Chapter Text
I’m fiddling with my last bit of grading when I meet Stratt. I’ve done my best to get everything prepped for my upcoming absence. In an unprecedented move for me, I’ve made sure that there are solid lesson plans for the entire year’s curriculum and personally roped into the school’s sub pool a local retired teacher who I know the kids will love. They won’t be calling me because they’re bored or confused this time.
I hope they’ll still call.
Stratt walks into the room, and stops. I don’t look up yet, flicking through my papers. Her heels clack on the floor, letting me know that she’s taking a look around the room. I wonder if she did that last time. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if she did.
I did take more liberties with decorating my room this time. Any area not covered with something informative or required by policy was backed with paper covered in handmade star charts, painstakingly assembled over years of work. To most people, they look like nonsense. One mother, a hobby astronomer, asked me if they were supposed to be the stars of a fictional world. After all, I am the only person alive who knows how the stars look from above the atmosphere of Erid.
Slowly, she approaches my desk. When she’s close enough to be in my peripherals, I look up. “Good afternoon.”
She’d been the one to greet me first, the first time. Should I have waited? She’s frowning a little, studying me. Not that I was unfamiliar with that, but it definitely wasn’t the same as what I remembered from our first meeting. Then again, that might be a good sign.
“Good afternoon. You seem to have a very… themed classroom, Dr. Grace.”
The coil in my gut doesn’t unspool, but it begins to loosen. “Yeah, I am fond of space. Lots of science to do out there, you know?” I toss in a smile. She doesn’t return it. I don’t expect her to.
“What is your favorite star, Dr. Grace?” It’s a familiar question, if not from her. Almost everyone who sees my classroom asks, especially the children. My response is automatic.
“40 Eridani. It’s technically a trinary system, but. And you?”
“Tau Ceti.”
Carefully, I set aside my grading. “And who are you with?”
“The Petrova Taskforce. I believe you know why we exist.”
“I do know what the Petrova line is,” I agree. “If you’re coming to a middle school science teacher about it, I must be your Hail Mary.”
Stratt’s face splinters into a small, sharp smile. “Yes. I believe you are.”
This time, I get into the car voluntarily.
We skip the lab. There’s no point in me looking over what I already know. I’d be surprised if the equipment in there hasn’t been specialized to the machines she knows I favor. Instead, the two of us hole up in an office I honestly hadn’t known was attached to the place. The chairs are the comfy kind, sturdy padding over a firm base. I wish I had one for my desk at school. Alas, budgets. One of the things I had not missed when working with Stratt.
“Why weren’t you doing your work here?” I ask, looking around. There’s certainly plenty of indication that this was designed as a working office. The desk is just as comfy looking as the chairs, with outlets built in. Handy. “Seems a lot more comfortable than the observation room.”
Stratt glances up at me sideways. She’s settled herself into one of the three chairs on one side of the desk, rather than the singleton on the other side. “Dr. Grace, I was here two days before you figured out that astrophage was water-based. I was observing your work to make sure that you would not attempt to sabotage the project and to assure myself of your competence. If you had taken even a day longer, I would have moved my work here.”
“That’s fair,” I concede, settling into the chair next to her. “You think it’s realistic to move my poking it with a stick to day one?”
Stratt finally raises her head from her tablet for the first time since we were bundled into the car. Her expression is the same one I got from the principal when I told her that my kids being ahead of standard was not a real problem. “I think we should discuss any and all proposed deviations from the original timeline before implementing them, considering that the first timeline worked.”
I blink, then gesture lightly around us. “Ship’s sailed. We’re already in ripple effect territory, and probably were before we even met. We’ve radically changed our starting relationship just by existing, and neither of us is capable of just leaving anything.”
“Which is even more reason,” she bites out. “We need to have a conversation, Dr. Grace. The fewer variables changed, the more accurately we can predict outcomes.”
Now, that was a more familiar tone. I lean back in the chair and fold my hands. “Alright. Let’s shoot. Goals first, so we know what we’re planning towards. I want us to get the Hail Mary into space as soon as is physically possible, and I want to be on there.”
Stratt starts to type something into her tablet, then visibly pauses. I dig my time notebook out of my pocket and offer it to her. It’s a rattyish thing in the same way a lot of my things are. But unlike her tablet, it’s impossible to remote access. She makes a face, but flips it open, then pauses again. I hold out a pencil, which she takes. “You are very much a teacher, Dr. Grace.”
“Thank you.”
After a few seconds of scribbling, she speaks. “My goal is to have the Hail Mary launched as soon as is possible without causing a degree of planetary disruption that would make it less viable for the planet to cooperate as much as possible during the duration of the mission. Additionally, I would strongly prefer to have you aboard, considering the remarkable results of last time.”
“You could have just said ‘same.’”
Stratt closes her eyes and exhales sharply. “I would also appreciate if you would attempt at least a veneer of professionalism.”
The silence stretches out expectantly. I take it to think over my answer. “Stratt, I’m going to be frank with you,” I began.
“If I have to be a completely professional person with the only other person I’ve found who remembers, I am going to start cracking in weird ways.” I pause. “Also, if you have to do that, I’m pretty sure you’re going to give yourself some kind of stress injury, since you already know the projected fatalities from Leclerc. Which is going to delay the project significantly more than relaxing a little.”
She slaps my poor notebook on the desk. “There are billions of lives at stake. The least we can do is respect that.”
“And we are the only ones who can do that. Critical staff and machines need to remain functional above all else,” I counter. “I know you’ve seen the studies on long-term stress and productivity. I was the one who emailed them to you.”
Stratt stares at me, then sighs. “You are the worst and best person I could have here.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Flip to page eight, it starts the record of my memory of timeline alpha. This is timeline beta, unless you remember something I don’t.”
She doesn’t, thankfully. Well. She doesn’t remember more than one other timeline. There are some things she remembers that I don’t, which she adds to my timeline. By some things, I mean a lot. When she’s done, it looks like my eighth grade English teacher went ham on it.
Stratt glares at the timeline like it offends her personally. It probably does. “We need to cut this down as much as possible, and get a head start on producing greenhouse gases. Methane if possible. If not, whatever we can get our hands on.”
“Let’s start our more detailed plans with the project,” I suggest. “That's going to be more complicated. For a general head start, you could add some funding or other support to industrialization of countries who are struggling with it. They tend to produce increased greenhouse gases for a while before it settles. Funding their meat industries could help with methane specifically, meat consumption tends to increase in industrialized countries."
She stares.
“What? Kids love the ‘where does your food come from’ unit and I collaborate with the history teacher on the industry unit.”
Stratt makes a note and moves on. “The earliest we could have you make the water discovery is indeed the day you get it. It is not implausible that you poke it with your stick the first day.”
“Please don’t phrase it- you’re teasing me!?”
“You were the one who said that we need to relax.”
I point at her with my pencil. “You keeping that you’re funny from me the entire first timeline is a crime against me personally. I’m going to retaliate with the worst jokes you have ever heard.”
Her lips twitch. “If you can do worse than last time, I will be impressed. What is the earliest we can plausibly have you breed it?”
“I’m taking that as a challenge, just so you know. So, considering that my test was based on how they go to Venus…”
Stratt’s “My way or my way, I’ll kidnap you off the highway” attitude towards problem solving is significantly more tolerable when you have the same goals she does. She’s definitely the most efficient person I know on Earth. Working with her, I have a feeling we’ll be able to do everything.
"We're fixing the coma bots, and you're not going to drug me, right?"
"Of course not. You're far more valuable as a willing and aware participant."
"Never change, Stratt."
After the third hour, some suit shows up with a stack of blank sketchbooks. There’s a brief shuffle to hide exactly what we’re working on, and then move it back after he leaves. The sheer amount of space to work with lets us expand from notes and cramped timelines to flowcharts, graphs, and other visual representations. I keep my notebook, slipping it back into my pocket. These big ones are great for planning, but they aren’t exactly easy to carry around.
"Dr. Grace, if I only send you, the entire world is going to be up our asses about why."
"Ugh. Fine. I guess that I got along with the original primary crew fine anyway. Think that they can keep a secret?"
“If they learn after you arrive at Tau Ceti, it will be mostly irrelevant to mission success, since they were not involved and will not be able to tell the press until after they return.”
“Cold, but fair.”
I squint in mild surprise into my takeaway cup, obtained from a tray left outside our office door. Probably by a suit, I doubt that Uber Eats drivers are cleared to be within ten feet of the building. “You remembered my coffee order?”
“Truly, it is a feat that I remember what you got every one of our hundreds of meetings together.”
“I can’t believe you deprived me of your sense of humor last time.”
“Then don’t. You know Lokken better than me, how do we provoke her into storming onto the project as fast as possible?”
We end up spending two days formulating our basic plan, including all major landmark events and recruitments that we want to happen. A lot of them I wasn’t aware of, I was pretty focused on the science side of the project. Stratt tells me not to worry about what I don’t know. I remind her that I am the literal only person she can bounce her ideas off of for this. I proceed to regret that reminder for seven hours of political information.
All in all, we manage to trim the project down to about two and a half years. Two, if everything goes perfectly, but plans never survive first contact with reality. Between both the shortened mission time and the improved preparations we should be able to set in motion for maintaining global stability our conservative (admittedly inexpert— neither of us is a climatologist) projections say that the population should retain at least two billion more people.
I groan and twist in my chair, my back cracking and popping. “Okay. I think both of us need sleep and some real food. Man and woman cannot live on coffee alone.”
Stratt rolls her eyes at me.
“How do you not look tired at all?” I demand, gesturing dramatically at her face. “I know you’re not a robot, robots can’t drink coffee.”
“Concealer, Dr. Grace. Makeup is an excellent weapon when it comes to keeping up appearances.”
“…do you think that would help with the whole ‘trying to charm world leaders on a time crunch’ problem?”
“I’ll get you an artist to work with. Work on touching your face less, it’ll be easier to break the habit now rather than later.”
“Fine. But we’re going to go sleep and eat first.”
“There is a car waiting to take you to your apartment. Breakfast will be delivered in the morning. We have a few weeks left before the ArcLight probe is back. Take that time to wrap up your affairs.”
“Will do, captain.” I salute her sloppily, and wander off to my well-deserved rest.
I do not get a break in the weeks leading up to the ArcLight landing. Stratt has my personal email, and sends me a set of proposals to review. They all deal with indirectly increasing greenhouse gases in ways that the UN was likely to approve. We’ll need to keep that last part in mind until she gets her informal dictator of the world position.
“How many different variations on this plan can there be?” I complain to myself. “And why do I have to review them? This isn’t my field at all.”
I know why, but just because I planned this doesn’t mean I have to like it. Complaining makes it more bearable.
I close my eyes, and breathe out.
I open my eyes and the first file.
“Hey,” I greet Stratt in the lab office.
She raises an eyebrow, somehow without moving the rest of her face. It’s impressive, in a very specific way. “Why are you here, Dr. Grace?”
I roll my eyes, and hold out her coffees.
“I have people for that.” She takes them.
“Yeah, and you’re as bad as me for remembering to ask.” I plop down in one of the comfy chairs. “So, remember how we want to avoid Embezzler Bob because he’s politically costly? I found an intern who could be prodded in the same direction he took if we set up the right mentorships…”
I wonder how long it’ll take her to remember that she never officially gave me permission to come back here before the probe lands.
The answer is one day. Or that she didn’t want to kick me out when I was already there last time. It could go either way, really.
The guards are visibly nervous when they ask me for ID. While they fidget, I text Stratt.
Really
Operational security is important. You have been compensated for unofficial penetration testing.
Great, thanks, do I have clearance for the office tho
You have access to everything you need remotely.
Really
Indeed.
Can I at least get some of those comfy chairs
See you on the 23rd.
I flick the app shut and look up at the guards. “I’ll be back.”
The chairs arrive at my apartment that afternoon. I sink into one with a sigh. If I have to do this alone, I can at least do it with good spinal support. Alright. Time to get back to — I check — planning my lesson schedule for the astronauts.
…
I skive off for a bit by checking my teacher email for anything from my students. A few of them are asking when I’ll be back, most are asking for information or resources, and one is just a paragraph of complaints about the sub.
I stifle a laugh. Gosh, I love my kids. Even when they’re being little menaces.
I let the worriers know that I won’t be back, so the sub is long term. I provide specific resources for all of the kids that ask. I ask the complainer to give her a chance, for me.
Heart sufficiently warmed, I get to lesson planning.
The makeup artist ambushes me the next day, walking into my apartment and ordering me to wash my face. Which I apparently don’t know how to do correctly, as she shows me exactly what spots I missed the first time and makes me wash again. It’s like learning what spots I miss brushing my teeth from the dentist all over again.
Angela is one of the most competent people I’ve met in my entire life. She takes one look at me and pulls out powders and creams that, when applied, look exactly like my skin, but nicer. Her heart is a steady, strong beat behind my head as she demonstrates how to apply them.
“The most important thing for you is to look natural,” she stresses. “A man with visible makeup is much worse for reputation than a man who looks tired. If you have to choose between total coverage and looking natural, look natural.”
“Right, no blue eyeshadow for me,” I joke.
Angela points a makeup brush at me threateningly. I didn’t even know you could do that. I hold my hands up in surrender. “Alright. Should I learn to color match?”
“Absolutely not, you’d be awful at it. You will buy the products that I have matched for you today. Additionally you will moisturize and you will take it off if not every night, every time that you sleep.” Her voice leaves no room for compromise.
I like Angela.
After the slightly chaotic first week, I have a system down.
Morning, roll out of bed and brush teeth while checking my email for tasks from Stratt. Eat something from the toaster while reading through some of the material. Bother Stratt via text about anything she’s probably forgotten, like her own breakfast. Complete tasks from Stratt.
Afternoon, eat something microwaved. Reply to her irritated texts back. Check my email for more tasks. Complete the new tasks.
Evening, eat something microwaved. Brush my teeth. Shower. Moisturize. Sleep.
It works.
On the 23rd, I become the first human to kill an alien, and am “kicked off” the project. I put up a mock protest, and Stratt leaves me with three cells. I only need two of them, but it’s nice to have a spare.
On the 26th, I breed them. It’s much easier when you know how.
The plane trip requires only one transfer this time, instead of three. Planning ahead makes it easier to streamline the itinerary.
There’s a smaller group for me to present to this time. I note the differences, matching them up with the recruitments that Stratt mentioned. Some of the ones from last time haven’t had the time to get here. Others won’t be brought on at all.
I’m a little smug that this time, the Chinese haven’t had the time to replicate my results. I’ll let them figure out the doubling time. They’ll be quick enough about it. If I make every discovery, then it’s going to start looking suspicious.
What I am not expecting is the bombshell that Stratt drops after my presentation.
“Well. It looks like I have a head for the science side of the operation. Dr. Ryland Grace, I am appointing you co-leader of the project. You will have total authority over the administration of the scientific side of Project Hail Mary. Take any measures necessary to get breeding scaled up as fast as possible.”
“Hold on,” I protest. “Shouldn’t we talk about this?!” Shouldn’t you have warned me? I demand with my eyes.
Hers glint with amusement. “Certainly. But I’d recommend that you choose your office first. I’d recommend one near the labs. Welcome aboard, Director Grace.”