I feel like the hackey sack was Stratt. A memory of their first interaction. A reminder of what’s at stake. A reminder of what all of this is for and how this little ball of lava is only lava in our minds, and is not that scary if we just grab it and hold onto it.
But the skittles? The skittles were all Carl.
Carl, who’s just supposed to be a quiet and imposing body guard. Carl who gets stuck with baby sitting duty.
Carl, who is the first person Grace asks for input from. Not Stratt, not the military officials, not phoning another science friend. Carl.
Carl, who does his job of be seen and not heard so well it earned him a job on the Petrova task force. Carl, who is obviously smart to have gotten to where he is- but is not ‘smart’ in the way the enlisted scientists are. Carl, who is there to be the muscles to everyone else’s brains.
And yet, it’s Carl that Grace looks to and asks, “if you were a little space dot, why would you go to Venus? Why not a closer planet, like Mercury?”
And it’s such a simple question but the way that Grace asks is so important. The sun is dying and as terrifying and heavy as that implication is, Grace doesn’t talk about it like that. He doesn’t say, “Carl, what migration criteria do you think are necessary to trigger an IR light release, despite a 107.7 km distance between them?” He asks Carl in the same way a teacher and a friend asks something. “Yo, if you were X, why would you do Y?” He presents it as though Carl is an equal in this brainstorming.
And when Grace initially doubts Carl’s answer (“Venus’s atmosphere is almost completely CO2”), Carl responds with exactly what Grace needs to hear. “Maybe that’s fresh air to them.”
Do you all understand? I need others to understand this. Carl presents the same kind of answer that got Grace kicked out of the academic field. Grace’s academic paper was essentially “fuck you, we don’t know what an alien species would like.” And Carl’s gut answer was “Yo, you don’t know what these little space dots like.”
And from that moment on Carl isn’t just a body guard. He’s Grace’s fellow scientist. Yeah, sure, Grace knows the technology and HOW to design the experiment. But you hear Grace say it- it’s “The Carl Hypothesis”.
Then Carl, who has not once been laughed at by this person everyone treats as ‘the smart one’, who’s been made to feel ‘a part of’ through the whole experiment, goes a step further. Now not only has he proposed a successful hypothesis, he’s proposing successful solutions! He paid attention to everything Grace explains, and when the dots escape the slide, he tells Grace to go get them. And when Grace explains all the ways it could go wrong, he not only understands the problem because of how Grace has taught/explained, he understands enough to propose the obvious solution. “Just put that box in a bigger box.”
A scientist that was full of themselves getting high off the smell of their own fucking farts probably would have scoffed and laughed. But not Grace. Because Grace was always the kind to challenge the status quo with his own science.
And throughout all of this, they’re making themself fucking sick on sour skittles. And when Carl finally watches his co-scientist, his teacher, his friend, begging for help in the dirt as he’s pinned down and sedated, it’s Carl that think of those fucking skittles. Because when Stratt had Grace shoved on a fucking fighter jet screaming his head off as he was flown off to the carrier, there was no time to pack that entire register of skittles.
And sure, Carl has a bag, occasionally. But he’s a grown ass man. And his job is to be a guard, and look intimidating- and he can’t munch on skittles while doing that.
But he keeps those extra bags. And sure, Stratt packed the dumbass tshirts and hackey sack and the one photo they have of him aboard the carrier… but it’s Carl that’s standing at her side, just like he was the first time he met Grace.
And it’s Carl that tucks those last few bags of sour skittles in Grace’s personal belongings.
And it’s Carl that’s hopes some part of Grace remembers him when he sees them. That he’s not forgotten by the one person that saw him for once as not just the muscles, but the brains too.
And it’s Carl that wants Grace to remember how important it is to always be curious and learning, and how sometimes the answer isn’t found by who has the most degrees but by who is willing to ask the ‘why’s that everyone else takes for granted.
And while Stratt hopes that Grace and the others will find the answer that saves humanity- it’s Carl that’s hopes the sourness of those skittles might be enough to mask the bitterness of his betrayal.
