Chapter Text
I just wanna go home.
Why did I choose to come back to Earth? My kids. I miss my kids and now I miss my pebbles. Also maybe because I want to rub it in Stratt’s face that hey! The guy you sent to die didn’t die because he isn’t a complacent buttwad!
Now I’m gonna die. I’ve tuned it out by now, but Mary’s systems are screaming WARNING! EXCESSIVE CENTRIFUGAL FORCE!
This time, jetting a fuel bay isn’t gonna save me, because the astrophage isn’t the issue. I’ve been thrown off course by something, which is insane because Eridian engineers are shockingly good at creating autopilot systems and sticking them onto ships. I don’t know what threw it off, but the autopilot is fighting it and now we’re in a perpetual spiral of push-and-pull. If I could just reach the off-switch-
I heard the crash before I knew it happened. I was calibrating a new safe-lock feature on the magnet gun when a large explosion came from nearby. In town? Surely not.
“POINDEXTER! A SPACESHIP JUST RAMMED INTO THE NORTHWEST MANOR.”
Surely.
I grumble to myself as I put the magnet gun down, making my way to the gift shop. The astrophage crisis was solved three years ago, so it couldn’t possibly be a spaceship. After all, why would the Hail Mary be alive and coming back to Earth? I haven’t watched the documentary videos that they’d put on the public record, but as far as the mission statement goes, it’s pretty straightforward. They only had enough fuel to get out there, so the solution would be sent back in pods named after the Beatles (the worst musical group of all time) and the crew would have a preferred method of dying. Even if they didn’t use that, they would eventually just starve or go insane.
“It looks like the Hail Mary ship!” Dipper rejoiced. He was obsessed with that mission. The science expert on board was meant to be his seventh grade science teacher, and he didn’t stop talking about it.
Wait, what?
I had just processed what he said, and I quickly shoved Stanley out of the way before realizing I couldn’t see past the trees. I rushed to the out that led onto the roof and looked out towards the manor.
Dear god. (Uncapitalized. God doesn’t exist, it is an axolotl)
Before I know what I’m doing, I jump off the roof platform and sprint towards the manor.
Holy shit.
Pardon my French, whatever, there’s kids around. But I swear that this place does not have a space center, and it is not the Northwest Manor.
Either way, it was kind of fun to watch.
I was forcing Dipper to hike with me (what else is a grunkle good for?) when we saw this giant, flaming ball of rotation barrel towards the manor. Dipper, understandably, was very excited about the anomaly. It crashed, and the flames died out some, and I realized that it looked a hell of a lot like a spaceship.
Dipper sprints back to the Mystery Shack (oh, nice rap starter right there), and I have to run after him because I can’t exactly let the kid loose. Last summer was too much on my old man bones.
Dipper bursts in and starts hunting Mabel down like a wolf before giving up and going for his journal, and I call for Sixer. Before I knew what was happening, Sixer was jumping off the roof, Dipper was running after him, and I was in the unreasonably fast golf cart I borrowed.
We get to the wreckage, and it is hot as shit. I mean, assumable, it was on fire, but still. Ford has started trying to get it open, but I noticed a door before he got to it.
Obviously, the only thing to do was be a good brother and go in without telling him about it. I open the door and I’m greeted with a mess. This thing was not made to crash.
Equipment and supplies everywhere, and an obvious struggle. There’s a hatch open, so I go in there. It looks like a control room, but there’s a dead guy in the middle. I walk over and poke at the body. It groans. Not dead. Dammit.
I don’t want to be responsible for another science nerd, but I also don’t usually let people die on my watch. I sling the guy’s body over my shoulders and haul him out, getting in the golf cart before anyone can see what I’m doing, and I haul him back to the Mystery Shack.
🎱
Saving a life is shockingly more difficult than ending it, not that I’d know. I manage to stop whatever bleeding the guy had, but it’s hard to tell where I’m supposed to be with him. His face is (mostly) undamaged, and his right arm has a ginormous burn scar that seems old, but he’s badly hurt in spots that I don’t know how to fix. I bandage him up and lay him on the more comfortable bed in the shack (mine, I stole it from Susan’s bed and breakfast) and walk off to go find the nerds while Mr. Starman rests.
By the time I realized Stanley had left, I had already given up on finding a way into the ship. Dipper and I went home to find Stanley washing his hands in the kitchen sink.
“Have you suddenly become hygienic after 68 years of filthy life, or did you find something you don’t want on your hands in the wreckage?” I grunt.
“Dragged some guy out of the ship,” Stanley responds casually.
Some guy? Oh, yes, of course, leave it to Stanley to find a way into THE most high-tech ship humanity has ever built and drag a man out of it.
“How- Stanley, how did you even get into the ship?!”
“There was a door. I opened the door, I walked through the door, and I walked through another, smaller door, and dragged a guy out.”
“Right, okay, and where is this “guy” now?”
“In my bed. I patched him up and now he’s going to sleep there because I sleep in my chair every night anyway.”
Of course. Yes, of course. There was a door. On a high-tech spaceship designed for the best of the best. And of course Stanley said nothing about it, because why would he? He’s Stanley fucking Pines, he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to. Great. Just great. I had less trouble wrangling Bill than living with this slobbering nightmare of a man.
☍
I’m busy for hours after that. Well, I make myself busy. I don’t want to look at whoever Stanley dragged out of that wreckage. Where were the other two that were aboard? Why did only one survive? How did only one survive? There was extensive, intensive research put into the technology on that ship. I would’ve wanted to help, but cryptology isn’t a helpful field in space, and I also returned the year after the Beatles got to Earth. I ate up nearly all of the information about the mission that I could get my hands on. The description, the crew, the tragic accident, Dr. Grace’s volunteering. All of it. I hear his twin brother, some stuntman, is acting in a movie to honor his life. Imagine that? Your twin honoring your life. Instead of, oh, I don’t know, STEALING YOUR IDENTITY AND TURNING YOUR HOUSE INTO A TOURIST ATTRACTION.
I’m still a little salty.
By the time I actually end up going to see the man Stanley rescued, it’s nearly midnight. Not that anybody would actually care, midnight shenanigans are normal in this household.
I slink up the stairs- no, slink isn’t a good word. Too mischievous. I mouse up the stairs (yes, that is a verb) and into Stanley’s bedroom. The man is still asleep, but that’s to be expected. He just crashed into one of the most gravitationally (and otherwise) anomalous places on Earth.
I slide up to the side of the bed, and gently tilt his face. Dr. Ryland Grace, my brain provides immediately. He’s almost too recognizable for his own good. A genius in his own right. I mean, really, who else thought of the fact that maybe the goldilocks zone isn’t so special? Maybe life can exist without our limited knowledge of its requirements. He hasn’t been proven wrong. He just hasn’t been proven right yet.
“An honor to meet you, Dr. Grace.” I mumble into the darkness. Dear god, that is the dumbest thing I have done in my life, second only to Bill. Stanley is rubbing off.
I turn and quickly, quietly leave the room. That’s enough embarrassment for one night. At least nobody heard it.
“An honor to meet you, Dr. Grace.”
I hear the words just after I’m dragged from sleep by a hand on my face. Or this is a dream? There’s no other humans on Erid.
Oh.
Right.
I’m not on Erid.
So then who is this? And why are they touching my face and saying it’s an honor?
How deluded did the people get on Earth while I was gone? I mean, methane is supposed to just have heated the Earth, but maybe melting the arctic had side effects? Any blind man could see that he wasn’t anyone close to honorable. Seriously, how do you crash a spaceship with one of the best autopilot systems anyone had ever seen? An honor was an overstatement.
I peek open my eyes just in time to see a green-yellow trench coat disappear behind the door. Yeah, people are crazy.
It seems like it’s the middle of the night, judging by the fact that the (extremely helpful) “clock” on the bedside says MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
I sigh and close my eyes.