What if human astronauts visit Erid one day and are doing diplomatic things and whatnot and they learn Ryland Grace is sstill alive and is in a terrarium. One of the astronauts jokingly says “you’re not experimenting on him are you” and the Eridians freeze cause yeah, they totally are. They experiment on him all the time. They’re experimenting on him right now in fact. They read about deep sea diving and are now testing the effects of replacing certain gases in Graces atmosphere. Right now they’re testing helium.
They send someone to stop the experiment but Grace refuses cause they’re so far in already and well that would just ruin the data.
The new humans think this is hilarious and insist on joining the experiment as Grace excitedly yaps about all the cool stuff he’s learned about aliens but he’s still got that high pitched helium voice.
