imagine you're one of grace's peers from before he was chased out of academia. you kind of fondly remember the guy in your phd cohort who would argue with anyone about water-based life forms being the assumed only possibility, despite every other theorist agreeing that water is needed for life. he writes papers big and small calling the goldilocks zone bullshit and proposing increasingly bizzare alternatives to water-based life. he successfully defends his thesis, somehow. you and your other peers agree it's probably because his advisor and half the faculty never want to see him again if he doesn't get his degree and go. he's a good researcher and a great orator, if nothing else, awkwardly charming in a way that just kind of works for him.
a few years later you hear he publically and loudly called a leading scientist in your field a waste of carbon and effectively told that same person to drop dead before storming out. you think huh. yeah. makes sense, i guess. you google him a few years later and oh. now he's a middle school teacher. you know? that feels right for him. you hope he's happier now than he was always arguing with scientists who would never agree with him.
a few years after that everyone is freaking out about the petrova line and the potential for alien life. when astrophage is confirmed to both be an alien life form and eating the sun, you have a vague moment of thinking ryland grace must be sending off a thousand "i told you so" emails, since obviously water based life couldn't survive on the surface of the sun, like the astrophage does. you don't spend much time thinking about him because, you know. the world is ending. but hey. at least somebody has something to celebrate, right?
a month later you're watching the latest press conference where they're confirming that they have figured out how to breed astrophage. you vaguely knew this for the same reason people vaguely knew about the manhattan project: the top scientists in practically every field have been leaving insanely competitive tenured positions and research labs and disappearing off the face of the earth at the same time the race is on to figure out how to stop the sun from dying, so. clearly somebody is working on the problem.
what makes you do a double take is that the woman who has become the face of the astrophage project is only one of a dozen people visible wherever this message was recorded. and hey, you know a few faces. a few people who you haven't seen or heard from recently because they were called away to work the problem and- whoah. hey. it's ryland grace.
and then he's everywhere. he doesn't speak. he's not the face of the project at all. most people have no idea who he is. but you see him trailing behind eva stratt, who is unequivocally the most powerful person in the world right now, who has every world leader at her beck and call, who is commanding teams of scientists to do whatever it takes whatever the cost to save the world. everywhere she goes, ryland grace is one step behind. project hail mary becomes public knowledge and when you spend a weekend obsessively combing through all of the public information, which isn't that much, you realize ryland grace's name is on every single major breakthrough that has been published, every paper released to the academic world asking for more thoughts and theories. you know a few people who send ideas in, and they're gone. you're a little glad you didn't concentrate on the type of biology that would get you drafted to this project, because it's intense that way. the kidnapping way. you wonder if that's what happened to ryland grace, if he was drafted to this life or if he's choosing it.
a handful of press photos are released of the astronaut crew and backup crew enjoying life on earth in the months leading up to launch. ryland grace is in every single one. they laugh with him. they dance with him. they sing karaoke with him. you remember the awkwardly charming guy you had a handful of seminars with and think, yeah. he'd be a good guy to have around you to cheer you up at the end of the world.
and then there's an explosion. a press release. and suddenly ryland grace, who had managed to stay relatively unknown compared to the public faces of project hail mary, is announced to have bravely agreed to step up and take the place of the deceased scientists. you think, i couldn't do that. i didn't know he could do that. good for him. go save the world. you think, there's the answer to my question. ryland grace is a brave man who stepped up when the world was ending.
and the next years are hard. people die. cities burn. wars break out and people show the worst of humanity. you think, maybe they're the lucky ones, up there. maybe even if they save us, we won't ever recover. you lose friends and families and start to wish you'd be the next to go, maybe.
and then the beatles return. the twee name feels almost insulting, now that you've seen how bad it got. but they come with a savior: tiny predators to wipe out the cells trying to kill your planet. and they come with news: intelligent life! a whole society of intelligent life!
they release the logs after they get the taumeba to venus, after the sun starts to stabalize and then get stronger, after the numbers are crunched and the surviving scientists agree: we can recover from this. we will.
they release the logs and there he is. ryland grace. still awkwardly charming. talking to the camera. confused at first, and then purposeful. and there's the alien, who ryland grace has given a name and learned to speak with and who also saved this world. grace rocky save stars! the alien proclaims. ryland grace laughs at the camera and agrees: grace rocky save stars! and they did.
the kicker though comes at the end of the logs. a sort of appendix, the story of ryland grace. that's where you learn the truth: he was drafted to the project first because he was the only person who never backed down from believing life didn't need water. he stayed on the project because he needed to work for the kids he taught (i was right, you think, teaching was good for him). but in the end, he was sent into space without a choice, because other people decided he needed to go and couldn't be allowed to say no. you think back to learning he was going, and realize: he's the same type of coward as you, and he still saved the world.
only, he isn't a coward. he chose to turn around, to sacrifice himself to save his new friend and that friend's planet and people. this time, he chose, himself, to die if that's what it took. and you look around at your planet: frozen, starving, war-torn, angry.
for the first time in years, earth is hopeful. and you look up at the stars and remember ryland grace, the awkwardly charming fighter who never knew when to quit, and promise yourself: i'll be more like him.
vaporwave
germansingergirl
annaxmalina
areudirty
