one thing about grace is he cant have a normal relationship. it may not be romantic or sexual but. wtf does he have with stratt and rocky. whats going on there can he be normal for once.
new human calls friend grace ryland. rocky knew this was part of grace name, but nobody used. not even old crewmates. not even human "stratt" who rocky thinks he must have been close with. not even grace students, and students grace favorite humans (said many times).
maybe because not very close, rocky first thought, grace lets new human call him name he uses less. but rocky not stupid. grace smile when other human say ryland. rocky gets more smiles total. but simon say ryland, get grace smile every time. every time.
smile when simon touch, too. human courting weird weird gross, rocky know. grace has held rocky hand before. kissed rocky before. through ball. kiss gross gross gross human mating custom where openings press together. ... rocky like, though. grace probably like kiss simon better. can do more than press against the xenonite and hum. more than rocky. gasp ryland, baby when grace touch his waist, turn around in his arms like human dancing and kiss and kiss and kiss his lips, call grace pretty and perfect in a language made of sounds my voice cannot form.
rocky also think grace pretty. rocky also think grace perfect.
Bloodymary au with a little sister/adopted kid reader? Young 20's type prodigy who Ryland takes under his wing (he's a teacher legally he's gotta), who Simon can't help but soften around, who Rocky screeches is a baby (yet gets translated swear words from).
Throw a little live streamer Ryland you had for extra sauce if you wanna. Earth is watching an overtired science dad, a local cryptid, a ROCK and a child gnawing at their enclosure.
As you please, my friend. ✌️
Live streamer Ryland Grace lives rent free in my head I will always take the opportunity to write it (i am working on an actual fic for it slowly but surely)
I formatted this in kind of a funky way, hopefully it's okay. I'm getting back into the swing of doing things like this.
~
You weren't supposed to be on the ship in the first place, that much he knew for sure. The ship was barely big enough for the three intended people, but somehow you'd managed to weasel your way on board. He wonders if Stratt knew, or if you'd managed to sneak in despite her constant oversight. He asked, but you didn't exactly answer. And honestly? He's not sure he really wants to know. You were so young, and yet you seemed to know just as well as he did how this mission was supposed to end.
There's always something new happening on the Hail Mary, making it hard for watchers on Earth to look away from the livestream. It was because of you that any of this was even possible in the first place, and Grace still isn't sure how you managed to make it work, but he's glad he let you try.
You have it set up so that there are four different streams connected to four cameras in different areas of the ship so people aren't missing anything. That wasn't how it originally started, but once it was realized that your tinkering had worked, Grace gave you permission to expand.
Below is a short collection of things caught on camera, in no particular order.
Finding Rocky and the Blip-A
"Soo, we met an alien-" This was the first real shock to Earth. Middle School Science Teacher and Science Expert Aboard the Extremely Important Hail Mary, Dr. Ryland Grace, grins at the camera like an absolute goof while you can be heard giggling in the background. The musical notes of the Eridian engineer are initially confused by watchers as a radio or some other Earthly comfort, only for everyone to be proven very very wrong.
Finding Simon
He scares you, at first. Hell, he scares all of you at first. Meeting Rocky and discovering there really truly was more life out there was enough of a shock, but finding a human from a whole other timeline abandoned in space due to what you can only assume is black hole fuckery or some kind of relative anomaly is something else entirely.
He's violent in the beginning, too. Lot's of yelling, and he shoves Ryland into a wall hard enough to give him a minor concussion. You end up putting a camera in the 'Don't Go Crazy' room so people can watch Simon, as that's where he ends up quarantined for several days before anyone tries to talk to him again. Ryland argues that you probably shouldn't do that in case he breaks the equipment, but Rocky is on your side, so he folds pretty quick.
It sends Earth scientists into a tizzy trying to solve the mystery of Simon Nolastname. You're updated daily via chat about progress, but if you're honest, his and everyone else's safety and comfort is slightly more important than how he got here.
Rocky sleeping
It brings your Eridian friend great joy to know that there will always be someone to watch him sleep so long as he does it in front of the camera. It's not the same as if you or Ryland are in the room, but he's grateful nonetheless for all the humans keeping him safe while he rests.
Every scientific breakthrough with the astrophage and taumoeba
You joke that you can hear Earth cheering when Ryland manages to successfully breed the nitrogen resistant astrophage. He quips back that it's only because you're reading the chat instead of working.
Simon becoming part of the team
It's a slow process. He doesn't trust Ryland, doesn't trust Rocky, but you manage to get through to him. You sit in the 'Don't Go Crazy' room with him- sometimes in silence, sometimes talking until your voice starts to give out and he finally finally tells you to shut up.
He's not a fan of being treated like he's fragile. Not when he's physically stronger than you and Ryland combined. Rocky might give him some trouble, if the Eridian deemed fighting necessary, but thankfully that doesn't happen. More than once, anyway.
He's not a science genius, but Simon isn't unintelligent. In fact, you find that he's quite smart. He can logic out puzzles that take the other three of you hours to solve in mere minutes. He's still shocked at the sight of the stars, yet he figures out how to navigate them without a map.
Simon becomes your pilot, secondary engineer, and brute muscle to open or carry things, allowing the rest of you to focus on the science. You keep the fact that people are shipping him and Ryland a secret for as long as you can, laughing so hard you cry when Rocky very loudly asks ['What mean Simon and Grace should kiss, question?'] while your mentor and the other man both turn redder than any tomato and rush to separate rooms, leaving you to explain. Rocky thinks on this for a while before deciding that he agreed. They made good mates for each other.
Ryland Grace realizing he was on the ship against his will, and every foul word Simon says about it
You don't take a camera with you when you explore Rocky's ship, so no one catches the exact moment, but the way he moves upon returning to the Hail Mary is sign enough that something is wrong. Earth watches as he slumps to the ground, curling into himself and sobbing while you stay at his side, trying to soothe him. When that doesn't work, you run to find Simon, who had chosen to stay aboard the ship.
"I don't know what happened," You say, pulling him towards your friend- your mentor- your father. "One minute he was fine, the next he was- well..."
Simon stares at Ryland for a long time. He'd always been a crybaby- quick to burst into tears. But even he could tell this was different. He looks at you, unsure of what exactly you want him to do, but you just look back at him, fighting tears of your own. He pats you on the head, and gives you one of his rare little smiles before telling you to change from your foul smelling ammonia clothes into something that doesn't smell like cat piss.
The chat explodes when he sits next to Ryland and pulls him into his arms, letting the sobbing mess of a scientist curl into his chest. He pets his hair- like you do when he was having one of his panic episodes after a nightmare- and hums an old tune from Eden. Something his mother used to sing when he was very very small. Hearts both inside the ship and across the universe shatter when Ryland explains what he remembered through broken sobs.
Eva Stratt watches in tense silence, making eye contact with Simon through the screen as he glares at the camera, as if knowing she, too, was watching. His gaze is a threat. And a promise.
You and Simon adding to Rocky's ever-expanding vocabulary despite Ryland's attempts to stop you
You do it in secret, whispering to him profanity Ryland avoids and adding his translations to the list. Simon, on the other hand, is less concerned with secrecy. He defines whatever foul word he uses the moment he's asked, ignoring Ryland's attempts to distract or talk over him.
Rocky thinks it's hilarious, and finds a specific kind of joy in the look of exasperation that crosses his best friend's face when he uses a new curse word for the first time.
Scientific Mayhem
Between you and Ryland, things were bound to get a little crazy in the lab sometimes. There was way more downtime between world saving tasks than anyone really expected, which left the two of you a lot of time to play.
It's all fun and games until the twenty-something and their mentor both end up getting treated for illness/injury due to unsafe lab practices while Simon and Rocky both yell at them.
Grace being kind of a pushover due to a combination of conflict avoidance, low self-esteem and the amount of stuff he had to put up with while working for Stratt (eg, “you live on this aircraft carrier now”).
Rocky and Grace being in some kind of meeting with the science thrum on Erid's surface (Grace in his xenonite suit), shortly after they arrive, when Rocky notices that Grace is being even more clingy than usual. Like he's constantly got at least one arm on Rocky's carapace, and has not moved away from Rocky since the meeting started. He's much stiller than he usually is— even accounting for his weakness from the malnutrition— and his light sensing organs keep rolling around in their sockets, meaning that he's anxiously scanning the room.
Rocky begins to worry. Is Grace getting sicker? Is the higher gravity having a worse impact than they thought? Or is he just nervous to be around strange Eridians? (Though he hasn't had this reaction to anyone else? Is there something up with the science Thrum??)
Rocky is like spiralling into anxiety until they have to move to a different part of the room for some reason and Grace, slowed down by the suit, briefly loses his hold on Rocky.
Immediately, he crashes into a table. And then backs into a wall. And then nearly knocks over some important Eridian science equipment. And then stands in the middle of the room, looking confused and slightly freaked out, both hands stretched out in front of him, opening and closing like he's grasping at the air.
Wait.
“Grace.”
“Yeah Rock?”
“At which point during meeting did light emitting devices in room stop working question?”
“Uh… like two minutes after we got in. Sorry, didn't want to be a bother.”
Each day they grow slower, weaker. The ship becomes quieter. Each day, the mission to save their star slowly turns into a desperate attempt to save the crew instead. The biologists have discovered the problem, but not the cure. Cells are multiplying without control, damaging their bodies from the inside out.
The only one not suffering from the disease is Rocky.
Even when he lets the others prod and study him, they find no answers. Eventually they become too weak to even continue investigating him. Rocky spends every waking moment caring for them. He even watches them eat to make sure they finish their meals. They need strength. They need food and rest so their bodies can recover.
Rocky tries and tries, but they never improve.
He is fairly certain some of the crew have already gone cold, but he is too afraid to confirm it. Too afraid to sleep with no one watching him. Rocky wails mournfully through the silent halls of the ship.
He goes to the bridge because someone has to manage the Blip-A, but when he returns to the dormitory there is only silence.
Complete silence.
Rocky trembles in fear.
He checks each body. Cold. Cooling. Soundless.
The youngest of them all is still alive. They release one final pained, mournful wail before going still. They remain alive for a few more hours after that, and nothing Rocky does can help them.
Eventually, Rocky closes the dormitory doors and retreats to his workshop near the back of the ship, where the reactors hum with power and astrophage.
There, hidden among the noise, he cries in terror.
Days pass until they blur into months.
Rocky cannot bear going into the dormitory anymore. The room had been specially designed to become the Blip-A’s social center structure so the crew could sleep together, surrounded and guarded by one another.
Finally, Rocky makes a difficult decision. One by one, he moves the bodies of his crewmates into an empty storage room. If he ever returns to Erid, their families will want the husks to mourn and carve.
It takes him three entire days.
By the end of it, Rocky is exhausted and distraught. So distraught that he considers joining them. He thinks and thinks and thinks.
Why not him?
Is he broken?
Is it because he is smaller than most Eridians?
Because he has no soulmate?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Rocky loves Adrien and always will, even if his soulmate eventually appears. But he has felt alone for so long.
Eridians say it takes six items to identify your soulmate. Eridians rarely lose things—perfect memory and all that—but Rocky has spent two hundred and eighty years without receiving a single item.
Not one.
Nor has he lost anything himself.
He has never felt lonelier than he does now, trapped within the silent hull of the Blip-A.
Rocky and Adrien met at a scientific conference where Adrien was presenting a project about reconstructing a collapsed mountain range to restore local fauna and return breeding grounds to the displaced animals.
Most of the conference attendees were skeptical. They believed it would be easier to flatten the terrain and allow the animals to migrate elsewhere, but Adrien insisted that restoring their original territory was vital to Erid’s biosphere.
Rocky was intrigued.
Engineering a solution on that scale would be incredibly difficult—but that only made it more exciting. After the presentation, Rocky approached them.
Adrien sounded beautiful: smooth and soft, though unafraid to let their voice resonate through the room. They were at least twice Rocky’s size, all sharp angles and heavy limbs.
Rocky taps the ground a few times to gain a clearer understanding of them and to catch their attention. Adrien tilts their carapace downward and taps the ground beside him in acknowledgment.
Rocky eagerly explains how they could build a supporting infrastructure beneath the mountain to maintain the terrain while adding fresh soil later to restore the breeding grounds properly.
Adrien trills excitedly and motions for Rocky to follow.
The project becomes a massive success. It propels both their careers forward, and over time their relationship deepens naturally through the with the exchange of courting rocks
It doesn’t matter that Adrien has a soulmate somewhere out there. They have only received four items and cannot identify who they belong to.
Adrien always tells Rocky the same thing:
“One of my hearts belongs to you.”
For Eridians, a soulmate is not necessarily the only eridian they love. A soulmate is simply the person who changes your life the most. Love itself is meant to be shared freely, and most Eridians have between three and five partners sharing a burrow together.
One day Rocky quietly asks if Adrien minds the fact that he is broken. That he has no soulmate. That he is alone.
Adrien simply tells him:
“I chose you as my soulmate. You will always belong with me, dear one.”
And for a long time, that is enough.
But now Adrien is gone.
Without their kind words, Rocky feels unbearably alone.
He prepares to sleep close to the reactors so their noise can drown out the silence threatening to consume him. He burrows into his nest, surrounding himself with blankets gathered from around the ship, pretending for a moment that he is curling against Adrien’s side.
When Rocky taps the nest to listen to the reverberations more closely, something sounds different.
There is a new piece of fabric there.
He picks it up carefully.
It is soft. Fluffy. Completely unlike anything he has ever encountered before.
Rocky marvels at it in confusion.
Where could it have come from?
He is alone on the ship.
.
.
.
A SOULMATE!!!!
This piece of fabric must have come from his soulmate.
His first item.
Rocky goes completely crazy erupting into joyful whistles and trills. He presses the fabric close to his carapace, nuzzling it as the strange softness makes him feel safe for the first time in years.
If only Rocky knew this was just the beginning.
A couple of months later, Rocky enters his workshop to find a glob of melted something sitting on his workbench. When he taps the bench, it sounds thicker than water. Sticky.
He touches it with one claw and immediately regrets it when the substance clings stubbornly to him no matter how much he shakes his limb.
Rocky loves his soulmate dearly, but whatever this thing is, it is an absolute nightmare to clean. How does someone even lose something like this?
Still, he remains grateful for the gift.
Another few months later, Rocky receives several geometric objects: cubes, triangles, and cylinders made from fragile organic material. The moment he picks one up, it shatters beneath his claws. He panics.
What if it was important?
He immediately throws himself into repairing it with glue and xenonite, spending nearly two weeks painstakingly reconstructing the object.
When he finally taps the repaired cylinder and hears the same reverberation as the others, relief floods through him. Only then does Rocky realize this is the longest he has gone without thinking about his dead crew.
He silently thanks his soulmate for that.
Eventually, Rocky starts becoming concerned by the absurd amount of things his soulmate loses. An alarming quantity of the melting objects begin appearing around him. Once, he even witnesses one materialize and slowly melt in real time.
It is fascinating.
For the first time in years, Rocky has something new to study. He begins researching the physical properties and chemical makeup of the strange substances.
Over time he learns that if he keeps part of the ship a few degrees colder, the objects deteriorate less quickly.
Still, the sheer number of lost items worries him deeply. No Eridian loses this many things in such a short period of time. Thankfully, after extensive testing, Rocky confirms none of the items are toxic.
Three years after his soulmate first appeared, Rocky receives his first organic “gift.” It is absolutely disgusting.
Even in lowered temperatures, the objects wilt rapidly. Some shrivel entirely while others cook into brittle crisps.
Rocky hates them with a passion.
He dearly hopes his soulmate will not be offended because he immediately ejects every single one out of the airlock as soon as they come.
Years continue to pass.
More objects appear.
Melting things with liquid trapped inside.
Fragile organic cylinders filled with graphite.
Rocky cannot figure out what they are used for, nor why his soulmate seems to lose one every week.
Ten years in, Rocky receives something made of metal: two round crystals held together by wire, forming an open square.
This one becomes his favorite.
It sounds beautiful when tapped.
The material reminds him of xenonite, and Rocky is delighted by the idea that he and his soulmate might share a love for similar materials.
At the twelve-year mark, Rocky decides to make figurines of his loved ones and former crew. But when he reaches Adrien’s figure, grief overwhelms him.
Guilt twists painfully inside him. He has been enjoying the gifts from his soulmate so much that sometimes he forgets to think about Adrien. The realization hurts too much.
Rocky abandons the unfinished figurine.
Two days later, when he finally finds the courage to complete it, the figurine is gone.
Completely gone.
Rocky nearly dismantles his entire workshop searching for it before a thought suddenly strikes him. Maybe his soulmate received it.
And if they did… then that is alright.
His soulmate deserves to know how beautiful Adrien is. Rocky is not replacing Adrien with his soulmate.Absolutely not.
Nu uh.
The next few years are happier.
Rocky receives more fabric from his soulmate and adds every piece to his nest. Eventually he realizes he no longer sleeps on Eridian fabrics at all.
Only soulmate fabrics. It makes him embarrassingly happy.
He even considers making a little jumper for himself from the material. Most pieces seem designed with one large opening and two smaller ones.
Perhaps it is some kind of fashion from his soulmate’s region, a large hole for the radiator, the other 2 for the preferred limbs. Though the sizes keep increasing far too quickly for any normal developing eridian , which worries Rocky slightly. Maybe they are a designer, that would be cool.
Because if his soulmate is a developing eridian it'd be concerning.
At year eighteen, Rocky attempts to send his soulmate a gift.
He fills a box with unusual space rocks and beautiful crystals he has collected over the years. It is not technically a courting gift.
Probably.
Maybe a little.
Rocky tries desperately to “lose” the box naturally, but nothing works. Eventually he does something drastic and leaves it in the airlock, hoping for the best.
Rocky now has an entire controlled room dedicated to his soulmate’s belongings.
The melting objects are stored carefully at reduced temperatures. Only three remain perfectly preserved.
Nearby he keeps all the metal trinkets that survive Eridian atmospheric conditions.
Sometimes he simply taps along the walls of the storage room and listens to the soft reverberations of everything his soulmate has unknowingly given him.
It makes him happy.
At the 24 year mark, he resumes his figurine project afterward, for the last figurine he makes a replica of himself. It feels selfish, but imagining himself standing beside Adrien fills him with a strange warmth.
The moment Rocky finishes the figurine and tries placing it beside Adrien’s, it tumbles into the ship’s inner mechanisms and disappears.
Rocky freezes.
Maybe…
Maybe his soulmate will receive it too.
He hopes they do. He never searches for the figure.
Time passes.
Thin organic sheets begin appearing in large quantities. They do not rot as quickly as the other organic objects, and Rocky cannot understand why his soulmate needs so many of them.
One day he notices tiny raised markings along the surface.
Drawings.
Writing.
His soulmate must possess incredible visual perception to create symbols this impossibly detailed, and thin. Rocky gathers every sheet he can find and slowly begins deciphering them. Many contain circles intersecting or surrounding other circles.
Space.
The Petrova line.
Of course.
His soulmate is trying to solve the same problem. That explains the endless strange research materials.
Rocky spends years constructing the perfect model of the Tau Ceti system for his soulmate. The replica is enormous, nearly as large as Rocky himself. Every surface is carefully engraved so that each planet produces beautiful harmonics when tapped.
Rocky is incredibly proud of it.
Instead of throwing it out the airlock, he pushes the model into the farthest corner of the ship and tries not to think about it too hard.
By the time he finishes, thirty years have passed.
And Rocky is beginning to lose hope that he will ever make it home.
Over the next two years, the graphite cylinders and organic sheets multiply dramatically, like sometimes several a day.
Then one day Rocky receives something soft looped with beads.
A courting gift.
His soulmate received the box!!
And sent something back.
The object is slightly too small to fit securely around Rocky’s primary limb, but that does not matter. He immediately begins planning how to secure it properly with decorative chains.
Stranger things begin appearing around Rocky now. Empty glass cylinders, delicate and hollow, and flat circles objects with liquid trapped inside them. Rocky carefully organizes every new arrival together, wanting to preserve this new stage of his soulmate’s life separately from the older items. He loves interacting with them, loves studying them. Every object feels like a tiny piece of someone impossibly far away, proof that his soulmate is alive somewhere beyond the endless silence of space.
And then one day everything changes.
A mountain appears.
A literal mountain of belongings crashes into Rocky’s carefully ordered workspace. Fabric spills across the floor in tangled heaps while solid objects clatter loudly against the walls of the room. Strange tools and objects, organic sheets, melted things, all piled together chaotically as if someone had emptied an entire life into the ship at once.
Rocky freezes in horror.
No Eridian could lose this many things at once.
His claws tremble violently as he begins sorting through the pile, trying to understand what happened, trying to convince himself this means nothing terrible. Then he finds it.
A box
No….
The box
The one he threw out of the airlock years ago in the desperate hope it might somehow reach his soulmate.
It is here.
Which means his soulmate received it.
His soulmate had it.
But if the box is back now… why?
Why would it return?
Why are there so many objects?
Why does it feel like someone vanished all at once?
How does someone lose their entire life all at once?
Rocky’s thoughts spiral so violently he can barely think. Terror grips every part of him as he curls protectively around the box, claws scraping harshly against the floor.
Did soulmate die?
Are they hurt?
What happened?
Help help help—
Frightened whistles break uncontrollably from his throat as panic overtakes him completely.
And then it gets worse.
For the next four years, not a single thing arrives.
Nothing.
No fabrics. No melting objects. No strange cylinders. No little pieces of another life drifting gently into his own.
Nothing.
The silence of space devours Rocky whole.
He has survived isolation before, but this is different now. Before, the soulmate objects filled the ship with companionship, noise. They gave him someone to think about, someone to care for, someone to imagine. They made the empty halls of the Blip-A feel less dead.
Now even that is gone.
Rocky mourns loudly and endlessly, singing broken grieving songs into the hollow corridors while the reactors hum in distant response. Eventually, he resigns himself to dying alone in space.
Four years of silence.
Four years of nothing.
To make the loneliness hurt less, Rocky sews together pieces of his soulmate’s fabric into a sweater he can wrap around himself while he sleeps. Sometimes Rocky presses himself into it and pretends someone is holding him close.
Then one cycle, after four endless years of silence, Rocky wakes beside a melting cylinder filled with liquid.
For one terrible moment he doesn't know what he is listening to.
Why is it here?
Why now?
Then realization crashes into him all at once.
Soulmate.
Soulmate is alive!!!
Rocky releases a sound so loud and joyful the entire Blip-A vibrates with it. He sings and trills wildly, clutching the cylinder close while relief tears through him so intensely it almost hurts.
Alive alive alive.
His soulmate is alive.
Rocky spends days studying the object obsessively, searching for any difference between this cylinder and the others before it. There are none.
He does not care.
It immediately becomes one of his favorite objects simply because it means his soulmate survived.
Only a few days later, alarms begin screaming throughout the Blip-A.
Rocky jerks upright in terror and races toward the bridge. No systems appear damaged. No reactors are failing. So why is the ship panicking?
Then the radio announces:
FOREIGN VESSEL DETECTED.
Rocky freezes.
Outside the Blip-A is another ship. Small, tiny compared to the Blip-A, but unmistakably a spacecraft surfing the Petrova line.
Rocky stares at the monitors in disbelief, listening carefully to the strange muted sounds reverberating from the vessel. The structure sounds wrong somehow. Softer. Distorted. The acoustic feedback is terrible.
Not Eridian.
Rocky does not care.
Someone is here.
Someone alive.
Companionship.
Help.
That is all Rocky cares right now.
Immediately he prepares a capsule message and launches it toward the unknown vessel. The first capsule drifts uselessly past the ship, those inside unable to chat it even though they went outside to catch it, and distractedly Rocky wonders if his soulmate will somehow receive this one too before hurriedly preparing another. This time he aims carefully toward the airlock where the figure tied catching it.
Rocky is fascinated.
A species capable of surviving vacuum exposure? Incredible. Terrifying. Brave.
There is awkward back and forth for a while. Rocky sends capsules. The aliens return them with clumsy welds and attached objects that make absolutely no sense.
Until he taps one of them closely once.
Twice.
Then he recoils in shock.
The sound.
It sounds exactly like the organic sheets his soulmate sends.
Impossible.
Rocky checks again frantically. Same material. Same structure. Same impossible tiny markings.
Oh, Erid.
Is his soulmate there?
That cannot be possible.
It cannot—
Rocky nearly trips over himself in his rush to send another message, this one containing instructions to align the ships and rotate together for artificial gravity and direct communication.
Yes yes yes.
Amaze amaze amaze.
Rocky can barely think around the frantic joy and terror flooding through him. Maybe these aliens know his soulmate. Maybe one of them is his soulmate?? Right now Rocky would be happy with whatever company.
Even if the ship is not Eridian in design, perhaps it is new technology. Perhaps soulmate built it. Perhaps soulmate came to save him.
Rocky thinks selfishly that his soulmate must be a scientist, someone curious and brilliant like Adrien and he.
Slowly, the alien ship begins to rotate.
So does the Blip-A.
And at last, finally, the tunnel connecting them is constructed.
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