Grace is bored out of his mind on the way to Erid.
He helps Rocky out with the basic maintenance chores every day and tries to keep a consistent schedule so as not to quite literally lose his mind, but 4 years is a long-ass time for a trip and he is BORED.
Thankfully, Eva Stratt gave him an entire digital library of nearly every single piece of art and entertainment ever produced up to the year 2021. And boy do humans love making art and entertaining each other. The Hail Mary is basically a modern, digital Library of Alexandria.
So far, he’s introduced Rocky to most of the western culture he grew up with—music, movies, TV shows—and they both even got to discover art from different cultures from Grace’s that he never (or only vaguely) knew about before. It’s a super fun experience and it brings them closer every time.
But when all you can do to entertain yourself is sit around and watch movies all day, you eventually get bored of that too. At least, Grace did. He likes watching movies, don’t get him wrong, but he’s getting tired of being so passive. He wants to do something that requires intellectual effort, like a game.
Unfortunately, Rocky isn’t so down to play board games with Grace. The last time they tried, Grace introduced Rocky to a classic cards game, which Rocky couldn’t play because he couldn’t see the cards, then tried something simpler, like chess, which Rocky couldn’t play either because he’s stuck behind a xenonite barrier. Then Rocky tried to introduce Grace to one of his eridian board games. Which Grace couldn’t play because of the xenonite barrier. Oh, and the ammonia. That stuff makes everything Rocky tries to give him a little too hot for Grace’s liking. The burn scars are cool, but he’s had enough experience with heat for the rest of his life, thank you very much.
So, board games are off the table, but he distinctly remembers video games being a thing. He’s played arcade games in his teens, and he had students who would sneak their phones under their desk to play mobile games during class. He’s not too unfamiliar with video games.
Okay, maybe he is a little unfamiliar with video games. What the hell is an emulator and why would he need different ones to play different games??
After an entire afternoon spent trying to understand what emulators are and how they work—and subsequently falling into a rabbit hole of research about the history of gaming from its genesis to the early 2020s— Grace has finally managed to 1) set up a bunch of emulators on his NASA-issued computer, 2) find several different types of controllers which were apparently in storage since the beginning(??), and 3) pick a selection of what some downloaded online articles consider to be “the most important classics in video game history”.
(Heh, “genesis”. That’s a good one. Get it? Genesis. Because of the console—
Yyyyeah. He’s been severely sleep-deprived lately.)
And so Grace goes on to try out many different games, from many different genres, many different consoles, and many different eras. Platformers, racing games, first-person shooters, RPGs, puzzle games, point-and-click, horror games, fighting games, cozy games, and wow that raccoon really wants his fudging money.
He’s having fun. Mario and Pac-Man are the ones he’s most familiar with, and he knew they were still big in the industry when he left Earth, but he wasn’t aware this many games had been made. The Sonic games are fun, too, he likes how fast the gameplay can be, it stimulates his reflexes quite well. The horror games aren’t his thing—he’s never been a fan of the genre even in cinema and theme parks. The rest is alright, but he finds he enjoys the puzzle games and the cozy games the most. The former are great for putting his thinking skills to the test, and the latter are a nice change of pace from the distressing reality of living full time inside of an aluminum box in the void of space.
He’s tried a bunch. Stardew Valley, the first two Sims games, Spiritfarer, Tomodachi Life—that one is unhinged, he’s not even sure it qualifies as a “cozy” game—and a bunch of other, lesser known titles he can’t remember the names of. His favorite one so far is Animal Crossing. The one on the DS, he thinks. Or was it 3DS? He’s not sure, there are so many different entries in this series.
He never spends much time on one title in particular. Some of these he drops after only an hour. He could spend a whole day playing nothing but Animal Crossing, and he would be happy to, but he feels like if he does, it’s going to drain all the joy from that game pretty fast, and by extension, it’ll drain all the pleasure he gets from gaming as a whole and he’ll go back to his crushing boredom.
So Grace plays a bunch of different games for the next few days and manages to have fun the entire time. Take that, crushing boredom!
At some point, though, he puts the Animal Crossing series down and decides to try something new. He scrolls through the lists he’s been using and stops at a random title.
It rings a bell. He’s never played it before, but he’s pretty sure he used to hear his students talk about it from time to time. He has no idea what it’s about, though.
Grace looks through the digital library until he finds it. There are two different versions: ”Java” and “Bedrock”. He’s not sure what the “Bedrock” version means, but he knows Java is used to work on any type of computer, so he figures he might as well go with that one.
He downloads it, launches the program, and is met with a simple home screen. He clicks on the “singleplayer” button and, after a minute trying to figure out the settings, creates his own world.
For several hours, he works to understand what the game is about and how it works. He quickly picks up the controls (after switching to a mouse and keyboard because the controllers feel like they weren’t meant to be used for that game), manages to die to mobs only three times, hides in a hole in the ground for four consecutive nights (and boy, do the nights come quickly), builds a small house out of dirt, then a medium-sized house out of wood once he’s found out he can break different blocks, makes himself some tools once he’s found out he can make a crafting table—and really, he’s supposed to be a genius, it shouldn’t have taken him so long to understand why it’s called Minecraft—has started his own cow farm and is in the process of melting some iron after an eventful trip to his first cave.
It’s a fun game, he thinks as he controls his avatar out of the woods and towards the nearest body of water. He’s only been playing for less than an hour, but he’s having fun. He’s considering dropping it to go do something else, though. He’s getting tired of sitting around all day, he needs some exercise. Besides, to be perfectly honest, even though he’s managed to understand how the game works in very little time, he still doesn’t get the point. Every game he’s played so far had a narrative, or at least a directive. Minecraft doesn’t seem to be like those other games. What is he meant to do?
Grace stops his avatar on a beach. He just found out how to make a fishing rod and he’s going to test it in the ocean. Right ahead, on his screen, the water stretches out as far as the eye can see. The sun hasn’t hit the horizon yet, but it’s getting lower and lower in the sky by the second, so he has to be quick if he doesn’t want to get shot by skeletons again. He casts his rod, and waits. He catches a salmon, and casts the rod again. Eyes locked on the water. It’s almost sunset.
And then, the music starts.
A low, gentle hum. A shy piano playing a few notes at first, then a sweet melody. Almost like a lullaby.
Grace looks up to the horizon line and sees the sunset. The music keeps on playing, getting more and more joyful as it goes on. It’s like the whole game is telling him, whispering in his ear, like a promise: I know times are tough, I know it’s hard, but you’re going to be okay.
And that’s when he gets it.
And he bursts into tears.
Hope, it says. There is always hope.
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