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"I'm not an astronaut! I put the not in astronaut! I've never done a spacewalk, I can't even moonwalk, I can't do this." I breathe deeply.
"I cannot do this," I say
"You're smart, you'll figure it out," says Stratt's voice. How can she think that?
"This might be very hard for you to understand: some people are failures, some people don't rise to the challenge, "I say, frustrated; it feels a little too good to say out loud.
"You've been present for every major scientific or strategic meeting we've had on the mission." Of course, she's right; she probably planned it this way. I'm starting to feel desperate.
"You're missing out on the most important part of the mission, which is the suicide part."
"Grace, you'd be in… very cool company," says Illhyunka.
"If you don't go, you die anyway," says Stratt, ever logical.
"Yeah, but I die in… thirty years with-"
"With the rest of us. You have no immediate family, you don't even have a dog." She's right- no, she's wrong? I have a brother, Colt, my twin, but they must not know he's alive. I'll leave it for now.
"Just so we're clear, you are right now asking me to give up my life." I'm hoping they'll say no.
"Yes, I am," darn it, Stratt.
"Can I think about this?"
"You have three hours."
There's no real thinking to do.
My three hours are up, and I make my way to Stratt's office. I feel an awful lot like a man going to the gallows for someone who has made the decision not to take the road to death.
I knock, and Stratt's voice comes in through the cheap door, "Come in," short and to the point, like everything is with her. I take a seat in the chair across from her at her desk, hundreds of memories flash by, every time I'd sat here as we worked together or when we had meetings. Every time I'd sat in this chair before.
"I take it you've made your decision." It's not a question. Of course it isn't, I'm sure she knows what choice I've made already.
"I understand you think I'm the right person for this mission, but I can't do it. I can't do it. You'll find a solution," I feel possibly the most self-pity a man has ever felt, saying those words.
"You are my solution," but I'm not.
“It’s…you know…the kids. I should stay here for the kids.” I squirmed in my seat. “Even if the Hail Mary finds the answer, we’re going to have almost thirty years of misery.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“And, um, well, I’m a teacher. I should teach. We need to raise a strong, solid generation of survivors. Right now we’re soft. You, me, the whole Western world. We’re the result of growing up in unprecedented comfort and stability. It’s the kids of today that’ll have to make the world of tomorrow work. And they’re going to inherit a mess. I can really do a lot more by preparing kids for the world that’s to come. I should stay here on Earth where I’m needed.”
“On Earth,” she repeated. “Where you’re needed.”
“Y-Yeah.”
"Stop pretending this is about your students its so insulting." Why is she always right? "Grace, we will lose a quarter of the world's population in the next 30 years, and that's assuming that the nations of the world will work together to ration food, which they won't. So I double the estimate." Those numbers make my stomach clench.
"If you truly cared about your students or anyone else, for that matter, you'd get on that ship." Of course, she has to go in for the kill. I take a deep, shaky breath. There are tears rolling down my cheeks right now.
“Okay, it’s true! I’m afraid! I don’t want to die! I worked my ass off on this project and I deserve to live! I’m not going, and that’s final! Get the next person on the list—that Paraguayan chemist. She wants to go!”
She slammed her fist on the table. “I don’t care who wants to go. I care who’s most qualified! Dr. Grace, I’m sorry, but we need you on that mission. I know you’re afraid. I know you don’t want to die. But you have to go.”
"I understand the stakes," another breath, "I do, but I don't have it in me. My mind is made up." another wave of tears. "I'm sorry, but uh, you just can't talk me into it." I may have just doomed the human race and all of Earth to extinction. And that's that.
Then she says it.
"I'm not trying to talk you into anything, I am trying to make you understand what I'm about to do next, yeah? Please stay calm." she turns to the door, "Come in," what?
A man in a white lab coat comes in through the door with a duffel bag, and two more men in black suits follow after him. That doesn't bode well for me and my continued survival.
"What is this?" But there's a sinking feeling that I know what this is.
"The mission plan will state that we induced your coma early to maximize your safety. You will be remembered as a hero." Please, no-
"Come on, this is crazy." No its not, it's actually insane.
"I have to do it," she sounds desperate, and maybe she is. She has the whole fate of the world in her hands.
"Wh-what are you doing, what is this?" I'm gasping through the tears," you're not-" I stand up from my seat at Stratt's desk, "come on, what are you doing?" I can barely see her face through the tears, but what I see looks an awful lot like regret.
"This may feel like me betraying you, but it's actually me believing in you." Believing in me? Yeah, right, she's murdering me.
"It sure feels like you're betraying me." I back up to the table, close to the wall, and the guys in suits walk closer with every step I take away from them.
"Don't make this harder, please"
“This is crazy!” I yelled. “Yáo will never go for this! He specifically said he doesn’t want anyone on his ship against their will!”
“Yeah, that was a curveball. He is annoyingly honorable,” Stratt said, not a drop of remorse in her posture. The suit guys are herding me up against the wall.
"Come on, guys," I look in their eyes, and there's not a hint of emotion. My life is really just another job to them. I take a chair and fling it at the guy closest to me, and I climb up on the cabinet.
“Believe it or not, Dr. Grace, I kind of like you. I don’t respect you very much, but I do think you’re a fundamentally good man.”
“Easy for you to say when you’re not the one being murdered! You’re murdering me!” Tears rolled down my face. “I don’t want to die! Don’t send me off to die! Please!” She looked pained.
"Sit down, and we do it differently." Sit down? Do it differently? We can't come back from this. Stratt knows it, I know it, even the guys in suits know it, I'm sure.
I make a break for it, I step across the shelf, and I can tell that the suit guys aren't trying to hurt me because they aren't really grabbing at me. I'm sure that's about to change.
I jump off the shelf and make a break for the miraculously open door, and I don't stop, even for a moment. I don't look back.
"Yeah, he's running"
I can feel the air whistling through my lungs, burning my throat, and the hot blood pumping through my limbs, the burn of my muscles as I run as fast as I possibly can. I am quite literally running for my life right now.
But it doesn't last long, I'm out in the courtyard, and I'm running to the fence, I'm going to hop the fence, I'm going to grab it and stick the toe of my right foot in the groove at knee height and hoist myself up. I'm going to do it again with the left, and then the right, and then the left, and then I'm going to pull myself over the top, and I'll keep running. I'm going to-
Something solid comes at me from the left, and I hit the ground hard, I hit my head, I know I did- they've caught me. I wasn't fast enough, and now I'm going to die. They're going to kill me. I'm a coward, I'm going to die, what is there to do? I remember Colt, I remember him teaching me how to get out of a hold, not quite like this, but similar enough.
The man has me on my stomach, right arm pinned behind my back, but he is lying on me, using his full weight to keep me down. I brace my free hand on the dead grass beneath me, and I close my eyes with a breath, and then I smack the back of my skull into the guy's nose.
He screams, and honestly, if I weren't so hopped up on adrenaline, the pain probably would've made me scream, too. There are spots in my eyes, but it doesn't matter. I push myself up and throw the guy off me. I roll a few times to get out of his grasp, and then I'm up. I'm running again. The fence is right in front of me. I grab it, I put my right foot in, I hoist myself up, I repeat with my left, and do it again. Then I swing my leg over the side, and I jump.
But I don't stop running, I pump my legs as fast as I can down the road, I run straight into the forest, and I do not stop. They know where I am, vaguely, if not exactly.