yknow how call transmissions took a Long Fucking Time between Earth and Tau Ceti? yknow how Erid is a bit further than that so it could take maybe 10 more years for the call to potentially connect? yknow how Grace spends like. 16 years on Erid living peacefully?
what if one day he’s just chilling in his dome and then out of nowhere, one of the salvaged speakers from the Hail Mary in his house starts crackling. and then a screen lights up with a voice going “incoming transmission, please hold.” And Grace is like “haha. what”
and then the screen clears up and this like. bored teenager is on the other side. maybe chewing gum, kinda scribbling on something off screen, and Grace is just staring at them, trying to parse out what… what the heck was happening.
After a few seconds of nothing, he just goes “hello?”
and the person on the other side jumps, startled out of their skin. they lock eyes. and then slowly, their face goes pale.
Grace swallows and tries again. “Hello?”
This time the person yelps in fright, dropping everything in their hands in a jumbled frenzy. they shoot out of their chair and run off screen, and Grace can hear them shouting. Shouting for people, for someone, screaming “IT HAPPENED, IT WENT THROUGH, THE CALL WENT THROUGH” and all Grace can do is sit there and process the fact that he’s looking at what looks to be a Mission Control room on Earth. And then all of a sudden there’s many more faces— HUMAN faces— cluttering up the screen, all of them wearing lab coats and uniform and winter coats, all stunned speechless. They stare at each other for a long time.
“Dr. Ryland Grace?” one asks, hesitantly.
Grace fidgets. “Uh… Yeah?”
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snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
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