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1.
Grace has the tendency to mumble in his sleep.
It rattles my carapace, sends my silicate synapses into a stock-still shiver — Eridians are a species known to quickly adapt, to grasp at never-heard-before theories and incomprehensible phenomena, yet I find myself struggling to understand the intricacies of [Human] biology time and time again. The uncertainty is agitating: an architecture whose structure I cannot dismantle, its facade a scripture I cannot decipher.
As an engineer, I am supposed to indulge in every detail and direction of his [Flesh]-composed structure. I do not; this decision not borne from volition, but from a lack of wherewithal. An engineer can only build so much with insufficient resources until its architecture collapses into something beyond any prospect of refurbishment.
When I hear his voice scuttle for another’s, my first instinct is to respond. I think that he is asking me of a favor until he speaks of a monosyllabic name that he would not lend me the information of if he were conscious. Until then, I begrudgingly listen as he weeps for reprieve, particularly gargling on the word no. I hear how it lodges itself in his [Throat] and I fear that he will die of a prayer-induced suffocation ([Throat] enrobed in [Fingers] under the name of [God], pressing against the [Carotid] pulp like an [Orange] wrung of its juices as you cry out holy and blasphemous) until he [Blinks] astir and I banish the panic into my mausoleum of a mind and let it die there.
Grace has told me that he thinks I look dead when I am in rest. I refrain from telling him that he looks like he is dying. Dying, like a friend or mate or enemy thrashing and whimpering in its last moments of termination, the backflow of mercury feasting upon its vessel the same way Grace’s [Tears] indulgently moats its creator’s [Face] in another one of his leaky [Nightmares].
I remember the first time Grace told me tales of [Nightmares], how my carapace could only shudder in return. No wonder Grace saw himself a cowering [Man], when his brain blighted him with phantasmagorias of his unforgettable-forgotten past as a means of regulation. Even in rest, peace drifted astray from him, yet he crawled to it all the same, [Muscles] muddling into [Carrion] as soon as his [Eyes] knit themselves together. I cannot justify this idiocy, how Grace lets himself ache in return for the promise of eventual reprieve.
Grace has the tendency to mumble in his sleep and he speaks in disjointed scriptures and prayers that perhaps I could assemble if I were a better engineer. He vacillates in-between monosyllabic and bisyllabic names and cannot decide which one he wishes to beg mercy from. He is never quiet in his rest and I absently wonder if all [Humans] go through this self-induced hell guised under the pretense of relief.
2.
Grace unlatches the hinges of his maws during feeding and the motion has me tilting over in nausea. The [Human’s] laugh sings a harmony that dares to challenge the ceremonial choirs of matrimony back in Eridani.
It’s horrible— disgust, disgust, disgust, the word tastes nectarous and decadent as it trickles from my voice box, hardly sweet enough to mitigate the repulsion borne from watching my friend, the reckless [Human] heedless of any potential [Pathogens] and germs begriming his source of sustenance, voraciously sinking his [Teeth] into it. I suppose it is in his nature: bravery, that is; to dive into anything without a speck of hesitation. Or maybe a more-befitting word for it is asininity. I do not doubt that both terms are applicable to him.
I cannot contain my contempt and he cannot contain his laughter, or his rich smile which glistens bright enough to elicit a chorus of its own (he explains it to be the unrestrained curve of his [Lips], the crinkling of star-struck [Eyes] — I find the description to be pathetic, in comparison to the hymn only I can hear) I am baffled by how someone can morph a sacred and private into something so sacrilegious until Grace tells me about shared [Birthday] [Cakes], late-night instant [Noodle] cups, or the [Student]-managed [Cookie] stalls scattered across his [School]. He tells me of family [Thanksgiving] dinners and solo ice [Cream] dates after a stressful day and an overpriced, sugar-excessive [Coffee] order and there is so much longing in his eyes I almost forget the disgust of it all.
He misses his home — that much, I can surmise. I do too but I do not bear the same grieving and cumbersome [Cross] that emburdens his [Back]. There is a secrecy in the way his octaves lower a tone as he speaks of other [Humans], as he speaks of himself.
(“Coward,” he forces the too-large-too-cracked word out of his constricting [Throat], conferring the damned title unto himself as if no other [Human] was brave enough for martyrdom, “I’m a coward, Rocky, I’m not—“)
There are many things Grace abstains from telling me about his home. There lies no apprehension when he talks about his children or how far Earth is from Sol or how every continent adheres to their own season at a time but when I ask him how a teacher managed to end up in our solar system he discards the question and when I regurgitate it later on he tells me to go to sleep.
He bites into [Sandwiches] like they’ve damned him and tells me he habitually extracts the [Tomatoes] from his [Stew] because he’d always sneak them onto his brother’s plate during youth. I suppose a [Human’s] feeding, albeit abhorrent, is sacred in its own way as well.
3.
The Hail Mary is uncharacteristically quiet even as Grace absentmindedly drums a staccato against disfigured test-tubes and glass vials with teeth-distraught nails. The incessant contract-relax-contract-relax rhythmus of his [Diaphragm] smoothly flits into my auricles and drowns in my perennial memory.
Grace is scared of death, more than anything. He does not tell me that the knowledge of imminent death dreadfully settles on his [Shoulders] but it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out; I see it in the way his [Back] hunches on itself when he thinks I am still entrenched in rest, or the way his heart accelerates arrhythmically when he ruminates for a few seconds too long. It is a pitying sight: how a [Human’s] body offers it a tangible glimpse of death whilst its mind cowers under the thought of it. Everything about [Humans] is intrinsically cruel and maybe that is why Grace was condemned to martyrdom, despite that all he ever does on this suicide mission is grapple at any prospect of survival.
I am not treated as his subordinate but there are times where it comes close. He tells me with sincere insincerity that he has come to terms to death even if the word alone is enough to curve the handholds of his [Ribcage] into spears that directly penetrate his tender-weak heart. He is disgustingly and utterly terrified of death and uses his last dregs of energy to hide it from me.
The conduct only begs the question: does he not see me as a survivor? Does Grace not see me as someone who has thrashed against the throes of death, struggling and struggling and struggling under the pressure of xenonite, of stock-still carcasses cluttering our ship, my carapace and trifurcated claws shuttering as I beg out weak to no survivors, please please please let me come home let them have a body to grieve please please don’t let me die I don’t want to die—
My self-instilled conspiracy theory is left unanswered and I force myself to be okay with the uncertainty. Grace is scared of death and deems it sacrilegious to show it to me; I wish I could convince him otherwise, to knock some sense into that stupid fleshy [Human] brain caged up in his [Skull]. But I can’t, with every discussion of death discarded as quickly as it’d been introduced, so I relent.
In my cowardice, I hope he knows that I am as scared of death as he is.
4.
Grace has the tendency to mumble in his sleep.
This time, he is silent.
[Eyelashes] knitted with crusted [Blood], the [Human’s] [Cheek] molds against the navigation controls and the scent of metal disperses through the room like dying stars. Every extant sound clamors against my mind — I can hear the Hail Mary’s hull warbling as it burns alight; the digital screens hung on the walls screeching and malfunctioning as disfigured fragments plummet to the floor; my own warbles as I thrash and bang against xenonite — but I cannot hear the rhythmic contract-relax-contract-relax pattern of Grace’s [Diaphragm]. He is suffocating.
The absence of his [Breath] is louder than the screeches and burns protruding my auricles.
His [Lips] are slightly parted but no sound crawls out of his [Throat]. His [Eyebrows] are furrowed and twitching and I know it won’t take long before they completely fall slack. I sense a viscous liquid pouring from the bridge of Grace’s [Nose] and my mind instinctively scurries to the memory where he accidentally sliced his flesh-filled claw with a fragmented shard of glass during one of our laboratory experiments.
This is what I harbor as an engineer: I am forged from resilience and practicality and intelligence. I am made to repair things and invent new machinery. I am as much of a mate as I am a friend and a lover and a partner. I am an engineer whose structures have failed upon themselves because I am a fucking idiot who cannot save my saviors. I am my own failed invention.
I try not to curl up and hide but that is all I am good for; I am sure my twenty-two crew-mates would agree.
The Hail Mary lurches forward again and Grace’s [Face] misshapens and disfigures into something indiscernible as it slams against the control screen. He was sent on this ship to die and will die here. With enough cabin pressure, the ship will collapse in on itself and morph into the tapered shape of a [Coffin], but [Coffins] are not meant to carry two bodies. So I make my decision.
The sacrifice is easy; my chamber tears asunder with an all-resounding hiss, and I let out something more guttural right after, the oxygen-rich atmosphere tackling every synapse and receptor within me. Insensibility enraptures the room in its entirety, the expanse a conglomerate of indecipherable shapes and blurred outlines, skittering until I manage to grapple onto the restraints caging Grace and scythed through them with all my will. The [Human] breath that sputters from Grace is reward enough. I am burning. I am suffocating. I am fulfilling my purpose.
Grace looks at me like I have killed him. I can concede that I am killing a part of him.
I ask him to save both our home planets and scuttle to say something more meaningful — the words I love you creep into the forefront of my mind, but I decide that those three words do not suffice to convey my apology, my grief, my love, my gratitude. I hungrily scavenge for a [Human] word, unable to recognize that I’ve spent too much time thinking.
In search for a better word, I forget to say anything at all.
5.
[Earth] is very dear to Grace.
He speaks of it fondly, like a mother cradling its fledgling, like it is his merciful [God]. Grace still feels the [Rashes] from where [God] spasmed its [Hand] around his [Throat] but he cannot forget how the same [Hand] cradled his [Face], its calloused [Palm] against a bulbous [Cheek] like he was Sol itself. I don’t understand how a [Human’s] creator can both harm and care for its creation and the latter will come scrambling back to it all the same. I think Grace is all-too forgiving.
(Grace’s beauty is written in his name: Grace; [God’s] unmerited favor in the salvation of sinners, wholly undeserving to those who receive it. The name suits him perfectly.)
Too merciful, to the [Gods] who have condemned him to martyrdom, and too forgiving to the sinner-turned-servants who have weaved their way into making him a product of eschatology. Not once have I encountered such moral depravity akin to that of a [Human’s] gluttony. I do not know how to forgive because I have yet to come across anything that warrants a forgiveness’ preliminary resentment, but Grace knows how to forgive. He had ample right and ability to reject [Earth] and didn’t.
I want to tell him that his altruism is idiotic; lunatic; dangerous. But [Earth] is dear to him and I’d be no better than his [Ranchers] who have cultivated him for slaughter if I were to take his home from him — so when Grace warbles on a childish cry, telling me that he’s not going to make it home, I do what engineers do best: repairment. 2.2 million kilograms of Astrophage is all I need to weld the promise of Grace’s survival shut.
He slams his body unto my xenonite shell, the [Cartilage] between his [Muscle] calcifying into muddled minerals, with the [Human] urging me to reciprocate the motion. I harbor the memory, salvage it ravenously into my mind, even if I know it will embed itself there either way. Grace won’t. This is okay. I am fine, even if the bitterness festering between my synapses is enough to make them tremble. Grace gets to go home. He does not have to die. This departure is what will substantiate my title as an engineer, a crew-mate.
Forty-six years I have spent, suffocated by grief and loss and guilt, only to be salvaged by Grace (Grace; [God’s] unmerited favor in the salvation of sinners, wholly undeserving to those who receive it. Why must I be the one rescued when I have failed to save everyone else?) and taught how to love and love and love once more. Grace is an amazing, intelligent teacher. One of the best amongst his species. I suppose that answers my question from many solar nights ago.
I am scared. I am scared to relearn grief. I am scared to be chained to the deaths inflicted by my own cowardice and I am scared letting Grace go. He leaks and leaks and leaks and has the audacity to call it a [Human] thing like I am not on the verge of leaking myself. I wish I could hold him one more time but the open-[Flesh] burns snaking across his body dissuade me from doing so. Soon enough, he waves his [Hand] farewell and I am back to where I was forty-six years ago.
There is a lot to Grace that I cannot understand, his biology and psychology a structure I cannot assemble. But I know, as an engineer, I have done my job. I have repaired Eridani’s stars and invented a black-hole-collision of a bond. I know I will not ever forget Grace and though a [Human’s] memory is fickle and ever-changing, I pray that I am preserved in his stupid, fleshy, small [Human] brain.
I sunder my ship’s hull from its conduit to the Hail Mary and mourn as we part ways. [Goodbye], Grace. Should the stars ever die again, I hope I can save them with you.