bit of a bastard blog

Grace: ok so we've covered my profession tone and social status tone, are we done?

Rocky: no. relationship status tone

Grace: are you for real? you know i'm single

Rocky: yes but is Grace single as in looking or single as in forever question

Grace: .....

Rocky: Grace

Grace, sitting down: 🤔

Rocky: GRACE

*later*

Grace, pacing the lab: I mean it's a bit of a moot point now right cause I'm light years away from earth so I'm not going to be dating any time soon

Rocky: ughhh

Grace: and I guess I AM cool with never dating again but maybe I wouldn't be cool with that if I was still on earth? maybe it's just not a priority right now?

Rocky: Grace just pick a tone

Grace: it's just a big commitment you know like I'm always telling myself the right person might come along -

Because what I'm imagining is that when they found potential life they reached out to the leading expert in the field, and when they told him that the aforementioned potential life was found on the surface of the sun the first words out of his mouth were "If that motherfucking asshole was right about water-based lifeforms this whole time I'll destroy this planet my goddamned self"

and then a little later on he learns that it had nothing to do with sound at all! purely by chance this composition of xenonite lets light pass through it! and humans have this special organ that lets them detect invisible radiation to such a fine and accurate degree they use it to navigate a room and sometimes to communicate with each other, without even needing technological augmentation!* at one point when looking at planet adrian grace is like wow, i know from our readings this planet has a surface, but the atmosphere must be really dense, i can't see anything past the clouds! and rocky is like YOU CAN NORMALLY SEE PLANET SURFACE FROM SPACE QUESTION??

(*mostly. giving movie grace glasses makes this retroactively very funny)

and then there's an initial smaller taumoeba leak before the catastrophic one (not due to the xenonite, due to a lot of stuff around the ship breaking during the adrian mission), which mostly just succeeds in draining the hail mary's non-vital power system and turning all the lights off

which drops grace's ability to navigate his own ship to zero

Antartica nuking scene

I really like leclerc actually. A climatologist whos lifes mission comes crumbling down with nothing but the sound of distant thunder... 🤕

That's not what Eva would call it if asked. She is not good at jokes which is apparent by the way this one falls flat. If Eva had to call it anything, she'd call it a ruse. A clever diversion. Of course the second coffee is for Dr. Grace but she knows better than to give a man who just vomited twice and whose throat is probably scraped raw a hot, caffeinated liquid. She didn't expect him to react this intensely to the experience but she really should have. He's a civilian, not military. She needs to remember that going forward.

So she pulls the cups to her chest and says “I need both” expecting him to look at her weird. But he's not missing a beat, just smiles crookedly and waves it off and Eva thinks once again: ‘I'm not good at jokes.’

☕☕☕☕☕☕

“Here you go.”

Eva looks up and there are two coffees sitting on her desk. Dr. Grace sits down next to her, sipping at his own cup, already distracted by papers he was handed for review.

Two coffees. Black.

She opens her mouth to tell him she doesn't need both but snaps it shut when he glances over at her and grins. She lifts one to take a sip and pulls the other one closer to herself.

It can't hurt.

☕☕☕☕

It keeps happening.

Two coffees. On her desk, waiting in her office, shoved into her hands on the way to another mind numbing meeting.

It doesn't happen all the time. Only on especially stressful days or when she is barely able to keep her eyes open. She's unsure if Dr. Grace knows it's just a bit that doesn't need to be indulged all the time or if he is genuinely concerned about her caffeine intake.

He doesn't tell her. She doesn't ask.

☕☕☕☕☕☕

He doesn't bring her two coffees when he meets with her to tell her that he can't do it, that he doesn't have it in him.

She's glad. She doesn't deserve it.

If he had, he might have taken one of them and thrown it in her face.

(he wouldn't)

She would deserve it.

☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕

She orders the technicians to reprogram the food distribution part of Mary and assign Dr. Grace Ilyukhina’s coffee ration. The Russian woman rarely drinks coffee anyway. She will just have to deal. Eva feels guilty for all of a second before she soothes her own conscience with the fact that Grace will definitely share his ration with the woman anyway if she really craves some caffeine.

He's good like that.

☕☕☕☕☕☕☕

The launch goes off without a hitch. The atmosphere is somber and quiet. There is no loud countdown, no champagne for everyone. Just whispers and a table with some snacks and coffee.

Eva pours herself two cups, just out of habit. Puts cream and sugar in one of them.

Habit, everything.

She stares, unmoving, at the two cups sitting on the table for so long a hand reaches past her to take one of them, probably thinking they are up for grabs for everyone. It's the cream and sugar one, the one she won't drink anyway. She could let them take it but instead she grabs both cups before the other hand can.

“I need both,” she says.

The person next to her makes a face. Like she is being weird.

Someone to be brave for.

excerpt is from chapter 29 of the novel.

location: Grace being American, I imagine the main exhibit would be at one of the Smithsonians (or affiliates). originally I went with Space Center Houston, but the National Air and Space Museum in DC might make marginally more sense. it’s pretty small, but they do also literally have Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit and the command module from Apollo 11, so a Hail Mary exhibit might make a nice companion.

name: Earth’s Saving Grace: The Story of Project Hail Mary (if this was real life it would be called like “The Lockheed Martin Hail Mary Exhibit” or something equally asinine, but this is fake so I can ignore that <3)

actual artifacts:

at least one of the Beetles probes (probably Ringo, idk I’m attached to that one for some reason) 

xenonite taumoeba breeder tank 

replicas of the yellow and red jumpsuits grace wore, with highlights on each of the individual patches and what they mean + the patches that were on Ilyukhina + Yáo’s suits

a small replica of the astrophage panels used to power the Hail Mary

I imagine Grace kept some kind of physical research journal while working on Stratt’s Vat, that would be in here

interactive:

tech panel breaking down time dilation + the difference between the actual time the hail mary traveled to tau ceti, the time as experienced from earth, and the time as experienced by the crew onboard

tech panel that teaches about base 6 + Eridian numbers, and has a little quiz where you’re given a number in base 10 and have to convert it to base 6 (or you’re given a number 0-5 and have to pick the Eridian equivalent) 

tech panel with a 3D model of Rocky you can spin around and click various parts of to learn about Eridian biology (or at least what they know of it from Grace’s logs)

tech panel comparing the planet characteristics of Earth vs Erid, + potentially Venus vs Threeworld +  maybe Sol vs 40 Eridani A; I’m not sure how comprehensive I want this panel to be actually thinking through this a Sol/40 Eridani A comparison would be built in, as I envision you being able to both look at the planets themselves side by side and switch views to look at their orbits around their hosts side by side 

other elements:

one of those semi-enclosed movie rooms with the big wall projection(s), where they loop through a curated collection of the video clips sent back by Grace [when the museum is busy this part of the exhibit in particular is packed]

wrapping around the exhibit is a timeline of the entire mission, from the Petrova line discovery all the way to the Sun returning to full brightness (and when they have confirmation that 40 Eridani A has also returned to full brightness, I imagine this would be added as well) [the actual line part of the timeline is red, of course]

a dedicated wall with pictures of all of the big players in the mission, and a placard naming them all. Stratt is at the top (which she hates), with Grace immediately beneath her, and then the remaining astronauts side by side underneath him, continuing down through technicians scientists etc. Grace never took a mission picture the way the rest of the astronaut crew did, so it’s just his final yearbook photo as a teacher. it’s led to a number of conspiracy theories online that maybe he never actually agreed to be the tertiary scientist, but it’s explained in the exhibit as highlighting that he wanted to be remembered as a teacher, not an astronaut

"But I can't. Hah. Just like last time, right? I can't do it. I can't just do the right thing.

"I wish you a good life. Happiness, peace, eight hours of sleep at night. And if the governments are watching this, if my vote counts at all, I don't think she should be punished. But I do want you to remember me.

"Not, like, in the cute way. I mean I want you to remember. Whenever you see an old man walking a dog, or a child holding hands with her mother, whenever you see the rays of the afternoon sun streaking through the clouds like the sky was the canvas of your God... I want you to hear me screaming. Whenever the thought that you did something to be proud of even approaches your heart, I want you to remember me telling you 'No,' in plain fucking English.

"I know that's, y'know, mean. But you killed me, so it's probably fair. And I know you'll do what I ask, because you are, fundamentally, a really good person, Eva Stratt."