Queer Who Loves Stories

The Not-So-Golden Record from chapter 10 of Terra's Grace is living in my head rent-free. As a whole concept. I kept coming back today to the way that carving is *not* a fast medium to write in, and it would be a pretty slow, meditative activity to sit with as you record information just in case. *Just in case* everything goes wrong. *Just in case* the two of you on this ship become the furthest either of your peoples ever reach and a last testament to everything they've done to anyone who comes after. As much as it would ultimately be meditative and really centered on love for their planets and what their people have accomplished, I kept thinking about how the heck that got started, given that it'd necessitate sitting down and *thinking* about that worst case scenario concretely enough to start carving. And as much as I know that USG doesn't strictly share a continuity with Terra's Grace, I sure am thinking about chapter 3 of that, and the fact that Grace actually did have some good initially unrelated reason, there, to be thinking about practicing his carving skills, and decent reason to start doodling on the walls about it, and fair call to be contemplating what he cold carve that would properly symbolize humanity and first contact and himself, and maybe trying out a new carving tool that speeds things up eventually. And I could totally see him stepping back from that, at some point, and realizing only mid-process that this has become an exercise in recording the best of humanity as he sees it.

I forget whether it comes up in the book or not, does rocky know that grace didn't go on the hail mary willingly?