Chapter Text
One day you’ll look…
There’s a sound, but I can’t quite tell what it is yet. It must be early morning, and my brain is foggy. There’s a faint glow from the window, but even with the morning sun it’s freezing cold. It hasn’t not been freezing cold for almost twenty years in North America. The equatorial regions were luckier.
…to see I’ve gone
I can tell now that it’s music playing. I pay it no mind and let it fade into the background. I occasionally hear music playing from the MP3 players of the ‘well-behaved’ inmates who were granted permission to own one. Well, usually it’s through their earphones because it can otherwise sometimes cause quite a stir. She—whoever that inmate is—will probably be able to get off lightly though, it’s no huge offense to listen to some music out loud from your cell. Is it coming from the next cell? Though, I thought she’d only been here two weeks. How could she have gotten an MP3 player so fast? Nevertheless, even if I became some patron saint, I’ll never get one of those.
But an MP3 player isn’t high on my wishlist. It was only after I’d been in prison for a couple of years that I allowed myself to start wishing for things again. What else can you do to pass the time? A heater is just one of the many things I wish for these days. Only the uber-rich still have the luxury of a radiator ever since the economy collapsed. It became a privilege to feel warm at all.
I sigh.
Some day you’ll know I was the one
But tomorrow may rain, so I’ll follow the sun
The song is familiar. I know I’ve heard it a long time ago, and I know it’s by The Beatles.
The beetles.
I sit up with a jolt. It’s not fast — I’m almost eighty now — but it’s as fast as I can.
The song finishes playing from a radio. It’s not a very long song, because by the time I’m fully awake and on my feet, it’s over. Just like that.
I crack a smile, a real smile. It feels tender and unnatural.
My one chance: a predetermined backup plan orchestrated decades ago, is ready for launch. It involved a whole process of making sure we always had an insider at every women’s prison in the United States at any given time for the remainder of my sentence, or rather, my life, so that we would be prepared even if I was moved. And, we had a backup backup plan if I ever got deported. This was the second-most difficult scouting program we ever did, after the crew and redundancies for the Hail Mary, of course. The whole project was made harder due to its highly illegal nature, with only myself and five others on the team. The scientists had no reason to know about it, the crew certainly didn’t need to know about it, and Grace was the last person who’d ever need to know about it.
Ah, Grace. Hearing his name should sting, but all I feel is nerves. I need to see what’s in those beetles.
I’m on a plane somewhere. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been on a plane and not known where I’m going. It feels oddly cathartic. The guards escorting me only had as much instruction as I did — we were going to the plane, and the plane was going to take me to where they had sent the beetles to.
They—whoever ‘they’ are now—must have relocated the labs, or repurposed another aircraft carrier completely. The Chinese navy was never going to lend us their carrier forever, that was a given. The people I left in charge are unlikely to have remained the same. Some of them might’ve resigned, maybe even passed on by now, but I have enough faith that if they were able to break me out of prison, I must be in good hands. Oh, yes — Long story. I don’t have time to explain.
After twenty-six years of no communication, I had received news of two beetles’ safe retrievals. This was as good as it would get.
What would be even better is if this plane flew just a little bit slower. Just a teeny, tiny, bit slower. I know I must seem like one tough old lady, but the truth is I can’t move at all in this jet. I’m whizzing along like a comet in this two-seater fighter jet at who-knows how many kilometers per hour, experiencing who-knows how many g’s. I’ve tried a couple times now to ask where we’re going, but the sound just doesn’t seem to be able to leave my throat. I feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest, and I can’t think, or take a deep breath, or—
The engines die and I realise we’ve been on solid ground for a few seconds now. I’m here. Thank Mary.
It only takes about an hour for me to settle back into a rhythm. I make calls and I tell people where they need to be, then I make more calls and tell people what to do.
There are plenty of new faces — young scientists recruited for Phase 2 of Project Hail Mary, but it’s also strange to see all these old, familiar faces just like mine, grown weary and haggard with the knowledge of Earth’s impending demise, but now there’s a glint of hope in every eye, a smile at every greeting in the hallway, and the firm clasp of hundreds of emaciated hands in co-operation.
It’s time. Everyone is here and in place, ready to start upon my order. The contents of the beetles have been carefully removed — a container labelled ‘Taumoeba’ (I have so many questions about this) and a hard drive of video logs.
We send the taumoeba on an express to the lab along with a copy of the relevant files on its properties and purpose, leaving me to comb through the video logs to see what else we can find. There’s four folders in total,
> MISCELLANEOUS MULTICAM [2.9TB]
> GRACE ROCKY SAVE STARS [196.5GB]
> TAUMOEBA: HOW TO KILL ASTROPHAGE [88.3GB]
> STRATT [4.2GB]
The main computer is connected via cable to the projection screen. I opt for the folder curiously named ‘GRACE ROCKY SAVE STARS’. I’ve delegated the taumoeba one to the lab already, and we’ll deal with miscellaneous logs once we get everything on its way — I’m guessing by the folder size that it’s just camera feed from the multicams we had installed in every room. And as for the one addressed to me… I’ll watch it after launch when we have nothing to do but wait. Personal messages are never imperative in these situations, and I don’t like the feeling of not knowing what’s in those logs. Maybe it’s Ryland Grace cussing me out for two hours straight. That’s not exactly something I’d like to screen to the whole team.
I’ve invited all of the remaining original taskforce to watch the Hail Mary’s crew’s logs for the first time together. We all wait with bated breath as the first video pops onto the screen and begins to play.
> GRACE ROCKY SAVE STARS > ENTRY HM - PL.0020 OBSERVATION ROOM
It’s Grace, looking just as I remember him, while I’m looking like… how I do, now. I almost laugh at how absurd it is, it’s like glimpsing into the past. But I’m more surprised — I thought that Captain Yao would make the first log, or maybe Ilyukhina would pop in first with her cheerful grin. I always did like her attitude.
But it’s the next line that shocks the shit out of all of us.
“So… I met an alien.”