People talk about book vs movie Stratt. And YES she did nuke Antarctica in the book and YES it is iconic.
But what I haven't seen with it's own post?
In the book, Grace's amnesia is NOT caused by the coma. Stratt gave him amnesia-inducing drugs, developed for interrogation purposes, before he left. She did it on purpose.
Because in a desperate bid to save his own life, Grace threatened to sabotage the mission if he was forced into it against his will. She called his bluff -- she knows that even if he isn't a brave person, he's a good one. He wouldn't sacrifice billions of lives out of what, spite?
But there's a chance. 1% chance, a risk too high for her to take, that knowing he didn't choose this would impact his mission performance. There will be two other astronauts there to remember the details. They'll think it's a side effect of the coma. They'll all think he volunteered, and then forgot.
(Because Commander Yao is a good person. Because he refused to have anyone on his crew who didn't choose to be there. Because Eva Stratt is not a good person, at least not in that way. She knows her choice, and could not make any other.)
The drugs will wear off, eventually. Maybe after he's dead. Maybe while he's still on the mission, but she knows by then he'll be in too deep to quit just because he's remembered that she murdered him.
Is it a mercy? He's on a suicide mission either way. Why not let him believe that he chose it? It's the same mercy she tries so hard to offer, giving him those precious hours to decide. Give him the illusion of choice, hoping he'll choose right, and not notice the walls closing in.
Please, don't make this harder than it needs to me. Please, make the right choice. She's not begging on behalf of humanity. She has already taken that risk out of the equation; it is too vital a choice to be left to Grace's hands. (To any hands but her own.) She's begging for his sake, for her own, for whatever tangled-up friendship they shared. Please, let me pretend the armed security is only there as an overreaction to the explosion. Please, let yourself go onto this mission not knowing what I would have done to put you on board. Please, stay on the path I lead you on, so you don't have to press your face to the walls of the cage we're both in.
Please, let us both pretend there was a choice. Neither of us had one.
I will give you back my greatest mercy, and my greatest cruelty. You ran at every turn. You saw the chains. You pulled against them and wailed and screamed as the cold iron cut against your skin. (One day, that skin will burn at the touch of an alien risking everything to save only your life.)
Forget. Be blind to the chains once more. I grant you the grace of believing yourself to be a good person. Of believing that as doomed as you may be, at least you chose this fate yourself. I will take everything away from you -- your life, your planet, your choices and your memory -- at least I can give you this.
Don't blame me. Not until it's too late. Not until you've already proven me right.
Because Eva Stratt believes in Ryland Grace. She knows him. She believes in him so deeply she knows that forced into this challenge, he will rise to every occasion. The odds go up if he think he had a choice. Her life, the life of the whole planet, is a game of odds. Every percent chance, multiplied out across seven billion lives. Seven million lives saved for every tenth of a percent she can add to their chances. He can't remember; she can't let him.
She's right. He does it, all of it. Presented with the same choice, he chooses right. (Exactly the same choice -- save Erid at the cost of his life. The only difference is this time, he really could say no. There is no Stratt there to force him. Only Rocky, waiting and dying and alone.)
She was right. In every single individual choice, she was right. Earth is saved, and that's all that matters.
And if, for a few precious weeks, twelve light years and a suicide mission away, her best friend gets to think of her fondly? A brief window where he remembers who they were together, without remembering how it ended?
(She can never for a moment forget how it ended. How can she, when the pain of that parting is also her greatest success, her only hope?)
Well. Perhaps it is not earned. But in this doomed, star-crossing friendship, one ending in murder and deepest betrayal-
They have still, despite it all, earned that little bit of Grace.
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