as he put his hands to his face and groaned into them. It was stupid, it was so stupid, but the sudden burst of anger surprised Simon. Violence wasn't something Simon was a stranger to. Anyone could be violent, Simon just knew better than to be in the line of fire. Ryland had been so gentle, but his anger was explosive as it was brief.

In less than a second, Ryland’s anger dissipated and he was sulking. His face barely changed from the sudden outburst, there was no warning, no build up. Even after it was clear Ryland’s anger had passed, Simon couldn’t banish the way his eyes tracked Ryland’s pacing, expecting Ryland to throw the item at Simon next, at the other Eridians. To hit a wall, the nearest person. It was so unexpected from a person like Ryland, but Simon should know better. Everyone was violent, anyone who survived or clawed their way to the top in this universe used their anger as their fuel. Simon was no different. 

“Grace!” Rocky scolded, “No breaking equipment!”

The Eridians barely moved at Ryland’s outburst. Had they seen the same thing Simon did? Why was no one reacting? 

Ryland turned to them with his hands on his hips. “Both the temperatures are the same.”

His anger wasn’t directed at anyone at least, and Ryland wasn’t taking it out on the Eridians despite how close they stood to him. Even if they were ‘family’, that meant little when it came to emotional outbursts. But Simon knew the signs of his brother's anger. He could read when something he said was going to trigger a fight, when frustration or annoyance would boil over into an explosion. Besides Gabriel, Simon wasn’t afraid of fighting any of his brothers or being in their line of fire. It was cathartic, even, sometimes, to take out their anger on each other. To funnel their fists into tough skin instead of breaking down screaming or crying at their unfair and cruel circumstances. Fucking Ezekiel had it out for Simon most, the scrappy shithead.

Then again, Ryland had barely reacted to Rocky’s outbursts, not doing much more than holding him back from attacking Simon. Simon was just being ridiculous. Afraid of the man currently hitting his forehead over the desk. He needed to get a fucking grip.

*also graphs are not to an accurate scale

I watched the movie Iron Lung and tried to work backward, figuring out how Blood would be able to do all... that.

It burns through Simon's skin, but it also grows Blood Eel teeth on his face, AND melds his arm to the Iron Lung.

Red blood cells by themselves can't really do all that, and I struggled to figure out why so much blood would be there, surviving outside a body in a liquid form, and doing all the mutating stuff.

So... Bacteria!

There's this plant bacteria, Agrobacterium, that docks on wounded plant cells (using T4SS: Type IV Secretion System) and gives its T-DNA or T-Strand to the cell, and the cell takes it into its nucleus and starts growing a tumor, basically that benefits Agrobacterium. Here's the youtube video I watched explaining it.

I'm sure there's a lot of other cool bacteria I could have done, but PLANTS. Simon mutated/melded with/ 'became the soil' for the Blood Tree, so I took Agrobacterium and ran with it.

Why blood?

Simon's universe is dying. There are moons with life on them, but most planets and stars have been 'Raptured'. Like most Bloodymary fans, it's a cool crossover to think that Simon's universe is one where the astrophage problem was never fixed. Planets can't really disappear, but they would definitely change. But if there was no sun or the sun was too dim, Venus and Threeworld would start to freeze. Carbon dioxide-rich environments would be hard to find in a dying universe. The Astrophage overeats and ruins its own environment. (I'll make another post about how the astrophage is different in Simon's world.)

Agroglobin started off not looking like a blood cell, but it needs heat to have enough energy to survive, so it figures out a way (by accident) to entice the Astrophage to come to the moon it's living on. Carbon Dioxide.

There are some creatures on the blood moon like eels, angler fish, and frogs and when the Agroglobin encountered these native species, they did two things: injected DNA and stole DNA. It encountered human blood and liked its blueprint. It also really likes BONE because that's where blood cells originate.

Blood cells can 'hold' oxygen- it's like fuel for the bacteria to produce as much carbon dioxide as possible. (I had to figure out how they get oxygen in the first place, but I won't get into that yet). Also, mitochondria produce a lot of CO2 so it's there as well. There are also the chemoreceptor arrays to allow it to 'sense' stuff using chemotaxis to help it figure out which items are the most beneficial things to steal.

There are these hairs on bacteria called Type IV Pili that can grab stuff and pull it back into itself. If the cell bursts when it injects its DNA, then it will use the pili to steal the DNA or proteins or other useful stuff. If it doesn't then it uses the T4SS to transfer stuff between the two cells.

Basically, it takes whatever helps it survive better, and blood cells happen to do that.

Astrophage was desperate enough to go far enough into the environment to linger in the blood- making it boiling hot. It traps some weaker astrophage that doesn't have enough energy to leave. So there's astrophage in the blood ocean. (Grace freaks out about this)

Agrobacterium needs a wound to get its DNA into the cell, astrophage solves that problem. It makes it hot enough to burn Simon's skin, and the Agroglobin can insert its DNA into the cells.

Weaker cells just burst, and the agroglobin takes any proteins or useful DNA it finds. If it's not useful, it will just spit it back out.

But the cells that are strong enough to host the Agrobacterium DNA are where we get the mutation part. Skeletal muscle cells and plant cells are strong enough to host, so the Agroglobin puts its DNA into those cells, and it begins to mutate.

When it finds a useful mutation, it will multiply very fast using binary fission (like E. Coli) but much faster because it's science fiction and that makes it scarier.

It will damage its host until it finds a good (survivable) mutation that keeps the host alive long enough to be useful to the agroglobin. It does this to the Blood Eel that started out a pretty regular fish that got mutated by the bacteria that basically took over. It keeps adding to the Blood Eel, its strongest host. Thus: the human body parts that are a part of the Blood Eel. (also how it somehow speaks to Simon- this is less scientifically explainable, but whatever happened- it's the bloods fault.)

I'll make another post about what this means specifically for Simon when I post chapter five! I don't want to spoil too much here.

My Extra notes

Extra Picture references

I go into more detail in THIS POST, but basically I made up a space bacteria to explain what's all going down in Iron Lung.

The blood, I'm calling it Agroglobin, is a super aggressive bacteria that steals genetic DNA, multiplies very fast, and tries to infect its DNA onto a host.

In the movie we see it burn through Simon's skin, but it also starts growing Blood Eel teeth onto his cheek, AND it like, melds his arm to the Iron Lung. And somehow turns him into the 'Blood Tree'.

Simon froze. Did he not mention that? Shit. Information was slowly bleeding out of him, and regardless of the debt he owed, Simon was having a hard time not panicking at the valuable resource he was steadily sharing. Simon had wanted to keep his violence tightly contained, his crimes hidden from the crew. He tensed, hoping they wouldn’t connect the role with the word Butcher, that they wouldn’t think too hard about what Simon had to do as a soldier or what war he was fighting. 

Information was the only thing he had to vouch for his survival.

If he proved to be useless, they wouldn’t keep him. If he didn’t help with the mission, they could let the Eridians take him to their planet. Ryland trusted them, but Simon knew that they wouldn’t just let him live on Erid in peace, not without the Savior of their world protecting him. Simon hated needing protection, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think he had any power over this situation. He was at the complete mercy of Ryland and the Eridians, and if he wasn’t good, then he needed to be useful. Simon was trying to be both, but the well of useful information he’d gathered was slowly drying up.

But if he had a role, if he could do something, then Simon would feel more secure in his place here. He just had to earn it.  

Simon swallowed. “...I piloted smaller flighters. Nowhere near as fancy as this, but I was good at what I did. I’ve been watching how you do it. I think I can do it with one arm, if you take notes. We… could switch.”

“I… dunno,” Ryland exhaled. “It’s pretty tricky to fly this thing. It took me a long time to figure out.”

“I’ve flown in space before, and I didn’t need any fancy shit to do it either,” Simon huffed and then took a steadying breath, “Look- you’re tired, no point in arguing it- I’m bored out of my mind and I know how to do this. Let’s switch. I know we move it 100 clicks out, then you gotta redo the search grid before we do this all over again. 360 turn, stop, angle it up 5 degrees, 18 planes- I’ve been paying attention.”

“I didn’t think you hadn’t,” Ryland protested. “It’s easier to watch than do.”

“If I suck, I won’t ask again,” Simon said. “I know you have no reason to trust m-”

“It’s not that!” Ryland said, “I just-”

He looked over at Rocky and Adrian and stopped. He let out a long sigh and raised his eyebrows at them.

“It is Grace’s ship. Rocky cannot decide.”

“Adrian wants to see Simon fly ship,” Adrian said. That’s why they were his favorite. Simon gestured to them and then gave an expectant look to Ryland. 

“So?” Simon prompted, unable to keep the hope from fluttering in his chest. 

“Alright,” Ryland sighed. “It's hard to get the hang of, so if it doesn't work out, it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with being a note taker-”

Simon grinned and unbuckled his seatbelt. He drifted in zero gravity, angling toward Ryland’s seat. Much more reluctantly Ryland started to unbuckle, and Simon clasped his shoulder amicably. “You won’t regret this.”

Ryland jolted at the touch at the same time he released the claps on his seatbelt, wobbling a bit like he had forgotten how to move in zero gravity. 

“Right! Uh, yeah, I mean, no, sure, give it go!” Ryland stumbled. “Hopefully the flighters you piloted have comparable mechanisms-”

Simon tuned him out. He was thrumming with excitement as they switched places. The throttle was warm and sweaty, but Simon didn’t care. It was smooth and sleek and new. It was the nicest cockpit he’d ever been inside, nowhere near the rust buckets Eden and COI had. He couldn’t contain the smile twitching at his lips as he took a steadying breath to calm his nerves. Don’t screw this up.

I’m tickled by how much the plot is surprising people. Unfortunately I have a bad case of ‘must plot and world build’ and all my fics suffer this fate. The goal is to get them to confess their devotion to each other, but I need to give them an unnecessarily difficult task to accomplish that, of course. 

I struggled to find a good percentage of the star dimming. If I got the number wrong, basically, it is an alarming amount in such a short timespan but it’s not catastrophic. (Erid will be just fine) Realized I forgot to add the happy ending tag so that's there now! I need happy endings and I love the hope that Hail Mary leaves you with at the end.

I’m giving Grace more trauma, but I’m actually being super nice to Simon (sorta). He gets another chance to save the world! The longer I thought about the blackbox, the more sad I got because the only reason the black box gets to the COI is because the sub (welded shut) explodes and it floats to the surface. Without Simon exploding, the black box didn’t make it. I think that would crush Simon. All that suffering… for what? So to rectify this, he gets another chance at making a difference. Even if he doesn’t realize it, I think Simon’s got the ‘I want to save the world gene’ even if he had to be bribed by freedom in Iron Lung. Like Grace. They both have it inside them. They just need help finding it. Also, what's better than gay astronauts saving the universe?? 

I want to go more in-depth with Simon's pain because I don't really see a lot of how losing an arm would affect him in the long run. Balance, standing, and the pain that would form on his right side. I hurt my left shoulder, and now my right is fucked up from my body overcompensating. Simon needs to go to physical therapy.

I think it's funny that Simon is drawing conclusions that are pretty close to the truth and combining the science and knowledge Grace is explaining to him and then just… not telling Grace. Simon’s well aware of the blood eel dna in him and Grace is still stumped about the teeth. Because Grace teaches as easy as breathing and Simon keeps his cards close and information is practically currency where he’s from. Did you see the way his face changes when it dawns on him that he has information Ava needs? Information is the only thing Simon has as leverage.

It'd be cool to have Simon remember Mars or directly be from Mars, but if I want it to fit into the whole ‘astrophage is the reason for the great rapture’ thing, I think they need to be far removed from it. Mass can’t just disappear but the iron lung lore clearly states the planets disappeared. I’m still figuring it out. Turns out: It’s actually REALLY HARD to kill the whole universe. In PHM the star wouldn’t even die- just all life on other planets- because it's eating the stuff the sun gives off, but not its fuel. A problem for future Grace to solve. 

But I will say the more distance they put between the planets, the more knowledge they could lose.  Knowledge can get lost so easily and I really really believe that the stations would lose so much knowledge in the great rapture. I mean people still believe the Earth is flat with bounds of knowledge at their fingertips so I don’t think it's a far stretch to say that the space stations don’t know the exact truth of what happened to their universe. 

I really dislike the ‘Grace is a crybaby’ trope, but I love to write characters breaking down. It’s ugh. It’s a hard line to toe. But I think learning all your hard work is undone would be a good reason to cry. Grace is the epitome of ‘do it scared’. I also cried writing this, so. I think Grace gets teary and is emotional, obviously, but it’s a little overdone sometimes. I hope I’ve written him realistically and haven’t made him a crybaby. I also think he would hide this from Simon for as long as possible. Grace is guarded too, in a surprising way. He’s open and outgoing and awkward, but he’s also reserved and excludes himself and avoids talking about his issues. I think Rocky and Adrian have broken down his walls, but Grace isn’t going to show that side of himself to Simon yet. I also tried to counteract his break down with showing his more outgoing and even angry side. 

I saw somewhere that pretty emotionally mature people have quick outbursts but their emotions don’t linger. Idk if Grace is emotionally mature (I'm not a therapist), but all his outburst and anger in the film are sudden short bursts and he’s pretty chill after that. I wanted to see how Simon would react to him breaking equipment. Flip the bloodymary trope around, eh, eh? Instead of Grace reacting to violent Simon, it's Simon reacting to Grace’s anger.

Adrian Rocky queer platonic polycule. They’re important to me. They’re all he has, and he’s all they have. They’re everything to each other. You can rip them from my cold dead hands. Adrian is a peace maker. They have their work cut out for them. Internally Adrian is like ‘Rocky, I love you, but you are only making it worse’. I don’t want Rocky to turn into a point of conflict for Simon, mostly I just want him to be defensive and protective of Grace. I’m gonna slow burn Rocky and Simon’s friendship, just you wait. These two WILL bond. Eventually. 

I also have created some worldbuilding for Eden. They have a hierarchy based on religious importance and ‘roles’ or jobs. They get educated until age twelve, baptized at age eight to purify them of the sin of being born (taking up resources) and based on what their Teachers notice in them, they’ll get assigned a role. Simon got the role of soldier at age twelve due to being aggressive- but he was really just defending kids from bigger bullies and he’s a scrappy intense fighter. He had a bad teacher. A wayward is the role for children who are deemed useless. Kids who cause too much trouble, are too difficult to take care of, or refuse to believe in religion. Waywards are also ostracized adults who either leave the cult and refuse to participate or were deemed useless (injured too badly, sick, can’t work). I think that if kids who struggle now are failed by the system, the post apocalyptic stations would be even worse. Simon would come from a sad, sad world. 

I think Simon who just muttered “fucking aliens”  when he saw the monsters would definitely put off thinking about the weird voice telling him to do things. Also the voices were a trick and a trap in the iron lung so he’s taking what he’s gone through and applying it. 

I like to think the space stations had some advancements that were better than the Hail Mary, especially if they lived in space for so long, but with time, they became more run down. They focused their technology and engineering on living in space and colonizing mars in 1990s so that's crazy. Idk how realistic artificial gravity is but I think they’d figure out something else over centrifugal force. I dug deeper and it doesn’t seem possible to make artificial gravity as we know it right now. If they could figure out gravitons or if they exist (aparently currently up for debate in the science world) they’re set. It’d be so hard to permanently live in centrifugal force with so many people. What if it malfunctioned? How would they repair things outside? How would they navigate and keep everyday life running? It’s a headache. Let’s suspend our disbelief, yeah? We’ll all hold hands and pretend. Does the microbiology science make up for this? (pls say yes). 

Simon is just like me fr, leaving a cult and realizing there are actual answers to my questions with scientific evidence and answers. I think this happened on a minor degree in the COI, just him sorta realizing the world didn’t have to be like Eden and realizing how bad Eden was even though he despised the COI. And then he goes through that x100 with Grace. 

I’m also making Simon smart. He’s a navigator. I also like the idea that as a soldier part of his role was to pilot small flighter ships for raids. Eden sucks haha. But I also think Simon is good at math. Him and Grace can geek out about it once they realize. 

In any apocalyptic movie genuinely that thing that gets me the most is the amount of knowledge lost. It even makes me devastated to think about all the knowledge that humanity has lost now due to time and crisis and war and colonization. Never stop learning, never stop asking questions my friends. I kinda have some baggage over the ‘world ending’ idea from yk the whole cult thing and it sometimes messes with me and there's this learned helplessness that I think Simon demonstrates when he tells the COI that there’s no point in trying to fight extinction- but he still find himself trying anyway: ‘its bigger than me’. I think he outwardly is like ‘what’s the point?’ but still tries and fights anyway.

Imagine for me, Simon looking at Ryland tilting his head to the side like a dog trying to figure him out. Like ‘does it make more sense at a 45 degree angle, bud?’. Thank you. I release you now.