grace and rocky don't make it back to erid right away. and during one of their side quests they encountered the COI space station. the COI was initially hostile, placing both grace and rocky "under observation".
grace and rocky, after a week of quarantine, make nice with the COI and manage to negotiate their way into what they thought was a license to GTFO, but was actually a barter -- "i'm a scientist -- microbiologist. rocky's an engineer. together, we're pretty much the greatest minds of our generation." rocky didn't quite agree with the oversell, but this seemed to spark something of need in the COI officers. grace was unsure what to make of it.
he and rocky were immediately led into a lab, a metal box handed to them. grace held the box at arm's length at first, nearing it to the side of his face at a snail's pace, and was about to shake it as if any given audio queue would clue him in as to what it was.
"just kidding," he beamed at several alarmed faces in front of him, their hands and arms paused as they attempted to stop grace from shaking the box. they backed away after a few seconds, regaining composure.
rocky did the equivalent of tsk tsk in eridian.
a few turns in his hand, a squint here and there, grace held up the box again and said more than asked: "this is a blackbox?" he kept that lilt in his voice, in case that also still sounded polite in this part of the universe.
and as if it were the first question to a test both grace and rocky were unaware they were taking, the officers led them further into a more restricted area of the lab. when the doors slid apart, in the middle of the room was a cylindrical glass case, wired into multiple machines huddled around it like it were a campfire.
"... a tree," rocky's programmed voice completed over the speaker of grace's laptop.
"yes," one of the officers nodded.
"the tree is... bleeding?" grace pushed his glasses further up his nose. "how is it doing that?"
