Chapter Text
There’s no easy way to explain this.
Actually, maybe there is. We Quantum Leaped. Like in the show, Quantum Leap.
I tried to show Rocky an episode of it one time, but he kept asking questions about how it worked and what the rules were, and what’s that thing Scott Bakula is doing with that other human, and I asked if he wanted to watch New Girl again (he did).
All that to say: it’s all I can think about as I half-drag half-lead someone who was a complete stranger to me a minute ago toward my trailer at the research center in Baikonur. Yes, the one on Earth, as opposed to the Baikonur just past the halfway point between Tau Ceti and 40-Eridani.
A moment ago I was leaning on the xenonite wall of Rocky’s room in the dormitory, watching him sleep and trying to focus on the Eridian biology paper I was drafting instead of my whiny, attention-seeking stomach begging for just one more pack of instant ramen instead of the diluted coma slurry laced with taumeoba goop it would be getting later. Just as I morosely realized I would need to start upping the ratio of taumeoba in my dwindling supply of coma feed, I felt my brain being smashed by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.
Now, and also somehow then, I was somewhere with wind. Cold, biting, foggy wind. I gasped, clutching my head and fighting off vertigo.
“Ahhh,” I heard, a few feet away.
I tried to get my bearings. I was not on the Hail Mary. I was on a rooftop. A familiar one, with satellite dishes and a radio tower and a guy collapsed on the ground– wait what? There was someone else on the roof of the main laboratory building at the launch site in Kazakhstan, where I now seemed to be.
“Uhhgg,” he added, wiggling his arms and legs at random. Not knowing what else to do, I began to stand - then thought better of it and kept all my limbs firmly planted underneath me, crawling toward whoever else looked to be also experiencing whatever I had just been subjected to.
“Hey, are you okay? What just-” I paused once I had helped him roll onto his back. He looked strangely familiar, someone I had briefly met on the project, but not familiar enough that their name or anything else was coming back to me. French amnesia drugs and whatever the heck this was will do that to a guy’s memory.
He had thick-rimmed circular glasses, askew over deep brown lidded eyes, a NASA jacket, and strikingly impressive salt and pepper hair. None of it rang a bell, but his voice…
“Waeh?”
“I- I don’t– are you okay?” His eyes boggled and he moaned in confusion. “Just breathe, okay? I’ll call someone for help.”
He was only starting to sound more distressed. My total confusion at everything took a back seat to finding a phone. Hadn’t had to use one of those in a while. I patted the pockets on my raincoat (dang, I missed this raincoat! And rain!) but wasn’t coming up with anything. I tried to see if the guy had a phone on him.
There was a small black rectangle near him– I reached for it just to realize it was a vape. I had confiscated many a stupid-looking rig over the years from students who later got pop-quizzes on lung disease. I tried his jacket pocket, and found a press pass with his ID.
“Richard Peralta– are you okay, Richard?”
“Ruh… Ruck…”
That voice. This was too weird, and I didn’t know what was real and if my stomach was rolling from nausea or starvation or fear.
I looked up from him and inhaled the high-steppes air. I was here, on Earth. Maybe the last two years were some sort of fever dream, brought on by bad borscht. My best friend was a figment of my overactive imagination, with a name bastardized from some dude vaping on the roof.
“You go by Rick? Okay, um– oh!” Rick had grabbed my face with both hands. His grip was weak, but he locked me in his gaze, searching my face wildly.
“Grapes!”
“What?”
Rick did a raspberry, spitting in my face a little in the process, and tried again. “Gr-accce!”
“You know me?”
“Grace Grace Grace!” He said more insistently. He said it three times, in his voice.
I felt a little stupid and a little hopeful when I replied, “Rocky?”
He hummed a sound, not an ‘uh-huh’, but a lilting upturn I recognized immediately. It was a bit off-key, but I wouldn't blame him under these circumstances. Whatever these circumstances were exactly.
That right there was Eridian for yes.
♪☆♪☆♪
“You gotta get your legs underneath you, buddy,” I huff. Rocky is getting heavy, and I want to move fast. The sooner I can get us back to my trailer, the sooner we can sit down and figure out what is happening.
“Grapes,” he mumbles, breathing erratically. I think he’s still getting the hang of the whole breathing thing, and bipedal thing, too.
“Close enough,” I poke my head around the corner. It’s a straight shot to the stairwell that leads outside, and a clear shot to the small huddle of trailers set up for the increased population of scientists out in the middle of nowhere. “Come on, almost there.”
We pass by one scientist, a physicist from Mexico I remember foggily. I give a toothy smile but she’s lost in her tablet, completely ignorant to the man made of jell-o I’m carrying.
Finally, we make it to the stairwell. I give Rocky and myself a second to catch our breath, gently sinking to sit on a step. I stare at him, really look at him, for the first time.
It was Rocky made human. He had a soft, rounded nose, a rectangular jaw, and expressive brows. Features that strangely fit him for someone who normally has no semblance of a face. I had no idea how, or why this was happening. I didn’t have a clue in the slightest what was happening in general, but this was far weirder than waking up back on Earth. I couldn't even begin to imagine what was going through his mind.
The concrete walls bounce our heavy breathing back at us. The echoes seem to ground Rocky, and his eyes focus a little more, looking at our surroundings before looking at me.
“You okay?”
“Bad, bad, bad,” he whimpers. “Wh- wha..?” Words were not coming naturally to him. It’s one thing to understand an alien language, and another to suddenly find yourself with the biology to produce the noises of an alien language. I don’t think I’d do very well in an Eridian body either.
I immediately banish that thought because, again, I don't know how this works and I don't want to jinx myself.
“What’s happening?” I guess his line of thinking. Rocky hums an affirmative. “I don’t know. I’m as lost as you.”
Rocky frowns and looks down at himself. “Rock-y, quesh-tin?”
“I think so,” I confirm.
He actually gags as it fully hits him that he’s in a human body, and then the gagging reflex grosses him out even more, so he pinches his eyes shut and moans again.
“Hey, calm down, it’s okay. We’ll figure this out.” I’m still holding him upright, but I squeeze his arms a little tighter. This gets his attention.
Rocky drags his hands up and grasps my arms. He can do that now, without either of us going up in a ball of fire. A slack-jawed smile of joy takes him over and Rocky pulls me into a hug.
“Hi, Grace.”
I hug him right back, holding onto him like a lifeline. “Hey, buddy.” I take it back. This is the least confusing part of this whole thing. Thank the weird, weird universe I don’t have to figure this out alone.
We take another moment to collect ourselves. I’m still, as ever, a leaky blob, and take off my glasses to wipe at my eyes. Rocky is surprisingly dry-eyed despite the sensory overwhelm.
“Okay, you ready to keep going? It’s not much further from here.”
“Where go, quesh-tin?”
I grab Rocky’s shoulders again, adjusting the jacket that had been messed up. “We’re gonna go to my trailer. It’s where I was living during the last few months of the project.” I take the press pass from his pocket. It’s on a lanyard and I put it around his neck. “Or well, where I am living. I guess.”
I fix his glasses, too. The wheels are turning behind those brown eyes. “On… Earth.”
I sigh, and nod. “On Earth.”
Rocky copies my nodding, though he just keeps going, like he can shake his head into accepting that information. “Stop, you’re going to make yourself dizzy. I need you to walk like a normal human being when we’re out in the open.” I pull him up to standing, and have him copy my legs for the five steps it takes to get to the door. “There you go, you’re getting the hang of it!”
I open the door, and a breeze rushes in. It’s still cold, as always here, but the sun has fought its way through the fog making me squint and Rocky gasp. The smell of grass and dirt hits me in a way I didn’t expect to miss so deeply. Down a shallow slope, I can see my trailer. It’s close to the main building but still out of the way enough that people aren’t constantly passing by it on the way to their own trailers. Perks of being Stratt’s right hand: you get first dibs on a parking spot.
I do not want to think about Stratt right now.
“Ready?” I ask Rocky.
“Ready?” He doesn’t clarify that he’s asking a question, but he sounds pretty uncertain.
“We’ve got this,” I assure the both of us. Holding onto each other for dear life, we step out into the sun.
♪☆♪☆♪
Getting the final 200 yards to the trailer is thankfully not too bad. Rocky keeps his legs mostly underneath him, tripping over uneven ground here and there, but I’m able to hold him steady. It would help a little if he wasn’t looking every which way but the one we were going.
I tug at the door. Unlocked, good. I don't remember ever locking the door, it’s not like anyone would break in here past the miles of barbed-wire and army personnel. Everything important was in the labs, anyways.
As I’m pulling Rocky inside, I think I see Ilyukhina walking by. My heart short-circuits and I jump inside and shut the door.
I breathe, head against the door. Rocky just stands in the middle of the small space. “Dirty, dirty, dirty.”
“Alright, it’s not that bad,” I snipe, pulling the blinds on the two small windows. There’s some clothes on the floor, a half-eaten top ramen, and a cramped table overflowing with binders, loose notes, and empty coffee cups.
I stare at the ramen. I don’t remember how old that is, but I don’t care. I pick it up and see there’s only a few tangles of noodles left. They’ve absorbed nearly all the broth, and there’s a smattering of rehydrated peas and carrots. I could cry.
“What do– eugh!” Rocky grimaces at the sight of me downing the deliciously salty-umami, freezing cold noodles. “Grace disgust!”
“Grace is eating something other than taumeoba goop. Only a matter of time before you’re gonna have to eat too, Rock.”
He shudders. “No, we fix this. Fix fast, fast, fast.” He’s getting a little better at speaking. Surprisingly fast, actually, but Rocky’s always been a quick learner.
“I agree,” I say, throwing the styrofoam cup away and guiding Rocky to sit on the futon. “But first we’ve gotta figure out what happened.”
We gradually piece together our most recent memories. Rocky remembers falling asleep on the Hail Mary, then being rudely shocked into consciousness in a new body. This tracks with my recollection of events. Neither of us remember anything strange going on with the ship; the taumeboa farms were looking good, we were on course and making good time, nothing out of the ordinary had come up on the sensors since three months ago when an asteroid whizzed past 100,000 km starboard.
We have nothing to go on from the present, so I see what I can figure out from the past. Now. I’m thinking of this as the past, because it is. If Rocky is here, that wasn’t some future I had maybe experienced, it was real. Baikonur was a place from fuzzy memories, where I was a very different person.
I’m not surprised it took Rocky a second to realize it was me up on the roof.
I check the time and date. September 28th, 2018. A Friday. It’s 4:36 PM (16:36 in military time, like most people here use).
I try to recall what I had been doing before, but it’s exactly as impossible as trying to remember what you were doing on a specific day multiple years ago (About three for me, relatively). Rocky doesn’t have any immediate memories of being on the Blip-A, either. He worryingly quiets after I ask him.
“Let’s see what we can learn about you–” I wave at his general human-ness. “This guy.”
I look up the name Richard Peralta online and in my email history. Turns out he is a journalist and reporter for NASA; there’s a small news podcast he hosts about space news. The last couple episodes are all about the Petrova line and astrophage, but they’re all months old.
Looking through emails Stratt had CC’d me in that were still unread, because I couldn't care less about the public relations side of Project Hail Mary, it appears that Peralta had been flown in with a small group of journalists for a very limited view at how the project was going. I’m sure the public wanted to know a lot more about their long-shot hope for a future, and Stratt had acquiesced.
This was coming back to me now– I recalled some journalists being toured around the more mundane areas of the facility. Stratt had kept it as boring as possible for those journalists. They had access to the purely administrative meetings that I could barely keep my eyes open for, and the parts of the lab where lab assistants tested singular astrophage instead of excitingly dangerous levels. After a month they had all but left to cover brewing conflicts and climate disasters.
All but one: Peralta. He’d somehow slipped through the cracks, and had been roaming Baikonur for weeks. At least a few days since the last journalists had high-tailed it to something more interesting. I could only wonder why.
“This is good, it doesn’t seem like you’re on anyone’s radar,” I hum. “If we can just lay low…” I peter out as I return to the top of my inbox. This, more than anything, is giving me a good idea of when I am. The recent messages are about fuel production and finalizing the launch preparations for the main structure of the Hail Mary. There are also a few messages from Shapiro and DuBois, asking some follow-up questions about astrophage from our last lesson.
We are a little more than 50 days before the Hail Mary launches. The closer I get to that day, the fuzzier my memory is, but the events of today are still somewhere in my head. It was a Friday, and although weekends were practically nonexistent here, I had finished up my work for the day early. I’d gone to the roof to think through my next lesson plan for Shapiro and DuBois.
I remember leaving shortly after some guy (Peralta) started stinking up the roof with his vape and stopping by the mess for dinner. I remember clicking away at my laptop, alone in my trailer that night. And continuing on with my life up until the explosion. I remember how it played out originally.
“If we lay low, what, question?” Rocky pushes.
I sigh and rub my eyes. It’s getting dark, and the screen is straining my vision. “I really don’t know. This isn’t what happened originally, last time. Obviously. I don’t know what will happen if we change how things play out this time. Or if we even can!”
Rocky hums. “Grace want to change, question?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. Shapiro and DuBois are still alive. So are Yao and Ilyukhina. My kids are still kids, and they and countless other people are still alive– will continue to be if taumeoba can be delivered to earth even a week faster.
“Then we change!” he shouts. “Grace is scientist. Stupid scientist, but still scientist.”
I slap my laptop shut. “I know you’re still new to the whole ‘talking with a mouth’ thing, but is there a way you can explain that better?”
“Make theory. Test. Learn. Until we fix.”
Easier said than done, but he has a point. And I’ve already got a theory to test out:
We Quantum Leaped.