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"Course modification rejected. You will return to Earth, Dr. Grace," Mary says, for the fifteenth time.
I scream into my hands a little over it. It'd seemed like a stroke of impossible luck – had been one, literally, I was still no programmer but even I knew very well that the Hail Mary hadn't been loaded with anything capable of synthetic intelligence – the universe cutting us a break for once when the centrifuge had engaged itself at Adrian right when I'd been on the verge of blacking out. Another Earth second and Rocky would almost definitely have broken out of his atmosphere to save me, and I probably would've lost him and then myself as well. And I'd even thought it fortunate, that I'd have someone to talk to on the long way back to Earth.
It hadn't really changed the events after that, of course. For all that Mary had somehow gained rudimentary sentience she was still limited in cognition, and if I'd missed the glaring possibility of the Taumoeba evolving to escape xenonite there was no way she could've caught it instead. No, that one was entirely on me.
Which is why it hadn't been a hard choice in the end, after all, to decide that I had to go back to save Rocky from the consequences of my own hubris. Except –
Except that this apparently isn't an acceptable choice of action, to Mary. And sure, I could override her to plot a course back to Rocky's last known position myself. I'd already had to do that while escaping from Adrian with the beetles; things had already been precarious enough as they were and I couldn't afford any additional variables between my Excel sheet and Rocky's jury-rigged controls.
But that had only been for a few days, and with Rocky around to boot. There'd always been someone awake to watch the trajectory.
Now, though? I can't stay awake for four years, and I don't have enough food to fight the possibility of Mary course-correcting every time I so much as take a nap. I only just have enough to make it to Erid as it is.
I scream into my hands a little bit more. It's not as cathartic as when I'd made the decision to save Rocky, but it's better than nothing. Every minute I spend here arguing with my own darned ship is another widening in the cone of uncertainty on the Blip-A's position, and I'm not sure how much more of this I can take. (I ignore the sudden and unhelpful thought about whether Stratt had ever felt this way. Probably not, given the whole – y'know. World dictator thing and all.)
I try to reach for something constructive. Science had failed me for once, as proven by Mary's continued response, but I'm a teacher too. "I've already launched the beetles, haven't I? Earth's going to be safe."
"Acknowledged. Irrelevant."
"Irrele– how can saving Earth be irrelevant!? That was the whole point!"
"Secondary objective," Mary replies, and that makes no sense whatsoever, giving the Project the best chance of saving humanity was why I'd ended up–
Wait. Not 'mission objective'. Not Stratt's objective, because she had in fact decided against putting me out here in some kind of HAL 9000 situation–
My mouth feels dry all of a sudden, never mind that it's still quite literally the same air I've been breathing for months now. "What is your primary objective, Mary?"
"Protect crew," Mary says, and "Dr. Ryland Grace," and "End of manifest," and between one moment and another I'm curled up on the floor with no memory of how I got there, xenonite refracting too-familiar wavelengths even as my vision swims, and distantly I think: no, this is how Stratt felt.
I'm not touched, or I am but that's not why I'm having trouble pulling air into my lungs because I thought it'd all been clear once I'd gotten tired enough to stop crying. And it had been, but not this, not like this. Because Mary doesn't count Rocky among her crew – why would she, being an Earth-made ship? – or maybe she does but it'd only rank as her tertiary objective, he had literally done uncountable modifications to her physical body even if you put aside the toxic-to-human-crew atmosphere and all.
Or maybe I'm being too cynical for once in my life and she would count Rocky in her primary objective if he was on board, but he isn't right now and even if he was the logical action would be to pick him up then make our merry way back to Earth.
Because if Earth only got secondary objective then Erid, a planet sight-unseen filled with things Mary had never been built to save, probably doesn't even rank anything. Certainly nothing enough for her to concede the necessary failure of objective: keep Ryland Grace from starving to death like a stupid fragile space blob.
The thought alone is almost enough to send me into another crying jag except I don't have the time. I'd liked sci-fi novels well enough; I'd never wanted to be living in one and I certainly don't want to be living in this one.
I clear my throat. I'm still no programmer, that was supposed to have been Ilyukhina's job, but I'd had enough practice in brute-forcing my way around it, and the running joke was that we'd built the Hail Mary to be genius-proof. You had to hit the overrides along the way, of course, but the crew had to be allowed to do anything they might need to.
Like, say, wipe the ship's memory. Format it all. Start over.
"Dr. Grace," Mary says, and it's a computerised voice, she's a computer, but I'd also spent half my time with Rocky parsing his speech through a hacked-together synthesiser and it didn't make him any less of a person. Mary had only her data and her sensors and this ship that'd kept me alive for four years now and four years yet, a camera trained on the haunting behind my eyes and the Petrovascope with four beetle-dots receding into space and that made one out of two, it would have to be enough. It's more than I'd had.
(Don't make this harder, please, echoes a different voice from some corner of memory, I am trying to make you understand–)
The moment passes through my mind, a brief insane thought of threatening Mary with my life if we didn't turn around this very minute, jettison myself from the airlock or take Yao's gun from the storage, and maybe that's something Stratt could have done but I'd always been a step too many behind her, even at the end of it all.
I scrub roughly at my eyes – I'd ended up crying after all – and find myself wondering, for the first time, what she'd said at the end. If she had even said anything at all. At least Mary isn't a coward like I'd been, not that she had anywhere to run to.
Does that make it better or worse? I don't know.
I have to pretend that I'm recording another video log for Earth to stop my voice from cracking as I pull up the terminal on the nearest screen. "Thank you for trying to protect me. I–"
– would be good as dead if I don't go back to save him.
– hope you never have to understand this.
– don't want to do this, I have to do this, I –
The final confirmation blinks up at me, simple, too simple, my hands shaking as violently as the gasps in my breath–
"–I'm sorry. I'll remember you as a hero, too," I choke out, and the ship goes dark around me.