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Rocky,
Thank you, buddy. You saved me. You saved all of us. Earth, Erid, no one would have made it without you making first contact and being smart enough to fix all the mistakes I made.
I haven’t felt the touch of anyone or anything in…I can’t remember how long. Before the Hail Mary first launched. The last touch I can remember is the officers holding me down while an anesthesiologist put me to sleep against my will. The last pleasant, meaningful touch was long before that. I haven’t seen sunlight or felt a breeze or pet a dog or heard a bird chirp in all this time. It’s made me nostalgic for a place that realistically was entirely indifferent about my existence.
I simply don’t belong here. I miss Earth, but I never really belonged there, either. I spent my entire life running, avoiding, being a coward. I guess I’m doing that again. Maybe that’s simply my nature. No use trying to outrun it now.
I haven’t heard anyone other than machines speak to me in my own language since I left Earth. Heck, you’re my best friend and I haven’t even gotten to actually touch you—it’s always fist-bumps through centimeters-thick xenonite. The gravity here is getting to me; I’m sure you’ve seen the way I slowly hobble and shuffle along, getting compressed in a degree of extremity my bones simply did not evolve for. Somehow, the loneliness is still more crushing.
On Earth, my loneliness was a choice. At least that’s what I told myself. I chose to be alone. I chose to hide from academia and seek solace in a classroom, where kids thought I was cool because they were simply too young to know better. When I first awoke on the Hail Mary, I thought that my loneliness there was a choice, too. I chose to get on the ship, chose a suicide mission to save humanity. Except I didn’t; of course I didn’t. The bravest thing I ever did was save you, and even that was a cop-out. I saved you so that I didn’t have to save myself. And then you orchestrated the second-largest thrum in your entire planet’s history just to keep me alive and safe.
Your people are so incredibly kind to me. They’ll give me anything I ask for, which I have been very cognizant of not abusing. Not until now, at least. When I asked them for a tool to cut through xenonite for a class demonstration, they were only all too happy to oblige. I hope no one blames themselves. I take full responsibility.
By the time you read this, I will have used this tool to puncture through my xenonite-encased living quarters. The 29 atmospheres will instantly crush me like a grape. It sounds terrifying in theory, but I won’t even have time to think about what’s happening before I’m gone. Human bodies really are equal parts amazing and stupid. I’m sure we can agree on that.
Tell Adrian and the kids that I’ll miss them.
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stick it out. I did it for as long as I could. Humans are pack animals; we aren’t meant to live in solitary confinement. Wires get crossed. I spent my whole life on Earth feeling like there was an invisible wall between myself and the rest of the world. The Hail Mary and Erid just made the wall real. You’re the only reason I made it as long as I did. I owe everything to you. All of humanity—Earthlings and Eridians—do.
We’re scientists. We know that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. I don’t know what I believe beyond that, but I know that the matter that makes up my body and mind will still be here in some form when I’m gone. Take solace in that. You sleep; I’ll watch.
Your friend always,
Grace