Archive of Our Own

It was against my better judgment that I found myself scrolling Futuristic Buzzfeed for the second time this month.

In my defence, I had been trying to avoid it. I’d sworn off googling myself after the accidental discovery that half the population thought I was autistic, instead turning to a stack of eighth-grade modern history textbooks I’d asked my assistant Maya to source for me. They’d detailed the sorts of events I’d expected would come after the launch of the Hail Mary: the collapse of the African ecosystem, the invention of mass-producible Astrophage-powered greenhouse equipment, and the famines that took the lives of fifty-eight per cent of humanity. It listed the major wars, all fourteen of them, that developed within those thirty years of hopelessness.

But the books also contained sparks of hope I never would have bet on. The grit of farmers across the globe, who pivoted to those greenhouses and learned a completely different method of farming to keep their countries fed. The success of clean Astrophage energy and, when the Beatles arrived, xenonite. And the peacekeeping treaties founded in the wake of the Taumoeba, which let new technology bloom.

Heck, somehow studying Astrophage biology had led to a possible cure for cancer. Who would have known?

But the textbooks were limited, so my knowledge of what had happened while I was gone was still minimal. I had a decent idea, though, so I was satisfied.

I was also incredibly bored.

It wasn’t like my life wasn’t as full as it could be. It was just that my health fought with my enjoyment every step of the way. Rocky and I went out on adventures with Maya at least once or twice a week; we were heroes, so there wasn’t much the world could do to touch us. I’d shown him real beaches, and forests, and even a McDonald's 24/7 Drive Thru. But I tired quickly, and I refused to give in to a wheelchair just yet, so I stayed back with Maya and our security detail while Rocky explored in his xenonite spacesuit, listening to the sounds of the Earth I’d worked so hard to save.

It was enough to feel the heartbeat of my planet beneath my feet and watch the birds fly overhead, my cane taking most of my weight, and Maya the rest. I felt safer indoors, anyway — something about being confined behind airlocks for thirty years would do that to a man.

So, I got out as much as I could. The rest of my time, I also spent with Rocky. During the first few weeks of my arrival, I’d been dragged to important meetings and milked dry of information that the Earth had been desperate for for decades, but my life had quietened down considerably since then. When Rocky and his Eridian crew had been brought down to Earth, I’d been able to put my foot down, and now, I had almost every day to myself to be with him.

I hadn’t been able to explain how much he meant to me, but the relevant humans had seemed to understand, because they gave us space now. I had precious years to live. I wanted to spend them all with him.

So, I was content, but I was bored. Which was why I was scrolling Futuristic Buzzfeed again, one of Rocky’s favourite emerging pastimes.

“What does that word mean? The last one?” he asked after I read out another frankly ridiculous title.

“S-Log? I have absolutely no idea,” I sighed, leaning back into the curved bay window that had been built into the Eridian biodome for me.

My laptop was propped up against my knees again, just as it always was, and a warm hot chocolate sat on a side table I’d dragged into the meeting alcove, delivered by Maya just a few minutes ago.

(I’d been banned from coffee due to concerns about my health, which had been devastating but easy enough to adapt to, since I hadn’t had a taste of it in decades.)

“I think they’re just making up slang at this point. Like, I know I’m old, but there’s no way this is actually how people speak these days.”

We were scrolling through the Pop Culture section, reading funny headlines about movies and TV shows neither of us had ever seen. I’d somehow found an archive of top articles from previous years, ranked by decade, and over the past three hours, we’d blown through the ‘80s, the ‘70s, and were steadily making our way down through the 2060s.

About an hour ago, a pair of other Eridians had gathered nearby to listen, too. Duke and Mickey were anthropologists, so they often sat in on Rocky and my conversations whenever we talked about the internet — though they rarely spoke. They were a lot younger than Rocky, but they’d been studying me since I’d landed on Erid, and they’d been obvious choices for this first mission to Earth. As far as I knew, they were meant to be meeting with some human diplomats in another section of the biodome right now, but their company was always welcome.

“Slang words on Erid were the same when we arrived,” Rocky told me in grim solidarity, subtly angling his carapace towards the younger pair as if to point them out. “You never get used to it.”

I laughed. He wasn’t really that old in Eridian standards, but he liked to pretend to be.

We kept scrolling, and I kept reading things out, taking the occasional sip of my hot chocolate and letting the sweetness of Earth bloom on my tongue.

Technically, Rocky could use his light-sensing tool, which had gotten a number of upgrades since the first prototype he’d made at Tau Ceti. But after trying it out, we’d both agreed that it was better when I did it. His English reading was great, but it just felt… different this way. I liked to be useful, and staring at a screen in silence together didn’t feel like quality time for either of us.

“Surely the World Space Council has a Netflix subscription,” I said when Rocky expressed interest in a few of the TV shows mentioned in the articles.

“Oh! Does Netflix have podcasts?” he asked curiously.

I smiled.

Human podcasts and radio dramas had become a fascination of Eridians across Erid in the time I was there. Rocky had listened to the original Sherlock Holmes radio series obsessively on our trip from Tau Ceti, and I’d had to course correct wildly when he’d begun to pick up 1940s British speech patterns in his enthusiasm.

“Maybe we’ll see if Spotify is still around, then,” I told him warmly. “Later.”

We continued through the archive, making fun of celebrities and doing the occasional quiz to find out which character we would be in a movie we’d never heard of before. It was good, easy fun, a relief for my aching body after managing to take Rocky to a rushing waterfall the day before.

(He’d helped me up the trail, his carapace steady as I leaned on it with one hand. It had been beautiful; I’d never seen so much fresh water in my life.

“You’re smiling,” he’d said after a while, running one of his xenonite-clad legs through the water.

“Yeah,” I’d choked.

I didn’t know how to explain it to him. I never had. But I could feel, deep inside as I always did, that he understood.

“I like it when you smile.”)

Time passed languidly until we made it down to a year that looked familiar to me. 2062, 2062… It rattled around in my head, but I couldn’t imagine why. Maybe I was remembering a date from those history textbooks?

We kept going, but I couldn’t help feeling uneasy.

2062 appeared to be a quiet year for pop culture; Toy Story 8 had aired in theatres to a shockingly loyal audience, Ed Sheeran’s illegitimate granddaughter had released an album about whale conservation, and if I’d been a character in the hit TV show ‘Backyard Cherries’, I’d have been some guy called Ralph who collected vintage coins.

Then, April 2062 came around, and my own name jumpscared me at the bottom of the page, spelled in big, bold letters in the middle of a very jarring heading.

Were Eva Stratt and Ryland Grace a thing? 5 Things Lorne and Myers Got Wrong in Project Hail Mary: The Movie

I swallowed my spit before I could choke on it.

Ah, yes. The infamous film adaptation. Project Hail Mary (2062).

That was what my brain had been alerting me about.

My mouse hovered over the headline, and I had to will myself not to click on it just for the kicks. Stratt? Me? Geez, now I was glad I’d managed to avoid watching my movie thus far. I’d heard it wasn’t entirely accurate, but this was…

Was laughable the right word when it made me feel so uneasy?

“What’s wrong?” Rocky asked, and I realised I’d gone quiet.

I glanced up, trying to play it off.

“Nothing, Rock, just a funny headline. Humans being humans.”

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say, because Rocky excitedly craned his carapace, standing on what I’d taken to calling his tippy-toes.

“Read it out! I want to hear!”

Even the other Eridians in the area looked interested.

I shook my head with a chuckle, clicking into the article because I hated myself and everything I did had no explanation except stupidity.

“Yeah, no chance,” I told them, scrolling down.

‘Number 1: The centrifuge

It’s arguably the smallest detail on this list, but it’s what’s caused the most stir. Yes, that’s right. The centrifuge Ronald Griffin (Ryland Grace) uses to investigate the Astrophage samples collected at Tau Ceti…’

My eyes skimmed over the text, finding nothing interesting. An unbalanced centrifuge had scientists taking to social media with their complaints, apparently. Nothing was mentioned about the headline.

Then, I remembered how these kinds of articles worked.

Taking a sip of my hot chocolate for courage, I scrolled quickly, flicking past the rest of the subheadings until I reached the final one. Bingo.

‘Number 5: Eva Stratt and Ryland Grace’s unsubtle yearning’

I almost spat out my drink.

What?!

“Grace??” Rocky asked in alarm. “Grace, are you okay? What happened?”

My throat burned as I swallowed as much of the hot chocolate as I could, wiping the rest from my lips with a shake of my head.

“I’m fine,” I managed, giving him a wave of dismissal. Luckily, nothing had landed on my computer. I cleared my throat, trying to regain my composure, and rubbed at my watering eyes under my glasses. “Something caught me off guard, that’s all.”

My attention returned to the article, and I read the subheading again. Unsubtle yearning?? I knew people had liked to speculate, but seriously?

Gosh, it felt weird to even be thinking about Stratt, especially like this. My chest felt tight, and I realised this was a bad idea.

When I’d come home, it had been the first question I’d asked. Was she alive? It had been sixty years, and she’d been older than me when the Hail Mary was launched. Still, I’d held out hope, or something like it.

I’d been angry at her, but the sort of anger that would have evaporated immediately if I’d met her eyes. I hadn’t wanted her to be dead.

But she was. Gone nearly a decade ago, they’d told me with sorry eyes.

I didn’t want us to be remembered like… whatever this article was suggesting we were. Obviously, someone from the Vatt had blabbed. Nobody had ever been able to see a man and a woman who respected each other without twisting it into something it wasn’t.

More importantly, I didn’t want that to be how she was remembered.

If the title of the article was to be believed, though, then the author was trying to dispel myths like this. I looked at the bar on the side of the webpage and found her name: Nicola Cho. Surely, this Buzzfeed journalist would defend our honour, right?

I’m counting on you, Nicola.

So, against all rationality, judgment, or the heavy feeling in my stomach, I read on, ignoring Rocky’s very pointed questions.

“Just let me read this one myself, bud,” I told him quietly, and he seemed to understand.

“One thing in particular about the film really got audiences divided, and that’s the unsubtle looks shared between Ronald Griffin (Ryland Grace) and Samantha Hütter (Eva Stratt) — especially during that tension-filled scene before the explosion,” the article began.

“The yearning in Hütter’s eyes is palpable, and though Griffin plays a rather awkward Dr Grace, it’s obvious that he returns it. Later, Hütter’s tender kiss to Griffin’s forehead as the medics wheel his unconscious body away is the send-off of a heartbroken woman, forced to sacrifice her chance for love to save the world, and it has fans across the globe reimagining the Hail Mary mission as a love story.”

I had to make an effort not to scoff. This sounded like Hollywood, alright. A forehead kiss? I didn’t think the real Stratt had ever bent down for anyone in her life.

And… a love story? Between me and Stratt? I’d respected her, but I wouldn’t go that far. She’d put me on the Hail Mary, and I’d fought tooth and nail against her for it. She’d wiped my brain! It might have been hard for her, but evidently not hard enough.

Don’t get me wrong; I was full of love. Love for the Earth, love for Erid, love for Rocky. Was that not enough?

I often felt guilty that I hadn’t been fighting for anyone back on Earth when I’d tried to find a reason to keep going at Tau Ceti. There had been my students, yes, and I’d loved them, too. But I hadn’t had a girlfriend’s picture in a locket by my heart like other men always did in the movies. I hadn’t had a ring on my finger to remind myself of a family back home. Hell, even Rocky had Adrian.

I’d done it all for love, but I often got the feeling that I hadn’t done it for the right kind of love.

Maybe that was why Stratt and I had been the victims of rumour and creative license. I wasn’t a compelling story on my own, and I knew it.

I read on, hoping Nicola Cho would come through for us in the next paragraph.

“However, anyone close to the pair during the construction of the Hail Mary would be quick to dismiss the scenes as movie magic,” the article continued, beneath a screenshot of Movie-Stratt and Movie-me in a field of radio dishes.

YES, Nicola! I really, really hoped the public didn’t actually believe this nonsense.

“In the ESA and the Petrova Taskforce, Eva Stratt was known for her uncompromising work ethic, laser focus, and disinterest in personal matters on the job. It would have been highly unprofessional and out of character for her to pursue a subordinate like Dr Grace, who, as sources have been saying for years, showed little desire for romantic partnership.’

So, her defence was that Stratt was dignified and I was a loser. Awesome.

Honestly, I couldn’t argue much. I’d never asked if Stratt had a family back home — I’d gotten the impression that she wouldn’t answer — but I’d always assumed she hadn’t. She was single-minded. I was, too. We were two sides of the same coin, even if her motivation might have been work, and mine was just general disinterest.

“Some theorists even go so far as to suggest Dr Grace was on the aromantic and/or asexual spectrum,” the article went on, and I frowned a little at the foreign words, “as he lived to his thirties without any major relationships, and his colleagues say he expressed discomfort and sometimes disdain over questions about his love life. Everyone remembers his famously memed response to one of Rocky’s questions on human biology, quoted endlessly after the Hail Mary video logs were released to the public: ‘Sure, sex feels great… biologically. But lots of things can get the same response. Tacos, for example. Gosh, what I wouldn’t give for a taco…’

“Me too, Dr Grace, me too.

“Regardless, it’s highly unlikely that Eva Stratt and Ryland Grace really did look at each other like that. And though Ms Stratt has not appeared publicly since the return of the Beatles fifteen years ago, I suspect she’d say the same thing.”

The article ended with a candid image of Stratt and me on the deck of Stratt’s Vatt. She was leaning over a railing, her hair whipping out in the wind, and I was leaning back against a pole beside her, yapping away about something I couldn’t remember. I didn’t know who’d managed to take the photo — I hadn’t even known it existed until now — but when I looked closely, I could see just a hint of a smile behind the high collar of her coat.

Grief hit me, low and longing, as I remembered all the people I would never see again.

Then, my eyes drifted up to those underlined words. They had hyperlinks which presumably led to different pages — definitions, maybe. I suspected they were new slang terms, though I narrowed my eyes at ‘asexual’. Like… bacteria? Like Astrophage?

I think Rocky could sense the flood of emotions through my body, because he didn’t interrupt, even though I knew he could hear the movements of my eye muscles and understand I’d stopped reading for now. He’d settled down on the ground now, his legs tucked beneath him like a cat, but I could tell he was still very much attentive. He was just giving me space.

The hyperlinks teased me until I finally gave in and clicked on the second one.

A new tab loaded quickly on the WSC WiFi, bright and clean. The site looked to be a dictionary of different… sexualities? It was aptly named ‘The LGBTQIA+ Identity Project’ in big, bright rainbow letters, which I instantly frowned at.

I wasn’t gay. I was very much decidedly not gay. The world didn’t think I was gay, did it?

“What is Asexuality?” the page was titled, which did little to quell my apprehension.

I tilted my head and started reading anyway.

“Asexuality is a sexual orientation characterised by little to no experience of sexual attraction. It is distinct from sexual abstinence, celibacy, and low libido, which are medical and/or behavioural and are often motivated by external factors…”

I blinked.

Read it again.

Moved down the page, skimming over sentences.

“…exists on a spectrum…”

“…does not necessarily mean a lack of love, emotional connection, or meaningful relationships…”

“…can still engage in, enjoy, or seek out sex, but may also be sex-neutral or sex-repulsed…”

Something in my brain went very, very still.

Okay, sure. So, there was a word for people who didn’t find other people sexy. Great. A normal word. A well-known word. And not a medical condition.

But surely whoever wrote this understood that it was an anomaly. There weren’t enough people like this to warrant a label. After all, what was the point of a human who didn’t want sex?

(What was the point of me? — I’d asked a hundred times before.)

I felt scattered suddenly, parts of my consciousness thrown across a foreign field and expected to find their way back to each other. It was disorientating. Never in my life had I come across this word in a context other than biology, but here it was, and it felt…

I rushed back to the original article and clicked on the other link.

A second page loaded, lightning fast.

“What is Aromanticism?”

“Aromanticism is a romantic orientation characterised by little to no experience of romantic attraction…”

I knew it was coming, but I still sucked in a breath. That one hit harder somehow. I’d always thought sex was overrated, but romance… romance was the stuff of life, wasn’t it?

It was the same website, the same painfully gentle, objective tone as I read on:

“…still experience strong platonic love…”

“…often value friendships and other forms of connection deeply…”

“…may feel alienated by societal expectations around romance, family, and settling down…”

My heart was pounding. I couldn’t say why — there wasn’t any danger, I was sitting. Just reading. But this knowledge felt forbidden; it couldn’t be true. I’d lived my whole life alone. By Earth standards, I’d failed. People didn’t just… they couldn’t just…

But they did.

Beneath the definition lay paragraphs of testimony.

People talking about growing up thinking they were broken. Assuming everyone else was exaggerating. Feeling like they’d missed some kind of universal memo. Parents and grandparents telling them they’d change their minds once they met the right person.

I huffed out a quiet, disbelieving laugh and leaned back against the bay window, my laptop tilting forward on my knees.

When I closed my eyes, memories flickered.

Well-meaning colleagues asking if I had a wife.

Students giggling about crushes I’d never had when I was their age.

My girlfriend Linda telling me it was okay if I was gay, but did I really think she couldn’t tell I hated being with her?

At the bottom of the article, there were a few different flags, all with different shades of green, grey, and black. Then, underneath:

“A person who is both aromantic and asexual may call themselves ‘aroace’, accompanied by the following flag:”

I scrolled down, and my face was suddenly lit up in blue and orange, soft as a sunset over the water. The shades were beautiful.

I stared at it as my throat worked, trying to piece my identity back together around these two new words.

This was me.

God, I wasn’t broken. I’d never been broken.

I just hadn’t known.

“Are you finished reading?” Rocky asked slowly, finally breaking the silence he’d allowed me.

I cleared my throat and looked up.

“Um, yeah,” I croaked, blinking back tears I hadn’t realised were there. “All… all finished.”

He was still for a moment, then rose to his feet and gave some kind of subtle gesture to Duke and Mickey. They wordlessly excused themselves, clambering off to another section of the biodome, and I let out a long breath.

I’d been right when I’d called this a bad idea; Futuristic Buzzfeed was now two for two on making me rethink my entire identity by accident.

“You’ve learned something,” Rocky observed without judgment, coming closer to the xenonite barrier between us.

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“Something sad?”

I hesitated, then shook my head.

“Happy-sad? Bittersweet,” Rocky landed on.

It wasn’t necessary, but I nodded again.

“…Yeah,” I hiccuped, a sob taking its opportunity the second I sucked a breath in. The tears followed, trickling down my face, but I clenched my jaw tightly to try and stay composed. “Um, I don’t— I’ll try to explain it, but…”

He was already angled toward me, but he pressed even closer now, as if to say he had me.

God, I wanted to die. This was embarassing. This was world-defining.

“There are… words,” I tried, surprised by how quickly I choked up. “For— okay, you know how humans have… different orientations? Like being attracted to different genders and all that?”

“Yes,” Rocky said immediately. “You explained it to me. Many genders, so many categories.”

“Right. So this is…” I hesitated. “It’s like that. But for people who don’t really… feel that kind of attraction. Sexual, or romantic.”

There was a brief pause.

I’d talked to Rocky about this before. We’d spoken at length about human and Eridian mating customs, and I’d always been more… clinical about my own species than him. He’d asked, and I’d given it to him straight: I didn’t care much about sex or romance, but most humans did, so he shouldn’t use me as a baseline.

He knew that it nagged at me more than I’d let on. He always knew these things, even if I only told him once.

“What words?” he eventually asked, his tone soft, and it made my chest pang to know he understood how much this meant to me.

“Asexual,” I said, my lips taking the shape of the word all too easily. “And aromantic.”

Rocky hummed soothingly. “I will ask if Erid has similar words. Otherwise, I’ll make some for you.”

I didn’t know why, but that was the final straw.

I broke down.

My face screwed up all ugly and leaky, and I sobbed, great heaving sobs like the grown man-baby I was.

“I love you, Rock,” I managed through hiccuping breaths. I needed him to know. “And I don’t care that— that it’s supposed to matter less. I love you, and— and you’re everything. That’s everything for me.”

I wasn’t making any sense, but as always, I knew Rocky got the message.

He rested his body against the xenonite, and I did too. It was as close as we could get to a hug like this.

“I love you too,” he sang quietly. “It doesn’t matter less. Never matters less.”

There were five different words for love in his language. One for objects and concepts, one for familial love, one for platonic love, one for romantic love, and finally, a fifth one reserved for the people who defined your life. It was the most complex, used to say you mean the world to me. Like soulmates. And it could apply to any kind of love.

That was the one that Rocky had always used for me.

I stayed there for a long time, pressing as close as I could to him through the wall seperating our environments. The tears grew sticky on my neck and covered my glasses, which I slipped off my face and threw onto the side table beside me. I pulled my legs to my chest, my cheek against the wall, and let the world narrow down to the comfort he provided.

This was more than marriage, or sex, or family. Friendship didn’t feel like a powerful enough word.

He was everything.

And there were words for that now. There were words for why this was everything for me.

It had taken sixty years, but I didn’t feel broken anymore.

I pulled myself together as best as I could when the sky got dark outside and the warehouse around the biodome slowed to a lazy trickle of interns on overtime. I said goodbye to Rocky, promised I’d be back as soon as I’d slept in a proper bed, and didn’t have to say a word before my assistant was at my side.

She waved to Rocky and took my arm with practiced care, watching my other hand to make sure I didn’t put too much weight on my cane.

“What’s on your mind tonight, Dr Grace?” Maya asked idly as we made our way past reception.

After she’d gotten over her initial hesitation around me, I’d learned she was a great conversationalist. Never pressing, but never awkwardly silent either; always asking the right questions. We’d spent long hours together waiting for rescheduled meetings, sitting in doctors’ offices, and doing all sorts of futuristic paperwork, so we’d had to get friendly quickly. She put up with my stupid jokes, her face always straight when I said anything bizarre, and I answered her questions about my health with as much truth as I could manage.

Tonight, I fixed her with the sort of grin you’d give an unsuspecting student before you referenced a piece of internet slang you weren’t meant to know about.

“Oh, you know,” I said casually, despite the hoarseness of my voice. “Just thinking about all the sex that Eva Stratt and I never had.”