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The first country to declare war over the dwindling resources is the US.
Ryland should have known.
He watches from his San Francisco apartment as the fighter jets leave gen China. Or maybe India. He tries to avoid the news these days; tries to look away.
The next day in class, he answers the kids’ questions as best as he can. There are fewer now than there used to be, but not by a lot: while climate change has made most of the latitudes along the equator uninhabitable by now, the poles are slowly freezing again. For a few years now, Earth will hold on. But people – normal, every day people, not scientists and doomsday preppers – have stopped in their endless pursuit of mammalian reproduction.
The birth rates are plummeting. Even here, where the world is still relatively alright.
There are many good things happening as well, he tells the kids. It is a desperate plea to his own worst kept secrets.
Astrophage is reducing CO2 emissions by 70%, groundwater levels are slowly going up again, space travel – real, sci-fi space travel – seems more likely every day. Not all is lost just yet. The African Union has only recently published a demand to the UN on how to properly push forward decolonization efforts in exchange for better trading rates for the Astrophage farms covering most of the Sahara. Green energy has become the norm, high speed train lines finally being built, even in the US.
They even had a female president last term!
The times are changing.
On the way home, the radio informs him that the US fighter jets have reached the South Asian mainland. They don’t tell him how many innocent people died. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to picture their faces. He doesn’t turn on the TV.
When he goes to sleep at night, he sees Eva.
They don’t talk anymore. None of them talk to him anymore. Dimitri and Lokken were kind enough to keep Eva from knocking him out and sending him to space, but Ryland remembers the look they threw at him as they left. Disappointment. Resignation. Hopelessness.
Turns out he really was the only one who didn’t know that he was Plan 3.
Commander Yao might have forgiven him, probably did. Doing some quick math – Ryland’s never allowed himself to forget the exact calculations needed to trace the Hail Mary’s flight path – Yao and Ilyukhina would have reached Tau Ceti two years ago. By now, they are probably dead.
It will take another eight years before Ryland knows whether he doomed all of humanity.
He shouldn’t think himself that important, but every time he turns on the news, he's informed of another disaster. A fire in Australia, killing 2,410 people. An avalanche in the Canadian Rockies, 500 dead in the Nuxalk Nation. A hurricane in upstate New York, 471 people. Border skirmishes in Eastern Europe, US involvement in Peru and Ecuador to secure cocoa and coffee for the American people. A famine in South Sudan and a bombed dam in Egypt and—
Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Eva.
Every time he closes his eyes, the world grows a little bit colder.
There was a slight crack to her facade when she asked him to die. A tremor to her left eyebrow, betraying that some part of her – small and shriveled up as it was – had wanted him to live. Only him asking for that part to be honored… oh, Ryland always thought he knew what hatred looked like. Knew what Eva looked like, hating. He had no idea.
When he’d refused— when Dimitri had knocked on the door, interrupting what was about to follow— her eyes had burned black. Pale blue darkened, until Ryland could see every choice Eva had ever made condensed down into one truth: he had failed her.
He had failed humanity.
Before he left, she’d looked at him one last time. The question wasn’t uttered out loud; it didn’t have to be. Ryland could hear it as clear as day: 7 billion people. How could they not be worth it?
Ryland’s asked himself the same question ever since.
Giving up on sleep, he turns the radio back on. Eco terrorists planted bombs in a data center in Michigan; the following wild fire destroyed 19 square miles of forest. Trans athletes successfully sued the Olympic Committee. Eva Stratt to be released from prison after her third trial at the Den Haag. Three new species of bird have officially gone extinct.
He turns off the radio, pulls a blanket up over his head.
He’s not a philosopher, just a teacher. Then again, many of the OG thinkers were teachers as well. Socrates had a school, as did Plato. Surely, at some point, one of them must have asked themselves what the other guy in the Trolley Problem felt, right?
Not that neither Plato nor Socrates knew what a train track was. Or trolleys.
Getting his phone from the night stand, he googles it.
Five articles and a cup of coffee later (imitation coffee made from buckwheat flower as coffee is basically extinct, a luxury item once more), and it turns out that nobody’s asked the guy they need to kill yet what he thinks about dying. Maybe Ryland should offer interviews.
Turns out it sucks.
Only, he still doesn’t want to die. Go figure.
Most people go through life without ever knowing their ultimate flaw. His is cowardice. His is turning off the radio. His is telling the kids in his classroom that everything will be alright. His is— saying no, when Eva asked him to sacrifice himself.
There are less stars in the night sky these days, and Ryland knows it’s not just the light pollution.
Staring out the window, the constant thrum of heavy machinery a steady backdrop as more and more military jets awaken like slumbering beasts ready to take on the world, Ryland dares to wonder who else he’s doomed. And then he shakes his head. Goes back to bed.
Somewhere above him, the Hail Mary drifts through space.
It’s humanity's only hope. Turns out Dr. Ryland Grace isn’t any better at powerlessness than he is at bravery. Still, it’s too late now. The fate of the world is out of his hands.
Tomorrow morning, the news will inform him of the actions taken by the US government to extinguish lives in the name of food.
One day, his classroom will be empty.
What was it that he told Eva? He’s doing it for the kids. They need him.
Even back then, he knew what her raised eyebrow was telling him: What about the rest of us? It was months before she was actually forced to stop pretending; before she asked the question out loud.
There is only the Hail Mary, this time without any Grace.