lily

He's who walks up to stand beside her when recruiting Grace. A seamless team. "I need you to come with us."

He's in the observation room with her and all the other important officials, watching Grace make first contact. He's privy to that pivotal moment. She must think he's entitled to partaking of it. Because this is his mission too.

She trusts him to oversee Grace's experiments with three (and a dead) invaluable astrophage cells. How he does it is up to his own judgment. With an expense account and plenty of leeway for how to use it, no questions asked. He's entirely confident in the authority he wields in her name. "Which government?" "All of them."

He's in the room at Baikonur when they present Grace with his role as replacement science officer. He knows. Of all people she thought would be appropriate to have there, the flight team, the lead scientists who have worked with Grace all this time... he's there. Shaking his head in disappointment. Expressing what Eva doubtlessly feels beneath her ever so calmly presented arguments.

He's doubtlessly the one she calls from her office to let him know they predicted correctly and the final stretch of corralling their wayward savior will be up to him. He'll do it right. He'll do it.

Just... unspoken, implicit trust and faith in his ability to do his part in their greater purpose. She believes in Grace but can't fully trust him. Carl? Zero doubt.

So anything regarding astrophage or the ship or space goes through Ryland, and that means he is constantly working with Stratt to make sure all the many moving parts of getting the Hail Mary in the air keep moving. But it’s Carl who the lawyers and accountants and security report to, whose sphere is making sure payments are processed, supply management and delivery to the ship stays on track, authorization to enter national waters or national airspace is obtained, background checks are performed, security threats are handled, political threats to the project are monitored, and who joins activities like springing useful embezzlers out of prison and Stratt’s copyright trial excursion. She has two deputies to cover different aspects of keeping the project running and she thought she chose them well based on their stated willingness to go all in on the task to save the world but as the project goes on only one of them seems to really understand what they’re all dealing with here.

(And so after DuBois and Shapiro die in that explosion, Carl is the one Stratt sits down with to say, “You know it has to be him.”

Carl gives a long sigh and is quiet for a few heavy seconds before he says, “Yeah, I know. Does he?”

everyone gets onto eva stratt for the "think about it long time" vs. "you have three hours" thing but

operating on book canon a little bit: if grace couldn't do it-- if he said no*-- the alternative was to scramble and fly in the next most qualified volunteer, who had 0 training, 0 knowledge of astrophage, and was not an astronaut. three hours could have been three hours of training for that replacement. three hours could have been three hours of preparation for grace, if he said yes

eva stratt gave grace three hours. not to decide, necessarily, because the decision was going to be made the way it was no matter what. but three hours to come to terms with it, to grieve, to mentally prepare himself. three hours that could have been spent giving humanity a better chance to survive

she borrowed three hours that she didn't have to give grace space to process. to get himself together and come to her, teary-eyed but resolved, and say yes.

YOU LITERALLY GET IT!!! ohh "think about it long time" well eva stratt did not HAVE "long time" to OFFER him. eva stratt offered him everything she possibly could and then some! rocky can offer him "long time" because they already DID the hard part. there IS a long time!