Chapter Text
The hail mary had launched weeks ago. Grace vividly remembers watching his comrades' motionless bodies getting dragged onto the spaceship, placed into their eventual coffin. It hurt him, knowing he couldn’t do more to save his friends.
They did this willingly, he told himself… He was the leading expert on astrophage, needed on earth in case the bullet proof systems somehow failed. Which they won’t, Stratt had the best of the best working on this mission, expecting nothing less than perfect. Speaking of Stratt, she was currently commanding new scientists, her favorite hobby!
The project got a new batch of scientists which all need to be trained by Grace ofcourse…
He loves teaching, he really does! Don’t get him wrong, his passion lies with spreading knowledge. But Grace always imagined he’d teach children for the rest of his life, not full grown adults with an ego inflated by their PhD.
It’s fun talking with people his own age, going back and forth about random useless theories, but he really does miss the curiosity from those kids, how bright their smiles got when they finally understood a foreign concept. But instead he has this. These adults are smart, don’t like shenanigans and don’t look up to him.
Not really atleast, they respected that he was the first contact with alien life even if it was just some space cells (space cells that had the power of nuclear bombs), they respected that he found out how those little nuclear bombs breed, but other than that they look up to him, he was just another scientist.
Astrophage was so new that there were many scientists making more impressive discoveries than him. He was just first contact and accidentally found out how it bred...
But if Grace told that to his kids- They would be so proud of him! They didn’t even know their own teacher named the 'space dots' and discovered how those little rascals bred. He wanted so badly to explain to the kids how they worked back then, but he just couldn’t bare the effects astrophage would have on their future, the effects he calculated the day before. He imagined how those kids would be in the next few decades when the thing they were so curious about kills them.
His mind began to wander again, how those children wouldn’t even live comfortably to the age he is now. Images flashed in his mind of their face’s, never getting to grow old and never getting to tell stupid stories to their kids and grandchildren. How his smartest kids could never truly pursue their dreams…
He knew how smart Abby is, too good for her age. She always interrupted the other kids to yell out the correct answer every single time! That kid was the first to ask Grace what those 'space dots' were, which haunts him to this day.
He secretly loved how passionate that kid was but it was creepy how fast she knew about new scientific discoveries. He could imagine the kid as a scientist in the future…
But the fear of impending doom due to astrophage could impact those kids' minds so badly..
He remembers when he was little and he received any negative news, he thought the world was seriously ending! He couldn’t focus on anything, lost all motivation and almost quit school all together. Luckily he grew out of that phase, but he wouldn't be surprised if his kids never did.
Hell, Grace could barely think straight at his grown age when he thought about the Petrova line! Imagine how those children feel in their young impressionable years realizing that whatever they do, whatever they plan for their future, won't matter anyway.
In another universe maybe astrophage didn’t kill the earth and all living life at that. Maybe they could use astrophage to drive society forward, power cities for centuries, and use the astrophage for research to help humanity itself.
It withstands literally everything but his scientific poke, so it could be used to bring understanding to unexplainable concepts, and then adapt that information to save humanity.
He could research that now honestly, the new scientists are getting a tour anyway, or maybe getting the ground rules? He never knows with Stratt. He aimlessly grabbed astrophage samples, his mind still not caught up to what his body is doing.
The scientist is not in space but Stratt still held him captive claiming that he would be their hero if the hail mary failed… huh, Grace never imagined himself as a hero… More of a coward really.
Glasses slid down clumsily as he rubbed his face trying to motivate himself, 'Gotta stop thinking about that depressing stuff Ryland! You got work to do.'
His fingers fidgeted with random candy that he still had unlimited supply of, perks to being doctor Ryland Grace! Somewhere in his mind he could hear yelling about leaving the samples in an uncontained area, mind too distracted to remember he even grabbed the samples.
“Sorry!” The scientist yelped as he moved quickly to contain it properly. Other people looked strangely in his direction- yep, to be expected. Grace was always a weird one.
He examined the astrophage for many hours, looking over papers other scientists wrote and checking his own work on repeat. Once he got bored out of his mind he started munching on twizzlers again out of bad habit.
Grace practically jumped out of his skin as he heard a knock against his window. There stood Stratt and the new scientists, finally at his door. He was smiling at them while walking out of his lab, face flushed from embarrassment that they witnessed him jump like a spooked cat.
God he adores that lab! Has everything a scientist could dream about, even if the lab somehow didn't have the equipment he needed for something specific he could just tell Stratt and it'd be there at a terrifyingly fast rate.
“Doctor Grace, these are the new scientists who will help work on the backup for the hail mary. They’ve experimented and researched astrophage plenty of times already, all experts in their countries who've written multiple papers themselves, so they’re well acquainted.” Stratt said to the man, same commanding no nonsense tone as always.
“It’s an honor, I’m excited to share what I’ve learnt about astrophage and spin drives! We have 1009 of these little engines that could on the hail mary!”
His smile was still bright as he looked at my new coworkers, they smiled back awkwardly…
Once again a reason that kids were better than adults with doctorates. Kids loved his enthusiasm, sending it back tenfold and overwhelming him with questions.
...Horror soon took over his face as he realized his mistake- Why the hell did he repeat himself from information that was only accurate when he first met the astronauts ages ago?!
Research was way more abundant now, same with the numbers of the alien cells, so his whole sentence was already well known facts or just not accurate at all.
His face flushed as he stuttered to correct himself.
“Ah- Wait, my bad my bad! That is old info! Force of habit from when I spoke to… the astronauts…”
He blurted out awkwardly, the pain of losing them still fresh. Images of what their corpses would look like flashed in his mind, they were such close friends of his. It was painful making such close friends just for them to leave, knowing they will never come back and never knowing when they pass away. A dull ache now taking over his head at the sudden flood of memories.
“The hail mary currently has 2 million kg of astrophage as was already known, they will arrive at tau ceti in 13 years. On this ship and new home we currently have a small fraction of that. Our job is to continue researching astrophage and finding out if there’s an effective way to get rid of it quickly and at mass scale!”
He waited for any questions, standing like a middle school teacher does. Way too happy and too much energy for someone that works on this project. Gotta work on stopping his teacher instincts huh… The man already creeped out the saviors up in space when he first met them, and now the new recruits.
“No questions?..” He asked, confused as to why there were zero questions. Previous recruits he introduced were full of questions and curiosity.
He perked up as he saw one of the scientists hands raised, calling on the woman and waiting for her question:
“Are they really eating the sun, the ‘space dots?’”
One of the new scientists asked.
The coward stared at the woman for a few seconds too long, the dull ache from before coming back. He tried to think back to what she said, maybe he misheard her.
It was as if life gave him a chance to see his children grown up and having a successful career. The woman looked like his star student who asked the exact same thing.
He knows this isn’t right, but the image sticks with him. That is what overworking does to a man, forced to continue working on this damned project until he drops dead.
His mind blanked once again as he tried to make sense of what was going on, the sudden migraine like pain making it even harder to think. Memories of his students flooding back, hearing their excited yells for one last round of 'the beanbag is lava'. That's where the questioning about astrophage began. That very beanbag now laid abandoned. Grace hadn't looked at it since Stratt tossed it at him. It was as if the little crochet earth had created it's own gravity, impossible for him to hold now.
Just like that day he ran away again while cluthing his head in pain, like a coward. If only he was brave enough to face the consequences of being Ryland Grace.