Chapter Text
The video started with one Doctor Ryland Grace sitting in front of the camera.
Well, sitting wasn’t quite the right word considering he was clearly in zero gravity, but it was the closest descriptor possible. His legs were crossed.
He barely looked older than he did when he left Earth. The frown lines in between his eyes were more defined than they used to be, but the same could be said for his crows feet and smile lines. His glasses floated next to his head, his hair floating up out of his face. He was wearing a normal T-shirt and tracksuit pants; the T-shirt had a rolling ball and the words ‘I had potential’ on it.
Altogether he looked almost exactly the same as he had before the mission. Except for the odd winding… was that a burn scar? On his left arm.
He smiled awkwardly at the camera mounted on the wall, which appeared to follow him as he floated. “Uh, hi, Earth! My name is Doctor Ryland Grace. I’m not exactly sure how many of you would know who I am, so, uh…” He ran his hand through his hair. “I was one of the leading scientists of the Petrova Task Force however many years ago—twenty six?—we first started dealing with the issue of Astrophage. I was the leading expert of Astrophage, and now am the scientist on the Hail Mary, the, uh, the ship we sent to a star system known as Tau Ceti in order to try and find a solution to the whole,” He waved his hand vaguely, accidentally causing himself to tip sideways, which he just let happen. “‘Astrophage eating the sun and cooling the Earth at an alarming rate’ issue.”
“Uh,” He swallowed, looking at something off to the side. “A lot… a lot happened between the launch and now. There is… way too much to be explained so, honestly, I’m not even going to try.” He smiled again, this time genuinely. “I mean, obviously I’ll explain how the Taumoeba—oh, right! We found a solution! I’ll explain what it is and how it works in a second, but everything else that happened? I think it would be easier to just show the logs that were taken over the course of the mission.”
There was a crash off camera. Grace didn’t acknowledge it, keeping his gaze on the camera.
“The rest of what’s on this drive is the rest of the logs from this mission. Have fun with that one. You might want to brace yourselves before watching them.”
Another crash from off camera, this time paired with what sounded like music. Not any specific song, more like someone was playing random notes on a keyboard. Grace continued to ignore it.
“Anyway! The Taumoeba! The annoying solution to the even more annoying astrophage problem. The reason why I call Taumoeba annoying will be revealed in the logs themselves. Let’s get into it.”
He twisted his body to grab something off camera, pulling a whiteboard up beside him and uncapping a pen. There was a mug sitting on the whiteboard, which made no sense considering he was still in zero gravity. He didn’t say anything about it, merely pulling it off the whiteboard and tossing it behind him.
“So basically,” He drew two circles, one bigger than the other, and connected them with a curved line. “This,” He tapped the bigger circle with the pen, “is Tau Ceti. And this,” he tapped the smaller circle, “is the planet that Astrophage came from. We called it Adrian.”
He paused, turning away from the whiteboard to look at the camera. “That—the name ‘Adrian’—will be explained at some point in the logs. I don’t remember when exactly. Anyway, the line between them is Tau Ceti’s petrova line.”
He then drew a line sectioning off the first drawing, following it up with a strange looking blob underneath. He tapped it. “This is Taumoeba. The name for this is a much simpler explanation, so I’ll just tell you now. We’re in the Tau Ceti star system and it’s essentially just an amoeba. Taumoeba.” He drew a small circle next to the blob that was Taumoeba. “The cool thing about Taumoeba is that it’s actually the natural predator of Astrophage.”
Grace did two more drawings. One of Taumoeba starting to wrap itself around the Astrophage, then another of Taumoeba with the little Astrophage circle sitting in the middle of it, completely enclosed. “Which means it eats the Astrophage.” He erased everything on the board except the first Taumoeba blob, then turned back to the camera.
“So,” He clapped his hands together. “Taumoeba eats Astrophage, but the atmosphere of Adrian is very different to the atmosphere of Venus and-” he cut himself off, frowning. It had sounded like he was about to list something else. He amended his words. “The atmosphere of Venus. The big issue was that Adrian doesn’t have nitrogen in its atmosphere.” He wrote ‘N₂’ on the whiteboard. “Which Venus does. Because, for those of you who don’t know, Venus’ atmosphere," he wrote percentages on the board, "is made up of 96.5% carbon dioxide and 3.5% nitrogen, as well as trace amounts of other gases. The other gases are not relevant. This then meant that Taumoeba would not survive on Venus.”
He crossed out the Taumoeba blob. “The good thing is we had a supply of nitrogen on board the ship! Why we had that is not important and i implore you not to worry about it. This meant that we could culture the Taumoeba in mini atmospheres that had progressively more and more nitrogen in them until we achieved a generation of Taumoeba that could survive in nitrogen. We call this,” he paused to write a name on the board. “Taumoeba-82.5! Yes, we cultured like 83 generations of Taumoeba. It took a while.”
He looked mildly haunted. Only for a second, though, before turning back to the whiteboard, drawing more blobs on it. A third crash sounded from off camera. Grace didn’t look away from the whiteboard.
“So, because Taumoeba eats Astrophage and we had… a lot of Astrophage, we basically just fed small amounts of Astrophage to the Taumoeba in their little enclosed environments with specialised atmospheres until they didn’t die of nitrogen exposure.” He shrugged, looking back at the camera. “It worked, and now we have Taumoeba-82.5 that is being sent with the beatles to Earth. Whoever retrieved the beatles, you may have noticed little metal boxes attached to them, that is a little farm kind of thing that contains the Taumoeba. It is fully sealed and you will need to use diamond to get it open. Don’t question it. If you’re wondering about atmosphere temperature, Taumoeba can survive in a very large temperature range and will survive Venus.”
Grace pushed the whiteboard away and let go of the marker, the whiteboard just kind of floating listlessly behind him and the marker in front of him. “That’s about everything you need to know about that! All the time sensitive stuff. Oh, that, and for the Taumoeba to work, you launch it into the upper atmosphere of Venus. Given,” He gestured around himself, “everything, it shouldn’t be too hard. I wouldn’t think.”
He grinned at the camera, reaching for it. “Good luck. And prepare yourselves.”
There was one last crash. The video continued for just long enough to show Grace turning to glare at something off to the side. Then it all went black.