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GRACE
I'm alone. Alone is bad. It's fuzzy memories and dead friends and scary robot arms and learning I'm going to die.
Then, a presence. I know it: this pattern of movement and sound is etched into me. Rocky. I'm not alone anymore, I relax.
I move to meet him and stumble over myself. The gravity's funky, not quite what I'm used to, even after all of the changes in gravity my body's constantly going through. That, and my limbs don't move quite the way I remember.
I stagger, but manage to stay up. It would take a lot to knock me over; My center of gravity is low and steady.
Rocky laughs. Like, honest to god laughs, not the usual tinkly-bell ring sound he makes. The sound of it envelops me wholly. Every inch of my body soaks it up and in turn feeds my mind the richest sound I've ever heard.
I try to move to him again, slower this time. Hand over hand over hand- wait, that's too many… and walking on my hands?
Rocky brushes against me lightly. My vision comes in quickly at his touch. The shape and texture of him rush through my mind. A booming thud vibrates outwards for what feels like infinity from one of his claws stamped into the ground. We're in empty space on a flat plane. Anxiety starts to creep into me. Where was the ship? All of the work we'd done?! The fate of two planets, missing! I knew I'd do something stupid like this and lose it!
I'm interrupted by Rocky's hand on my shoulder and a sudden jolt of mental activity. My whole body buzzes, brightens, beckons-
Rocky's voice is strong. Rolling low frequencies rattle through me and the multiple other higher pitches he carries dispense tales of Erid's space program and their equivalent mission. They're woven on top of and through each other but I don't miss a single word.
And I get everything from him. It goes way beyond just the mission. I get his kids being born. I get Adrian lingering to touch him one last time before he went up the elevator. The first news of Astrophage, the startling realization that there was more than nothing in the infinite overhead.
"What is this, question?" I ask, then instantly fumble over why I appended 'question' to my words.
"Thrum." He butts against me again and my vision swims in intense detail. We may as well be the same person right now. I can see and feel every part of him inside and out.
"Wait, imperative. I can't thrum, I'm not-" Rocky grabs my hand out from under me delicately, then presses his claws up to mine.
It fits. Three into three.
"Understand, question?"
Something shifts in me, then lifts away. A weight I'd long borne, so rote it'd become a part of my psyche. Layers and layers peel back: the niggling sense of distance from every other person I'd met, abstract yearning for completeness, looking in the mirror and seeing… someone… but maybe not quite me. But now, that's my hand against his.
I don't even have to open my mouth to tell him what it was like on Earth as we scrambled to collect ourselves and do something together-ish for once. My words twist into his, filling the empty space perfectly.
He gets everything from me too. Every emotion, insignificant detail, every caffeine pill fueled double all-nighter on the vat spent trembling with exhaustion while Stratt breathed down my neck.
It's my turn to nudge into him. The happiness of being able to share like this pours out of me in light notes of emotion over top of my recounting.
And Rocky sings sweet welcomes that fit neatly into, across, and through my joy.
We thrum.
ROCKY
Grace sleeps often: so often in the short time we've known each other, I feel a sense of routine returning to me after so much time alone. The void of nobody watching and nobody to watch is, thankfully, behind me. At least for now.
Having the basal need of watching and being watched back in my life stirs more instincts within in me. I miss maintaining Adrian's carapace and Adrian maintaining mine. I miss meeting with the crew, brushing up to each other and hearing the state everyone was in. And I miss thrumming. I miss thrumming so much. We were instructed by the psychologists to thrum often—once an eating cycle.
We did until the end. Then I'd drone and chant over recorded thrums to try to get even a little of the feeling. The recordings made no difference. What I was doing wasn't thrumming and none of my stupid emulations came remotely close.
When I first saw Grace's ship I was sure I'd finally gone insane. Eridians aren't meant to be alone for as long as I'd been. There are many, many studies backing the fact up with unfortunate cases of inexplicable illness, death, and suicide.
I haven't tried to solo-thrum (a laughable oxymoron) since joining Grace. Grace's presence is helpful to me but the pull of joining in song, even with an alien who isn't capable of thrumming, is overwhelming.
Now Grace is asleep, so I try to resolve my urge to thrum.
Keeping quiet while trying to chant like I'm thrumming is awkward. I want to envelop Grace in sound as loud as my body will let me make, but I've prematurely woken Grace from sleep on accident before, which is an experience I don't want to have again.
I focus on controlling the volume and rolling vibration of my voice against the intricate interior of the ship. I recount my journey until now. Everyone's name who I'd lost along the way. Adrian, my children, everyone I'd left behind.
"Mnh. whazzis- question-" Grace mumbles. I jolt up and slam my vents shut.
"Was thrum- I not mean to wake-" But Grace is still asleep, I can hear Grace's heart and breathing steady like before, consistent with an unconscious state. The only change is Grace's closed eyes moving rapidly as they sometimes do. A dream?
"Buh- I can'th…" Grace replies. Maybe I'm wrong and Grace is awake? Human sleep is so weird. I struggle to even call the state sleep, given Grace is so easily able to come back to consciousness.
"Grace, question? You are dreaming or you understand me, question?"
Grace makes a strange little noise, exhales audibly, then hums. The sound is steady and low.
My body takes the tone as close enough to another thrumming with me and breaks out into chanting again.
Making noise with another living thing is an unbelievable relief. To harmonize and follow the imperfections in Grace's sound restores me.
Grace's human body can't sustain the sound for long. Breaths and muttered half-words punctuate what sounds like a rudimentary thrum chant.
I envision what actually thrumming with Grace would be like… Grace would share the same like I had: the tale of Earth and the Humans' work which culminated in just one Human, so far from home. I let my mind wander in the fantasy of learning about Earth, and for a fleeting moment, I feel the ephemeral presence of a foreign memory. A ship, but not in space. Liquid water. A colony of science humans. Then, a spark of distant joy.
There's no way.
I shift my chant and focus on the empathic bond a thrum would produce and sure enough, something is there. Something small and weak and bright, reaching out like a hatchling yet to find a voice. Maybe I'm still going insane. I had plenty of time to on my own. I probe at the barely-there whispers of a consciousness to make sure…
Grace, still asleep as far as I can tell, sputters and laughs! The presence flits around my mental reach, unable to settle and connect like an Eridian would.
Humans can thrum!
GRACE
Searing light accosts me from sleep.
Then dry, stagnant air.
I sputter on saliva and bring hands to shield my eyes.
"Computer, reduce volume by half-"
"Volume reduced fifty percent." The computer whispers. Meanwhile, the lights are just as deafening as before.
"No, no. Computer- reduce dormitory light volume- wait-what?" My brain realizes how ridiculous it was to say that and wakes me up further.
"Unknown command. For help, say 'Computer, list commands.'"
"Gosh darnit, computer, reduce dormitory lights by half!"
My eyes are no longer assaulted by the cold luminance of the Hail Mary.
I groan and push myself up to sit, focusing on trying to fit back in to my human body.
"Grace!" Rocky squeaks in excitement. Weird morning so far. Usually he just quietly watches me while I struggle to wake up. "You awake!"
"Barely."
"We thrum while you sleep!"
I rub my eyes. "I thought that was a dream." Needs more data before I can draw any conclusion. "What happened?"
"You thrum about science humans on water!"
That wakes me up the rest of the way and more. I hadn't told him about the vat. "Was I talking in my sleep?"
"No! I show you with thrum!" Rocky stamps the floor excitedly, "Sing with me!"
The best way to describe the sound he breaks into is a choir of throat singers. And it's loud. The kind of low frequency that rattles your organs. I sit awkwardly, not sure exactly what I should be doing. It's like when my kids would sing happy birthday to me and I had to stand there and smile. But worse. Because it's an alien instead of a bunch of middle schoolers, and I have to sing, which I'm just awful at.
"You sing!" Rocky commands again, atop of all of the other noise.
"Uh."
"Follow voice."
His sounds become much less complicated and he hums out a single note following a constant beat. I tentatively hum, trying to match the pitch.
When I do eventually get there, our combined noises make a kind of buzzy ringing between the low drone. It's pleasant and easy to lose my focus into. "Good good." Rocky interrupts, "Continue. Feel. Feel me. Feel you. Feel us."
Well, that's vague. But I try to do what I'm told as he gradually makes the repetitive notes he's been singing more complicated. The ringing shifts around as Rocky's song grows.
My mind wanders to how his claim is even possible. I trust Rocky with every fiber of my being and I don't think he's misunderstood or even lying. So how in the world did I manage it?
Something flickers in my mind. Rocky alone aboard the Blip-A. Then dizziness slams into me and my vision swims. If I wasn't on carefully optimized space meals I'd assume I was having an anemic head rush right now. Whatever this is, I'm feeling it alright. It's not quite like my dream. It's shaky and a little scary, but not unpleasant. Just very new.
"I feel you." Rocky chimes. I shiver reflexively. The strange newness blossoms tentatively into something right. How lucky am I? I don't even care that I'm on a would-be suicide mission right now, I'm being taught how to mind-meld by an alien. I can't reply to him without stopping the hum I've got going, so I smile. The dizziness pulls me in again, floaters zip around in my vision, but I go with it. I hear quiet song, kept just below the threshold of waking me up. He was trying to thrum while I was asleep…
That's sad. But efficient. Humans can't thrum, so using the time while I'm asleep to pretend-thrum optimizes what time we've got while I'm awake. A little jag of shame interjects. Thrumming alone is sad and awkward for him... Oh, buddy. You've been through so much, and I have no sense of Eridian shame. You don't need to feel that way about it any more.
Then I hear myself making noise in my sleep from Rocky's point of view and things get trippy.
I see three things at once:
-
My field of view right now with Rocky across from me.
-
His view of me sleeping while he thrummed.
-
The vast emptiness of my dream.
Focusing on just one is impossible, if I try to hone in on any of them specifically, it fades as I try to chase after it.
I miss the ease everything came to me with in the dream. It felt so much more right in an Eridian body. It was easier to understand what was happening, because that was what I was made for. The feelings and memories Rocky shared then were digestible. Now I have to perfectly angle my focus and perception to absorb anything from this jumble of information that feels like it's being beamed into my head.
Across our shared consciousness, I sense Rocky turning the concept of dreaming as another self over in attempt to grok my feelings. Even the fact that humans dream is out there for him. Heck, he thought I was joking when I first told him about dreams.
There's a reverence to him exploring my emotion like this, but as he presses further into my mind, I struggle to keep focus on the feeling of connection. I'm literally sweating with the effort of maintaining it.
Rocky upturning the dream-memory of pressing our claws together strikes an emotional nerve I didn't realize was there and all at once, I fall out of the trance the thrum put me in and almost off of my bed. It's like if a hypnic jerk and vertigo had an evil baby.
"Grace!!"
"Gimme a sec, I might puke-"
Rocky doesn't give me a sec, he's too excited, "Amaze! Thrum success!!"
"Success? That didn't feel like a success." Which sucks, because I want the correctness I felt in my dream back, not the confusing emotional rollercoaster I just got off of.
"Yes, success! You have mind like Eridian," My heart skips a beat, "Thrum is possible. We will practice. Will be smart smart smart and save suns together!"