Work Text:
The day the beetles came back was a beacon of hope for humanity: we had a cure for the astrophage and the Petrova Line. I hadn't killed the one person I could call a friend for nothing - I had made the right decision. He was, truly, a good man and I had been right in my assessment of him.
I remember the day like it was yesterday, mostly because it nearly was. Three days ago, I had been broken out of my cell from whatever European country wanted a piece of me, a chance to put me in the court of law again and again to make me pay for saving humanity - for all of the crimes I had committed to ensure that Project Hail Mary succeeded.
I had no regrets. Some guilt, but no regrets. I had done what was needed, what was required for humanity to survive, despite the personal cost it weighed on me. There was guilt over the people I had sent to space, those who offered to give up their lives - Yao and Ilyukhina - and the one I had forced - Ryland Grace - whose name haunted me like a ghost.
I regretted what I had to do to him - send him to space against his will and drug him to not remember - but I knew that he could do this. He was the only one that could. And all of my fears and sacrifices were made worth when the beetles returned, holding the last hope for humanity's survival.
As soon as I was pulled out of prison, rescued by the Hail Mary team that still existed, we got to work. Earth was not going to save itself and I was the whipping boy for humanity, now and forever. I would do what was necessary at any cost, a job that only a woman could do.
The scientists immediately began to work with the samples the astronauts, or as I had later learned, Dr. Grace alone, sent back. Time was something we did not have enough of, it was imperative that we moved quickly and efficiently. So, as they worked with the samples, I made my way through the vast video, audio, and digital files that had been sent back. Hundreds of hours that encapsulated the first moment of life on the ship until the beetles had been released.
What I saw broke my heart and put it back together.
I watched as Dr. Grace woke up, unaware of who he was, terrified of his situation. I watched as he was forced to hold a double funeral for his companions, despite not knowing who they were. I watched as he nearly drank himself to death, drowning his sorrows and fears in vodka.
I watched as he pulled himself together for the sake of humanity. I watched as he discovered alien life - intelligent life - and befriended it. I watched as they shared their cultures, sacrificed for each other, and parted their ways, both heading home to save their planets. My heart soared at the notion. Maybe this wasn't a suicide mission anymore. Maybe Dr. Grace could come home and have the life I stole from him.
I watched as his final log ran, the dubbed taumoeba - the cure for the astrophage - had eaten through the xenonite, made it impossible for his new found friend, Rocky, to get home or to even survive. I watched as Dr. Grace accepted his fate with open arms this time, willing to die for a friend and someone who cared for him. I watched as he signed off, telling me goodbye in the Eridian way and wishing us luck.
The mission had been completed and I could only hope that Eridani E - the sun that lit the Eridian planet of Erid - would brighten in the next few years. I personally assured that a beetle would be sent to them with a message, translated using Dr. Grace's language files, just in case Dr. Grace never managed to find Rocky or return to Erid.
Rocky had helped Earth to discover a cure for the astrophage. The least I could do was to ensure that his people had a beacon of hope, of survival, too.
As work continued, I began to scroll through the computer history and the files contained there. The researchers needed guidance on what techniques to use and the history was a good place to start: what had Dr. Grace been looking at when he made his discoveries?
I spent many days and nights moving through the vast information contained on the chips, including Dr. Grace's personal search history, which had no less than 60 different occasions of watching cute animal videos, more often than not, foxes. At the very least, I was confident in my decision to pack the fox keychain for him with his things - it was some of the only comfort I could offer him.
Some of the other searches were more odd, but to be expected from someone who was in space: can 0G kill a person if in it for too long? Jn O ewskku ygsr feibl> - we still don't know what that one was trying to say. How to write a basic language program with microphone audio? - we assumed that this was when he first met Rocky and wanted to catalogue the Eridian dialect.
There were two searches, one particular bit of history, that stood out to me from Dr. Grace's first week of being awake, when the memory drugs would have been at their strongest and he would not have known much of anything about himself outside of being a biologist. One was a query - asking simply "how to know if you are gay" - and the other was a quiz. It was an online quiz that happened to coincide with an image of his whiteboard that had been captured: an Am I Gay? quiz.
Now, I'd had my suspicions about Dr. Grace while we worked on the boat together, and even before that if I was being honest. He had no previous records of marriage, divorce, or even a roommate, always living alone. He'd never spoken of needing to inform anyone outside of his work that he was being moved onto the boat, a nail in his coffin that he didn't have any close personal relationships.
Being queer was not something I cared about with the situation we were in, much less at any other time. I honestly didn't care if he was gay, straight, or otherwise as long as he could get the job done.
I'd had no qualms about his identity or preferences, if anything, his lack of wandering eyes had been a relief considering how closely we worked together. Most anyone else, like nearly everyone on the boat, would have wanted to explore romantic or sexual relationships - Dr. Grace did not.
He had no interest in those as he had so kindly put it to me one day when I asked him about his family. I had been in a talkative mood that night, a few drinks down with someone I considered my friend, and my loose lips were unable to sink any ships.
I respected him for that if nothing else. I was the same. Relationships were more trouble than they were worth and I felt no draw for them. We were kindred spirits in that aspect - both bound to live a life alone, but we preferred it that way.
Out of pure curiosity, I scrolled though the quiz, reading the questions and ticking boxes mentally as I went, responding similarly to Dr. Grace in most aspects - what a shock from two people who never had true romantic relationships or otherwise.
I couldn't imagine what it had been like for him when he woke up. I had expected at least one of his crew members to be alive and awake when he had woken up, but fate had other plans and he was left alone. I pitied him in that situation. So unsure of who he was that he was relying on a stupid online quiz to tell him something about himself - such like a teenager, trying to discover who they might be.
I do have to admit that I chuckled slightly when the results of the quiz popped up:
"You are likely aroace!" It proclaimed in bold lettering, a colorful flag of oranges, white, and blues below. "Aroace, or aromantic asexual, is a type of queer identity that involves having little to no romantic or sexual attraction towards others. Your answers indicate that this is your most likely identity."
Well, I mused to myself. At the very least, it was accurate.