary, full of grace-’” I choke.
Holy crud. Hail Mary full of Grace. The Hail Mary is full of Grace. I am Grace and I am in the Hail Mary. Even though it isn’t even that funny, I’m laughing so hard I have to sit down. Hail Mary full of Grace.
Did Stratt know? Did that pun ever cross her mind? If it had, would that make her actions better or worse?
“Grace? You are well, question?” Rocky sounds torn between concern and amusement. “I do not understand? What is funny, question?”
I hold up a hand while I struggle to catch my breath. “The prayer starts ‘Hail Mary, full of grace.’ I am Grace, and I am on the Hail Mary. The Hail Mary is literally full of Grace. I hadn’t noticed that until now.”
Rocky seems more confused than amused, which is fair, he’s not the one who just found out his whole life is in service to a stupid pun. “Humans are weird,” he finally says. “But continue. The myth-human Mary is graceful, question?”
“Not really. Well, maybe, physical grace is usually associated with beauty and femininity, but that’s not what the prayer means. The word ‘Grace’ has more than one meaning. It means elegant movement, but it also means a gift of favor from a god. Specifically, it means a gift of mercy or salvation given by a god. So that’s what the prayer is talking about, because it’s a prayer you say when you want mercy or salvation.”
“Understand. You say humans name big, important space missions after big, important ideas. But this meaning of grace is a big important idea. Humans are named as infants, yes? Why give an infant human such an important name, question?”
“Naming children after virtues isn’t that uncommon for humans. I guess it’s supposed to represent what sort of person you hope that child will grow up to be, and either way it’s better to be named after a virtue than after something bad. But nobody really chose to name me Grace. Human names have more than one part. It’s different in different languages and cultures, but usually one part represents your ancestors, what family you come from, and one part represents you as an individual. Grace is my family name; it means I’m the child of another human who was also named Grace. Ryland is my individual name, which my parents chose when I was born. It just means a type of plant on Earth, which isn’t as easy to translate. Humans usually call each other by their family name in formal or professional settings, and you call someone by their individual name if they’re your friend.”
“Understand. Eridian names also have multiple parts. We do not share names with our families, since parentage is less important to us. Eridian children are raised by the community, not by their parents. Instead of a family name we have a cluster name, representing the community we hatched in. We also have individual names, same as humans. Individual names never have special meaning. They sound good and are distinctive. Individual name is always used, even in formal situations.”
“That makes sense. I think some human cultures might have done the same thing, taking names from a person’s home and not their family, but I can’t think of any. I’m not really a social studies guy.”
“I should call you your other name, question? If ‘Grace’ is your formal name, and your other name is for friends.”
“I guess you could if you want to, but like I said, ‘Ryland’ doesn’t translate nearly as well as ‘Grace,’ so you’d just have to make up a new name for me like I did for you. It wouldn’t be as accurate.”
“Understand. Would prefer to continue calling you ‘Grace.’ The word is appropriate to describe you. Not the elegance meaning. You are not graceful. But the other meaning is accurate.” His pitch lowers and he shifts, uncomfortable. “Twice I was alone on a ship, responsible for saving Erid, but without the tools to succeed. It felt like… punishment, being forced to work hopelessly while my people died. Twice I wished for forgiveness, salvation. Twice you appeared with the answers to save me and save Erid. Good, important name for good, important human.”
I take a moment, still sitting on the ground where I collapsed laughing, unsure how to even respond to that. All I can do is put my hand on the partition and say, voice quavering, “I wasn’t alone for nearly as long as you, but I was still just as glad to find you. I wouldn’t have been able to save anyone without your help. I couldn’t have even gotten a sample of the taumoeba. My whole species sent me out here as a prayer for salvation, and I wouldn’t have been able to save them without you.”
Rocky raises his claw to my hand and we sit in silence for a moment. I think about how two species sent ships as prayers to a distant star in a desperate bid for survival. I think about how neither species would have survived without the other - even with a full crew, human or eridian science alone wouldn’t have been enough to complete this mission. I think about how across all human cultures and mythologies, one constant is the need for community, a constant eridians share. I think about how the one universal constant that led to two species developing intelligent civilization, the closest thing to god anyone can prove, is the basic need for friendship and teamwork.