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Admittedly, the call from the fucking UN had been the last thing Marissa had ever expected. It's not like she expects a lot these days, what with the sun dying and everything, but some things still manage to catch her off guard, and there's a weird rush she gets when they do.
Pretty much all of her days are the same now, at least at work, and it's not like she exactly has time to catch up with people outside. Even before all of this shit with the astrophage, civil servant-ing took up far more of a person's time than it reasonably should, to the point where her Thursday evenings with Ryland were religious and time honoured, and it had become a bit of a joke for new team leaders to try and argue the toss about her overtime. It's only gotten worse, really, with the amount of charts they're watching and consultations with climatologists about prediction papers for food stockpiles, and now with temperatures noticeably beginning to drop beyond a slightly colder than average spring, it's not getting any better any time soon.
Ryland always knew how to help, always knew good excuses for getting out of overtime and creative insults to get her supervisors off her back, just like he was back in grad school. Really, he never changed, and she thought he never would; he was one of those perpetually youthful souls, who's weeks all looked the same and who's routines where baked into the ground he trod like a drag path, always the same meals at the same restaurants after dealing with the same variety of bullshit from eighth graders. Time and tide waited for no man, but Ryland Grace seemed to be able to keep them off his back for a bit longer than everyone else.
At least, until-
"If you're just joining us folks, it's a quiet four in the afternoon aboard the International Space Station, and we're tuning into the final preparations of the valiant crew of the Hail Mary-"
Until now.
She's not sure why the Project Hail Mary livestream would be good background noise, but it's on pretty much every television channel baring children's cartoons, so it's not like she has much choice, she just needs something to fill the ghostly silence of the flat. Between this and Bluey, it's a no brainer; at least she can pick the accent she's being told about humanity's last chance at hope in. Surprisingly, for the first time maybe ever, it's a pleasant distraction from the task at hand, considering that the ISS is probably infinitely more organised than the state that Ryland left his goddamn flat in. Back in grad school, he wasn't exactly the cleanest, but Marissa had just assumed that was a side effect of being a twenty one year old man in a shared college dorm room. This is taking the piss though, to the point where she's not entirely sure how much of this was him and not the hellish scenario the earth seem to have landed itself in.
From the moment she turned the key in the door, she knew this was going to be rough. Three years is a long time to allow junk mail to build, and in all honesty she's surprised the key even worked - three years is also a long time for your landlord to claim abandonment and put in new tenants, but the unspoken silence around Ryland's name seems to persist. Even before it was announced he was going to be the replacement science officer, there's been a hush in the air that was never there before, a slightly sympathetic quality in her mother's voice whenever she asks if she's heard from him, like he's been raised to sainthood before he's even dead on account of just being associated with the project.
Because in a way, he has, declared by the golden wings on his chest and coffin he's currently being loaded into. She didn't even get to say goodbye properly.
"You really don't have to hang around you know," Marissa mutters as she shakes out a plastic trash bag - none of this is being wasted, tags on the dining table waiting patiently to allocate this bag as one for a local incinerator, ready to provide whatever meagre heat San Francisco can hoard, "not my first rodeo - had to clean out my abuelita's ranch when she passed, I can sort it on my own if you're busy."
In the threshold of the flat, the official looking dude who met her to drop the keys off shrugs as he folds his hands back into the pocket of his thick black duster. Apparently the Petrova Project only ever hired strange, tall, mysterious people - apart from Ryland, clearly - since this man has said maybe five words to her since they met, and takes up far more space in aura than physicality despite being easily over six foot and built like a bouncer.
"It's alright," he practically whispers, for such a formal man he speaks softer than anyone she's ever met before, pressed suit barely shifting as he shuffles his shoulders faintly, "I'd like to help."
There's no arguing that. Mom's too far away to come over and help, not with how expensive plane tickets are these days, and somehow Ryland's accrued a shit ton of random crap that somehow she's got to sort into trash and charity. Might only take her one week rather than two if he's willing to stick around.
"Fine," Marissa relents, and the man lips twitch into a ghost of a smile, "you hold the bag, I'll dump this shit into it, I doubt Ry' was particularly attached to pizza menus - I- I don't think I got your name?"
"That's 'cause I didn't give it," the government man says flatly, not at all helping the Men In Black vibe he's executing perfectly as he wanders over to take the bag off her, "Carl."
"Nice to meet you," she replies with a laugh, and the faint shutting of the front door sounds like a slam in the eerie silence of the apartment, "hope you don't mind carrying shit down three flights of stairs, I thought I saw an out of order sign on the lift."
A wry smile curls across his lips as he shakes the bag out slightly. "Try doing all this shit on an active aircraft carrier, then we'll talk."
All she wants to do is ask, but she knows better than anyone that there's a grand total of fuck all he can probably reveal. If there's one thing a shadowy UN department loves, it's an NDA, and she knows everyone on that shadowy UN department had to sign one; after he got drafted, she got maybe one email a week from Ryland, heavily edited to say that he was safe and wouldn't be able to make their Thursday dinner that week, but it was better than nothing. Sometimes if she was lucky, he'd include a link to a newly published paper or a stupid anecdote about someone on the boat - he'd given everyone a silly nickname, and from their shared knowledge of pop culture she'd been able to puzzle out roughly what everyone's job was on the boat, but it was enough to slip past the filters.
"So, which one are you, then?" Marissa asks innocently, Carl's lips curling wryly like he already knows what she means, "you- you know about his little email workaround, yeah?"
"Who do you think had to scan his emails?" Carl chuckles dryly, shaking the paper waste bag as it starts to fill up to try and free up some space, "I was his assigned handler, nothing that he did got out without it going around me first."
"You poor fucker," Marissa laughs, and Carl's face goes flat again, eyes flat all of a sudden - if she didn't know any better she'd say that was almost grief, but the only emotion he's shown since he got here was a dry, almost frustrated tiredness, so who's to say, "I bet you have some stories."
All Carl does is smile that wry, tight smile again, clearly not keen on letting anything slip, and whilst she can't be mad, she wants something, anything, any remaining proof that someone else remembers him as a person rather than a martyr. Maybe Carl never knew him, not properly - she can't even begin to guess the exact job of a handler other than the fact that Ryland could definitely be a handful if he wanted to be, and for a second, she's jealous. From his emails she could only imagine what kind of ecstatic science experiments he was putting together on an aircraft carrier with an alien cell that could power the entire United States with an equivalent mass to a bag of flour, and Ryland was always at his best when no one else gave a damn about what he had to do to get results. What she would have given to have seen him like that, to see that proper, wicked grin on his face she hasn't seen since he was putting together his thesis application in a haze of caffeine and sleep deprivation.
The Ryland Grace that went to space, taught eighth graders about colour cones and sound waves, rode that crappy bike around San Francisco like he owned the place, was - is - not the Ryland Grace, pill-popping, last minute essay writing, desperately trying to fit in Ryland Grace she knew back in college. Maybe the reason Marissa's not mourning him properly yet is that the Ryland in her head has been dead for a little while now, and she still hasn't made up her mind on whether that's for the best.
At least the junk mail doesn't take too long to clear, and there's very little in here of worth that either of them have to take time to check. Thankfully Carl catches the most important things, he's got a better eye than her apparently, and most of it is formalities from the various journals that have accepted his astrophage research papers, submitted for him over the many years on the ship. Dutifully, Carl checks every one, a very faint smile curling on his face at every other one, and it's fond in a way that Marissa doesn't think Ryland has ever inspired in anyone, even Linda from the however many times he invited her to dinner.
"He really meant a lot to you, huh?"
Carl's head snaps up, eyebrow raised. "'Scuse me?"
God, why the fuck did she say that? Why the fuck is she calling out a UN bodyguard who's a foot taller than her and could probably chuck her a hundred yards if he tried? But she carries on anyway - call it filling the silence, dealing with grief, whatever. Hopefully she won't get arrested for knowing too much at the end of it. "I wouldn't pick through just about anyone's junk mail, but you are, nor would I hang around to clear up some random dead man's flat-"
Her words hang in the air heavily, and her throat closes around the oxygen in her lungs. God. He's actually dead.
"-Over the next thirteen years, the Hail Mary is set to travel over eleven light years to reach the Tau Ceti system. Whilst we watch Commander Yao Li-Jang and Chief Engineer Olesya Ilyukhina prepare their final meal in space for a long, long time, we're joined here in the studio by Astronaut Major Tim Peake. Now, Major, you went up to the ISS in 2015-"
"Sorry, I-" she cuts herself off, the drone of the BBC world news presenter filling the room like asbestos, and her eyes prick painfully as she looks down at the junk mail in her hands, "fuck, sorry."
Doctor Ryland Grace, the tax invoice declared. Of course he was still registered everywhere as Doctor no matter how hard he tried to distance himself from academia. Bastard's ego just needed to be stroked every now and then, and apparently the only way he was getting that was through the IRS and his utilities bills.
"All good," Carl states, letting the bag drop to the floor to take a slight step forwards, "need a minute?"
"I- yeah, maybe." Everything in Marissa's body feels like lead, aching and numb at the same time. Suddenly she's aware of pressure on her elbow, and as she blinks away tears Carl's a lot closer to her than he was before, waste bag left discarded and a few stray envelopes sliding out; he's leading her somewhere, over to one of Ryland's threadbare sofas. When he'd first moved in, she'd hired a van for him, and they'd wandered around a local Salvation Army secondhand shop trying to find some furniture for him that wasn't going to put him further into the credit card debt she knew he was already in. When she'd offered to pay, she knew his protests were just for show.
One corner of the sofa is moulded in a distinct dent, right in front of the TV, probably the soul spot he came home to every night to relax with Brian Cox documentaries and a pile of papers to grade. As Carl leads her to the sofa, they skirt around a coffee table, and she nearly upends a small collection of what looks like pop quizzes he was halfway through marking when he got whisked away. It was like he just ceased to exist, got up for a glass of water and just never came back, like this whole flat has been frozen in time since the date those space dots became public knowledge.
In a blink she's eased onto the sofa, onto a pillow that feels as unused as the day they bought it; Ryland was a man of habit and routine, everyone knew this, and the starkness of how deeply his routines were entrenched into his flat almost makes her sob. If she were to wipe her eyes and focus, she'd probably be able to make out distinct dirt tracks in the fraying carpet of the exact pathways he'd navigate this flat by, trace his route from sofa to kitchenette to bedroom like his ghost was going through the motions before her.
No ghost, not yet. He's not dead yet.
Gently a plastic bottle of water is placed into her hands, and Carl shifts slowly from kneeling before her - when was he kneeling? - to a kitchen stool he'd dragged over to the other side of the coffee table. Never has she been more grateful for water as she cracks the top and takes a few sips before her treacherous throat threatens to choke.
"Want me to turn the TV off?" Carl asks politely, voice soft and quiet, and Marissa shakes her head.
"I want to see him," she states shakily, "I need to- I need to see that it's really, truly him and this isn't just some awful dream."
"They probably won't show much of him," Carl advises, a strange knowing to his tone, "it's not pretty-"
"Oh, because you probably got him ready to die, right?" She snaps, and she doesn't even know why she's snapping. Her throat hurts, her lungs fight for oxygen, and anger sears through her like a flashover, searching for something, anything to burn. Sorry, Carl, she says in her head, and promises to actually say it later.
Carl's expression twists, eyes dropping as his flat expression becomes faintly downtrodden. Jesus fucking Christ, what a fucked up thing of her to say, fucking hell-
"I did," he confirms, voice still soft but unwavering, and for a second it's like all the air has left the room, "someone had to put him in his flight suit, for ceremony, safety, and the goddamn photos we all knew the press were gonna' take. I made sure he was presentable, at least."
All Marissa can do is gape. This man was with Ryland on his last moments on Earth, and now he's clearing out an empty flat like nothing was the matter. Immediately her mind races with questions - what were Ryland's final words? What convinced him to finally sign up? Was there anything he wanted passed along? - but nothing seems quite right to say, words dying on her tongue before any of them can form properly.
"And I promise you, it ain't something you want to see." Carl's still speaking, apparently, so she forces herself to tune back in. "Lots of wires and tubes and shit, more than I think should be in one person. They'd have to do a lot of editing to give him dignity."
On the TV screen, Yao and Ilyukhina cheers their water pouches together with the various Roscosmos, NASA, and CNSA astronauts on the ISS. Their smiles are wide, their happiness infectious. At least Ryland is in safe hands.
"I think he called me 'skittles' in his emails," Carl adds, and Marissa's focus snaps back as he answers a question she feels like she asked maybe years ago. That lines up, Skittles was always painted as a scary security type who Ryland seemed to think was a bit of a soft touch on account of the sweets deliveries left mysteriously on his desk every Friday afternoon, and she can see it. Intimidating looking guy with a soft side lines up nicely from how terrifying he was on the phone and yet how kindly he sat her down with a bottle of water, she can easily see how Ryland kind of imprinted on this dude.
He always liked soft people, not just kind people, soft people. Folks who were tactile with their friends and checked in on him even when he didn't entirely deserve it - she just used to assume he liked the attention, but he never really managed to find a life partner, or maybe never wanted to try, so maybe people like that filled the gap for him. He'd trail around after some of their joint friends like a puppy, helpful in a sly way where he'd often guilt people into letting him do things for them, and he was like that with her right up until the day he vanished.
"Makes sense," Marissa hiccups, and Carl's head cocks slightly in questioning, "was he really so pathetic on the job that you had to bribe him into working?"
Breathing a slight laugh, Carl leans back on his stool, hands folding in his lap. "Grace was the easiest to manage person I was assigned to on that fuckin' boat," he states, and Marissa has to bite back a sarcastic laugh, "and weirdly infectious - if he was in a grump, his team was in a grump. But, he had an affinity for sour skittles and a beer every now and then, so he was easy to not make grumpy. If only everyone on that project was as easy to keep happy."
"He was like that at grad school too," she laughs wetly, wiping at her nose with the sleeve of her woollen cardigan and mentally making a note she'll need to wash it later, "he- I'm sure he probably told you, he was my college boyfriend's roommate, and the only times I could ever have a decent conversation with Connor was when Ryland was in the room, he's- yeah, infectious, that's about right."
Carl hums under his breath like he's remembering something. "He never changed - only way half our partners could have a decent conversation with our boss was if Grace was at the table."
Sounds about right, that sounds like her Ryland.
"-and of course, my deepest sympathies for Doctor Grace, who is unlikely to have much zero-g training-"
"We should start on the kitchen," Carl states, pushing himself to his feet, palms heavy against his knees, and once he's up he offers Marissa a hand, "get the worst bit out of the way."
"I thought his bedroom would be the worst," she snickers - apparently insulting him keeps the tears at bay, "I remember his dorm room, that was-"
"I tided up in there, before," Carl states plainly, "someone had to get him clothes for up there."
Thankfully the kitchen isn't complicated, it's mostly just a matter of chucking everything that was once upon a time edible out and boxing up his crockery for the second hand store. Nothing in here is sacred or particularly special, Ryland wasn't exactly much of a chef, so it's not like he went out of his way to acquire expensive pans or technical appliances; most of it is probably the same shit he had in college, two pans, a rusting oven tray, and a two-person ceramic dining set that's scratched from years upon years of use. The only thing that immediately looks like it's even worth saving is a novelty set of salt and pepper shakers, clumsily painted to look like Jupiter and Saturn, and they're only of worth to her because she's pretty sure she painted one of them.
("C'mon Ry', how can your hands be so shaky? You used to handle nanopipettes for a living."
"I just don't wanna' screw it up." His tongue pokes out the corner of his lips in focus, delicate paintbrush wobbling faintly in his grip. "Not much of a housewarming present for you and Sasha if one's shoddy-"
"Actually, she bought us some nice mechanical ones last week from TJ Maxx, I thought you could have these for your new flat. You're doing Jupiter, right? I'll do Saturn.")
The fridge is the worst, mostly on account of how no one's opened it in God knows how long, and apparently the week before he vanished Ryland decided it was time to attempt cooking from scratch. Maybe once upon a time there was fresh produce in here, but all that remains now is a thin black sludge that drips onto the laminate as they both recoil from the sheer stench of it all; she had assumed the awful smell was his drains or something but no, instead it's the remains of two chicken breasts and some unidentified vegetables that have rotted so severely that even the mould can't hold its shape anymore.
For a second Carl hesitates, hands out in front of him twitching like he's trying to work out what to do, and Marissa's cleaned enough dodgy kitchens to know what someone grossed the hell out looks like. Logically, he's a handler, not a janitor, and that carrier probably had a fleet of cleaners at the ready for any and all eventualities. He showed up to a dead man's flat in a neatly pressed suit whilst she's in her paint stained overalls and a shirt with holes in the hem, that should have told her everything she needed to know.
"Don't sweat it, I got this," she says genuinely, and Carl takes a grateful step back, rubbish bag outstretched just that little bit further than before as she braces herself for the stink. Nothing a bit of industrial cleaner and a shit ton of kitchen roll can't fix, and whilst it takes a damn long time, at least most of the liquid gets soaked up. Unfortunately, there's not a lot she can do about the permanent grey stain on the plastic shelving, but it's not exactly like anyone's going to be picking this up secondhand; this is going straight to the skip, along with the ratty sofa and the peeling coffee table and his shitty TV. All ready for someone new to move in and have no idea that they're following the same motions as a man who decided to go to Tau Ceri and never come home again.
Maybe they'll put a blue plaque above the door like they do in England, 'Here lived Doctor Ryland Grace, astrobiologist and discoverer of Astrophage.' Except there's no way the landlord would agree to that, and Ryland would hate it because inevitably they won't mention his shittily paid teacher job and apparently that's all he cared about.
Thankfully there's fuck all in the freezer except mounds of frost and some severely ice-burned ready meals, lasagna and pot pie and meatloaf ready to be microwaved within an inch of its life. The whole thing needs defrosting, but it probably needed defrosting when he lived here, he didn't know shit about any kind of appliance maintenance apart from the fact he needed to clean his microwave every now and then. At the back, she finds one lone blue raspberry ice pop that was probably still fine from the chemicals and- yep, the best before isn't for a few months yet.
Carl grimaces. "You ain't actually thinking of eating that, right?"
"Listen man, we're gonna' be rationing sugar by Christmas," Marissa grumbles, slipping the ice pop back into the front of the freezer to collect on the way out, "I'll take whatever the hell I can, Sash bought a packet of these a few weeks ago and there's no goddamn blue raspberry anymore."
It's the little things that fuck you up the most in the apocalypse, apparently.
The rest of the kitchen doesn't take very long. His cupboards are bare bar for a few long life staples, and whilst his pasta probably isn't edible anymore, at least it's crumbled to dust inside the intact plastic bag it was bought in. Same for the tinned peaches - actually those might still be okay, she should take these home and see - and the box of shortbread biscuits one of his students had bought him as a gift, but it all ends up in the same bin bag headed straight for the incinerator. Neither of them can afford to discriminate, neither of them want to be here any longer than they have to; this is an exercise in house flipping rather than passing through their friend's personal effects, and by the time the sun is beginning is set over the bay, they're tying off the seventh trash bag of the area.
Both of them have worked up a sweat, and whilst the landlord has paid for professional cleaners to come around in the morning (on me, he'd said, because who wants to hold a debt against one of the valiant saviours of Earth?) she doesn't want them to walk head first into a biohazard. Or, worse, have this mess as their first impression of Ryland, and from the way Carl has been intently mopping the cheap laminate, he gets it.
Quietly, there's a warmth somewhere in Marissa's chest. For as long as she'd known him, Ryland was and probably still is a lonely man, and he seemed content with that. Sometimes she loved it - she'd go out with friends who couldn't put their phones down for long enough to have a solid conversation, and God didn't it piss her off - but there was always this acceptance that followed him around like a shadow. Sure, maybe he was content with passing small talk with other teachers and dinner with her once a week, but she never quite understood how much of that was self-imposed. At college he'd had friends, of course he had to, otherwise they never would have met, but the moment he swore off the booze and the Ecstasy tabs to try and knuckle down on his thesis their calls became less and less frequent.
And yet, Carl is here, and maybe Ryland wasn't as alone on that boat as she first thought. Carl packed him up his clothes, rifled through his drawers for a list of sentimental objects whilst Ryland was busy getting mission ready, lined his pockets with sugar because he knew which sweets Ryland liked the most. She's grateful, she thinks, in a way she can't quite place.
"Let's call it here." Carl's heavy sigh snaps her out of her thoughts; at some point he's shrugged off the duster, the jacket, and his tie, it almost makes him look like a regular guy rather than some stony official. "You want Chinese?"
In the background, the TV continues to roll, and true to Carl's word, they haven't once shown Ryland. "Sure, if you're offering."
"I am," he confirms with a nod, "and if you didn't drive here, there's a beer in the basket already, thought we might need it."
"Well I did, but I'll get my wife to get a bus down and drive me home," she says with a weary laugh, and Carl passes her his phone with a food delivery app open before, "what can I get?"
Carl shrugs, before sitting down on the stool again heavily. "Whatever. My expense account is still open, and I know for a fact my boss doesn't check my invoices."
"Your boss? That's…"
"La'An," Carl mutters, "I never got that one."
"Chief of Security on the Enterprise in Strange New Worlds." That's her favourite Star Trek series, of course he would slide a reference in for her, they watched the whole show over about two weeks together. "She's quite… guarded, harbours a lot of guilt but always does what she thinks is right regardless, and she usually is right. I always thought it was weird, everyone else's name is funny, but her's wasn't."
Slowly, Carl nods, gaze distant like he's connecting some far flung dots she will never be able to make out. "Aptly picked."
He doesn't say anything else, and Marissa figures that maybe that's all he can say. Ms Eva Stratt remains a public mystery despite how her image is nearly indistinguishable from the entirety of Project Hail Mary, Ryland never had much to say about her other than how much of a ball-breaker she was and how sad she looked.
Swiftly, food is ordered, and like clockwork they retake their places in front of the TV, both of them dancing around Ryland's indented cushion like he died there. It's about half an hour until the Hail Mary departs the ISS, then it'll be about a month and a half until her radio handshakes become too sparse to monitor from the other side of the solar system, and the painful waiting game begins. On screen, Yao and Ilyukhina talk a Roscosmos camera man though their final checks, the lens trained on Ilyukhina skillfully doing an EVA around their external camera mounts, and for a second she looks like she's dancing, making the bulky suit look like a ballet leotard as she flits from camera to camera.
Ryland would have killed to have seen this.
"…and Mr Murphy from United Kingdom Channel Four would like to know status of Doctor Grace," the cameraman asks, voice light as he rattles off a series of questions handpicked from the journalists of the world, "May world get one last look at him? There are… many questions here for him."
As if on cue, Carl perks up at the same time as Marissa.
Cocking his head slightly, Commander Yao turns to his left, softly asking something to someone off screen in mandarin, before nodding solemnly after receiving an inaudible reply. "Final preparations for Doctor Grace's coma have just been finished. I can take you."
Marissa's breath catches in her throat.
Smoothly the camera is lead through the open tunnel connecting the ISS to the Hail Mary, airlock thrown open for the world to see. Over the last few days, she's seen a lot of the inside of the ship, the whole world has, thanks to the two astronauts happily giving tours of their condo sized coffin, so the space doesn't seem alien and sterile anymore; they've hung bunting along some of the grab rails, hand stitched by the hopefuls they're leaving behind, and paper posters line the walls wherever there isn't essential equipment.
They're led down into the dormitory, past two empty beds that are ear marked for Yao and Ilyukhina in order of intended earliest wake up. Yao is to be the first, so that he's with it enough to help orient Ilyukhina, and then apparently Ryland is enough of a liability that waking him up is a two man job, so he's all the way at the bottom, nearly flush with what will be the floor when they're in gravity.
It takes a second for the camera to focus, but she can make out what looks like a body bag at the bottom; it's not quite zipped up, but she can see his face, oh my god, she can see his face-
The camera gets closer. Without a doubt, that's Ryland Grace, her dumbass ex-boyfriend's roommate who couldn't make toast without burning the kitchen down, who once took so many caffeine pills in one day he ended up in the emergency room with temporary arrhythmia and a migraine that took two weeks to ease. Ryland, who had a full blown crisis on her couch after Linda called it off, calling himself broken and fucked in the head 'cause he couldn't feel what she could.Ryland who bounded into their familiar diner one evening on the verge of tears because a kid who had been struggling at home got a C in a mid-term knowledge check and came up to him afterwards to thank him.
Her best friend Ryland Grace, best man at her wedding, co-conspirer in her proposal to Sasha, her ride or die. Hooked up to an NG tube and a respirator and God knows what else is hidden by the wall the bed slides into. This is really happening.
"The last thing he said to me was how he gets sick on elevators," Commander Yao explains to an invisible audience, hovering next to Ryland's head to shift some stray blonde stands out of his pleasantly closed eyes like he might wake up because of it, "so he requested to be put into his coma on Earth. Thankfully the ship is programmed to take many photos of our solar system, so he will not miss out on our beautiful planet, and Ilyukhina and I will be ready to wake him upon arrival at Tau Ceti."
"They're really accommodating to him," Marissa comments, unable to tear her eyes away from the screen, "he- we went on holiday to Mexico once, some all inclusive piss-up when I was dating Connor, and he threw up before the plane had even left the runway."
"It's for the best," Carl murmurs in response, and she's not entirely sure exactly what he's referring to, "everything, and everyone on that ship is designed to keep him safe, no one knows astrophage better than he does."
"You're saying-?"
"That ship is a vessel for an intergalactic laboratory," Carl continues, "that commander is there to get that lab to Tau Ceti, and that engineer is there to keep that lab functioning once they get there. Everything hinges on him."
She focuses back in on the screen, at Ryland's sleeping form, and wonders for a second how he ended up so goddamn important. For this moment, he's the most important human alive.
"Why did he pick me?" She asks absentmindedly, still staring steadfastly at the screen; she's a bit worried if she looks anywhere else that she'll forget his face, "I mean, I'm flattered, but next of kin? Really?"
Carl shrugs again. He does a lot of that, apparently, seemingly not a guy with a lot of concerns on his shoulders. "I dunno', but he was the only head of department I managed that I was able to do a full on-boarding for, and he was certain if anything happened to him, everything went to you."
"He has a brother - a twin, I think, down in Hollywood." No parents though, she remembers picking him up from the funeral before dropping him straight onto a plane to Denmark for that fateful conference, he hadn't even had time to change out of his suit. Sometimes she wonders if she should have made them late, taken a wrong turn, or put her foot down about him not going, since maybe then he would still be in academia. "I don't think they talk much."
"Went non-contact before college, Grace was adamant he wasn't to be involved," Carl says firmly, and Marissa feels sick all of a sudden that she didn't know this about her best friend, "he said if anything happened to him, you'd know what to do."
Guilt festers in her stomach quietly, and she has to forcibly fight off the traditional part of her that says family should be family in times of grief and strife. Maybe she was family to him, lord knows she feels that way about him, and certainly not about the doppelgänger she spotted on the other side of the crematorium car park trying to fit his temporary crutches into the back of his car before driving off without a word.
A week ago, she'd found his number on an agency site, and swears every day she's going to call him to see if he wants to grieve Ryland with her, but she hasn't found the courage yet.
"Doctor Grace is, without a doubt, our bravest member," Commander Yao, ever calm and collected, continues on the screen; he's floated away from Ryland now, and in a strange way Marissa is grateful for it, "it took a lot of courage for him to consent to be with us on this mission, I know first hand how much he sacrificed for this having trained with him since I was selected."
His throat bobs, barely visible on the poor-quality feed. "He would have wanted me to share that he is a teacher first, and an Astrobiologist second. He wants nothing but safety for the children of Earth. I cannot think of a more noble reason to do what we are preparing to do."
Preparing to die alone in space, Marissa thinks, far away from everyone who loved him, looked up to him, where they weren't even given a chance to tell him how much he will be missed.
"Marissa," Carl says suddenly, gaze suddenly focused on her, and she feels intensely like she's about to be interrogated, "you need to be prepared for what happens next."
She's immediately taken aback - fucking hell, her best friend's unconscious face is on international TV whilst they talk ominously about all the ways he's sacrificing himself for humanity, give her a chance. "Carl, can't this wait-?"
"No," he interrupts bluntly, and for the first time today there's a shakiness in his voice, like maybe he's nervous, "Marissa, the moment that ship leaves Earth's orbit, there is going to be a criminal investigation into the entire Petrova Taskforce, and I need you to be prepared about what comes out about Grace and why he is on that ship."
"You sound like you're about to tell me he killed those science officers himself," she spits, but Carl's expression doesn't shift, "go on, tell me, what awful things did Ryland do this time?"
"Nothing. He did nothing except defend himself," Carl answers truthfully, ominously, and the venom on the tip of Marissa's tongue becomes icy, cold and uncomfortable, "I just need you to be prepared - it will all be public information in line with the guidelines of the International Criminal Court, and I know Ms Stratt will not lie."
"Well, that was our last view at the astronauts of the Hail Mary, as they begin final preparations before departure," the newsreader states calmly, "stay with us as we give a final tribute to our heroes - the livestream will continue on this channel for the next few weeks as we follow the Hail Mary on its journey beyond the Solar System."
"He didn't want to go, did he?" She asks, her own voice thin and reedy, tinny to her own ears, and Carl's silence tells her all she needs to know.
They eat in silence, the only noise being a memorial reel that goes into detail of each member of the crew, sharing photos and stories submitted by loved ones. As expected, Ryland's is the shortest, with only a few photos scraped from social media and no obituaries, at least she doesn't remember being contacted to give one; it's rougher than the other two, naturally no one had time to cobble together something for him, but they did their best to highlight the successes and gloss over whatever the fuck happened in Denmark. Her beer tastes like shit, her takeout like cardboard, but she eats it anyway, going through the motions of chopsticks to mouth and back again, and Carl is very clearly doing the same.
The ship launches without a hitch. Outside the window, there's a few cheers from neighbouring flats, but it's otherwise quiet, still as a lake as the world is glued to their feeds. An eerie rememberence rather than a heroic cerebration, and when the feed cuts back to the newsreader, she's changed into a modest black dress. Marissa's pink overalls suddenly feel far too cheery for such an occasion.
Truthfully, she wants to be angry at Carl, wants to ball up her fists and scream and smash something until he agrees to tell her every little detail of what went down on that ship. Inside her chest roils something uncomfortable, something slimy and chilling and vile that says nothing about this is what it seems, and Carl clearly fucking knows and Carl clearly isn't going to fucking tell her. She's up shit creak without a paddle, left to survive whilst hell freezes over knowing that her best and closest friend was shipped off to the next fucking star system after having his life upended for the greater good, and something fucking stinks about it.
She wants to rage, cry, sob until her chest hurts, pulls at her hair until it comes out in clumps, burn this fucking sofa that still smells like that horrible drugstore cologne Ryland bought religiously, rip those pop quizzes to shreds.
Instead-
"There's a few of us that are going to the diner me and Ryland used to meet at," she hears herself say like she's watching herself from the ceiling, "this Thursday, might be a one-off, but I hope it's not."
For the first time in a while, Carl's gaze softens, corners of his mouth downturned as he threads his hands together.
"There's not many of us," she rambles, tripping on the words as her eyes prick painfully again, "me, Sash, a few of our mates from college, some of the other teachers from his school - I'm gonna' try and reach out to his brother, but no promises."
She can't hold them back, the tears start to flow, and her eyes burn but she just can't bring herself to wipe them away. "Couple of drinks, share some stories. We're- we're gonna' make sure he's remembered, you're welcome to come if you'd like."
Naturally, Carl's going to say no; why the fuck would he come along when he can't share anything that isn't under a heavily guarded NDA? What else is there to share? Were they really friends-?
"I'd like that," Carl answers, gaze locked in his own hands, and if Marissa focuses through the tears she can see where his jaw is locked tightly in an attempt to keep composure, "text me the address, I'll be there."
And as his own tears threaten to spill over, she believes him.
"No understand, thought you were happy with meburgers?"
Explaining human routine is still a thing that's taking a bit of time to sink in for Rocky, as is variety. If it's one thing that Grace has learned, it's that eridians love repetition, and have no reason to mix things up like he's apparently so intent on doing, so getting Rocky to understand his apparently zany requests requires a bit of patience.
"I am!" He answers lightly, unable to help the cheeky grin that spreads as Rocky grumbles in indignation behind him, "it's just- it's Thursday, y'know?"
"Yes yes, nearly end of work week, I know," Rocky retorts with a sung eye-roll; he's loafed on his reinforced stool at the kitchen table, using two hands to knit some small bird figurines with xenonite whilst a third holds up his light to texture camera at the laptop screen, "don't understand why that means you require specific meal, though - thinking machine tells me it is meant to be fish on Friday. You have not asked for fish and it is not Friday."
"Aha, that one's for religious folk, which I am not," Grace hums back, and the me-steak sizzles pleasantly in the pan, "back on Earth, Thursday was the night me and my best friend would go out for dinner, and we'd always have steak."
Behind him there's a soft chitter of understanding. "Understand. Just like how Friday is Grace-Rocky date night."
He has to laugh at that, Rocky's sincerity endearing in a way that makes his chest warm and his brain lightheaded. In a way, Rocky is bang on the money, Friday is their dedicated evening where Grace gets Rocky all to himself (or maybe it's the other way round, he's not sure and doesn't particularly care), and they usually end up playing a game or watching a movie until Grace needs to sleep. For the last few weeks, they've been on a board game kick, so currently Rocky sits making physical representations of the bird cards for Wingspan in preparation for tomorrow, and it's one of the few occasions where his perfect memory works in their favour. Since he can't read the cards easily, they've settled on making little models for each bird; Rocky reads each bird's abilities whilst he's making the card-rep, commits them to memory, and then it's only Grace who needs to refer to the laptop when playing something to his board. It's what they did with the robber and the resources in Catan, and that worked like a charm.
"Yeah, kinda'" Grace replies happily, flipping the me-steak in the cast xenonite pan, "except Marissa wasn't my mate, she was just my friend - I think I've told you about her before, we went to school together, and she was the only one who stuck with me when everything went downhill."
"Marissa," Rocky parrots like he's testing the name over his voice boxes - it doesn't directly translate, another tricky proper noun, but he can make out Grace-Earth-friend-kind-long-time in amongst the affectionate embellishments, so he can easily infer the meaning, "good friend to you, therefore good friend to me, to Erid. You miss her?"
"I do." Rocky's question catches him off guard, and for a moment the room is ever so slightly too small. "I miss her a lot."
The steak sizzles in the pan, unfeeling, and Grace just stares. Sometimes he'd feel bad for ordering steak on her credit card, but she'd always insist, always grumble that she needed it more than he did and he wasn't gonna' clear his plate anyway so really she was just paying for her meal and then some after she'd picked at his leftovers.
Gosh he hopes she's alive.
Something brushes past his pant leg, and he flinches away instinctively before he feels something smooth and warm loop around his right hand handing loosely by his side. Of course, it's Rocky, holding his hand gently as his carapace tilts up slightly to focus in on him. Steadfast, supportive Rocky, who always seems to know when the wave of malaise is going to hit him before he's even awake of it, thumb stroking gently over his knuckles in a familiar, calming rhythm.
"Speak about her," Rocky instructs softly, shuffling in slightly to press himself against Grace's leg, "human memory fallible, tell me now so I remember her for you when you forget."
The holes in Grace's memory have been growing, after all. Yesterday he woke up and forgot where he was until Rocky took him by the hand and gently led him back to bed, and it wasn't until a few hours later that the realisation hit that he hadn't been scared at all.
So he tells him, recounts nearly every routine and adventure they had together, from the awful Mexico holiday to how she'd shown up at his parents' funeral for him, to how he was the first person she turned to when she finally escaped Connor, how he gave a truly awful speech at her wedding that she still quotes to wind him up. Bird models are forgotten about as Grace continues to talk through his meal, Rocky only wincing slightly when he forgets to chew in his eagerness, but never leaves, never asks Grace to stop or to come back to this another day.
They talk until the fake sun is dimmed, Rocky asking curious questions whenever he can get a word in edgeways, and by the time the emulated sunset streams in through the windows of his cottage, Grace feels exhausted in that horrible, joyous way when one has been flipping between tears and laughter. Grief, his mind supplies, for someone who isn't dead, but he'll never see again.
"There is some talk in Science Thrum about a probe," Rocky states gently after they've retired to bed, the dehydration from crying making Grace's joints ache painfully, "we include message for Marissa, let her know you are safe and she is loved."
As Grace nods, Rocky curls around him, careful not to put his full weight on Grace's chest, but just enough that there's a supportive, comforting weight against his ribs. Like a weighted blanket back home, except this one holds him lovingly around his middle, and plays with his hair when sleep eludes him. Memories replay of the sleepovers he had in her flat when he was at his lowest, when she would insist he slept in her bed so she could hold him close and make sure he rested, and when he did the same for her when she couldn't trust the sounds of her own house-
"Sleep, my Grace," Rocky insists, like he can hear the desperate firing of Grace's brain scrabbling to remember everything about her he could, "we craft message in the morning."
Hopefully there will be enough space on that probe for everything he needs to say.