Chapter Text
Notes from Daniel Hensley session
Review of Dr. Alvarez interview:
- Main issue: I answered questions accurately, but I gave too much context without considering how it could be interpreted.
- Important distinction:
- Facts: what happened.
- Interpretation: what I believe happened.
- Personal opinions/emotions: how I felt about events or people.
Need to avoid accidentally presenting assumptions as facts.
Examples:
- “Stratt made the decision” = fact if referring to documented authority.
- “Stratt had no choice” = interpretation.
- “I understood why she did it” = personal position.
This is not a classroom. I am not required to make sure everyone understands the whole situation. My responsibility is to answer the question asked.
Hensley’s wording:
“Answering the question and being thorough are not the same thing.”
So less talking and it won’t make me guilty as long as I still answer it!
Next interview likely focus:
- Workplace relationships.
- Project Hail Mary team dynamics.
- My relationship with Stratt.
- My role within the project structure.
Need to remember:
I am not there to defend every person involved.
I am not there to provide the complete history of the project.
I am there to answer questions about my own involvement.
People:
Must give professional relationships unless explicitly requested otherwise
Didn’t interact with them much → when did I interact with them and why
General rule:
Do not say “I don’t know” when I mean “I have not personally verified that.”
Do not say “everyone knew” unless everyone actually did.
Do not minimise my own involvement just because I dislike the way others describe it.
Apparently saying “I was just there” is not a useful legal statement.
Marriage:
People will probably ask about Stratt.
Need to answer consistently.
Need to ensure that I actually sound romantically interested in her *****
We were ‘near each other all the time’ is not romance
Really got to work that one out
Need to avoid jokes :(
Must seem professional and put together…
I can do that though, it’s just specifically no jokes at all
ALWAYS WAIT TO CONFIRM WITH HENSLEY BEFORE REPLYING
-
The strange thing is that I am probably more nervous about talking than I am about prison.
Don’t get me wrong though.
I’m terrified of going to prison. But I’m not quite nervous. Not really, not yet.
I pick up the notes I’ve taken, even though I've read them enough times that I don't really need to anymore. I know most of them by memory now. That somehow doesn't make them any less annoying.
"Answering the question and being thorough are not the same thing."
I still disagree with that.
Not legally. He’s a lawyer, not saying I know more than him about that.
But if someone asks me why the sky is blue and I just say, "Rayleigh scattering," then nobody has actually learned anything. You explain things because otherwise people walk away with half an answer, and half an answer usually creates three more questions.
Hensley was very clear that answering thoroughly and answering correctly were not the same thing, and I still haven't decided whether that feels comforting or deeply unnatural. I suppose lawyers spend their entire careers trying to stop people like me from accidentally wandering into trouble halfway through a sentence.
He said I should practice beforehand.
Not write a script or anything, just feel steady enough to answer.
I pick one question because that seems sensible.
Something that they’ll almost certainly ask.
Tell me about your relationship with Ms. Stratt.
Professional relationship.
Please let it be the professional relationship.
We worked closely together after I worked out how to breed Astrophage and was properly recruited.
Easy enough.
Easy as being interrogated can be anyways.
Tell me about your marriage.
The answer arrives immediately.
We got married because it was practical.
I mentally cross it out almost as quickly as I thought it.
That isn't going to work.
It's true, but not what’s supposed to happen. It’s supposed to be genuine, not just practical. Not what it actually is.
Stupid marriage. It might make the courts easier, but it sre makes
I try to think about what a normal answer would sound like instead.
I knew married people before Project Hail Mary. A few of my friends from university got married, and there were teachers at school who'd mention their spouses every so often. They talked about holidays, whose turn it was to cook dinner, forgetting anniversaries and buying birthday presents at the last minute.
Perfectly ordinary things.
None of those conversations involved calculating whether a marriage might simplify legal jurisdiction after the launch of an interstellar mission.
I frown at the paper with my notes. When exactly were Stratt and I supposed to have had time to become whatever people think couples before they get married?
We spent nearly every day together, but that doesn't really answer the question. Most of those days involved engineers, scientists, meetings or impending extinction. The conversations I remember are about centrifuges, breeding Astrophage, mission planning and trying to stop civilisation collapsing.
There is a distinct lack of... everything else.
I pick up the notes without really deciding to and skim over the page again.
Facts.
Interpretation.
Personal opinion.
But how am I supposed to separate them if I’m talking about myself?
Maybe she'll only ask about work.
Work would be nice. I know work. I can explain reporting structures and meetings and who made decisions because that's just remembering things.
...Actually no, I probably shouldn't think "explain." Hensley would probably object to that word.
This is not a classroom.
That sentence has become surprisingly irritating over the last couple of days.
I know it isn't a classroom. I haven't forgotten where I am. It's just difficult to switch off the part of my brain that automatically assumes if someone asks a question, they're asking because they want to understand the answer rather than because they're collecting information.
I tried to make people understand my idea in academia, and when people asked questions, I attempted to open discussions.
I made sure my students understood the answers to their questions.
And I explained the finer points about Astrophage to many people during Project Hail Mary and tried to learn more myself when I had time.
The problem is that explaining is usually the part where I am most useful.
That is not a particularly comforting thought when the entire reason I am sitting here is because I apparently explain things too much.
I put the notes down on the bed beside me and look at them for a while. They do not look like the notes of someone preparing for an interview. They look like the notes of someone preparing for an exam, which is probably another thing Hensley would tell me not to do.
Except I have no idea what else I am supposed to do.
I have spent the last few days trying to understand what they want from me, and every time I think I have figured it out, I find another problem.
If they want facts, I can give facts.
Facts are easy.
Facts are dates, conversations, locations, documents. Facts are things that happened. Facts do not care how uncomfortable they are.
I think about the question I tried to practice.
Tell me about your relationship with Ms. Stratt.
It should not be difficult.
It is a workplace relationship. That is objectively true. She recruited me. I worked under her direction. We discussed scientific problems and project decisions. She had authority over the project and I provided scientific input.
Stratt knew what needed to be done, and I helped.
That is probably the closest thing to the truth.
But any deeper than that is when problems start again.
Because even though we’re married, I don’t know how to love her.
Heck, I don’t think I know how to love anyone romantically at the moment.
I really should have gone on more dates.
This is ridiculous.
I have explained molecular biology to people who had never heard of the subject before. I taught astronauts enough science to survive a mission to another star. I answered questions from engineers, politicians, and scientists who were all operating under completely different assumptions.
But ask me to describe my relationship with one person and suddenly I am incapable of forming a sentence.
I which I was a better liar.
I think about my students again.
I don’t think about them as much as I thought I would. I think I assumed, before all this happened, that if I ever became separated from my normal life I would spend every second thinking about how much I missed it.
That is not really what happens.
Mostly I think about whether they are okay.
They’re going to have to grow up in a dying world, and maybe die there too.
Whether they are watching the news and seeing a photograph of their former science teacher being escorted somewhere by security.
That thought bothers me more than I want it to.
Not because I care what strangers think.
At least, I don’t t think I do.
But my students are different.
They’re the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.
That still feels strange to think about. For years I told myself I had left academia because I preferred teaching, and that was true, but I never imagined teaching would eventually drag me right back into the middle of the biggest scientific project in human history.
I wonder what they're saying about me now.
Or maybe they've moved on already.
That thought is somehow both reassuring and disappointing.
I lean back against the wall and let my head rest there for a moment. The room hasn't changed in the last few days. Same bed. Same sink. Same walls. I don't know why I keep looking around as though one morning there'll suddenly be a window.
I miss conversations.
Not talking in general. If anything, talking has become the thing I'm most worried about. But conversations where nobody was trying to establish a timeline or determine liability or decide whether a particular sentence should be interpreted one way instead of another.
Normal conversations.
I think about Dimitri.
It was nice, to have someone you could relax with there. Because god forbid Stratt let us have a little fun.
Half the time I wasn't even certain whether he was joking with me or at me, but it didn't really matter because either way he'd eventually laugh and I'd usually end up laughing too.
I wonder how he's doing.
I hope he's alright.
I hope they're all alright.
The project was enormous. Thousands of people, probably more by the end. Scientists, engineers, technicians, administrators, pilots, military staff, construction workers, people whose names I never even learned because they were solving problems on the other side of the planet.
I miss the scientists most of all.
Of course I miss Dimitri, but I never would’ve expected missing Lokken.
She was a pain in my butt, however she did like the science as much as I did which sure is something.
I pick up the notes again without intending to read them. My eyes find the same section they've been finding for the last two days.
Do not minimise my own involvement...
Apparently saying "I was just there" is not a useful legal statement.
I still don't entirely understand what I'm supposed to replace it with.
Not because Hensley explained it badly. I get it. I just don’t like the alternative.
How come everyone worked out I was ‘important’ before I did?
If I even am like that, which unfortunately everything seems to be pointing towards.
I look down at the notes again.
Do not minimise my own involvement.
That sentence has become strangely difficult to look at. Every time I read it my brain immediately starts trying to rewrite it into something more comfortable, and every time I catch myself before I finish.
Apparently I'm not even allowed to edit my own thoughts anymore.
No.
That isn't what Hensley said.
He said not to minimise my involvement when I'm answering questions. That's different. I'm the one who's somehow managed to extend it into sitting alone in a prison cell arguing with myself over hypothetical conversations that haven't happened.
Which, now that I think about it, is probably not the intended outcome.
I close my eyes for a second.
Explain—
No.
Answer.
Not explain.
It's surprisingly irritating to have someone else's advice become part of your internal monologue. Every time I start following a thought all the way to the end, another part of my brain quietly reminds me that I'm adding context again.
If somebody asks me a question, I answer it.
Not because I'm trying to convince them of anything, but because I usually assume they asked for a reason.
I guess I could think of it as defending my paper. That was a time that I didn’t really want to explain more than absolutely necessary. Although that was more because every time I gave even a little context it would be met with sighs.
I don’t know whether thinking of it like that would be better or worse, considering it got me kicked out of academia.
And gave me involvement in this project.
The strange thing is that nobody ever complained before.
Scientists wanted explanations.
Engineers wanted explanations.
Kids definitely wanted explanations.
Politicians... actually, politicians usually wanted shorter explanations, but they still wanted enough information to understand why the answer mattered.
I give up.
Future Ryland could deal with this.
Present Ryland had officially run out of ideas.