“Here it comes now,” OS responds. “Look!”
My irritation vanishes, because what I’m seeing truly is amazing. Earth. Small, but big enough to appear blue and not white like the stars. I press my face closer to the window. There are swirling clouds on the visible half of the sphere, hints of brown land beneath. I can make out the heat cyclones, like the ones that devastated Australia and Firma Antarctica just months before we departed, that forced us to move the launch to the pad in Mari.
The most surprising thing? The moon. All the times I’ve imagined this moment, I forgot to also imagine the moon rotating around Earth. There it is, shining white on one half, black on the other. Earth has a pet on an invisible leash. It’s kind of adorable, not that I’d ever say that aloud.
It makes me think of Titan, in its own rotation around Saturn, along with its eighty-one siblings. Where Minerva is, dead or alive.
“I’m glad you woke up in time to see the colors of Earth,” OS says. “A few more weeks of travel, and it will look like any other star or planet to the human eye.”
It’s a programming affectation I’ve always disliked, when a computer program says it’s “glad.” Here, isolated in space, it’s especially unnerving. This operating system, which has no limbic system and therefore no emotions, and which has my life in its hands, can lie.
“I could spend forever looking out at this,” I say, wriggling my body along the white floor, tapping individual stars, as if I can zoom in on them. I hope OS hasn’t picked up on my tension. My coma, the ship’s unexpected damages—it’s not adding up.
“I can’t promise you forever. But you should get more than half a year to look at it,” OS says.
“That’s an imprecise number,” I say. “I’m disappointed. What kind of OS are you?”
“I used the degree of specificity a human would likely choose in this situation. A more precise estimated length of time is zero-point-five-two-three-two—”
“Thank you, OS,” I interrupt. “That’s better.” I rap my knuckle against the polycarbonate wall of the ship. “This is all that’s separating us from annihilation,” I say. “From dying in that void.”
“Please avoid the nihilistic tendencies in your personality profile. And ‘us’ is an inappropriate pronoun in this situation. I’d survive a hull rupture just fine.”
“OS. That was harsh,” I say. Especially in my mother’s voice, I silently add. Callousness is her strong suit, though she would name it strength. I was raised by Cusk family surrogates, while my mother ran the business. She didn’t even gestate me. She did pay a fortune to procure the reconstructed sperm of Alexander the Great as my paternal DNA, though. Maybe that’s love?
“I am sorry. While you were sleeping, I have been developing what I have chosen to call my Universal Membrane Theory of Life,” OS says. “In a few seconds I could draft up a treatise on my theory if you’d like to read it.”
“No. Don’t mention it again. I don’t want to think about my membranes. It’s depressing,” I say.
“I am sorry. I will try not to make similar mistakes in the future.”
I wish I could look OS in the eyes right now. But of course, I can’t. OS has no eyes. Or OS has eyes everywhere, depending on how I think about it. “Thank you, OS,” I say. “I know it’s hard to figure out murky human hearts. I’m sure your Universal Membrane Theory is great. I still want you to keep it to yourself.”
Tick, whir. Rover rides the walls of room 05. OS can’t possibly feel wounded, right?
“Also,” I continue, “if my skin broke open and I spilled out, there would be a whole lot of red all over your pretty white floor. Big job for Rover. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“The cleanup would be substantial, but I’d be more upset that you were dead,” my mother’s voice says.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 342 *-_
I start with the tasks in 06, so I can stare out at the spectacle of space. The display projects the current East Africa time in the air. It’s 10:46 on Sunday morning. Sure. Why not?
My coma hangover has started to ebb. Though my feet are still iridescent purple against the smooth white floor, the swelling has subsided. Time to get down to business.
Hundreds of millions of miles away is a dark moon with whatever remains of Minerva, sending a distress code out over the radio, breaking the universe’s static into predictable patterns.
My sister.
Well. Probably my sister.
“The signal remains the same,” OS says. “A simple Morse ‘SOS,’ manually tripped by a lever on the Titan base, repeating every five seconds.”
My joints creak as I get to my feet. Already my prefrontal cortex is editing the hum of the ship out from my hearing. The sound is there, but to my experience it is ceasing to be. That feels like a warning, somehow. I rub my temples. Maybe I’m still a little disoriented. “Since there’s nothing to do about Minerva for now, I think it’s time I took a walk around the rest of the ship,” I say. “So I don’t get gloomy.”
“That is a good idea,” OS says. “I would have suggested it if you didn’t. Take twenty minutes to explore. Then I would like to brief you on the asteroid retrieval mission.”
I wish I could lie flat and wallow in the stars. But my sister’s voice drums in my mind: Prove to them all that they chose the right Cusk to rescue me. That it’s your abilities that got you on this mission, not just our name or our bond.
I begin wandering through the ship, seeing but not seeing each room, like when I’ve been scrolling through my bracelet for too long. Room 04 has a small white polycarb counter, a machine to heat food pouches, Rover tracks riddling every surface. There are two chairs, I guess so I can vary where I sit? There was only one chair in the mock-up back on Earth.
Then I realize: that extra chair is for Minerva. Minerva alive, Minerva returned. I run my knuckles along its edge.
Room 03 is a pair of bunks, one made up with blue sheets and a small pillow. Rooms 02 and 01 are storage. The floor is higher here, so I have to take a big step up to get in. A thick rubber mat sighs under my feet. I peel up the corner. It’s as we planned: like in a submarine, the floor is composed of layers and layers of food. Clear polycarb bags, labels like tofu curry and roasted eggplant. I’ll eat my way to the bottom as the voyage progresses. Roasted eggplant—yum. I’ll be looking forward to that one. No lie.
Room 00 is at the center of the living quarters. The wall at the edges of this room has been molded to a circular ramp, leading up to a hatch. The Endeavor—or “Coordinated” Endeavor, as the OS has decided to call it—was designed as a sort of lollipop, with the living quarters on one end counterweighted by the machinery and inaccessible storage that make up the other side. Its rotation is just the right speed to exert the same amount of force on the living quarters as Earth’s gravity would.
As I near the rotation point, the forces lessen. My body becomes lighter even with the few feet I’ve risen. My hands float.
There are two portals up here. There shouldn’t be two portals up here.
One of the doors is yellow and the other is bright orange. Yellow leads to the engine room, but I could swear there was no orange door on the model I practiced in. I know from training that there’s a matching gray door on the exterior of the ship—it leads to gear I’ll need once I arrive on Titan. There’s a single-body mortuary in there, in case Minerva’s story has a bad end. But there’s not supposed to be any orange door.
It’s like the ship glitched, produced an accidental portal. But reality doesn’t glitch . . . right? I shake my head. “Where does this door lead, OS?” I ask.
“The yellow door? It leads to the engine room. I will open it only when you need to make necessary ship repairs.”
“Yes, I know,” I snap. “I’m asking about the orange door.”
There is no answer.
“I asked you to open all the portals on board.”
“You did,” OS answers.
“Open this orange door.”
>
“I have noted your desire,” OS says in my mother’s voice.
The door remains shut.
My skin pricks. “Open it now, OS.”
“I cannot do that without reciprocal permission.”
I nervously whisk my hands over my hair, feel the capillaries pulsing under my scalp. I understand OS’s words, but all the same I can’t make any sense of them. “What the hell are you talking about? Reciprocal permission from whom?”
“From the Dimokratía spacefarer,” OS answers.
I hear the hum of the ship all over again. It breaks over me, stops time for long seconds while my skin crawls.
“OS,” I say slowly, “are you telling me that I’m not alone on this ship?”
“That is correct,” my mother’s voice says. “You are not alone on this ship.”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 342 *-_
Much of my time at the Cusk Academy was spent programming AIs, and one thing I learned early on was that emotional concerns only hurt a human’s bargaining position. If I’m suddenly feeling out of my element, it’s best to shut the hell up. Not a bad rule for interacting with organic intelligences, come to think of it.
Coma, damages, and now someone else on my ship. None of this is right.
I drill my attention into the portal. Somewhere on the other side of this orange door is a stranger, hurtling with me through space. Fear sets my knees jiggling, shaking the fabric of my suit.
I want to bang my fists on that orange portal.
With a whirring sound, Rover comes skittering into the room, ticking to a stop beside me.
“Are you having Rover spy on me?” I ask.
“No. I do not need Rover to observe you—as you know, the very walls of the ship function as surveillance. I have sent Rover to you only because I am concerned for your health. Tell me: What do you remember of the day you left Earth, Spacefarer Cusk?”
“What? It was like any other . . .” My voice trails off. I remember my name projected in the grand hall of the Cusk Academy, walking on the beach, imagining how proud Minerva would be of me, then back to the hangar, to a bright room upstairs in the facility, where they began my final medical exam before takeoff . . . and that’s where my memory cuts out. The pricking at the back of my neck becomes a hot spritz of sweat. “I remember walking up a staircase,” I say, rubbing my hands over my arms. “I thought it was to a medical scan, but maybe it was to the shuttle, to rendezvous with the Endeavor. Was it . . . was it unusually hot that day?”
“Am I right to assume from the pace of your words that you have no memory of the launch itself, or of the subsequent revisions to the mission structure?”
“Yes,” I say. “Explain everything to me. Now.” Shit. How hard did I get knocked around?
There’s a micropause before OS’s response—which represents a significant amount of strategizing for a computer as advanced as the Endeavor’s. What conversational pathways did it just consider and dismiss? What am I not being told? “You are fine. I am convinced you are perfectly fine. The orange portal separating your half of the ship from the Dimokratía half can be opened only with permission from both parties. I can query the Dimokratía spacefarer, if you wish. I would suggest that we waste no time in preparing to harvest the asteroid, however. I can coordinate your responsibilities separately. We have only nineteen-point-seven hours until we need to execute the operation.”
I wonder, not for the first time, whether OS is trying to keep me off my feet by emphasizing my passing out. If it knows that my fear of failing is what makes me manipulatable. “Wait, OS. You called this my ‘half’ of the Endeavor?”
“Of the Coordinated Endeavor, yes. The Fédération Endeavor was linked to the Dimokratía Aurora while in orbit, before the mission started. Rather than each ship traveling in its original ‘lollipop’ shape, they have been joined into a rotating barbell, with zero gravity at its center and simulated gravity at either end. A joint mission by Earth’s last two countries was a fraught prospect, of course. As a condition of conjoining the spacecraft, the connecting corridor can be opened only if both parties grant permission.”
“Are you in charge of both halves of the craft?”
“Yes. I am a Cusk creation, a corporate product without nationality. I am in contact with the other spacefarer. In fact, I am communicating with him right now.”
Parallel processing: one of the most unnerving things about AIs. OS could be having conversations with me, this other spacefarer, and mission control, all at the same time. Who knows who else it’s talking to. Or what else. Settle down, Ambrose. A contained environment is no place for an overheated imagination.
“You said ‘him.’ So it’s a ‘he,’” I say. Somehow my brain had assumed an imperious and utterly capable young woman running the other half of the ship. Another Minerva Cusk.
“Yes,” OS responds. “A ‘he.’ All Dimokratía spacefarers are male.”
I run my hands along the rim of the orange door. The polycarbonate at the edge puckers, a sign of hasty construction. “What can you tell me about this stranger?”
“I am authorized to inform you that his name is Kodiak Celius. Like you, he was chosen from among the cadets in his respective training program.”
“Will he be helping me with the asteroid?”
“You can count on his expertise. His file notes particular gifts in mechanical engineering, piloting, survivalism, and hand-to-hand combat.”
Survivalism. Hand-to-hand combat. “Ask him to open the door.”
“I have already asked him. He has declined.”
“‘Declined’?”
“That is correct.”
“What, is he too busy to meet me?” I ask, mouth gaping. “When we’ve been leaking oxygen, and have to net an asteroid hurtling past at twenty kilometers a second so we can drink and breathe? When we’re on a mission to rescue Minerva?”
There’s no answer at first. If I were in my right mind I’d have known better—sarcasm is the surest way to fritz out an AI’s conversation skills. Why am I being sarcastic? Because this hurts, and I’m feeling weak, and sarcasm is the refuge of the hurt and the weak. That’s why. It will be the last time I let myself be sarcastic. I’m stronger than that. I’m Ambrose Cusk, dammit.
“Spacefarer Celius is indeed busy at the moment. You have a two-kilobyte list of tasks, but there is a list over six kilobytes long on the Aurora. Maintaining the ship and ensuring its integrity is of course a foremost priority. Even if we did not harvest more oxygen, you wouldn’t expire for another four to five months. Loss of hull integrity would cause you to expire within seconds.”
I’m only half listening. I can’t help it. I bang on the orange portal. Fuck you, Kodiak Celius!
A door with my mother’s feet casting shadows underneath. Minerva’s voice, hushed in a velvet hallway: As long as I’m alive, someone loves you.
OS speaks. “I surmise from your nonverbal cues that you are upset Kodiak Celius has sealed himself off. Could I offer you medication to help you relax?”
“I’m a trained spacefarer, OS,” I say, stepping away from the portal and clambering back down, my body gaining weight as it goes. “I’m not some sweaty-balled knock-kneed cadet. I represent the legacy of Minerva Cusk. I’m fine.”
. . . and now I’m bragging to a computer. Yep, totally fine.
I make my way down the last few rungs to ordinary gravity, then to room 03 and its narrow bed. Someone made this bed for me. I wonder who it was. I lie down and close my eyes. I stick my hands in my pants. I pull them out. I sit up. “Tell me everything else you know about this Kodiak Celius.”
“Most information about him is privileged,” OS responds.
“Connect me with mission control.”
“Communications with Earth are temporarily unavailable due to solar activity.”
“Notify me as soon as communications are available, and once they are, immediately download an update on relations between Dimokratía and Fédération,” I say. A moment pass
es before I continue. “Kodiak. Is he . . . like me?”
“If you are referring to his age, like you he was selected from among the seventeen-year-olds in his class. Given what astrobiologists know about the quantity of radiation your bodies will receive in outer space, seventeen was determined to be the optimal age for the crew. Any younger and you would have been likelier to make fatal mistakes in navigation or negotiation. Any older and you would have had unacceptable likelihood of dying of a malignant tumor, with Rover as your only option for crude medical treatment. Current analysis gives an eight percent chance that radiation-caused cancer is what incapacitated Minerva, making that one of the most likely outcomes, second only to gas poisoning.”
Even with the best social engineering, AI personalities contain currents of callousness. Lucky for me, life in my family trained me well to cope with that. “Got it.”
A pitying tone enters OS’s words. “Spacefarer Celius turned eighteen while on board, but you’re nearer eighteen than seventeen, too. You have your own separate routines scheduled in by your respective countries. There is no reason you cannot train effectively in isolation for the eventual rescue of Minerva.”
“Bullshit. This isn’t about meeting up for tea and gossip. This is about our survival. Remind Kodiak that I’m the only game in town if he’s hoping for any human contact whatsoever. Remind him that loneliness will wreck anyone eventually. That even the most tundra-hardened soldier trained in survivialism and hand-to-hand combat can die of it.”
“I relayed your message, using your exact language. I will note, though, that I am engineered to provide social sustenance—”
“Let me guess, no response from Kodiak?”
“You are correct.”
I stretch out on the bunk, even within my anger enjoying the sensation of muscles that no longer cramp and clutch. I press my hands over my eyes. You’re in outer space, where you’ve always dreamed to be, I remind myself. You are rescuing your sister. You are the pride of your family and the hope of Fédération. Millions want to be you.
I place my feet on the ground to get the blood circulating. I must have caught Rover by surprise; it squeaks. “I guess I’ll be dining on my own today, while I review the harvesting training reels. What’s the plat du jour, madame?”
The Darkness Outside Us Page 2