Chapter Text
Ryland Grace wakes up.
Or at least, he thinks he wakes up. He should’ve woken up on Erid, surrounded by gadgets and whatnot. Other beings, maybe. Aspects of extraterrestrial nature. He should’ve been able to spot Rocky, or maybe even Adrian, or at the very least, any of their hatchlings staring (or well, echolocating, internally, he’s cursing their lack of eyes currently for complicating the simplicity of language) right at him. Still, there is nobody. He is completely alone. He is enveloped by a perpetual, yet thin, coat of darkness. He sees that it stretches for miles and miles, yet contains no end.
That’s exactly the problem. It’s an infinite void, with the overwhelming presence of absolutely nothing. He’s never witnessed something being so absent but so full. He’s never been fond of infinity. Infinity has always been an uncomfortable thought for him. It’s not just like any other number. Growing up, he’d had a book on strange fears people could develop, like paranoia around the number four or superstitions around the number thirteen. Even from a young age, he thought it was dumb to attribute such negative emotions towards a character that merely served the purpose of embodying an abstract concept. It’d be like getting scared of syllables for making up a word, or something. Like a girlfriend he’d had who used to announce she’d been uncomfortable with the word “moist.” Although then, when collecting his thoughts, he’s thinking that there’s a significant difference between performative announcements and cultural conditioning. Ever the hypocrite, though, he stays scared of the number infinity. The idea of something continuous. The idea that so many things unknown to him could survive him.
Part of him blames it on ego. How could he not? He’s a scientist. That’s what scientists are all about, aren’t they? An insatiable desire to understand the world around you, despite the fact the world remains cold, unwilling and persevering. A world reluctant to end.
It shouldn’t end, he selfishly thinks, not until we figure out everything going on in it.
But that makes no difference. We could pave the pathway for every field of physics, shake hands with the edge of creation, find the cure to cancer, and Earth would still eventually end, regardless if we got it done in time or not. Earth, however lovely, however alive, would die, and the memory of humans who once loved and loathed their little blue planet would be gone with it, and the Eridians would one day share the same fate. All things must die, except the universe. Memento mori should be considered scientific law. There’s probably somebody coming up with an equation to back it up right now, as he’s laying in this atmosphere of nothing.
Therefore, however uncomfortable he finds the fact, he knows all things must come to an end.
That’s the principal thing. Endings. He’s incredibly scared of endings, just as scared as he is of the infinity thing. He's incredibly scared of death in specific. He thinks that in this circumstance, he must either be having the strangest nightmare an elderly brain like his can conjure up, or he must be dead. He hopes he’s not dead.
If this is the afterlife, Grace thinks, it’s a terrible answer to the question of which religion was right.
He tries to get up, and it’s abnormally easy for him to do so. His legs are intact. He moves with a swiftness he hasn’t seen in decades. He’s as light as a feather, though his body looks particularly strong.
Strong? Why is he strong? He’s an elderly man, who uses a cane modified by aliens. He’s weird about gravity, but it feels like there’s nothing weighing down on him like gravity. He waves his hands around. Jumps up and down like a kid. He feels young. He is young. His skin doesn’t sag, doesn’t bear a single wrinkle. He’s in tip-top shape. There’s no thud, no noise when he falls back down. There’s nothing beneath his feet to push against when he hits what should be ground. He feels nothing. It’s like he’s not real. It’s all nothing.
Okay, Grace decides. I might actually be dead.
In the distance, he notices an abnormality. There’s a glowing presence, a blanket of a milky light surrounding what it appears to be another human body. It flickers and pauses, flickers and pauses, mimicking that of a streetlamp he’d been acquainted with on so many late nights back in San Francisco. He doesn’t know if he should approach it. It? Them? Pronouns don't matter right now. He just doesn’t want to leave the person alone, because whatever’s going on, they’re both in it together now. They could be just as scared as he is.
Hey. Wow. Get it together, dude, he tells himself. It won’t matter if he makes his decision. They’ll be forced to interact eventually, assuming there’s no outlet for either of them. Just everybody’s dream, being forced into the afterlife with a glowing body. That’d make a really good movie.
He walks up to the body anyways, mostly for the purpose of observance. He wonders if this is how Darwin felt walking up to birds in the Galapagos after getting off the HMS Beagle. He hates himself for thinking that, but he also laughs again to himself. He’s a pretty funny guy sometimes. People should give him more credit.
The body stops glowing, and it’s a woman with red hair, blue eyes, and a harsh glare. It’s Stratt. It’s Hail Mary taskforce director Eva Stratt. She’s perfectly recognizable to him, looks just like the day she’d murdered him. He’s staring down at her, she’s looking up at him. It is now that they’re both aware of their nakedness.
Before he can say anything, she gets up and tries to kick him in the groin. It goes completely through his body, like if he were a hologram, and she was one as well. She does it again. The same thing happens again. They’re both practically projector images fighting with one another, or well, she’s fighting him. He’s just standing there looking all dumb and dopey.
She slaps him on the cheek. And it completely goes through his skin.
“Are we done?” Grace asks. “Are we going to keep doing this?”
“Give me one last try,” Stratt says. She slaps the other side of his face. He flinches as he braces for impact, but nothing’s felt. “What the fuck?”
Grace laughs awkwardly. “We’re done, right?”
Stratt shakes her head. She tries to bite his neck. Grace, again, feels nothing, and her face goes completely through his. She’s on the other side of him. She’s a bit embarrassed. Grace is questioning what could lead a grown woman to do this, much less the awfully mysterious and cerebral pseudo global dictator of planet Earth.
“Now, we’re done,” Stratt decides, and Grace complies embarrassingly quickly. “Is this death?”
“You’re fast,” Grace says in response. “How’d you figure it out?”
“Well, it can’t be a dream, because I always have good dreams, and my good dreams don’t involve you.”
Ouch. Not the best thing to hear from the girl who’d signed your death certificate. “Sounds a little bit like overcompensation,” Grace says quickly.
“It is not.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Shut up. Even in death, you don’t shut up. Do you want a second one? Seriously.”
“Man, I just think you’re a crappy liar. Seriously,” Grace replies. He mimics her German accent, even though it sounds horrific. “I only have sweet, sweet dreams. My good dreams don’t involve you, Dr. Grace. I’ve never had a nightmare in my life.”
“I sleep very well with the weight of my actions, thank you very much. Everything was worth it in the end. Why would I be troubled?” Stratt asks.
“You’re missing one tiny, tiny detail. See, you sent me to die. Wouldn’t that haunt your conscience at least a little bit, even if the good outweighed the bad or whatever–”
“-Don’t overestimate your importance in my life,” Stratt interrupts. She looks down at her feet. “Can we move on?” She asks.
Is this hell? Grace thinks he’s in some new cosmic hell, or at least, he’d rather be in Christian hell than whatever this is. At least there, they’d be doing much more burning and much less talking.
Yes, Stratt, let’s move on from the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. “I’ve got one more thing to say.”
She stares up at him, makes a mean face. She’s impatient, tapping her feet on the floorless floor of their new world. He smiles in return.
“I forgive you, Stratt,” Grace says. He’s always wanted to do that, weirdly, because he knows it would piss her off. He’s standing there all Christlike and kind.
Stratt is immediately uncomfortable, confused and bored with this topic. “I’m not sorry enough to need to be forgiven. Try again later.”
“Whatever, it was worth a shot.”
“Okay, well I’m moving on,” Stratt ignores him. “Why are we the only ones here?”
“Beats me. I got here a second before you did,” Grace responds. “Did you seriously think I’d have the answers to any of this?”
“Sorry, Dr. Grace,” Stratt smiles, and speaks gently. “I didn’t know you got here a second before me. Next time we’re stranded alone in a void, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. How terribly impolite of me.”
“Seriously?” Grace asks.
“No. Are you fucking dumb?” Stratt goes back to her original tone. “How the fuck would I know you were here a second before me? Don’t you think it’s reasonable for me to ask you, the only other person, why we’re the only ones here? I repeat, are you fucking dumb?”
Grace laughs. “Swear at me all you want, Stratt. But it still won’t give me the answers.” He turns around, and starts walking around the void.
Stratt follows behind him. It’s weird that for her to follow behind him, he thinks to himself. She’s used to leading and directing. She used to herd him around everywhere, in the short four year timespan they’d known each other, a lifetime ago. But now they’re dead, and she’s just as confused as he is.
“Did you even question why we’re the only ones here?” Stratt asks him as they keep walking off onto nothing.
Grace notices he can climb the lateral sides of the void, like a kid on a playground. “Just kind of figured we were both dead, and this is where the dead go.”
Stratt doesn’t follow this time. She watches him from a distance, because no matter how far, she notices their voices are still heard the same. “What a stupid thing to think.”
“What?” Grace says. “How?”
“Do you know how many people die per minute?” Stratt asks.
“Why the hell would I know that kind of information?”
Stratt answers her own question. “Approximately 120 people die per minute, all over the world. Do you see an exponential growth in the amount of sprouting souls in this place?”
Grace lets go of the invisible monkey bars. Drops to the Stratt’s ground, and once again, there is no thud. He looks around, a hand on his forehead and eyes squinting.
“Are you making fun of me?” Stratt says.
Grace nods.
Stratt frowns sarcastically. “I’m hurt.”
Grace frowns back, genuinely. “You get used to that feeling. It happens a lot.”
Stratt can’t believe he took that seriously. While her mouth is wide open in shock, he’s trying to see if he can swim through the void. He can. This is an incredible achievement for him, for some reason. He happily cheers to himself while she comes up with more questions.
“Do you think this is a punishment?” Stratt says from a couple feet - if you can even call it feet - away. “Do you think this is purgatory? What if we’re in purgatory? Or maybe, this is hell.”
“Why would we be the only people in hell?” Grace responds. “I’m sure there’s real dictators and criminals that’d also be there. Y’know, like Hitler and stuff. Not just us two.”
“No, I mean, what if this is our own hell, being with each other?” Stratt sighs. “What if this is the universe’s way of punishing us for our misdeeds, sticking us together with no way out?”
“Listen, I know you’re Catholic, and you can’t cope with the fact God’s not here, but you’ve got to let this whole punishment and hell and purgatory thing go. You’re going to go insane. I know it’s bothering you that I’m–”
“--What’s bothering me is that you’re not the slightest bit concerned about any of this,” Stratt interrupts him again. “To be honest.”
Grace pauses. “I’m actually kind of happy about this, to be frank with you. I thought I would just poof out of existence. Now, that’s scary.”
“I think I would rather have that,” Stratt admits, a bit defeated. “This doesn’t answer anything. I can’t exist in an answerless world with you, Grace.”
“Aw. Still waiting on Saint Peanut to come and get you?” Grace teases.
“Peter,” Stratt corrects. “You’re insufferable.”
Stratt spends the majority of her days--that aren’t even days--just fragments of time, blanketed in an unbearable atmosphere of nothingness, listening to and bantering with Grace. She tells herself she wants an escape from this, which she truly does on the inside. However, she sometimes finds him a bit amusing under the current circumstances.
But she does miss Earth, however much she knows that Earth does not miss her. She misses the way the hot sun would feel on her skin during the summers of her youth. She misses celebrations with her family members, and the way her father would lift her up in his arms to attach a star on the family Christmas tree. She misses afternoons she’d spend in university at a library, stressing over her exams and passing her courses with good marks. She misses philosophy, architecture and languages. She misses being part of the human experience. Whatever this state of faux existence she’s in, with Grace, is something she’d never want to endure. She hates this. She’s aware this is death, but it is not the death that anybody should ever have. Death should be the end of a sentence, not an extension of one.
She’d always imagined death to be a friend. One that’d after all her sacrifices to keep Earth alive, would take her sweetly by surprise, and plant a gentle kiss on her soul as it led her to a quiet finale. She’s never been scared of death. She’s never felt like she had reason to be.
But this? This isn’t what death should be. This is a liminal space where everything goes bad, and everything feels like spoiled milk. The longer it goes on, the less she thinks she can take it. And she knows she can deal with a lot more than Grace can.
“Do you think all of our choices led us here?” Grace asks her, at random. Her ears perk up immediately. Why is he asking her this? Grace hasn’t asked a single question for the eternity they’ve been here so far.
Stratt looks back at him. “What do you mean?”
“Do you think we were always going to end up here?” Grace asks. “Even if we’d never met. Even if we’d never worked on the project together. Even if there was no astrophage. I don’t know. I’m just asking you. Do you believe in fate?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Stratt replies. “I don’t think this is related to anything we faced while we were alive.”
“Really?” Grace is shocked to hear this. “Because moments ago, you were the one hellbent on this being some sort of universal punishment, but it had me thinking, like…what would we even deserve a punishment for?”
“I can’t believe you’re asking me this,” Stratt laughs. “I sent you to your death, isn’t that murder? Were you not here when I paved the Sahara, nuked Antartica, and indirectly caused the death of a quarter of the population?”
“Okay, yeah, but you were doing it to save Earth,” Grace replies. “That’s got to count for something.”
“Doesn’t erase the fact I still did it. If anything, if I’m surprised, it’s me being surprised that you also got punished by the universe. What would you even have done?” Stratt raises an eyebrow.
“Selfishness?”
“Yeah, but you became a hero,” Stratt replies. “So it’s like you unlearned it.”
Grace goes quiet for a minute. “Huh. Well. I feel like we subconsciously chose to be here.”
Stratt blinks. She’d never choose this. What is he talking about? Why would anybody put themselves into an eternity of nothingness with the person who doomed them to intensive isolation from humanity? Was Ryland Grace officially going insane? Besides, Grace wasn’t even powerful enough to kill cockroaches around the vat. Why would he suddenly possess the power to be dictating their fates in the cosmos?
“Do you think we can choose our way out?” Stratt asks him. “Are you actively choosing to stay here?”
“I don’t know,” Grace shrugs. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? What?”
“I just don’t really want to leave yet.”
That pisses her off immediately. What do you mean you don’t want to leave yet? He can’t possibly be the reason they’re both here, she tells herself, but his attitudes about it aren’t exactly helping them get their answers back, either.
“Why?” Stratt grimaces. “Why would you want to sit in a waiting room forever? Are you actually enjoying this?”
“Well, not really, not when you put it like that.”
“Then?”
“Idon’tknowwhat’styingmeheretoyou,” he says in a rush. However, the volume is the same as his speaking voice.
“Can’t hear you,” Stratt spats. “Repeat it. Use your words, you’re a grown man.”
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S TYING ME HERE TO YOU, BUT I DON’T HATE IT.”
“Okay,” Stratt responds. “That was unnecessary. Please keep that to yourself next time.”
Grace’s face looks ashamed of himself. She walks away like it’s nothing. They go on like this for days, like children playing tug-of-war with a never-ending rope.