What if Stratt was the first trolley operator, but not the last?
Stratt is put in prison, of course, as soon as the Hail Mary departs. A life sentence. She'd known it would happen—it was inevitable. The governments of the world can't let it seem like they're okay with one person making executive decisions for the entire world, much less those executive decisions, the ones that racked up her list of crimes in countless countries. They can't, no matter how necessary they all know those decisions were.
Stratt is put in prison. But the world leaders know despite themselves that what she did worked. The plan itself was stupid, maybe—so much destruction and ruthlessness and sorrow just to send a whispered Hail Mary flying toward a hope much of the world doesn't even believe in—but still, Stratt made it happen.
They need a new plan. Not a Hail Mary, this time. Just a buying of time. A managing of resources. A creating of infrastructure that can save a small remnant of humanity far into the future, since that's all they can reasonably hope for. A preventing of wars.
A deciding of who will die.
Again, they choose a capable, steady, stubborn woman and put her in charge.
Oh, and a self-sacrificial one, too. No one would accept this job who isn't.
This woman is a little younger than Stratt, though still not exactly young. She was never directly involved in Project Hail Mary, but she's been closely following all the news she could get on it. Her respect for Stratt is boundless.
The woman begins organizing. She creates a system to distribute the food resources of the entire world. For the first time in human history, there is a way to distribute available food reasonably to everyone on Earth who needs it. Seven years ago, this system would have eradicated starvation.
It isn't seven years ago.
The woman makes sacrifices. She stores up food for the colder years to come and lets people go hungry. She makes choices that she knows will let people die.
She only offers herself spare, scheduled minutes to grieve. (She's heard that Eva Stratt did the same. It's what women like them have to do.) Those are also the only times she allows herself to truly feel guilt; but it constantly sits like a small stone in her stomach anyway. So does the sorrow and the self-criticism and the bitterness and the loneliness and the despair... No. Not despair. She cannot feel despair. Humanity will be wounded and fall, but it will not die out. She will not let it.
The woman breaks Eva Stratt out of prison. (Stratt did similar things during the Hail Mary project. She knows she will be allowed to do the same.)
They do let her, but not without conditions. It's dangerous, after all, when you let one woman have as much power as the world once gave Eva Stratt. They are keeping a closer eye on this woman than they did on Stratt. Restricting her just a bit more. So they let her break Stratt out of prison, but they force her to keep cuffs on Stratt's wrists, and have Stratt constantly be watched, and to limit Stratt's interpersonal interactions to ones that the woman deems necessary for this project.
The woman deems it necessary that the two of them talk. A lot. She could and would do this by herself if she had to, but she doesn't, so she needs help. She needs advice from the woman who already knows how to be both a trolley operator and a scapegoat bleeding out on the altar to Hope.
Stratt gives all the advice she can. She helps the woman perfect how to be ruthless. How to make snap decisions. How to delegate and plan and understand and control, each when necessary. How to stay strong. The woman already has all these skills, of course, mostly from her own experience and partly from learning indirectly from Stratt. But it's helpful to have Stratt there.
The woman has never seen Stratt cry. Never seen her be anything but calm and cold. But one time, Stratt ends up in the woman's office during one of her scheduled 5-minute breakdowns, and Stratt walks over and silently holds her as she sobs. After that, Stratt somehow ends up in that room during most of those times.
And though the woman hasn't seen Stratt break, she sees the constant tension in Stratt's shoulders and brow loosen when they are in a room together, and even more so when they are alone. And the woman knows, because she's almost experienced it, that Eva Stratt was the loneliest woman in the world before she herself took second place; but she knows that neither of them are quite as alone anymore.
They are the only people in the world who can understand each other. And they do. They are both there, one woman with the weight of the world resting on her shoulders and the other woman with her back broken and skin torn from the same weight. They are both standing next to each other.
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