Grace and Rocky, giving a tour of the Hail Mary to fascinated Eridian scientists and diplomats.
Pointing at things and explaining what they are and how the ship works, lots of awed and appreciative noises are made.
Until one of the visiting Eridians points out a specific item. āAnd that?ā
Itās a strange, circular thing, a xenonite disk mounted upright on some sort of pivot so it can spin freely, but around the edges it hasā¦ spokes? Pegs? Sticking out of it, that hit against a stiff flap that would slow down the spinning.
It is also separated into sections decorated with crude etchings of a human and an Eridian.
āAh,ā Grace says.
āThat,ā Rocky says.
āThatās. Um.ā Grace seems somewhat embarrassed. āThatās the sacrifice wheel.ā
The Eridian visitors clearly do not know what to make of that. āWe think we misunderstood Savior Graceās word,ā they say, apparently hoping this is a vocabulary mix-up. āExplain (question, polite)?ā
āDidnāt misunderstand,ā says Rocky, sounding very sheepish. āThat is sacrifice wheel.ā
āSo. While we were on our way to Erid, we might have gottenā¦ anxious about each otherās well-being,ā Grace says, which everyone is already very aware is a wild understatement. āAnd, well, you heard what happened at Tau Ceti, and after. There were a lot of unexpected dangers for the whole trip that required a lot of, at least, attempted self-sacrifice to solve. We ended up almost dying for each other several times. And we had an argument about what weād do if another crisis like that came up. And we couldn't agree.ā
āGrace argued that Grace already was unlikely to survive long-term on Erid, so he should be the one to do any potential deadly but necessary maneuvers to make sure I was able to bring taumoeba back,ā Rocky says.
āWhich made sense.ā
āDid not make sense! Grace already sacrificed so much for me and for Erid, wouldnāt be fair to make you do it againāā Rocky cuts himself off with a huff. They have obviously had this conversation before. āSo sacrifice wheel was compromise.ā
āYeah,ā Grace says. He spins it to demonstrate; it whirls around in a blur and a rattle of the flap hitting the pegs, then eventually slows down, and stopsāpointing at the segment depicting a very bad but very clear image of an Eridian. āRocky made the wheel, I spin the wheel, and whoever it lands on, thatās who gets to sacrifice themself to save the other and the other person does not get to argue. This way, we wouldnāt waste time debating who does the self-sacrifice and who survives, itās just a plain fifty-fifty chance. Or, eighteen-eighteen chance in base six. But the point is it could be either of us and we would have to accept the outcome.ā
Rocky started fidgeting while Grace was explaining. When Grace finishes, proud of the equitable solution they came up with to allow them to die for each other fairly, Rocky says, āNow that we are back and we donāt need sacrifice wheel anymoreā¦ I have confession to make. About the wheel.ā
āWhat about the wheel?ā
Rocky doesnāt answer. Grace frowns, first confused, then suspicious, and spins the wheel again.
It lands on Rocky again.
He spins the wheel again, and again, and again, and it lands on Rocky every single time.
āRocky!ā
āI weighted the wheel,ā Rocky admits.
āRocky the whole point was that it was equal, that was why we even made itāā
āNever was necessary so doesnāt matter anymore!ā
āBut you WOULD have!ā
āAnd you never noticed because you were hungry and cranky and distracted and so would have done bad job on heroic self-sacrifice anyway!ā
āI would not! I would have done fine!ā
(The Eridian scientists and diplomats are still here watching this btw. Slowly dawning on them that 1) these two are extremely not normal about each other 2) if Erid ever does another space mission they NEED to send a therapist aboard because this is what happens when they donāt)
I've seen so many posts lately about how Grace wouldn't add swears to their translator but I 100% think he did.
He's not morally against swearing, he said holy fucking shit when he saw the Blip-A for the first time, the only reason he doesn't swear normally is because he trained himself out of it because he teaches middle schoolers. If I'm remembering right, he even calls one of the kids a smartass in his internal narration at one point. He's spent so long not swearing that he's not just going to fall out of the habit immediately.
We know that at some point, he learned Eridian swearing anyway because Rocky swears in the final chapter of the book. And I think he learned most of them when Rocky reamed him out after leaving the taumoeba collector out at room temp.
Plus, Rocky is an adult and Grace treats him like one, which includes adding swear words into their translator so that Rocky can express himself.
hey you. teenage girl writing in her diary. quit talking about the boy you have a crush on and start writing about the current political situation, the valuation of currencies, and the level of technology your people hold. your diary might be the only piece of evidence our society existed after nuclear war fries all of our data backups. future historians don't need to know about damian, they need at least a secondhand accounts of the great water wars and whether or not your leaders truly did worship a deity called "the free hand of the market"
Keep writing about your crush Teenaged Girl. About your clothes, and how that other girl wore the same dress as you. Paint me a picture of what you were like.
Make those future Historians reverse engineer the socioeconomic hierarchies of the 21st century from dreamy descriptions of Damian's current fashions. It's giving them enrichment.
Talk about the things you want to talk about. You never know what mysteries your diary might solve in future generations bc you are the only person who talks about something that other people thought was too obvious to talk about, like whatever that third condiment dish that used to be on the table with salt and pepper was for.
the eva stratt in my mind is a conglomeration of movie stratt and book stratt because god fucking bless sandra huller put her entire pussy into that performance, but while weir is bad at character writing (women especially) he IS disconcertingly good at coming up with plots that generate interesting character concepts through circumstances... which due to story cuts the movie sadly missed out on.
it's really interesting looking back at both iterations of the story and how stratt and grace's rapport hinges on unrequitedness. there's obviously the karaoke scene in the movie acting as grace's bid for human connection vs stratt's necessary refusal in order to do her job. the book rarely if ever interrogates stratt's interpersonal relationships in the project and how her sense of duty and utilitarianism extends to them (well, aside from grace. more on that in a sec). She's a History major and an administrator and She Loves Humanity, but it's a characteristic that when analyzed deeper rings pretty hollow (possibly because the author thinks social analysis/critique in science fiction is stupid and thus doesn't exactly have much to say about People like someone in the humanities would. SAD!) so that's an addition to her character from the movie that i'm deeply pleased about. what i don't like as much is that the bid for connection starts from grace.
because book stratt and grace? the one sidedness of their rapport is the driving emotional conflict of the entire pre-launch plotlineāand of grace's character development throughout the whole book.
like most scientists on the team, grace was brought onto the project by force, but he's the only one who fulfilled his purpose, was allowed to return to his own life, and then came back of his own volition, out of a sense of personal duty and responsibility. which is the reason stratt takes him back on! and why she begins to rely on him more and more, as an administrator, as a mediator, as a scientist, as an advisor. she has all the more reason to do that when she discovers he's coma resistant, but she was already doing all that baby!
grace spends the rest of their relationship half-assing that sense of responsibility. one thing i adore about book phm is how merciless it is with grace's "modesty" "insecurity" and "social anxiety". children are easy to dote on. they're not stupid, obviously, but on an interpersonal level they're not your equal, they have no way to actually demand accountability from you and call your ass out. he doesn't actually think he's a failure, he's not blind he should know damn well he's not like the other scientists. "science lapdog", "ooo i'm just a little guy cmonnnn i'm just a middle school teacher", he downplays his own importance because if he genuinely grappled with the level of responsibility she holds him to towards the people in the project he'd run like a fucking dog.
he is a good man AND he is a coward. stratt's relationship with him verges on the tension between those coexisting truths. he is both someone she wants to respect but can't, someone she can rely on but has to act behind his back least he realizes. she WANTS them to be equals, she WANTS him to understand. on the day the hail mary is scheduled for launch she paces HIS prison cell like SHE'S the caged animal, trying to get through to the glimpse of the man she saw that day, the one who barged into an FBI guarded facility, looked atlas in the eye and told her scoot over, i'm carrying this with you. she cares about him. she wouldn't feel so betrayed if she didn't. please understand why i'm doing this to you. please understand why i need you to be that fundamentally good man. i am tied to the tracks right next to you. and as far as she is concerned, ryland grace dies on earth saying "no".
I love how we as a fandom have universally accepted that Adrian is a massive green eridian, Rocky swears like a sailor, Grace is aroace, Simon and Grace are dating and Grace has a twin and its Colt Seavers from The Fall Guy
titsay
origamiaround
gummygunk
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
