Chapter Text
Yáo Li-Jie didn’t expect waking up from a coma would feel like this. He had anticipated mental fog and unsteady muscles. But all he felt was eerie clarity. If anything, he was almost completely lacking in sensation of what was around him.
Maybe I’m only numb, Yáo thought. He tried to open his eyes. The darkness was so absolute it was as if he’d never opened them at all. He tried to recall what was happening to him.
My name is Yáo Li-Jie. I am 24 years old. I am the commander of the Hail Mary. We are journeying to Tau Ceti to save our sun and the Earth. My crew and I were put into medically induced comas for the trip. I must be being woken from mine.
Yáo tried to open his eyes again and waited. And waited. Nothing happened. Before he’d been put under, he’d been informed that when they were almost at Tau Ceti, the ship's computer would perform preliminary cognition tests upon their awakening.
That wasn’t happening. Did something go wrong? What if that system broke down and he and his crew were going to be on their own for caring for their newly awoken bodies?
Yáo tried to move one of his arms and found that he was moving with unexpected ease. He reached for the breathing mask that would be on his face. He couldn’t grab it. It should be right there but his fingers couldn’t find it. A burst of irritation compelled him to sit up and grab it with both hands. He froze when faint light filled his vision.
The room was lit only just enough to see. From his position, Yáo could see sterile white walls and robot arms emerging from the ceiling. The caretaker robot. A soft alarm was sounding and the arms descended towards him. Yáo flinched back slightly, leaning on his hands against his bed. He frowned. Why couldn’t he feel the bed below him? How severe was his numbness?
“What’s my status?” Yáo asked the robot. It ignored him and continued moving closer.
Wait.
How was he speaking clearly with a breathing mask on his face? Yáo touched his mouth and found no mask. His fingers only felt smooth skin slightly peppered with stubble.
Before Yáo could figure out what this meant, the robot arms reached him. They moved down and passed right through him.
Yáo had always thought of himself as a fairly calm man. Sure, he could be a bit goofy in certain situations, but he tried to keep a level head when it was called for.
This was not one of those times. Yáo screamed and tried to pull away from the arms. They continued, undeterred. Yáo lunged forward, seeking an escape. The arms didn’t pursue him. Instead their focus was on the spot of the bed where he had once been.
There was something laying there. The arms were fussing with it. Yáo leaned closer, curious as to what he’d been sitting on that had captivated the caretaker robot. The arms retracted and began carrying something to another part of the room. Yáo now had a fully unobstructed view of what was before him.
It was him. He looked peacefully asleep, like he was still in his coma. But all the life support mechanisms were gone, seemingly removed by the robot arms.
“Wha-” Yáo’s confused outburst was interrupted by the return of the robot arms. One of the arms pulled a white cloth over the face of the Yáo look-alike lying down. They then moved to the foot of the bed and seemed to be interacting with something there. A long beep sounded before the arms retreated, heading for another area of the dormitory.
Yáo craned his head over the side of the bed to look at what the arms had been fussing with. A small orange screen was embedded into the bed. It was lit up and displaying text in English: Yáo L.J. DECEASED.
He felt like he couldn’t breathe. He started shaking. He was dead? How, how was that possible? He had the coma resistant gene, so why was he dead?!? And if he was dead, then what did that mean for the mission? Were Ilyukhina and Grace dead as well? Had the mission failed?!
Yáo scrambled off the bed, away from his dead body. In his haste, he fell off of it. He yelped and braced himself for the coming impact against the floor. He felt nothing. Opening his eyes, he was floating in space like he was in zero-g.
But there should still be gravity. The force of acceleration the ship was undergoing was imposing an artificial gravity within it. They would only experience zero-g once the engines stopped upon their arrival. And yet he was floating in space.
Disorientated, Yáo reached for his bed to steady himself. His hand passed through it. Fingers trembling, he tried again. And again. No matter how much he tried, Yáo couldn’t touch the bed at all. He wrapped his arms around himself and could just barely register the feeling of himself and the coma suit he wore.
He was dead and a ghost. Perhaps he could no longer feel physical sensations. That would certainly line up with how he’d felt when he first awoke. Or rather, when he-
Yáo cut off that thought. He couldn’t think about that now. He had to assure that his crew were okay. As long as they were alive, the mission was still viable. Yáo looked at where his bed had been. It extended out of a hole in the wall. As he was looking, the robot arms finished with whatever task had been occupying them and they pressed a button on a wall panel nearby him. With a whirring sound, Yáo’s bed slid back into its hole. There were two similar holes beneath it that also contained beds.
Yáo reached down tentatively, seeing if he could somehow will himself to move closer to the wall. He gradually began to float downwards. Yáo paused in front of the bed first below his own. He couldn’t see anything just by gazing in. He’d have to . . . go in and take a look for himself.
A pang of revulsion rippled through him. Even with his crew in comas, that would be a violation of their personal space. Perhaps he should wait until the beds were retracted for the routine care. He’d know then if they were alive and well. Or not. In the meantime, maybe he should look around the rest of the ship. Even if he were to forgo that now, it would be inevitable that he would do it later out of boredom.
Yáo floated towards the hatch at the top of the room. He still felt unsettled by how he was able to move but it was at least a convenient way to get around. Yáo pressed a hand against the hatch. He couldn’t feel it. Pushing his hand even harder, he suddenly phased through it. A rolling, almost nauseous feeling spread through his gut. Yáo did his best to ignore it and continued through.
Yáo emerged in what seemed to be the lab. It was odd, as while he could see that there were lights in the ceiling, none of them appeared to be on. Yet he could perfectly see all of the equipment that was there.
Was it because he was a ghost? Did he no longer have to comply with the laws of nature because he was dead? Well, he certainly wasn’t being affected by physics, given by how he could ignore the ship’s artificial gravity and could pass through objects. He really didn’t want to test the limits of the latter. If he were to pass through the hull of the ship, he’d surely be stranded in the endless void that was space.
Yáo pushed that thought out of his head and continued up to where the flight control room would be. It was illuminated by the faint glow of all the screens, buttons, and switches. One screen caught his attention as something on it seemed to be flickering. He drifted closer. The screen displayed a countdown ticking down:
TIME TO ENGINE CUTOFF: 0943:07:48:16.
It didn’t take Yáo long to convert the displayed time into something more understandable. He had only made it for almost a year and a half before dying. Even though he had the damn coma gene! Had one of his superiors at the China National Space Administration lied to ensure he would be chosen? No, surely they would have picked someone with even more experience compared to him. And why would they make such a choice that could risk being discovered?
If the problem didn’t lie with him, then something must have gone wrong with the life support systems. Something inexplicably went wrong, leaving him dead.
God, what if something similar happened to either Grace or Ilyukhina? Then everything they, the rest of the Project Hail Mary team, and humanity as a whole had done would be all for nothing! He needed to check on his crew immediately.
Yáo rushed back to the dormitory. As he was entering the room, he saw that both Ilyukhina and Grace’s beds were extended out of the wall and the robot was fussing with them. Both of them still lay there, peacefully unaware of everything around them. After a few minutes, the robot arms retreated from the beds as they slid back into the wall. The robot arms then disappeared back into the ceiling.
They were alive. The mission hadn’t failed. Earth still had a chance of salvation. As long as Ilyukhina and Grace survived their comas and worked together to discover the secret behind why Tau Ceti was failing to dim, everything could still work out.
Only, he wouldn’t be there for them. The mission was Yáo’s responsibility as the commander. It was supposed to be his job to make decisions and protect his crew and the mission. He could no longer do that for them.
Because he was dead.
They would be on their own without him.
They’d have to push on despite the loss of him. Yáo knew that. His death would surely be devastating for the both of them but they’d have to move on. The mission had to come first. Yáo couldn’t be upset about that. But he could be upset about how he could no longer contribute anything for the sake of humanity.
Yáo hugged himself as a rush of sorrow and regret washed over him. No tears came to give him a reprieve. As he shuddered all alone, a prayer came to him unbidden. He had only learned of it as a result of joining the project, having grown up Buddhist. He started reciting it, begging for some kind of relief.
“Áve María, grátia pléna . . .”