keeper's crypt

Just the mental image of Carl watching Grace get transported after being sedated. A man, who prior to that moment, his most vivid memory consists of them finding world changing discoveries with plywood, duck tape, and copious amounts of sour skittles. A man who he associates with the exhilarating feeling of wonder and life. A teacher teaching, a scientist finding, a man living.

But suddenly, that's not his most vivid memory. Suddenly, what first comes to mind when he thinks of Dr. Ryland Grace is the image of him running away, of chasing him through the compound, of the look on his face when they do inevitably catch up to him. He can't hear the excited laughter of the previous memories without them eliciting the desperate pleas for life.

I wonder if he ever gets to see the videos. How would he feel if he knew that his name was the first one that Grace remembers. Foggy like the thing he misses most about earth.

Thank about it. Rocky's a spitfire and bounces off the walls at baseline and they looked at that little autistic, bossy ball of energy and went 'yes. that's them. the creature I want to spend the next 500+ years with'. They have to at LEAST match their energy somewhat. And if you think you wouldn't be a fucking ball of PTSD and bitterness at your culture and society after fifty plus years of not knowing they were alive or dead, you're fucking operating on moon logic. Honestly, Adrian and the other families were probably begging for a rescue mission that never happened for various political and logical reasons; and while it probably would have ended in mass fatalities as well, so thank goodness that figurative and literal ship never got off the ground, the fact that it didn't happen probably burns more than a little, reasonable or unreasonable.

So one day Adrian gets some Eridian diplomat on their doorstep, and they're expecting the formal condolences at long last, but instead they go into this whole spiel of ' so. So! Turns out twenty two of the original crew died, but your mate survived! When did they die? Oh, early on, so your mate was submerged in crippling and literal deafening loneliness for over four decades; and now he's back and acting weird, and he's become codependent with this weird fragile squishy human being that's the only reason he came back at all, and he's refusing to send down the cure unless we make the blob an aquarium. Could you come to the space elevator and tell him to stop being so unreasonable?' If that were MY mate? I'd fucking lose it.

Just throwing things at this poor messenger and shrieking like " Oh! Oh!! So it's somehow Rocky's fault that you're refusing to take a few months out of the several hundred Eridian years we have left to ship the cure we already have to Threeworld before things actually become problematic to make sure one of the two saviors of our entire species doesn't die?! To give the sole survivor of the mission--my mate, who's been alone and in silence, with no one to watch him sleep, for hundreds of years--some sort of solace and peace?! And you're wondering why he's acting erratically?! Maybe you wouldn't be in this position at all if you'd sent the rescue mission for which we've pleaded for years at every single thrum! I don't care if this Grace thing is a literal giant space amoeba; get the fuck out of my house and tell the powers that be to give it literally everything it wants and needs!" And they're all 'be reasonable' and Adrian's like " I've been reasonable for hundreds of Eridian years, and you would not be in this situation if you'd actually sent a rescue mission and not simply wrung your claws and hoped for the best, so fucking live in the nest you made. All I'm going to do if you get me on the radio with Rocky right now is tell him he's doing amazing and give him advice on how to properly parboil the Taumoeba so that you can't even recover even the slightest scrap of DNA if you don't give the flesh blob that saved his life and saved OUR lives PLURAL goddamn vitamins." Like, they think it's bad that Rocky basically stands over Grace's sleeping body and hisses? Wait until they get the MUCH LARGER ERIDIAN doing that for Grace and Rocky. Wait until the much large Eridian leads the families of the dead twenty-two crewmates to the space elevator to riot because this sure sounds like a coverup to them!! This sure sounds like the deflection of blame on the sole survivor!! This sure sounds like the same paralysis that left them to die alone in space because you didn't want to admit failure!! Yes, I know, I'm weaving some sort of political intrigue plot that probably doesn't exist in canon. All I'm saying is that you all are missing the delicious implications of a mission that went radio silent for fifty plus earth years with no word from the government and no obvious attempt at rescue, followed by your partner coming home with the only being that's been around to watch him sleep since the rest of the crew died forty-some years ago, and people are calling him weird and changed. You'd be horrified. You'd be sick.

something something Eva Stratt being named after the first woman, the first scapegoat, the reason the garden died (paving the Sahara, nuking Antarctica) while simultaneously being the reason any of them are alive

i love annie shapiro and her not having any filter "sorry i had to go use the restroom, i was peeing myself" and her nerdy excitment to get to learn from grace

i love olesya ilyukhina, her bravery and childlike innocense, hugging the earth's dicatator like nothing, taking her teddy bear to a suicide mission, and literally sacrificing her life for humanity without a second thought

i loved dr. lokken's pride and her beef with grace about his theory

i love eva stratt and her love for humaity being so big that she had to destroy herself to give humanity a real chance to have a future

Because Grace, Jesus, Odyssius, Jonathan Sims, etc all got something in common (other than being guys), something about their vibes.

My first thought was they all got wet cat vibes but Jesus doesn't really fit that description... anyway what I'm trying to say is, I think you have a type.

A mini PHM comic about Grace growing old. I wanted to explore two ideas: Rocky dealing with Grace’s dementia and Grace wanting to donate his body to science. I spend so much time on figuring out the dialogue (some part still feel clunky to me) but I hope it express my thoughts on where I think Grace’s life would go :)