Hatta

An ancient, all-seeing but unknowing “GOD” pulling a desperate, scared, rebellious man through the pinhole of space to Witness IT—that’s insane. The time dilation, the oxygen staying level—the oxygen growing, the lack of symptoms from dehydration and starvation; the GOD keeping Simon alive, the GOD existing in his mind. To just imagine it:

You always thought space was cold. That cruelty was the way to stay alive; which alone is a futile hope. Everything dies. There is no future for you, no future for humankind. There are no stars above. Space is cold. Space is empty. Whatever “people” are left are the same.

But it was not cruelty that killed the stars. It is not even an uncaring, cosmic event that damned your existence. It was GOD. A curious, covetous being.

Grace has his kids, his students. In the book, he has a friend he has dinner with once every week. In the movie, he makes connections everywhere he goes. Stratt doesn’t have that.

Grace and Stratt’s lives are similar: they have people they’re in charge of, they have colleagues they’re divorced from, no family, no lovers, no pets. Stratt sees herself in Grace. So, Stratt dubs Grace expendable because that is what she’s made herself.

Stratt is a shepherd but is not the Good Shepherd (if you’ll allow me to steal a biblical parable for a moment). Stratt will not endanger the 99 sheep for a single lamb. Stratt will not carry an injured lamb back to the flock she left behind. She will not leave them at all. But she will risk the one for her 99 million.

Stratt is christian; she knows this parable. She knows she is charged by God to care for the one that strays just as well as the ninety-nine who stay. But she does not. She cannot. Stratt is willing to forsake her own soul for the earthly lives of everyone else.

The themes—not just plot and character parallels but just the idea of two humans from completely different cultures relating and being together (in whatever capacity people write: platonic, romantic, sexual, all of the above, a secret other thing). Something something it’s the human condition, something something every Bloody Mary fic is genuine philosophy that asks and answers the question of “what is human?”

Is it our DNA? Is it what we are made of—what about mutation? Can something changed still be what it was? Can a person be the same after they’ve forgotten who they are and lived without knowing? Can gaps in space and time be filled with humanity? Is humanity gentle and caring or is it starved and hungry?