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Most of Abby’s pod is assembled in the tiny common area in their quarters, tense and mostly silent, ready for the broadcast 10 minutes before its scheduled time. It’s early, but everyone’s too keyed up to be sleepy, and it’s not like there are windows to show the darkness Up Top. The room is in its “living room” configuration, and Abby shifts nervously on the bench that folds out from the wall, trying to make sure everyone has enough room. She's squeezed herself onto the bench between her mother and Rachel. Alba squirms on Rachel’s lap, but there’s no good place to put her down to play. There’s just barely enough room for Ben at the far end of the bench, and Jack and Kaylee have been relegated to the floor in front of them. The table’s been folded up to make room. Abby longingly remembers the den in her parents’ house, Before, with its giant, luxurious couch that, with a little creativity, could fit her whole Girl Scout troop. She immediately shoos the thought away, like she does hundreds of times every day.
Rachel’s husband doesn’t normally work the early shift on Thursdays, but the entire staff of the Counseling Center is standing by this morning. Abby’s trying not to read too much into this, and failing. At least they don’t have to find space for Ethan too.
Rachel leans in close to Abby’s ear. “Are you ready?”
Abby grins, but it’s a little shaky. “I’ve been ready for most of my life.”
Rachel rolls her eyes. “Haven’t we all?” Neither of them notice that while Abby’s mother is pretending to ignore their conversation, her eyebrows have gone up.
“I feel like a creepy stalker, but I think about him all the time.” Abby squeezes the beanbag she’s holding in her lap. "I don't think I could do it, even if I knew it was the best chance we had to save humanity."
“I think about him pretty often too, and I didn’t even know him. I think probably most people think about him regularly.”
“I think about him all the time, and he probably doesn’t remember I exist.” She snorts ruefully. “That’s probably for the best. If he remembers me at all it would be– would have been… because I was kind of an insufferable pain in the ass.”
“What do you mean ‘was?’” Abby actually chuckles, her shoulders relaxing slightly. Rachel’s always been able to put her at ease with irreverent sarcasm, ever since she joined Abby’s lab to get her doctorate too. “But you’re my insufferable pain in the ass. Mostly we don’t get judged as the people we were when we were 12.”
“Thank fuck,” Abby mutters under her breath, and the two of them grin at each other.
Everyone else politely pretends that they can’t hear Abby and Rachel’s conversation. Alba may actually be successfully ignoring them, because that’s what she's been seeing her family do her whole life.
The screen on the wall beeps, and Abby’s daughter Anika appears in a sidebar, accompanied by a wall of sound. Everyone in Abby’s tiny apartment erupts in greetings, and Alba smiles a toothy smile and claps her hands. Anika left soon after Alba was born, but Alba knows her well from all their family video chats. Just like every time they see each other on a screen, Abby instantly resents this world they live in that has taken her daughter away from her, and immediately squashes the feeling.
“Hey kiddo!” Abby greets her. “Don’t you want to watch with your friends? Where are you?”
“The whole Institute is watching together.” Anika’s friend Xin-Yue leans into view and waves. Anika pans her camera around to show a room that’s now shockingly large, but would have been completely unremarkable Before. It’s filled with hundreds of kids, tweens to almost adults, all facing a large screen showing the same Federation logo that’s on their small one.
Anika’s classmates are all talking but it’s a steady background rumble. No one is goofing off at all, which just looks wrong to Abby.
The whole world has been waiting for this broadcast for more than 25 years. Back when she was in high school, Abby had had an actual timer going on her phone, counting down to a time when Earth could expect to receive communication from the Hail Mary. She stopped it sometime during college when she realized that it wasn’t doing her mental health any good. But she still knew, all the time. Mr. Grace is in a coma traveling at close to the speed of light. If he survived the trip, Mr. Grace is awake and in orbit around Tau Ceti, searching for a solution to Earth’s astrophage problem. Mr. Grace has died, and has found a solution that will save humanity, or not, and we won’t know for 13 years.
13 years ago, Abby had been pregnant with Anika. She had second-guessed herself constantly about whether adding another mouth to feed was a good idea. Whether it was fair to bring a child into a world that could be harsh and precarious and yet somehow monotonous and constrained at the same time. Whether her daughter’s quality of life would be high enough to justify the resources she would consume.
Whether the increase in Abby’s own quality of life would justify the resources a child would consume.
Sai had always wanted a big family.
Nobody gets what they want now though.
“The counseling staff want to be around in case anyone freaks out,” Anika continues. That’s fair, Abby thinks. It’s precisely why she didn’t want to go to the group viewing in the recreation area. “I just wanted to be with you all.”
But Abby knows that mostly Anika means her. It didn’t escape Abby’s notice that her whole little family immediately said they’d watch the broadcast from home, too. Her mom pats her knee, and Rachel bumps shoulders with her.
More than 30 years ago, Abby’s life had changed unexpectedly but gradually when the President of the United States gave a speech and told the world that the sun’s energy output was expected to decrease dramatically. The first concrete difference was that her favorite teacher disappeared, the first person Abby knew whose entire life was upended by the looming crisis. This morning, the entire course of Anika’s life is potentially about to change, predictably but abruptly, based on what this broadcast reveals. No wonder she looks so tense on the screen. Abby wishes she were here. They’d make room.
Abby picked a career that she thought would be useful. And even if she never helps to repopulate the Earth to its previous levels of genetic diversity, her choice has already been useful. She has to be on-site at the Tissue Archive & Cloning Center, and that has given her and her family a big bump in points needed to score a spot in the attached residence facility. Fully underground. Fully independent, producing its own power, food, air and water filtration. Vitamin D and other essentials in the drinking water. All residents extensively background-checked. All surface installations within at least two border walls, constantly monitored and patrolled by armed guards.
If Abby had truly felt she had a choice of careers, she probably would not have chosen to be a geneticist. But from the vantage point of her mid-forties, she recognizes that being a large-animal vet, her planned career from Before, might not have been the best choice for her either.
There’s another beep and Abby’s husband Sai appears on the screen, yawning. Abby feels herself relax the tiniest bit more now that he’s here. She misses him like a dull ache that sometimes fades into the background. He can only visit every few months, but like his daughter, he wanted to be with his family when they all got the news. She tries to give him a private smile, from the middle of this room packed with people, and he smiles back.
Abby and Sai had told Anika that the decision of whether to leave home was entirely up to her. She could choose to move thousands of miles away to the Federation’s International Innovation Center, where she would receive an extremely rigorous, privileged and focused education. She would work very, very hard (“preparing the youth of today to meet the challenges of the future”) in their state-of-the-art facility. She would make friends with kids from around the world (“fostering international collaboration and partnership”). She would also actually get to go outside sometimes.
It was a great honor to be chosen, and Abby had desperately hoped that Anika would decline the invitation. She had kept her mouth shut and her face straight after telling Anika that of course they would miss her. She was quietly devastated and not at all surprised when Anika told them that of course she would go, because if there was any way she could help save the world, then she should at least try. Even if that meant that she could only visit her family every couple of years, depending on the weather.
“But Anika,” Abby had said, even though she knew she shouldn’t, “What if you want to study literature? Become a chef? Write poetry?”
Anika had laughed uproariously. But Abby had been completely serious.
She misses Anika constantly.
At least with Anika off at the Institute, there was room in their quarters when Ethan met Kaylee at the Counseling Center. At 15, she had walked up to one of the security stations on the outermost TACC border wall, hands up to show that she was unarmed, and asked for asylum. Her parents are Independents, and she started plotting her escape after a second of her siblings died. She doesn’t talk about it much, but Abby knows that she has more siblings she’d like to get out.
Kaylee isn’t Anika, but Abby tries hard not to hold that against her. And it’s nice to have more kids around. If you can consider someone who planned in secret for a year and a half, left her family, hiked for two weeks across a hostile landscape, and pled her case in front of armed strangers a kid.
The announcement (only a few hours ahead of time, so there hadn’t been much time to panic) of an important broadcast this evening hadn’t precisely been a surprise. It’s been 5 months since the absolute earliest possible return of the Beetles. And there’s been chatter. You don’t go to grad school at one of the top-tier (where at this point “top-tier” means “still operating”) universities without knowing someone who knows something.
Whatever the news from the Hail Mary, today will mark a turning point in the story of human civilization, and all Abby had planned was go to work, meet up with a friend to go for a walk around the recreation area, chat with her husband, and have dinner with her family.
It’s October. But down in the bowels of the TACC facility, this means nothing. The air smells the same as it always does, neutral, sometimes a little bit stale. The temperature is the same as it always is, carefully controlled centrally to a meticulously-calculated optimal temperature that minimizes energy usage without making everyone too crabby.
Yesterday, Abby had noticed the date on a document at work, and was distracted for several seconds by vivid memories of tromping through crunching, brightly-colored fall leaves in the forest near her childhood home, the air crisp, the sunlight bright, and her cheeks slightly chilly in a pleasant kind of way. Anika has never done this, which makes Abby want to cry sometimes. Anika’s never gone to summer camp. She’s never played in the ocean and then basked in the sun on the beach eating an ice cream cone. She’s never wandered around a new city, staring at skyscrapers or cathedrals and tasting the local cuisine’s specialties. She’s never watched a movie with a beloved dog curled up next to her. She’s never experienced the particular muffled, muted quality of the air when the landscape around her is blanketed in fresh snow.
But Abby knows that while these losses occasionally fill her with sadness at odd times, Anika has only an academic curiosity for these things that the adults around her remember so fondly. She has always been a pretty happy child, whip-smart and well-liked by her peers. It makes sense that she was admitted to the Institute — Abby can hardly blame them. Anika left home full of fond memories of chasing her friends through narrow corridors, squeezing onto someone’s bunk with 3 other girls of all different ages to play pretend or share secrets, and Residence-wide social events in the recreation area after dinner every Sunday night. And she is always horrified at the idea that even people her parents’ age — her own mother! — once ate meat from real animals that had been raised just to be slaughtered and eaten. Yeah, that’s not coming back, even if they do manage to reverse the global cooling, Abby thinks.
On the screen in their living quarters, the view changes to show the Federation President, sitting at a desk with her hands clasped in front of her. All conversation stops immediately. Even Alba can tell that it’s time to be quiet. Anika immediately mutes herself on their call, and stares past her camera, biting her bottom lip.
“Thank you for joining me. I’m Katja Annenberg, the President of the Global Federation of Nations.” She pauses briefly. “26 years ago, an international coalition launched the Hail Mary, a manned spacecraft bound for the Tau Ceti system. Astronauts aboard would attempt to determine why Tau Ceti was not affected by astrophage infection, the way our solar system and many others had been. If the crew aboard was able to find a solution to our solar dimming problem, they were to send word back to Earth.”
Another pause. Partially for effect, Abby’s sure, but also so there’s time for the simultaneous translation into the world’s top 107 languages to catch up. “Earlier this week, Earth received the first and last communication that we expect from the Hail Mary.”
“Commander Yáo Li-Jie, of China, and engineer Olesya Ilyukhina, of Russia, did not survive the journey to the Tau Ceti system.” The view of the President is replaced by headshots of the two astronauts. On their screen, Anika is chewing her knuckles, and she blinks rapidly. She has studied Commander Yáo and Specialist Ilyukhina in school. They were celebrities and heroes long before they left Earth. They gave interviews, they wrote letters to the world. Abby remembers reading a picture-book biography of Ilyukhina to Anika when she was small, her curly blond hair bright yellow and wild on the screen.
The broadcast switches back to the President Annenberg’s desk. “We honor their sacrifice.”
On the screen in Abby’s quarters, Anika’s still facing the camera, but her eyes have slid sideways towards Xin-Yue.
“The Hail Mary’s Science Advisor, Dr. Ryland Grace, of the United States,” — Abby knows that everyone in the room with her, except for the toddler, is giving her the same look that Anika had been giving Xin-Yue — “did survive the journey to Tau Ceti.” Abby lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding, and grins, even past when she remembers that Mr. Grace is just as dead as the other two.
Big dramatic pause this time, just short of being cruelly long.
“Dr. Grace was able to find a way to prevent astrophage from consuming our sun’s energy.” President Annenberg is actually smiling now. “The Federation has begun work on a plan to use his findings. We estimate that we will be able to return the sun to its previous illumination within the next 3 years.”
The view on the screen changes to a montage of people reacting to the news in different Federation spaces, including the room Anika’s in at the Institute. But Abby’s not paying attention because it’s all happening in her living room too.
Almost everyone is crying. Abby’s simultaneously laughing in a way that sounds distant and vaguely unhinged even to her own ears. Rachel is hugging Alba, her face buried in her curls. Alba struggles against her mother and looks very concerned. Kaylee is leaning back against Rachel’s knees and smiling the most unguarded smile Abby has ever seen from her. Abby’s mom is gripping her hand hard enough to hurt, but she doesn’t care. Jack and Ben are actually dancing around the tiny room toasting each other with reusable water bottles.
Alcohol is not permitted in the TACC Residence Facility, but Abby has a very small quantity of actual milk chocolate stashed in the back of her 1 cubic meter cubby of personal effects. She paid an astronomical amount of money for it 5 months ago, so they’d have something to celebrate with if the news was good. She has mostly adapted to a diet of hydroponically-grown produce (powered by a nigh-infinite supply of energy from farmed astrophage) and lab-grown meat, but some days she would kill for a glass of cold milk. Anika’s only had chocolate once, and she immediately declared it too rich and too sweet.
On the screen in Abby’s apartment, the view switches back to the Federation president. “We honor Dr. Grace’s sacrifice as well, and humanity itself will be forever in his debt.”
Also in the back of Abby’s storage cubby right now is a small empty space where there’s normally a navy blue beanbag. She almost never takes it out, so it’s a little worn but still in good shape. She had several of them in her backpack the day that Mr. Grace disappeared – she’d had a particularly good lightning round that week.. She doesn’t need to take it out and hold it to know that it’s there. Even hidden away, it helps her remember that if Mr. Grace could voluntarily give up literally everything to try to save the world, she can live without pets or vacations or fresh air. Or even her husband and her daughter.
“Dr. Grace was able to find, breed, and send back to Earth a natural predator of astrophage, which we will be able to use to control the astrophage infestation in our solar system. But that was not all that the small crafts known as ‘Beetles’ carried back to us across more than 100 trillion kilometers.”
Abby meets Rachel’s eyes behind Alba’s head, eyebrows raised. Of course the Beetles would have brought back information about the parts of the galaxy that they had traveled through. What else was in those tiny ships that’s getting top billing in President Annenberg’s speech?
“The Hail Mary itself could not have been launched without a massive joint effort between many nations here on Earth. As the Earth rapidly cooled, we as a species needed to learn to work together, independent of culture, language or nation, lest more of us perish.”
Abby’s inner cynic scoffs, but… she supposes they mostly did manage that. Mostly.
“Our salvation, in the form of a microbe that eats astrophage, would never have made it to Earth without another vitally-important, cross-cultural collaboration. While in the Tau Ceti system, Dr. Ryland Grace discovered incontrovertible evidence of intelligent alien life.”
Oh.
“By combining their own unique skills, and innovations from two different civilizations, Dr. Grace and a being he describes as a dear friend were able to save not only our Earth, but potentially an entire alien civilization as well. We have no reason to believe that this species is a threat. Out of an abundance of caution, we have already begun monitoring their system, approximately 16 light years away, in the constellation Eridani.”
Abby’s living room is completely silent. Except for the babbling toddler, who doesn’t understand that she is watching a major event in the history of the planet unfold.
“You probably have a lot of questions, about the Hail Mary’s mission, about the microbe that eats astrophage, and about the species that Dr. Grace named ‘Eridians.’ Fortunately, we have an experienced teacher available to tell you all about it.”
On the screen in Abby’s quarters, the view changes to show her 7th grade science teacher, sitting in a fancy lab but wearing wrinkled coveralls, smiling a smile that looks a little forced into the camera.
“Hello, Earthlings!”
Abby gasps involuntarily and she knows everyone is staring at her again. Mr. Grace looks mostly the same as she remembers from when he taught her and her classmates about rocks and climate change (oh, the irony) and space algae that was eating the light from the sun. For him it’s been less than 10 years since she last saw him and for half of that time he was blissfully (she hopes) asleep. His hair is a little grayer, but not much, and he’s sporting an extremely unflattering haircut. Like most people a generation older than Abby’s, he looks a little more weathered than his chronological age would suggest.
Rachel passes Alba to her Uncle Jack and grabs Abby’s hand.
“I’m Dr. Ryland Grace, the Science Advisor on the Hail Mary. I started out my career as a molecular biologist, and I’m going to end it as an astronaut, and, I hope, savior of human civilization. But in the middle, I taught science to middle schoolers. I really enjoyed it. Pre-teens get a bad rap, but really they’re just figuring out who they are. And often, who they are, and who they will be, is awesome.”
Abby is trying to maintain a composed outer facade, but she’s not doing a very good job. Rachel squeezes her hand, and from the other side of the room, Ben gives her a tiny, secret smile. Ben’s been Rachel’s brother’s best friend since the fourth grade, and Jack picked well.
“I also think I was pretty good at teaching science. So, before I sign off for good… it’s time for one last lesson. This one is going to have to be a little less interactive than I usually try for. And I’d prefer higher production values, but I’m in a little bit of a hurry. We’ll get to that in a bit.”
Mr. Grace takes a deep breath and stands up a little straighter.
“I can’t tell the story of how I saved you all without first telling you about my friend Rocky. You see, when I arrived at Tau Ceti, someone was already here.”
Everyone in Abby’s quarters stares transfixed at the screen, as Mr. Grace explains what’s happened aboard the Hail Mary since he woke up from his coma 13 light years from home. Even Alba watches quietly because he is a dynamic teacher, whose excitement is palpable. He asks lots of questions, and leaves pauses for the people watching to think about the answers.
As he teaches, Mr. Grace relaxes into the animated, engaging teacher Abby remembers. “Okay, this is a little creepy, I feel like I’m 12 again,” she announces to the room, and everyone laughs.
The “lesson” alternates between Mr. Grace giving demonstrations around his lab — how the period of a pendulum is slightly shorter than it would be on earth because the artificial gravity is stronger, what it looks like when taumoeba consumes astrophage and a black slide turns clear, how the atmosphere was controlled in the different tanks of the taumoeba farm — with videos of Rocky.
There’s a video of Rocky that demonstrates how he moves and speaks. There’s one where Mr. Grace asks Rocky about his family at home, and translates his answering tones back into English. In one, Mr. Grace faces away from Rocky and uses a stopwatch to generate “random” numbers by taking the least significant digit of the stopped timer’s readout, and holding up that many fingers. Behind him, Rocky holds up the same number of fingers, every time.
There are also clips that just show life on the Hail Mary, with Mr. Grace and Rocky trying to do their jobs and keep each other company. Shots of Rocky scrabbling through the tubes he has installed throughout the ship. Mr. Grace and Rocky ribbing each other while assembling a 10-km xenonite chain. Rocky and Mr. Grace celebrating after they have successfully bred taumoeba that can survive in Threeworld’s atmosphere.
When Rocky speaks in these clips, they’ve been subtitled in English.
“And so,” Mr. Grace concludes, 48 riveting minutes later, “humanity got extraordinarily lucky, so many times over. I hope you can use our specially-bred taumoeba to take care of Earth’s little astrophage problem. But I was also, personally, extraordinarily lucky, to have help and to make a friend out here so far from home. Rocky is a great guy, and an amazing engineer. There’s no way I could have found a solution on my own.”
“One of the particular ways that I got lucky was that Eridians never discovered relativity. I won’t get into that now, but that means that they traveled here much faster than they expected, and as a result their ship had a lot of extra fuel. When I had to admit to Rocky that I’d made a one-way trip out here, he immediately offered me enough astrophage to come home. I was pretty excited about that.“
Most of the people in Abby’s quarters gasp again at this. But since Mr. Grace doesn’t look that genuinely excited, Abby waits for the bad news. Oh, Abby realizes. He would be able to come home specifically because the rest of the crew died, and he could have their food. That’s got to feel weird. But at this point, she supposes, Mr. Grace has had a lot of experience with the weird and yet unavoidable.
“Even though probably no one would remember me by the time I got there.” He pauses. “Well, maybe some of my students.”
Abby sniffles and rubs her fingers over the worn canvas of the beanbag. On their screen, Anika smiles.
“But I won’t be coming home. I didn’t get that lucky. I got cocky and messed up, and that’s going to cost me. But, I can’t let it cost Rocky and several billion of his friends.”
Abby’s family is mostly silent as Dr. Grace explains how the taumoeba in their farms evolved to penetrate xenonite, and how Rocky is presumably stranded somewhere, alone, in the vastness of space, so close and yet so far from bringing salvation to his own home.
“I’d love to go home. I’d love to take a walk somewhere, outside, and not worry about the future of humanity. I’d love to eat some junk food. Don’t get me wrong, this ship is a marvel and the food is actually really good, but… a little variety would be nice.”
Abby hopes that somewhere, a food scientist or habitat designer watching this broadcast has just had their year made.
“I’d love to have a little post-global-catastrophe debriefing session with Eva Stratt. You know, how’d we do? What went well? What went badly? What should we do differently, the next time there’s a potentially species-obliterating emergency?
“But I can’t do any of that. Commander Yáo and Specialist Ilyukhina, and hundreds of other people from all over the world, volunteered to give up their lives to save the rest of us. When I weigh my life, which I’m really quite fond of, against an entire civilization, it’s a pretty obvious decision. I’m not happy about it, but it’s very straightforward.
“So, here’s where I sign off. I hope that you can use this nitrogen-resistant taumoeba to take care of the astrophage. Back when I thought I was coming home, I had planned to just drop some off at Venus for you, but now you’ll have to take care of that part yourselves. There is tons of information about the trip out here, our search for a solution, and Eridian biology and culture, included on the drives in the Beetles. Oh, and I included some xenonite, too — this stuff is amazing, if unfortunately taumoeba-permeable now.” He shrugs.
“Anyway. I’m going to launch the Beetles, and then I’m going to attempt to find my best friend, and give him a lift home.”
Mr. Grace stares into his camera for a few seconds.
“Good luck.” He pauses. “Grace out.” And he leans over and turns off his camera. The view on the screen changes to the Hail Mary’s mission crest.
Abby resolves to never even consider complaining about feeling trapped underground ever again.
Sniffling, she turns to Rachel, kind of glad that she’s crying too. “I guess if I was going to inappropriately idolize someone, at least I picked well.” Everyone else politely ignores them as President Annenberg reappears on the screen and starts talking again. Abby has no idea what she’s saying.
The room is a little too quiet, and Abby knows it’s because her whole pod is waiting to see her next move. So she levers herself off of the uncomfortable bench, announcing, “I got a special treat to celebrate!” As she heads toward the tiny bunk room she shares with her mother, she sees Anika break into a smile on the screen. Even if everyone’s curious and excited, Abby knows that no one will comment on it if she stays in her room, alone, for a little longer than it takes to find the chocolate in the back of her cubby.