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Eridian voices are not meant to sing alone. Their conversations are a chorus, consensus reached through harmonies, multiple viewpoints becoming counter-melodies as they’re assimilate into the communal song. There’s no speech without a chorus and smaller groups prefer silence when there is nothing to be said.
The transmission comes from an extrasteller object moving as nothing else in the observable universe. It swoops past their star, briefly orbits Threeworld before accelerating on a course to Erid itself. And it comes with a facsimile of an Eridian voice.
The voice is strangely flattened, something stilted in its tonality, none of the usual flourishes to distinguish triumph or longing, just an impassive recitation of facts. The only thing that sounds correct is the fact that is not alone. The sounds under the Eridian voice are structured enough to be recognized as speech, but words are percussive rather than melodic. They fit into the space around the Eridian voice, punctuating with enough precision that the song sounds almost like a consensus.
But this is not an Eridian ship. None of the Eridian ships have returned. Erid’s chorus eventually decided Eridians did not belong in space and it turned its efforts to adapting the planet’s surface to the cooling sun rather than searching for answers in the stars.
Rocky, the Eridian voice identifies itself, but the name does not match any of the manifests. It sounds at best like a poor imitation of <Rocky>, the tertiary engineer of their original extrasteller mission. They have launched seven more since.
None have returned.
Rocky and Grace save stars, the strange chorus sings. Astrophage predator introduced. Improvement imminent. Request landing on Erid surface.
Erid’s responding song sounds hours. Many counter-melodies, more discord than there has been since the decision to stop sending ships away from the planet’s surface.
Please, the transmission sings as they deliberate. The strange percussive undertones are gone. Rocky and Grace save Erid. Rocky and Grace save Earth. Erid save Grace.
The planet designated Earth is many years from Erid, well inside a cluster of infected stars. Obscure and insignificant except for being part of a larger pattern.
No one knows the name Grace.
Something has stolen the voice, someone whispers and the music swells with it, pushing away the competing melodies to become the dominant theme. That is not <Rocky>. We cannot trust this stranger Grace.
Grace dying, the Eridian says in its strange monotone. Grace save Erid. Erid save Grace. Statement. Demand landing Erid surface.
Erid’s melody settles. If this is <Rocky> he has spent nearly fifty years in space and returned without any of his crew on a foreign ship. This new vessel is likely full of foreign pathogens, possibly more dangerous than the astrophage consuming their star. Worst case scenario, the strange percussive voice has somehow stolen <Rocky>’s song. Either way, there is only danger in inviting the ship to land.
Permission denied.
The transmission from the strange vessel ceases.
The command is not obeyed.
The foreign object remains in orbit, but it spits out a smaller globe that launches itself, burning, into the planet’s atmosphere and crashes into the molten sea. It sinks deep enough that the chorus hesitantly concludes it is gone forever. The elders deem the area a hazard anyway and set up a perimeter around the object to warn people away.
After several cycles the object reappears, a new and complex structure expanding from a solid base. The metal of the initial falling structure is strange, but the new pieces are undeniably a clarified version of xenonite.
Either there is something living in the object or doing a very good facsimile of living. With its reemergence, the transmission resumes. The Eridian voice singing with accelerating urgency that the flattened tone does not reflect. The strange percussive alien undertone is gone but somehow it’s still there, the rhythms infusing the single Eridian voice. Help help help. Sun saved. Need food. Need nutrients <unintelligible> Grace friend <unintelligible> dying. Nutrients synthesize. Urgent. Urgent. Urgent.
<Adrian> is the first to respond, unable to ignore the thing that has robbed her mate’s name. She sneaks past the quarantine, ignoring all warnings and when she returns she spends a single elated day telling anyone who will listen that her mate has returned and that the star will reignite.
The next day, she steals nearly two thousand kilograms of bizarre trace chemicals and disappears back into the molten sea.
The structure balloons, bifurcating as it pushes its way towards the shore. There are strange gases suffusing half of it, highly flammable despite temperatures that are cool enough to freeze the molten sea, the metal coating thick enough to obscure the creatures lurking inside.
<Adrian> does not return.
The approach vessel that had birthed the falling object hangs in a decaying orbit. It is a distracting blight against the otherwise empty sky. After the launch of the final doomed extrasteller mission, the space elevator had been all but abandoned. Its purpose had been a launchpad. A hub for ship construction that let them sail into the vacuum of space rather than face the pressures of atmospheric exit. But with the space program decommissioned and the planet’s scientists wholly focused on on-planet solutions to their dimming star, the elevator has remained empty for years.
With the slowly growing anomaly in the molten sea and an obvious source, it is a quick song to reach consensus.
They wake up the elevator.
It’s done with extreme caution. Most of the scientists and engineers who had spent significant time with the elevator had either set off on doomed missions or sickened slowly on the planet. Luckily, the automation is largely intact and it is easy enough to send up enough xenonite to construct a bridge from the elevator to the foreign vessel.
The surprise comes with atmospheric analysis. Cold temperatures. Extremely high oxygen levels.
There is no way an Eridian could have survived in that atmosphere, no way for <Rocky> to have navigated those controls. If an Eridian made this journey, they were captive, not commander.
In the molten sea, the bubble expands.
There is not much to do after that. They flood the vessel with ammonium so it can be explored, but the ammonium seems to have damaged a lot of the inner functions. The technology inside appears advanced, but the meaning of the instruments is impenetrable.
The xenonite tunnels tell a potentially more friendly story than initial contact had feared but there is also charred matter against the walls. At some point, an Eridian had been on this ship.
And they had burned.
The thing in the sea breaches the shore. It is still transmitting. Sometimes the voice that is almost <Rocky> singing alone, but more and more it is joined by <Adrian> who lends steadfast support. It begins proposing puzzles and offering observations. Bizarre chemical syntheses. Unusual math regarding stellar travel. Observations about the slowly recovering sun.
The scientific questions are more intriguing than the answers and inevitably scientists find themselves responding. A deviation from the great chorus, that had decided the risk of engagement far exceeded the benefits.
The counter-melody picks up steam slowly and the signal changes, growing and twisting into something more complicated. Especially after the alien tones start to strengthen, its strange droning speech doubled by Eridian tones that talk of light sensing and relativistic physics. The advancements are impossible to ignore. The chorus almost accepts the loss of several of their best just to see the changes, the progress.
That changes when the children being responding. At first, it’s regarded as a passing phase, the chorus of the young trading theories, proposing translations and later outright decoding the alien voice.
And once it’s decoded, they start asking questions.
Amaze, amaze, amaze, the alien voice croaks in a haunting approximation of Eridian speech. In its own voice it adds. “You come, I’ll teach.”
The counter-melody sings it’s support, promising safety. Grace Rocky saved stars. We tell you how. Grace teach. Rocky protect. Together, we grow.
The children start to flock to the sound.
A song takes shape. A history. A myth.
With their star dying, Erid sent ships into the Great Unknown seeking answers. Brave Eridians. The best they had for chemistry, physics and engineering. The Great Unknown swallowed all but one: <Rocky> the engineer.
As the last voice in a lonely chorus, <Rocky> made a deal with an entity it found in empty sky.
We can help each other, but it will cost you your name, the entity said.
My name is already gone, <Rocky> replied. There is no one here to speak it.
It may change your voice, the entity challenged. We cannot communicate if you keep it.
My chorus is dead. My planet will follow. We can create a new song.
Your planet’s future will twin with mine, the entity warned. You will never be rid of me.
My planet has no future with no solution, <Rocky> answered. Whatever you need I will give.
Years later the star burned anew.
And the one now known as Rocky? He carried the monster home, carved it a space in the molten sea and delivered it the children that would shape an Eridian future. And the bubble in the molten sea heaved and grew as the rest of Erid awaited the price for their reignited star.