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In thirty years, Earth will remember Grace.
In twenty-six years, the first beetle comes back, fed on a diet of astrophage and bearing the news. The sun is alive, the earth is warming. Slowly, yes. But warming all the same. The countries that stick around long enough, that haven’t been completely swallowed up by political strife, rejoice. A saviour! The name of the project had long been dissolved, its members having been placed behind bars silently (and then broken out later on), but the Hail Mary remains a ubiquitous name, rolling off the tongues of radiocasters and politicians and teachers.
Teachers. Cleveland Grove not so much thrives as it does survive, holding on to a meager student population of some hundred children. All the same, a bicycle is parked at the clamps, a model now obsolete, with a helmet and a couple bean bags in the basket and years of rust blanketing it. Grace is not buried there, or anywhere, but all the same, it’s an unspoken memorial of sorts. Teacher Grace, we commend you, to the stars. Patron saint of new beginnings. The students touch the rusty bike as a motion of luck. The very face of resilience and bravery. At the end of their school years, they successfully toss the bean bags into the basket like a carnival game and make just one out of the three in. A successful toss means they’ll get into the college of their choice.
Grace is a story. A dirge on the days when the fog is thick and some members of his last batch of students see their batches of students in the hallways, and a humorous laugh on the days when they go through his old classroom — preserved in the manner a parent keeps their child’s belongings after they leave for college — and find out the organs were nothing more but long-mouldy props. They do the same.
There was talk of a statue for the school, a bust or a model of the saviour Grace himself close to the gate, but as it would be, not a single photo of him accurate to the time of takeoff had surfaced. (Which, then, begs the question, Wait, we never knew he was on the Hail Mary. It’s like he’d just spawned. What’s up with that? We hadn’t even known there was a Hail Mary being sent up. Wait, what?) There is hardly a need, anyway, for such a grandiose thing; the world remembers him in its own way. The plants eagerly reach to the healed sun like calling to him, their saviour as well, and the scientific world or what remains of it attaches an abundance of prefixes to his name so much so Dr. Captain Grace, Petrova Taskforce’s second-in command sounds like a sort of non-religious god. Grace is now more a deity than he was ever a man. No longer Earth’s unknown, unseen and unheard Laika, the golden wings to his name now change the name they're attached to. Earth's saviour. Grace.
‧₊˚✩ 🪐✩˚₊‧
the name ryland has no meaning.
“seriously, none?”
“none. unless you count, like, a land of rye?” he laughs. “don’t know how that’s relevant.”
simon curls in on himself, at the beach they’re sitting on. “i know,” ryland continues, “what your name means. it derives from the new testament greek form of the hebrew name shimon, which comes from shama, meaning listening…” he rambles. it grows a little hotter, the artificial sun “rising higher” with what must really just be an eridian changing the brightness setting of the dome. the fog clears a little.
“... or it could come from the greek word simon, meaning… flat-nosed.”
“i am not flat-nosed,” simon deadpans.
“i know,” the latter laughs. “i’m sure they meant the better versions when they named you.”
“your parents didn’t even mean anything when they named you.” simon replies. it’s kind of unfair. no thought put in at all. might as well have named him child and let him loose into the world. (like rocky being called rocky, because it’s… rocky. maybe the terrible-at-giving-names gene was passed down twofold.)
“i named myself ryland, simon.” the statement alludes to facts simon already knows, ones he found out and is reminded of when he lets his calloused fingers drag against the gossamer scars running along ryland’s chest. he listens anyway.
“it’s good to be meaningless. no one expects anything. no pedestal to be put on. a story no one wants to read, a show you’re spared from putting on. i just don’t think names necessarily have to have meaning, you know? like the meaning isn’t going to be relevant to you at all. i’m not a land of rye. and if you wanted to know the meaning of my name, wouldn’t you have to just know me?”
‧₊˚✩ 🪐✩˚₊‧
At the end of the day, no matter how he had screamed and cried in the submarine, the Butcher was the Butcher. A criminal, COI-viewed scum of the earth, the man who’d slaughtered sixty-three others in Filament Bay. I didn’t do it, he insists. The oxygen drops to the last bar all the same.
COI fishes the remains of the SM-14 out of the ocean, mangled by odd tree root-like structures. Their black boxes resurface, both the SM-14 and 13. It says nothing new about the Convict, in fact, it paints the picture of him getting his just deserts, fighting a force he could do nothing against. A fraction of the suffering he’d caused. They learn about the ocean, the bizarre creatures, strange entities, then shrug and send in the next Convict, this time an inside agent that had been exposed.
The Butcher’s story does not budge an inch, it does not change. A sacrifice made by the COI. A sacrifice for the Tree. When they named him son of Eden, rubbed dirt all over his forehead and cheeks, they had named him the lamb to the slaughter, signed his name in blood he could never wipe.
The Father will continue to preach about him like a martyr, and the congregation will continue to respect him as a devout believer. When the last remains of Simon come back to Eden in the form what little belongings he was allowed in prison, and when they are handed over to the woman that raised him, that packed for his journey to Filament Bay, she will weep, enough to satisfy the mandated and socially acceptable short mourning period, and then weep some more in secrecy, for the child who’d cried at the thought of being buried under the tree. I just want to live. Is that so wrong? Why doesn’t anyone else want that?
You will live if you are useful. Take this. Make good use of it, were her last words to him, handing the cleaver over. Now, so many years later, May you rot, Sons of Eden, the Father leads the congregation to say. The hymn begins. In the distance, her son waits. She clasps her hands, prays for the rot to be kinder than life itself. A better, softer tomorrow.
‧₊˚✩ 🪐✩˚₊‧
simon wears many hats. not in a prolific way. simon wears many hats like crowns of thorns stacked on each other, like blankets over a lamp stifling the light.
“the butcher, you?” ryland looks him up and down, like appraising a decorative item, letting his eyes roam. “could never imagine that.”
“son of eden, the butcher, and then the convict.” three names too many. ryland tries to catalog them. first is the convict. a lamb to the slaughter, biting and snapping all the way but succumbing to the despair of a lone way out. freedom is so close, freedom is so far.
second is the butcher, the terrifying prison escapee. sixty-three at filament bay gone, now another twenty COI personnel out of the way, resembling hunks of meat disfigured and deboned. it’s in the name: meat, butcher.
third is the edenite. covered in the dirt that birthed him and he will eventually return to, nothing more than a lanky teenager when sent off to the station called filament bay. scared of death, scared of god, as would be the case in any other world. a coward. filament bay was supposed to be an outreach, evangelism. a boy, shaking as he trembles with his hand on the airlock. do it, or leave the shuttle, and die now. he chooses the first. The second will come back for him later.
tenderly, simon brushes the leaves of a plant in the xenonite greenhouse, untangling it from the others and bringing it just a little closer to the light. carefully, he picks up a swab, dabbing it in the red flower, gentle like the first rays of the morning sun, and brushes them on the others.
“i prefer simon.”
“over who, rocky?” he snorts. ryland grins, feeling a familiar buzz in his heart that he’s long since come to name affection. the early morning makes him a little more dopey than usual. he smiles, eyes screwing so tight they almost look closed.
“over all the other names. simon,” he says again, just to hear the syllables roll off his tongue, “simon. best name i’ll ever hear of.”
the COI can keep their impression of the murderous butcher, and eden can keep their funeral dirges for the cowardly boy. when ryland says simon, he says it with all the warmth and none of the disproval they had. when ryland says the name, he is telling the COI to go fuck themselves, he is taking simon off eden’s cold and cruel hands. their stories, variations on the theme, matter not; what matters is the man standing before him, who smiles at his little speech and brings an arm around his waist to hold him closer, so that they stand impossibly close. no titles. ryland, meet simon. simon, meet ryland.