Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The world doubted my every decision for twenty-seven years. But never for a moment did I question them myself.

How could I? Every single decision stood between assured death and the possibility of life. If I had doubted myself, decisions would stall, and what faith I built up in the people that listened to me would falter. Project Hail Mary would have never lived long enough to even hear its own name.

While an annoying percentage of people still believe my actions were born out of a lust for power, it was never about that. In fact, I hated having the power I did. But I hated seeing nothing get done more. Everything I did was for the good of the world. I didn’t let the small loses weigh me down. And it was all with a single goal in mind: reduce the loss of life caused by those tiny, microscopic terrors we called Astrophage.

That’s not to say my decisions held no weight on my shoulders today. Some days, I catch myself wishing that I hadn’t needed to make the calls I did. That we needn’t have dropped three nuclear bombs in the arctic. That DuBios and Shaprio didn’t try testing that stupid edge case.

But wishing was a waste of time. Wishing is nothing more than a response to feeling powerless in a situation. I had all the power I could have hoped, and it still wasn’t enough. So I refused waste my time wishing.

Not that I was short on time. I spent a whole decade in prison, a few prisons, actually. I was paraded through fourteen different courts in different countries so they could feel like they weren’t as powerless as they truly were. France was where I was supposed to wait out the rest of my life, and I accepted it.

The Russians saw my value, though. They knew how devastating hash winters could be and knew that they needed to get working on more tangible solutions. So they pressured France into releasing me into their custody, which wasn’t hard with how much France was hurting from the effects of the global cooling.

So since then, I’ve been in St. Petersberg. I would have preferred somewhere more rural and away from people, but that was a death sentence. Hardly anyone survived outside of cities due to just how difficult it was to get food and deal with the constant ice and snow.

When I saw the dim trails of red, I knew it had all been worth it. While I never doubted my decisions, I can’t say I never doubted what would come after launch day. Would the Hail Mary reach Tau Ceti at all? Would there even be an answer there? Would the beetles make it home? Would those three brilliant minds, the saviors of humanity… would they suffer in the end?

“And you are absolutely certain this time?” I asked Irina in Russian as she turned her phone to me. She set the screen to enlarge and I saw it. A somewhat fuzzy photo of three red dots with dimming trails behind them.

She stood in my doorway with a bright smile on her wrinkled face.

“Absolutely.” She nodded and took her phone back, tapping on it a few times. “That was only the first photo. Some kid in northern Ireland just happened to be looking up at exactly the right time.”

A cold draft and windy howl echoed through the hallway. The door to the outside had once again gone off kilter from the ice, and the hall was poorly insulated.

Irina shivered, tightening her thick sweater around herself.

We’d become quite fond of one another’s company. I worked with her a lot at the start of the Project, but even after her area of expertise wasn’t vital, she remained a part of the team, bouncing from a few different places where she was best needed. And when the Russians helped make a deal with France to get me out of prison, she was the first to help me find a new home in St. Petersberg.

“Come inside,” I said, stepping back to let her into my home.

We lived in a large apartment complex that had once been a row of townhomes, but it had a sort of shell build around it out of brick to fight back against the cold. A lot of places had built up new exteriors that encapsulated building entrances.

“After the embarrassment of that comet three years ago, it seems people were a little more diligent this time before letting the information come to you,” Irina said as she came in, the door closing behind her.

I locked the door in three places and then followed Irina to my small kitchen. “Good,” I asserted.

I foolishly believed that sudden dot with a bright Petrova frequency had been a beetle coming home. It was too early for it to make sense, but it happened to come from the direction of Tau Ceti. But after an additional fourteen hours of observation and calculations, it was discovered to be nothing more than a comet that just so happened to be moving at just the right speed with the right red shift to read as that specific band of IR frequency we all knew too well.

I sat down at the table and Irina set her phone in front of me with another picture before she went over to my coffee pot that was still brewing.

This photo was much clearer. There were three bright red dots surrounded by stars.

“Taken by ESA probably an hour or so after the amateur photo,” Irina explained as she

“Only three?” I asked, still looking at the photo. My heart raced in my chest. I wanted to believe it this time.

About seven months ago was the earliest the beetles could have possibly arrived, and that was assuming that they were launched days after the Hail Mary reached the uninfected star. Since then, thousands of Petrovascopes were trained on the sky. Most to pointed towards Tau Ceti with a few pointed elsewhere to ensure every angle was covered just in case.

“Only three,” Irina confirmed and pulled out a second coffee cup. She set it next to the one I already set out for myself earlier. “But that’s why Hatch made four, no? In case one failed.”

I slowly nodded, eyes on the screen. My chest felt tight. I let out a deep breath. “Yes, exactly.” I finally looked up at Irina who glanced back at me over her shoulder.

“I’d say that the Hail Mary might finally be proving she’s a success,” she hummed. “Seems like a lot of people have some apologizing to do.” She nodded her head towards me.

“Oh please, we don’t even know if they found an answer,” I said, waving her words away. I did want to believe those words, but if I always believed things would work as intended, the Project might have only lived to hear its own name once or twice.

“You can’t even celebrate a little?” Irina asked, pouring two cups of coffee.

“We’ve lost almost three billion people these last decades. No. I don’t want to celebrate anything,” I huffed and looked out the window. A tree outside my window shivered against the wind, dead leaves caught in its branches.

“I’m sure you’ll change your tune once we get that data,” she Irina hummed. She added the smallest amount of sugar to my mug and two heaping spoonfuls to her own before she came to the table.

I gave a vague nod of thanks when she set my mug in front of me. “Any idea on when that will be?”

“A few months from now,” Irina said. “That’s when they’ll pass by Neptune.”

I nodded, remembering Steve Hatch telling me about how the things worked. They just needed to get within reach of our radio signals. At the time, we could only get so far as Saturn, but with the Artemis base on the moon and further advancements of technology. We can get that data just a little sooner.

“Has Hatch been contacted about this?” I carefully sip the hot coffee.

“Couldn’t tell you,” Irina said with a shrug. “It was my friend at ESA that called me today. Only gave me the photos and explanation with the underlying hint to tell it to you.”

I nodded slowly as I held the mug in my hands. Legally, I wasn’t allowed to know anything going at NASA, Roscomos, CSA, CNSA, ESA, JAXA, or almost any other space organization or even government organization. That was a part of the deal the Russians worked out for me.

Of course, I still had got my contacts. A fair number of them had reached out to me before the other way around over the years. I’ve been kept updated on anything regarding the Hail Mary and beetles. I even helped make necessary introductions for the Artemis Project to get humans on the moon for Astrophage farming.

I was well aware when CSA’s Orb Weaver completed. It was an unmanned ship specially designed to retrieve the beetles once they were directed into earth’s orbit. While all we really needed was the data aboard the beetles, it’s possible there might be something in or on the beetles that are relevant for study.

I looked down at the three red dots again on Irina’s phone screen. I closed out of it and slid it back over to her while I pulled out my own phone. I flipped through my contacts and tapped on Steve Hatch’s name.

While it rang, it put it to my ear.

“Oh hello!” the familiar voice said in a Canadian accent. “This is Steve Hatch speaking. I can’t say I recognize an Eve Aster, but you never know when a call from a stranger is important,” he rambled on, same as ever, though his voice was a little slower with age.

“Hatch, this is Eva Stratt,” I asserted. I couldn’t remember the last time I had to actually announce myself to someone.

I knew the public was going to despise me for some of my decisions as the head of the Project, and I’ve dealt with it for decades now. Even when I exited prison and was trying to figure out where I’d land, people recognized my name when I was simply trying to pay for my groceries.

They’d gawk and jeer and give me their useless opinions. I didn’t like it, but it didn’t bother me. Dimitri had told me countless times that I should change my name and get some help from the take up the offer from the Russian witness protection folks he was friendly with. But I simply didn’t care enough.

That was until someone pulled a gun on me while I was simply exiting a hotel in downtown Moscow. It turned out that one bullet shattering your shoulder and a a second puncturing a lung will make you care a little bit about who hears your name.

So I took Dimitri up on his offer and I got all new documents in a fake name. It’s helped, but it’s not like my face has been forgotten.

“Eva!” Hatch gasped. “Well I’ll be gosh darned! I haven’t heard from you since before they locked you away, but I’m glad to hear you got out. Seems like you changed your name, huh? How are you doing these days? You’re in Russia, right? I’ve had some chats with Dimitri back when we worked on the Orb Weaver project, and—”

“I did not call for pleasantries, Hatch,” I said flatly before he could keep talking.

“Oh! Apologies, I suppose you’ve always been a business first kind of gal, huh?”

I rolled my eyes and gave a slight shake of my head. “Have you seen the images from CSA yet?”

“Hm? Images? No, no, no, I’ve been busing myself in my garage all day. Working on a remote control car for my grandson. Have hardly looked at a screen all day!” Steve went on brightly. “I only just happened to pick up my phone from where it fell under a workbench when it started ringin’. Needed to check the time and it’s already one in the morning!” he laughed.

I glanced at a clock on the wall, reminding herself that there was a seven hour time difference from where the man lived in Canada to St. Petersberg.

“Little Jeziah was asking if I could use some Astrophage to give it a boost,” Steve chuckled. “Tried giving him a lesson on—”

“Hatch,” I cut him off. I didn’t want his whole day or family history or whatever rattled off to me. I sipped my coffee. “You’re probably going to be a busier man soon. It seems your beetles are coming home.”

The man gasped and there was a sudden clattering. I frowned, confused at the sound.

Distantly his voice came back. “Ah shit. Sorry.” Then his voice became clearer again. “The beetles? Jon, Paul, George, and Ringo? They’re gonna get back to where they once belong?” he asked in shock, though he ended with a sort of sing-song quality to his words.

“So far we only see three of them. They’re not even in our solar system yet. Initial estimates say it’ll be a few months before teams can connect to them,” I explained. “I just thought you should know.”

“W-why thank you, Eva! Or should I be calling you Eve now?” he quickly corrected. “I want to be uh, respectful a—”

“You can continue to call me Stratt,” I said flatly, unamused. I hated the new name. Well, more specifically I hated that it was necessary to use.

“Oh, uh, right. Stratt, of course. Well I really do appreciate the message! I do really hope there’s just a straggler. Would be terribly sad if we lost one. Though I suppose it’d be thematic if it were—”

“I have other calls to make,” I cut him off. I knew too well that he’d go on about the Beatles.

“Right, right. Well God bless you, Stratt! And God bless those beetles.” He took in another breath to continue speaking, but I just hung up the phone.

Irina chuckled over her mug. “I am both disappointed and glad I never got around to meeting him.”

“Be glad,” I muttered, going back to my contacts. “The optimism exuding from that man is painful sometimes, though it was necessary at others.” I found Dr. Sunan Lamai in the list and started the call. “Incredible engineer, though,” I added. “He probably had fewer failed tests than most any other part of the Project.”

Irina gave a slightly surprised look and just nodded.

“Good morning, Eva,” Dr. Lamai answered after a moment.

“Good afternoon, Sunan,” I replied. She was one of the few folks from the Project that I actually spoke with outside of Russia. We didn’t speak very often these days, but she checked in on me from time to time. The last time we spoke, she had also quite helpful when I called her after accidentally sliced my arm open by falling on my glass coffee table and shattering it. I remember her and I giving pleasantries before I told her about all the blood I was losing and she went off on me. I just needed to know if such an injury would require an emergency visit, which she very aggressively told me yes.

“I am calling because I’ve just seen some images from NASA,” I began.

Dr. Lamai said something in Thai to someone else. She was likely busy at her research facility. “Sorry, yes?”

“They believe it’s the beetles.”

“The beetles?” she repeated in a whisper.

All these years, Dr. Lamai has been fretting over the fate of the Hail Mary crew. She carried their safety on her shoulders this entire time. Four years after launch, she uncovered some concerning deficiencies with her medical robot program that terrified her. I can’t recall the specifics, and in reality it didn’t matter. The program launched with the ship and was all we had.

“The crew must made it to Tau Ceti, Sunan,” I said in a softer tone. I hoped that telling her would help unravel some of that fear and guilt.

There was a deep breath on the other end of the line. “Holy shit,” she whispered, still taking in. “They actually made it. They survived their comas.”

“I don’t know anything else yet. The beetles, three of them, have only just been detected and all the math checks out. It’s them.”

There was another moment of quiet and I gave her the time to process.

“Thank you, Eva,” she managed with a hard swallow. “Thank you for calling me.”

“Of course. I will let you know what more I learn about the crew after we get the data,” I assured. “I’ll let you get back to your work.”

“Right. Thank you,” she said again. “You take care now. Oh! Be safe. And congratulations.”

“For what?” I asked, putting the phone back to my ear as I had just been about to end the call.

“Your work. It seems you finally get to prove to the world your work was worth it.”

“I suppose so. But we need to know if they found a solution.”

“I know, I know, but this proves that a lot went right.”

I let out a small sigh and nodded to myself. “Sure, yes. But we need solutions not proof that the space program part of it succeeded.”

“Can’t you take a compliment?” Sunan said in a slight laugh.

“No, you know that.” But a small smile did turn up the corners of my lips.

“Well, I’ll keep trying anyways. I’ll let you go. Have a good day now, Eva.”

“You as well.” I hung up and let out a deep breath. I wanted to tell Dimitri, too, but chances are he’d already found out and was excited to tell me or would learn the news shortly. Besides, I’ve done enough of phone tag and repeating news to last a lifetime. This wasn’t my job anymore, though the familiarity of it was somewhat comfortable and nice. I’ll probably call Dimitri when I got on the train after breakfast.

Irina finished off her coffee. “And I’ll pass on what more I learn,” she assured as she got up. She knew well enough that I didn’t like prolonged company.

“Thank you, Irina, I really do appreciate it,” I said, looking up at her.

She placed her mug in the small dishwasher. “Take care now.”

“You as well.”

Irina let herself back out. I remained seated at my tiny kitchen table. All sorts of thoughts were flying through my mind. Faces long since past. Meeting after meeting after meeting. Practically kidnapping people to beg for their knowledge. Demanding prediction model after prediction model. Literally kidnapping the smartest person I knew.

The world didn’t quite hit the peak of those predictions, thankfully. Paradoxically, it’s all thanks to the Astrophage. The Sahara farms continued pumping out more Astrophage—albeit slower and slower as the sun has dimmed—allowing us to tap into their immense energy potential. Within a decade the world launched Demeter, a ship that took people and equipment to the moon to build a small base that’s now been named Artemis. There, scientists began using the moon for Astrophage farming, setting up solar panels near the moon’s equator where it was the hottest.

It took quite a while for things to get going, including one rather devastating lunar explosion, but now every month, Earth received a shipment of Astrophage that went to power plants. Most people still never came close to Astrphage, considering even one milligram could cause devastation. But handled correctly, it’s been used to power indoor farms, keep pipes from freezing, and even simply vent heat into the atmosphere, slowing down the cooling from the lack of sunlight.

The dishes in my sink rattle every so slightly, bringing me back in reality. The train was passing by and I needed to get on it in fifteen minutes.

There goes a nice breakfast.

I grab what’s so deliciously labeled as a Nutritious Single Meal Bar and shove it in my pocket. It’s not particularly flavorful. Nor does it have a good texture. But when energy can’t be wasted on excess ingredients to make more “fun” foods, you take what you can get so you can remain fed and therefore alive.

With my coat on, I head out, locking my door carefully before exiting the building to face the near constant blizzard. The sidewalks were well cleared and heated at least.

This was an incredibly fast magnet train based on iterations made in Japan. Many countries in the world began building efficient public transportation to reduce resource consumption. And with Astrophage power plants, operating such trains was easy.

My phone buzzed and I answered it immediately.

“Yes?” I greeted.

“Eva, my friend!” Dimitri called. “I have some most wonderful news to share with you.”

A slight smile came to my face. I decide to let him have his moment of grand reveal. “Oh? Go on,” I said as I weaved through a sparse crowd towards the open train doors.