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We’re about halfway to Erid when disaster strikes.
It’s embarrassingly mundane. If it had happened whilst I was on a spacewalk to heroically fix part of our now somewhat-battered ship, or dramatically throwing myself through the lab to catch a vital piece of equipment before it shattered, I might have been able to accept it. As it is, it’s just carelessness – one of those little things that happens from time to time in a wide, indifferent universe.
Only, this isn’t a little thing. Not to me.
My food supplies are starting to run low and being on rations, it turns out, makes me both grumpier and less coordinated than usual. So when I turn from the microscope in the lab to grab a pen, I do it too quickly and too imprecisely, and my flailing hand catches my half-full cup of coffee. I scramble frantically to rescue it – with a restricted diet, coffee is getting more important to me by the day – and though I manage to prevent a spill, my frantic motion knocks my elbow into my glasses where I’d placed them, folded, on the edge of the table. They go flying, skidding over the floor with a clatter.
‘Fudge!’
I get up and hurry towards them. I’m worried, but not too worried – we’ve been through plenty, me and the glasses, and we’ve both survived so far. I bend down, pick them up. And groan.
The left lens is cracked.
‘Oh no,’ I murmur. A bent arm, a loose screw, I could have fixed easily. But the lens? ‘Oh no.’
‘Grace question?’ Rocky asks, steering his ball into the room. He hears most everything that happens on the ship.
I put the glasses on, squinting. It’s not even a single crack but a spiderweb, scattering my vision and making me dizzy. I take them off again. ‘I broke my glasses.’
‘Grace have more question?’
‘No.’ There’d been no spares in my bag. At the time, I thought it was odd. Now, knowing how I’d ended up here, it made sense.
‘Rocky fix question?’
‘I…I don’t know if you can fix this one, pal.’
Even if I could pass them through to his atmosphere without them melting – unlikely – what could Rocky do about a new lens? Eridians don’t have eyes. We’ve had a few conversations about my glasses, but though Rocky understands their purpose, he’s never quite grasped the intricacies of how prescriptions work. Darn it, I’m no expert myself.
Rocky does his best. We both do a lot of research, and he tries to fashion me some lenses out of clear xenonite but, wonderful stuff that it is, it isn’t suited to the task. Perhaps with a simple prescription, Rocky might have managed, but these aren’t just reading glasses. I have astigmatism, so I need them for some things close-up as well as far away. The balance is too delicate.
‘It’s okay,’ I say at last, after the fifth or sixth try, a rough set with lenses so thick they make me feel like I’m underwater. I take them off, put my old, cracked ones, back on. ‘I can manage with these.’
‘Apology friend Grace.’
‘It’s not your fault. I broke them. Honestly, it’s a miracle I haven’t done it before now. I’ve always been clumsy.’
Rocky tilts his carapace.
‘Damage things easily.’
‘Understand.’ Rocky doesn’t even take the opportunity to tease me, which must mean I sound pretty miserable. ‘Science Eridians help, perhaps.’
‘Yeah. Perhaps.’
I try to say it hopefully, but my stomach twists with doubt. Even if they can help, we’re a long way from Erid. I’d known that eventually my glasses might break, or that my vision could change – though thankfully my prescription hasn’t altered much in the past decade – but the prospect of months, years without being able to see properly… This journey wasn’t ever going to be comfortable, what with the dwindling rations, but now I won’t even be able to read without getting a headache or watch a movie properly. I know I’ll get used to it, sort of, but my world just feels like it’s shrunk horribly around me. I want to cry.
I don’t let myself. I return my glasses to my face, broken as they are, and carry on.
I do sort of get used to it. I wear my glasses when I have to, but take them off if I can manage without. If I must use them for long periods, I have to close my left eye to stop myself getting seasick – eventually, I fashion a patch that I can put over the broken lens when I need to do this, to stop my face cramping from being scrunched up. I try to pretend that I’m a pirate, but it doesn’t really make me feel any better. Every now and then Rocky produces another set of xenonite lenses, but none are any good.
It’s almost three months before I find them.
I’m looking in my bag because I’m trying to find more deodorant. I’ve finally run out of what was provided in the common areas of the ship, and though Rocky can’t smell me, I can smell myself. I’m already hungry and half-blind – I don’t need to stink as well. After searching most of the communal storage places, I remember that I’d seen a box of deodorant in my bag when I was first going through it, trying to work out where – and who – I was. I haven’t really looked in there since, seeing as the ship has most everything I need, and not to mention the bitter memories the bag brings back. But hey, needs must.
I unzip the bag and paw the contents. The first thing I notice is that the deodorant box is the same brand as we had on the ship, which seems weird. I don’t remember using it on Earth, and certainly not having a box this large – it’s a multipack of three. The second thing I notice is that it’s already open, the lid pried up and then stuck down again with tape.
I frown, peel back the tape. Lift the lid – and blink.
It isn’t deodorant. Inside are three small black plastic cases. They’ve been packed in the box tightly, stuffed around with cotton wool.
‘No…’ I murmur.
I open the first case. Inside is a pair of glasses, identical to my own. I pick them up, swap them from my cracked ones. I’ve got used to not having my glasses, or else only using one eye, so everything seems a bit wavy, but I can tell they’re the same as my old ones. Inside the second and third case are second and third pairs, shining in the Hail Mary’s sharp lights.
Anyone could have packed a single pair – I had a spare in my rooms on Earth somewhere. But three pairs…and a rush job, clearly, given the way they’ve been stored. Not easy to get glasses made to prescription in a matter of days.
A flash of memory comes to me – Stratt and I alone in a conference room somewhere, one of the hundreds we’d sat in in our course of trying to save the world. I waved my hands, excited, and knocked my glasses where I’d hung them over my collar, sending them flying across the table. I’d gone red, fumbling towards them, but she’d got there before me, plucking them up and handing them over.
‘You should take more care, Dr Grace,’ she said. It could have been an admonishment – only, she’d smiled, as if, despite the task ahead of us, despite the world ending, her dreadful, necessary need to be calm and collected at all times, she couldn’t help herself.
I can’t remember, now, if I had smiled back. Probably I did. I had admired her, liked her even, up until…well.
There’s no note in the box. No words of encouragement, no warning, no apology. I wouldn’t have expected one, not from her. But there are three pairs of glasses, and that is a message in itself. Be careful, Dr Grace, I imagine her saying in her clipped, weary tone. I know what you’re like.
I don’t know how to feel about it. Angry? Sad? Grateful? I bounce between all three like a ping pong ball, light-headed and confused. But that’s okay. I have time. And, most importantly, I have a new pair of glasses.
I fold the ones with the broken lens into the now-empty case and set it in the box with the others. I return the box very carefully to the bag, zip it up and stand for a moment, looking at it, as if it might speak to me.
It doesn’t, of course. I take a deep breath, unclench my fists, and go to find Rocky. For once, I have good news.