This is actually a really good question since reader is implied to be from an alternate universe and having gone through a wormhole or something in their escape pod and that’s how the ended up within range of being found by Erid. But I never fully thought about that.
Obviously Simon’s stories of his world are very different from you and Grace considering humanity has migrated to living on different places in space and his stars were actually dying instead of them being threatened.
However you’re also a little different from Grace (who’s sort of the reference point for a ‘normal earth’) because in your version of earth and humanity have advanced just a little bit to do more space exploration with people involved. You aren’t crazy advanced or anything. You just live in a reality where humans are putting even more emphasis on having humans exploring space just for the sake of exploring rather than “There is something definitive we want to look at” if that makes any sense.
Think of it sort of being like Mouthwashing where space travel is a casual thing but in a science way and not in a late stage capitalism you’re-space-amazon way. The dead ship and the reader’s were canonically science/research oriented ships.
Fun fact for you to add onto this. I’ve named the ships. The dead ship was named the Demestar and reader’s ship was called Whitney
(This is a reference to another classic horror but I want to see who gets it on their own)
Anyways!!
I like to think that you all mention your differences in passing, to which someone questions it, and then you start explaining
When Simon feels comfortable he actually talks about the good things that he can remember before he went down the path that be did. Like customs and culture, maybe even describing them to you and showing you if he can.
I just love the idea that a little bit of Grace rubs off on him and he grabs a whiteboard and marker and draws shitty little diagrams to explain things.
It actually helps him feel a little less out of place because Simon initially feels like his life makes him a bit alien to you and Grace. So teaching you about his home and you remembering or showing interest (Grace totally takes notes) makes him feel appreciated and valued.
As mentioned before, you and Grace’s earth aren’t too different from each other. Earth still exists and is doing just fine (“Fine” as in it was doing okay and looked the same when Grace left). Matter of fact, your ship wasn’t even trying to look for a cure to the astrophage. You had no clue what Grace and Rocky were talking about when they said tiny alien organisms were eating the suns??? You and your crew were in space for the love of the game. You were just a bunch of nerds trying to see what you could find. You just accidentally ended up finding horrors.
By the way, The Thing doesn’t exist in reader’s universe if you can’t tell. I know I refer to it as The Thing in the stories but that’s just because it helps indicate that the characters are talking about the alien and not an object/concept/etc that one might refer to as “things”. You know? But I would assume that since PHM’s earth is just our earth, The Thing the movie exists and Grace has seen it. But obviously Grace will never show it to you because even if you know it’s a fictional movie, it still shows exactly what would have happened to you and their crew and Grace would never do that to you.
It would also be really trippy if you think about it because how tf did a person, who’s never personally experienced “the real thing”, come up with something so accurate to it? But that’s beside the point.
But yeah, I think non-trauma based story time is actually really nice for all of you.
