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VIDEO LOG HAIL_MARY_DORMITORY 1400H TIME ELAPSED 00:00:00
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[VIDEO LOG BEGINS. RYLAND GRACE is looking at the camera. His hair is shoulder length and unwashed. He wears a black t-shirt with text that reads “YOU MATTER. YOU ENERGY.” There are dirty bandages all over his left arm and scarring on his neck. He is smiling.]
Hello Earth! Or hello to whoever’s seeing this first. Don’t freak out! It’s me! Um… I am – I should probably do an official intro, right?
My name is Ryland Grace. I was born in 1984 in Portland, Oregon. I am the science specialist of the Hail Mary crew. I was selected – actually, I probably shouldn’t tell you that part, that’s probably a state secret or something – a planetary secret. I guess it wouldn’t matter. Anyway.
Don’t hold your breath – I have a fix. For Astrophage. [Dr. Grace grins.] For the whole dang thing. When I was at Tau Ceti, we – I went into orbit around one of the planets there, which I’ve named Adrien. In the atmosphere there, I found the natural predator of Astrophage. Uh, it’s an amoeba, so I named it… Taumoeba, which [Dr. Grace laughs] I had to name a lot of stuff, so cut me some slack, I should’ve named it something better, but um–
[There is a whirring, tonal sound panning from the left, offscreen. Dr. Grace stops talking for a moment. The sound stops. Dr. Grace rolls his eyes.]
Yeah, yeah, yuk it up. You weren’t helping. [Dr. Grace turns his attention back into the camera.] I was saying that Taumoeba eats Astrophage – oh! Don’t open it yet! Be careful! It’s a really good predator. It ate all my astrophage. All of it. It was so bad. So, um, just be careful. If you’re still using Astrophage for stuff, which you should be, cause it’s freaking amazing, just be careful. But, yeah. Cure for Astrophage. Just pop those bad boys in the Petrova line. I swear it’s gonna take like ten minutes. I mean, it’s actually gonna take much longer, but, like, not that much longer. I swear.
I needed to make this video, because I have a lot of stuff to show you, but also because I want to tell Earth that– that, um, my crew did not survive the journey to Tau Ceti. Olesya Ilyukhina and Yao Li-Je passed away at some point on the trip, I don’t know when, or why, but they did. Die. So. [Dr. Grace removes his glasses and rubs at his eyes, sniffling. A set of tones plays from offscreen. Dr. Grace looks to the left, offscreen.] What– no. No, I’m fine. [Dr. Grace turns his attention back into the camera.] They were brave, wonderful people. I was lucky to know them.
Olesya and Yao had already died by the time I woke up here. I was alone, and really scared, and I didn’t really know what was going on, for reasons. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, or even where I was. I was just so panicked. And then– [Dr. Grace giggles.] I saw something on the ship’s radar. And it was…a ship. It was a ship!
[Dr. Grace stands up and paces around the room excitedly. He is beaming.]
I was like, what is that, and it got closer, and it was turning around, and then a bunch of stuff happened – oh, I have a ton of footage, by the way, from the whole time we’ve been out here, and it’s all in the files – I’m gonna call this one WATCH THIS so it’ll make sense chronologically– I’m getting distracted! BUT! Eventually, this other ship makes a tunnel, and connects to the Hail Mary’s airlock, so I go inside! You need to understand that I literally had no idea what to do or how to do it. I weighed the risks but I decided it was worth it for scientific discovery and–
[The whirring, tonal sound plays offscreen again, in a similar pitch and quality but different notes.]
…Yes, I was also just very excited. And maybe lonely. And, then, I…wasn’t lonely anymore. [Dr. Grace smiles helplessly.] It's aliens, guys. Alien, singular. From the Eridani B system. I can confidently say, with incontrovertible proof, that humanity owes its existence to aliens. I owe my life to an alien. Please keep this in mind going forward.
I’ll stop being grand and universal now. I don’t owe my life to an alien, I owe my life to my friend – my best friend – who happens to be an alien. So I want you guys – whoever this is that’s watching – to, um. Meet him! I don’t even know where to start. I had a whole script and everything, but…
[Dr. Grace nods to offscreen left. The whirring tonal sound plays again, along with noises of scuffling and scraping.]
Go on the rope! No, on the– the thing, you know what I’m talking about, the [Dr. Grace gestures to three cords in a star shape behind him which tether down a clear, plasticine structure.] Go in the thing! The ball!
[There is more scuffling. The whirring sound plays again. Behind Dr. Grace, a creature appears in the plasticine structure. It is approximately 0.5 meters tall, and grayish brown. It has five legs emerging from a thorax.]
[Dr. Grace turns to the camera. He nods his head in deference to the figure next to and slightly behind him.]
This is Rocky. And I’m going to translate for him.
[the whirring, tonal notes play again, now coming squarely through the main microphone interface. As they continue, Dr. Grace speaks over them, pausing intermittently.]
Hello, Earth. My name is Rocky –oh, if I could cut in for a second, that’s not his actual name, I can’t pronounce his name, obviously, so I named him Rocky ‘cause look at him, and that’s why I named the planet Adrien– [the tones, coming from Rocky, play loudly. Dr. Grace stops speaking abruptly.] He just told me to be quiet. Ahem.
Hello, Earth. My name is Rocky. I am from the Eridani star system. My planet was affected by Astrophage in the same way Earth was, and we also noticed that Tau Ceti was not infected. We built a ship to travel to Tau Ceti, which is where I met Dr. Grace. We worked together to find a cure for Astrophage, and then planned to return to our planets. There was an issue with my ship, and Dr. Grace saved my life and my planet. Thank you for sending him.
[The musical noises end.]
Okay. good? [Rocky tilts up and down.] Um… yeah. All of the logs and files and stuff have the details. This video’s probably going to be shared everywhere, so I won’t bore you with that if you’re just watching on Twitter or something. Do you guys still have Twitter? Long story short, I thought for a while I was gonna come home, but I’m not. I’m going to Erid. That’s Rocky’s planet, I named it. We’re gonna… we’re gonna see what happens. Working on the food situation, and all that stuff. I’m excited to see it if–
[Rocky whirs.]
When I get there. Yeah. That’s it. Go tell your manager or whatever to get the Taumoeba in the Petrova Line. And BE CAREFUL. Please. You can stop watching now, but I am going to read out some messages that I prepared so that people can see my face when I talk to them.
[Dr. Grace retrieves a post-it from offscreen.]
Ahem. This first one– oh, by the way, I know Rocky’s still here. Don’t get distracted, people who are listening to me.
[Rocky whirs.]
He says that he knows he’s very popular. Diva. Okay, moving on.
Firstly, this is to my sister: I hope you have found a place to keep the puzzle collection sometime in the twenty-five years or so since you’ve seen me last. Say hi to our tree. I love you.
I have lots of other rambling videos for people, I’ll hit some points here, um… sorry we never got the beer, Dmitri. I hope you’re doing okay. Same goes for everyone who worked on the project. Uh, to Dr. Lokken, I told you so, to my thesis advisor Professor Hill, hope you got that tenure.
Stratt, I hope you’re still alive. I hope the prison food is okay. I hope and assume that, when you see this video, you aren’t thinking how sorry you are. I don’t think you would actually do that, but I’m just checking to confirm that I would actually be angrier at you if I knew that you did feel sorry. Why do everything you did just to regret it?
And, Stratt, for what it’s worth, [Dr. Grace shrugs, and looks around the room.] I had a pretty good time.
To my students: Abby, I hope the horses are okay. Congratulations on winning the science fair. I’m sad I wasn’t there to see it. Larry, I hope GTA 6 came out and that you liked playing it. Truong, I one-hundred percent believe that you got the growth spurt and you’re playing in the NBA now. Score a basket for me. Ellen, I know you stole the dinosaur poster from my classroom, but I hope you took good care of it. Lily, I hope you got the slime stain off your shirt. And I hope your mom has forgiven me for that. Uh, okay, that’s table one… [Dr. Grace trails off, emotional.] I’m gonna do the rest of these in a separate video, I think. But to all of my students: being able to teach you was the best part of my life on Earth. I hope you all know– you, and your classmates, and every kid, honestly, I hope you know wherever you are or whatever you’re doing now, you have people in your corner. If you ever feel like you don’t, remember to check the super far corner. The corner that’s light years away. That’s where I am. I’m rooting for you.
[Dr. Grace smiles into the camera. He wipes his eyes.]
Okay. That’s it. Bye, Earth! I’ll miss you. But I’ll miss you, like, in the way I missed home when I went to college. So don’t be too sad. Say bye, Rocky.
[Rocky whirs and puts one arm up, waving it.]
He says goodbye. And thank you.
VIDEO LOG HAIL_MARY_DORMITORY 1400H TIME ELAPSED 00:12:21
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