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If not you, then who, Grace?
Why should someone else be told to die?
What makes you so special?
Guilt. That is the voice’s name, the voice that has been murmuring at the back of his mind since this whole mess started. Its presence had arrived at his shoulder in the conference room, but it had not been alone. Its companion, Shame, had lingered nearby as well, unbearably silent. It did not need to speak to be heard. Fear had come earlier, when the lab exploded. But it had gone from just a feeling in the back of his mind, to an unwanted companion at his elbow.
“Can I think about it?” Grace asked the room, unable to pry his gaze from the polished tabletop in front of him.
Stratt had given him three hours.
When he pushed back from the table, Guilt, Shame, and Fear had trailed him dutifully from the room, stumbled after him up the steps to the roof.
They wouldn’t let him be alone.
He just wanted to be alone.
But he hasn’t had that luxury for a long, long time. Stratt’s people always know where he is. It is the nature of being part of a classified project. Assets don't get to just wander away whenever they feel like it.
So, really, it is the illusion of privacy he finds on the rooftop. Alone with his looming demons.
He sits with his knees pulled to his chest, curled in on himself. The satellite dishes gawk at the sky overhead, the expanse still stained with smoke and ash. It is the same sky that Stratt wants him to launch into, to race lightyears and lightyears away, and never, ever come back.
He only has three hours to tell her that this whole contingency plan of hers is crazy. She’s crazy. They’re ALL crazy!
But why not you, Ryland Grace? Guilt hums.
Grace covers his face with his hands, shielding himself from whoever or whatever might be watching him fall apart on this rooftop. He can’t do this. He can’t be the hero they’re asking him to be. He isn’t built for it, equipped for it.
Okay, sure, he knows a lot about the parasitic, single cell alien lifeform eating their sun. And yeah, he might know more about the subject than anyone else this side of the atmosphere. But that doesn’t mean he’s the only answer, the only solution. It isn’t fair. He didn’t ask for this. Not this.
Why not you?
Three hours, ticking away, second by second. Crawling by at the speed of light.
The obstructive invasion of Grief he’d wrestled with a few hours ago at the sudden loss of DuBois and Shapiro has shifted forms. It has twisted into something ugly and brutal, unrecognizable. Guilt tips its head at the monster Grief has become: Anger.
They shouldn’t both be dead, Grace laments bitterly. They’re the ones who chose this life, this end, this…sacrifice! They were the ones willing to do it, to die in space. They were the ones who made the plans. And now, they are both gone, the launch is in three days, and somehow he is the one everyone expects to shoulder the burden. No.
No.
No – he can’t be the answer.
He won’t be!
Why is he the one who has to step up to the plate with no notice, no planning, no warning? Why is he the one that gets to be told to die?
Guilt steps closer. Why not you?
When Grace joined this project, there had been an unspoken understanding that everything would go back to normal eventually. Maybe a gnarled version of normal, given the whole dying sun situation. But he would go back to the job he loved most in the world, return to San Francisco, walk the beaches again with their salt infused air and blankets of fog. Sure, his stupid little apartment was already leased out to someone else, but how hard would it be to find something similar?
He never thought that the last time he’d been in California could be the last time for the rest of his life.
This isn’t fair.
What they are asking of him isn’t fair.
But is it fair for someone else?
They can’t expect him to make peace with something like this in just three hours and then waltz onto a doomed interstellar ship three days later to die.
His thoughts scramble away from the horror of it, fleeing to the safe memories of his kids. The last class of middle schoolers he’d had are in high school now, trying to figure out what their futures will look like after graduation in a world facing its end. If he went back to teaching – no – when he goes back to teaching, it will be a new set of kids. New names, new faces, new minds to impart his knowledge to.
That’s where he should be, where he’s meant to be. He should be helping humanity here with his knowledge, not lightyears away on a suicide mission. He can help prepare humanity, come up with more temporary solutions to buy them more time until the real heroes send word back with a hopefully permanent cure.
Okay. Okay, he’s thought this through. Logically, analytically, practically. He’s looked at it from all angles, like a good scientist.
Like a good human.
A good, brave human that is looking out for humanity in the way he can best serve it.
Here. Boots on the ground, in the thick of it.
Fear has nothing to do with it.
He isn’t a coward.
He is realistic.
Guilt eyes him with an assessing, accusatory gaze. Shame bares sharp teeth in a knowing, leering smile.
Fear shies from both.
Grace checks his watch. It’s been two hours and fifty-six minutes.
He stands up, straightens his raincoat, and scrubs at his face. The motions don’t erase the anguish carved into his features.
“I’m a teacher,” Grace breathes, steeling himself for the argument surely to come. “That’s what I’m good at. That’s my purpose. I need to be here, on Earth. For the kids. For humanity.”
When he leaves the roof, Fear leads the way.
Guilt and Shame follow.
Bravery waits its turn.