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Today was the day. Today would be when he got to know if things would go according to plan, or if he had just entirely screwed up everything for no reason.
Ryland sat, hunched up in his office chair as he meaninglessly picked at the paperwork, counting down the seconds. It happened sometime early in the day, right? Or was it in the afternoon? It’s been too long, he can’t remember, he doesn’t want to remember but he must-
A rumble in the earth, then he threw himself to the ground under his desk before the shockwave hit. Glass shattered above him, blasting the portable housing back several meters and him in it.
This was it. This was… Ryland curled up under that desk as his ears rang and the sirens began to rise in an atonal wail, as his radio crackled with voices shouting at one another, and wept. Because he knew this was coming. He had seen Dubois and Shapiro off yesterday night, told them to sleep well, and then shut himself in his room to stare into nothing. And he had known they were using the lab today, and sequestered himself in his paperwork because he absolutely would not be showing his face to anyone else any time soon. And he had known they would die today. And he did nothing.
They had had to die, so that he would be forced on the mission again. Because it happened last time and the Earth was ultimately saved. And maybe Dubois or Shapiro could do what he had managed, but he could never be sure. And it’s not as if Stratt would believe ‘I am and have been a time traveler this entire time.’ He isn’t any good at manipulations and Stratt would immediately see if he tried to wiggle his way onto the team. He had no idea if she would approve or not, and he needed to not somehow blacklist himself early.
So he didn’t. And just… let things play out. Again.
The radio was a little louder now, his hearing was clearing out, and he could faintly hear his name being called. “- Dr Grace! Check in, damn you!”
He sucked in a breath, clicked the radio, and managed not to sound entirely like he was still currently sobbing. “Here. I’m here. Rattled. Sorry.”
He wasn’t wrong, per say. But it takes a far stronger heart than his own to commit manslaughter without feeling it. Is it even manslaughter if it’s pre-meditated? Perhaps ‘negligent homicide’ is closer. He doesn’t know.
Get up, Grace. You have a ship to catch.
…
To say that his sudden return to Earth had been explosive would be a rather extreme understatement. Ryland had jerked awake, abruptly transported 16 light years across the universe and at least fifty years prior, in his tiny studio apartment at two in the morning. Then before he could fully come to terms with the sudden change, his hindbrain had suddenly and enormously shot him full of so much energy that, forgetting shoes and even to change out of pajamas, he sprinted directly from bed down into the street outside his apartment. He was so taken with the sudden impulse to run that he didn’t even care if anyone heard (saw, he meant saw. People would see him first now!) his leaping and whooping and hollering. If someone was up in the middle of the night to see a random thirty-something (he thinks? Listen, sudden time travel is hard on the brain) man dancing and jumping in the dark pavement of a random street… well. They chose to live in San Francisco.
His body didn’t have the myriad aches and pains of all of his years of hard living in the wrong gravity, but his brain sure remembered when he did, and it was throwing up so many signs of elation that he was crying before he was laughing. Wind! Lightened gravity, the twinkling faint light of stars above, the sound of crickets nearby that wasn’t piped through a speaker in a vain attempt by himself to make his biodome feel less empty! Ryland scuffed a bare foot against the asphalt, winced, then started laughing even harder. His bones weren’t toothpicks! He took in a huge breath filled with so many little smells that the Eridians, bless their five hearts as many times as he can in his lifetime for everything they did, just could never have even considered adding to his dome. Trees and plants and the distant smell of smoke from a bushfire and… eugh, the many smells of human civilization too. He didn’t care. Those were a wonder in of themselves as well. He sprinted down the street, stumbling only twice as he kept putting his feet down harder than they actually needed to. How had he ever thought himself weighed down by Earth’s gravity, when he feels like every jump would send him flying like it had when he was still aboard the Hail Mary?
When he passed a corner store, he scrambled in so fast that the attendant (his first human contact in FIFTY YEARS!!!) jerked up to attention. Then they slumped again to watch him warily as he prowled up and down the aisles. Let them think he was going mad. He hadn’t had proper Earth grown food in so long and he needs to think carefully about if his head would actually explode with happiness if he bit into a sour patch kid without warning.
Then he remembered, as his arms bulged with bags of chips and other prepackaged junk, about the concept of money.
… right. He forgot his wallet, didn’t he. Everything here wasn’t made for his biology, was it. Or, well, it was, but not specifically for him in particular.
The corner store attendant took pity on him, and let him keep a packet of twizzlers while he shamefully put everything else away. He’ll take that, he hasn’t had twizzlers for fifty years.
His teeth were whole and healthy again, his jaw was no longer constantly aching from his scare with hypocalcemia, his taste palate is still the utterly fried modern American’s and not reduced to whatever could be approximated with simple chemicals and his own proteins. He ate the twizzlers.
Was he still crying? Maybe. Was it entirely justified because he has missed processed sugar garbage like this so badly - absolutely yes. The night was cool, there is a hint of mist in the air forecasting the fog rolling in a little later, he thinks he heard a bird fly overhead a moment ago, and Ryland was back on Earth. Even if it was a dream, even if this all was some elaborate illusion, he holds it as close to himself as he can.
Unfortunately for him, he finally wandered back around to his apartment (after a long forty minutes of stuffing his face with twizzlers then kicking around on a park lawn for the simple pleasure of feeling grass under his feet again) and finally noticed his phone. It was on the bedside table, and checking the time gave him the large and obvious popup for his workday alarm. Set for two and a half hours from now.
What an incredible dream, to be able to go and see his old students again after all this time. What a fantastic experience, to be able to feel Earth again when he had long given up on it.
What a horror, to finally unlock his phone and see the date, see the first email at the top of his personal inbox having been sent only a few hours previously: The Thin Red Line. Dr Irina Petrova’s first warning of the Astrophage crisis.
He only just managed to make it to the toilet before the twizzlers came back up.
…
And. Well. Here he was. Again. It wasn’t like he did anything different before that day, and he certainly didn’t do much of anything different after that day (besides a LOT more spur-of-the-moment walks. He had missed the sun a lot.) so it really shouldn’t be all that surprising when Stratt arrived at his classroom exactly at the same time she had last time.
God. He really was going to need to do this again wasn’t he. He could fix so much! He could skip all the long tedious science by already having the answers to give! He could save Yao and Ilyukhina and Shapiro and D -
But. What if doing that means that Taumoeba cannot be collected?
The thought struck him dumb. In time travel stories aren't there so many warnings that trying to fix one wrong could cause a hundred more to appear further down the line? What if he prevented the explosion and that inadvertently caused the Earth to die down the road?
What if he changed everything and never got to see Rocky again?
Well. Hopefully bursting into tears the moment he entered that argon-filled lab with the first sample of astrophage humanity had acquired would not affect the future too much. Because he doesn’t seem to be able to stop.
It’s fine. He’s got years to try and find a better way out of this. Because he needs to be on the flight again, just to be absolutely sure that nothing goes wrong. He can keep his mouth shut and work just slow enough to seem reasonable for a scientist exploring an entirely new field of study, rather than an old expert retreading the basics. He can…
Ryland - no, he’s Grace, he’s always Grace to Stratt and other scientists and Rocky and the Eridians, - blinks a few times and comes back to himself to the sharp sting of pain on his cheek. His eyes focus on Stratt in front of him lethargically. Wow! He hasn’t felt like this in a while, like an entire block of memory suddenly rose back up out of the mists of that amnesiac drug for his brain to cling to again. What were they talking about again?
“Dr Grace, can you hear me?” Oh - right. He was… in a conference room. Every team lead for the Petrova taskforce was there, staring with various amounts of concern or nervousness at him as he apparently missed some kind of cue. He shook his head.
“Yes, sorry, what was it again?” He had missed something important, something bad enough to make him entirely lose track of his mind, what was it -
“I said that you will be the replacement science specialist.” Ah. And that would be it.
Ilyukhina gave a shaky thumbs up from over Stratt’s shoulder, and Yao was frowning with consternation. It went like this the first time too, right? He should be relieved, he had jumped the final hurdle. Literally nothing that he did at this point would affect the outcome now, so Earth was saved.
Hooray.
“Right.” He really couldn’t manage to muster up either enthusiasm or shock. He had been playing pretend for so long and, while it hurt so badly to be back here again at last, he also knew that it was the right way forward.
His tepid response seemed to get Stratt more concerned than any of his panicked spluttering had last time. “Are you in shock, Dr Grace? Should I call for medical?” She always phrased questions like that in a way that made him imagine she was threatening him with that.
No, he wasn’t in shock. Grace shook his head. Oh wow, his movements felt all out of sync from normal. That’s probably fine. “It had to be done, right?” He had had plenty of time to scream at the ghost of Eva Stratt, to hate and revel in that hate. He had had even more time to cry and weep for what he had lost. He had been only so lucky as to come out on the other side and know that there was something more to reach out for. He only needed to remember that he could find that peace again. God, but he would miss Earth though.
“Just.” His voice was a little shakier now. His emotions felt like they were being heard through a wall, and not even a clear xenonite one. “Let me see the Earth before we go, ok? From space.”
Was the room quieting, or was he receding from reality again?
Then, Stratt’s voice. “That can be arranged. Thank you Dr Grace.”
Yao’s. “Thank you, Dr Grace. For our sake, for the sake of Dr Dubois and Dr Shapiro… I appreciate you coming with us like this.”
Ilyukhina’s. “Proud of you! Very brave!”
He took all those words and tipped them gently into the same grave that Dubois and Shapiro had been sent to because of his lack of willingness to rock the boat. Lined it gently around the caskets where Yao and Ilyukhina will lay soon enough. And let himself mourn quietly.
Nobody else talked to him during that meeting. At least he had already proven that crying at inopportune moments wouldn’t change the trajectory of the timeline.
He was going on the trip.
Earth would be saved.
He would see Rocky again.
He will never see Earth again.
It will have to have meant something.