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It had been one year into their trip to Erid, and Ryland had noticed something. He’d always been someone to pick up on patterns, and living in the same routine every day intensified his already strong fixation on details that others might not notice. Even so, he would have probably noticed this one before if they hadn’t been so focused on other projects. Important projects such as preventing himself from dying of malnutrition, figuring out how they’re going to safely land the ship once they get there, and showing Rocky his favorite movies and making him review them.
Rocky didn’t like the sound of his computer generated voice. Ryland had been practicing listening to him with it off, to try to see how well he could memorize phonetics constructed from chords (it had been slow going, but then again, Ryland had never been good at languages), and when he would turn it back on at the end of the session, he had noticed Rocky’s body language shifting in a way that he recognized as displeased. He also noticed sometimes after he turned it on in the morning, (he usually waited until after breakfast now, he could recognize ‘good morning’, ‘hello’, and the likes well enough) he could see Rocky bring in his legs and hunch over in a frustrated manner.
It took him a week after noticing this behavior to actually ask about it, after another session of language memorization that was about the most important ship functions and buttons. They had decided that it would be critical to be able to understand each other just in case the laptop broke at a crucial moment of danger. Once again, he noticed Rocky’s annoyance at the computer speaking for him. Ryland cleared his throat. “Hey Rocky?”
Rocky tilted his carapace in acknowledgment, a habit he had picked up from Ryland. “What Grace want. Question.”
“Do you want me to pick out a new voice for the translator? Do you not like this one anymore?” Ryland asks, moving the laptop off the floor of the crew quarters, bringing it back to the lab.
“No.” Rocky responds. Ryland is still not great with Eridian tones, but he’s pretty sure that this wavery one is of confusion. “This best voice.”
“But you don’t like it.” He frowns, laptop under one arm as he climbs up the ladder. “I can tell.”
“Hear Rocky words in human voice, strange.” Rocky says, skittering along in his tunnel. “Not matter which human voice. Still strange.”
Oh. Ryland feels very foolish suddenly. This should have been his first thought, but they’ve got there now. “Well, that’s why we’re working on me learning your language. Hopefully someday I won’t have to use this translator at all.”
“Someday never come.” Rocky stuck out his arms in front of him stiffly, a gesture analogous to crossing his arms. “Friend Grace stupid stupid stupid. Not fully learn Eridian language on trip to Erid. Not know when Grace learn Eridian language.” Ryland opened his mouth to defend himself, but Rocky wasn’t done yet. “Rocky spend many many rotations alone not hearing Eridian voices. Find alien but alien can’t even speak layered like Eridians. Rocky miss hearing Eridian voices. Sorry for taking out on Grace.”
Ryland nodded, frowning. He’s never been the best at comforting people. “I got it. That makes sense.” His mind was already whirring. He couldn’t say chords, let alone layered ones, but he could sing notes, and notes could be overlaid with technology to create chords. And chords could be overlayed with other chords…
He set down the laptop on the table, pulling up a chair. Before he starts on this project- “Do you not have any text to speech programs on your ship?”
Rocky was already hard at work on some mechanics. If Ryland remembered correctly, this was going to be some device to monitor the taumoeba colonies from a distance once they automated them. They were planning on trying to breed more for other star systems nearby, just in case. “No. Only recordings. Rocky play recordings sometimes. Not the same. Not speak new words. No conversation.”
“Sorry bud.” Ryland responded, opening up his audio editing software. “Only a few years yet.” They lapsed into a comfortable silence. That was another thing he appreciated about Rocky, silences were never awkward. He always felt like someone expected something out of him when they went quiet, but Rocky would always speak up when he wanted something.
He spent some time working on the programming of this generator. Honestly, he wasn’t great at programming, he had only picked it up as a hobby. Luckily, he already had the translator to work with as a base. It was also already set up to detect human words, so he didn’t have to mess with the input system at all. All he’d need to do is to change the output from one of the given languages to his own custom recordings. One earbud in his left ear to prevent Rocky from hearing, he tested it out by transcribing ‘hello’ from the waveforms saved in the translator into midi piano. It was surprisingly difficult to play it by ear. He’d never played much more music than recorder in elementary school. It was one thing to remember the sound, but another thing to figure out what notes it was made out of. It would only be more difficult and take even longer with more complex words and phrases with overlapping chords. Shoot.
He spent the next ten minutes frustrated and pushing himself to recognize the notes more accurately with little luck, before realizing that there was probably a program someone had already made in the past that automatically wrote out the notes of music. Of course he didn’t have access to the internet, but a lot of the content of websites had been saved alongside the academic papers. A few thousand terabytes of informational sources, which if he’s lucky, should include at least something that could help him. He found his savior in a write up of a program used to transcribe whale songs into sheet music. Unfortunately, it was written in Javascript, while his text to speech program was written in C++, which meant he’d have to rewrite it. Fortunately, it was a fairly simple program, with functions that were transcribable enough with existing C++ documentation.
He wasn’t able to finish it that day, but he was able to complete it the next, interspersed with the other work he was progressing on. Despite his usual lack of privacy in other areas, Rocky didn’t often use his texture device to look at his screen, either because it didn’t come naturally to him to remember, or because he wasn’t much interested unless prompted. Ryland knew that Rocky was most likely due for a sleep sometime today, which is when he’d take his chance to record his own voice.
Around when the clocks in the ship said was 3 PM, Rocky stood up tall, flexing each leg to keep his hydraulic system working smoothly. “Grace watch Rocky sleep?” He asked, waiting patiently for Ryland to turn towards him.
“Yeah, let’s go.” He responds, bringing his laptop with him. Rocky crawled along the tube sluggishly, and as soon as they arrived in the crew quarters, his body collapsed into the “dead bug” pose that he always took when sleeping. It still unsettled Ryland after more than a year of knowing him. But now he had the opportunity to record. Recording the notes too, was difficult. He had to check his sound against the transliteration program to make sure he was making the correct note every time. He also made sure to record the same notes octaves up and down to minimize any potential weirdness that the program might create by pitchshifting his voice. It took longer than he expected, because he had to re-record notes often to get them clear and crisp. It was also embarrassing, for some reason that he couldn’t quite figure out, which ate up more time.
Luckily, Rocky was still asleep by the time he was done, and he spent the rest of the hours running and testing the transcriber on the recordings of Eridian vocabulary, getting the music note outputs, and feeding them back into the text to speech part of the program, using his recorded notes as a custom soundfont for the midi keyboard. He encountered an issue quickly. Volume control. Each Eridian word and phrase that was complex enough to have multiple groupings of notes layered on top of each other had a main chord that was loudest, and other chords, pairings, or single notes quieter, so there was a main chord that carried the phrase and the whole sound was easier to parse. Some phrases or words even had a tertiary musical grouping at an even quieter volume. His program was just set to play all notes that were transcribed indiscriminately, so his own voice’s version had every note the same volume, and it sounded disorganized and confused.
He was able to notice a few chords that seemed to repeat as the main grouping in a few words, and it did seem like they carried similar meanings, so there was certainly some logic behind it, but he couldn’t always figure out a pattern, and there was no way he could manually code in every single word’s specific volume settings, at least not in any reasonable time. Worse yet, a few words included either pops or the sound of Rocky grinding against the ground or against himself with his arms, creating a gritty stone sound that Ryland was certain he didn’t have enough time to record before Rocky woke up. This project would not be completed today.
Nevertheless, he had made great progress, and the program at least worked correctly every time he tested it. This was a good foundation, at the very least. The next few days passed uneventfully, them both working on their projects, and during this time Rocky asked Ryland to talk about constellations, something he was all too happy to describe to him. By the end of these days, Ryland had created an algorithm that gave priority to the chords he had noticed most often being the primary ones in the words he had in his bank, so that way if he had to add new words on the fly, they would at least have some presence of volume distinction so that the notes would be easier to distinguish. He was certain he had gotten half or more of the volume patterns wrong, but this could be workshopped later. The notes were there at least, and they could be heard. He had also incorporated an algorithm to change the tone of the notes to the one used for questions if he said ‘hm’ at the end of the sentence, as that tone was one he could easily recognize, and a simple change from the base sound. He could incorporate other tone shifts later, once he revealed the project to Rocky.
Finally, the next time Rocky slept, Ryland recorded the stone scraping sounds (easy enough to replicate) and pops, (clicking his tongue and popping his lips) and manually added them into the words that required them. Unfortunately, his program for automatically transcribing Eridian words wouldn’t be able to transcribe these sounds, so he’d have to continue adding them manually for new words he came across. This was the easy part though, as there were much less of these sounds and they were easier to recognize than determining if a note was an F# or a G.
Finally, he was satisfied. This program should at least be comprehensible as words, even if the tone was off and strange sometimes. He tested it out by saying a few phrases that he already memorized the translation for in Eridian. “Hey buddy, what are you up to.”, “I’ll be right back.”, “Good morning Rocky, working hard or hardly working, hm?” He forgot to use the ‘hm’ marker on the first sentence, stumbling a bit over his words, but remembered it for the last. He listened back to the Eridian playing through his laptop speakers, and winced. Oh yeah. That was rough. But, it was correct! Those were the right words! The tone shift for a question was also working as intended! He clapped, relief sagging his shoulders.
He immediately got up and warmed a burrito, a rare treat these days, as he was trying to save some real food for as long as possible, having coma slurry for most of his meals. In comparison to that, and due to his current exhaustion and hunger, this bland burrito tasted like the best restaurant food he had ever tasted. He curled into his bed, watching Rocky and savoring every bite of his dinner, turning on a TV show and turning off his brain.
He was brought back to himself when Rocky woke up, clunks of stone against metal. He hadn’t been sleeping, just relaxing so deeply that he wasn’t aware of the world around him. “Mornin’ Rocky.” He spoke, smiling up at him.
“Hello friend Grace. It is not ‘morning’ 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮 you 𝅘𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅝𝅘𝅥.” Rocky chirps back. Without the translator being on, Ryland has to guess at the words that he hasn’t memorized yet. He’s getting better at it.
“I know, I know. Force of habit.” He says, smiling. He opens his new program, but doesn’t run it yet. “Morning can be whenever you wake up.”
Rocky pulls himself upright, clambering to his feet. “Not true. Very 𝆔𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅱𝅝𝅘𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮. Grace strange.”
“Human thing.” Ryland replies, sitting up.
“Humans strange.” Rocky confirms, beginning to head towards the lab.
“Wait, Rock.” Ryland introjects. Rocky pauses. “I have something to show you. I just finished it.”
“What 𝅘𝅥𝅗𝅥 Grace finish?” Rocky curiously taps the ground twice. “Flight 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅰𝅘𝅥𝅰𝅝𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅝𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅰 for 𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅰𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥?”
Oh wow. He did not get that. His face wrinkled a bit trying to parse what he was hearing. Rocky in turn looked curious, tapping a few more times. Most likely wondering why Ryland hadn’t turned on the translation program yet. “No, nothing to do with flight.” He settled on as a response. “Listen to this.”
He turned on the program and cleared his throat. “I made this for you, Rock. What do you think?” He can barely hear his own words as the Eridian chords ring out over them.
Rocky immediately flinches back, stiff. Ryland remembers that this is an indicator of shock. He trills immediately afterwards, in a way that seems involuntary. “More!” He cries out, the moment he gets his words back.
“This might not be the best, but we can always make it better later.” Ryland continues. “I wanted for you to be able to hear someone speaking Eridian again.”
Rocky’s making a low, chittering sound now, one that Ryland can’t recognize as any words, nor place the tone, other than ‘emotional’. “Grace…do this? For Rocky?” He’s pulled himself into his legs so much that it’s hard to see his body.
Ryland nods. “It took a long time, but. Is it good?”
Rocky has not yet relaxed, still quite stiff and still as he continues. “No. Is bad. Strange 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅰𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮. Not quite right. But is good. Because it’s Grace. Grace voice. Never thought 𝅘𝅥𝅰𝅝𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅗𝅥𝅝𝅘𝅥𝅰. Never thought hear Grace speak in Rocky’s language. Never ever.” He’s vibrating a little.
Ryland approaches the xenonite, pressing his hand to it. His eyes are a little misty just from the weight of Rocky’s emotions that he’s feeling. “We can fix. Make it better. I’m sure there’s a linguist on your planet that would be thrilled to work with me.”
Rocky presses his claw against the xenonite as well, right over Ryland’s, still chittering. “Grace good. Good good smart 𝅝𝅘𝅥𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅝𝅘𝅥𝅗𝅥 kind human. Thank you. Best human.”
Oh yeah. This was absolutely worth the headache. Thank goodness for cetologists and whale song sheet music.