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“Colt sit still for Christ’s sake please. I’m going to accidentally lob your ear if you don’t.”
“Just hurry, the guys are shooting off fireworks,” Colt wiggled from side to side, “You said we’d be done by then, Ry.”
“We would if you stopped moving so could not be moving like a snail,”
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Colt stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, he was far from the squirming teenager he was in the memory. He wasn’t even really sure why that came to him. Colt weirdly hesitated with the scissors even though he had been cutting his own hair since he and Ryland became adults. He hadn’t talked to Ry in months, they had fallen into that period where they don’t talk for a while because of life. Something deep in his gut told him that something was deeply wrong. Then Jody called from the front of the trailer-
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Grace awkwardly held the mirror to himself, staring at his reflection. His brain still felt like a batch of scrambled eggs, but a memory flashed in his head. Clearly he was a teenager in this memory, but there was another boy with him, Colt, and he looked exactly like Grace. Well younger of course. Did he have a brother? Why would he have gone on whatever this mission was if he had a brother? Why couldn’t he remember?
All of these emotions welled in force behind his eyes. Happiness, joy, anger, bitterness, fear, comfort, and the strongest, belonging. He couldn’t even remember his own brother. They shared a face and he couldn’t remember him. What he was like, how he laughed, or even how he felt about Grace. What if he just left without saying anything? What if they left on bad terms and he didn’t know it yet? This all knocked Grace to the floor into a fit of sobs. The kind of sobs that hurt when you breathed and stung behind the eyes. He just wanted to remember.
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Colt exited the bathroom and found Jody walking up to him. She had an odd expression on her face that he couldn’t discern. They were on set getting ready for the first day of shoot, but it had been a slow start as everyone had been discussing the launch of the Hail Mary from the day prior. Colt himself never got to watch the launch, he was too focused on getting stunt rigs set for the next day, though he remembered anytime he walked past people they would look at him as if he was a ghost. Jody reached her hand out towards him, to which he took, interlacing their fingers together as they walked to the door of their trailer. At the door stood a stout man in a clean black suit.
“Colton Grace?” He looked directly at Colt. No one ever used his actual last name, full name at that, and when they did it was serious.
Colt’s heart sank. What had happened? Did something happen to Ryland, and this was the man delivering the news? Jody squeezed his hand and stood solid beside him.
Colt shoved down the lump that formed in his throat before responding, “Uh- Yeah that’s me.”
He didn’t want to ask, but not asking hurt just as bad. Colt saw on the man’s face that he too seemed as if he was seeing a ghost when looking at him. Even more so than anyone on set, this was the look of someone who knew Ryland well. The man seemed to shake himself out lightly and address Colt again.
“Mr. Grace-”
“Just Colt is fine, Mr. Grace is my brother,” Colt replied quickly.
“Well. I’d like for you to come with me if you could. You’re wife is also welcome to join,”
Colt turned to Jody, she was now not meeting his eyes and instead she kept them forwards.
Jody spoke.
“This is about Ryland isn’t it?”
“Yes ma’am.” the man answered simply.
Taken aback, Colt tried to question Jody, but she let go and turned towards the inside of the trailer.
“I’m going to get the shoot halted for the day, we can worry about it later,”
“Jodes?” Colt pleaded, his voice twinged with confusion.
He looked back to the door for an answer from the mysterious suited man who had arrived asking for him. His face was unreadable.
“How much do you know about what your brother was working on for the Petrova Task Force?”
“Not much, just that he was recruited about a year and a half ago for it-”
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“Petrova Task Force?” Colt asked, “Like that weird line of stuff coming from the sun?”
“Yes. Like the Petrova line,” Grace answered.
Grace stared at his brother, they had finally found time to meet for lunch between his shooting schedule and Grace’s new position with the task force. Colt sat across from him with his head back to soak in the sun on his face.
“Are you telling me about it so I can tell you to keep doing it, or do you want me to tell you not to be a part of solving this big problem. Because I’m not going to do that,”
“I guess, I don’t know. It just kinda happened. I’m supposed to run experiments on these astrophage. But I just want to be back with my kids teaching,”
“Ry, just do it. What could it hurt, you’ve been out of science for years and I have always seen how you’ve missed it. I think it might do you some good,” Colt stated frankly, looking over the top of his sunglasses at Grace.
“Are you saying I need a life?”
“No. Okay not exactly, you just spend most your time with kids, couldn’t hurt being around scientists again,”
“I wouldn’t be. Around scientists I mean. It’s just kind of a bunch of government guys,”
“Eh- Either way. Just do it man, you’ll regret it if you don’t-”
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♩♪ Grace okay, question?♩♪
Rocky’s voice synthesizer pulled Grace out of his head, and back to the task at hand. Ahead of him was the Petrovascope focused on the line coming from Adrien. He shut his eyes to try and remember what they were presently doing. He remembered they were setting orbit for astrophage collection.
♩♪ Grace?♩♪
“Yeah. Sorry Rock, I’m good,”
♩♪ Another memory, question?♩♪
“Uh huh, it was another one of my brother,”
The more memories Grace got of Colt dulled the ache in his chest, but it never went away. He remembered more, but there were still chunks missing. Sometimes it was a memory of their childhood together, or it was of their meetings as adults with separate lives. There was no rhyme or reason to when he would remember Colt, he just would. Grace remembered how he never mentioned Colt to anyone on the project, but he couldn’t remember why. Maybe he was just never asked and he never told. The piecemeal memories weren't very helpful in any aspect of the mission. It was just the personal memories that were the most frustrating.
♩♪ Was good memory♩♪
“I guess, it was just us at lunch talking about the group that was created on Earth to deal with the astrophage,”
♩♪ Happy memory♩♪ Rocky said, his tone pitched up, ♩♪ Grace get collector♩♪
“Yes, I’m getting the collector Rock,” Grace chuckled.
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In the back of a heavy black SUV sat Colt and Jody, they were being driven away from the set with no indication how long the ride was going to be. Jody had been on the phone, coordinating the set for the time being. Colt didn’t like any of this one bit, he was completely in the dark and that sinking feeling he had felt in the bathroom had grown stronger. The man who had arrived for him sat in the front passenger seat quietly.
After about an hour they arrived at an office building back in LA, they were ushered out of the car and into a conference room within the building. At the far end of the table sat a woman with red hair, she had an air of authority to her and Colt surmised she was the head of the task force Ryland had been a part of. She gestured for Colt and Jody to sit in the seats just next to her. Colt sat a few seats from her left and Jody directly next to him. Colt’s leg bounced nervously, all of the hush hush about things even from Jody was killing him. Eventually the woman addressed him and he kept his gaze to the side of her.
“Mr. Grace, Ms. Moreno, thank you for coming, I’m Eva Stratt. The director of Project Hail Mary, as well as Dr. Grace’s superior,”
“Please just call me Colt. Or at least just use Seavers,” Colt corrected, again.
The shake in his leg got worse.
“I’m sorry that this is how you are having to hear this, but as Dr. Grace’s only immediate family, I am obligated to inform you. Dr. Grace was our only option after an incident that killed my science team,” she paused to give herself a breath, “He was assigned to the Hail Mary as its scientific officer effective four days ago.”
“What?”
The air was knocked out of Colt’s lungs. His brother. Sent into space, and he didn’t even say goodbye.
“Yes, and unfortunately until about four hours ago, we were under the impression that he did not have any immediate family, you were no longer using your shared name. As well has Dr. Grace never mentioning having a brother, and being a twin no less,”
Colt didn’t like how she only referred to Ryland as Dr. Grace, one would think that after over a year of working together, you would drop the formalities. Ryland only being referred to as his title left a weird taste in Colt’s mouth.
“I’m so sorry Colt, I had only seen the news a few minutes before they came to the door,” Jody said solemnly, “I was coming to get you when-”
Colt’s ears rang. The world fell away and his vision sank in. His brother was gone. Being sent god knows how many millions of miles away with no hope of return. It had been months since they talked, and Colt couldn’t even remember the conversation; it was so mundane. Life had done its thing and gotten in the way.
“You- you sent,” Colt fumbled over his words, he laughed, but the kind of laugh when something sounds so absurd you can’t believe it, “You sent my brother into space?”
“Indeed,”
Snapping back to reality, Colt stood up from his chair with his hands on the table. Tears welled in his eyes, both sadness and anger mixed in his stomach.
“No way he did that willingly,” Colt’s voice raised, “He can barely ride an escalator without getting sick. And you’re telling me my brother willingly said yes to a suicide mission.”
“That you are correct Mr. Seavers. Your brother did not go willingly, we put him in a medically induced coma three days before launch to insure he would not resist,” Eva said. She kept her voice level, and tried to explain herself, “It was our only option and it was an extreme one, but sacrifices have to be made for the betterment of the whole. And I am informing you of this in hopes that you understand why it had to be done.”
With that, the sadness had melted away to just anger. Colt straightened up and stared Stratt directly, he could see on her face that she wavered a bit now that he was giving her his full attention. A flicker of something under the stoic exterior. As if seeing the anger on his face, his brother's face was something she wasn’t prepared for. Made him wonder what his brother’s expression was being told he was being sent to die.
“You killed him. You fucking. Killed. Him!”
“Colt,” Jody tried to calm him by placing her hand on his.
“No! She.” He jabbed his finger at Stratt, “Deserves to hear this. I’m certain nothing happened without her authorization. You killed my brother. His blood is on your hands. You’re a murder.”
Colt left Stratt with that, another version of his brother calling her a murder for what she had done. He hoped she would sit with that, he hoped Ryland had told her the same thing. He stormed out of the conference room and down the stairs. He burst through the doors to the street, the fresh air calmed Colt. But that only left room for the heaviness of the situation to set in. A few moments later Jody appeared next to Colt, he was trying to keep his composure because he knew the moment he looked at her he would break, and she would be there to pick up the pieces when he did.
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Grace ran.
He ran for his life.
Boots pounded behind him and people shouted. He wasn’t sure where he was running to, just anywhere but where he was. The compound was a maze of buildings and walk ways, everything looked the same. Grace fumbled for his phone, almost dropping it in the process until getting an iron grip on it. The first speed dial was for his brother. The phone rang and rang.
“This is Colt. I’m probably off doing something cool. Leave a message and I’ll call ya back.”
Again and again Grace tried as he ran, the boots getting closer and the edge of the compound closing in. One last call, it rang and the away message echoed, and without noticing Grace hit the button for voicemail. Grace’s chest collided with the ground as one of the men who was chasing him slammed into his back. He screamed and struggled against the weight on top of him.
“No! Colt! Colt, Colt! I can’t do it!” Grace pleaded. Calling out for his brother who wouldn’t hear him.
His companion, his friend, walked into view with his black suit, blocking the light from the sun.
“Carl! Don’t do it. Please!”
“You’ll do great,” Carl said simply, a hint of sadness in his voice.
Then the world went black with a prick of a needle into the back of his neck.
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It had been a week since the launch of the Hail Mary, the ship that was being hailed as Earth’s last hope. One week since Colton Grace was told that his twin brother had been on that one way trip. In that time Colt had found a missed voicemail from Ryland, dated the same day Stratt had said they sedated him for the mission. Colt had missed the calls that day. He hadn’t brought himself to listen to it quite yet. Maybe after they cleared Rylands apartment.
By the grace of some higher power, Colt had not had to interact with Eva Stratt again, he wasn’t really sure how another encounter would have gone. Colt had been given a box of Rylands belongings that they hadn’t sent with him on the Hail Mary. Nothing really remarkable, notepads and desk decorations, with his apartment keys being among them. And the only notable thing being his yellow raincoat. The one he wore every spring season when the bay would become only rain and fog. It smelt heavily of citrus and cedar.
The smell of Ryland’s apartment was the same but stronger. The inside wasn’t messy, but well lived, last time he had seen it was when helped Ryland move in. The walls were warm oranges and yellows. Everything was in a place as if it was frozen in time. Which it was. Jody had been by his side the whole week, and she was beside him this time as well. She helped him box and label things away. Helped him decide what could be donated and what was important to keep. She also understood when Colt would walk out the front door for a bit because it had become too much. He was essentially burying his brother without the body, mourning him without ever being able to give a proper goodbye.
It took some time and multiple days to recuperate, but Ryland’s apartment was cleared of his personal belongings and stored away into a storage unit that Jody had set up. After saying goodbye to his brother in this way, Colt got the courage to listen to Ryland’s last voicemail. Going in with the hope it was mundane and unimportant.
Colt was inconsolable.
It was worse than he could’ve ever imagined. Ryland hadn’t even realized the voicemail had started. He heard his brother calling out for him and begging for his life. Colt kept telling himself that just maybe if he had picked up the phone instead of being so focused on work. Just maybe Colt could have done something in time. Done anything to try and stop what had happened.
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Grace stared at the record button of the display, this most recent memory shook him to his core. He was a coward. He was a damned coward. He wasn’t the brave scientist who sacrificed himself for the rest of the world, he was drug onto that ship kicking and screaming, calling out for his brother. Grace pressed the record button, this wasn’t a log for anyone, just himself for his own sake.
“I’m so sorry Colt. I wish I could’ve been brave like you are. I can’t throw myself on top of cars, or through fire. Hell I wasn’t even brave enough to get on this damned damned ship.”
Grace wiped the tears that welled in his eyes away and continued.
“I might not have been brave enough to get on but I’ve already come this far and it would be a waste. I wish I could’ve said goodbye to you, or anything to you for that matter. Just feels like I’ve been split in two sometimes, you know. You’ll likely never see this, since I don’t need to send any of the logs home. So it’s just for myself.”
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Life went on for Colt, he eventually stopped blaming himself for what happened, finally becoming okay with the fact that there was nothing he could’ve done. He continued to do his stunts and make movies with the woman he loved, but that had its time in the light. The Earth began to cool just like the scientists had said, even with the increase in greenhouse gases they had tried to pump into the atmosphere. Eventually things got too grim and no one really wanted to make entertainment anymore, at least for the moment, so the studios shuddered and the world was a little less bright in that respect.
As for Eva Stratt, she had been incarcerated on a whole plethora of international crimes, Colt would never admit it but he felt it was too harsh. It was a weird mix of emotions when it came to director Stratt for Colt. He may have never forgiven her for what she had done to Ryland, but he came to understand the reasons why even if he hated them. He and Jody had been set up with a quaint house close to what remained of the U.S. government, it was mostly officials and their families with a select few not a part of that group. The families of the Hail Mary crew were among those who were allowed on to the government compound. This was campaigned by most of the remaining members of the Petrova Task Force including Stratt even if she didn’t have the power she used to. It wasn’t much, food had become difficult to come by consistently, so having a regular food delivery was a blessing. They had gotten lucky when it came to surviving the Earth cooling, Colt just wished it hadn’t taken his brother's life to get this opportunity.
Twenty-Six years had passed for Colt, he was a bit fuzzy on the whole relativity thing and he wasn’t ever sure if Ryland had actually survived. It was easier to think he did. He never really knew what age Ry would be, so in his head they were still the same age. They would always be the same. Colt had done his best to always keep his brother close in those years through the photos of the two of them on the walls of the house, or placing an extra candle in the cakes Jody would make for his birthday. December 19th would come around and he would go out to the statue on the compound that commemorated the crew of the Hail Mary to say Happy Birthday to Ryland.
The air on this particular December 19th was frigid, and Colt had to bundle up more and more every year. It was getting harder to make the trek every year, he was still fit but being in his early sixties and with the weather becoming so unrelenting. This day also happened to be the day the beetles from the Hail Mary had been retrieved. About a week prior the Deep Space Network had stopped three of their radio signals at the edge of the solar system. There was to be a meeting later that day to discuss what had been retrieved from them, and the crew's families were invited to join.
By mid day the central research center of the compound was like a bee hive, there were more people there than Colt had seen in a long time. People talked excitedly, many of the scientists discussing what could be on the beetles, what data they might find, how the astrophage problem was going to be solved. For Colt, Jody, and the rest of the families, they wondered if their loved ones had survived the trip. Suddenly Colt was back in his mid thirties feeling the full weight of what happened to Ryland on his shoulders again. All that time of managing washed away in an instant. The crew’s families were brought to their own room with a large projector and seating. For them they played the logs that had been stored on the hard drives of the beetles.
Colt wouldn’t say he was lucky, he had confirmation that his brother had survived but he had been the only one to. Captain Yao and Engineer Ilyukhina hadn’t survived the comas they were put in for the trip. As for Ryland, most of the first hours of logs were him working out who he was and why he was there. It hurt Colt to see his brother in that state, how awful it must have been to wake up in an unknown place with no semblance of who you are. There were hours upon hours of video, Colt was the one who had stayed the longest, understandably Yao’s and Ilyukhina’s families had chosen to depart after learning the fate of their loved ones. As a courtesy, a cot and blankets had been set up in the room with the understanding that Colt likely wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon.
After hours and a quick few hour nap, Colt finally reached the end of the logs. Ryland had been given fuel by his alien friend, so why were the beetles here and not him? There were two left with the first not boding well, he loaded the log and there sat Ryland bathed in deep red light:
“There’s a leak. I’ve managed to contain it… the taumoeba have evolved to slip through xenonite, I was able to isolate them. But Rocky’s entire ship is the leak-”
“Oh Ry-” Colt choked.
He knew his brother too well, that was why his brother had sent the probes back, he had gone back for his friend. Through teary eyes Colt had finished the logs, the last bit of his brother slipped away through his fingers.
A voice from behind him prompted Colt to straighten his back and wipe his tears away.
“There is one more video, but I can’t show it here. Special request from Dr. Grace,”
Colt turned to see a young woman carrying a clipboard at the entrance to the room.
“Any particular reason?” Colt asked.
“No, all the note attached to the file said was that it would all be explained within the log itself and that it was specifically addressed only for your eyes, sir,”
Colt was brought to an empty office, there was a flat screen on the wall with Ryland’s face on it. He was in the same place he was in the last log, it was clear it had been recorded either directly before or after that final log. He cautiously sat and the woman who brought him here exited the room, leaving him alone. The video began after he pressed play on the keyboard on the table in front of him.
“Alright, I sent specific instructions for this log. If they listened, you should be the only one seeing this Colt. There are so many things I want to say to you. I hope you’ve watched everything up to this point so it all makes sense. You probably wondered towards the end of my logs why it was the beetles and not me when I had the fuel. Please know I’m not abandoning you for Rocky. Never in my life would I make a choice like this lightly. And I know you know this. Doing the math, by the time the beetles get back to Earth, it’ll have been twenty-six years. You’ll have experienced almost as much of life without me as you have with.
“And before I made the decision to go after Rocky, I was thinking about how I would be eighteen years younger than you. Time dilation’s a funny thing ain’t it, makes things weird and difficult. It would have just been eight years for me if I had returned home. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to deal with seeing you older than me or having to watch you go before me. Let alone how you would feel seeing your twin no longer your twin. Heh, you probably would have brought back using that older brother title you always told everyone when we were kids if so. You’re older by four minutes, in the grand scheme of it all, it isn’t that long.”
Ryland laughed to himself while wiping tears away from his eyes and Colt found himself doing the same.
“Where was I? …Right. Rocky. I can’t just leave him, he’s my best friend and I would never forgive myself if I did. If you were here you’d tell me to go. I know that. Not really sure if that makes the whole thing easier or not, knowing you wouldn’t hesitate to tell me to go.
“I’m sure you’ve learned to live without me, and I’m still figuring it out. You’ve had longer to figure it out than me, so you got a leg up. Guess all this is a really roundabout way of me telling you to live your life for yourself now. You don’t have to worry about me anymore. We will always be each other's keepers because not even twelve light years and twenty six years could change that. And I’m not ending this with goodbye. That would be too depressing, so I’ll see you later Colt.”
The video ended and the final frame was of a teary eyed Ryland with their matching smile plastered on his face.
“See ya later Ry,”
Colt sat there for sometime and no one bothered him, occasionally hushed voices would echo under the door discussing if they should check on him. Happiness, joy, anger, bitterness, fear, comfort, belonging all mixed in his head, Colt knew he would see Ryland again someday. Maybe not in this life, or how they were now, but Colt was certain of it and he knew Ryland was as well. Twin stars dancing through space, permanently bound no matter what. Colt finally rose from his chair and ran his hands through his greyed hair, it had gotten long and unruly. He would trim it like he always had, just like how Ryland had shown him how when they were kids. Just another way Colt kept his other half close.