We’re not going to do anything right now. There’s no rush. Let’s take a few hours doing our normal tasks to throw the OS off a bit, in case it’s on alert. Then we’ll talk more after dinner.
He looks at me for a long moment. He’s searching my face for a feeling, for information, for I don’t know what. I don’t think he found it. When he finally nods and stands, there’s a forced calm on his face.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 1799 *-_
He doesn’t come to dinner.
I go and look for him. As I enter the Aurora, I don’t hear any sounds of tinkering. Instead I hear something far more ominous: silence.
I pad through the ship and find Kodiak at the very end, by his airlock. He’s got one of the spacewalk helmets in hand, is grinding away at the inside with what appears to be a screwdriver. “Kodiak,” I ask slowly, “what are you doing?”
“Figuring out . . . what’s on the other side of this screen,” he says as he strains. A fragment of polycarbonate pops to the ground.
“Stop! Stop. Isn’t that going to destroy it?” I ask, as horrified as if it were one of his fingernails that popped off.
Kodiak hurls the helmet down. It rolls into a corner, shards of high-tech carbonite tinkling from it. “We need those helmets,” I say.
“To rescue Minerva?” he says in a mockingly squeaky voice. He shrugs, taking another suit down from the wall, peering into another helmet, screwdriver in hand. “We don’t need these helmets if this is all some simulation.”
I speak at full voice, OS be damned. “Whatever this is, it’s not a simulation, Kodiak. Even if we’re copies of ourselves, even if you and I are doomed, at least in this version, we’ll need those helmets.”
“Pathetic,” Kodiak says. “Even after the system has fucked you over, you’re holding on to whatever shreds of lies that it’s left you with. We have to break this manipulation, not bow to it.”
“Break it? What does that mean?”
Kodiak gashes a long line down the front of the helmet. The sharp squeal of the fracturing polycarb makes me cringe.
My skin goes rubbery. “And you’ll kill us in the process?”
“No. I’ll prove to our testers that we’re onto them. That we won’t give up control of our destiny. That’s how we’ll pass this exam. Then they’ll have to let us out.”
I watch helplessly as he gashes away at the second helmet. Our only tool to survive if we—or a version of us—get off the ship. The darkness outside hums its outrage. “You don’t know any of that for sure. For both of our sakes, I need you to stop what you’re doing.”
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
He puts his whole weight into it, and I’m reminded how his body has been honed as a weapon.
“Kodiak,” I say, tears clogging my voice, “I’m serious. Stop.”
When he doesn’t even acknowledge what I said, hot rage splashes through my cold fear. The back of my neck sparks, sweat dots my brow. I step forward.
He looks up from his work, face gone gray. Then he returns to his labor.
I take another step.
“Stop right there,” he says, again without looking at me.
I take another step.
I kneel beside him.
I lay my fingers over his, over the handle of the screwdriver.
His other hand lashes out, too fast to counter, striking me flat across the temple. I go sliding along the floor.
I’m up and cursing, hurling myself at Kodiak. I launch onto his back, pummeling his thick neck, biting into his salty skin. He shrugs, and that movement of the powerful planes of his back is enough to send me crashing against the wall. I’m right back on him, and this time I have the presence of mind to snatch the screwdriver before he hurls me off.
When I land, I spring to my feet and see him charging toward me, fists outstretched. I duck into the next room, press myself against the far wall.
Kodiak is soon beside me, his hands grasping for the screwdriver. It’s instantly gone; I don’t have the strength to resist him.
I lurch after him, hoping to stop him from destroying everything, but when he hears my footsteps he whirls, screwdriver over his head, ready to stab like a dagger.
From his expression, I have no doubt he’ll use it. I’ve never seen such desperate sadness. I imagine bleeding out all over the white polycarbonate floor, Kodiak standing over me with the bloody screwdriver, Rover hovering nearby, trying in vain to cauterize my wounds.
I retreat toward the Endeavor. Better the loss of a few helmets than the loss of my life.
I think.
Kodiak is unmoving as I shut the door. The last sight I have of him is the maniacal look in his eyes, staring at me and yet somehow unseeing, chest heaving as he prepares to attack. I might as well have been some faceless enemy soldier, judging from the level of disregard I saw in his eyes.
What has gone so terribly wrong?
I drop into a defensive crouch, ready for him to open the portal and stalk after me. But it doesn’t open. Instead I can hear, faintly, the sounds of the screwdriver gnashing against the hard synthetics of the helmet.
Once he’s done with the helmets, what will he destroy next?
“Spacefarer Cusk, it is urgent that I speak with you,” OS says.
I’m surprised by how much relief I feel at the sound of my mother’s voice. “Yes! Please help me,” I say, voice cracking.
“From his brain waves, Spacefarer Celius appears to have had a psychotic break. This makes me want to ask how you are feeling.”
“I’m fine. I mean, I’m not having a break, too. I want him to stop, OS. How do we make him stop?”
“Do not worry. I have protocols for most health crises, including mental health. I have determined that further human interaction will not help Kodiak in his current state. Our only recourse is to incapacitate. Rover is on his way to do so now.”
I still hear the awful screech of the polycarbonate fragmenting under the stabs of the screwdriver. Rover must not have arrived yet.
“Don’t hurt him too badly,” I cry.
“I need to do whatever it takes to prevent him from compromising the ship’s mission. The voltage will have to be significant.”
From the other side of the door, the scratching pauses. The walls are too thick for me to hear Rover’s ticking, but I can imagine the robot edging into the room.
I hear something like a chair being hurled against the floor, then OS’s voice, muffled in Kodiak’s chamber.
A scream. It’s shatteringly loud, even muffled by the wall, but it’s almost stripped of feeling, like it’s caused not by human will but by the physical process of air expelling from compressed lungs. Then the room is silent.
“The threat is neutralized,” OS announces.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 1799 *-_
Those words continue to play in my mind as I numbly wander the Endeavor. Threat. Neutralized.
I sit but can’t stay down, am immediately back on my feet. There’s just too much worry coursing through my body for me to find any stillness.
I want to go to Kodiak, to find out if he’s okay after Rover attacked him. But then I remember that image of him with the screwdriver over his head, ready to stab me.
OS is right. Better I don’t stoke Kodiak back into a rage. If Rover has blocked him from damaging the ship for now, I should give him space to get calm.
To give my racing mind somewhere to be, I do a couple of tasks that OS had on its list, recalibrating sensors that had been giving faulty readings.
While I work, my mind spins back to Fédération and Dimokratía, our countries at war. They’d only come together for the Cusk projects—sending Minerva to Titan, and then sending us to rescue her. Because in each case it was something to hope for, something to long for. A way out of war.
That was the balm: hope. And that was what was taken away by the reveal of the true purpose of our mission. Can I give Kodiak some new source of hope?
We do know our distance and heading now. We n
ever got to finish that project together, finding out the Coordinated Endeavor’s destination. Maybe the answer will be enough to pop Kodiak out of his delusion—if it is a delusion. I scan through the offline tablet, to see what I can suss out. The ray from Earth to the Coordinated Endeavor extends out into broad emptiness. I follow it, follow it, beyond and between the stars at the sparse edge of the Milky Way, until one comes close, or really it’s two, a binary solar system, and here’s a little planet between them—our course intersects its orbit perfectly. It’s the only celestial body the ship hits before leaving the galaxy entirely.
I look the planet up in the tablet. Spectroscopy reveals its atmosphere to be 20 percent oxygen, less than 1 percent carbon dioxide. Its nearness to the two stars should give it an earthlike temperature.
It’s an exoplanet. An inhabitable exoplanet.
We’re heading to a new home.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 1797 *-_
I dash into the Aurora, only slowing as I approach the room where I last saw Kodiak. My eyes take in the legs of a knocked-over chair, a screwdriver rolled into a corner, shards of poly reflecting fluorescent light back at the ceiling. An unconscious body in the center, breathing deeply.
Kodiak is sprawled facedown on the floor, arms and legs akimbo, like he plummeted from a great height. He’s peed in his suit; yellow pools on the white floor. There’s a bitter odor to the air, like someone’s burned a skillet of eggs.
Rover is parked beside him. “OS, may I approach?” I call out.
“Of course,” my mother’s voice responds.
I warily circle Rover. I take Kodiak’s pulse at his wrist. His eyes dart beneath his lids as his breathing deepens. If it weren’t for the pair of livid welts on his arm where Rover’s electrodes must have contacted him, it would look like Kodiak was having an amazing sleep.
I fetch a blanket and pillows. After a quick debate, I change him out of his urine-soaked suit and wrap his naked body in the blanket, terrified he’ll wake up halfway through the process. I place the soiled suit in the Aurora’s cleaner. Kodiak never needs to know he peed in it, if he’s still asleep once the suit’s clean. I can just put it right back on him.
“How long do you think he’s going to be out?” I ask OS.
“It is difficult to predict the length of time that human bodies are incapacitated by electrical shocks.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t shock them,” I respond tartly.
“You know precisely why I did what I did,” my mother’s voice says. “As long as Spacefarer Celius doesn’t try to compromise the ship again, I’ll have no need to take such extreme measures.”
I suddenly feel very tired.
Kodiak groans, turning his head. I take it into my lap, stroke his surprisingly soft hair. Rover hovers nearby, making menacing little zaps with its electrodes. “Back the fuck off,” I tell it. Of course, it doesn’t move.
“May I give you some advice on how best to pacify Spacefarer Celius once he wakes up?” OS asks.
“No.”
“At least consider—”
“No, OS! Be silent for half an hour.”
Above the hum of the ship I can hear Kodiak’s breathing, can almost sense the blood sloshing through his veins, and through my own. I can hear my own breathing. As I concentrate on the sound of it, I become separate from it. Separate from myself. It feels strangely honest.
I leave time. My legs hurt for a while, and then they stop. Even the pain travels to the middle distance.
Home. We’re traveling to a new home.
I return to myself when the head in my lap takes in a deep breath. The eyes flutter open. I’m arrested by the sudden sight of them, by their tan depths. “Shh,” I tell Kodiak.
His eyes focus in on me and he startles, body going rigid. He smashes his elbows into the floor so he can sit straight up, eyes gleaming. The blanket falls from his torso, draping over his lap, like he’s a sculptor’s model.
“Hey,” I say gently. “It’s okay. You’ve been unconscious. You’re fine. Don’t panic.”
His eyes scan around, and he makes quick and shallow breaths as he looks for enemies. Rover is still here, but inactive, its arms motionless on the floor. The sight of Rover standing down doesn’t calm Kodiak. His enemies aren’t outside him. They’ve never been outside him.
His eyes finally lock with mine, and something passes between us. I don’t know what he’s getting from seeing my face, but it does seem to be the thing that finally calms his panic. “Try not to think about anything for a while,” I whisper.
Not the best advice, I guess. His breathing goes quick again. He brings his hand to the welts on his side, where Rover shocked him.
Kodiak gets to his feet, knotting the blanket around his waist just before it falls away. I look up at him, my own breathing quickening. I ease to my feet, hands open. “It’s okay,” I whisper.
He sways from side to side. Just like Rover.
Kodiak picks up the screwdriver, looks at it, then releases his grip. It clatters to the floor.
I place my hand on his shoulder and nod. “Why don’t you take a rest? Just rest. There’s no rush for anything. Besides, I have something to tell you. Something you’ll like to hear.”
Kodiak allows me to guide him toward my sleeping room. I can’t think of anything else to do with him; getting Kodiak to bed seems like the best cure for his strange glassiness. Maybe when he wakes up, this dark desperation will be gone.
He accepts my bed, snaking his arms under my pillow and shutting his eyes. His face softens.
“Are you ready to hear it?” I ask.
But he’s asleep.
“OS,” I say, “lights out.” OS makes it happen.
I pad my way to 06, with the largest window—screen?—that shows me the image of outer space that I think I recognize. I name familiar constellations, same as I might see on Earth. Why shouldn’t this be the honest view? If it would mean I could live my life in peace, why can’t I just choose to believe what I see and what I’ve been told and be done with it? I’m rescuing Minerva. Done. My life can have a purpose that makes sense to me. Done. I’m not building to some abstract better future that I’ll never get to enjoy. Done.
I don’t need Kodiak’s sort of clarity, not when seeing clearly also means dying.
I don’t know if believing in a planet for our future selves will be enough to convince Kodiak to accept the ruse we’re living in—if that’s what it is. Maybe the model of my own calm presence, of my own acceptance, will eventually be enough. As Minerva said in her departure speech, broadcast live to both Fédération and Dimokratía: We are meant to be extraordinary. Take hope from our example.
I tent a hand against the stars on the screen, five pads touching five points of light that have traveled eons from their various different histories to strike this window at this precise instant. Five moments in time, five places. I know that this is true, even as I know that it is untrue, that I’m touching pixels OS has placed. Maybe my heart can be a more insightful organ than my brain.
Your heart is only good for pumping your blood, says my brain. I am the source of both what you feel and what you think.
Insanity used to be a stranger that lived on the other side of the world. Now it’s moved next door. It’s only a matter of time until it becomes shipmate, lover, self.
I trance, my focus skipping far off into the cosmos. Maybe I’ll never eat or drink again. Maybe I will be forever disembodied.
Maybe I’m fooling myself.
I stop wallowing and open up the audio file on the pinup video of the Dimokratía soldier, the one that alerted me to my supposed reality. I add a new chapter to the recording, so the next me will know more about himself—and about Kodiak. I decide that I’ll do this every day, so our lives can build even as they restart, so that each version of us will have a better chance at happiness than the one before.
There’s a rustling sound from my sleeping quarters. I imagine Kodiak rousing, finding himself in my bed,
testing his painful welts where he was electrocuted. Getting to his feet. Foraging himself something to eat and something to drink.
I hear the orange portal open. I ready myself for the sound of it shutting, but it doesn’t. As a safety precaution, we’ve been keeping the passageway between the two ships closed. Has Kodiak been absentminded, or has he left it open because he wants me to follow?
Maybe he’s disoriented. Maybe he’s confused and scared. I pad quietly toward the Aurora, instinct keeping my steps as quiet as possible.
He’s ahead of me in the zero g, flying forward, still wrapped in my sheet. It billows around him, making him look like a phantasm. I speed up, soaring after him.
I lose track of him once he heads into the Aurora. I creep through the blind room. He’s not in his eating and sleeping rooms, either. Only a few rooms left where he could be.
I hear whistling from the airlock.
“Kodiak?”
The song is tuneful and melancholy, some Dimokratía folk ballad that I’ve never heard before. I tiptoe forward.
“Kodiak?”
He’s before the small round window, looking out at the stars, or the images of stars, or maybe the darkness between the images of stars. When he hears me enter, he turns to look at me, then returns to staring into the porthole. “Kodiak? You okay?”
He opens his stance toward me. That’s when I see there’s a wrench in his hand.
I’m about to ask him to put it down when he rears back and strikes the porthole.
I scream despite myself, despite knowing that there’s no way that the ship’s pane would break under a simple wrench. But the horror of it, the horror of imagining cracks appearing, followed by explosive decompression, my pulverized body dying four ways at once . . . macerated, frozen, asphyxiated, boiled.
Kodiak strikes again. I hear a ticking sound from the next room over as Rover speeds toward us.
Stop it! I cry, or think I cry. We’re heading to a home, a home just for us! I’m staggering across the space between us, reaching for the wrench. He brandishes it at me, then swings it toward the clear pane, only I’ve put myself between the wrench and the airlock door, the wrench is full in my view, my nose fills with the smell of metal, and then the metallic smell is my own blood, and I’m howling against the floor, watching my blood pool against the white floor, rivulets of red running through the grooves between the panels.
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