"hi, hey, hello" - aldona

Project Hail Mary said "what if you were so deeply scared that you didn't want to try but then found out that all you needed was a hard push and somebody believing in you to realize you were capable all along" and also "sometimes growth isn't fighting your way back to where you were before but realizing that it no longer serves you and choosing to move forward instead"

so not to add to the fandoms collective misery after my last sad phm post but grace was added to the project hail mary mission so late and against his will - naturally, stratt assumed that because he has no family, no real friends outside the project, not even a dog, he would have nobody he would have to say goodbye to; but he does. he has his students. imagine being in his science class and just randomly finding out one day that your teacher has been sent on a suicide mission to space and that's why you have a substitute for the rest of the year, on TOP of the whole 'everyone on earth is gonna die if this doesn't succeed' thing. do you think he thought of them first when he woke up (or if not, when he got his memories of them back) and how he didn't get to say goodbye or even tell them he was going away, forever? how often do you think he subsequently thinks of them, while studying the taumoeba or rockys habitat or looking out into space, wishing he could show it to them?

do you think the eridians would repatriate grace's body to earth after he inevitably dies? or would they understand that he wouldn't want to face the cold dark void of space again, and keep him on erid? would rocky trawl through the huge expanse of information stored on the hail mary, hoping to find something about earth funeral customs? do you think they would at least send a message about it to earth - after all, he was theirs first? do you think by that time, there would be people on earth who weren't even born during the astrophage crisis, but nevertheless had grown up hearing the stories of the brave astronaut and his alien friend who had saved the planet? do you think ryland grace, who starts out the movie as stratt's dispensable guinea pig, no partner or family, "you don't even have a dog", would become the first living thing to be globally mourned by TWO planets? yeah just a thought