Chapter Text
Ryland Grace woke with a start, opening his eyes before quickly squeezing them shut against the bright light of the room. His head was tipped back, the top pressing back into a soft surface. Turning his face to the side, away from the direct view of the light, he gave a few cautious blinks until his eyes adjusted. After a moment, he carefully looked up, rolling his head into an upright position to look around the room.
It featured two rows of reclined leather chairs, the back row elevated slightly above the front. The right arm of each chair featured a few buttons on a small keypad. In each seat there was a member of the Project Hail Mary research and mission team. Most of the members were blinking awake like he was, although some were still unconscious.
He was seated in the center of the front row, Eva Stratt in the seat to his right while Carl was seated beside her. Both were awake, looking around in alarm. An awake Ilyukhina sat to his left, with a sleeping Yao beside her. Ilyukhina made eye contact with Grace, her confused expression matching his own.
Twisting around, Grace tried to see who else was in the room with them. On the left side of the back row was DuBois with Annie beside him. The couple’s chairs were joined together without an arm in the middle, resembling a love seat. Annie was leaning into DuBois’ side, still asleep, while the young man had seemingly woken up and wrapped an arm around her shoulders protectively. Then, Dr Lokken and Dimitri were seated in the center, both looking to be far more awake than anyone else, whispering to each other as they tried to figure out what was going on. Dr Lamai finished the last row, blinking hard against the light as she slowly pushed herself into a seated position.
Everyone looked to be safe, just very confused. Grace couldn’t remember how they got here. The last thing he remembered was testing Dubois and Annie on their knowledge, all three crowded around an Astrophage sample. He could vaguely recall Annie swaying slightly before she dropped, being caught by a woozy-looking DuBois who had opened his mouth to call for help just as Grace’s own vision had gone dark.
They had been drugged, likely through the air.
It was the only explanation for why the three of them had so rapidly lost consciousness, and apparently, they hadn’t been the only ones.
Stratt was patting her blazer pockets, likely looking for a phone and seemingly coming up empty. Carl was out of his seat and circling the room, trying to find an escape. Grace hadn’t noticed before that all the walls were flat with no doors or windows.
No exit.
In front of his seat was a large object, hidden under a large square of fabric. It was strange though. The top was flat, but then the fabric angled down, before dropping off at each edge. He assumed it was some kind of hexagonal sphere, but what it was for he could not tell.
With the curiosity inherent in every scientist, Grace reached forward, leaning out of his seat to pull at the fabric. Just as his fingers brushed against the cloth, noting detachedly a slight warmth emanating from the object, a loud voice echoed through the room, “Do not touch that!”
He paused in an uncomfortable stretch, while everyone else in the room froze. Out of the corner of his vision, he could see Carl had also paused from where he had been running his hand along the wall.
“Were you talking to me or him?” Grace uttered, drawing a wince from Ilyukhina at his stupidity. It seemed clear to her that they shouldn’t be questioning which one of them was breaking the rules of their mysterious captor and should just listen and stop touching random things.
“You, Dr. Grace.” The voice responded, annoyance dripping from each syllable. Grace nodded awkwardly once, pushing down the fear which threatened to choke him when he realised their captor knew his name, removing his hand and sitting back in his seat. As he did, he glanced around the room again.
Annie and Yao had woken up, with everyone in the room now conscious and aware of how much danger they were in. Carl had moved his hand so it was hidden by his body, but Grace could tell from the angle that he was still trying to feel for an exit, just more surreptitiously than before. Stratt’s cold eyes were tracking around the room, clearly devising a plan.
“I understand this must be very confusing for you all, but I ask that you return to your seats. I do not wish you any harm, instead I wish to help you and your mission.” The voice continued. There were two speakers on the wall opposite them, each positioned in the top corners and Grace assumed that was where the voice was coming from.
Carl sat back in his seat, making eye contact with Grace. The other man tried to send a reassuring look to the scientist, who returned a shaky half-smile.
“Help us how?” Stratt asked, voice as cold as the Antarctica ice sheet they had recently blown up in the name of said mission.
“The specifics of how do not matter. I will be showing you a film. This film contains your future.”
Everyone shifted in their seats, suddenly deeply concerned about the sanity of their captor. It was bad enough to be kidnapped by someone with unknown motives, but to be kidnapped by someone who was clearly not in touch with reality? It surely could not end well.
As if sensing their discomfort the voice continued. “I assure you I am telling the truth. I will explain more later but for now, just know that this film I show you will help you avoid future heartbreak and death. If you use the knowledge provided by this film, your Project Hail Mary goes from a long shot to a guaranteed success.”
So, the voice knew about Project Hail Mary. Concerning.
The wall opposite them suddenly lit up and Grace realized with a start that it was a cinema screen. They were in a home movie theatre. It explained the chairs and their formation.
“Before we begin, we have another guest. This guest has been provided the technology to understand what you are watching, and I have installed a translator and voice system into the room so anything he says will be understandable for you all and vice versa. Please treat him with kindness, he is sure to be as confused as you all are.”
With that, a robotic arm similar to Dr Lamai’s recent work descended from the ceiling and removed the fabric from the strange object and the room gasped.
The object was a hexagonal sphere, like Grace had suspected, but that wasn’t of interest. What they all were focused on was the creature inside the sphere.
With a rock-like exterior, the creature somewhat resembled a spider. It had five arms which held up its torso, and it had no head. Grace couldn’t see any kind of eyes, mouth or ears, its surface smooth except for small pockets of a green gel-like substance in sporadic places across its body.
It moved slightly, leaning side to side on its legs before suddenly letting out sounds which resembled a musical melody. A different voice echoed from the speakers “Hello, where ♩♫♩ question?”
Everyone had been shocked into silence. It seemed pretty clear this was an alien, and an intelligent one at that. Everything they had understood about the universe was unravelling in front of their eyes.
Grace was the first one to recover, and assumed from context clues the alien was asking where it was, despite the slight issues in the translation, awkwardly responding. “Hi, we don’t know exactly where we are, but you are on the planet Earth.”
Ilyukhina was the next to recover, tacking on a shaky “Welcome” with a smile.
Grace couldn't resist trying to learn more. The creature didn't look like anything that could be found on Earth, and they'd already found the alien astrophage, maybe this creature was also an alien. "Where are you from?"
Melodic sounds played from a small speaker which had been attached to the sphere the creature sat in. It seemed to listen to these sounds before responding. “♩♫♩ from planet Erid.”
Erid. It sounded vaguely familiar to Grace although he couldn’t place it exactly.
Annie gasped from behind him and he jumped slightly with a start, having forgotten all about the back row in the shock of seeing an alien for the first time. She placed her hands on the back of Yao’s seat so she could lean forward, “Like 40 Eridani, the star system.”
That was where the name was familiar. Grace admittedly wasn’t the most knowledgeable on the stars, far more interested in extraterrestrial life than celestial bodies, but he had heard of this star system. It was one of the constellations closest to Cetus, the star system which Tau Ceti belonged to.
He turned back to face the alien, ready to ask another question but was interrupted by Ilyukhina, “What’s your name?”
The alien responded with a long melody, and they all waited but the translator did not respond with an English translation.
“I guess it doesn’t have a translation for that.” Grace mused. “We’ll just have to give you one. How about… Rocky?”
Dr Lokken gave him a harsh glare, “Dr Grace, you cannot call the first ever intelligent alien humanity has been introduced to ‘Rocky’.”
“Why not? It’s accurate.” He motioned towards the rock-like alien, who was silent for a few moments before straightening up tall, pushing itself forward like it was jutting out its chest.
“I like.”
Grace smiled, turning a victorious smirk towards the other doctor “See? He like.”
“You also can’t call it a ‘he’ when we know nothing about its biological or cultural understanding of sex and gender.” Dr Lokken continued.
The others in the room smiled at the silly argument, a sense of normalcy in an otherwise deeply strange situation. The two looked like they were ready to launch into a full verbal brawl but were quickly interrupted by the voice.
“Now that you have met your fellow audience member, we will now start the film. Pay attention, what you learn will be essential for saving not only your planet but Erid as well.” At that, the alien straightened its body, leaning towards the screen.
The humans also sat back, Carl’s hand brushing against the buttons on the keypad on his chair, and his seat abruptly reclined further back. He gave a startled yelp, eyeing the keypad before tapping one of the buttons, his chair sliding back upright.
The others quickly realized what the buttons were for, setting their seats to their preferred position. Grace shifted his chair back and forth, trying to get comfortable until Stratt sent him an unimpressed stare. He stopped before slowly reclining his chair back, until his chest and legs were nearly parallel. He gave her a sheepish smile before facing the front.
His eyes fell on the alien, who was now holding a small diamond-like device. Grace hadn’t noticed it before but assumed it must have been the technology the voice had mentioned providing for the alien. Next to the alien sat a screen with what looked like kinetic sand balanced on top. As the alien was inspecting the device, the tip of the diamond pointed towards its leg. At that, the shape of the leg was suddenly being displayed on the small screen, the kinetic sand raising into a 3D replica of the leg.
Grace tried to figure out the purpose of this new device. He hadn’t seen any eyes, so maybe the alien ‘saw’ the world differently and this device would help that. Could it be touch based? But the alien didn’t touch the screen. So it must see in a different way. Grace decided he’d watch the alien rather than the cinema screen, try and figure out how it worked.
However, that plan quickly flew out the window when music started from the cinema speakers and he looked up in time to see the ‘film’ had started, the screen focused on what looked like a translucent body bag, a man inside. Grace narrowed his eyes, trying to see the details of the face.
“Eye movement detected”. The body bag was unzipped and one of Dr Lamai’s robots descended from the ceiling, pulling out an intubation tube. It was clearly the end of one of the planned comas for the Hail Mary’s travel to Tau Ceti.
The man on the medical bed did not look like any of the members of the mission team who would be in space, not even any of the substitutes. His hair was long with a scraggly beard and he gagged on the table as the intubation tube was removed.
The viewers winced in sympathy. Yao, Ilyukhina and Dubois especially looked uncomfortable, not appreciating the reminders of the pain that awaited them when they awoke from their comas.
The man’s head rolled to the side and he looked and sounded incredibly familiar as he coughed in pain. He suddenly rolled back onto his back, his face filling the screen.
Grace realized with a start why the man on the table had looked so familiar.
“Is that me?”