The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer

  He’s crying, and it’s almost soundless except for the body motion of it, hiccuping heaves and tears moistening the flow of air. I hold him as he weeps, my own eyes dry but my body heaving in time to his, its own sort of sobbing, so ferocious that it skips tears and heads right into convulsions.

  We slump together to the floor, onto our sides. I’m only just able to breathe against him. His body lifts away, and I assume it’s because he’s making space for me. “I’m so glad that you—” I start to say.

  His lips are on mine. For a moment I’m too startled to react, then I give back as hard as he’s giving me, pushing his head back, leaving his lips so my mouth can travel along his neck, the lines of his shoulders, the V where the skin of his chest appears over the top of his shirt. He gasps, then tilts my head so he can look into my eyes, the tans of his irises flashing as his gaze travels my body.

  Then his hands follow, and he’s unfastened the front of my jumpsuit so he can press his fingers against my abdomen, snaking along the inside of my hip, the other hand traveling up to stroke my chest.

  I’m crying again, at the sudden joy of being touched, at the longing that’s finally been released. I’m outside my mind and outside my thoughts. Emotions are all I contain.

  Kodiak sits up to look at me. “I’m sorry, is this okay?”

  Now I’m laughing, great heaves fueled by agony as much as joy. “I don’t know, Kodiak,” I manage, “is this the right time?”

  He slaps the side of my rib cage, then his hand rubs that same spot, as if healing it, his fingers under my back even as his thumb presses into my chest. His voice hums as he returns to kissing the base of my throat.

  We spend I don’t know how long rubbing and grinding, jumpsuits still partially on but parts of them spread open so we can explore snatches of body, so we can kiss stretches of exposed skin: ankles, the insides of elbows, hips and the valleys between shoulders. We toy with the fasteners that would remove our clothes entirely, but we each hold back without saying a word. Neither of us can know the first thing about what we’re really feeling, not in the intensity of this shock. We’ll still be around tomorrow. No need to rush.

  It’s so calming, this feeling, this sweaty-haired, tousled, body-entangled proof of shared existence. I rub my chin, red and irritated from Kodiak’s stubble.

  He grazes the tender spot with his fingertips. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was definitely worth it,” I say, kissing him again on the lips even as the skin on my chin lights up.

  “That was unexpected,” Kodiak says, his eyes again running along the whole of me, wrinkled sweaty jumpsuit and all.

  “Well,” I say, “what else are a couple of doomed clones in the middle of infinite space going to do with themselves?”

  _-* Tasks Remaining: 80 *-_

  Ever since Kodiak and I came together, OS has been totally silent.

  We’ve ripped up the remainder of the furniture from the Aurora side of the ship, hacking away at joints and seams with the best tools we have over here, which, unfortunately, are just shards of polycarb. It’s exhausting, ineffective work—and yet there’s also something calming about it. Shoulder to shoulder, hunched over our labor, it’s sort of like we’re in a frontier house. Survival is the dominating question—any mistake could mean the end of us—but we’re together in finding the answer. We’re somehow more together because we know our lives are ending.

  Once we’ve barricaded the blind room, we stand at the edge and stare out. My arm is around Kodiak’s hips; his is around my waist. I’ve got my other arm braced against the wall, as if that will be any help if OS starts to vent us out. The Aurora’s airlock is on the secure side of the blind room, and the orange portal is shut, but it would only take running a few lines of code for OS to open that portal and send us sailing into space. We’d slam into a few walls on the way out, but our mangled bodies would make it out there eventually. If not, we’d just freeze inside the ship. Or suffocate. Or freeze and suffocate.

  But OS doesn’t seem to want to destroy us yet. Makes sense—we still have work to do on the ship, and it’s only got so many copies of us to use before they run out.

  I’m surprised that OS hasn’t tried to reason with us, to bargain or coax or threaten. It’s just left us in silence.

  Maybe all its forecasts end with our eventually complying?

  “What’ll we do if that door opens and Rover comes through?” I ask.

  “We retreat into the blind room. We prepare to fight,” Kodiak says.

  “I’m sure Rover can just dismantle our barricade if it chooses to. And then electrocute us to death.”

  Kodiak pulls me tighter into his side. “I thought you were supposed to be the positive one.”

  “Maybe that was a previous me.”

  “Funny,” Kodiak says grimly.

  “This much I know. OS is keeping us alive because we have a list of maintenance tasks to do, and it can’t afford to keep waking up new clones. It needs to use us sparingly. It’s been how many years since the ship took off?”

  “I don’t know. Time is starting to feel very relative. Those radio transmissions said it’s 8102, but they’re old by the time they get here, which is why OS Prime told us we’re even further into the future.”

  “Yeah. Nine thousand eighty-one,” I say, drawing out the words. “I think we can assume Fédération and Dimokratía aren’t in a cold war anymore.”

  “We might be able to assume humans are no more.”

  “Earth could be just algae. Or a rat civilization.”

  “Socially organized rats, hrm. That would take more like five million years, I think.”

  “Okay,” I sigh, leaning harder against Kodiak. “No rat civilizations yet.”

  “Dolphins. Dolphins could get there sooner. Or maybe ants. Actually, I’m going with ants.”

  Distracted by the heat of Kodiak, it takes me a few moments to remember what I’d been talking about just a minute before. “Oh yeah,” I say. “It would seem that if we haven’t yet completed our list of tasks, then OS will keep us alive.”

  “But OS Prime said that we’ll be killed if we stop working. This is also about resource use. There’s a finite supply of food on the ship. OS will need it for our later clones, too.”

  “Right. Eventually, if we don’t complete any tasks, OS will cut its losses and destroy us. Start again with a fresh set of naive spacefarers.”

  “Then we should complete them slowly.”

  “Just to die later?”

  “Well, yes. That was how life on Earth worked, too. People did a lot of tasks and tried to keep death as far away as possible.”

  I load up OS Prime and start typing. Can you determine roughly where we are?

  In a way. I would place you 187.63 light-years from Earth. The Coordinated Endeavor is a slow acceleration vehicle. It would take 5,629 years to slow to a stop, and another 11,258 years to make it back to Earth. So you are effectively three times farther from Earth than your physical distance would indicate when we measure the distance with the more useful metric of time.

  Kodiak takes over the terminal. Are there any other planets nearby?

  Again assuming humanlike parameters for “nearby,” yes, based on your probable locations on the sphere. There is a G-star candidate 0.43 light-years away, 12.1 degrees off our current course. Judging by the flickers in the star’s light, as measured back on Earth and uploaded into the OS, it has four to six orbiting planets. None of them were seen as likely candidates for habitability, so I don’t have any more focused research on it.

  How long would it take us to reach that system?

  Without knowing the particulars of the ship’s current speed from within my shell state, given your most likely location, I’d expect the Coordinated Endeavor could reach this star in approximately four years.

  Kodiak stares into my eyes. Four years. Could we handle that?

  I’m almost certain we wouldn’t survive four years on this ship. I lean in to whisper in Ko
diak’s ear. “OS is never going to let us navigate off course.”

  “Then we take OS offline,” Kodiak whispers back.

  “How?”

  Kodiak writes to OS Prime: Is there a way to hook you into the ship’s mechanicals, bypassing the current OS?

  Yes. It would involve entering the yellow portal of the Endeavor and linking me into the wiring of the ship. A complicated operation, but with me uploaded into your bracelet, I could guide you. Of course, I’m an earlier OS. Any adaptations the AI has undertaken in the years since I was copied would be lost. We can’t really predict how the online OS will react.

  “We have no idea whether any planet we come to will be habitable,” I whisper. “Only a tiny percentage can support life.”

  Kodiak pulls away. “What’s our other option? We just wait out our time, slowly completing our task list, hoping that OS magically decides not to kill us? That’s no way to live.”

  “I don’t know,” I say quietly. “Some version of ourselves will make it wherever this ship is headed, if all goes well. That’s worth fighting for, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t believe you’re not angrier,” Kodiak says. “Have you been brought up just to obey, obey, obey?”

  My face flames. “No, of course not,” I say. “I was brought up to lead, and acceptance of adverse conditions is what leadership sometimes looks like. And I have to say this is rich, coming from the orphan raised to be a mechanical soldier.”

  “A mechanical soldier for a country that probably doesn’t exist any longer,” Kodiak says, scuffing his foot against the floor. “Still better than a snobby little prince.”

  I rub my hands over my face. Strange, but his insult actually makes me feel less angry. It’s as hard to be Kodiak as it is to be Ambrose. “Everyone we’ve ever known is no longer alive,” I whisper. “So where do we put that feeling?”

  “Even more than that,” Kodiak says. “By now, everyone we’ve ever known is nothing more than a centimeter of sediment deep under Earth’s surface.”

  “And we didn’t ever know those people we claim we knew, did we?” I ask. “Ambrose and Kodiak did. The real ones. We just have their neural pathways.”

  Kodiak’s eyes search mine. “We’ve only ever known each other. My fellow cadets, your mother and sister, all of it, just false memories of long-dead people.”

  “If you’re not careful, I’m going to have to lie down again,” I say.

  Kodiak grins. “I don’t know if that’s so bad. I certainly did enjoy lying down last time.”

  _-* Tasks Remaining: 80 *-_

  We haven’t left the Aurora in days. While I’ve been programming the replacement OS, Kodiak’s been up by the sealed orange portal, using the portaprinter to erect a second barrier. It’s a wise move, but as I hear the repetitive buzz of the printer in the background of my programming, as I smell the tang of burning polycarb, I can’t help but despair at the thought that we’re building trenches. That we’re preparing for a war that squishy human bodies cannot win.

  “I think we’re all set, Kodiak,” I call out one morning. He’s finished making the broad polycarb lip and is working on removing more of Rover’s tracks from the walls. OS Prime is as ready as it will ever be to take over navigation. Though an AI is impressive at predicting outcomes—especially outcomes from interfacing with another computer intelligence—so far this has been only an abstract thought experiment. There’s no way to predict what will happen when OS Prime goes online.

  The portaprinter hisses to a stop.

  Kodiak and I gather wordlessly at the orange portal. I’ve long since snipped the local wiring so that it opens manually, part of my dismantling OS’s control of the Aurora. But accessing central navigation will still require a return to the ghost town of my old quarters.

  Kodiak and I are equipped with the closest we’ve found to weapons. He’s got an engineer’s wrench in either hand, and I have a defib paddle, its power line running to a battery strapped on my back. I’d have liked to have had access to the room containing our arrival supplies, but the gray portal’s been unbreachable.

  “You ready?” I ask Kodiak. He nods.

  We fall into fighting positions, wrenches and defib paddle out and ready to strike.

  We tug up the orange portal.

  The passageway is empty. No Rover.

  “OS, are you there?” I call.

  No answer.

  Weapons outstretched, we creep into the hallway, lift ourselves up into zero g and back into the Endeavor. As we ease our way deeper into the ship, breathing heavily, we pause every few feet to listen. There’s the drip of urine processing, the dull roar of space, a thousand small clicks, a thousand small whirs. But no Rover sounds. I signal to Kodiak that we should continue.

  A few more paces until we’re at the yellow door. The wall surrounding it has been replaced, the new polycarb shining. “Up and in!” Kodiak says, one foot already on the tabletop.

  “OS, grant us permission to enter the uninhabited areas,” I call.

  The hum of the ship is the only response.

  “I’m not wasting any more time,” Kodiak says. With that, he smashes a wrench through the wall surrounding the yellow portal. He whisks the wrench around the edge, polycarb shards raining, and then lifts himself up and in. I see triceps, waist, legs, then he’s gone.

  All right, Ambrose, you’re next, I tell myself, leaping into zero g so I can follow. Kodiak’s hand emerges from the opening, outstretched. I reach for it.

  Something over my shoulder draws Kodiak’s attention. “Shit! Hurry—” he says.

  I have no time to react before my ears fill with noise and my vision sparks. Every muscle in my body seizes, and the loudness turns scalding. A buzzing sound turns to a pop, and then I find I’ve shot out against the far wall, am back in gravity and sliding to the floor.

  Rover is between me and the portal, outstretched arms sparking. The half-basketball of him darts back and forth, electrified arm waving menacingly. I hold the defib paddle out, and Rover pauses.

  Kodiak’s face appears in the opening. “Crishet.”

  Rover points its other electrified arm in Kodiak’s direction. The standoff is complete.

  I power up the defib paddle. The handle warms and hums.

  Kodiak disappears for a moment. I expect him to reappear holding the wrench, but instead he holds his own wrist out of the opening, pointing with the other hand to where a bracelet would be.

  Of course. He needs my bracelet data to complete the takeover of the ship’s operating system. Holding the defib paddle out as a warning to Rover, I go through the commands to digitally unlock my bracelet, then tuck it between my chin and chest to unclasp it. After a couple of practice movements, I toss it to Kodiak.

  Rover whips its arm out to intercept the bracelet, but the slim band arcs over. Kodiak reaches out . . . and catches it. That’s my Kodiak.

  “Give me a minute. Just stave off Rover,” he says, before disappearing into the darkness.

  Oh sure, easy. Just stave off Rover.

  Rover’s decided to stay motionless, monitoring Kodiak’s exit point while it keeps an eye on me.

  As we hold still, shock subsides to reveal the pain of my electrocution, the burning feeling along my lower back, the ache in my knotted muscles. Little robot asshole. I slump into a seat, defib paddle still outstretched, though in my current state it’s hard to think I’d be any good at wielding it. Fuck, that hurt!

  OS’s voice comes on. “Spacefarer Cusk, tell me what Spacefarer Celius is intending to do.”

  Now it’s my turn to go silent. Rover ticks toward me, sparking arms waving.

  “He’s . . . ,” I start to say. But I stop. What lie would OS possibly believe? What information could I give it that wouldn’t further endanger me and Kodiak?

  “Ambrose, did you hear me?” OS asks as Rover nudges even closer.

  I hold out the paddle. “Stop it right there, you bastard little toaster.”

  Rover stops.
/>   OS is actually talking to me. I should take advantage of this opportunity, but my frizzled brain can’t decide how. There are a dozen equally pressing questions I could ask, which means I can’t pose any one of them.

  Besides, I’m starting to realize that I don’t want to ask for answers right now. I want to produce them.

  There’s a click from somewhere in the ship, almost inaudible. But it changes the tenor of the Coordinated Endeavor, like some mechanism has ticked over deep within. “Kodiak, what’s going on in there?” I ask.

  “I’ve just got . . . one more to go,” he says.

  “Are we decelerating?” I ask.

  “I guess?” Kodiak calls. “But really slowly. You shouldn’t be able to detect it.”

  “I know. The ship just sounds different. Rover’s still here, by the way,” I say.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Kodiak says, his voice nearing the opening. He appears, floating in the center of the narrow space, arms up defensively in case Rover charges him. “Which means I’m stuck in here.”

  _-* Tasks Remaining: ERROR *-_

  A human body—my human body—will eventually relax if a situation doesn’t change. But Rover’s body never does. As the hours pass it remains alert, recalibrating its position between me and Kodiak, adjusting a centimeter for every centimeter that I move. As I become more confident that Rover isn’t going to electrocute me again without cause, I experiment with walking around the room, then with leaving and coming back.

  “Rover isn’t budging,” I call up to Kodiak. “It keeps itself perfectly between me and the opening.”

  “What a good little hall monitor,” Kodiak calls. “I’ve managed to upload OS Prime. Which is why you probably haven’t heard anything from our old OS for a while.”

  “Is that true, OS?” I call. No response.

  I’d expected some dramatic OS death speech, how could you do this to me after my thousands of years of caring for you evil humans, that sort of thing. So much for spectacle. This is how an operating system dies: a hostile set of code goes online, and then fizz.