#augustellar 2026

Grace has always been stuck.

Well, not always. He wasn't stuck when he was younger. But I guess that depends on how young we go.

When Ryland was a kid he wasn't stuck. He was outgoing and had many thoughts and questions about any and all things.

His mother fondly remembers how he would repeatedly ask her, “What comes after humans?” He knew dinosaurs were before us, and he even knew about some small animals that lived before even then.

Ryland liked to theorize about the possibilities. He had a few ideas, what if robots took over? Maybe we would all go extinct and something else would come along naturally. What if aliens came and took over?!

Grace has always been interested in aliens. It even led into his academic studies. He thought microbes were very alien looking and he actually developed the interest in biology first, which led to the whole alien thing.

You could say in university he started to slow down. He majored in the sciences, specifically biology and astronomy. When he went for his bachelor's, he did microbiology and fell into academia. He rolled to a stop then.

Dr. Grace presented as arrogant and hot headed to hide his own insecurities. He ended up writing a paper and went to a conference where he got into a heated argument with one of the panel speakers. He got kicked out and went back to school.

This time he went to college and got a teaching degree. Being laughed out of academia meant he couldn't get any decent job at a university and he ended up at a middle school in San Francisco.

He was definitely stuck then. Being surrounded by children definitely didn't do him any favours. Kids loved him because if course they did, they didn't know what he was actually like. No one would.

He had few friends and mostly went to work and home. He didn't have the energy, time, or money to do anything interesting with his time or make any worthwhile connections. Then Stratt showed up in his classroom after school one day.

Grace obviously knew about the Petrova line and the Arc Light probe but he was never expecting to be asked, or forced, to join the project. He started moving again. He discovered and named the Astrophage, he killed it and he ended up with three cells to study.

Grace figured out how to breed the Astrophage and became a dad with Carl as the father. Stratt took him to a meeting with leaders of the world where he officially got clearance and learnt the full scope of Project Hail Mary.

Grace quickly became Stratt's right hand man and the head scientist. He moved onto the vat and fell into a routine. He started slowing down again.

Grace met the crew for the mission and their backups and quickly became close with them. When the main and secondary scientist, Dubois and Shapiro, had the wrong amount of Astrophage given to them, exploding their experiment, he was had no idea what to do.

He sat there in shock and desperation before he saw everyone looking at him and he was told he was the tertiary option all along, that he was to go on the ship with Yao and Ilyukhina. Grace couldn't believe what he was hearing and refused entirely then and three hours later. He stopped entirely, he froze in place.

When Stratt began to force him into the ship, he ran. He ran until he couldn't and then he was put on a ship and sent thirteen light years away.

He soared through the solar system, crashing into Tau Ceti. Crashing into Rocky who had been sitting there since before Grace was born.