Chapter Text
Project Hail Mary was sent out without a hitch. With the ship built and the crew aboard, it set off towards Tau Ceti, and that was the last Earth saw of Yáo Li-Jie, Olesya Ilyukhina, and Ryland Grace.
It would be thirteen years before they even reached Tau Ceti. Weeks, if not months, before they completed their research, if they even could. Another thirteen years before the Beetles would (hopefully) return to our solar system.
Less than a week after our saving grace left the outskirts of the Oort Cloud (or so we estimated), Stratt was arrested. She knew this was coming. We all knew this was coming. Waltzing around giving orders to every single world leader like they were her personal assistants had certainly ticked them all off. It was worth it though, and she knew the risks.
The trial was secret. Turns out that a whole lot of powerful people don’t like the public knowing that they were someone else’s bitch. A lot of us tried to be put on the stand as witnesses of her necessary actions and how she was trying to save humanity. We were denied any access at all. She was found guilty for international terrorism, obstruction of justice, political malfeasance, worker’s endangerment, human rights violations, and who knows what else. They threw anything they could that would stick, and it stuck. We don’t know what her actual sentence was, just that she was sent back to the Netherlands under top security, permanently.
And we waited. Things got worse, as we expected. Countries started disputing small issues that turned into larger scale threats. Nothing puts people on edge like waiting.
And we waited. Things also stayed the same, which we hadn’t really expected. We went back to our previous lives. A select few of us continued our monitoring positions, keeping an eye out for Earth’s last resort. It was far too soon to know anything, but the only other thing we could do was wait.
And we waited. Things also got better, which was entirely unexpected. Despite the conflict, and the dread, and the awful feeling of the unknown, people banded together. Small groups of people upheld hope; religious organizations across the globe held prayers and vigils for our martyred crew. Rifts grew between nations as people grew closer across cultures, waiting for everything and nothing.
And we waited. Twenty-six years, two months and three days. Very few of the original crew were left by then, but the younger members took over from the older, and fresh, eager faces joined on. No sign for twenty-six years, two months and three days. And then we spotted it.
“We.” Royal we. Every day we checked our programs, our telescopes across the globe. It was like fate, almost. The young woman that first spotted our little Beetle had been a student of Ryland Grace when he left, and she had taken to completing his last work. It was she who had worked one of the Mauna Kea telescopes in Hawai’i, and it was she who spotted a glimpse of the signal designating a Beetle had reentered the solar system.
Never had Earth seen such a widespread celebration as that night (or day, depending on your hemisphere). An emergency broadcast had been sent out, fireworks erupted in every sky. Cities across the globe reported riots in the streets, not out of fear or anger but the explosive joy of a Philly fan after a Super Bowl win.
We hadn’t told the world that we didn’t know what was in the Beetles. Three had made it back (John, Paul, and George - Ringo was lost among the cosmos), but nobody had reviewed the files. We didn’t even know if our team had found a solution yet. The plan was to wait for the retrieval before telling the world, but someone hadn’t managed to keep the secret. Not that we could blame them.
It took a while, and the world waited with bated breath. Sure, Earth can wait two and a half decades, but once you know your savior is that close? They don’t even want to wait a day.
Eventually, we managed to collect all three Beetles and their information. Three were set up across the globe in Hawai’i, Russia, and Peru, in typical Stratt manner, each with a Beetle. They contained identical information, but we were spread out to avoid losing our only hope at saving humanity. Inside each was an identical clear box of an unfamiliar material and a file folder labeled “Project Hail Mary - Mission Logs.”
The content of the file was as follows:
[Folder] 1.READ THIS FIRST!!!
[Folder] Astrophage Taumeoba Research
[Folder] Daily (ish) Mission Logs
[Folder] Eridians
[Folder] FOR STRATT ONLY (I’m serious)
[Folder] Personal Notes and Final Message
[File] Let_It_Be.mp4