Chapter Text
It’s been a few months since he and Rocky embarked on their journey to Erid, and Ryland Grace is incredibly bored.
Look, there’s only so much that can occupy his attention span while he floats aimlessly, waiting to touch down on solid ground. He’s played all the games, and read all the books, and listened to all the music and podcasts, and seen all the documentaries, and cried over all the romcoms that the Hail Mary has to offer. Stratt had gone all out in terms of entertainment (when she said the entire sum of human knowledge in the database she really meant it), but it was only a matter of time before he’d scoured every Wikipedia article and used up all the art supplies to fingerpaint with Rocky.
That was the one silver lining in all of this, really. Rocky, for all the teasing Ryland gives him, is actually incredibly patient when he wants to be. Grace imagines it comes with being a member of a species that lives over 700 years. That, and the fact that Rocky’s been out here for longer than he’s been alive: what’s a couple months of travelling home by comparison?
It’s agony, that’s what it is.
He knows Rocky feels guilty for bringing Ryland along no matter how much he assures him that it was his choice and he’d gladly make it again. Because he would. Even if he’d maybe starve to death after landing on Erid, and never come in contact with another person again, and never see blue skies or oceans, he would do it again to give Rocky and the rest of his planet chance to live.
This doesn’t seem to lift the burden off of the Eridian’s five shoulders, though. Neither does Grace’s constant whining about how boring the rest of this trip is going to be if they don’t find something else to do to pass the time.
He’s quick to take back any complaints when it’s clear Rocky takes them to heart, because he knows his friend really has been trying his best. They’ve done everything together—how could they not? Puppet shows, movie binges, late night chats, dress-up in Illy’s skirts on a fake runway, whistling contests (Rocky crushes him in these, obviously), language exchanges, cultural exchanges. They’ve done everything and anything that two dudes in a tin can in outer space can do to make the hours pass.
It’s reached a breaking point, though.
He’s sprawled out on the floor like a starfish, staring blankly at the ceiling. He swears he’s counted the number of screws overhead so many times he can see them in his sleep. He does not have the capacity to count them all over again.
“Ro-ckyyyyyy,” he draws the name out in that way he knows said Eridian finds annoying. He can’t help himself, there’s not much else to do besides pester his best friend into spending time with him.
Rocky doesn’t even pause his work on the weird xenonite structure he’s been making for the last hour. What it is, Grace has no idea, but it’s taken up all of Rocky’s attention in a way that’s making him jealous.“Grace quiet right now, Rocky working.”
“Come onnnn, Rocks, I’m so bored,” he whines, knowing full well he sounds exactly like his middle schoolers asking for more game time. He doesn’t particularly care about his dignity right now.
“Too bad, Grace will have to put up with boredom. Rocky busy,” he waves a tool around flippantly.
“Rocks, I’m so bored, there’s nothing to do, I’m literally dying. I’m dying and you haven’t even turned around to watch.”
A couple months ago, Grace’s fatalistic humor would have sent Rocky into a panic and get Grace to apologize profusely. Now though, he doesn’t bat an eye—not that he has any eyes to bat—tutting skeptically. “Grace being dramatic. Will not die. Bored, tired, stupid. Take nap, statement.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Then find something to do. Put on movie, Rocky come watch later.”
“We’ve already seen everything, though.” And they have, basically. Well, not everything-everything, but everything that Grace has cared to see. From Wall-E to The Godfather and The Magic School Bus. Grace doesn’t think he’s seen so much television in his life. He’s so bored he’s even started watching old 80’s Turkish TV-shows just to have something to do. He’s picked up every hobby he can think of, from origami to crochet to pottery, even (and why Stratt had air-dry clay stored, he doesn’t know). He’s even considering learning a few languages for the heck of it. He’s got so much free time on his hands and no idea what to do with it.
“I could help you with your project?” he offers, a little desperately.
Rocky tilts his carapace. “No,” he says flatly. Grace pouts. “Grace mess up xenonite, Rocky have to start over.”
“Come on, that was one time. Maybe I’ve gotten better at it.”
“Rocky doubt that much much much.”
“Mean,” he huffs, picking up an arm to drag over his face before flopping back down. “Ugh.”
“Maybe Grace find more tools in storage, question? More things to do, help Grace pass time.”
“Maybe,” he says, unconvinced. “If nothing else, I guess I could grab the rest of the clothes I left down there. I feel like we’ve done everything there is to do, though.”
Rocky makes a noise of acknowledgement. “Always something to do. Just need to find it first. Bring games, question? Tired of beating Grace at Uno, bring something else for Rocky to beat Grace in.”
Ryland cracks a grin in spite of himself. How he keeps losing to a species that can’t even see the difference in card colors, he’ll never know. “Yeah, yeah, okay.” He pushes himself up off the floor with a grunt, stretching with a satisfying pop that makes Rocky let loose a quiet sound of disgust. Small victories. “I’ll dig up something, I guess. Don’t get your hopes up, though.”
“Yes yes yes, Grace go find clothes and games, Rocky win them all.”
“Oh, you’re so on.” Grace is going to lose so badly later.
He leaves Rocky to his productive work session and makes his way towards storage. He’s not particularly optimistic about the chances of finding something new. It’s not like a new box will just magically appear every time he opens the door. Maybe there’ll be something he hasn’t spotted, though. It’s possible, however unlikely.
Grace is trying to stay positive, he really is. It’s getting tiring, though, keeping his hopes up.
He locates the storage room on the other side of the ship. It reminds him of the attic in his old apartment where he’d kept all his junk. Old clothes, random games, pictures and memories that seem blurry in his mind’s eye. He bats the thought away gently. Whatever he’d kept in his apartment is probably long gone at this point.
Ah well. He opens the storage room door with a sigh. No use dwelling on it now—
There is a giant creature where a giant creature should not be.
Yelping, Ryland jumps backwards and slams the door of the storage room shut.
…What was that.
Admittedly, he may not have been in the best space mentally the last time he’d been in storage. As in, was-still-recovering-from-amnesia. In spite of that, he’s pretty sure he’d be able to remember the terrifying unknown entity that he’d laid eyes on just five seconds ago. For the sake of it, he tries to recall the memory of scavenging for clothes, and yep, no big scary figure looming over the boxes, as he’d expected. And it was pretty dark in there, the storage room doesn’t have lighting, so maybe he’s wrong. But unless he’s finally lost it, he’s pretty sure he didn’t imagine it this time either.
He slides the door back open to double check. Sure enough, it’s still there.
“Grace?” Rocky calls from across the hall. He can hear the clunking of xenonite against the floorboards but doesn’t dare to turn his back on this creature. Maybe it operates on Weeping Angels logic or something. “Grace find mystery box, quest–”
Rocky stops short. Grace doesn’t need to look down at him to know his attention is on the thing. There is a long moment of silence.
Grace stares dumbly at the giant robot before him.
“...Grace hear what Rocky hear, question?”
“Yeah,” he clears his throat, eyes not leaving the powered-down animatronic. “Yeah, I see it bud.”
“Scary.”
“Yup.” And Rocky doesn’t even have eyes, which Grace has never envied him for before but almost does now because, cheese and crackers, this thing is creepy.
Firstly, it’s huge. Even crumpled in the corner like a puppet with cut strings, the robot easily holds a good two feet over him, and Grace is on the taller side of average himself. He’s absolutely certain that no robot needs to be near eight feet tall for any reason and it’s kind of freaking him out. But the thing that actually makes him recoil is the face.
Fake eyes like the glass balls in those old porcelain dolls, with no pupils–he’s not sure if pupils would be more or less terrifying, actually. The colorless white is unnerving enough. The whole faceplate is too realistic, crossing just over into uncanny valley in a way that makes him viscerally uncomfortable. Perks of being human, he supposes. Rocky probably can’t understand that part, but he probably can understand Grace’s aversion to the teeth, because there are far too many in that mouth carved into the plastic in a rictus grin.
“What triangles sticking out from face, question?”
Grace squints. Yup, triangles sticking out from face indeed. A quick count proves there’s nine of them, which makes everything neck-up look like a windmill. Or maybe a sawblade.
Yikes. He pushes that particular image out of his mind for his own sanity. No need to start panicking now when nothing’s even happened yet.
“Scary scary scary,” Rocky repeats. Ryland lets out a low hum of agreement. “Why so many teeth, question?”
“I’ve got absolutely no idea, Rocks,” he murmurs. “Why would Stratt even put this here…?”
He can vaguely make out a…seam? Splitting the face in half down the middle. It curves near the eyes in a cartoonish depiction of a nose, like a crescent that cuts across. There are stylized swirls over the bulbous cheeks that make it seem like the designers knew how terrifying this thing was and tried to make it look more charming.
Grace doesn’t feel particularly charmed right now. He feels like those characters in the horror movies who stumble upon something that’ll end up killing them in the next scene. He feels like he’s going to get jumpscared pretty soon if he isn’t careful.
There’s evidence of other attempts to make this monstrosity more appealing. Bells on the wrists hang from loosely-wrapped ribbons.There’s a big ruffle-thing that covers up a good portion of the neck, some kind of velvet-esque fabric that looks worn down by age. Come to think of it, the whole thing matches that description: whatever it is, this robot clearly isn’t fresh off the production line. There’s smudges along the chassis, faint echoes of tiny human handprints over the chestplate that make his heart ache with something he can’t place.
The chest has a similar separation of color as the face with a seam that cuts down the middle. Two buttons sit smack in the middle. Is that how they power it on or merely aesthetic purposes? He’s not taking his chances by testing them out. Why on Earth would Stratt think to pack a scary robot aboard their one-way trip to Tau-Ceti?
He takes a step back, taking in the scene once more. Triangles on the head, faded paint job, crescent across the face. All told, it looks like a crude caricature of the sun.
Huh.
“Grace?”
“Yeah, bud?”
“We should leave.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, not moving an inch. Some irrational part of his brain tells him that if he takes his eyes off this thing, it will get up and walk away.
No, stop it, he’s being ridiculous. It clearly isn’t up and leaving. There’s nowhere for it to go anyways, they’re in a tin can rocketing towards Erid, it’s not jumping out of the airlock to go on a space stroll anytime soon. Not to mention that it’s very much powered off, Ryland, quit being paranoid. Yeesh.
…Out of some absurd impulse to fudge around and find out, he reaches out beyond the doorframe and taps one of the bells adorning its wrists. It jingles prettily.
Nothing happens.
He lets out a sigh of relief. Behind him, Rocky chirps.
“Can come back later to investigate. Find supplies for now, bring up to dormitory.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Grace mutters. He rips his eyes away from the robot and scans the rest of the storage unit. It’s too dark to make anything out besides the silhouette of the boxes, but–
“Aha!” There it is, just where he thought it’d be! Well, not actually, because it’s right behind the robot, but it’s here, at least. Has to count for something, right?
Yeah, it means he has to get behind the freaky robot corpse to get his supplies out of here.
Great.
“Rocky?”
“Yes?”
“Do we actually need to get the supplies, though? I’ve got plenty of clothes in the dorms, I don’t really need to go through Yao and Illy’s, and we don’t really need the board games if we’ve got plenty of other things to do—”
“Grace.”
Grace caves. “Fine, I’m going, I’m going.”
Grumbling about how if he’s dying at the hands of this animatronic deathtrap, he’ll be haunting Rocky’s carapace for centuries, he stoops under the low ceiling and ducks past the towers of boxes. He doesn’t know how the spotless spaceship contracted dust, but there’s dust built up in here all the same, making him sniffle after thirty seconds of existing in the room.
He passes the creature leaning against the box of interest, crouching under its lanky form. This close to it, he can more clearly make out the details of its figure. Yep, definitely not a new model. There are ball joints clearly visible between the segmented shoulders, elbows, wrists and digits, and if he squints he swears he can almost make out the wires tucked behind them. And sure enough, he was right, there are handprints smeared along its front and back. Small ones, much smaller than his own.
Carefully, he lays a hand just over one on the back. The metal is cool and dusty under his palm. He lingers there for a moment. He wonders whose hand brushed over this robot, marked it with their presence. He wonders if they’re still alive, if the probes made it in time to save them.
There is powder clinging to his skin when he pulls his hand away. He wipes it on his pant leg and moves on.
Checking the box’s label confirms that he’s found the clothes, at least. Chinese script neatly spells out what he can’t read, but he can make out Yao’s name between the characters. His chest feels cramped thinking of the layers of dust now covering what belonged to his friend.
He swallows and grabs hold of the box flaps, peering inside.
Yeah, it’s more clothes. He doesn’t want to rummage around to try them on here, obviously, but he does have to free the box from the weight of the robot. He’d also like to find out if there’s any more boardgames here like Rocky mentioned. He thinks a round of Battleship could temporarily alleviate his chronic boredom.
First, though, getting this box free. He places both hands on the bot to cautiously lift it off the cardboard, using his foot in an attempt to nudge the box out from under him.
Grace fails to account for the fact that he is not graceful whatsoever, and promptly loses balance, sending the box away and falling on his back with a harsh oof that knocks the wind out of him.
The robot comes crashing down and Ryland just barely manages to roll out of the way in time. He winces at the loud crashing sound, hefting himself up.
Oops. Mystery robot fell down faceplate first. He tries not to feel too bad about it. At least it wouldn’t feel any of that? And the box is safe, that’s a win.
He rubs the sore side of his back with a grimace. Nothing seriously wounded but his pride, but still. Ouch.
“Grace okay, question?” Rocky calls from outside. Oh, right, he’s on a mission here.
“I’m okay!” he answers. “Be out in a sec.”
He turns back around to pick the box up, staring down at the robot with a hum.
It’s weird, a part of him feels bad for it. Maybe he should lean it against the wall or something? He’s definitely not going to be able to fix it, that’s for sure. Assuming there’s something wrong with it, that is—he’s not going to power it on and find out.
Still, he can’t help the pang of sympathy in his chest looking at it.
“Grace?” Rocky pipes up again.
“Coming!”
He readjusts his hold on the box and turns back to the door, taking the few steps to cross the line between the room and the hall.
“Just the clothes in here. I didn’t manage to find a games box, sorry man.”
“It okay. Can look for it later.” Rocky pauses, then adds. “Weird.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Grace not know what it is, question?”
“Nope. Don’t remember anyone ever mentioning it, either. I guess some mysteries just have to remain unsolv—”
There is a loud, distinct crashing noise that sounds inside the storage room. Grace cuts himself off and whips back around to face the door. Rocky stiffens beside him, rearing up to stand alert.
It’s quiet for a moment. Grace holds his breath. For what, he doesn’t know. If it weren’t for Rocky beside him, he’d think he imagined it. But then, out of nowhere—
“He-llo, New Friend!”