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About a week into their trip to Erid, Ryland had the bright idea of making use of the ridiculously large Library of Congress archive on his laptop. He’d suggested to Rocky that they establish a nightly-ish movie screening together in the Don’t Go Crazy room, and Rocky, having fond memories of meeting his film namesake, excitedly agreed. It warmed Ryland’s heart just how interested and invested Rocky continued to be in Earth culture, and Ryland was incredibly excited to return that excitement when he got to Erid. Besides decreasing his rations a bit and taking stock of what was on the ship, he had tried not to think too much yet about how he would survive the trip to Erid – he just knew that he was determined to do so and to experience Eridian culture.
About three weeks into their movie nights, they’d developed a system in which they would take turns each night for who got to pick their film. Ryland would typically pick one that he remembered loving, whether it be from his childhood or his nerdy and increasingly immature (your taste can change when you work with kids) adulthood. Rocky, on the other hand, would shout out instructions for Ryland to follow as he scrolled through the list, giving him numbers to count, pages to flip to, and all kinds of bizarre orders to find the most random film possible. They’d discovered some gems in this way, with a lot of things that Ryland had never seen, and a great mix of both well-made and absolutely horrible films.
Tonight was Rocky’s night to pick, and after 10 minutes of arbitrary instructions, including hits such as “Grace count 37 movies, skip ahead 3 pages, go back 13, forward 4 pages” – basically a design to make Ryland have to continue clicking buttons for Rocky’s entertainment – they had landed on Punching Down, Punching Back, which seemed like a run-of-the-mill cheesy action film. They’d stumbled across a couple before, which they’d both enjoyed for the exaggeration of it all, if nothing else.
The movie seemed pretty foreign to Ryland from the description and the title, though as it began, he felt a slight tinge of deja vu. That wasn’t abnormal for him in the slightest, since pretty much everything he’d encountered since waking up from his coma had given him that sensation as he still actively tried to regain memories. He figured that maybe he’d seen a trailer for the film, or had heard the song playing over the opening scene in some public setting once before.
But the feeling kept creeping up on him more. When the star of the film finally entered the screen, it clicked for him. Tom Ryder. He knew that guy – maybe not personally, but he remembered the name as soon as his face appeared. A couple of small things, stemming from general celebrity and pop culture knowledge, came streaming into Ryland’s head. It wasn’t unlike his other memories had come in: there was a slight reminder of a larger piece of information, and then it all kind of planted itself in his head like he’d known it the whole time. Which, technically, he had, but it was like it was locked away somewhere in his brain – behind bars, in a safe, in time out.
Tiny memories of Tom Ryder began to file in. He was an action star, he had a knack for the crazy, explosive movies that usually ended up being pretty entertaining, and he… was a jerk? That was something coming up. Particularly, the word that was conjured in Ryland’s brain was asshole, which admittedly was not a way that Ryland would typically like to describe someone. Middle school censorship and all of that. But it must be true and important enough if that is in his core memories of this random actor.
Ryland’s brain was telling him he’d seen a ton of Tom Ryder movies, actually. He could picture the big man in others, walking away from explosions or shooting someone in slow motion. He didn’t necessarily get warm feelings about Ryder or even his genre of films, but knew that he’d seen a bunch of them, for some reason. Huh. Maybe he’d had a student who was a fan.
“From what my foggy memories are telling me,” Ryland started, filling Rocky in on what he was remembering about the film they’d just committed to. “This Ryder guy playing the lead is actually a huge prick in real life. Like, not a nice dude. But, my brain is telling me his movies are worth the watch.”
“Hmm,” Rocky replied. “Rocky thought Grace not watch this one before.”
“You know how my brain is these days,” Ryland answered. “Always neglecting to tell me things until the second I need them.”
And so, they watched Punching Down, Punching Back, laughing together at some of the over-the-top lines and deliveries, or the effects that might not have been fully polished. They’d watched enough movies together that Rocky had learned to distinguish between supposed high art and the lower tiers and generally knew what characteristics pointed to each category of critique.
All throughout the film, though, the gnawing feeling at the back of Ryland’s brain didn’t leave. He figured that remembering Ryder and maybe a couple of things about the film – he’d predicted a plot twist about halfway through using what he figured to be previous knowledge from a long-forgotten past watch – would make the itch go away. And yet, it remained, only getting harder and harder to deal with as they continued their viewing. What the hell was it about Punching Down, Punching Back that seemed so deeply important to Ryland’s memories? What was it that his subconscious brain, still so desperately and eagerly reminding him of his past, couldn’t ignore?
Before he was ready, Ryland got his answer.
It was a relatively mundane scene in the third act, compared to some of the other things they’d watched the Ryder character go through already. The main hero had made his way into the villain’s hideout and then been captured, and was now being interrogated. A slight shove, a kick to the shin. But on an aggressive push to the ground, and a very abrupt cut in the camera angle, something showed. Or rather, someone.
It was a flash of a face. So small, it would’ve been imperceptible to anyone else. It got through the editors, the director, and everyone else on the crew as microscopic enough that no one would notice. But those people were not Ryland. He noticed.
Within a second, decades came flooding into his head and his heart. A soft, encouraging voice as he lay in the dirt in a playground. A shush from the bunk bed above him during a fit of giggles in the night. A warm, wet washcloth held gently over a gnarly knee scrape. A loud cheer as he walked the stage at one of his graduations. The comfort of a jacket that was not his being wrapped around his shoulders, followed by the heartiest laugh one could imagine. A dark hospital room and a plea to leave. A crude, guest demonstration of the physics of the human body in his classroom. A voicemail begging him to call back and explain where he’s been for the past few weeks.
His brother. His twin brother. Colt.
The 360 screen faded out of his view, and the audio of punches and groans disappeared. Years and years of memories played through his head simultaneously. And then the ugliest sob Ryland had ever heard erupted from deep in his chest, followed immediately by vomit creeping up his throat.
He was too overwhelmed to even try to get himself to an ethical spot to upchuck. His emotions were too visceral to allow him to move beyond curling himself into a ball on the cold metal below him.
Every new memory he unlocked unearthed another gut-wrenching cry from deep within him. He’d thought that he had no loose ends he’d miss out on in not returning to his planet. And now, he knew that wasn’t true. He’d left his brother on Earth. And even without all of his memories back, he knew deep down that he never got to say goodbye.
Ryland felt like he was caught in a violent rip current of devastation. He was being thrashed around in his mind, the juxtaposition between remembering his favorite person on Earth and the onset of realization that he would never see him again giving him whiplash.
He remembered now that he’d spent his entire life the half of a whole, beyond a best friend or brother. He had been ripped from that, with no goodbye, no future, and for months, no memory. He had never felt more alone in his life.
Ryland only remembered he was not alone after a particularly hard jut of a sharp corner into his back. He’d spent what already felt like a lifetime – his recovered memories spanning a lifetime, at least – crumbling and giving into his desolation before the sound surrounding him began to fade back into his ears. What mostly began to crawl its way back in was a panicked voice repeating his name, near screaming.
“Grace! Grace! Grace! Grace get up, please! Grace scare Rocky! Rocky want to help!”
The distressed sound of his best friend snapped him out of whatever hellish, almost comatose state he’d been trapped in. Ryland managed to sit up and wipe god-knows-what off his face – probably some abhorrent combination of tears, sweat, snot, and vomit – temporarily calming Rocky down. But even as he tried to say anything to explain himself or get Rocky’s stress levels down, he could not stop the violent sobs still ravaging his system. He could hardly get a breath in as he heaved, choking through each cry.
Not only was it a horrendous feeling, but it was humiliating, in a way. Ryland had been comfortable crying in front of Rocky – all of his accusations of Ryland being leaky proved that much – but this was on another level. This was a disturbing, traumatic side of himself that he did not want to expose Rocky to. And still, it was Rocky’s voice slowly guiding him out of it.
“Grace tell Rocky breathe when Rocky stressed,” he could hear Rocky say. Ryland could barely open his eyes to see where Rocky was, the translator also not helping in his approximation, but he could guess that he was as close as he could be without poking him again. “Grace breathe. Breathe. Calm calm calm.”
Ryland choked his way through deep breaths. It was a tactic that had worked a lot in his classroom when his students were panicking, whether from an academic stressor or a social issue. He’d brought it there from his time in academia, using the simpleton technique of deep breaths to get himself through high-pressure presentations and defenses, and he’d brought it onto the Hail Mary when he could tell he or Rocky were getting anxiously amped up about parts of their mission. Even if Eridians didn’t really breathe, just the idea of pausing and focusing on your body and mind together had aided Rocky the same way it did Ryland.
Once he could really focus on breathing, it helped. The tears kept flowing, but the monstrous wails died out. Ryland’s eyes opened, and Rocky stood still in front of him.
“Grace breathing. Good good good.” Rocky said softly. “Grace okay, question? Remember something, question?”
Ryland took another deep breath. He couldn’t answer yet, but hoped that his increasingly steady breathing would help settle Rocky’s panic. Thank God Rocky was there, or he may have never come out of that. He didn’t want to think about what would’ve happened if those memories had resurfaced when he was alone on his way back to the Blip-A a few weeks earlier.
Rocky continued to watch Ryland as he grounded himself. Silent tears still slid down his face, but he prepared himself to speak. Words were slowly forming in his head, and it felt like his vocal cords could croak out a few with some effort. But before he did, he made the mistake of looking over his right shoulder and back at the large screen. Somehow, Rocky had paused at the exact moment the character took another hit, and Colt’s face stared back at him.
He hung his head again, feeling like hundreds of extra G’s had landed on his neck. This time, it was less of a writhing and screaming pain and more of a dull ache directly in his heart. One that he now realized was there the entire time he’d been awake in space, and he just hadn’t been fully aware of it or what it meant.
A lot of people arbitrarily like to call their closest friend their “other half.” But Colt was Ryland’s other half. They came from the same cell. They had spent every minute of their lives together from the moment they, ironically, separated into two. They had been together every second until they grew up. They were together until Ryland was blacklisted from academia and hated by all of those around him, and purposefully shut himself off from the world – that is, until Colt weaseled his way back in to take care of him. They were together until Colt had gotten hurt, had done the same thing, and then Ryland did the same weaseling to get back to him. They were together until Ryland had been shipped off onto an aircraft carrier to lead a world-saving scientific field, and had mostly shut his mouth about his twin to keep him safe from the all-powerful governments surrounding him, just in case.
They had shared the same womb, the same face, the same birthday, the same last name (until Colt adopted his stage name for Hollywood). They were the same person, and two completely different people, and the perfect fit for one another in every situation. Everything one wasn’t, the other was. They were two sides of the same coin. They were one at the same time that they were two. There were hardly even words to describe the ways in which they occupied each other’s lives, and maybe the best to use was simply twin.
And yet, it had taken Ryland this long to remember. As soon as Colt’s face came into his brain– with the knowledge that it was Colt’s face, and not Ryland’s – it felt like a wound was sealed. There was an entire half of Ryland, one that he had not realized he was missing, that filled up at the memory of his brother. So many things clicked, from memories he’d felt were only half-recovered to the Polaroid packed with his things. But that half, despite now consciously existing, ached. It stung. The wound might’ve been stitched up, but it was not healed. And it probably never would be.
When Ryland was able to lift his head again, he saw Rocky looking down at his visualizer, its camera pointed at the screens. He was looking at the shot of Colt he’d coincidentally paused on. It was almost laughable how so many shots of his face had made their way into the movie – Ryland remembered now how much that ticked Ryder off on other projects.
“Grace in movie, question?” Rocky asked, almost innocently.
Ryland somehow managed to let out a dry laugh at that. With the tears and snot of it all, it was more like a wet laugh, but the humor in it was dry. He understood why his face up on the screen could be confusing.
“That’s my brother,” was all he could muster in the moment.
The statement didn’t have nearly the grandeur or poignancy that the emotion attached to it deserved, but it got the point across.
As simple as they were, just saying the words out loud hit Ryland with the same euphoria he’d felt the first time he’d remembered his own name after waking up in space. Colt’s presence in his life, his importance to him as a person, held the same weight that his own identity had. Even through tears and calmer but still persistent sobs, Ryland couldn’t help but smile. It felt like Colt was the last piece in the fuzzy puzzle of his memory and his life – not just the last piece, but the one in the center.
“Grace have brother, question? Not tell Rocky about brother until now,” he heard Rocky say. Ryland forced himself to look back up at his friend, who paused and lowered his carapace before he spoke again. “Grace not remember brother until now…”
“Yeah,” Ryland replied. He shut his eyes and sighed. Each time he closed his eyes, new memories appeared. This time, he recalled going to a film set to watch Colt do a new stunt he was incredibly proud of. Yes, he was a stuntman. A darn good one, at that, and yet his brother’s profession still scared the bejeezus out of Ryland every time he thought about it for too long. Especially after the accident. The accident, which was caused by Ryder. Ryder, who later framed Colt for murder and tried to kill him. So the memory of Colt’s rants to Ryland about Ryder being an asshole was not only true, but somehow underexaggerated.
Ryland remembered what it had felt like seeing news stations report on the fact that his brother was supposedly dead and a murderer. He’d taken the day off work, he’d broken a thing or two, and he’d cried until he felt he had no tears left to give. Yet, when he received a call from Colt via Jody’s phone the next day, confirming he was alive, he’d realized he’d known the whole time. That piece of his soul, his chest, his heart – the very same piece that had just been filled once again – had stayed intact. Twin intuition, some might call it. He knew deep down that Colt was okay.
He hoped that Colt could still feel that piece of himself. He hoped that it had stayed intact for Colt even when it wasn’t for Ryland. He hoped that Colt didn’t have to suffer 12 years of that emptiness.
“I feel horrible it took me this long,” Ryland said, somehow even quieter.
Rocky, despite already being very close to Ryland, rolled even closer. “Grace memory not Grace fault,” he said in what Ryland could tell was a very strict tone. “Do not blame self.”
Rocky was right, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. He had already remembered so much else. His brain felt the need to remind him what he’d eaten for breakfast the day he was recruited to the Petrova Taskforce (yogurt). He’d remembered what he got one of his co-workers for teacher Secret Santa the year before he’d left (a personalized book stamp). He remembered the names of his neighbor’s three cats (Piper, Billy, and Cherry).
And somehow, he hadn’t remembered his lifelong best friend. The man whom he now remembered had driven hours in the middle of the night to pick him up from a college party he’d gone a little too hard at while trying to distract himself from his deadlines. The man who took time out of his days on set to call him and ask about what his students were up to. The boy who had put up with two weeks of detention for punching the kid who broke Ryland’s glasses in middle school (even though he’d told him it was fine and he would just get a new pair).
Every time Ryland thought the universe was done playing miserable tricks on him, he was proven wrong. How could he forget for so long the most important person in his life?
“Tell more about Grace brother,” he heard, snapping him out of yet another spiral. Ryland smiled again, still through tears, wondering where he could even begin.
“His name is Colt.” He paused to take a breath. It was the first time in a long time he’d said the name out loud. “Colt Seavers. Technically Colton Grace, but he had to change it when he started in film because someone else in the industry already had his name.”
“Grace brother is actor, question?”
Ryland filed away in his head a reminder to get a name for Colt from Rocky and into their database. It would be much simpler for both of them.
“No, he’s what they call a stunt performer. So, like, when you see a character in a movie jump off a building, or crash a car, or get set on fire, those aren’t the actors, but people who come in specifically to do the dangerous stuff so the actor doesn’t get hurt. That’s what Colt does.”
“Gets hurt on purpose, question?”
Ryland laughed. “Yeah, that’s exactly it.”
Rocky made a short noise, somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. Slightly judgmental, but mostly endearing. Then he added, “Sounds stupid.”
“And that’s what I’ve been trying to tell him for twenty years. Glad you agree, Rock.”
After wiping his cheeks again, which he felt might be eternally wet, Ryland took a leap of faith in looking back at the large screen, where Colt (albeit blurry and mid-punch) was still staring at him. Not only was it funny that Colt was so visible in this film, but it was kind of hilarious that Ryder had seemingly requested that he take punches for him. For someone who bragged so much about his talent, you would think Ryder could learn how to mime a simple reaction to a fake punch. It seemed like high school stage combat 101.
Ryland stared deep into Colt’s eyes. Here he was, actively taking hits, yet entirely in his element. Somehow, way beyond Ryland’s understanding, this was what his brother loved to do. In all the ways they were similar, they were also different. In all the ways they were different, they were similar.
“He’s my twin,” Ryland croaked out.
“No understand word.”
He should’ve seen that coming. Even months into his and Rocky’s friendship and communication, new words were still coming up all the time. The textbook definition wouldn’t be too difficult to explain or understand. Ryland, of course, knew about all things DNA and genetics on an expert level, even using his status as a twin as an advantage in college and talking Colt into being part of a few of his studies. But how do you even begin to describe emotionally what having a twin brother meant to your entire life and identity?
In typical Ryland Grace fashion, he figured it was easier to start scientifically.
“Well, I’m not sure if this happens at all for Eridians, but for humans, sometimes during gestation, a single cell will split into two. At least when it comes to identical, monozygotic cases, which is what Colt and I are. So one egg becomes two while they’re still growing. Two separate children, mostly identical DNA and genetics. We call them twins.”
“Born together?” Rocky said, speaking softly. It could’ve been both a question and a statement.
“Yeah,” Ryland affirmed, even softer. Born together. Grow together. Laugh together. Hurt together. Succeed together. Suffer together. Everything together.
Now, not together. One on Earth and one in another star system, hurtling through space even farther away.
“Die apart.”