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Somewhere in the mid 1800s, statistician Francis Galton coined the age-old debate of nature versus nurture, a byproduct during his study on the influence of genetics and environment on intelligence.
Somewhere in the early 2000s, science teacher Ryland Grace incorrectly argues that water is not essential to sustain life. He knows nothing of nature versus nurture beyond the bare essentials, psychology not being his field of expertise.
Instead, he knows physics.
The memory comes back to him much later on, but when it does, he can remember it clearly.
One summer, somewhere in the late 1900s, his family had been invited to spend the weekend on a family friend's boat. It had been renovated into a boathouse, made into an actual place of residence after a good three, four years of hard work. But unlike most boathouses, it had been built with a speedboat engine as its foundation.
He remembers being on the 'rooftop' of the boat—the dedicated sunbathing floor, really—with two other kids. The glittering waters below had been smooth, but when the boat broke its surface every other second, salty sea water sprayed up into the air all around them like magic.
"Look at how fast we're going!" exclaimed the eldest of them. Grace had the smallest stature of the three, but he'd been too young to be self conscious of the fact.
Another spray of water showered past them, refracting an array of technicolor in its thousands of droplets.
"What if I jumped up while we moved?" asked Grace curiously over the roaring of the wind, the rumbling hum of the engine. "What'd happen?"
"Don't!" The older sister exclaimed, understandably worried. As the eldest, it would be on her head if something went wrong.
"You can't!" echoed her brother, as mindlessly as a parrot.
But instead of shying away from what others perceived as danger, as any sane child might, Grace had asked his favourite question. "Why?"
"Look at how fast we're going—you'll go flying!" she cried.
"No, I won't!" But his tiny hands had fastened their grip on the railing, alarmed by the mere possibility.
"You will!"
"You will!" parroted the brother.
"No, I wont!" he shouted back. "And, even if I did, I'm not tall enough to jump over the railing!"
"You will!" she persisted, adamant.
"You wi—"
"I won't!" Grace clapped his hands over his ears to block out their echoes; annoyance two-fold. "I won't, I won't, I won't!" He shook his head fiercely. "Just—watch!"
His hands were nowhere near the railing then. One, two steps away from the edges and to the centre of the blinding white rooftop, leaving enough leeway on all four sides if he did go flying—or fall over.
It was hard to keep steady when the boat staggered on at such a high speed, but little Grace was determined, fuelled by the need to be right. The need to prove that the two of them were both being so stupid! Of course he wouldn't go flying—otherwise, why would they have let them up there with no adult? They were safe!
"Watch me!"
He took a deep breath,
"NO!"
"GRACE!"
and jumped.
Only to land exactly where he was.
Huh. While he hadn't expected to go flying over the railing and tumbling into the vast sea below, he hadn't expected not to move at all. He didn't even move an inch.
"Oh thank goodness you're okay!" The two of them rushed over to shake him like a human maraca. His plastic blue glasses had slid down his nose with the force of it. "What were you thinking?!"
"What were you thinking?!" parroted Peter predictably.
Grace had stared down at the melting rubber of his flip flop straps, captivated by not even an inch.
He had later stared at the mountain range blurring past the car windows, confused by not even an inch?
He had stared at the scientifically inaccurate stars on his closet doors, mulling it over and over, until he finally asked his favourite question.
Why?
In Grace's case, nature and nurture had both been at play. Something inherently inside of him made him want to constantly pursue the why. Then, pursuing why had led him to the library just down the street. And the library just down the street had led Grace to his first taste of physics.
The first law of physics Grace learns is Newton’s law of inertia. It states: if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force. And like most people's firsts, Grace would continue to keep Newton's first law close to his heart throughout his life.
Perhaps, a little too close.
Though it is medically inaccurate to say, a passion for physics began to grow inside of him—rapidly, and thankfully benign. Despite his thirst for knowledge and his sponge-like tendency to absorb any and all of it, Grace quickly learned that his nature would not be nurtured forever—that a why was often about as welcome as fighting words, when most teachers were staggeringly unequipped to answer.
He privately swore that if he were ever to become a teacher—not that he particularly wanted to—he would never let a why go unanswered.
Perhaps inspired by his growing fondness for electrons, Grace learned to follow the path of least resistance.
He supposes he must have lucked out when the path of least resistance turned out to be the singular avenue of interest he wanted to pursue. When Grace decided to continue on in STEM, it was an easy decision—hardly a decision made at all. It was a familiar trajectory, and it fuelled a part of him that couldn't find its sustenance elsewhere.
Socialising didn't follow the same path. In fact, it seemed to diverge and split around Grace like an act of repulsion itself.
Opportunities to meet new people never quite intersected with where he enjoyed quiet lunchtimes in the courtyard between the lecture and lab buildings. Expanding his social circle never seemed that much necessary when he was content just sticking to the same two project partners in every class—why change? They were both easy enough to get along with.
Friendships, relationships, and love didn't enter his orbit, so to speak. It didn't bother him. Not when that was just how the magnetic field of his life moved around him. It's simple; he's electron.
He's electron—negatively charged, repelling other humans.
He's awkward—unable to walk the line between talking too little and talking too much in conversations.
He's confused—painfully missing the mark in every social opportunity that does arise.
An example of such mortification comes easily with a little prodding at his brain. The bad memories rise up to the surface quicker than the good, the same way rotten eggs float and good eggs stay under.
He recalls when one of his project partners approached him after their lab. They'd never spoken outside of lab before. They hardly ever spoke during it, either. He remembers the interaction had gone about as well as nuclear fission.
"Are you taking anyone to prom?" They stopped at his blacktop table and asked, seemingly out of the blue.
"No, sorry, uh, what?"
While his face said, that's not somewhere I belong, I don't think I'd even go if I was held at gunpoint, his mouth opened to say, "Imagine me taking someone to prom."
He laughed self-deprecatingly.
"You could take me," they shrugged.
"…Why would I do that?"
"Because I've not been asked yet."
Grace paused, trying to make sense of the trap that was laid out, because there was definitely something sticky to it. He didn't know how to navigate these social bombs—he was a shut-in mad scientist in the making, just trying to make it to graduation without incident.
He did not want this to be An Incident.
"I'm sure you'll be asked by someone soon. No need to waste a whole night with me," he'd smiled, half-apologetic, half-confused, and wholly missing the point.
Crisis, connection, and change, all averted.
Adaptability, was what he initially titled it, then later excused it as. It's a weak excuse at best, but there's something to be said about Grace's remarkable ability to apply the essence of mundane to every situation.
He hardly batted an eye when his freshman roommate ran a brownie baking business out of their dorm room, and barely took more than two minutes of convincing to get to work on developing a tool for the Top Secret Save-The-Universe mission. Somehow, both had been made equally as noteworthy and equally as dull with that odd little talent of his.
Perhaps it would be more apt to call it cowardice.
Grace is a body at rest. Or perhaps he is moving at a constant speed in a straight line and just doesn't notice. At least, back on Earth, he'd spun on the same axis and orbited the same dying Sun, so it made perfect sense that he'd never noticed the motion before. He'd been a kite riding a perfect pocket of wind; a dewdrop in a thunderstorm. He moved in tandem together with Earth, retaining its motion, thus it all appeared to be at rest.
Except, somewhere along the way, it hadn't.
Earth continued to turn on without him, turn on and turn on and and turn on until, eventually, it felt as though it turned on him. Time was a construct, but society, and its people, followed it all the same.
Then there Grace was, falling behind, toes stuck in weeping sand as the tides continued their heedless ebb and flow around him.
In just two, three days—or maybe it's been a week? It's hard to tell in space with so much vodka in his system—but life on the Hail Mary becomes mundane in its own right. It's this unearthly combination of foods (ha!) and a new article of mystery wardrobe every day. Time passing is marked only by the strange, growing weightlessness inside his body and the mundanity of what should have been incomprehensibly profound.
Even orbiting a new sun, Grace doesn't feel particularly enlightened. Maybe that's because he can't remember what Mom, Dad, or his dog look like. Does he even have a dog?
He thinks a dog would be nice, despite the ridiculous amount of attention they require. Does every dog owner really take them out twice a day? Does he? A dog wouldn't do well in space. A dog wouldn't do well waiting for him back on Earth, either.
He really hopes he didn't have a dog.
Earth is an unmoving, unblinking blip on the radar. From eleven lightyears away, it appears to be at rest.
And for the first time since his early formative years, Grace feels as though he is a kite riding a perfect pocket of wind; a dewdrop in a thunderstorm again. Eleven lightyears away and he is somehow back in motion with his home planet, retaining its orbit—he should not be able to notice any movement.
But Grace stares out at the vast expanse of the dying universe and knows that his inertia is an anomaly here. Surrounded by the void-like abyss, it's hard to forget.
He shuts his bleary, bloodshot eyes, overwhelmed by the profoundness of it all.
What is someone like him meant to do out here? Though he cannot recall most things of importance, he can recall this: a simmering self-depreciation; a broiling inadequacy kept down on low. It is as complimentary as the cowardice in his bone marrow, as familiar as the fear in his eyes.
Blip A.
Grace glances out at the foreign structure which dwarfs his ship hundreds of times over. It still hasn't stopped following him.
He knows, according to Newton's first law of inertia, that he will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at a constant speed unless acted upon by a force.
Unless acted upon by a force.
Unless acted upon by a force.
Blip B.
As Grace keeps the ship stationary so that the mechanical, alien hands can crawl its way towards him, he supposes that this is certainly one hell of a force.
Rocky does not have finger joints.
Nor the capacity to exist in the Hail Mary outside of his makeshift atmospheric 'spheres'—they're uneven icosahedrons at best—so it's up to Grace to learn how to do most things himself. With Yao and Ilyukhina dead, Grace learns to be Captain, Astronaut, and Science Expert of the Hail Mary.
Taking control and flying the ship is particularly gruelling, and Rocky raises his chirping voice far too many times for someone made of rock and no finger joints should, but Grace is malleable carbon, and Rocky can see just how brilliant of a diamond Grace is capable of becoming under pressure.
Also, yelling or not, Grace doesn't mind his company.
Drunk on a celebratory half-bag of vodka, Grace informs the video diary that he never expected to find the essence of humanity in aliens; that he never expected to discover the meaning of life staring down the great big barrel of death.
"Why crying question." Rocky interrupts his thoughts.
The fireworks around them have gone quiet, attenuating as it does when it senses speech.
Grace doesn't know how Rocky still manages to capture his attention like that after so long together. It's like he's attuned to listening out just for Rocky, precisely because Grace is no longer a silent observer in his own life. He is an active participant; a welcome input in every conversation.
He gives him a watery smile. "I'm good, Rock."
Rocky asks, "Why why why," so often that it inevitably heals something deep inside of him. "Grace sad question?"
Rocky's concern is an alien sensation, a robotic voice that never fails to reach deep within his head and yank him out of its cruel orbital pull. It's a gentle violence, a force which breaks him out of his constant inertia. So despite the lack of privacy, the strange sleeping arrangements, the constant thunk thunk thunk of Rocky's ball clunking through the halls of the ship, he's happy.
"Not sad, promise. Glad you're here, bud."
Rocky is warm where they meet in their hug. Something which had once been strange and unusual is now the new normal.
"Not 'bud'. Name Rocky statement."
He snorts inelegantly against the warm ball. Grace will likely know no other type of hug, no other type of friendship again, but that is not something he's had to make peace with—it's something he looks forward to for the rest of his life.
He's happier than he can remember. Then, even as he remembers, it only affirms that, yes, this is the happiest he has been.
Out here, eleven lightyears away from home, he is no longer an electron; no longer just a body in constant motion, no longer awkward, confused, nor outcast.
He's…friend. He's hero. He's Grace.