Ima figure it out wait

He stands up while thinking about what will he do now. There is two paths he can take: he can either spent more time and nerves on just thinking and trying to remember his name or he can go and explore even deeper what he already has.

It is understandable why computer doesn’t want to let somebody who can’t even remember their own name into main part of the spaceship. But understanding doesn’t help him at all.

Neither does giant blank space sitting where his knowledge about why he is in space is supposed to be at. So what will he do? Right, write in white board.

Listed questions were:

Why are two people dead?

My name?

Why are we here?

Who are they?

Friends?

Why?

What?

Decent list, very good list. Does it help? Also no. There is too many questions to be asked and answered, too many for his mind to comprehend. So if he cannot just sit expecting memories to pop up and writing down doesn’t help either, he should keep looking. But there is nothing more to look at. Two mummies? No, thanks, he doesn’t know them, yet every time his sight slips and catches onto them he feels so empty. They were close friends, he is sure, but he right now doesn’t have any idea about them. And his head starts to hurt when he tries too hard.

Back to the exploration? Yes.

He stands up from wall of the room that is now working as floor. Heading.. somewhere. He is very limited by two rooms.

As he been doing a circle around it he put his hand on the wall surface and not so long after that it hits bag like containers. Weird, he didn’t notice them before, they are tightly mounted into the wall and fastened few times in x-shape.

He unfastens them and takes the top one white bag. It is very quality made, words ‘captain Yao’ are on it.

“I am not Asian,” Ryland says to himself. He can look through it later and he will do that as he needs to somehow hold a funeral to Yao. The next one is with Ilukhina on it and that is not him again.

Finally the one with English-sounding surname. It has word grace scribbled on it with sharpie. Why is this one not embroidered? He decides to look at the last one. It also with embroidered badge end it says ‘geologist Grace’. Two Graces? Maybe this one is his? Is he geologist? No..? He definitely doesn’t think so. Back to first one with grace on it he goes.

It unzipped easily with satisfying sound opening even more satisfying knowledge Ryland is desperate to find.

On top of everything is glasses. “Nice,” Ryland puts them on immediately and the world makes more sense right away. No wonder he didn’t notice bags in the wall in darkened hallway he also didn’t notice a path-like metallic structure on the wall, that implies he is now standing on what is supposed to be side, but he got here with conveniently placed ladder, what implies that he was supposed to do it that way. He is in space and nothing makes sense. Good.

Next are two photos. One with him making a strange pose standing in the middle of something like lab, another one is him in dark blue suit and you in white kissing him on cheek the way half your face cannot be seen. So, he is either married or divorced and still is into his exwife. And there was a little plastic zip bag with ring in it under photos. He puts it on. He is now surprised with how he didn’t notice it missing before.

Ninety percents of total volume of the bag is devoted to clothing, on the top are orange, white and blue jumpsuits from different materials but they are overall made with same pattern, then are lots and lots of t-shirts with stupid puns on them.

—

Sun is shining in the window, falling onto you and Ryland with warm yellow sunshine, that is not too bright, it is just right. You are half laying on the couch, some show is playing on low volume on tv, laptop is near you as you and your husband were doing a little shopping online.

Ryland is standing at the kitchen making coffee.

“Should I get the “Um. The element of confusion” so I could match to yours?” You say looking at new t shirts that popped under the one that Ryland wants.

“Yeah, definitely.”

He can hear you laugh and it makes his heart beat a little faster.

—

And he doesn’t remember your face. That is upsetting. He feels his eyes filling up with tears making his vision blurry, his rib cage feels suddenly empty and his heart is racing. He puts his hands on his eyes and presses onto them. Why does he feel that way? This is not even melancholy, just sadness.

He puts his knees closer to his body and rests his forehead on them. Tears are now running down his face without any intention to stop them, Ryland lets a sob out and starts to cry. He cries over somebody whose face he can’t even remember. That feels awful.

Minutes pass and tears are now stopped, there is no more of them left. Ryland stands up, he still needs to work furthermore. He turns to bags of his now deceased crew mates and unzips both of them. On top of each are photos as it was in his, then are theirs clothes, then Ryland notices four sealed plastic bags with water-like fluid in Ilukhinas. He pulls them out. “Vodka,” he reads out loud and lets a little laugh out. “How did she manage to do that?”

—

Ryland is not very sure how much time has it been. He thinks Mary the computer said "good morning dr. Grace" at least five times and he also answered to at least two of them. Now he is wandering around ship just because he can and because it is everything he can do now. He now had updated his whiteboard with questions, it now has 'How did I get here?' as the main one.

He stops where the beds of crew are located. How can he be the only one to wake up? Why would whoever sent him here send a school teacher? Was he somehow incredibly smart? Ryland sits down and sighs, he tries not to look at his now deceased crew mates but it is impossible as the only way for his sight to reach the only one person that is at least alive is by going through empty monitors that are supposed to be showing heartbeat, well, not anymore. He will do something about them as soon as he will figure out where and why are all of them here and to know that he needs to know his name.

—

Ryland was sitting in his classroom thinking about the whole pertova line thing, he would be a pretty bad science teacher if he wasn’t up to date with such things, and this was when some woman entered.

“Knock knock,” she said.

“Who’s there?”

“Not good at jokes.”

“Not good at jokes who?”

She pursed her lips walking up to his table.

“Dr. Ryland Grace?”

“Maybe.” Ryland shifts his position, now his glasses are closer to his eyes, he is sitting in more bounded way.

“Eva Stratt from Petrova line task force, I need your help.”

“Me?”

“Did you write this?” Eva says handing Ryland his old work. “I am interested in this section here, page 31. The Goldilocks Zone is for idiotis, why everyone is wrong about life.”

“That was a long time ago.” Ryland now stands up and starts to put his staff in his backpack.

“Do you stand by what you wrote?”

“Listen, I was fired for standing by what I wrote. And now my closest person needs to publish under pseudonym.”

“You were fired for calling the leading scholar in you field a staggering waste of carbon at the UNESCO conference in Denmark?”

“You— You heard about that, huh? Look, I don’t know what this is, but, I think, I am not sure you are looking for me.”

Ryland walks past Eva and gets to hallway and she follows him there. That chase keeps till he goes out of school doors. Usually Ryland would walk to you in library, but now he is in desperate need of going away from Stratt.

“No one in your field wants anything to do with you because you refuse to back down from a very unpopular view, and I can give you a chance to prove them all wrong.”

“Well, um. Joke’s on them because I don’t even care anymore, I live my best life right now, so..”

“I think you care. You’re just running away because you’re scared.”

Ryland starts to run approaching his car. He can just drive away, can’t he? No, he can’t, you have car keys. So now he has to stand facing Eva while she practically caught him. Ryland puts his hands up to get himself a little space because Eva was standing too close, she is like a little closer that you want somebody whom you know for less then 10 minutes to be.

“No, I am not.”

“Do you still believe water is unnecessary for life to evolve?”

“Look, there is nothing magical about hydrogen and oxygen. Water I’d required for life on earth, sure, but a completely different planet might have completely different conditions. I don’t know why that makes me such a hut.”

“I need you to come with us.”

Ryland now notices a black car parked in front of him and by so behind Eva. A bodyguard gets out of the car from another side and walks up to Eva.

“Sorry I didn’t catch your name.” Ryland says as he reaches for a handshake.

“Carl.” Carl just stands in the same way he did before. No hand shake was given.

“Carl, hi.”

“Dr. Grace, Petrova line samples splashed down last night. I want you to tell me what they are, how they work. You are also will be succoured by our space geology specialist, Dr. [name] Grace, in order to cancel any demands on inanimation of the dots.”

“My wife? Listen, I am a teacher at Grover Cleveland middle, there is not a ton of things I can do, I can off hand name at least four people who are better than me. And my wife, did she agree already?”

“You have a doctorate in molecular biology. Yes, she did.”

“I also drive an old car. At least something positive. But I still don’t think—“

“It survives on the surface of the sun. Does it sound like a water-based life form to you?”

—

What a long thing. But. Bingo! His name is Ryland Grace, Dr. Ryland Grace. Now he can get further into the ship. He walks up to the closed circle door.

“Say your name in order to open the door”

“Dr. Ryland Grace.”

“Opening the doors.” Door-separator slides open.

“Thank you, Mary.”

“You are welcome, dr. Grace.”

Ryland now is in something like cockpit but walls are completely covered with screens of different types. He can see a fuel related screen there, bunch of speed and velocity showing ones, the most important one is the one that shows a huge(27 cm) yellowish dot.

“That’s the sun!” Ryland points on it. “Are we somewhere near Neptune? What’s scale on that?”

That’s not his sun. If scale is 1:4 000 000 000 then sun must be 3-4 cm wider, which it is not. Bad. Bad bad. Ryland rushes to flight deck sets, where he conveniently finds navigation-map system. So he scrolls and scrolls it down.

“Tau-Ceti… 11,9 light years.” Ryland now looks completely lost. “We are not going home are we?”

Ryland goes through all stages of grief over that in few seconds, he now thinks that he had a feeling that this will turn out thar way. He sighs almost crying.

Time to move on, isn’t it? Ryland signs again calmer now. The Hail Mary is now decelerating so he will stop sooner or later and after that he will not move a lot.

—

Ilukhina and Yao were moved near airlock, Ryland decided that it is appropriate way to hold a funeral in the middle of literally nowhere. They both hold photos they had with them in their mummified thin hands and are lying in their blue jumpsuits.

“I, um, don’t remember a lot about you, but I think you were nice people. Well, you agreed to be here for what ever reason, you must be brave.” Ryland stops to wipe tear running down his cheek. “I— I will do everything I can so you— You know,” he stops again and draws a circle in the air with his hand. “That.”

Ryland steps away from them. Airlock works automatically, door closes, alarm goes off, it unhermetisises the inside part, outside door opens, bodies slide away, and the outside door slides closed back. And now his crew mates are gone. Gone and done.

He now walks back to his safe space. You.

Things have changed since he last time properly looked at you, he finds it king of inappropriate, but now you don’t have anything connected to you, but a catheter, so, Ryland assumes, you are now just sleeping or dying, he hopes not.

“When will she wake up?” Ryland asks robotic hands that are sitting on the selling, they were first thing he saw when he woke up, therefore they controlled him, therefore they controlled every thing in the room, even you.

“Estimated time: 14 hours.”

“Not that long.”

“I ironed your shirt yesterday,” you murmur. “And since the rain we are probably have to take a car and so I will wait for you in library.”

“Okay,” he says as he puts yours and his omelettes and dishes and hands them to you. You put them on dinner table and put some of unchecked works away, while he takes forks and comes to the table. And so you sit down to have breakfast in this little paradise. 

When you park the car and get out of it, one of your favourite part of daily routine happens. You kiss Ryland and give him a hug, while Ryland puts his chin in your head and answers to a hug. You love to get here few minutes before everybody else does. You get to have this moment and Ryland gets to avoid ‘helicopter’ moms. But now your hug feels like it is ending so you make a step back.

“Bye bye love,” you say with a smile waving your hand at him. He waves back and starts to walk away towards part of school where his classroom is located. You head to the library thinking on your research while holding strong on pack of documents you took with you. 

You walk by the parking lots. There is approximately six minutes till the school day starts. You see a group of kids running down the road, they are probably late to their class. “Good morning, Mrs. Grace!” One of boys says while the group passes you and all other kids pick the gesture up and start to greet you too. 

“Hi kids,” you answer. 

This is not the place where you expected yourself to be found at ten years ago. Back then you would say something like “People like me are born without felling of satisfaction.” Or “I am not dreaming about stars, I am planning on how to get them.” And you were. Terraforming Mars. Lunar colonies. Internship at  NASA. You wasn’t the brightest star on the sky yet you were definitely one that was made to look at. Geodesics is a fun science, you can do whatever you want after getting your degree starting with geology and ending with astronomy. So you did. You were staying in your group of friends working with them in different fields, exploring, living your best life. Till something not very good happened but now, looking back, you are happy your life changed that way. As life showed you few times you do have feeling of satisfaction you just weren’t searching for it in right place. 

Time passes faster when you work. Few kids came in to return books during lunch break but library was mostly silent today, what you are quite enjoying because it lets you concentrate easier. 

You were thinking about the Petrova-line for few days. And after Arcline collected few samples and it was showed on TV your interest of course didn’t collapse. So now instead of focusing on your research about ways to explore glaciers using technology of IR light instead of typical carbon relying analysis as you should. You have white board on your lap, writing down questions and answers you know. That doesn’t fill space at all so you decide to put down thinking for a bit and make your hands busy with some monotonous activity. 

You hear door opening as you are on few finishing stitches of new Venus as last one was missing for few weeks. 

“Hi, dear, approximately five minutes and we can go,” you say not lifting your eyes from crocheting. Why would you? Not like somebody, who is not your dearest favourite most precious husband Ryland, will enter library, that is supposed to be closed by now, forty minutes after sixth period.

“Hello”, a woman that entered the library says. You stare at her as she keeps approaching your table. Your mind splits into thinking about two things. First one was ‘Are you sane? Maybe you are asleep and dreaming’. Second was ‘Did she just tried to walk in closed library doors? What would she do if they were closed?’. You didn’t have time to start questioning her identity.

“I am Eva Stratt.  I’m with the Petrova Taskforce.”

You nod, not like there is a lot for you to do. She continues. 

“Doctor—”

“No,” you interrupt her.

“Miss—”

“And you missed again.” Yes, this is not professional, but there is not a lot of professional right now right here, so why not to let a little game happen? 

Eva looks a little confused but that expression disappears pretty fast as her eyes find your nameplate in the corner of your table.

“Mrs Grace, are you familiar with this work?”

She asks handing me pretty thick paper with ‘An Analysis of Water-Based Assumptions and Recalibration of Expectations for Evolutionary Models.’ right in the middle of front page. How could you possibly not know? “Is that why she is here? It’s been years just forget already,” you think. But you hope that your face didn’t show all the frustration you had on your mind.  

“It states your name here as one of the sources and as an editor. I am specifically asking about page 20 to 25. Where it clearly states that considering all existing theories about start of life we cannot be sure that only possible scenario is where some kind of energy hits some body of water changing the way molecules were bonded to basic amino acids. We can also assume that any specific type of rock or/and ice formation has potential to be that ‘body of water’”. She opens the paper at twenty first page, puts it on your table, turns it to be facing you, and slides it in your direction. But you don’t even need to look at it. 

“Maybe.. Answer mostly depends on why are you asking.” You look at her expecting to make some kind of eye contact but you are surprised to find her looking over your shoulder where to your ‘luck’ white board with words ‘Pavlova line’ right at the most obvious place are. You hit it with tip of your foot a little so it makes a little turn and falls on the side with words written. 

“We need your help with research about the Pavlova-line. Right now we have around two hundred scientists from different countries working with us and we need your help too.”  Eva says while ignoring the thing you just did, unlike you, she behaves very professionally.

“Why?” You are definitely not the first person they should ask about it. You can name at least ten better candidates right now. 

You probably look confused as her tone changes with next words.

“You decided to support study that disapproves the main way to see evolution,” Eva now has more of explanatory voice as if she was explaining the difference between gas and liquid. 

“Yes, I did, but that was a long time ago, and it also little bit ruined my husband’s academic career, just a little, you know. I now have to publish under pseudonym, so does he, but both of us are satisfied with the way things go and I don’t want to fix something that is not broken.” Well, that came out fast. Maybe just a little too fast as if you were thinking about it every few days, as if you still cared about how life was before, as if you are still interested in how would things be if one single very significant event didn’t happen.. But you didn’t. Topic closed.

“Are you sure that this is what brings you satisfaction? Don’t you want to make life easier? The dots are staying all around our sun what can stand as prove of your theory. Don’t you want to try?” Eva leans over your table, coming closer to you. You want to try but you don’t want to answer her like anything that proves her right even a little. Somewhere deep in your mind thought about Ryland sparkles. Did they ask him? It was and is his idea after all. 

“First of all, this isn’t my theory, I just suggested few things, second of all, I am a geodesist, what means that I look at ground and tell whether you can build here or not, even more, my speciality over all is rocks, and they can not be alive, they are bunch of same kind atoms, yet even there all I do is looking at rocks and say whether they are cool or not! I am not a biologist nor a chemist, the biochemistry part of mine life just exists, I was young and had way to much time and courage to explore, and, the most important part, I am a librarian at middle school right now. I just.. I just don’t get it honestly. Why?” You finish your ‘speech’. You are not satisfied with it but you did what you could. Eva nods, probably deciding something in her mind. You find yourself feeling something like agreement with whatever she thought about. 

“We have the Arclight coming in few hours, it, of course, is completely up to you if you want to participate, but we would like you to.” Eva says. 

You answer immediately. 

“How much time I have to decide?” 

“Twenty minutes.”

“Am I allowed to call my husband and tell him that?”

“There is no need in that.”

“Wha— Why? I will still need to take him home as we took car today and I want to take at least something with me.”

So they talked to Ryland, didn’t they? You came with such concern since this is the most obvious thing to happen. And he probably did agree. And he is the one who most likely told them about you. Them? Did Eva talk to him or it was someone else? 

“We will drive you. And, if you decide now, we maybe will have time for you to do things you want to do.”

You think that there no need in that since he is already with them. Yet a little check will not hurt anybody. So instead of asking directly and probably getting something like ‘…I don’t need you to know so you won’t’, you go with very ‘sneaky’ way. 

“Fine, I am in, but you get me home so I at least can leave car keys and a note there.” You say, while starting to pack your bag.

“There is no need in note.” As expected, she repeats her self and you are more than happy to hear that this time. So you decide to make a bald move and ask straight away.

“You took him too? You came to him first didn’t you? This is why he didn’t come here yet?” And all of those questions are yes or no, so she cannot get you distracted and avoid answering. 

“Yes.” Eva says. She is not talkative. But right now you couldn’t care less, as you can almost hear yourself screaming ‘bingo!’ in your mind. Three out of three! Perfect score! But your face stays rested and calm(not for Eva, she sees the way your eyes brighten up, when she answers the way you were expecting her to.) 

“Then there is no need to go home, so you instead can take me now wherever you want to.. Are you going to tell me where are we going? No?” You say that in most uncaring voice possible. 

“No”. Not like you were expecting her to tell you governmental secrets, but she said it in dry tone. So you decided to give her a compliment. 

“I kinda like you. You are in some way predictable.” Yes, this is exactly what you wanted to say. 

She smiles just a little. 

We leave as soon as you are done closing library. Eva and you  walk up to the parking lots, where you see two black jeeps parked. 

Eva introduces you to Carl, then you are given a walkie talkie and are set in the car without any clarifications. And in something like ten minutes of drive you notice that your phone has lost its signal. In ten more minutes car stops and Eva opens your door. You see very generic environment but you don’t really have time to spend on comprehension of everything around you.

“Welcome to the mobile Petrova-line Taskforce base.” Eva says as you two walk away from the car. 

Thank you for reading this

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