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While he, of course, was horrified at how close Rocky had come to going the way of his crewmates, the selfish and stupid part of his brain was grateful that he had really no excuse to not turn around.
Not only of course was the imperative to save the one Being he felt closest to in the universe, and subsequently their entire species and home planet. Which, again, was the primary reason here. But, on a smaller, more personal level, he was so hopeful to hear Rocky’s songs again. To hear a responding tap on the walls when he woke up at night and got scared.
He couldn’t be alone anymore- and Grace heavily suspected that even if he was able to, somehow, return to Earth, there was little that could be done to make him feel connected to the others in his species ever again.
He had a lot of fermented resentment towards not just Stratt, but the conglomerate of humanity as a whole. The decision that had been made to send him up was not just made by Stratt, and he wasn’t naive enough to view her as the scapegoat he was fairly certain she had been at risk of becoming.
A whole populace, the entirety of humanity, billions of options and ideas and possibilities, and the best solution was to forcibly kidnap Ryland Grace?! The best plan really had been to sacrifice him up to the stars like some old-world ritual, hoping to appease the mysterious cosmic forces and earn favor with their wilting sun.
If Stratt was humanity’s scapegoat, he had been the unwilling sacrificial lamb. Pretty shitty petting zoo, he thought to himself.
There were some days that the idea of speaking to another human brought along sadness- but more often than not, as of late, the preferred point of comfort and contact for Grace had shifted firmly from any memories of the people on the pale blue dot to Rocky.
Rocky, who was here. Rocky, who had been there, had joined him. Rocky, who hadn’t been gone by the time Grace finally returned, hadn’t gone the way as his shipmates. Rocky, who had been there, waiting for Grace, just as Grace had waited for him.
In his recent reflections, he had begun to wonder how he had ever even survived on earth without the wise-cracking music box of an alien. He had come to not just recognize, but expect and crave some of the intricacies of Eridian culture.
Although his mind supplied, the sample size was by no means statistically significant. What if Rocky, like Ryland, was an outlier of his own species?
Sure, he knew that Rocky was one of (if not the best) astro-engineer the Eridians had to offer. But what is culturally Rocky was a bit sequestered from his culture, too?
The thought warmed him, for a moment, in the cold interior of Mary- they both were bound by a common thread. “Rocky?”
“What Grace want, question?”
Honestly, I truly didn’t even know where to pick up my inner musings in order to vocalize the question, so I just shook my head (instinct) and then remembered almost instantly to audibly tell my alien friend never mind. Besides, in reality, he was probably the equivalent of a hot Eridian celebrity or something.
-
Looking at the data on Armando’s small screen, he scratched down the numbers without processing it. Once he had the set copied down, he diverted his attention to the notepad fully, looking at the figures, ready to interpret.
So, with the compounding ability of the ship's automated pharmacy-tech, and the amount needed for the most recent dose he had been taking, he had figured he had about 529 doses left.
Hmm… and their current arrival date to Erid displayed on Mary’s screen was estimated at 726 more (Earth) days. Well, that certainly wasn’t ideal.
They were so close to getting to Erid, just for Grace to what? Suffer a depressive episode and medication withdrawal so bad he may die from that anyways? Space travel sure had its downs. He was waiting to find out some of its ups.
Hah! And he had thought that the malnutrition was going to be an issue. If only he was so lucky as to just starve to death, but no, he’d hate himself while he’d do it. Yay me, he thought wryly.
There was two full years to go, and the levels of Grace’s synthesized medication was already dwindling faster than he cared to think about. When he had been planning on returning to Earth, there wasn’t as much of a concern on obtaining pharmaceuticals...but now?
Well, It wasn’t likely they would be passing by a CVS drive-thru within the upcoming star systems anytime soon. So really, he had no idea what was going to happen next. Okay- well, that’s not entirely true. He had a fair idea. After leaving academia, he had lost his insurance. Or rather, had it stripped from him alongside his dignity and job... semantics.
Grace made a short staccato tone, a single sharp beat. Some quick word that Rocky wasn’t familiar with, hadn’t ever heard from Grace before; this long into knowing one another, the frequency of these occurrences was very seldom.
Grace thought back to his worst withdrawal. He had been without meds for over a month, and he had so seriously considered doing… irreparable things. He had also considered committing himself to an inpatient ward, but the desire to waste away in his stuffy room had won out.
He was trapped, chained within his apartment by binds from his own brain. Indestructible, they may as well have been trapping Samson to the pillars. When he had gone through withdrawal last, well, it was just bad timing overall. Not that there was ever a great time to have your reputation ruined and be ousted from polite society, but especially so when he had only a week left on his prescription.
When it ran out, so had Grace’s ability to function.
The first week or so was okay. Yes, by day two or three, he wasn’t much of his usual happy self. His fuse was much shorter, and the need for sleep seemed near constant. It pulled at his mind and weighed down his limbs and eyelids. The constant exhaustion just added to his irritability.
By week two, he had found himself either gorging on food, the only thing that could break through the cloud of numbness that was beginning to formally reside in Ryland’s head, or refraining from eating anything at all for days. That’s when he would lie in bed and sob silently. That was all he could manage, what with the potent stream of self-hatred coursing through his veins alongside the hemoglobin and leukocytes.
His body was protesting alongside his mind; when he wasn’t in mental torment, his body was in a physical hell. His limbs prickled with constant pins-and-needles, the sensations painful and drawing his awareness constantly. He had bouts of nausea and dizziness when he moved too fast- or flipped over in bed wrong.
He was constantly tired, to the point he would swear he could feel the need to dissipate into unconsciousness deep in his bones. And despite the hours upon hours of sleep (wasn’t like he had a job to get to, anyway, his mind would always helpfully remind him), he never felt rested.
He would have vivid dreams, usually nightmares, but always disorienting and worrisome. His waking hours were spent wishing for nothingness, and his sleeping hours were a mixture of different, unique torments...
The trickle of memories kept coming, a dripping faucet in the basin of his mind. A constant drip, drip, drip of a reminder; what he could expect once his medications ran out.
He had to get out of the lab, had to look away from the calculations of his remaining doses. Away from the difference in the possible doses and the days left on their journey. He couldn’t look at this, couldn’t be in this room right now. He had to move, had to go-
“Rocky! I’m going upstairs.” The announcement was abrupt, and left the Eridian whizzing curiously with a slightly worried note, listening as Grace ascended the ladder to the next level. His steps upwards echoed out louder than normal, giving Rocky a clear view of Grace’s body as it moved away, up further into the ship.
_
Operation: Happy Pills was underway. He’d found a single tome of Organic Chemistry information, densely written for the eyes of a professional in the same field. (Shit.)
He had a good-enough grasp of organic chemistry, sure. There was a certain expectation for a PhD in Microbiology to be able to work through organic reactions, to synthesize, and to degrade. Determine where the oxidation was occurring.
But his passion had lain within the cells, not at the level beneath even the microbial. So as soon as his required courses were fulfilled, he happily never synthesized anything ever again. In undergraduate, he thought he had created some sort of medicine in a lab. He thinks.
His memories have never fully returned, nor have they reached a comfortable chronology in his mind. Sometimes it seems like the things that are floating through his mind are far, far back in the annals of his brain. But then a thought comes through that makes Grace question if he isn’t thinking of something more recent. Not that it mattered- one thing about space, it created a very stark contrast between important and not-important.
Save Earth, and Earth’s sun? Important
Understanding gravity, radiation, relativity? Important
Knowing if the flash of him in a bowling uniform happened before or after his doctorate? Unimportant. Statement.
Grace's lips turned up into a smile; he had picked up some of the linguistic quirks his friend had brought to their now shared language. Turning his attention back to his whiteboard littered with questions, he continued. “Maybe I could taper down? But I don’t think I’ll just magically not need it anymore, especially after having been on this stuff since college-.”
While there was a brighter happiness than I had ever felt before in my new life, what with my stony-faced friend (hah), and the fact that we had done all we could to save two civilizations, I couldn't very well trust my biology to suddenly begin producing adequate amounts of serotonin on its own.
“I could ration? Every other day? A few times a week, maybe?… No, no, that’s stupid, it needs to stay in my system, I think to work.”
"Grace, ration what, question? Nutrient stores depleting faster than Grace first thought, question?"
“Hmm? Oh, no, Rocks- the food levels are okay for now,” I’m hoping our experimentations with the tau-food would be fruitful (could that be considered a pun, I wondered) prior to the food rations starting to reduce much more. Out of all the potential deaths in space, slow and painful starvation was one of the options that interested Grace least.
“I’m talking about my medicine. I guess when Stratt sent me off, she didn’t have the most optimistic view of the amount of time I’d be spending alive.”
There was a scratchy sound, like a chair on a linoleum floor, and I had noticed Rocky making it often after mention of Stratt in the last few months. I suspected he didn’t like her- not after what she had done to me, and especially not after seeing me awaken from a night terror shortly after remembering the logistics of my forced entry into space. That night had been... rough. Ryland's need for reassurance, for comfort that he wasn't still drifting along, forgotten and forgetful, alone- well, that had taken precedence over the pride of hiding the fact he was a coward who had to be forced to save the world. It was embarrassing, but between Rocky's worried trills and his own wrenching sobs, the confession had been unavoidable, so Rocky knew all the details that Grace had retained.
Rocky repeated the scratching noise, and, though not translated, had always led Grace to think Rocky was pointedly saying something that held very little appreciation for Stratt’s methods. Before he could ask, though, Rocky tapped one of his hind legs and asked, “Grace need medicine! Grace sick, question?”
“Eh, kinda-,” I tried to remember if there had ever been a reference to the mental health of Eridians in our hours of conversations, but I don’t recall any.
“On Earth, there are a lot of different ways you can be sick. You can be hurt, like breaking a bone, or infirm, which can happen if you have something called a virus, or an infection. Those are like small teeny-tiny beings we can’t see with our eyes, but they can crawl into our bodies to live, and sometimes they replicate to the point of hurting us.”
A startled trill. “Earth scary, statement!”
“Sometimes.”
“But Grace bones not broken, statement. Rocky would hear difference in body parts! Bones sound good!”
“No,” I agreed, smiling in spite of the topic. Rocky was an incredible being, and I counted my lucky stars (of which there were a great few, being in space and all) that I had been able to know him in my lifetime. “You're right. So, I have another kind of sickness, what we call a mental illness.”
Rocky’s carapace twirled nervously, left to right, right to left. Almost as if he was scanning Ryland’s face, but the lack of eyes made that likelihood low. “Grace has been… different.” Rocky’s apprehension seemed obvious, even to someone as new to Eridian body language as I was. Before I could ask, he continued. “Grace has been… sad, question?”
I was shocked at the question- god, he was observant. Smart guy. I had been convinced my actions were normal, no different than my baseline of the oh-so calm, cool, collected Ryland Grace. Right? Right?
But no, of course, Rocky was Rocky. Alien, hyper-observant, and deeply caring. So, yeah, of course, he had noticed, the igneous ass. He was just incredible.
“♩♫♫♪,” His tone of inquiry was slow, almost mournful. I didn’t need a translator for that. He was worried.
“Hey, no, I’m okay, buddy- a lot of humans have these issues. There’s a lot of different kinds of mental illnesses. Some make you- well, we try not to say the word ‘crazy’ anymore because that can be a bit stigmatizing, but it makes you… incompatible with reality. Some people hear things that aren’t actually there, or see people that don’t really exist."
Rocky’s carapace shivered- for a species reliant on sound, Grace could imagine the idea of auditory hallucinations would be frightening. When he didn’t respond, though, Grace continued.
“There’s personality disorders that can make you act differently than how you usually would, or want to. Some make you act manic, others mean. Umm, there’s anxiety disorders, obsessive issues, depression-“
"Need new word!”
“Ah, it is- depression is one of the main mental issues I deal with. I guess you can translate it as-" I whistled a trilling noise, trying to mimic the tones of sickness and sadness atop one another. My inelegant vocal cords didn’t quite make the nose as it was meant to, but Rocky clearly understood the intention, because he moved one of his legs in understanding, tapping for Grace to continue.
“So, um, depression, it can manifest in a bunch of different ways, and totally different for some people; sometimes it physically hurts, it pulls your body down like the gravity has gotten stronger. Most people know depression as something that makes you sad, but it’s a lot more than that. It makes you… despondent. Like it hurts to be alive, to breathe, to think- and it turns you against yourself. Your brain makes you think thoughts and ideas that aren’t yours, that are cruel, and you don’t want to think about it, but there’s nothing to stop the thoughts or mean words. They just, they don’t leave the mind- we call those intrusive thoughts.”
Rocky’s rapt attention encouraged me to continue, and I found the explanations to be unraveling a knot in my heart I hadn’t even realized was there. “It can be really scary. It can drain your energy, too. I’ve had some episodes where I couldn’t get out of bed. I would just lie there, numb, for days-” Grace’s voice grew distant, remembering some of the worst episodes he had had in his life.
There had been one on the aircraft carrier that took him down for almost a week. He hadn’t been able to get the idea of his children screaming, fighting for food in a society that was failing them, playing on a repeat within his mind. Images of a world falling into dissent and chaos.
And, of course, the fact that his life was narrowed down to the confines of the aircraft. Crying in a small metal dorm, drowning in despair. Crying, alone. In those moments, the self-hatred screeched loudly. I was worthless, for I couldn’t even get out of bed and do anything to try and help save this future I was paralyzed with fear over. I couldn’t get out of my bed because my brain was a cacophony, so useless…
During that episode, the depression had gotten pretty bad. And then worse… and worse, until Stratt had finally insisted (read: forced) him to see the on-board psychiatrist. Whatever.
The solution then had been to bump his dose up, and that had made life… manageable. Kind of. Existing wasn’t pure agony; his mind wasn’t aflame anymore. The fire had dulled back to a gentle enough rumble that he could keep going. The new dosage had helped, enough at least to be useful, once more. Which is what he needed, anyway. Or what Stratt needed. Or, humanity... maybe Carl? That name, still not fully recovered in his mind, brought pain to his heart. He wasn’t entirely sure why.
“Grace- this sound very… ♭♪♩♫♬♯♪.” It was clear that Rocky hadn’t been fully certain as to what word he was looking for, but the intent was pretty clear. The emotion made him tear up- his throat grew tight and hot, unshed tears pushing against his eyes. He didn’t bother asking for the translation at the moment- the laptop was across the room, and he understood the intent.
“It- yeah, it can be, Rock. It can be really, really scary. Really hard. Pretty lonely.”
“But Grace took incredible human medicine, and now all better, statement!”
“Well, the kinds of medicine humans have figured out to help us have something called a dependency effect. Essentially with certain kinds of drugs, once you’re on them, you pretty much stay on them until…”
The silence was mocking me; of course Rocky wouldn’t fill the blank in. “We stay on the medicines until we die, to keep the sickness from coming back.”
“What does the medicine do? How does it protect, question?”
“Well, people take the medicine to help with the symptoms, especially the really bad ones. So, um, if you don’t take it, they come back. It helps, with some of the chronic symptoms, like the intrusive thoughts, or suicidal ideations.”
A higher-pitched tone, a droning noise that was a clear question, with a hint of anxious upset. “New words, please, Grace.” This conversation had turned serious, and I knew Rocky felt the shift in momentum, as he was being so polite in his ask- no, not polite. Gentle.
“Yeah, ok- sorry, this is a sad one, buddy. Um, ideations, that is, the desire and idea to do something. Almost like a plan. And, heh, um, suicide…”
“Like fratricide and homicide. But for self.” Rocky finished the sentence for me, and my eyebrows raised in shock. He hummed a low, tragic note. The Eridian word for suicide, I guessed; I’d take the time to be shocked that the concept translated later.
“Yes, exactly. Um- how did you know that, buddy?” I heard my own voice, and it was dry.
“Word end -cide, means death. Learn on info-box.”
“You’re a smart guy, Rocks. Yeah, suicide is when you kill yourself. And a suicidal ideation, that’s when you, y’know, think about it.”
“How, question? So this is what happen, question, if Grace take no medicine, question?”
Fair inquiries, but I decided to just focus on the first; if the Eridians have a word for suicide, I’m left wondering what their method would be as well. Perhaps they had a hot spring of, um… oxygen? I had no clue, honestly.
“Oh, geez, Rocks. Well, there’s a lot of ways. Pick your poison, literally, heh. Ahem, uh, sorry, um. Honestly, I don’t think it’s good for me to detail all of them. They can make me have some pretty sad thoughts.”
Our silence stretched on for a few moments, but then Rocky’s tone warbled out. “Grace please no suicide ever, statement. Please please please. Rocky not able to be alone again. No no no, statement.”
Oh, my sweet, sweet alien friend. I pulled myself closer to his xenonite ball, and pressed my arms tightly around the stiff corners. “Yeah, buddy, I- I don’t want to do that, or am I planning on it. Don’t worry, I’m too much of a coward to do it, ever, anyways, probably.”
Rocky’s carapace rotated towards me, and even though I knew he couldn’t see, (he didn’t even have eyes) it felt distinctly like he was staring at me. Staring into me, it seemed.
We lapsed again into a shared quiet, but I didn’t yet release Rocky’s enclosure. I let the sensation of the edges and vertices of the xenonite ball draw my focus, and I cycled between pressing harder and then letting up, the sensation the closest I’ve been to another being in- what, a decade? A facsimile to a hug, the illusion of comfort. Knock-off or not, this moment was more comfort now than he had had in years.
All good things must end, I’ve learned though, so I couldn’t consider myself shocked when this moment concluded with a soft, sad whistle. “Grace… Grace had try before, question?”
Oh. Shittake. My lungs suddenly felt empty, the air vacuumed out of them as if I had been unmasked while on a spacewalk. My throat was dry, and I swallowed hard around the thick lump in an effort to respond. I had been unresponsive for so long that Rocky started tapping on his ball to echolocate if I was really still there. “Grace, question?”
The ringing in my ears subsided as I focused in on the worried song coming from my companion. “Oh, hey, shoot. I’m sorry, Rocky.” The ball rolled gently into him, bumping his leg. Insistent. He hedged, “Um, usually that’s a pretty personal question to ask someone, Rocks-”
“Need to know if Grace is dangerous to Grace.”
I huffed out a laugh- “Oh, well, no. I mean, no, not any more than I usually am. I haven’t had a really bad episode in a while.”
“…What bad episode look like, question?”
He said question, but it felt moreso like a demand. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, rippled through my head, and I vaguely recognized the saying. No point in mincing reality, anyway. Everything we shared would be the first knowledge on the topic shared between our species regarding the subject. When I felt apprehensive, I could usually curse science and find a way to overcome the worry. Damn, science.
“I usually can feel them coming on. I can get cranky, short-tempered.” I sighed, drumming my fingers on one of the side panels of the xenonite ball. It’s weight was comforting, resting in the space between my legs- almost like a large, spherical cat.
“I get mean, but no worries, it’s mostly at myself… that would be when I start having a lot of negative self-talk, so that’s usually a clue. I start to sleep a lot. Like, way more than usual. Twelve or more hours a day.”
Rocky was staying silent, for which I was grateful, but there was a nervous string of notes that came from him softly. I don’t think it translated to anything directly- maybe it was his way of sighing?
I continued on; “I lose my energy, to the point where getting out of bed, much less doing anything else, is pretty much impossible. I hate myself when I’m like that-”, my voice got small, even to my weak human ears.
“It makes you feel like the weakest, worst, most useless thing in the entire world.” The vitriol coloring my words is strange- because, yes, the depression was a part of me. Part of me like a cancer was part of people, though. It was engineered by my own faulty nervous system- did his thoughts just return to the path of self-disgust since this was the one most trodden down, of my many depressive thoughts turned down.
“I’ll cry a lot. Sometimes just, silently, in bed. Sometimes it hurts so bad it feels like it’s gonna claw out of me…S-sometimes I cry because of what someone said, or how they said it, or how someone looked at me.” The whimper in my voice was pathetic.
“It usually is some perception that isn’t the objective truth, but I’ll get stuck in my head. My mind gets mean, and it tries to make me believe the people I care about hate me. That they barely can bother putting up with me, that they must be disgusted with someone who is so useless, so cowardly, and weak-”
I didn’t realize I was tearing up until the first hot tears rolled onto my cheeks. Rocky warbled a song of comfort, and the low tone echoed into my chest. It coaxed the sadness out from my body, and I gave in to the feeling.
I reapplied myself to the xeno-ball, letting the warmth of his body heat bring some relief to my growing headache and growing despair. Rocky was letting out a continuous but soft lilt, notes feeling a little disconnected to one another. It was almost like a murmur, a subconscious discussion with himself. While I pressed in, I came to the realization that it I felt like he was studying me. It didn’t give me a shiver in the way it would if a human was doing the same thing. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to trust another human, much less an authority figure.
Certainly, he’d never be able to trust one enough to keep me safe while I slept. Which, at this point, felt more than a little necessary. He needed Rocky for that. Speaking of, he was ‘looking’ at me intently as I practically cuddled into the xenonite barrier.
“Grace need sleep now- Rocky watch.” My tears had exhausted me, so I gave into the statement and let the fog of sleep overtake me, an invitation to a pool of blackness. Maybe, if luck was something that could reach me all the way out in the vacuum of space, Rocky would forget the question by ‘morning’, he thought before drifting away fully.