The Hipsters are Appropriating Pop Culture

Eva Stratt had never had an intention of reproducing, even before the astrophage crisis. She's not anyone's idea of a warm, supportive parent.

(Ryland Grace probably hadn't either, not that it had ever occurred to her to ask.)

But that was before she sent her second off to die in space in the name of their planet's survival. That changed things, in ways Eva really couldn't articulate. Just that it was deeply unpleasant to consider a world without someone to remember Grace as the person he was instead of as the hero she'd made him.

And she has nothing but a long prison sentence ahead, so if ever there was a time for her to do something selfish, it was right now.

Eva Stratt is arrested on Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon, she's receiving confirmation that the surrogate's pregnancy looked viable.

She's of mixed opinions on this. Project Hail Mary was a success, for a given value of the term which includes 'only' 4 billion people dying. If she'd been asked, she would not have considered a do-over worth the risk. Unfortunately, whatever cosmic bullshit caused this didn't consult with her.

So here she is, and if she's going to do this all over again, she's going to do it better this time.

. . .There's also the little problem of being 15 again, which is actually worse than her time in prison. At least in prison it was expected that she'd be resentful that her life was being dictated by other people. Teenagers are expected to be respectful about the fact that they have no autonomy whatsoever. It pisses her off.

Anyway.

Soon enough, she's 18 and going to university. She studies history again, this time as a minor, and majors in communication. She graduates, sets herself up as a believer in better living through science, backs projects, makes suggestions, builds her network.

Her network includes Ryland Grace, awkward, angry teenage foster kid, sponsored through a scholarship she sets up for the younger scientists of the future task force.

And maybe she invests a little more time in Grace than she does others. Maybe she talks to him, under the guise of the scholarship. Maybe she advocates for him when the prestigious magnet school he attends threatens to expel him for behavior problems. Maybe she agrees to act as a character witness when he applies for emancipated minor status. Maybe a lot of things. It's not relevant to the problem she's dedicated herself to solving all over again.

Or it wasn't. Until the paper Grace puts out about non-water-based life is "A theoretical framework for extra-planetary life outside the Goldilocks Zone" and the UNESCO conference doesn't end in his expulsion from academia.

Until she looks around, and realizes Grace lives in the same city she does, that he learned German years ago, that she's got a reoccurring entry on her calendar labeled 'Pretending I understand Molecular Biology'.

Until the UN representative tells her she's been voted to lead the task force, (Five years earlier than the first time, after Eva nudged Irena Petrova to investigate her 'little space oddity' sooner, and the improved ArcLight made its trip that little bit faster) and her first thought is 'There's no way I can keep Grace out of this'.*

***

Joke version below the cut.

Murderbot continues to be the most deus-ee of deus ex machina the corporation rim has ever encountered, I love it.

You are a small-time militia trying to keep your small home sector safe from a bunch of armed assholes with guns that could put a hole through you in one shot. You've got a crowd of frightened civilians behind you, and a group of angry, armed mercenaries shouting demands in front of you.

Suddenly, a random security consultant literally appears behind you out of nowhere, saves your boss's life, identifies who the mercenaries are working for, borrows a gun and takes out one of the mercenary's guns in a single clean shot, saving an entire tram full of civilians. And then while you're all busy going after the weakness the security consultant identified in the mercenaries' weapons, they just as abruptly disappear.

Upper management takes one look at your report and says 'okay, fine, don't tell us what happened, but for fucks sake, come up with a better cover story.'