Allyfox

I was listening to City Of Stars on repeat and kept thinking about aroace grace. I love grace who is happy without a relationship, who doesn't need any romantic relationship to be fulfilled, but... I also keep thinking about Grace being a hopeless romantic. Grace who keeps hearing about love love love and nothing else, Grace who keeps waiting for that one true love, Grace who was more in love with the idea of romance than his actual girlfriend. Grace who just doesn't understand why it doesn't come naturally to him, why he can't seem to have what everyone else wants, what he keeps dreaming of. Maybe he thought Stratt may be the one for him. Maybe the idea of a big swooping romance with Stratt makes him want to claw his eyes out. Grace doesn't know what he wants.

He wanted to experience romance so bad, to understand what it was like to fall in love, what everyone keeps talking about... and now he never will.

[begin ID: a digital infographic showing a timeline of the book and movie project hail mary. it's done in simple colors; an off-black background with yellow, orange, red, and light teal. the title is a chunky yellow space-age font, reading "project hail mary" with smaller white text beneath reading "a timeline." on either side is a little teal circle and orange star for decoration.

a red, curvy line comes down from the top corner towards the middle, where it run downs the center of the image to the bottom. along the line on either side are dates, locations, and descriptions. in order from earliest to latest the descriptions/titles read: "erid, 1742. rocky the eridian hatches. according to rocky, eridians live an average of six hundred and eighty nine years". erid, 1850. Rocky and Adrian become mates. All Eridians are Intersex, and they mate for life". "erid, 1983. the blip A departs for tau ceti from erid". "tau ceti, 1986. the blip A arrives at tau ceti. rocky is the sole survivor". "earth, 1987. ryland grace is born." a smaller note with just the date reads "1989. the eridians estimates arrival date at tau ceti, not taking into account relativistic physics". "earth, 2016. the petrova problem is discovered, the earth will dim 5% over the next twenty years, and will continue to dim exponentially. an ice age is imminent. this is where dr. grace's memory flashbacks begin." "earth, 2017. the arclight probe returns with samples from the sun's petrova line. dr. ryland grace is drafted to project hail mary to study it. dr. grace names the life form found in the sample "astrophage." over the next several years, more scientists are recruited. the hail mary spaceship is designed and built, and two million kilos of astrophage are bred for fuel". "earth, 2021. the hail mary launches. after the deaths of the primary and secondary scientists, dr. grace is drugged and forced aboard the ship". "tau ceti, 2033. dr. grace arrives at tau ceti with no memory of who is or how he got there. he discovers that he is the sole survivor of the twelve year journey from earth. over the next six months he makes contact with rocky and the blip a. they solve the petrova problem, and send the beetle probes back to earth with the solution". "erid, 2036. dr. grace and rocky arrive on erid". three small notes read: "2037. the predicted time by which the hail mary will run out of human food". "2038. dr. grace's estimated arrival on earth, if he had returned using rocky's gift of fuel". "2036-2046. dr. grace describes that the first "few years" on erid were difficult before the eridians built the biodome and synthesized human food. the exact timeframe between grace's arrival and when things became more stable is unclear". "earth, 2046. the beetle probes return to earth with the solution to the petrova problem. stratt receives the taumoeba, as well as dr. grace's videos from the hail mary". "earth, 2047. the earth's sun returns to its normal luminence; the petrova problem is solved". "erid, 2062. dr. grace and rocky receive the news that earth's sun has been returned to its normal luminence. dr. grace has become a teacher on erid teaching eridian children, who are approximately 30 earth years old". timeline notes end here. the red line curves to the left, and upon it stands two simplified vector drawings of grace in his spacesuit and rocky, waving at the viewer.