Okay but imagine being one of Grace's students. Your favorite science teacher takes a few days off without warning and you get a boring substitute. Then he comes back, assigns you Rock Sorting, tells you that the sun is dying and in 30 years life on Earth will be almost impossible, but it's only 30 years and you are barely into your first decade on this planet so you relax and get ready to do Rock Sorting. Then your favorite teacher suddenly seems to snap a synapse, revokes the Rock Sorting and gives you study hall instead, and then leaves the classroom. Wow, Mr. Grace sure is acting weird lately. You do your remaining homework, joke around with your friends, and finish the school day happy and ready for tomorrow when your favorite teacher will teach you some actually cool science stuff. Or give you Rock Sorting. Whatever, it doesn't matter, Mr. Grace can make anything fun.
You come back the next day and he's not there. You have a substitute again.
You ask the principal, the vice principal, and the other teachers what's going on. Where's Mr. Grace? Is he okay? None of them can tell you. None of them know. One of them spotted him tearing out of the parking lot at light speed the other day, but they don't know anything else. Your favorite science teacher has simply vanished.
Days pass. Weeks. The substitutes are finally replaced by a new, not-fun science teacher. Not a bad teacher, but... not Mr. Grace. The new teacher begins taking down all of the cool stuff in the room. The Jacob's Ladder. The specimen jars. The solar system. You watch, silently, as your favorite teacher's mark is erased from the room. You find your new teacher at the end of the day and ask if you can keep the solar system. They apologize and say it's already in the dumpster.
You ask the adults again about Mr. Grace and get largely the same answers. No one has seen him. Not his family, not his friends. The principal went to his apartment a few weeks ago to check on him, but he wasn't there, nor was his car. His apartment showed no signs of life.
You hear whispers. Rumors. The stress got to him. He missed studying at the universities. He couldn't stand being tied down to a bunch of unruly kids. He crashed. He flew off the bridge.
You block it out, along with the growing talk of the sun dying.
Time goes by, and you slowly grow accustomed to your new science teacher. Your classmates seem to have moved on with no problem. Almost no one mentions his name anymore. His picture is gone from the staff line-up. His nameplates are nowhere to be found. You yourself struggle to think of him, to daily hold him in memory when everyone else seems to not care. But every so often, you'll catch a classmate's eye, and you'll see the same question there: What happened to Mr. Grace? And every so often, you'll overhear a few teachers whispering to each other in the halls. About what they thought they saw. Government vehicles. A woman in black. I heard he was drafted or something...
You and your classmates come up with your own theories. His parents got deathly sick and he rushed home to take care of them. He forgot something at his apartment but was driving so badly he got lost and is now on the other side of the country, still trying to find his way back home. He had an ex-girlfriend who was about to get on a plane for Nicaragua and he suddenly realized how much he still loved her and had to go tell her before she left, and they've run off somewhere together.
Anything is better than believing that he's gone.
One day, your parents sit you down in front of the TV and make you watch the President's special 4th address in the past 18 months. It's about the sun dying, and the astrophage, and the plan to stop it. They call it Project Hail Mary. They're going to send a rocket ship to a nearby star that isn't dying and study it to find out why it isn't dying, and hopefully use that information to save the sun. The mission plans to launch within the next two years. There will be a crew of three. They won't be able to return home because there won't be enough fuel.
Studying stars and distant planets. Leaving and never coming back. You think of your favorite teacher, and the world feels too big and too scary.
Time passes. You graduate 8th grade and officially enter high school, leaving behind the place where Mr. Grace taught you. Only a handful of your former classmates end up at the same high school as you. Every so often, NASA gives an update regarding Project Hail Mary. The past is slowly fading, and the astrophage-riddled future is slowly approaching.
Things begin to change. You hear about strange weather all over the world. Your social studies teacher halts mid-lesson to show you a video of the Sahara Desert covered in black rectangles. The news is filled with rumors of countries stockpiling crops and supplies in preparation for the coming apocalypse. The number of sidewalk preachers significantly spikes. One day the internet explodes with news that an ice cap in Antarctica has exploded and fallen into the sea. None of it feels real. Nothing feels right ever since your favorite teacher disappeared.
There's other stuff, too. The Hail Mary is slowly being assembled in orbit above Earth. The crew and back-up crew have been selected. The prime and back-up scientists are both American. You feel a jolt of hope, but--no, neither of them is Mr. Grace; that's not what happened to him. And then you feel relieved, because those people are going to die in space anyway.
Launch day is impending. It's only a few months away--three days before you graduate 9th grade and start summer break before becoming a sophomore. A new start for everyone. This year is hard enough already. But in the back of your head, you hear the voice of your favorite teacher telling you that it's going to get worse, and it's going to get worse faster than you think.
You ignore it, and feel awful for doing so.
It's less than a week until the Hail Mary launches from Earth into the depths of the galaxy. You feel nervous, but you can't say why. The weird weather has continued, but otherwise life is the same. The catastrophic effects haven't begun yet. You make yourself look forward to summer break and smile. You're almost there. You've made good grades all year, especially in science. Mr. Grace would be proud. Wherever he is.
You meet up with some of your old classmates after school and kick around downtown, doing your best not to feel the apprehension that still hangs around you like a cloud. Everything is fine. Everything's going to be okay. Earth's finest are going on a mission to save the sun. They're going to succeed. Everything's going to be okay.
One of your friends gets a notification on their phone and stares at it for longer than a minute, looking horrified. You all crowd around the phone and gape at the announcement from NASA. There was an explosion at the Russian research facility, and both of the Hail Mary's science specialists were killed. They are trying to find a replacement. They have good candidates. There will be an update shortly.
A shiver runs down your spine. But you squash the fear to comfort your friends, to remind them that NASA has a plan and the mission will still launch. It has to. Everything's going to be okay.
At long last, it's Launch Day.
You have heard no updates about Project Hail Mary other than the scientist position has been filled and the launch is proceeding as scheduled. You tell yourself the nerves are what everyone is feeling. The fate of the world rests in this ship and its crew.
They'll succeed. Everything's going to be okay. Summer is coming. Even if it might be your last real summer.
The launch is being covered all day on all channels, but all the teachers still require you to put your phones away and do school. As if history isn't being made. Finally, in science, your teacher pulls out the projector. No more studying. The Hail Mary is launching in the next two hours, and you should all get to watch.
You stare at the screen in amazement. The Hail Mary is shown in orbit above the Earth, big and strange and beautiful with its tiny crew compartment and giant fuel storage. Down on Earth, NASA is preparing a small craft to fly up to the Hail Mary. The crew will transfer over, get strapped in, and the Hail Mary will launch itself. The crew will be in comas for the whole trip. That way they won't go insane.
The reporters shift topics. The crew is coming out. You sit up in your chair, eager to see the saviors of Earth... before they fly off into space and are never seen again by the rest of humanity.
Commander Yao Li-jie. The pilot. He salutes, and you feel the urge to salute back. Or bow.
Olesya Ilyukhina. The engineer. She waves vigorously and throws up double peace signs. You almost smile. She doesn't seem to be thinking about how she's going to die.
And the scientist. The reporters apologize, the Hail Mary's science specialist is already aboard the craft, already unconscious by request, to minimize panic. He was brought in so late, didn't have much time to get accustomed to space travel. But we salute him all the same for stepping up and filling the spot after that tragic accident.
An image appears to fill the screen, with text underneath. Your heart stops.
You are thirteen years old again. You are sitting in your desk all ready for Rock Sorting. One of your classmates asks a question. It was the last normal moment of your life.
The reporters are talking, but you barely hear it. No one else in the room seems to be feeling the world fall apart the way you are. You look across the room at one of your classmates. She's the one who asked the question. You see it in her eyes. The same disbelief. The same shock. You're not dreaming. You look back up at the front of the classroom.
After all this time, there he is--right there in front of you. Your favorite teacher in the whole wide world, who taught you to be curious, who taught you to never stop learning, who told you that life was about to get very hard, but it didn't sound so scary when he was right there telling you about it. Dr. Ryland Grace, Microbiologist. About to be sent off to space to die.
His picture and name blur in your vision, and the ache you've been burying since 8th grade opens up to swallow your stomach.
Then the screen changes, and he's gone.
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