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Carl stands there, at the edge of the PHM base camp, watching the only real friend he made on this job get forced to the ground as he cries and struggles against the security guards. He knows this is for the greater good, and he knows he shouldn’t and probably couldn’t stop the guys from what they were doing to him. But hearing him cry out to him like that, repeating “I can’t do it” and “Don’t do it” over and over… let's just say, this is an exercise in restraint for him.
He knows how smart Grace is, he knows he could do this. No matter how much Grace doubts himself, he was one of the most capable and intelligent people on this project. And that was really saying something.
He watches as they stick the needle into Grace’s neck, internally wincing at the sight of it, and Grace’s eyes begin to flutter closed. “You know who you are.” Carl states, trying his best to form some words of genuine encouragement as he watches Grace’s body go limp, closing his eyes and looking away. It was hard to see him like that. Helpless, completely out of his own control.
Once the guards are done loading Grace into the truck and start to drive off, Carl stands there for a moment, watching them in silence, before he hears a voice behind him.
“Mr. Fergeson,” he turns his head around to see Eva Stratt approaching him, a slightly melancholy expression on her face. It wasn’t much, but it was the most emotion he had seen her show since they met. She stands by his side without turning to look at him, as if trying to keep her face hidden. He takes the cue, keeping his gaze focused forward as hers was. “I need you to pack up Dr. Grace’s personal effects.” she explains, Carl, responding with a sharp nod of his head. “Additionally, since he’s going to be experiencing memory loss, we're going to provide you with photos and cards that his students made that he can look back at to regain his memory. Do you think you can do that?” She asks, now looking up at him.
Everyone who worked closely with Eva Stratt knew that, when she asked you to do something, she was never really asking. She was mostly just being polite. But she wouldn’t listen if you said no. So Carl pushes down the feelings of dread and nods again. “Yeah,” he said simply, glancing back at her for a moment. “What am I packing all this into?” he asked.
“We’ve provided you with a bag for his things and a basic checklist of all the essentials, they’re waiting in his room on the ship.” she explains, leaving them in silence for a moment.
“You think he’ll be okay?” Carl asks, his gaze focused on the horizon.
“I think…” Stratt starts, pausing for a moment. “I think he’s smart, very smart, and he’ll be able to figure things out for himself.” she replies, nodding as if to reassure herself it was really true.
“And you’re sure you mean that?” he chuckles softly, glancing back at her.
“I’m sure.” she replies simply, standing her ground as always. “Now, you have work to do. Have his bag ready and in my office in 5 hours.” she says before departing, leaving Carl on his own.
He slowly makes his way back towards the docked ship, assuming it would take him a lot less than 5 hours to just pack up a bag.
When he reaches Grace’s room and pushes the door open, he’s met with crumpled-up papers and candy wrappers strewn around the room. Surprisingly enough, most of his clothes are still neatly put away, but everything else was seemingly thrown about the room with reckless abandon. The bag Stratt mentioned had been placed on Grace’s bed, a piece of paper lying neatly on top of it, and a plastic bag of cards and drawings lay next to it.
Carl chuckles at the mess, sifting through the papers to try and identify if any of them were of any sort of significance. As he reads over them, he realizes that most of them had been written out recently. A lot of them have makeshift pros and cons lists on them, trying to decide whether or not he wanted to go on the mission. A few of them were diary entries of sorts, and Carl tried not to read any of them, both for Grace’s privacy and his own emotional well-being.
He tidies the place up a bit before tucking the notes and artwork into the bag, then taking a peek at the list they gave him. It was mostly just common sense, what they were asking for: clothes, toiletries, personal technology, etc. he scoffs slightly as he places the paper down, moving towards the dresser to gather some shirts he’d seen Grace wearing around before that he knows he liked. He picked out a few of the exceptionally stupid science pun shirts, along with a few PHM polos and the occasional plain white shirt. As he searches through Grace’s belongings, he stumbles upon something he didn’t quite expect. A Cats shirt, like from the musical.
“And you think you know someone.” he mutters to himself playfully, dropping it into the bag with the rest of his shirts, as if Grace would be able to sense his teasing years from now, when he probably doesn’t even remember who Carl was. He freezes, staring at the open bag.
What if Grace doesn’t remember him?
The feeling envelops him for a moment, filling him with an unfamiliar dread, a dread that he couldn’t quite place. He tries to push the feeling out of his mind as he packs up some pairs of his pants and boxers, also trying his best not to think about the fact that he was folding up a grown man’s boxers for him, but the anxiety and dread stick to the back of his mind like a piece of gum in your hair.
He rummages through the contents of his desk drawers, finding CDs, a rainbow disco ball, and some random crafting materials. He chuckles as he picks out a few CDs; Let it be by the Beatles, Beautiful Noise by Neil Diamond, and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. he throws the Disco ball in there as well, just in case he needed to de-stress or something.
He spent the next hour or so packing up the essentials with a few fun additions. When he’s done, he looks down at the bag, Grace’s name scrawled hastily on a notecard tucked into a sleeve on the front. There was still plenty of empty space. He could fit more in there.
As he gathers more things to throw in Grace’s bag, the feeling keeps creeping back into his brain. He couldn’t push it away this time. It festered in his mind, fueling each of his actions. He couldn’t let Grace forget. Not him. Not himself. Not anything.
He shoves as much as he can into the bag, a few bags of Skittles he found in the cafeteria, the sunglasses they bought at Home Depot together, some various Fox figures he found on Grace’s desk, and a few knitted benies. Determined to send Ryland off with as much as he could, He packs the bag in tightly, yanking at the zipper to get it to close, but it keeps getting caught on a shirt that was sticking out the side, and the sides of the zipper are pulled too far apart in some parts, and he has to pull them together.
After struggling with the bag for way too long, only to have it be half closed, he finally snaps, letting out choked sobs as he falls forward onto his knees. He was never like this, but the idea of someone as special to him as Ryland Grace forgetting all of this…
It wasn’t even his choice. Carl knew he didn’t want this, he didn’t want to leave any of these things behind. Especially not his friends. It was Carl’s responsibility to pack his life in here. Or at least as much of his life as he could.
He pulled himself together, shaking off the tears and pulling a few things out of the bag that felt like maybe a little too much, setting those aside for himself to deal with later. He took a deep breath, starting to pull the bag closed again.
It took him the remaining 45 minutes to rearrange everything so it would fit as best it could and finish yanking the bag closed. But he did it.
As he stood up, ready to bring the bag to Stratt, he noticed the poorly written ‘grace’ on the nametag again, obviously written in a hurry. Carl searched around Grace’s room, finding an orange flash card that fit the namecard holder perfectly. He carefully rewrote his name, trying his best to make it look nice, and wrote a simple ‘you can do this’ on the back of the card before slipping it into the pocket. He didn’t know if Grace would ever see it, but Carl would know it was there.