Bloodymary Swap Au (Title still under works)
This is me just blurting out my thoughts so it might be a little disorganised and nonsensical...
Wherein the stars are gone, the sun glows dimmer and dimmer, and earth nears its end, succumbing into the ice age. Famine runs rampant and waters are no longer drinkable due to decades long worth of pollution and waste gone neglected and untreated. Earth's population gradually dwindles and many have fled to various space stations sent up into orbit during/before everything went to shit.
Then an ocean appears on the moon, a sickeningly red ocean seemingly out of nowhere. World governments launch to capitalize on this new discovery, to search for any sort of resources, cure or clue on how to revive the stars and prevent the sun from blowing out.
Enter Dr. Ryland Grace, a molecular biologist that was plucked out of his home station by Director Eva Stratt to work as one of the leading minds on Project Hail Mary, a project aimed to research this mysterious blood moon as much as possible as for potentially, the last hope for humanity.
Something goes terribly wrong. The 'blood' taken from the moon mutates terribly when introduced with human blood, something that the researchers didn't know while testing large amounts of 'blood' with a chemical under the suggestion of Dr Grace. Someone (somehow) had dripped a little bit of their own blood into the sample, causing the entire research lab on the moon to explode with black flesh and blood.
With such a loss of manpower and vital equipment, the blame was ultimately put on Grace. His punishment to be welded into the SM-13 and dive into the blood ocean to conduct extensive on-field research in the blood ocean. And ofc he didn't go willingly or knew what he was getting forced into...
God, Simon doesn't remember why the fuck he's doing in space.
Ok well, he does. Vaguely. Waking up with amnesia in a completely new environment was a task, with only his belongings to clue him in on who he was and a... Sentient ship..? The (insert ship name here), but he calls her Ellie, for brevity's sake.
His name is Simon (insert last name), he's a mechanical engineer that apparently dabbled in aerospace engineering enough to wound him up here? He's on a mission to save Mar's stars from dying, which required him to be put in an 11 year medically induced coma to save resources. He had... Crewmates... Two others, a scientist and a pilot. He doesn't remember them. It's probably better that way if he wanted to keep the already limited amount of food in his stomach.
Here's the kicker, aside from being an engineer, he worked full time, as a botanist. He only remembered this on the 3rd day after he woke up, stumbling around the ship in a drunken stupor (cause who wouldn't drink copious amounts of alcohol that was left by his crewmates after finding out you'll be completely alone for the next few years, or even his remaining lifetime). He had stumbled across the ship's biodome, squinting at the potted plants with an itch under his skin telling him something was terribly wrong. The temperature was too high, the chamber was too humid, the soil was too dense and compacted...
It took him exactly 2 days to correct the environment to its optimal condition. And a few existential crises.
... A lot of existential crises.
So what the FUCK is a botanist doing in space?!