Work Text:
The cardboard box on Stratt’s desk may as well be a loaded gun.
She saw the damned thing the moment that she entered her office. Her shoulders slumped. As ever, her men are quite efficient. Stratt made the request one week ago; promptly and without further guidance, her men traveled across the world and fulfilled their duties to the letter.
Head to Dr. Grace’s apartment and pack up anything that seems sentimental.
It doesn’t really matter what they thought of the request, if anything. Those men are not one of the privileged two-dozen who currently know Dr. Grace’s whereabouts. She is waiting a few more days until she makes the formal announcement that Dr. Grace will be aboard the Hail Mary. While the doctors and biologists promise her that Dr. Grace is handling cryostasis well, Stratt has read the reports. They are not out of the danger zone yet.
If Dr. Grace dies, she has several more contingencies—each less likely to succeed than the last. Somewhere, ten or twenty people down the line of succession, Eva Stratt’s name is even on the list.
None of that has anything to do with the cardboard box on her desk. She sees that one of her men has helpfully labeled it as ‘RYLAND’S STUFF’.
Ryland. An unusual name. English. She had researched to see whether it was a family name of the Grace’s, but even if it was, she doubts that meant much for Dr. Grace. Her research didn’t display a particularly close family bond. Nor any friends, nor any passionate hobbies, nor any pets or children or vice.
She takes a breath and is surprised to find that it trembles. Carefully, she pushes the box to the side and turns on her laptop. Stratt carefully navigates to a hidden folder and pulls up the document that she’s dreading.
RYLAND_GRACE_EULOGY_FINAL.docx
It’s blank. Stratt is reminded of a thousand term papers in university. She always titled her essays before she started to write them.
This obituary will not be released for a very long time, if at all. If the Hail Mary succeeds in its mission, they have a media fail-safe in place. Rather than admit to the world-at-large that those astronauts were sent to die, it will be a terrible mechanical failure. An awful tragedy to befall the heroes that deserved nothing but praise and adoration and mercy.
All of the other astronauts aboard the Hail Mary have people who will write their obituaries. They will all be lovingly remembered for a long, long time.
Dr. Grace…
Who is this for? Stratt wonders. Would it matter to him? Is this for you, Eva?
It isn’t like she can ask him. If she were to wake him right now and ask whether he’d like a funeral at all, much less an obituary, she supposes that Dr. Grace would wrap both hands around her neck and squeeze. Probably rightly, too.
After all, when Dr. Grace’s death is announced, nobody will remember him. Not really. Not as a person, not as anything more than a symbol for humanity. It will happen in decades, after people live through the worst global disaster in recorded history. Stratt probably won’t even be in a position to attend, be it dead herself or serving a life sentence. Some weeks ago, Stratt had realized that she might be the last person on Earth to ever have the opportunity to know Ryland Grace.
The funny thing is, Stratt supposes she’s writing this obituary because it feels unfair not to.
Unfair. Stratt thinks she might hate that word. People use it constantly. Every meeting, all the time. Unfair, unfair, unfair. This situation is so unfair. Why is nothing on our side? Why are we doomed to fail? Unfair, all of this is unfair. To which, of course, the given answer has something to do with the unfeeling force of the universe. This amoeba has no concept of fairness.
However, that’s not what Stratt feels.
Something about this situation feels perfectly fair to her. An extinction level problem on one side, all the resources in the world on the other. They have the calculus to make this work; they have a solution. As long as you didn’t consider individual human lives or happiness—and why would you? Some people had everything in the world and were unhappy regardless, and everyone died. This is about survival, and in terms of survival, it is perfectly fair.
Maybe that rationale—and how much she believes in it—is part of the reason why she’s writing this eulogy, too.
Swallowing, Stratt looks towards the box. She removes the duct tape holding it shut.
There’s some construction paper stacked at the top. Children’s drawings, all of them—well, pre-teens, maybe. Some depictions of the solar system. Pokemon. More Pokemon. Each has a brief description of their evolutionary adaptations. A drawing of Dr. Grace as Professor Oak. A drawing of Dr. Grace as a Psyduck.
Stratt taught, once upon a time. It’s borderline impossible for PhD students not to find themselves in front of a group of hopeful young undergraduates. She never liked it very much. Not because she has anything against children in particular, but because they were all so school-focused. To be expected, perhaps, but it made Stratt want to scream. Don’t you understand? History is now! History is now!
So much compassion in these few simple drawings. She can practically feel Dr. Grace twisting himself into knots, trying to connect with these children. Her lips purse. Maybe some connection between teaching the children of tomorrow and saving the entire human race. That would be fitting, even if Dr. Grace would hate it.
Next, her fingers alight on a DVD-case. Stratt hasn’t seen a DVD in quite some time. Unless Dr. Grace had it in some sort of shrine, she isn’t sure why her men would—oh, but it is well-worn. The case barely holds together in her hands. It’s an old copy of E.T., which Stratt has never seen. She gingerly traces the dirt-pile-shaped alien on the cover. Far too easy to imagine a young Dr. Grace sitting cross-legged in front of a chunky television, eagerly watching the alien… do… alien things, she supposes. ET Go Home, wasn’t that the saying?
Stratt pulls up the Wikipedia page for E.T. and ultimately casts it aside with a frustrated scoff. What would she even say? Yes, Dr. Grace, you are exactly like the short frumpy alien who just wants to go home. I’m the—whoever the villain is in ET. I’m the big scary government who wants to slice you open and pull out your internal organs.
Dr. Grace would laugh from the afterlife, that’s for certain. She suddenly has a strange desire to watch ET with him, to see what he enjoys about it. While her recent actions might call it into question, she does have a fondness for Dr. Grace. Once you get to a certain level of bureaucracy, nobody is a person anymore—most of all Stratt herself. Dr. Grace is fundamentally incapable of not being himself, which… is refreshing, if nothing else, though not always helpful for the mission.
ET is set aside. Onward she goes.
There is a mostly empty bag of Cheetos.
Why on Earth did they bring this? Does Dr. Grace like Cheetos? Did he have multiple bags in his apartment? Yes, she’s going to write a eulogy about how Dr. Grace likes Cheetos. That’s a beautifully fitting send-off for the man that she sent to his death. He likes Cheetos and I kidnapped him into a spaceship. People are calling the base explosion an omen, but Stratt can think of no more powerful omen.
Stratt takes a few deep breaths, presses her fingers against her temples.What else is there? Stratt finds herself hoping for something concrete. A photograph of a loved one (they didn’t find much evidence of serious relationships, at least—nothing that Grace would remember warmly) or a beautiful old artifact (20-year-old DVDs notwithstanding).
She is surprised at how empty the box seems, already. There is a ceramic statue of a fox, small enough to hold in her palm. When she does, she finds that her fingers fit perfectly in the worn-smooth places. It’s warm to the touch. There is a small snowglobe that features the Golden Gate Bridge, but it must be quite old. There is a novel, Dune, earmarked at Chapter 3. There is a scattering of paperwork at the bottom: health insurance and water bills and—
“God damn it,” Stratt abruptly curses, and pushes the entire box onto the floor.
The little fox figurine breaks entirely—that or the snowglobe. Regardless, she hears something crack when it hits the office floor. Regret fills Stratt immediately. A stupid, reckless thing to do. Dr. Grace would tease her about that, too. She just… she just…
God damn pension statements. It’s not exactly the gripping emotional sentiment that would make their way into a eulogy. Stratt doesn’t know what she was expecting. What would she uncover here that her research hadn’t turned up? They’d had to research Dr. Grace extensively; if he wasn’t utterly beyond suspicion, then they couldn’t trust him.
Her eyes return to the empty Word document yet again. The cursor flashes at her.
This isn’t something she can spend the appropriate amount of time on. Yes, in theory, they have years until Hail Mary reaches her destination. But somehow, this is just the easy part. It’s only when the ship leaves, that’s when things get tricky. That’s when her protection here gets… suspect. This eulogy will be left in a protected folder, with instructions to be used when the time is right. She has a plan. She always has a plan.
Perhaps she is going about this the wrong way. Perhaps she is going about the Eva Stratt way, because that’s the only person Stratt knows how to be right now. Perhaps she should think about…
Well, she doesn’t know much about Dr. Grace’s views on the afterlife. Perhaps he doesn’t believe that he would be watching the eulogy at all. But if Dr. Grace had the option, what sort of eulogy would he want?
He wouldn’t want anything heroic, Stratt doesn’t think. Nothing that painted him as the savior of the planet, nothing like that. It’s not something he chose to do, after all. He would like to be remembered for the things he chose. Like… like his papers. Stratt knows his research front-to-back; she might not be a biologist, but she’s read his work dozens of times.
Or like his teaching. He was a good teacher, Stratt has plenty of evaluations to prove that. His students loved him; he loved his students. From the extensive usage of metaphors in his academic work, he liked to simplify his findings so that anyone could understand that.
Like his humor, too. Dr. Grace liked that he was funny. Stratt sometimes thought Dr. Grace thought himself too funny, but—well, he was funny. Particularly in rooms that were filled with deeply serious people.
She doesn’t know him enough. Certainly, she doesn’t know him enough to be writing his eulogy, but—there is nobody else. She is the only one who can do this, and it is either this or nothing at all. What she knows will have to be enough. There are (to put it cruelly, perhaps) more important things to do than write sad words about a friend.
Stratt takes a deep breath and returns to her keyboard.
If only things were different, she thought to herself, not for the first time. If only she could have met Dr. Grace before. Somehow, she wishes Dr. Grace could have known her before all this. Before this situation turned her into what she has to be. They might have been friends, even. They might have had dinner and went to conferences and watched movies. Stratt could have called him when she first found out about the Petrova Line, when she felt so utterly small, so utterly… unready for the responsibility placed upon her.
Maybe that would have made things worse. After all, she has all the resources she needs for a chance at success. Maybe anything else would have been a weakness.
But, it’s nice to dream.
Somewhere, a quarter-mile away, Dr. Grace is in a coma. He awaits the launch day of a spaceship, where he will remain comatose for most of the voyage. He will help save humanity, and then he will die, and then, one day, he will have a funeral. Someone will stand up there, and read his eulogy—almost certainly on Stratt’s behalf.
It will be, for most, one sad day in a large set of very sad days.
Stratt thinks it may hurt the most for her.
When I first met Dr. Ryland Grace, she starts to type, I did not expect the relaxed, funny young man in a middle school science classroom. I thought I would find some humorless, bitter scientist. Instead I found the man who would exist, unchanging: funny, brilliant, compassionate. One could hardly cross Ryland’s path without being infected by his curiosity for the world around him, and his single-minded determination to carry it through…