I get to my feet and manage it for a moment before I’m back on hands and knees, the world blinking and bright and then narrowing and dark. I scream, as if screaming will help me stay conscious.
One eye is blinded by blood, but through the other I see Rover whiz toward Kodiak, only to be knocked off its tracks by him. He’s swung the wrench at it two-handed, like a baseball bat. Rover grinds and sighs uselessly in the corner of the room.
Kodiak shouts something that’s both far away and close, something I can’t understand. It resolves into words, sob-choked words. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
He’s moving away from me, backing to the edge of the room. Not to the rest of the ship. To the porthole. To the airlock. My view of it wavers.
“Stop,” I manage to gasp, my lips slick with the blood running down my face. “We’re going . . . we’re going . . .”
“I’ll come back with a doctor!” Kodiak says.
“No. You’re wrong,” I say, blinking heavily against the lightness, the strangely heavy lightness, tugging me down. So curiously heavy, this empty. “Kodiak, you’re wrong!”
Kodiak’s against the airlock, turning the handle. OS speaks, but I can’t make out its words in the roaring bright. The handle turns and turns forever under Kodiak’s sure hands.
“We’re going to pass this test,” Kodiak says.
“Stop,” I gasp.
But he doesn’t stop.
Kodiak looks back to me. “Sunlight, Ambrose! Think of all the sunlight!”
The airlock door shudders as he gives it a final turn. Kodiak throws his arm over his eyes, as if to protect his vision from the brightness to come.
The airlock opens, and the universe roars. The thunder on the other side is not full of light. It is only dark, and so cold.
Part Four
AMBROSE: 9 REMAINING.
KODIAK: 9 REMAINING.
“191 DAYS UNTIL TITAN.”
An earlier Ambrose embedded a reel for me. I wait days to play it, scared of what I’ll find.
One sleepless night, I start it going.
“I have reason to believe that I’m going to die,” my own recorded voice tells me. It’s breathless and manic. Paranoid. “OS has no use for us anymore, not now that we’re refusing to repair the ship. We’ve jammed the airlocks, but that won’t be enough. I’m embedding surveillance of myself, so you’ll know my story. Every twenty-four hours that I survive, I’ll restart the recording.”
I shiver when I realize what that means. I’m about to watch myself die.
I lean forward.
It’s me. I’m sleeping, in the very same bunk I use now, my back to the room. No one else is there, and nothing is happening.
The timestamp in the corner jumbles as I speed the reel ahead.
I slow it again. Rover has inched in along the ceiling, its robot arms dangling. There’s something pointed in each grip, maybe a sliver of printed polycarb. I zoom in. “What are those for?” I whisper.
My breathing catches as I watch Rover stalk toward my sleeping body. Rover ticks closer and closer, coming to a stop near my head. It holds there, so motionless that I have to check the timestamp to make sure the reel is still playing.
Then it extends one shard and the next over my neck. Two efficient cutting motions, like it’s slicing open a bag of rice.
Only it’s my throat that’s been slashed. The Ambrose in the reel staggers to his feet, hands over his neck. His mouth is open, and I imagine him screaming—or maybe gurgling, if Rover has cut through his windpipe. The blood has already soaked through the front of his jumpsuit, pooling on the white floor. Rover retreats from the room, and Ambrose staggers after it, only making it one step before he slumps to the floor. His forehead hits and then his knees. He remains at an unnatural angle, arms askew, as the blood continues to pool from his throat, before trickling to a stop.
I watch, mute and senseless, as Ambrose’s throat and cheeks mottle, reds and purples blooming along his arms. My arms.
Rover returns and clamps its hands onto my body’s ankles. As it tugs, my body splays to one side, one arm crossed over the other, straightening as Rover hauls me from the room. My arms go over my head, my fingertips the last things I see before the sleeping chamber is empty.
My pillow is crushed against the far wall. My blanket is on the floor, soaking up the pool of my blood until none of its light blue color remains, and it is only red. The timestamp continues to tick forward. The fluorescent lights are constant.
Rover returns and starts to clean, has gone right back from warbot to janitor.
“If you’re hearing this message, it’s because I didn’t survive to delete it after I woke up,” my voice reports. “Learn this from me: if you’re going to cross the operating system, you better be prepared for the consequences.”
Already, the kernel of a thought is forming in the back of my mind. Or I need to leave my future selves the weapons to fight back.
Part Five
AMBROSE: 8 REMAINING.
KODIAK: 8 REMAINING.
“191 DAYS UNTIL TITAN.”
My mother won’t answer my knocks.
Her feet cast shadows in the sliver of light beneath her door.
My sister’s voice, from down the hall. “Ambrose, come in here with me.”
When I open my eyes, the world looks no different. I’m blind.
Ting-ting buzz.
I haven’t been blind—I have been in the absolute dark.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 4909 *-_
The reel is still going. The soldier relaxes against a tree, the camera panning sensually over their body. But what my voice is saying has nothing to do with a vigorous forest outing.
What my voice is saying is definitely not sexy.
“I know you’re telling yourself this is an elaborate voice-skin prank. But think of what I’ve done. I’ve known which exact video you’d go for first, because I did as well, and I have an identical neural structure to you, and lived in the same environment. You can’t remember the launch, and that’s for a good reason. Your memories were nanoteched during your medical exam at the Cusk Academy, before the clones were installed on the ship. In my lifetime I learned that the original you, the original me, never left Earth. He died there many thousands of years ago. Maybe in the arms of the original Mother. His remains, and those of the civilization that produced him, are a layer in the geological record of Earth, thin as a piece of notebook paper by now. As far as I know, you and Kodiak, and your remaining clones, are all that remain of humankind.”
I pause the reel. My voice is correct about at least one thing. I am definitely feeling overwhelmed.
The paused slip of a soldier stares at me, their eyes hard and lucid. What do they know to be true?
Hand trembling, I start the reel again. My voiceover continues while the soldier bathes. “We both know,” that me says, “about Plato and the cave.”
He’s right, of course. I remember that academy seminar when I learned that Plato had this allegory of the cave, where he imagined prisoners shackled so they could see only the shadows of puppets on the cave wall, and not the true world outside. How would they know that the shadows they were watching weren’t the real thing? If one of the prisoners did escape and discovered the truth and then returned, why would anyone believe him? Maybe the other prisoners would be so threatened by his ravings that they’d kill him.
It wasn’t my favorite class, to be honest.
I think I get the thrust of past-me’s warning: I’m alone on a spaceship with someone who might not take the truth well. Maybe that person is me. Maybe it’s Kodiak. Maybe it’s our operating system, I don’t know. Of course, I also don’t know what the end of those astronauts’ days looked like. I do know that it was on this ship.
If all of this is to be believed.
I rap my knuckles against the window. Or screen. How can I know what’s on the other side? I’d never thought to ask. Apparently, it’s a dangerous question.
“Come
back to this recording once you’ve had time to think all this through,” my voice finishes. “I’ve left some . . . helpful surprises on the ship for you. Some schematics that will be useful.”
I let that one go for now. There’s too much else to think about. “OS,” I say, “how far are we from this exoplanet destination?”
“I do not understand what you mean,” my mother’s voice replies. “You are on your way to Titan to rescue Minerva Cusk.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say, then cringe. Now OS knows where the information from my previous self was likely located. I’ll need to find a new place to store it for the future me. If that’s really a thing I’m going to be doing.
“Whatever you’ve decided to believe,” OS responds, “I still need you to focus on the mission at hand. The Coordinated Endeavor has undergone numerous small damages over the course of its journey. I need you and Spacefarer Celius to repair them, to maintain the integrity of our vessel.”
“OS,” I say against the pit in my belly, “I’m inclined to believe that the only reason we have so many small damages is because you’ve been flying this ship without a human crew for thousands of years. There’s no reason there would be so many tasks to complete that Rover couldn’t handle. That simply shouldn’t happen over the months it takes to get to Titan.”
OS goes silent. I get to my feet. “I need to see Kodiak.”
“You are not alone on this ship, you are correct. But Spacefarer Celius does not wish to see you.”
“I know that’s what you claim, OS,” I say, dusting my palms. “But I have some things to say to him that he’s definitely going to want to hear.”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 4909 *-_
Kodiak and I stand before the wide screen of 06, looking out at the stars. They seem so real. But they can’t be touched or smelled. Despite the evidence before our eyes, I’m increasingly coming to believe they are not real.
“This is not how I expected this journey to begin,” Kodiak says gruffly.
“Believe me, I didn’t, either,” I say.
“I was all ready to lock myself away, to call you an enemy and be done with it so I could focus on my mission. But this evidence . . .” His voice trails off. I can feel him staring at me.
“Goodbye, Minerva,” I whisper as I press my forehead against the screen.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 4909 *-_
We stand beside the Endeavor’s airlock. The suits are all gone, except for one. Its helmet is intact but has been ravaged, a jagged scratch raked into the front of it. Kodiak holds it up to his face, examining the damage.
I watch him, wondering where this evidence will bring his mind.
Finally he speaks. “Sorry. I seem to have caused a mess our last time around.”
I reach out and grasp his hand. The hand of this stranger who will become anything but. He stiffens, then surprises me by clasping mine back fiercely. As if he’s lost his balance on a cliff, trusting the nearest stranger to hold him back from a fall.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 4909 *-_
I invited Kodiak to come for breakfast. I hear the orange portal open before my morning alarm even goes off. I roll over in my bunk and ask OS to project the ship time. It’s 4:25 a.m., back in Mari. Not that there probably even is a Mari anymore. When I tap on my light, I’m startled to see Kodiak at the doorway, staring down at me.
I flail to my feet. “What is it, what is it?”
His voice comes out muted. “I couldn’t sleep. I was hoping—apparently you have a violin? Would you play it for me?”
“Yeah,” I say, running my hand over my hair. “Sure. Let’s go find where it is.”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 4909 *-_
I’m not sure how long I play. OS cuts in between movements, asking us to work on smoothing the ship’s exterior shielding, but Kodiak raises his finger to silence it before he goes back to his eyes-closed reverie, seated on the floor with his arms wrapped around his knees. “Could you start at the beginning of the quiet section?” he asks. “The one that goes dun, dun doop?”
I return to the start of the adagio, the polycarb bridge on my violin stopping the instrument from playing much louder than the hum of the ship. The softness of the music feels right. A smile spreads across Kodiak’s features, and the furrows in his brow soften. I continue to play.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 4799 *-_
No task OS can come up with is pressing enough to get in the way of our music sessions. I scour the ship’s partial internet image for sheet music, surprising Kodiak with a new recital each morning. Once I run out, I compose pieces of my own, space-inspired combinations of harmonics created by laying my pinkie lightly on the string to produce high-pitched frequencies. I don’t think Kodiak enjoys them as much as the classics, but he puts on a good face.
Over the weeks, OS stops presenting us with tasks during the music hour. When I continue to push back against its tales of the Minerva rescue, it gives up on talking about Titan as well. Of course it does. Lying isn’t working, so it’s stopped.
After the daily music hour, we dutifully complete the tasks OS requests of us. Kodiak uses the one spacesuit remaining in the Aurora for the exterior jobs, while I work on the ship’s insides. OS appears to accept this truce of sorts. All the same, I’m haunted by that image of Rover coming into my sleeping chamber, deftly slashing the throat of my previous self. I set up traps and alarms, so I’ll wake if Rover is on its way in.
That’s no way to live. I hate this aching awareness that we will die once our tasks are completed. But Kodiak and I might have come up with a plan for that.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 3010 *-_
I sit cross-legged before the large window of 06, staring into the expanse. We’re out of tea—the previous Ambroses must have enjoyed it a little too much—but I can sip hot water, steeped in the flavors of polycarb. Yum. At least I don’t have to worry about the slow-growing cancers from heated plastic. I’m sure I’ve got plenty of fast ones that will end things a lot sooner. So . . . hooray?
I hear the thump of Kodiak’s heavier tread, then his body is pressed against the screen, shoulder pushing on the window as he peers out at the made-up stars.
“OS, revert screens to windows,” I try, not for the first time.
OS doesn’t respond. It doesn’t respond to much these days; I guess it knows anything it reveals will only decrease its advantage.
“It’s certainly impressive,” Kodiak says, eyes up to the stars. “High resolution.”
“That doesn’t make it the truth,” I say.
“No, unfortunately it doesn’t,” Kodiak says. He looks at me quietly.
“What?” I ask.
He shrugs, still looking at me. He returns to stroking the stars, leading with his middle finger, a Dimokratía mannerism.
“What are you thinking about?” I press.
“The last Dimokratía election.”
“I see you’re using ‘election’ loosely.”
Surprisingly, Kodiak chuckles. “Yes, it was the fifth one in a row with the same outcome. There were many fiery speeches. The whole country dropped everything to consider whether we should return to a firm geographical border instead of the patchwork of economically tied regions Earth had become.”
“Starting with the proposed swap of Patagonia and the Bangladesh fishery!” I finish. “I got assigned the ‘economic boundaries’ side of that one for a class debate.”
“Yes. So you remember? This issue seemed like the very greatest concern any human had ever had to worry about. All of that, the politics, the wars, the works of literature—”
“—even the old kings, the earliest cavepeople!”
Irritation flashes on his face. “Would you let me finish?”
“Sorry, I was just getting excited. I come from an interrupting sort of family.”
“They’re all gone now. They didn’t matter.” He puts his fingertip over Earth as it travels across the screen, bright and blue and tiny, a jeweler’s bead.
“Fro
m here, even our sun would be too small to represent using visible light,” I say.
“Using the term ‘here’ loosely,” he says, glowering.
“Yes, sure.”
“I just wish President Gruy could have seen this, that we all could have. It makes it a little easier to keep perspective, to go . . . more softly with each other.”
“Go more softly with each other, I like that way of putting it,” I say.
“Thank you. I said it just for you.”
I punch him. “That’s funny. You’re funny, Kodiak.”
He shrugs and rubs his shoulder. Pretending I’ve wounded him. Even with a good windup, I’m not sure I could.
“I was going somewhere with this,” he says. “I was thinking this morning that this aleyet we’re looking at, I guess ‘view’ is the closest word in Fédération, if we truly groya it, I guess ‘understand’ is the closest to that—” He starts to chew his lip, clearly frustrated at Fédération vocabulary. It suddenly strikes me as unfair that we speak Fédération all the time. That’s just the language the Cusk Corporation always uses. What other unfairnesses might I not have considered until now?
“We might not have any better words for it,” I risk interrupting. “That would be very typical Fédération, not to have words for quiet things. Anyway, I’m familiar with ‘aleyet’ and ‘groya.’”
His eyebrows knit. Now I’ve irritated him again. He’s a minefield, my Kodiak.
He presses on. “This understanding of our view takes some of the sting out of our situation. Plenty of organisms live for a season, in order for those who come next to have a chance. Mayflies, daffodils, the octopus. We can accept that?”
“Well, we’re hardwired not to accept our own demise. Daffodils are a lot more chill about it.”
“Okay, but we can be like daffodils together.”
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