Chapter Text
The astrophage was killing the universe.
Sometimes, it was all that Grace knew. When he awoke, memories hazy and unclear, unsure of where he was in space and time, it was a fact that he clung to with more certainty than anything else. When he didn’t remember his name, he had remembered that the astrophage was the problem.
And unfortunately, Dr. Ryland Grace was the only possible solution for lightyears.
The universe was a strange place, he had found. It was full of grand empty spaces and nebulae and tiny microbes that could devour suns.
If Grace didn’t know better, he would think that there were gods out in the vastness of spacetime.
But no, there was only himself. And a ship, full of ghosts and scientific equipment and no solution, with an alien sun out the windows.
Grace often felt as though he was on the tracks of a runaway train. And he was decidedly not the conductor. There was something beyond him in the universe that had put him on this road, and he hoped that whoever put him in this hell had paved the road with good intentions. Grace doubted it, though.
He’d been alone, out in the stars, drifting aimlessly and hoping to find some solution to the astrophage problem. He remembered that he’d named the microbes, had called them star-eater, and that they were what had made a lot of the hard times that he vaguely remembered from Earth.
Not all the hard times, of course. Astrophage was in no way responsible for late-stage capitalism or the slow decline of literacy rates in America. But it was causing climate issues. Would continue to do so if he didn’t find a solution.
And it was on one of his days pondering this that the Blip-A came into view. Grace had never done an extra-vehicular activity, had hoped it wouldn’t come to that, particularly with no memories and a dead crew.
But that’s where he found Rocky. A strange alien, five-limbed and spider-like, who was somehow both smarter and less informed than humanity about a variety of things.
After speaking to Rocky for the first few times, Grace thought about the species that he had met as he drifted off to sleep.
Gods, indeed.
Not that Rocky was a god. He was a person, sort of, with hopes and dreams and a mate and an astrophage problem to solve.
They’d been living in the Hail Mary together for a while when there was another Blip. A wormhole, a moon, a submarine.
And on that moon, other than a submarine, there was another life form. A true hellscape. Grace could hardly stomach it when he and Rocky had fished the submarine free from the ocean, similar to how they had fished for life in Adrian’s atmosphere.
Gods and men, all right.
So now, there was the problem of the astrophage. The problem of returning Rocky to his mate on Erid, the planet he was from. The problem of the blood moon and the injured man that they had pulled from the wrecked submarine.
The stress that surrounded Grace was palpable. He felt like the universe was against him. He was reminded of the Greek fates. Cutting string. Measuring a life. Putting it on its course.
Had someone put Grace on this course? He couldn’t remember.
There were now three of them on the Hail Mary - Rocky, the god-like alien who had saved Grace with his extra astrophage fuel. Grace, the human that had come from Earth with no memories and no name. And the mystery man, still asleep where Grace had first awoken.
Grace felt that he was starting some story. Some epic odyssey. There were so many problems to solve. And he wasn’t sure how to fix it.
All he knew is that he needed to bring the universe back into balance. He had no idea how. There was potentially, maybe, a solution from Adrian that they hadn’t yet found, too focused on pulling a wrecked submarine from a frickin’ blood ocean.
“Eye movement detected,” Armando blipped. The message was carried throughout the ship, although Grace was near enough that he heard it echoed. “What is two plus two?”
Grace put down what he was working on, racing to go talk to the stranger. Rocky was already there, and Grace could hear the rumbling of his chords through the ship.
Grace skidded to a stop in the doorway of the dorm room slash med bay. The stranger was sitting up, looking lost and confused.
“Grace, meet Simon,” Rocky trilled.