Chapter Text
Grace sighed as he flipped through the papers in front of him. While the project was technically top secret, they could hardly let the world fall into despair before they even managed a launch, so information was going out. ‘An Official spokesman from the Petrova Taskforce informs us things are going well’ style messages mostly, a few references to developing Project Hail Mary, even if it’s aim was still fairly secret for now. It was impossible to keep it completely secret, everyone knew the astrophage existed, everyone knew the sun was dimming and everyone knew the Petrova Taskforce existed to stop it. It was hard to miss that top scientists from around the world had up and vanished from their jobs and lives one day to join the Taskforce, and with all the misinformation and disinformation flying around, controlled press releases had jumped onto the list of priorities.
These papers were a part of that, reports and announcements to be sent off as proof that they were making progress, that a solution was coming, only...
They were awful.
Well, they were correct, factual, technical, but too much so. The average person couldn’t name half the cells in their own blood, but they were suddenly supposed to understand the complex breeding processes of an alien microorganism or the development of interstellar engineering at doctorate level? There was a joke about rocket science hidden in these papers, he was sure of it, but honestly, he was too tired to work it out as he shifted his focus to yet another highly technical report. Overly technical. It was like every project head had been asked to make a report of their progress, one that would be reassuring to the public, and had immediately jumped to writing something to justify continued project funding.
Only, they weren’t applying for further funding, Stratt had everything they needed for the project ready to go, all they had to do was ask, at least in his experience. Instead, they needed to focus on summarising their work in a way anyone could understand, not to prove their work was valuable but to reassure the public that hope was not lost. So now he was working on their reports as well as his own, because they could not be released like this. They had to be fixed, or else nobody would be reassured of anything. Honestly, he’d forgotten how much of an echo chamber professional environments could be, how easy it was to assume a baseline of knowledge and forget that it wasn’t the baseline everywhere.
He hadn’t even had time to start his own report yet. He'd been so busy, and then the rest of these reports had been dropped on his desk, he hadn’t had the chance. He'd been brought aboard to do science, why he had ended up with this task he had no idea.
Grace eyed the camera sitting next to his purloined petrographic microscope. The camera had been given to him to log any late-night discoveries he made to improve their chances of replicating it or even just showing it to someone the next morning, a recent addition to his equipment after ‘the incident’. In his defence, he had managed to replicate his process a second time anyway, but the camera was still a good idea.
His back clicked as he stood, and God he was too young to be saying that, but as he scanned around, the rest of the hanger was dark. Nobody was about, probably because it was about 2am, ship time, but that worked for him.
He zipped up the doors to his area, just for good measure, and pulled one of his standing whiteboards to the, well it wasn’t a wall, but it was close enough. A blank one, of course, not one he had any work already written on. A cursory check confirmed there was nothing classified that would be visible, and he set the camera up on the desk. Grace didn't think Stratt would throw him off the boat if he accidentally released something to the public he wasn’t supposed to, but he didn’t want to take the chance. It was a very long swim back to shore from here.
It was only after he pressed record that he realised he probably should have done a little more than smooth his hair down, but he was certain he looked presentable enough, and he was ready to go. This was teaching, and even teaching to a camera was easy enough. So long as he imagined his class in front of him, he could do anything.
“Astrophage...” he started, “by now, I'm sure you’ve head of it, everyone has. My name is Dr Ryland Grace, I'm the head of the Astrophage Research Group for the Petrova Taskforce, and today I’m going to explain what it is, how it works, and what it’s doing.”
He half turned to the whiteboard and drew a quick, simple sketch of the sun and the first few planets, as he spoke, labelling each one as he went.
“The astrophage are tiny creatures that live on the sun,” he drew a line in red pen from the sun to the one labelled Venus, “they make up the Petrova Line, this is what the taskforce was created to manage.”
He paused for a few seconds, knowing that a few seconds to let information process was always useful, before continuing on.
“The Petrova Line is made up of billions of them, as was seen by the probe we sent, billions of these tiny creatures moving from the sun to Venus, and then back again. In fact, the line is created by them expelling light as they move, like little glowsticks.”
He drew a basic diagram of an astrophage cell above the little solar system.
“They survive in space, and on the surface of the sun, by being well insulated.” he drew a thin membrane around the edge of the cell, “It keeps them at a constant temperature, one that can’t be changed by outside influences, which lets them survive the heat of the sun and cold of space and everything in between. They're fairly basic organisms, single celled, but pretty different to things here on Earth. They are what we would call an extremophile, because they can survive where most things can’t.”
He probably didn’t need to include that last part, but his students had always enjoyed extra information like that.
“The line is formed as they make their way to Venus to reproduce, much like how salmon live in the ocean but travel up the river to fresh water, then return to the sea when they’ve reproduced with the new generation.”
He drew a little fish for emphasis, then returned back to his planets.
“Unfortunately, in order to do this, they have to draw energy from the sun first, which is what’s causing it to dim. Here at the Petrova Taskforce, we’re looking to find a way to fix that, and we have some of the best minds in the world here working on it.”
He stepped over and switched the camera off.
It was only a short video, but he didn’t really know what to say next, or more accurately what he was allowed to say. He wasn’t even sure Stratt would let this go out, but videos were far better than technical reports for getting information across to large audiences, and it would only take a little editing to have it ready. Typing up a shorter written press release to go along with it, and writing up short summaries of the other reports in common English would take longer.
A yawn caught Grace off guard, and he rubbed his eyes under his glasses.
Those were a morning problem, he decided, he’d get them done in the morning.