Chapter Text
When the white woman walks into Carl’s classroom, it’s not initially cause for alarm. He starts shuffling mentally through the list of kids and their parents. It’s been a while since conferences, maybe he’s just forgotten her face.
He knows, somewhere, that isn’t true. You don’t forget a face like that, soft and world-weary. But he can hope.
Then she closes the door behind her, and his hand starts inching for the panic button under his desk.
“Ma’am,” he begins, and at the same time, she says, “don’t press that.”
So he doesn’t.
“Dr. Charlton Grace?” she asks, and he winces.
“Carl. Don’t go by Dr. Grace much these days.”
“I know,” she says, which doesn’t put him at ease at all. His hand remains within a short distance of the button. Not on it, but with the suggestion of being on it shortly. She clicks her tongue.
“My name is Eva Stratt. I’m with the Petrova Taskforce.”
She has an accent, something European. Carl’s no expert on that type of thing. Always been more for Science than Humanities.
“…Related to the Petrova line, I assume.”
He’s been reading about it a lot lately. Had to explain it to his kids. There’s no easy way to tell a room full of eighth graders that the sun is dying and they might be too.
“Yes. It’s an international body set up to deal with the Petrova line situation. I’ve been tasked with finding a solution. They’ve given me a certain amount of authority to get things done.”
“Right. And… respectfully, what does that have to do with me? I teach eighth grade science.”
“You do. But you haven’t always.”
She pulls a binder out of her briefcase and sets it on Carl’s desk. He opens the cover with a bad feeling he already knows what it is.
His name stares back at him from the page. His own dissertation, the one that’d gotten him removed from the academic world.
It wasn’t anything explosive, no. A slow, painful process. The research funding stopped coming. Rejections from every position he applied to. He was allowed to fade into irrelevance quietly, like he’d never been a part of that world at all.
“‘An Analysis of Water-Based Assumptions and Recalibration of Expectations for Evolutionary Models.’” Eva Stratt quotes, without looking at the page. “It is very well-written, Dr. Grace. Well thought out, quite eloquent. But controversial. You don’t believe life requires liquid water. Or that the Goldilocks zone is a necessary requirement for life to develop.”
“I didn’t then.”
“And now?”
“And now it doesn’t matter. Because I teach eighth grade science.”
She almost smiles.
“You know about the ArcLight probe, yes? Sent to collect the dots in the Petrova line. It is landing in a matter of days.”
“I’ve been following the news.”
“Good. We need you to study those dots when it returns.”
Carl looks at her, eyebrows raised. She stares back, impassive.
“Me.”
“Yes.”
“No ma’am.”
She does the most curious thing next; she whistles. Like one might call a dog. And one comes, in the form of a tall, lanky blond man. Carl could take him in a fight, except for the fact that he’s taken enough run-hide-fight trainings to know when someone has a gun they don’t want you to know about. The man smiles and waves at Carl like his presence hasn’t completely tipped the already fucked up balance of this dynamic.
“Hey! I’m Ry,” he says breezily. “You’re gonna have to come with us.”
“It isn’t optional,” Eva Stratt says, like that wasn’t abundantly clear.
Carl grits his teeth and stands, abandoning the panic button under the desk.
“Fine. Where are we going?”
“That’s classified,” Eva Stratt says.
Of course it is. He shouldn’t have expected anything different.