Work Text:
I decided I wanted to learn Eridianese.
I was getting much better at understanding Rocky, but I wanted to be able to speak his language with him. Unfortunately, my biology had given me about 4 vocal cords too less, but when had biology ever stopped us? I had all of Earth’s knowledge in my hands, an alien planet’s best engineer, and 3 years to kill.
The MIDI program on the ship's computer was completely useless - while it could in theory play 5 notes at once, it sounded incredibly robotic and couldn’t account for inflection or tone or any of the nuances of spoken language.
So we set off to build a piano.
—
“ No no no. Wrong. Bad sound.” I hear for the fifteenth time. Building a piano with only aluminium, xenonite, and a 3d printer is hard. Not to mention I don’t have nearly enough qualifications for this - I’m a microbiologist, not a piano maker.
“ Human ear not know how to hear, question?” Oh, and also a snarky Eridian.
“Sarcasm. Ha ha. You’d know how hard this is if you were actually doing it, you know.”
“Humans not have enough words for sound. I no can tell you how to do.” He repeats for what feels like the millionth time.
I bang some aluminium together in frustration.
—-
“Yes. Better. You saying actual word now”
VICTORY!
I play a few chords and make a sentence.
“ ♩♫♫ …. ♫♫♩♫♫… Adrian ….♩♫♩♫ ” I hear a lot of dissonant diminished chords and the name of Rocky’s mate. Three of his fists are balled. I seem to have hit a nerve.
“Wait…what did I just say??”
“You not intend to say last sentence, question?” Rocky asks, tilting his carapace upwards.
“I intended to ask whether the device is working.”
“You are in wrong key. You not hear difference, question? Human ear know how to hear difference in key.”
I smack my head with my hand. Back to the drawing board.
—-
“Hey Rocky! Listen to this!”
We got the piano working. It sounds nothing like an earth piano, but it seems to do the trick. Building out of aluminium and xenonite and all the other random materials I found in the ship wasn’t ideal, but both Rocky and my old translation software seem satisfied with the notes it produces. It’s a sharp enough sound to hurt my ears though after prolonged use though, so I decided to try something new.
I started singing what I believe was C while playing the 4 other notes that make up Rocky’s Eridian name. I lost my capacity to feel embarrassed with him somewhere between the Adrian Incident and the third month of the road trip.
“Stop. Stop. Stop.” he yelled. “You make sense hurt. Eridian hearing sense not capable of hurting, but you make hurt”
Ouch. Maybe we’ll just stick to me speaking English. Or maybe I can get him to give me voice lessons.