Been sitting on these for a solid month now so I figured it’s time to post em! AU in which an aging and frail Grace gets his consciousness transfered to an eridian body to extend his life :D

Some notes:

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

Stratt: tries to make a going-off comfort gift and instead creates the most insensitive thing possible

so after the extremely important post observing Grace is wearing Ilyukhina's dress during his crash out, i feel it is my civic duty to catalog Grace's wardrobe shifts during this sequence. important science. gender science. as if there were not enough science on that with Grace already.

This sequence is non-linear, jumping back and forth, so I'll try to put them in order.

CRASHOUTFIT ONE:

PHM shirt, workout shorts, what seem to be PHM socks, and his horrible flat sole sneakers. This is all probably his own clothes or communal PHM clothes.

(I am 80% sure he's wearing fucking KEDS. So apparently Grace does not require arch support. Or comfort. Or any grip on the soles of his shoes. Maybe this is a factor in his clumsiness.)

CRASHOUTFIT TWO:

When he's going through everyone's effects, he's in longer drawstring sweatpants, his PHM polo, and what I've determined to be a hospital cloak. It's cut the same way as the medical garb and doesn't have the same pockets/fasteners you'd expect from normal clothes.

CRASHOUTFIT THREE:

Grace really likes Ilyukhina's clothes. Read into this what you will, I know I am. But he also has plastic sunglasses, and a beach hat for the WHAM! Big Tour, which. Is wild. Ilyukhina's silk robe is the clear focal point here.

I want to note that I believe Grace has another of her dresses on the floor of the lab when Rocky first shows up. Also, Grace seems to be very careful and conscientious of the silk robe; it looks like he's hand-washed it and has hung it up on his improvised airlock clothesline.

(Why is that a dress? It has a similar look and pattern repetition to the other dress Ilyukhina wore, and when Grace briefly picks it up to try cleaning the room, the weight of it is floaty like a dress would be.)

CRASHOUTFIT FOUR:

Grace loves oversized jackets and cardigans. He seems of the opinion outwear should hang down below the hips and above/around the knees. Love that. Here, as he tries to remember who tf he is, he's in a thick, warm-looking robe and the fox mask. The mask is interesting; Eva Stratt leaves him a lil fox figurine as a gift with his effects, and we know/can infer most of the things packed for Grace were from her and the team since he was drugged into oblivion. So maybe Stratt's order was "just find fox-themed stuff and bring it to me."

CRASHOUTFIT FIVE:

There it is! But oh man this makes my heart hurt. Grace seems to be dressed in as much as he can be. The dress but also two different hats, the sunglasses, his cardigan, and what looks like another jacket under the cardigan. It gives the impression he's wearing as much of the crew's clothes as he can, as if trying to hold onto them in the only way his drunk brain can.

BONUS HEARTBREAK OBSERVATION:

Grace locates the NASA jumpsuits then makes the conscious decision to dress the bodies of Yao and Ilyukhina in their own before eulogizing them. This is apparently a detail lifted from the book, where Grace does the same thing, takes the extra time.