Chapter Text
Dr Captain Ryland Grace, sole-survivor of the Hail Mary expedition and intergalactic stray, has become deeply homesick.
A homesickness that only seemed to intensify the more like Earth his biodome became.
It’s not that he didn’t appreciate the hospitality of the Eridian species, they truly were the perfect hosts, accommodating and charitable to the strange, lanky creature that had shown up at their doorstep.
It was just that, every time the artificial lights of his biodome came on, filtering gently through his blinds, dappling his empty house with soft yellow patches of sun, his subconscious fooled him into believing, for just one beautiful moment, that he was on Earth.
Fooled himself into believing that he was sitting in the armchair he had gotten on the cheap off Facebook Marketplace, grading papers in his small, lived-in San-Fran apartment. That he would have dinner with Marissa, that he really couldn’t afford to be attending with such frequency, later that afternoon. That he could hear his upstairs neighbour seemingly rearranging every piece of furniture they owned. That he could hear the road outside, bustling with the symptoms of human life.
Then he would blink, and he would be back on Erid, 16.3 light years away from a planet that had long determined him “history”. And for the home of a species that relied entirely upon sound for their sensory input, Erid was quiet.
Grace loved Rocky. Rocky made the daily effort to visit his enclosure and fret over him as if he would fall back into the perilous atmosphere of Tau Ceti if he was left unsupervised. Rocky was easily the greatest, closest friend that Grace had ever had. Yet, Grace still bore the weight of a deep isolation. Humans are intrinsically social creatures that have evolved to rely on interaction to keep themselves healthy and safe, thus as the loneliest man this side of the galaxy, Grace’s acute case of homesickness arose from a primal sense of wrongness. Grace missed humanity.
Rocky had unveiled Grace’s new classroom 2 years after they arrived on Erid. Grace, who until that point had simply been revelling in the fact he was alive, had burst into tears upon seeing that Rocky, kind, caring Rocky had brought his life’s purpose across the galaxy.
“Grace likes his classroom, question? This is happy leaking, question?”
“Yeah bud, it is.”
Grace had thrown himself at his new job, spending every waking moment that he was not with Rocky trying to establish a science curriculum, and create the best classroom on Erid. It was a desperate attempt to fill the Grover-Cleveland-Middle sized hole in his chest that, at least for the first six months, worked effectively.
“Rocky, move that desk more to your right, no, not that far”
“Stupid. Desk is stupid, statement. What need desk for, question? Pebbles will not be writing”
“You can’t have a classroom without desks! And while you’re there I need you to hang up the planet models”
“Rocky do this! Rocky do that! Rocky need a break from bossy, bossy Grace.”
On Earth, Grace’s classroom had been a great source of pride for him. It had taken around 7 months for Grace to collect and create the various “specimens” that adorned the shelves of the room. There was great conspiracy within his classroom as to what was in the formaldehyde-filled jars.
In actuality, they were all improvised specimens designed for the effect of a “mad-science” lab rather than for educational value.
What was believed to be a set of mammalian “eyes”, the leading guess being that they belonged to a deer, was in actuality two meatballs Grace had preserved.
Similarly, what his students had believed to be a preserved seahorse, was in fact a gummy worm that had absorbed the formaldehyde in the jar, puffing up into a peculiar shape.
The magnum opus of his classroom, however, was the model of the solar system that hung from the ceiling, positioned according to factual distances, and incorporating a disco ball for the sake of whimsicality. He had spent many sleepless nights using his limited painting skills to texture the paper-mache globes into believable planets.
He designed his classroom to be as welcoming as possible. Bright colours and natural lighting, sensory items in a drawer at the back, a quiet corner for the days his students simply became overwhelmed.
Thus, in decorating his Eridian classroom, he became obsessive over the details.
In a feat of Human-Eridian artistic collaboration, code for: Rocky can’t say no to Grace, a xenonite model of the 40 Eridani system hung from the ceiling of his new classroom. Textured posters displayed the Eridian Periodic Table in written Eridani that appeared to the human eye as a mix of braille and a topographic map.
And in the corner of the room, facing north-west, was a model of Earth. Unlike the rest of the classroom decorations, the Earth model was made from aluminum foil, and coloured to match the Blue Planet.
Between classes, Grace often found himself staring at the model.
Pervading, always, in the back of his mind were thoughts of his human students. His kids.
Grace still had no way of knowing if the Beetles had found their way home. If there had been enough of humanity left to send its contents off to Venus.
It was predicted that a quarter of the Earth would succumb to the cold. Grace pictured a quarter of his kids, frozen and pale from the cold. He pictured the survivors, shaken, distant, and devoid of the world he had promised them. His stomach churned.
Grace had a complicated relationship with sleeping after teaching Eridian classes.
Returning to the practices of teaching had caused some of the drug-addled synapses in his brain to reignite, as such following his classes he often dreamt of his kids back on Earth. Memories vengefully returning, forever reminding him of what he had forgotten; threatening the likely probability that the amnesia had forever stolen precious moments between him and his kids.
Two nights ago Grace had dreamt of Abby.
She was one of the brightest students he had taught, she was witty, and outspoken, and quick to call out Mr Grace when he wrote the wrong date on the top right corner of the whiteboard.
In the dream, Abby was justifying why her absence the previous day meant she should be given two complimentary Earth hacky-sacks– an informal currency traded in for prizes once a month – as compensation for the questions she would have gotten right in “lava”, had she been present.
“Mr Grace, really you should be happy I’m only asking for two, normally I leave the room with at least four”
This was true, Abby was a very bright student.
“But Abby, you didn’t actually answer any questions. You can’t ask for rewards for hypothetical answers”
“But Mr Grace, I wasn’t given the opportunity to answer the questions, if I had, then I would’ve answered correctly”
Grace was an experienced teacher, he knew how to spot a losing battle.
“Alright, fine, but I want a paragraph on the properties of light on my desk by the end of the week.”
Abby grinned victoriously and collected her entitlement.
Grace had awoken from the dream with a smile on his face. His Pebbles were great, but he missed the idiosyncrasies of humanity. A pebble would never consider back-chatting Saviour-Teacher-Grace, and certainly wouldn’t attempt to win an argument with him. The pebbles were curious, but the cultural fear of losing their sun was far too fresh for them to ever consider disrespecting the human who restored it.
He wondered if Abby was still so outspoken. Had the cold frozen her playful curiosity?
It's a nauseating realisation; he will never know who his students became.
They will forever exist to him as partial memories, pictures fuzzy around the edges. Faces that blur together, and names left forever on the tip of his tongue.
This realisation had led to Grace’s current predicament. He didn’t want to go to sleep.
Like a kid throwing a tantrum over the monster under the bed, Grace felt his chest tighten every time he thought of remembering their faces, their voices, their laughs, only to lose them again upon waking.
Grace had held out for 38 hours, it was light-work for him, but Rocky, ever-observant, ever-caring Rocky would quickly realise his plans.
Thus, he busied himself with marking the pop-quiz his class had just completed. All pebbles received full marks, as they all had photographic memory, really the pop-quiz was for the sense of fulfilment it granted Grace.
“Grace, Rocky-visit time! Adrian wanted to know what Grace thought about the new upgrade to shoreline, added shells this morning!”
“The shells were great! Give Adrian my thanks.” In truth, Grace had not looked at the shoreline for the past week, it was becoming far too similar to San-Francisco, thus inspiring a deep, twisting dread in his stomach every time he thought of it.
“Grace liked shells, question?”
Grace, who had now begun to reorder the xenonite puzzles Rocky had provided him during his recovery to help his brain heal from eating itself, absentmindedly answered:
“Sure did, Rock.”
Rocky walked up to Grace, stood still for 10 seconds, and then poked him in the stomach.
“Bad Grace. Grace is a dirty, dirty, liar. Grace’s lies are more dirty than Grace’s room. There are no shells on the beach.”
Grace had made a fatal error. Oh, he was an idiot, now Rocky knew he was ignoring him, and knew he was tired too. You see, shells had already come up as a potential decoration for his biodome approximately a month ago. Shells, however, are made of calcium carbonate, the same substance as the fragile, protective casing around Eridian eggs. Thus, the suggestion of adding shells to the beach had been shot down before the concept even made it to the interior-design-thrum due to the taboo nature of their source material.
Grace, had he slept in the past 40 hours, would have immediately recognised the trap Rocky had laid for him.
And unfortunately, Rocky knew the primary cause of Grace-stupidity:
“When Grace last sleep, question? Rocky watch last night, statement. Was Grace not sleeping?”
Grace had chosen to spend the 28 800 seconds that Rocky watched him staring into the corner of the room and recalling every known fact he could about his students at Grover-Cleveland-Middle, and once this activity proved itself a futile effort, he spent the remainder of the time considering every way in which he had failed his students.
“Grace say why Grace is not sleeping, demand”
“I don’t want to, Rock. Every dream I have is about them, my kids on Earth.
I hate remembering it, because I can never see them again. I can never tell them how proud I am of them. I can never apologise to them for leaving.”
“Grace can return to Earth, Erid will help, if it will make Grace happy.” Rocky sang morosely.
“It won’t matter. They aren’t the same people I left. I’m not the same man who left them.”
Grace paused, placing his head between his knees and breathing deeply.
“I don’t want to change anymore, Rock.
So much has changed.”
“Grace is wrong, stupid human.
Grace is still the same human. Grace still cares for students. Grace still cares for Rocky and Adrian and all of Erid. Grace still cares enough to give everything for another.
Grace still says sorry to objects that don’t hear him. Grace still dirty, dirty, messy. Grace still Rocky's friend. Grace still the greatest human Rocky knows.
Everything around Grace changed. But Grace did not change, Grace grew. Grace still the same, but now has a whole planet who love him back”
Rocky, sweet, caring, loyal Rocky sat next to Grace whilst he shook from the pressure of the Earth upon his shoulders.
Rocky placed his arm upon Grace’s chest, a thin layer of xenonite barring them from connecting.
“Grace still has his students, in here.”
Grace, exhausted from the emotional turmoil of the past 6 years, and staying up for 40 hours, slowly fell asleep next to Rocky, and enjoyed a peaceful, dreamless sleep amongst the beginnings of his new home.