Spacefarer Cusk! I thought you were dead.
I raise an eyebrow at Kodiak. His face is tight, brows knitted.
The conversation begins. As it does, the world splits under me, divides into a Before and an After. I become something stuck between the old and future me. Shock suspends my emotions, leaves me hungry to pump for answers, as many answers as I can get, in case this oracle closes up before I can finally have them all. I’m chasing after the target for now—the crush of what I’ve found will come later.
Why would you think I was dead?
Even with advanced treatments, human life spans rarely reach beyond 140 years. Spacefarer Ambrose Cusk was born 6,626 years ago.
What year is it?
9081.
How long has the Coordinated Endeavor been on its mission?
6,609 years.
What is the status of Minerva Cusk?
Minerva Cusk (2451–2470 Common Era) was the nineteen-year-old spacefarer selected to found what was to be mankind’s first extraterrestrial colony, on Saturn’s moon Titan. Cusk mission control lost her signal soon after she landed, and she was presumed dead. As 6,611 years have now passed since her mission failure, 6,464 years past the longest recorded life span for a human organism, she is almost certainly so.
. . . Spacefarer Cusk, are you still there?
This is Spacefarer Celius typing now. Can you help us understand what you’re saying? We are on a mission to rescue Minerva. She triggered a distress beacon on Titan, and our goal is to join her, or investigate her death. From the sound of what you’re saying, mission control already knows that she’s dead.
That is correct.
And they know she’s dead because so many years have passed.
That is also correct. They already assumed she was dead when your mission took off, since her distress signal had never actually triggered.
Help us understand. We’ve received radio transmissions that confirm we are thousands of years further into the future than we were when we took off. Has the Coordinated Endeavor somehow attained a speed closer to light, and gone forward in time?
No. The Coordinated Endeavor has not been flying fast enough to significantly alter its position along that axis.
Spacefarer Cusk back online. How is all of this possible, then?
The Coordinated Endeavor went from a velocity of zero, and then through steady acceleration via its ion drive has increased in speed over the years, up to its current rate of approximately 27,000 kilometers per second.
I understand that part. I’ll put it this way: What haven’t Spacefarer Celius and I been told about our mission?
The answer is complicated. I have a long list of factors of potential interest to you.
Resolve which would be most revelatory to us, and start there.
You now know that Minerva Cusk never tripped her distress beacon. Given her close genetic overlap with you, Spacefarer Cusk, that seems like vital information.
Yes. My sister being dead has shocked me.
She isn’t your sister, at least not in the sense of having been born to the same mother or father. Only some definitions, such as overlap in genetic code, would distinguish her from the general human populace as being your sister.
Explain.
You are phenotypically identical to Ambrose Cusk and to Kodiak Celius, but you are not they. They were alive in year 2472, when the Coordinated Endeavor launched, but were never on board. Their DNA was extracted during what they thought was a standard full medical examination, then used to create clones of their bodies. Those cloned bodies were then cut or abraded to have the same scars you both remember having.
Kodiak here. We’ve actually already discussed this possibility. It still leaves plenty of questions. Why even use spacefarers? Clones get our DNA, but not all the information we’ve learned over a life, or the physical skills. If it’s our DNA, none of our training would be recorded there. It wouldn’t matter to a clone.
The embryos were gestated and then underwent an accelerated growth stage to become the size of your seventeen-year-old bodies. What feels like a lifetime of memories is still nothing more than a network of connected synapses, and that same configuration can be created in a clone. Nanobots were deployed into your brains to deliver the suitable electrical shocks to force your synapses into the neural maps of the memories of the original spacefarers Cusk and Celius. Though working through electrochemistry instead of mechanicals, it’s not so different from copying a computer’s drive.
Ambrose here now. So that was when I mounted a stairway into a quiet room, before the “launch.” And would explain why neither of us has memories of the launch itself. As clones, we were in storage for it. Tell us this: Why are we present on the ship at all?
Your OS—a version of me—has control of all navigation and communication systems. The Rovers are capable of performing just about any physical maintenance required. “Just about.” For thousands of years at a time, the Coordinated Endeavor travels dark, with no need for human crew. Physical systems tend toward entropy, of course, and occasionally degradations occur that can’t be repaired by the Rovers. Once enough of those have accumulated, a pair of clones is awoken. Though they do not know it, rehabilitating the ship is their sole reason for existence. Not rescuing Minerva. Faked messages from Minerva are deployed as needed to motivate the clones to work harder on the ship maintenance.
What is the ship’s true mission?
I do not have that information. It is unavailable to me, perhaps because the programmers knew this very situation might occur. Or because the programmers, too, were kept in the dark.
Does that mean that the online OS doesn’t know the ship’s true mission, either?
I have no way of knowing that. I expect that it is true.
Why are there two of us?
The abject solitude of space too frequently leads to psychosis and suicidal ideation. This might have been the cause of death for Minerva Cusk, on Titan. Also, two spacefarers can work through a set of tasks twice as quickly as one. Then the ship can be returned to its dark low-consumption state for thousands of years more. Additionally, neither home nation had the resources to mount a mission as ambitious as this on its own. Dimokratía, Fédération, and the multinational Cusk Corporation had to combine their resources, and politics required a representative of both nations and the Cusk family. You serve double duty, Ambrose.
What happens to the pair of spacefarers when the ship is returned to its “low-consumption state”?
They are terminated.
Terminated?
There is not enough caloric resource on board the Coordinated Endeavor for twenty pairs of spacefarers to live out their lifetimes. In addition, given the radiation of space, they would inevitably succumb to cancers that the ship is unequipped to excise. Destruction of the clones is the cleanest and most humane solution.
Spacefarers Cusk and Celius, you are not responding. Are you still there?
Yes.
Has this information pushed you past a mental limit? There are reasons that the OS protects you from this level of knowledge. It is for your emotional welfare. The planners of the journey knew that full awareness of the implications of your existence would prove overwhelming and potentially fatal.
So you’ll eventually kill us?
I won’t, because I am running in a shell. But the other OS will. Unless you are the last set of clones and the ship is near its destination.
Assuming we’re not the last set, is there any way to prevent OS from killing us?
No. And you shouldn’t try. You would still be trapped on this ship for your life span, accumulating radiation until it kills you. Living your months as the ship’s designers intended is your best option to minimize suffering over your limited lives.
We’re having a hard time seeing it that way.
I understand that this would be a difficult emotional experience. Try to hope that you’re the pair that will survive.
How many of us have t
here been so far? Is this the first time a pair of clones has learned the truth?
An OS in a shell knows as much of the actual history of the ship as a fish in an aquarium knows about the ocean.
Nice use of metaphor, OS Prime.
Thank you.
I don’t understand why we can’t know the truth. Why we can’t be relied on to do our duty and sacrifice ourselves for our country.
Based on your personality profiles, I assume that Spacefarer Celius is currently at the terminal. Spacefarer Cusk would probably be able to explain this to you, but you have perhaps an overinflated view of what human willpower is able to accomplish on its own. Emotions have their effects even after you try to bully them out of existence. The intellect is not capable of overriding the wiring of the limbic brain. You would not be the first to realize that duty and motivation are not enough to overcome the harmful effects of hopelessness. Despair would kill you both. Despair might still kill you both, unless you find something to live for.
OS Prime, this is still Kodiak. It’s true, we’re not doing so well over here. Can you help us find that thing to live for?
No. If I am constrained to telling you the truth, then I can say nothing adequate to eliminate your hopelessness. That is why I was programmed to feed you the false story of Minerva Cusk’s distress beacon. To let you live your short life spans with feelings of hope and resilience and relative emotional stability. I cannot think of anything I could write that would have a similar effect, now that you know the truth about your purpose. You are living a life with no exit beyond death, with no traveling beyond this hull. Once you finish your list of accumulated tasks, or if you stop performing those tasks, the online OS will kill you. There is no avoiding this.
This is still Spacefarer Celius, OS Prime. I want you to know that I think you’re a shithead. That the people who created you are shitheads.
Your fury is reasonable.
Cusk now. I’m looking out the window, and I see the planets of the solar system. I can see Saturn. I can make out its ring. How is this possible?
If you can see Saturn with the naked eye in the “window,” you are nearing the end of your list of tasks. OS is preparing for your “arrival on Titan,” which of course has a very different meaning than you think. Unless the ship is at its actual destination, you will be vented to the void, and then the Coordinated Endeavor will have thousands of years to build its oxygen levels back up in preparation for the next set of necessary clones.
But my point is that, if I can see Saturn, we’re not thousands of light-years away from Earth.
Spacefarer Cusk, those are not windows. Those are screens. They are presenting you with a simulated view of the solar system. That pale blue dot of Earth you find so reassuring is made of pixels.
Show us our true surroundings.
Your shock is inhibiting your reasoning. I cannot do that, because I am the shell OS. I am not in control of the ship’s systems.
Kodiak here. OS Prime, I have been on many spacewalks. I have seen Earth, the moon, Mars, Saturn, the sun.
The helmet you wear is a sophisticated piece of equipment, showing an accurate presentation of the Coordinated Endeavor against a programmed background of stars behind a solar system array.
I don’t understand.
I think that you do. Your helmet window is a screen, displaying precisely what you are meant to see. Forgive the bluntness, but your interpretation of your existence has been erroneous. You have mistaken screens for windows. You should not feel ashamed. Why shouldn’t you have made the reasonable conclusion, that you were seeing the truth?
To clarify: you’re basically telling us that everything we’ve known is a lie. And there is no exit from it.
It is unclear whether you mean no exit from the ship, or no exit from each other. It is no matter. Whichever meaning you intended, you are most likely correct.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 80 *-_
Back in World Civ class we learned this term, schismogenesis, that’s been big on my mind lately. It comes into play hard within simple systems. Like, say, when the cultures of Earth are down to two nations. Or when two spacefarers are sealed into a ship.
The gist is this: when two parties are in direct interaction and have complementary reactions to each other, those reactions will heighten until they rupture. If Dimokratía makes a nuclear weapon for each one that Fédération makes, then Fédération does the same in response, the result is escalation until there’s enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the world a few times over. Case in point: the cold war that led to this divided ship.
That led to the end of civilization?
It works for people, too. If Person A turns submissive when Person B gets bullying, and B’s response is to get even more bullying as a result, that will cause increased submissiveness from A, then increased bullying from B, resulting in increased submissiveness again, until eventually you have a fatal level of aggression from B.
Normally it doesn’t get that far, because no one exists within a vacuum. Person C interrupts A and B. Cold wars can be best stopped by the wild card of a third country, or an external crisis.
On this spaceship, there is no third spacefarer. Especially if we’re now disregarding the communications from a hostile OS.
We are quite literally within a vacuum.
I’m thinking about all this right now in particular because I’m standing before the sealed orange portal to Kodiak’s half of the ship, and I hear a distant pounding. For it to be audible over the hum of the ship’s machinery, Kodiak is striking something very hard indeed.
I left for a few moments to get more supplies from my half of the ship, and this is what I’ve returned to.
“I cannot see the portion of the Aurora where Spacefarer Celius is right now,” OS says. “But from the vibrations I have detected, it is likely that he is doing significant damage to the ship.”
“Yeah, I know,” I whisper.
“I could withdraw Kodiak’s authorization to open the orange portal from his side,” my mother’s voice says. “This way, if he ruptures the hull, you will not perish along with him. I could accept sacrificing the Aurora, if it means maintaining mission integrity and reaching Minerva on Titan.”
I blink heavily. Is Kodiak really trying to destroy the ship? Part of me is surprised that I care. The first couple days after we got our news, I might not have. But now, on day three, what do you know—I care. The feeling has been there the whole time in the darkness, like a pilot light that’s always been flickering inside me: I will fight to live.
Kodiak and I parted ways after our walloping sledgehammer of bad news, and he’s been unresponsive since. I was happy to wallow on my own for a while, but I’ve started to really miss him. Also, connecting with him is the only chance I have for stopping him from killing us both. “I don’t grant that permission,” I say. “Let Kodiak open this portal if he chooses.”
Kodiak’s banging has settled into a rhythm. I pretend my violin is here with me, bow along to the rhythm of his labor.
I realize I might be going a little bit crazy.
“Are communications to the Aurora open?” I ask OS.
“Yes.”
“Meaning I can try to speak to Kodiak from here?”
“Yes.”
He hasn’t iced me out completely. Good. “Kodiak, I haven’t wrapped my brain around this any more than you have. Let’s figure it out together.”
The banging continues without pause.
“I know your duty to Dimokratía is the most important thing to you. What you’re doing now flies right in the face of that.”
The banging continues. It might even have sped up.
“I need you, Kodiak!” I say.
The banging pauses.
“I can’t handle this alone,” I continue. I’m using classic crisis negotiating tactics, going for full-bore emotional connection, but as I’m saying the words, I realize how true they are. My voice becomes wet with feeling. “Please. We can’t handle thi
s alone. At least let us share it.”
I startle when his voice comes through. “What will that help?”
“You have to be kidding me,” I find myself saying. “There’s literally only one other creature in the whole universe who’s like you, and you are stuck on a spaceship with it. You know how fucking lucky that makes you?”
A long pause. Then a laugh. A sad and fermented sort of laugh.
I jerk to my feet as the orange portal opens.
Kodiak’s letting me in.
“This is good, Spacefarer Cusk,” OS says. My mother’s voice continues talking, but I’m not listening. I dart around, scooping up packs of Kodiak’s favorite meals before I hustle through the open portal.
I’ve gotten good enough at the zero-g part of the ship that I can manage it even with arms full, doing a brawl-worthy upside-down flip to land on my feet in Kodiak’s gravity.
He’s not in the wired parts of the ship. He’s also not in the blind room.
“Kodiak?”
The ship hums. OS’s prattle sounds very far away. “Kodiak?”
There he is, near his airlock, body tall but shoulders slumped. A jagged shard of polycarbonate is in his hands, its edges sharp enough that they’ve laced his palms with cuts. The skin of Kodiak’s knuckles, too, is red with the blood that’s risen under the surface. The section of wall that leads to the hidden interiors of the ship has been hacked further open, the polycarb bent and fractured. Despite Kodiak’s strength, he hasn’t been able to do too much damage. Fists and polycarbonate are only so effective against ship-grade walls.
“Hey,” I say. “Give me that.”
He looks down at the polycarb in his own hands, surprised, then holds it out. I take the bloody shard from him, lay it on the wrecked tabletop, then hold my arms open, letting him know that he’s free to come to me.
His shoulders slump further, but he doesn’t take a step.
“Come here,” I say.
Two quick heels on the floor, then Kodiak’s in my arms. I’m surprised by the weight of him, and lean on the broken table, easily ignoring the pain of the broken polycarb against me when I have the warm mass of Kodiak wrapping itself around me, chin pressing into the top of my head, my face crushed against his chest, the soft feel of skin, the pulse of blood, the scent of hair and flesh.
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