Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

I’m a scientist! Now we’re getting somewhere! Time for me to use science. All right, genius brain: come up with something! …I’m hungry. You have failed me, brain.

I think my job is to solve the Petrova problem. …in a small lab, wearing a bedsheet toga, with no idea who I am, and no help other than a mindless computer and two mummified roommates.

So it was that with the apocalypse looming—possibly caused by an alien life-form—I stood in front of a bunch of kids and taught them basic science. Because what’s the point of even having a world if you’re not going to pass it on to the next generation?

It had taken me years to cultivate a rep as the “cool” teacher. Kids are smarter than most people think. And they can tell when a teacher actually cares about them as opposed to when they’re just going through the motions. Anyway, it was time for the lightning round!

All life needs is a chemical reaction that results in copies of the original catalyst. And you don’t need water for that!”

She pinched her chin. “What would you call an organism that exists on a diet of stars?” I struggled to remember my Greek and Latin root words. “I think you’d call it ‘Astrophage.’ ”

How am I in another solar system?! That doesn’t even make sense! What star is that, anyway?! Oh my God, I am so going to die! I hyperventilate for a while. I remember what I tell my students: If you’re upset, take a deep breath, let it out, and count to ten. It dramatically reduced the number of tantrums in my classroom. I take a breath. “One…two…thr—this isn’t working! I’m going to die!”

“How did you do it? What killed it?” “I penetrated the outer cell membrane with a nanosyringe.” “You poked it with a stick?” “No!” I said. “Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick.” “It took you two days to think of poking it with a stick.” “You…be quiet.”

Point is: The inside of an Astrophage wasn’t much different from the inside of any single-celled organism you’d find on Earth. It used ATP, RNA transcription, and a whole host of other extremely familiar things. Some researchers speculated that it originated on Earth. Others postulated this specific set of molecules was the only way for life to occur and Astrophage evolved it independently. And a smaller, vocal faction suggested life might not have evolved on Earth at all, and that Astrophage and terrestrial life have a common ancestor.

Light is a funny thing. Its wavelength defines what it can and can’t interact with. Anything smaller than the wavelength is functionally nonexistent to that photon. That’s why there’s a mesh over the window of a microwave. The holes in the mesh are too small for microwaves to pass through. But visible light, with a much shorter wavelength, can go through freely. So you get to watch your food cook without melting your face off.

I had to sit down and take a breath. I should have taken a nap—I hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. But this was too exciting.

“Oh God, please tell me you understand where the heat goes. I can’t figure out what the heck it’s doing with the heat energy!” “We have figured this out, yes,” said Dimitri. “With lasers. It was very illuminating experiment.” “Was that a pun?” “It was!” “Good one!” We both laughed. Stratt glared at us. Dimitri cleared his throat. “Er…yes. We pointed tight-focus one-kilowatt laser at a single Astrophage cell. As usual, it did not get hotter. But after twenty-five minutes, light starts to bounce off. Our little Astrophage is full. Good meal. It consumed 1.5 megajoules of light energy. Does not want more. But this is very much energy! Where does it put all this energy?” I’m leaning way too far forward over the table, but I can’t help myself. “Where?!” “We measure Astrophage cell before and after experiment, of course.” “Of course.” “Astrophage cell is now seventeen nanograms heavier. You can see where this goes, yes?” “No, it can’t be. It must have gained that weight from reactions with the air or something.” “No, it was in a vacuum for the test, of course.” “Oh my God.” I was giddy. “Seventeen nanograms…times nine times ten to the sixteenth…1.5 megajoules!” I flopped back into my chair. “Holy…I mean just…wow!” “This was how I felt, yes.” Mass conversion. As the great Albert Einstein once said: E = mc2. There’s an absurd amount of energy in mass. A modern nuclear plant can power an entire city for a year with the energy stored in just one kilogram of Uranium. Yes. That’s it. ...

Okay, if I’m going to die, it’s going to have meaning. I’m going to figure out what can be done to stop Astrophage. And then I’ll send my answers off to Earth. And then…I’ll die.

“Oh gosh…” I whimper. “Gosh…this is…” Can I do this? Will I be rendered completely worthless from this point on? Will humanity die because I can’t handle zero g? No. I clench my teeth. I clench my fists. I clench my butt. I clench every part of me that I know how to clench. It gives me a feeling of control. I’m doing something by aggressively doing nothing. After an eternity, the panic begins to ebb away. Human brains are amazing things. We can get used to just about anything. I’m making the adjustment. The slight reduction of fear has a feedback effect. I know I will get less afraid now. And knowing that makes the fear subside even faster. Soon, the panic dies down to fear, which diffuses into general anxiousness.

“Very considerate of you…” I say. These are smart aliens. I have to assume friendly intent at this point. I mean, they’re going out of their way to say hi and be accommodating. Besides, if there is hostile intent, what would I do about it? Die. That’s what I’d do. I’m a scientist, not Buck Rogers.

Their move is taking a long time and I’m getting bored. Wow. I’m sitting here in a spaceship in the Tau Ceti system waiting for the intelligent aliens I just met to continue our conversation…and I’m bored. Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.

Broadly speaking, the human brain is a collection of software hacks compiled into a single, somehow-functional unit. Each “feature” was added as a random mutation that solved some specific problem to increase our odds of survival. In short, the human brain is a mess. Everything about evolution is messy. So, I assume Eridians are also a mess of random mutations. But whatever led to their brains being how they are, it gave them what we humans would call “photographic memory.”

He relaxes his limbs and they go limp. He curls up like a dead bug and remains motionless for a while. “Eridians same! ♪♫♫♪!” Oh thank God. I can’t imagine explaining “sleep” to someone who had never heard of it. Hey, I’m going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can’t do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No need for concern.

“That’s what I tell myself,” Leclerc said. “Three…two…one…detonation.” Nothing happened. The coastline remained as it was. No explosion. No flash. Not even a pop. He looked at his tablet. “The nukes have detonated. The shockwave should be here in ten minutes or so. It’ll just sound like distant thunder, though.” He looked down at the carrier deck. Stratt put her hand on his shoulder. “You did what you had to do. We’re all doing what we have to do.” He buried his face in his hands and cried.

So his whole body is a microphone. His brain must be doing some serious processing. It has to know the exact position of the body, sense the time difference between sound hitting different parts of it…man, that’s interesting. But hey, my brain gives me an entire 3-D model of my surroundings just from two eyeballs. Sensory input is really impressive across the board.

I’ve gone from “sole-surviving space explorer” to “guy with wacky new roommate.” It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

“Hello!” Ilyukhina lunged forward and hugged Stratt. “I’m here to die for Earth! Pretty awesome, yes?!” I leaned to Dimitri. “Are all Russians crazy?” “Yes,” he said with a smile. “It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.” “That’s…dark.” “That’s Russian!”

I’m all smiles. It’s been three days since I found out I won’t die and I’m still all smiles.

“Amaze is wrong word,” he says. “Amaze is compliment. Better word is ♫♪♫♪.” “What’s that mean?” “It is when person not act normal. Danger to self.” “Ah,” I say, adding the new chord into my language database. “Crazy. My word for that is ‘crazy.’ ” “Crazy. Humans are crazy.” I shrug.

“Yes, you are correct,” DuBois said. “I will be setting out on a suicide mission in under a year. And if for some reason I am deemed unfit or unable, she will go on the suicide mission. We are aware of this, and we know this relationship can only end in death.”

I’m lucky to be alive. There’s no other way to put it. Anything I do beyond that moment is a gift from the universe to me.

I rub my eyes. Between the pain from my burns and the dopiness from the painkillers, it’s hard to concentrate. And I’m tired. One thing I learned back in my graduate school days: When you’re stupid tired, accept that you’re stupid tired. Don’t try to solve things right then. I have a sealed container that I need to get into eventually. I’ll figure out how later.

“No!” Rocky says. He skitters over to the partition and taps the divider. “You sleep. Human no function well after no sleep. EVA dangerous. Sleep first. EVA next.” I roll my eyes. “All right, all right.” He points back to my bunk. “Sleep.” “Yes, Mom.” “Sarcasm. You sleep. I watch.”

“Do you think I don’t know you, Dr. Grace?!” she yelled. “You’re a coward and you always have been. You abandoned a promising scientific career because people didn’t like a paper you wrote. You retreated to the safety of children who worship you for being the cool teacher. You don’t have a romantic partner in your life because that would mean you might suffer heartbreak. You avoid risk like the plague.” I stood up. “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 you are going on that mission. I know you’re afraid. I know you don’t want to die. But you’re going.” “You’re out of your darn mind. I’m leaving now.” I turned to the door. “Meknikov!” she shouted. The soldier deftly stepped between me and the door. I turned back to her. “You have got to be kidding.” “It would have been easier if you’d just said yes.”

I’m a coward. I’ve known for a while that I’m not the best hope for saving mankind. I’m just a guy with the genes to survive a coma. I made my peace with that a while ago. But I didn’t know I was a coward. I remember the emotions. I remember that feeling of panic. I remember it all now. Sheer, unadulterated terror. Not for Earth or humanity or the children. For myself. Utter panic.

It’s a weird feeling, scientific breakthroughs. There’s no Eureka moment. Just a slow, steady progression toward a goal. But man, when you get to that goal it feels good.

“How long since last sleep, question?” “Huh? I’m talking about fuel here! Stay focused!” “Grumpy. Angry. Stupid. How long since last sleep, question?” I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve been working on the breeder tanks and fuel bays…I forget when I last slept.” “You sleep. I watch.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let me get some water first.” He bounces and skitters down his tube to the lab. “Why humans need water so much, question? Inefficient life-forms!” I chug a full liter bag of water I’d left in the control room before the EVA. It’s thirsty work. I wipe my mouth and let the bag float off. I push off the wall to float down the tunnel to the lab. “Eridians need water, too, you know.” “We keep inside. Closed system. Some inefficiencies inside, but we get all water we need from food. Humans leak! Gross.” I laugh as I float into the lab where Rocky is waiting. “On Earth, we have a scary, deadly creature called a spider. You look like one of those. Just so you know.” “Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.” He points to the breeder tanks. “Check tanks!”

“This is happy! Your face opening is in sad mode. Why, question?” “Going to be a long trip and I’ll be all alone.” I haven’t decided if I want to risk a coma on the way home. I may have to for my own sanity. Total solitude and nothing to eat but chalky, nasty coma slurry might just be too much. For the first part of the trip, at least, I definitely plan to stay awake. “You will miss me, question? I will miss you. You are friend.” “Yeah. I’m going to miss you.” I take another swig of vodka. “You’re my friend. Heck, you’re my best friend. And pretty soon we’re going to say goodbye forever.”

“Oh.” He’s quiet for a moment. “So we enjoy remaining time together, then go save planets. Then we are heroes!”

“History. I was a history major.” She drummed her fingers on the desk. “Most people assume I had a science major or business management. Communications, maybe. But no. It was history.” “Doesn’t seem like you.” I sat up on my bunk. “You don’t spend a lot of time looking backward.” “I was eighteen years old and had no idea what to do with my life. I majored in history because I didn’t know what else to do.” She smirked. “Hard to imagine me like that, eh?” “Yeah.” She looked out the barred window toward the launchpad in the distance. “But I learned a lot. I actually liked it. People nowadays…they have no idea how good they have it. The past was unrelenting misery for most people. And the further back in time you go, the worse it was.”

She stood and meandered around the room. “For fifty thousand years, right up to the industrial revolution, human civilization was about one thing and one thing only: food. Every culture that existed put most of their time, energy, manpower, and resources into food. Hunting it, gathering it, farming it, ranching it, storing it, distributing it…it was all about food.

Remember what Leclerc told us: Half the global population will die.” “I know,” I muttered. “No, you don’t know,” she said. “Because it gets a lot worse.” “Worse than half of humanity dying?” “Of course,” she said. “Leclerc’s estimate assumes all the nations of the world work together to share resources and ration food. But do you think that will happen? Do you think the United States—the most powerful military force of all time—is going to sit idly by while half their population starves? How about China, a nation of 1.3 billion people that’s always on the verge of famines in the best of times? Do you think they’ll just leave their militarily weak neighbors alone?” I shook my head. “There’ll be wars.” “Yes. There’ll be wars. Fought for the same reason most wars in ancient times were fought for: food.

“Malnourishment. Disruption. Famine. Every aspect of infrastructure going to food production and warfare. The entire fabric of society will fall apart. There’ll be plagues too. Lots of them. All over the world. Because the medical-care systems will be overwhelmed. Once easily contained outbreaks will go unchecked.” She turned to face me. “War, famine, pestilence, and death. Astrophage is literally the apocalypse. The Hail Mary is all we have now. I’ll make any sacrifice to give it even the tiniest additional chance of success.”

Yeah? Well, hell’s coming back to you, Stratt. In the form of me. I’m hell. I mean…I don’t know what I’ll say to her. But I definitely plan to say stuff. Mean stuff.

It’s progress, at least. But in the grand scheme of things, I’m on a long road trip and my current status is “just walking out the front door of the house.”

I put my head in my hands. I can go home. I really can. I can return and spend the rest of my life a hero. Statues, parades, et cetera. And I’ll be in a new world order where all energy problems are solved. Cheap, easy, renewable energy everywhere thanks to Astrophage. I can track down Stratt and tell her to shove it. But then Rocky dies. And more important, Rocky’s people die. Billions of them.

This far away from Tau Ceti, his ship won’t be reflecting much Taulight. There’s no chance I’d spot the Blip-A with my telescope. Side note: I’m going to die. “Stop,” I say. Whenever I think about my impending death, I think about Rocky instead. He must have a sense of hopelessness right now. I’m coming, buddy.

I have grounds and everything. Thirty Eridians outside the dome maintain my life-support systems, or so I’m told. And my dome is very close to one of the larger science centers. Many of Erid’s greatest minds collect there and thrum. That’s sort of a song and discussion in one. But everyone talks at the same time and it’s not really conscious on their part. Somehow the thrum leads to conclusions and decisions. The thrum itself is much smarter than any Eridian in it. In a way, Eridians can become ad-hoc neurons in a group mind. But they come and go as they please.

The best thing, though, is they managed to clone my muscle tissue and grow it in labs. I can thank Earth science for that. They were nowhere near that technology when I first showed up. But that was sixteen years ago—they’re catching up quite well. Anyway, it means I can finally eat meat. Yes, that’s right, I’m eating human meat. But it’s my own meat, and I don’t feel bad about it. Spend a decade eating nothing but odd-tasting, vaguely sweet vitamin shakes and then see if you’ll turn down a burger. I love meburgers. I eat one every day.

“Rocky…that news about Sol…it…it makes my whole life have meaning. You know? I still can’t…I can’t…” I start sobbing again. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

“I know,” he says, tilting his carapace in what I’ve come to realize is a smile. “I know. We’ll talk more about it later. I have to get home anyway. Adrian is going to sleep soon, so I have to be there to watch.”

I bet they did work together. Maybe it’s just the childish optimist in me, but humanity can be pretty impressive when we put our minds to it.

An Earthlike organ keyboard sits in the center of my area, oriented such that the operator faces the kids. The organ has quite a few more options than a typical keyboard found on Earth. I can apply inflection, tone, mood, and all the other little intricacies of spoken language. I settle into the comfortable chair, crack my knuckles, and start the class.