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“What are you going to do for the next 20 years?” Ryland asked.
They were standing outside in the cold winter air, and Eva was clutching the coffee he brought her.
The question stumped her for a moment. She had not allowed herself the luxury of envisioning life after the Hail Mary took off. She had too much to coordinate and people breathing down her neck.
But here was Ryland Grace, the one constant optimist in her life, ready to imagine what their lives would be like in seventy-two hours when the mission officially left Earth.
For the briefest of moments, she let herself imagine what a life with no responsibilities would be like.
At least, no responsibilities related to the fate of the Earth and everything (everyone) on it.
She knew, realistically, that after the Hail Mary crew took off, her work would not end. There would be paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork. There would probably be some inquiries from various governments about her choices over the past few years.
She could be in jail.
She probably should be in jail.
It would be worth it, of course. Saving the world matters more than anything that could happen to her.
But, secretly, Eva wished that it were an ideal world. One where everyone saw the sacrifices she’s been making and the deals she’s been cutting and how dire a situation they were all in. That, for the twenty years it was going to take for the Hail Mary to send information back to them, people would leave her alone. All she wanted was to breathe a little easier.
A therapist once told her that when things start to become too stressful, picture a happy place in her mind that exists in an ideal world. Ordinarily, she closes her eyes and is transported back to her flat in Germany. The sunlight comes through the window, her plants are all healthy and green, books are on the coffee table, and a bike near the front door indicates she has some leisure time. Twenty years of leisure time.
She shuffled her feet a little bit and looked at him. His kind blue eyes sparkled back at her, and the scene in her head shifted.
There are papers haphazardly piled up on the table for grading, a yellow raincoat on the hook by the door, a cup of coffee next to her that she didn’t make herself, and an overwhelming feeling that, for once, she is not alone.
Eva has never been very superstitious, but she’s pretty sure that this one fleeting thought jinxed her. The universe saw her longing for something, even just for a millisecond, and decided then would be a good time to cash in all the karma she’s been racking up.
It came in the form of her entire science team getting blown up.
Her entire science team, minus Ryland Grace.
As she took off, she could hear him running behind her towards the burning building.
“Wait!” He yelled, out of breath, pulling her back by her shoulder before she could get any closer.
Something else in the blaze popped and blew up, and she felt herself getting pulled backwards by him. His hand never left her shoulder as they stood there and watched it burn.
She knew who was dead. She knew what was going to happen next. All her senses flooded back to her at once, and the perfect soldier in her head stood at attention.
She turned to Grace, his hand dropping to his side. He was gaping at the fire in front of them, tears clouding his eyes.
She understood three certainties in that moment.
1. She had absolutely no other choice.
2. He is going to hate her until the day he dies.
3. She is going to hate herself until the day she dies.
In the weeks that followed, wherever she was, she would sometimes step outside and stare at the sky. Billions of stars in danger of disappearing twinkled back at her, and among them were three people who would never come home again.
Twenty years later
A young scientist runs into her office at full speed.
“Ma’am,” she says. “The beetles. They’re back.”
“Are you sure?” Eva asks, standing up quicker than her old bones would’ve liked.
“Yes! Get down here,” The employee says. “Now.”
She had a soft spot for this girl. Her name was Olivia, and she grew up in the chaos. She was one of thousands of children who saw the Petrova line on TV back when this was all brand new and decided they wanted to study the stars.
Eva met her during a visit to NASA a few years ago and had asked her what made her want to join the team.
She tried to ask all the new kids that, and usually got an answer along the lines of “saving the planet” or a story about how the crisis directly impacted their families. Olivia gave the first original answer she’d heard in a long time.
“Dr. Grace was my eighth-grade science teacher,” She smiled, a little melancholic. The world had changed a lot since she was in eighth grade.
“Grover Cleveland Middle School in San Francisco?” Eva asked. “I remember it.”
“It’s Ryland Grace Memorial Middle School now,” Olivia said. “They changed it when my brother was a student there about fifteen years ago.”
Eva did not know that. She supposed it made sense. Once everyone on Earth found out the Hail Mary was a suicide mission, memorials for the three astronauts began to pop up anywhere and everywhere.
She thought of San Francisco often, but never went back. Every time it crossed her mind, she thought about Grace and how much she wished she had left him in his classroom.
Yao and Ilyukhina were volunteers, already trained astronauts who knew the risk and fully consented to it.
Ryland Grace was a man she killed the second she decided to leave him three astrophages in San Francisco.
The only thing that made her feel a little bit better was knowing that he would have the other two around to show him the ropes. Perhaps they could teach him something, and it wouldn’t be as horrible a fate as the official mission statement made it sound.
The cameras inside the ship were designed to start recording the second that the crew woke up.
When the recording began, everyone huddled around a conference room to watch on the projector. The screen was split into four parts, each quarter holding a different camera perspective that shuffled through based on movement. They watched in horror as all four squares confirmed that only one of their heroes had woken up.
They had people assigned to go through the footage. There were thousands of hours of it, and while they were able to parse out the information pertinent to the mission (and, apparently, an alien), someone needed to sit there and take note of the entire thing for archival purposes and to make sure they didn’t miss anything.
Eva sat down in front of the screen, her face blank.
Not only did she kill him. She trapped him all alone in the middle of nothingness. She paused the video. In the lower left square, you could see his whiteboard with “Who am I?” written across it.
“You can leave,” Eva said, her voice sounding more hoarse than she expected.
She wasn’t even sure who was still in the room with her. There weren’t more than three or four, but she heard them shuffle out.
“Stratt-” Olivia was there, and Eva turned to look at her.
She had tears streaming down her face, and her eyes were wide in disbelief as she stared at her old teacher on the screen.
“You should go,” Eva said, softer. “You don’t need to remember him this way.”
Olivia nodded and slowly left, closing the door behind her like she was sneaking away.
Eva turned her attention back to the screens and let out a shuddering breath. She was crying now, too.
All the work everyone put into this. All the hours of training they received. Dead before they could even get started.
And then there is Ryland.
Dr. Grace.
Eva stood up and walked closer to the screen.
His eyes were the same shade of blue that she remembered them being, but they did not sparkle. She had a bitter, ironic thought that at the very least she was no longer the loneliest person in the universe.
More tears were streaming down her face now. It wasn’t fair. Not to any of them. Not her, or Ilyukhina, or Yao, or Grace. Not to any of the billions of people on this planet who have been suffering because of global cooling.
After composing herself, she decided she was going to take copies of the tapes with her. It was technically her project. She had the right.
She bid the guards in the hallway a short goodnight and took off to her living quarters.
Once settled, she gathered every bit of alcohol she could find, deposited it on her table, and opened up her laptop.
The footage was not always exciting. Many hours simply watched Grace working in his lab, or lying around. The cameras were supposed to only record when he was awake and moving, but they didn’t care if what he was doing was interesting.
Still, Eva found herself watching every second, glued to her screen. She smiled as he bounced around the lab, talking to himself. She cried with him as another clip played where he suddenly stopped pacing and collapsed to the floor, sobbing.
The alien was fun. It took her a minute to wrap her head around it. She wanted to yell at him when his first thought upon seeing an alien ship was “Nope.”
She was glad that it happened, though.
That he wasn’t alone.
She was also thoroughly impressed.
She watched them figure out language and how patient he was with Rocky. He was always, above all else, a great teacher.
It was what he referred to as vlogs that she had the hardest time with. The rest of the footage was like watching security cameras. Then, spliced in between were his video diaries.
“So, Rocky is asleep,” He said.
They usually started like that. It seemed that his new friend was nosy, and it was easier for him to talk this way freely.
“I learned today that he has a mate back home on Erid,” Ryland continued. “It’s pretty neat, actually. They mate for life, like penguins or whatever.”
Eva smiled. She could tell that he always seemed a little more giddy in the videos where he learned a new thing about Rocky.
“Wouldn’t that make life so much easier? If we all just met someone and they were perfect for us forever?” Ryland asked, looking wistfully past the camera. “I know that I, personally, have never had great luck with relationships.”
Eva snorted into her glass. She could relate to that.
“The last time I tried to ask a girl out, a building blew up,” He said, sighing. “Kinda ruined the mood.”
Eva froze.
“Probably shouldn’t say that!” He said, more quickly. “She might be watching this, actually.”
Eva was still frozen.
“Oh well, I’m dead, right?” Ryland shrugged. “It’s whatever.”
Maybe this is why the universe jinxed her that day. Maybe it wasn’t just because she thought about something for a fleeting second, but because they both thought about something for a fleeting second.
The video went on. Rocky was awake now, and they were fumbling around the ship putting the finishing touches on his living quarters. She watched them almost die, the exterior cameras showing stunning visuals of Adrian coupled with Ryland’s bravery. The video cut out for a while after that.
She held bated breath as she watched Rocky recover, Ryland sitting next to him quietly narrating his day. When Rocky woke up, she cheered.
It was a few hours later that a more excitable Ryland Grace picked up the camera and began another vlog.
“Actually, you know what,” The screen started a new vlog. “I don’t care. This feels like a reality TV confessional, God.”
His face filled the screen again, and Eva noticed the sparkle in his eyes again.
“This message is for Eva Stratt,” He said. “It was you, by the way. The girl I was going to ask out before the building blew up.”
She figured that.
“But you probably knew that,” He said. “I didn’t do a very good job. I’ve never been someone who can be all suave and like ‘Hey, what are you doing for the next twenty years? Can it be me?”
“Not that I was asking you to sleep with me!” He added, slightly panicked. She was smiling. “I really, truthfully do not care about that.”
“But, it would’ve been nice to get dinner. See you laugh, maybe. It couldn’t have been easy to have that much weight on your shoulders.” He gestured around the room, spinning in his chair.
He paused for a second, looking more serious. That’s new for him, she’s noted. There are times when he just locks in. Becomes more confident than she thought he was.
“I remembered everything earlier,” He continued. “About how I got on this ship.”
“I was upset about it at first. I’ve spent this entire time thinking I was some brave hero, but I am not. I ran.”
“Oddly enough, after sitting with it for a little while, I think you were right to put me here.”
“I’m proud of the work I’ve done. I got to meet Rocky,” He paused.
“I forgive you.”
“I hope that you can forgive me whenever I get home,” he said, smiling a sad little smile, and Eva’s heart ached. “Maybe I’ll ask you to dinner sometime. I’m curious what you would say.”
“I would have said yes,” she thinks.
A machine beeped somewhere in the background, stealing his attention. He turned back around in his chair to face the camera.
“I have to go check on that,” He said.
Then, he kissed his fingers and held them up to the camera.
“See you soon.”
Eva paused the video and held her hand up to the screen. There were still tears streaming down her face as she pushed her chair back to get up.
She knew what happened next. The scientists had briefed her on it earlier with an explanation of what he sent in the beetles. She had already seen the very last vlog.
“You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.” Echoed in her head every time she had to make a decision.
It was dark out; she had spent the entire day watching the tapes. She stepped outside into the cold air and looked up.
The benefit of being in the middle of nowhere meant that you could see the beauty of the cosmos pretty clearly. She spun around, snow crunching under her boots until she found it.
Up above her, shining brightly was Orion’s belt. Slightly to the upper right was 40 Eridani.
Her breath puffed out in front of her, and the wind blew her greying hair into her eyes. They were working on a way to send a message to him up there, all the way across the universe, yet still visible from where she stood. She hoped he could see the sun wherever he was.
“See you soon,” she whispered.