Chapter Text
With a deep sigh Patrick put a cup of a freshly brewed coffee on his workdesk and plopped down on his chair. NASA this days was such a joke. When he applied for the position, he thought he'll be a scientiest, studying deep space and et cetera. Instead he was looking for unauthorised spy satellites in the northern hemisphere. What a joke! But at least with donations from army, he had enough money for food and for heating in his house - last winter was truly brutal.
The last dump of files from scopes finally was processed by AI, so he clicked on the resulting report to check, if there was anything interesting.
Garbage. Garbage. Garbage. Oh, that's a cool photo of Jupiter! And even more garbage. Why is there so much satellites, that still in the orbit, but doesn't work anymore? They yeeted ISS into the Pacific, for fuck's sake, and they can't clean up a bit up there?
Patrick knew, that he was whining, but his work was so incredibly boooring.
It's safe to say, that in only two days he hated himself for that thought.
"What the hell is that?" he asked nobody in particular, leaning closer to his monitor.
Frequency 2210.5 MHz - 2216.5 MHz
Unknown source
"This is Ryland Grace on board the Hail Mary. Earth, do you copy?"
Is it some kind of a prank? If it is, it's not funny at all. With another deep sigh, Patrick checked the time stamp and opened the archive, that was previously analyzed by AI, looking for the source file of this message. By now, the team of Hail Mary should still be in their comas on their way to Tau Cety. Or already dead, who knows. So his goal was to find, who was messing with his equipment, and make them pay for all additional hours that he'll spend writing a report about this shit.
Huh. That's strange. According to the logs there were more than a hundred messages, with same text, sent in 5 minutes intervals from the unknown object in space. Either somebody had really too much free time to forge them so they'd look authentic, or his whole software gone awry. While Patrick had a basic level in coding, he wasn't qualified to solve such problems, so he just send a message to admins in one of their numerios work chats.
"And now we'll wait for 2 to 3 work days until they come to check this shit," he said wearily, clicking on Send button.
With today's data compromised, he had not much left to do, so he spent some time doomscrolling on his phone, cleaning his mailbox and bothering Alyson from accounting. Nice girl, he would've asked her on a date, but she was married. To the woman. Still, she was a good company to hang with during slow hours.
Patrick only returned from his lunch when one of the admins showed up. Surprisingly quickly, but he won't be complaining.
"So what's the deal?" asked the guy, Tony, if he remembered correctly.
"Look, I was checking report this morning and found this message," Patrick said, opening the files and finding the text in question. "I don't see any traces of interfierence, so I thought maybe it's just AI acting up." He stood up, making room for admin.
"Have you told anyone about that?"
"Why? There's no way that's really the crew of the Hail Mary," he shrugged nonchalantly. "Just look what's wrong with the software, cause I can't work like that".
"Sure you don't," Tony mumbled under his nose, taking the emptied chair and opening a command line.
The next 30 minutes were filled only with background noise of their office and low hum of air conditioning system.
"Whose it charge today?" the admin asked finally, clicking his tongue. "Sanders? You better go bring her here."
"Is there something serious?"
"There is no errors in the logs, satellite communication was stable all the time, so the only option left is that the message is real."
"But that's not possible. The earliest time for..."
"I don't care and it's really doesn't matter," Tony snapped. "Or rather it's making things so much worse, because if it is the Hail Mary, that means that the mission failed and we all doomed. So, for the love of God, just do what you was supposed to do few hours ago and inform your superior."
Patrick clenched his teeth, holding his breath not to say or do something stupid. He wasn't some errand boy to boss around! But as he went down the hallway, doubts started creeping out. What if it really was what it's appeared to be? He would be in trouble for not alerting direction earlier. That's not even mentioning, how much Sanders hate him. She'd probably threw a party if he was fired. Fuck! Did he really fucked up?
Nah, no way that was a real shit.
***
It seems that everyone believed, that it in fact was a real shit.
"... and you see, sortware reacted to the signal, deciper it, and our AI changed the telescope's viewing angle, taking this photo of Jupiter. It's for you to examine it, but..." sitting at his desktop, Tony was showing to the half of the office Patrick's findings. And they listened to him, as if he was an expert and not just some tech guy. Unbelivable!
"We should send a reply as soon as possible, and try to verify the sender," decided Lars, deputy director, who joined them via call in Zoom. "Find the members of the main team of PHM, better if it would be someone with USA citizenship, ask them for advice. And make everyone, and I mean everyone, sign NDA's."
Orders were given left and right, most of them running around like a bunch of headless chickens.
Next morning the reply was sent.
And Patrick was fired.
After signing his NDA's, of course.
***
Whoever was responsible for hiding Ilyukhina's heroin on this ship... He'll have a word with them after returning back. If that person is still alive. If there's still life on Earth at all. If he will make it...
Grace knew, that he was spiralling, but can do nothing about it. His body ached constantly, each move accompanied by pain and fatigue. Seven month ago his last bags of coma-slurry gone bad (it was a miracle it hadn't happened earlier), and he was forsed to switch to feeding himself through the feeding tube with taumoeba. And sure, he should be grateful for this option and still being alive, but was it really worth it? Grace was certain that he developed at least some form of PTSD in the first month of his diet change, because his GI tract wasn't happy about it at all. Diarrea on a spaceship? Not fun at all. Do not recommend.
He lost a lot of weight, got probably all possible vitamin and mineral deficits, and looked like a walking skeleton. His hair was patchy, with few bald spots, he lost few teeth, and those that was still with him was aching too. He tried his best not to look at any reflective surfices, cause the image was just so scary and wrong. He was slowly dying and he didn't need a reminder.
And now he was in his native solar system, few weeks from reaching the Earth's orbit. Grace created a simple repetitive message, hoping, that whoever was still there will be able to help him reach the surfice. He brought his blankets and food - if it could be classified like that - and made some kind of camp in the control room, waiting for the reply.
He was there for more than a day, and still - nothing. Each time he fall asleep, he would wake up to the wave of anxiety, rushing to check the reciever, and each time his hope was crushed by the space-deep silence.
Their Sol looked dimmer than he remembered. Have they received Beetles?
Is there anyone to answer him?
Grace was contemplating, how bad would it be, if he'll miss his "dinner" today, when something new bliped on the screen. He scrambled to his feet, almost falling in the process, tripping over his lucky blanket to reach the panels.
The screen was covered with a web of cracks, made with his head during the "fishing accident", but nonetheless the text was readable.
Frequency 2210.5 MHz - 2216.5 MHz
NASA GSFC
This is Anna Sanders from NASA GSFC. For verification of your identity, please, specify unofficial title of the reproduction process of the Astrophage.
Huh, strange. But probably valid, considering that he wasn't supposed to return. Grace's fingers flew over the keyboard, typing his response.
Frequency 2210.5 MHz - 2216.5 MHz
Hail Mary
The Carl's hypothesis. Ms Sanders, you can't even imagine, how glad I am to hear from you. Can I hope for a ride, after reaching the orbit?
With good news in mind, after much more enthusiastic dinner, Grace curled up in his pilot sit to sleep. With the current distance from Earth transmittion would take few hours on both sides, so he had time. And he needed his brain on full capacity for the next days, so sleep that is.
Unknown to him, down on Earth mayhem was only getting bigger.