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Grace sits a few feet away from the camera, dressed in the white cooling garment he wears beneath his EVA suit. He stares icily into the camera with narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw. He’s quiet for some time before finally speaking.
“Rocky thinks I’m brave. He believes that I risked my life to save others. That’s probably the real reason he offered to give me the Astrophage I need to get home. I wonder what he would think of me if he knew the real truth. It came to me in a flash while I was touring his ship. Standing there before all that stunning technology, all I could think about was what happened on my last day of consciousness back on Earth.”
He shakes his head slowly and says, “I never volunteered to come on this mission. I specifically begged not to come on this mission because I did not want to die nearly 12 light years away from home on a suicide mission. So what if I didn’t have any immediate family or even a dog? Stratt, you had no right to do what you did. It should have been my choice, but you took that away from me. Yeah, me saying no would have set the project back, by what, a few months? Was that really worth condemning me to death for a one-in-a-billion long shot?
“You could have used the extra time to work more on the whole ‘putting people into comas’ thing. Maybe the rest of the crew would have survived. But, no. You had a schedule to keep, at any cost. You should have planned better. The backups should've had backups somewhere safe. Or was I already a backup in your mind? Yeah, I was expendable from the very beginning, right? And, Carl… dude… I thought we were bros. But you just stood there and watched. And don’t say you were just following orders. You knew what she was doing was wrong, even if it was for the right reason.”
He pauses and drags a hand down his face. His head bobs up and down a few times before speaking again.
“And the more I think about what went down, besides putting me in that coma, I believe you gave me a little something extra to cause temporary amnesia as well. Some kind of specialized spy drug? Maybe that’s what kept me from meeting the same fate as the others? I know it seems odd that I would wake up with no recollection of who I was or what I was doing here but still maintain all my scientific knowledge. Yeah, you probably figured that if I had woken up with my memory intact, I would’ve been pissed and not willing to work on the project at all. I might have even considered some form of sabotage…. And you would have been right.”
He looks away and falls quiet for a short spell.
“The way I feel right now, I’m very tempted to just chuck all the Taumoeba out the airlock.” He shrugs his shoulders and scowls, “You don’t care about me; I don’t care about you either. Maybe mankind deserves to go extinct.”
He squeezes his eyes close as if in physical pain, then gets up and walks out of camera view. Noises can be heard that give the impression that objects are being tossed around and walls are being punched. The sounds are soon replaced by quiet sobbing. In the course of three minutes, the weeping grows louder with unbridled anguish, gradually tapers off to hard-to-control sniffling, and finishes with several ragged breaths. Another full minute elapses before Grace walks back into camera view and retakes his seat. His eyes are red and his brow furrowed.
“I don’t know who I am anymore. I thought I was someone who cared more about the people of Earth and its future than myself. But that’s not me. I’m a coward who had to be chased down, drugged, and forced onto this ship because there’s no one in my life I’m willing to be brave for.”
He covers his face momentarily with both hands, then takes a steadying breath and looks again into the camera lens.
“But, in the end, you were right. I stepped up and did what I was sent here to do. I was fortunate enough to find a friend along the way. Together, we discovered the answer that will save both our worlds. And we’ll return home to our respective planets to a hero’s welcome. Earlier, I was worried about not making it back to earth, but now, I’m determined to make it back. And when I do return, Stratt, I’m going to…”
His eyes shift to the side, and with a shake of his head, he shrugs.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I feel like I deserve some kind of justice for what you put me through. But, if you hadn’t done it, I would never have met Rocky, and I wouldn’t have had the most incredible experience of my life. I don’t forgive what you did to me, but I do feel like I’ve been somewhat compensated. So, we’re good. I’m good now.” He gives a final nod and says, “Mary, stop recording.”
The screen goes black.