Chapter Text
## 01. Arca
Ryland Grace woke up to another morning exactly like yesterday’s, with every joint in his body providing its own personal creak-and-groan soundtrack.
He planted his cane, shuffled to the sink, and gave his face a quick wash. While chewing through a me-burger, he tried not to think about the fact that it had been more than ten years since a tomato or a leaf of lettuce had been anywhere near his mouth. A lot of Eridian scientists had scraped together every organic compound they could find to create something a human could digest, all to keep him alive.
Grace was grateful for that. For all of it.
For everything on Erid.
Sometimes, imagining what had happened to his home was terrifying. Horrifying, even. But he had no choice but to cling to a vague, stubborn little hope. Mostly because there was literally nothing else he could do.
What was he supposed to do? Fire off a message from Erid toward Earth and wait twelve years for it to arrive at light speed? Send a casual “Hey, how’s it going?” and then die of old age while waiting twenty-four years for a reply?
Still, there had been one comfort.
Four Earth years ago, the signal had finally reached Erid: Earth’s sun had recovered its original brightness. Erid’s sky was hidden behind a thick atmosphere, so there was nothing to see from the surface. But if you rode the space elevator all the way up, docked at the Hail Mary in orbit, and turned a telescope toward just the right patch of space—
There it was.
The saved sun.
Erid’s gravity still crushed him. Still squeezed him. Still made him pant like an old dog after a long walk. But he could still walk, more or less, with his cane. His eyes worked perfectly. His hearing was, if anything, much better than it had been before.
There were pebbles waiting for him in the classroom. Eridian children. Homework and essays he had finished grading were stacked on his desk.
Grace still couldn’t leave the classroom.
As long as he was able, he wanted to stay at the front of that room.
Even after Rocky told him the Hail Mary had been fully repaired, restocked, and prepared for the journey back to Earth.
He had the chance to go home. He had every possible justification to go home. But he had said he wanted to stay on Erid.
Rocky had been purely, uncomplicatedly delighted by this and said Grace could stay for a long, long time.
Keeping one Ryland Grace alive must have cost an astronomical amount of resources and labor, but the people of Erid never treated him like an inconvenient “squishy space jelly monster.” Well, Rocky was the exception. But Rocky’s affectionate teasing and nicknames were good humor, and Grace enjoyed them. So, separate from whether or not they could send Grace back to Earth, the Eridians were curious about what was happening there. And, if possible, whether they could establish peaceful, friendly relations with humans.
After Grace and Rocky returned to Erid, Eridian science leapt ahead as if several centuries had been compressed into a few years. Radiation was no longer an unknown curse. The tragedy of the Blip-A had become an explainable accident.
But being able to explain it did not bring back the people who had been lost.
After Project Save Grace, one of the largest topics in Erid’s astronomical and aerospace community was the recovery of the Blip-A, which was still drifting somewhere between the Tau Ceti system and the Eridani system.
Every Eridian cycle, they honored the twenty-two crewmembers who had died aboard the Blip-A. They wanted to bring their legacy home and let them finally rest.
But the recovery effort was less useful than exploring the Solar System and establishing contact with humans. It was also far more dangerous.
So it kept being pushed down the priority list.
There was one Eridian who was deeply, bitterly dissatisfied with that fact.
One of the siblings born from his same egg-clutch had been **Flat**—a crewmember of the Blip-A and its vice-commander. When Grace and Rocky first arrived on Erid, the Eridians had sung a chorus of welcome and erupted in joy.
But he had stood alone in profound silence, feeling the empty place where his sibling should have been.
He could not accept it. Why had his precious sibling had to die in the middle of space? Why had only Rocky survived and returned as a hero, dragging an alien home with him?
Later, after learning through human science about the unknown disaster called “radiation,” he understood it with his mind.
But understanding something and forgiving it were very different things.
Rocky had met him at the memorial for the Blip-A crew. He had expressed the heavy guilt and sorrow he felt for being the only one to return alive.
Most of the bereaved families had offered Rocky gratitude and comfort. They had welcomed him warmly.
But that scientist—the vice-commander’s sibling—had remained silent to the end.
And Rocky had silently accepted that freezing silence.
All of it came back to Rocky as he left the Council chambers instead of his usual lab.
Today was the day the Central Council decided the scientific budget. Rocky hated politics with a passion that could have powered a small city. But the maintenance costs of the “Ry-Land Dome,” which was under his supervision, consumed enormous resources every year.
Its official name was something like Artificial Terrestrial Ecological Matrix Quarantine Zone blah blah blah—very long, very official, very boring. Grace had simply named it Ry-Land after himself.
File a complaint. See if he cared.
A great many Eridian scientists in the field of Earth studies had begged Rocky, savior of the planet, to say even one thing to the old-timers on the Council. So he had reluctantly attended the session and delivered yet another long speech about the importance of Savior Grace.
Once the annoying Council business was over, Rocky planned to visit Grace with Adrian. While Grace ate dinner, they would play a board game for the first time in a while, inspect the inside of the dome, and then take a walk together.
It was going to be a perfect day.
Until Rocky met him in the middle of the corridor.
If they had been human, they might have passed each other without recognizing faces they had not seen in twenty-two years.
But Eridian memory did not allow forgetting.
Rocky stopped for a moment.
His perfect memory substrate instantly calculated a vast amount of Council record data about the Eridian in front of him.
<<♪♬#♩♪#. Representative of the families of the Blip-A crew. Distinguished scientist of the aerospace engineering cluster.>>
And then Rocky remembered one more thing.
The spacecraft assembly plan for the Blip-A Recovery Project, proposed under this scientist’s leadership, had once again been rejected by the Council today for lack of budget.
Finally, Rocky remembered just how deeply this Eridian hated him.
The terrible silence from the memorial twenty-two years ago burrowed under his carapace again.
Not a single note had been sounded.
But Rocky had understood it clearly.
<<Why are you alive, and my precious one is not?>>
Rocky did not breathe. He had no lungs, no air, no little human respiratory system to betray him.
And yet, in that instant, he thought he understood what it meant to have the breath knocked out of you.
It might have been easier if the other Eridian had shouted at him. If he had raged.
But he only stood there, facing Rocky with one side of his carapace.
Like a human glaring daggers.
At last, he spoke. His first notes were sharp.
<Rocky. I saw the Earth-science budget proposal you submitted to the Council.>
Rocky realized anew that this Eridian’s tone was much higher and keener than most.
<Every Erid cycle, we purify and maintain thirty-six shard-hexes of atmosphere to keep one human alive. An alien ecosystem made from an extremely low-pressure, extremely low-temperature oxygen-nitrogen mixture and enormous quantities of salt water. With those resources, we could build two more interstellar spacecraft.>
<Grace is the savior of Erid and Earth!>
Rocky answered in a frantic chord.
<He is not an alien organism being kept in a zoo or laboratory! Grace is intelligent life! Grace risked his life for Erid! Grace deserves that space!>
<Oh, of course. Great Savior Rocky, and Savior Grace.>
A faint edge of mockery threaded through his frequency.
<Everyone sings welcoming choruses for you and lifts you up. I do not deny it. The taumoeba and human scientific knowledge you brought us were certainly great gifts. But, Rocky, do not pretend you do not hear the silence behind your resonance.>
<A scientist should not speak such superstitious words! The Blip-A, they… it was an unavoidable accident!>
<I will not stop until that cursed ship rests on this soil.>
He ended the conversation decisively with a piercing, needle-sharp tone. Then he moved past Rocky and disappeared down the corridor.
Left alone, Rocky could not say anything for a long time.
He only paced anxiously, his claws clicking against the corridor floor, as if the sound could give shape to the confusion inside him.
Adrian, worried, came looking for him and gently tapped his carapace before guiding him toward the Ry-Land Dome.
Until then, Rocky’s frequency never fully steadied.
“Friend, is something wrong?”
Grace asked the question with a worried frown as he gathered up the UNO cards on the table. Rocky had brought over a mathematical calculation game—the kind Rocky had absolutely no business ever losing—and yet here he was, limp and distracted and not focusing at all.
Something was definitely wrong.
So why was he clamming up and refusing to talk?
Frustrated, Grace shifted his gaze toward Adrian.
Adrian flicked his pentagonal joints back and forth in a very clear *I have no idea* gesture. It was purely an imitation of human body language.
Grace thought back over Rocky’s schedule for the day. He was pretty sure Rocky had said he was going to some kind of Eridian government council to secure funding for maintaining the dome.
*Maybe the Council geezers finally told him they couldn’t justify pouring more resources into one damp, leaky space-jelly monster?*
No. If that had happened, his small, hard-shelled friend would have been explosively furious, not… this droopy.
Grace sidled closer, then draped himself over Rocky’s xenonite protective suit, putting his weight on it as he whispered.
“Rocky, if you don’t tell me what happened…”
Grace pressed his lips right up against the transparent wall of the suit and puffed out his cheeks.
His tongue was almost touching it.
Rocky finally shrieked in horror.
<~!@#!!! Grace! Disgusting!!!>
“Then talk! Or I’m getting spit all over this thing!”
<Adrian! Save me! I am being eaten!>
Adrian, who had just been summoned for rescue, merely backed away with a giggling trill. Slowly. Deliberately. Traitorously.
If Rocky actually wanted to, snapping Grace’s fragile human bones would be about as difficult as breaking dry pasta. But Grace knew Rocky would never do that.
Which made this exactly the kind of stupid joke he could get away with.
Rocky and Grace wrestled around for a while in something that was technically not wrestling and also technically not safe for senior citizens. It ended, eventually, with Grace declaring surrender.
He sprawled out on the couch like a starfish, cackling, and complained that he was too old for this sort of thing now. His back hurt. His joints hurt. His dignity hurt. Normal pathetic old-man noises.
Rocky answered playfully.
But through the xenonite barrier, he could hear his friend’s heartbeat and breathing.
Both grew slower every year.
Grace was aging.
At last, Rocky mumbled his confession.
<Today, in Council corridor, I met ♪♬#♩♪#.>
“Hmm? That’s a new name.”
<He speaks for the Blip-A families. Egg-clutch sibling of Vice-Commander **Flat**.>
Grace listened quietly to Rocky’s story.
Then he gave the Eridian a human-style name: “Sharp.”
He added that, if possible, he would like to meet Sharp in person.
Rocky immediately sounded a note of refusal.
<Sharp dislikes Grace. Sharp thinks Grace is unnecessary waste for Erid.>
“Oh. Wow. Right in the ribs.”
<Of course, that is Sharp’s stupid thought alone! Everyone else loves Grace! Grace came to Erid and everyone is happy! Happy! Happy! Grace is very precious being! Sharp is idiot and does not understand!>
Rocky bounced with his whole body as he shouted, as if personally testifying to Grace’s innocence.
Watching him, Adrian let out a quiet, calming whistle.
<I know Sharp.>
<How do you know? Question.>
<I was in his cluster. The gathering of Blip-A crew families.>
A heavy silence fell inside the dome.
Rocky and Grace could only look at Adrian without speaking.
Adrian continued in a low, still resonance.
<After Blip-A left… mission time passed. Return cycle passed. Still, no signal. Still, no ship.>
<Families gathered. We listened for them together. There was nothing to hear.>
<Sharp became center of the cluster. He said rescue ship must be built. Blip-A must be found. He said this again and again.>
<But Eridani grew colder. Space beyond sky was still terror. We did not know why the great ones did not return.>
<No one wished to make more dead ones.>
<Only Sharp did not stop.>
A sorrowful resonance flowed from Adrian’s body.
Rocky quietly moved to Adrian’s side and folded his arms inward. A moment later, the carapaces of the two Eridians trembled and locked together.
Even through two layers of xenonite suit, the wordless frequency of comfort came through clearly.
<Grace. Rocky. Before you two came down from the sky, Erid was afraid.>
Adrian’s vibration turned damp.
<Many voices turned against science. They said our songs had been wrong. They listened to fear instead. To old dark stories.>
<They said the world-song would end soon. They said all Erid would grow still on the cold ground.>
<Sharp and our cluster tried. We sang need. We sang rescue. We sang Blip-A’s name.>
<But fear was too loud. Eridani grew colder. No resources could go to second ship.>
Now it was not only Rocky beside Adrian.
Grace was there too.
With his shaggy old-man arms, Grace wrapped both Eridians’ hard carapaces in the biggest hug he could manage. He was fighting back tears with all his might, but Adrian did not like it when humans leaked “liquid secretions,” so Grace tilted his head back and tried very hard not to get any on him.
<When I remember Sharp and that cluster, my song becomes unsteady.>
<I am here. My mate is here. Our days are ordinary again. This is too much fortune.>
<Sharp did not receive this. Many did not receive this.>
<So, Rocky. Do not hate him too much.>
<Good. Rocky will not hate Sharp.> Rocky’s harmony rang clear in agreement.
<But Sharp still hates Grace. How do we fix that? Question.>
“No, no. It’s fine. If Sharp hates me, I’m really okay. And when I say I’m okay, I really do mean okay.”
Grace cut in quickly and smiled.
He had never assumed there wasn’t a single Eridian on this distant alien planet who disliked him. But if the bottom of that dislike held something so desperate—and so justified—then what could he do?
If Sharp needed to hate somebody, fine.
Grace was available.
Just then, an alarm sounded from Mary’s main console, mounted on the wall of the dome.
It was, more or less, Ry-Land’s doorbell.
Grace tilted his head in confusion, because the people who usually rang that alarm were all right here next to him.
But his confusion lasted only a second.
Rocky and Adrian’s joints shot upright, all at once, sensing something in the air. A violent emergency signal in a high-frequency band, far beyond the range of weak little human ears, was shaking the air inside the dome.
Rocky sprang away and activated Mary’s intercom.
[Savior Grace! Savior Rocky! Message from Erid Aerospace Center. Please come to the center immediately.]
<What happened? Why must Grace come too? Question!>
“Me? I have to go too? Why?”
What could possibly be going on that they would send a summons all the way to a human habitat?
And right before elderly Grace bedtime, too!
[Report from deep-space observatory. One alien vessel from the Solar System appears to be approaching the Eridani system.]
And just like that, Grace was wide awake.
Six hours earlier, above the skies of Erid, far beyond the frozen reaches of deep space, an unknown vessel had altered course toward the planet.
The signal format of its transmission was unmistakably Terran.
At the very front of the encrypted data packet, alongside the seal of a supranational control authority, the name of the spacecraft was printed in sharp Gothic lettering.
**— ARCA —**
It was a massive wedge-shaped vessel, six times the size of the Hail Mary.
Behind it, the distinctive electromagnetic radiation emitted by astrophage propulsion slowly began to diminish.
The Arca, having decelerated to half the speed of light, finally entered the Eridani system.
Its hull began calculating the exact positions of the planets, plotting a gravitational slingshot trajectory with microscopic precision. Hundreds of blue optical sensors embedded in its bow and across its surface poured real-time data like a waterfall into the two AI androids connected at the center of the cockpit.
Once the calculations were complete, the machines changed course.
At the same time, they began broadcasting a wide-band message toward Erid.
The message repeated through space in thirteen versions: Morse code, binary operators, base-six code, and even Eridian, reconstructed perfectly from Dr. Grace’s old records.
It said:
[[ We are visitors from Earth. We wish to establish friendship with Erid. ]]
[[ Is Dr. Ryland Grace alive? ]]