Work Text:
7.
Grace smiled widely, his laptop full of eager little faces. It was five am Moscow time, which meant his students in San Francisco were winding down their days. Some of them had just come from sports practice, their little faces smeared with dirt and their uniforms still on, while others were already showered and in their pyjamas as they sat at their bedroom desks or kitchen tables, notebooks out and pencils ready.
He took a sip of his coffee, already wide-awake with excitement. The upside to doing lessons this obscenely early was that there was at least one empty meeting room, so he could do the lesson somewhere larger than his cabin, as well as make use of the large monitor to better look at all his kids. It was larger than any one class- Abby had clearly spread the word, and he had several periods worth of seventh-graders smiling at him through zoom.
“Hey guys, I missed you so much,” he greeted them. It had been about a year for them, and over thirty years for him, but he remembered all their names. Not even a French Amnesia drug could keep something that important from him forever.
“Mr. Grace, we miss you so much!” Rheka declared loudly in lieu of a greeting. “Our new teacher doesn’t play lava beanbag with us.”
“Yes, and he doesn't even have a doctorate,” Olivia added, derisively.
Grace bit back a laugh. “You guys do know that a Doctorate isn’t actually required to teach middle schoolers, yeah? You can get by just fine with a Bachelors and a teaching certificate,” he informed them, trying to give them a stern look. “It’s really not nice to say things like that.”
“Well, clearly you need a doctorate to be good at teaching, because Mr. Smithson is so boring,” Kevin piped up, ignoring his admonishment.
“Now Kevin, what have we talked about?” Grace reprimanded, staring at the camera through the frames of his crooked glasses.
“Correlation does not equal causation!” Abby declared. “Just because Mr. Grace has a PhD and is cool, and Mr. Smithson does not have one and is lame, that doesn’t mean that a doctorate makes you cool.”
“Yes, very good Abby, beanbag for you. But remember, it’s not polite to call people lame,” Grace replied.
“Even if they are lame?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, even then. That’s an inside thought,” Grace responded. “Now, who can tell me something- anything- about Infrared light?”
The raised hand emoji popped up on Rheka’s screen, and he smiled. “Yes, Rheka?” he asked.
“It’s what the Petrova Line’s made of,” she answered, confident.
“Don’t talk about the Petrova line,” Abby hissed (without using the ‘raise hand’ button). “That’s the thing that’s gonna kill him!”
“It’s alright Abby, we can talk about the Petrova line. And listen, guys, you don’t have to dance around the issue.” Ryland put on his most serious ‘teacher voice’. “This is technically a one-way trip for me. But you never know. I’ll bring some seeds on the ship, and maybe we can find a nice little planet with a hospitable atmosphere and we’ll start a little garden or something. Just because I’m not coming back to Earth doesn’t mean the three of us couldn’t find another solution. We’ll have enough extra food for a couple years even after the fuel’s gone, and we could figure something out.”
“You don’t have to lie to us,” Alex mumbled, fiddling with the string of their hoodie.
“I’m not lying, bud, I’m hoping,” he told the young teen. “There’s a difference. I gotta do this for Earth, but after that, who knows?” He smiled at the screen reassuringly. “Now, back to the topic! Infrared light is a type of thermomagnetic radiation that is just beyond red on the visible light spectrum, and even though we can’t see it, we can feel it as heat, and there are lots of uses for that heat in science and medicine. But even though we can’t see it with the naked eye, do you know what can see it? Cameras! So if I take this TV remote,” he picked up the remote for the monitor, “and point it at the wall and press the button, you’ll see that there’s no red dot coming off of it.” He pointed it at the wall to demonstrate. “But that doesn’t mean that there’s no light coming out- it uses IR light to ‘talk’ with the TV and give the signal to change the channel or turn up the volume. The TV can sense that, but so can our phone and laptop cameras, and with the help of this prism,” he held up the item in front of the camera, “we can see this sort of faint pink line just beyond the red end of the rainbow.” He took a screenshot and then used the pen function to circle the faint pink line, then added a pink heart emoji. “We’re still not truly seeing the IR light, but with the help of these tools, we can see a sort of ‘reflection’ that has been ‘translated’ into something we can see. Isn’t that cool?”
There were a series of appreciative murmurs. “I mean, it’s okay,” Justin said eventually, after Grace acknowledged his raised hand emoji. “But there are easier ways to look at pink.”
“Fair point,” Grace agreed. “But I do have another thing to show you. This” he declared, reaching around the camera and bringing forth a cube with one painted white side, one matt black side, a dull metal side, and a shiny metal side, “is my friend Leslie. They’re a Leslie cube. Yeah, I know, I’m not good at naming things,” he sighed in response to the giggles. “But I’m doing my best.”
“I thought Astrophage was a pretty cool name,” Rheka encouraged. He beamed at her.
“Thank you, Rheka,” replied, putting a hand over his heart. “Finally, some proper appreciation around here! You would not believe how much flak I’ve been catching for ‘xenaluminum’ here on the vat.”
“Vat?” Alex asked, scrunching their brows.
“Oh, that’s a nickname for an aircraft carrier- I live on a boat now.”
“But you get sick on the bus to fieldtrips- how can you live on a boat?” Justin asked, incredulous.
“Drugs- OTC motion sickness drugs, that is,” he replied over their snickers. “Also, these things kinda work,” he replied, lifting his wrist to show them the motion-sickness bracelet he had on. “Also, I’m gonna go up in a rocket ship, so I kind of have to get used to it,” he pointed out. “Now, back to Leslie and their awesome superpower. If I take boiling water from this kettle and fill them up like so” he said, reaching for the kettle plugged in beside him and filling the Leslie cube before screwing the top back on. Then he opened another packet of instant coffee with his teeth, dumped it in his mug, and filled that up too. “And then I take this IR thermometer, you’ll see that the matte black side is a lot better at holding onto the heat from the radiation.” He took readings from all four sides, stopping to show them after each. Now, why do we think that the matte black is better than the shiny parts at trapping IR light?”
“Reflection,” Olivia piped up, forgetting to raise her hand.
“No hand, no metaphorical beanbag, but correct!” Grace praised/scolded. “Reflective surfaces send light away from themselves, but darker surfaces absorb light, including IR light. Also, the matte paint makes a rough texture, which also traps more of the IR in all the tiny nooks and crannies!” He took a sip of his coffee and only then seemed to realize that he hadn’t added sugar and cream to the new cup, making a face that made his students laugh.
“It’s kinda cringe that you can’t handle black coffee,” Kevin ribbed him. “I drink my coffee black.”
“Yes Kevin; you’re deeply hardcore,” Grace sighed. It was a well-worn argument. “But hey, I’m an astronaut now, so take that home and put it in your awful coffee!”
“Mr. Grace, that doesn’t even make any sense,” Olivia sighed. “Wow, we spent so long trying to make you cooler, and now all our progress is gone.”
“Awww,” he pouted. “I’m literally the cool teacher, Livs, c’mon!”
“You’re the coolest teacher. As in, cooler than all the other teachers,” Abby corrected. “That doesn’t actually make you cool. It just means you’re closer than any of the other grownups.”
“You know what? Just for that, I’m giving all y’all homework!”
He did not, in fact, give them homework. But they did agree to meet at the same time the next week.
_____________
Ryland thought he had made his peace with the coma thing. He really, truly did. And the thing was, he had. For himself. He’d survived it once and he’d most likely survive it again. He and Armando were cool; any of his own coma-trauma was long-since processed with the therapy and mental health thrums back home, and he was happy to be flippant and make jokes about it and it genuinely didn’t bother him at all. But that was him.
So he wasn’t prepared for the way his body reacted when Ilyukhina, nursing a hangover and a very strong cup of coffee, complained “I hate having to choose between sleep and social time. I have good time last night, but now I am sooo tired,” and Yao responded, “Relax, soon you’ll get to have a nice four-year nap.”
His crew- his friends- were alive in front of him. They were laughing and teasing each other. He knew that. He could see that. So why was he suddenly unable to shake the image of their mummified bodies, so devoid of everything that made them them- that made him adore them- floating away from the ship, leaving him truly alone?
“No,” he muttered, knees hitting the floor of the cantina, the world hazy around him as his heartbeats started becoming indistinguishable from each other at the speed they’d reached. “No no no nononononono. You can’t. I’ll go alone. You can’t go into the comas again. You can’t die again.” His eyes were screwed tight, his hands over his ears as if he could hide from the sights and sounds in his own mind.
“Oh. Oh no,” Olesya gasped, hands over her mouth.
“Dr. Grace,” Yao began, crouching to his level where he knelt on the floor. The man didn’t reply. “Ryland…”, he tried again, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. Still no response other than a slight startle at the contact.
“Grace,” the pilot whispered softly. “We’re here. We’re alive. The coma systems are being scrutinized so heavily after what you told us that they’re probably the safest part of this mission at this point. We’re going to be okay, and we’re going to come with you. You had to get to Rocky alone once. We’re not going to ask you to do it again. We don’t want you to do it again.”
“And I don’t want you to die again,” Grace sniffed, turning tear-filled blue eyes on them.
“We won’t, okay? We won’t,” Ilyukhina soothed him. “We want to meet Rocky- no way we give oak before then.”
Yao looked at her. “What?”
“You know… give oak…” she replied, unhelpfully. “Like…” she made a garroting motion across her throat.
“I do not think English has that expression for death,” he told her as he helped Grace up. “Come, Dr. Grace. Let’s get you to the medbay, alright? If it’s alright with you, I’d like to have Dr. Lamai give you something to help calm you down.”
“No needles,” Grace replied immediately, jumping a little. He’d never truly gotten over his hang-ups around needles. Eridians didn’t have them, and he’d never liked them that much even before his traumatic send-off from Earth, so although he was mostly at peace and no longer had nightmares about his last moments, the mere idea of a needle when he was already overwrought still provoked a physical panic reaction.
“No needles,” Yao promised.
He kept that promise. Dr. Grace got a pill and then Carl carried him, bridal-style, back to his bunk for a nice nap. Yao and Ilyukhina cleared their schedules for the day, and when Stratt heard why, she didn’t argue with them.
So when he woke up later, they were there.
“We’re not going anywhere, dork,” Ilyukhina promised him once his eyes opened. “We’re stuck to you.”
“You mean that he’s stuck with us,” Yao corrected. He didn’t spend all those agonized hours studying English just to hear his crewmate use the wrong idioms.
“Is what I said,” Olesya replied.
“It’s not,” Yao argued.
“Close enough,” Grace said quietly, smiling at the two of them.
“It is not,” Yao huffed, nearly pouting. “You’re a science teacher, so don’t go trying to validate her poor use of English. It’s our only shared language and she needs to be clear!”
“She was clear to me,” Dr. Grace chuckled.
“Grace is my favorite,” Ilyukhina declared. “Yao, you are now pity invite.”
“Pity invite to the officially-still-a-suicide space mission to save the world?” Yao raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “You’re only invited cuz we need someone to drive us.”
“小恶魔,” Yao scolded her, and she stuck her tongue out at him.
“You too, whatever that means. Actually, you know what? I teach Grace Russian, and we don’t share lessons with you. Then you will beg for my bad English to return!”
Grace, whose only exposure to a foreign (earth) language was two semesters of high school Spanish, basic scientific latin and greek, and enough ASL comprehension to be able to understand a few of his kids when they were having a non-verbal day, did not look overly enthused by the prospect, but regardless gave an Eridian-thumbs up (which Olesya knew meant a thumbs-up even if his thumb was technically down) when she turned her big brown ‘puppy eyes’ in his direction.
“Хороший мальчик,” she praised.
“I don’t know what that means, but I think you’re being infantilized,” Yao told Grace, who waved him off.
“Yeah, but just let her have this. She’s going to be the only woman in Tau Ceti; we owe her.”
“Thank you,” she beamed at him. “Yao, I am going to tell Stratt that you are not feminist!”
“I don’t think Stratt’s a feminist either,” Yao replied, remembering the overheard conversation on the flight deck the day they’d landed.
“No no, she is general misanthrope. Is difference,” Olesya waved off his concerns. “But you need to be more feminist, Yao, or Grace and I will watch Barbie movie without you!”
“Oh no we won’t,” Grace protested. “The Ken character freaks me out.”
“What, because he looks a bit like you?” Yao asked. “Frankly, you all look the same to me.”
“I see what you did there,” Olesya laughed. “Okay, you can be cool again.” Grace interrupted their moment of camaraderie with a confused yelp.
“People think I look like Ken?”