Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

This is where it all started. Has to be. How else can we explain countless extremely different life-forms that all evolved to migrate in space? They all came from the same genetic root. Astrophage was just one of many, many life-forms that evolved here. And with all life, there is variance and predation. Adrian isn’t just some planet that Astrophage infected. It’s the Astrophage homeworld! And it’s the home of Astrophage’s predators. “This is amazing!” I yell. “If we find a predator…” “We take home!” Rocky says, two octaves higher than normal. “It eat Astrophage, breed, eat more Astrophage, breed, eat more more more! Stars saved!”

Because of the interstellar medium. There’s a teeny, tiny amount of hydrogen and helium wandering around out there in space. It’s on the order of one atom per cubic centimeter, but when you’re traveling near the speed of light, that adds up. Not only because you’re hitting a whole bunch of atoms but also because those atoms, from your inertial reference frame, weigh more than normal. Relativistic physics is weird. Long story short: I need the nose intact.

As soon as I unscrew the first bolt, it slides down the slope of the nose cone and falls away into the unknowable distance. “Um…” I say. “Rocky, you can make screws, right?” “Yes. Easy. Why, question?” “I dropped one.” “Hold screws better.” “How?” “Use hand.” “My hand’s busy with the wrench.” “Use second hand.” “My other hand’s on the hull to keep me steady.” “Use third han—hmm. Get beetles. I make new screws.” “Okay.”

Oh. Okay. I see how it is. I’m not some intrepid explorer who nobly sacrificed his life to save Earth. I’m a terrified man who had to be literally dragged kicking and screaming onto the mission. I’m a coward. All that came to me in a flash. I sit on the stool and stare at the lab table. I went from nearly hysterical to…this. This is worse. I’m numb. 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 yawn. “I’m going to sleep soon.” “I watch.” “Good night, Rocky.” “Good night, Grace.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_Goodnight,_Gracie

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!”

“Yes. I’ll do that. I’ll do all of that.” “Do now.” “I need rest! I just did an eight-hour EVA!” “Do now!” “Ugh! No!” I float over to his tunnel and face him through the xenonite. “First I’m going to breed up a bunch more Taumoeba-82.5. Just to make sure we have enough for testing. And I’ll make several stable colonies of it in sealed containers.” “Yes! And some on my ship too!” “Yes. The more backups the better.” He bounces back and forth some more. “Erid will live! Earth will live! Everyone live!” He curls the claws of one hand into a ball and presses it against the xenonite. “Fist me!” I push my knuckles against the xenonite. “It’s ‘fist-bump,’ but 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. “Even the Roman Empire. Everyone knows about the emperors, the armies, and the conquests. But what the Romans really invented was a very efficient system of acquiring farmland and transportation of food and water.” She walked to the other side of the room. “The industrial revolution mechanized agriculture. Since then, we’ve been able to focus our energies on other things. But that’s only been the last two hundred years. Before that, most people spent most of their lives directly dealing with food production.”

“But the fun doesn’t stop there,” she said. “Because once the desperate, starving countries start invading each other for food, the food production will go down. Ever heard of the Tai Ping rebellion? It was a civil war in China during the nineteenth century. Four hundred thousand soldiers died in combat. And twenty million people died from the resulting famine. The war disrupted agriculture, see? That’s how massive in scale these things are.”

Thanks to my Earth scientific journals, they know all my nutritional needs and how to synthesize the various vitamins in labs. Once they solved that, smaller, less-focused groups worked on making them taste better. That’s more or less up to me, actually. Lots of taste tests. Glucose, common to both Eridian and Human biomes, comes up a lot. 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.