The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer

I squeeze the back of his neck. “That’s sweet.”

  “Don’t tease me.”

  “I wasn’t, actually. I adore daffodils.” Because they were Minerva’s favorite, I silently add, tapping the image of Earth on the “window.”

  His voice lowers. “I know what I did thousands of years ago. The offline pilot station and the course change. I don’t think I’d do that sort of thing now.”

  “We don’t know how many copies of us are left. The next of us could be the last for all we know.”

  “It can be whatever we need it to be.”

  Kodiak doesn’t say any more. He draws his arm around me and pulls me close to his chest, crushing me against the heat of him. Then he shakes his head. I’m too far down his body to feel it directly but sense the shift in the muscles of his chest.

  I’m used to him enough now that he doesn’t need to speak, doesn’t need to put clearer words to what he has in mind. I think I know what he’s proposing from his heart rate, the altered life coursing through his veins, the words that he’s said and the words that he’s not allowing himself to say. There’s a sort of magnitude humming off him.

  I pull my head back from his chest, look up into his tan eyes. “I think I understand what you want us to do,” I whisper.

  “I think you do,” he whispers back.

  He turns his head so his eyes can look right into mine. The dappled light plays on his cheek, his throat, and then his chest as he unzips the top of his jumpsuit. It catches halfway down his torso, and I help him peel it down to the waist. Hesitantly at first, my hands play over his skin, learning the shape of the muscles beneath. “Oh. That’s not what I thought you meant. I don’t mind, though.”

  His fingers tug down the zipper of my jumpsuit, then they’re on my body. They snake below the waistband before they pause. “I’m glad you’re here with me,” I say.

  “Yes, me too,” he says between kisses. His breath is hot against my cheek.

  “Do you think we should take it slow?” I ask.

  His hand travels deeper beneath my waistband, disappearing up to the wrist. “I don’t feel a particular need to take it slow,” he sighs as he watches my face.

  “Good. Me neither.”

  _-* Tasks Remaining: 3010 *-_

  After, he holds me tight against him, my backside slick against his belly. He nuzzles his lips close to my ear. “Was that your first time?”

  I playfully slap him. “What, did it seem like my first time?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Actually,” I say, “I guess it was my first time. Officially. But it wasn’t Ambrose’s.”

  He pulls me in closer. “We have lots of time to practice.”

  I think for a second. “Wait, did you mean my first time at all, or my first time welcoming?”

  “Welcoming? What does that mean?”

  “What we just did. You donated, and I welcomed.”

  Kodiak snorts, and makes a hand gesture I don’t recognize, bent shaking fingers. “Oh, Fédération softy lingo.”

  I roll my eyes. “Do you still use hut and shihut, top and bottom?”

  “Of course. It makes more sense.”

  “Unless the shihut is literally on top.”

  “So sensitive.”

  “It’s a hierarchy, Kodiak. Top and bottom are not value-neutral terms. One implies more worth, which is all about homophobia. And homophobia is really all about misogyny, because in Dimokratía eyes to welcome is to be female, and to be female is to be lesser. Words matter.”

  “Okay, okay,” Kodiak says. “In any case, thank you for ‘welcoming’ me.”

  I harrumph, then start running my hands over his chest, smoothing the hair down flat. “That was Ambrose’s first time welcoming, by the way.”

  “You are usually hut?”

  “Yep.”

  Kodiak chuckles. “It sounds like a riddle. Two tops are in space together . . .”

  “I’m ready to be versatile,” I say.

  “Yes, and you were wonderful at it,” Kodiak says. “I am ready as well,” he continues after a moment. “In fact, I have already been so, during training.”

  I shake my head. “Unbelievable. Here I thought you’d be the one who needed to learn the ropes.”

  “There were many guys living together in close quarters, in the primes of their lives, all of them very fit, often very sweaty, so of course sometimes we were erotiyets . . . ,” he says, voice trailing off.

  “Okay, got it, thanks.”

  I can’t help it; something about our whole interchange has gotten me giggly. Kodiak joins in, his body shaking against mine.

  Once my breathing has returned, I sigh. “I’ll look forward to these practice sessions.”

  “Me too,” he whispers. “We can schedule them in. Five times a day. Maybe we’ll go down to four times a day in a few years.”

  “Five times a day! That means we’re almost due to—”

  “Yep.”

  Something else comes to me. “You know, before we started this very enjoyable diversion, I thought there was something else you wanted us to do, something we had to keep secret.”

  “There was something,” he whispers. “I thought you were the one pushing us to do this instead.”

  “That thing, that unspeakable thing,” I whisper. “The ship, it won’t be able to . . .”

  “Shh,” he says, laying a finger on my lips. I kiss it, staring up at him. He nods.

  Tears fill my eyes. I place the gauzy blanket over us and type into the offline tablet. Let’s go commit murder.

  _-* Tasks Remaining: 3010 *-_

  We’re finally ready to put our rebellion into action. We stand at the entrance to the Aurora’s engine room—and its set of Kodiak clones. To go inside, all we have to do is leap into zero g and bust through the printed polycarb. If Rover weren’t blocking the way.

  It doesn’t move, just keeps its arms out, ready to jolt us. Two Rover arms are more than enough to defend the narrow space.

  If our previous selves hadn’t prepared us for this combat.

  Kodiak makes two quick steps toward Rover. It’s instantly in motion, whipping its arms forward.

  . . . which is when I toss the EMP bomb.

  It reaches Rover before Kodiak does—and, since the robot is busy attacking Kodiak, it can’t defend itself from the projectile. When the coil hits Rover’s casing, the thin polycarb surrounding the battery shatters and triggers 1000kV. Not enough to do any damage to the rest of the room, but enough to take out Rover. With a white flash, its arms clatter to the ground.

  “Thanks for the schematics, old Ambrose,” I whisper.

  “Up and at ’em,” Kodiak says, body-slamming his way through the printed covering of the engine room and into the zero-g space beyond. “Hurry up, before OS can get another Rover online to send after us.”

  “Don’t have to ask twice,” I say as I follow him into the engine area.

  It’s a warren of hissing metal surfaces. Strange pounding sounds surround us, from outside the dim shaking light of our headlamps. Following the directions left by our past selves, we navigate our way to the rack, where, sure enough, there are seven Kodiaks lined up, one after another.

  “Abominations,” Kodiak spits.

  I float along the stack, looking at Kodiak, Kodiak motionless and Kodiak repeated, his handsome face made horrifying by sealed plastic and preservative juices.

  Kodiak gags as he puts a hand on the first one. He uses a jagged piece of polycarb to slice into the plastic. “Don’t you want me to do it?” I whisper.

  He shakes his head. “I should be the one. I don’t want you to have to live with killing me. You can do you.”

  The top of the plastic coating is open now. The clone’s head lolls. Kodiak places a palm against his own forehead. For a moment the Kodiaks are facing each other, near-exact copies of themselves.

  OS’s voice comes from elsewhere in the ship. For us to detect it here, within the inhabited areas my mother’s voice must b
e positively thundering. “Do not do this! You are jeopardizing the only future for humankind.”

  Kodiak holds the polycarb blade to his clone’s neck.

  “This is murder!” comes OS’s drowned cry. “History will judge you harshly.”

  “Go judge yourself,” Kodiak mutters as he drags the blade across the clone’s throat.

  There’s no heart beating in the clone, and no gravity, so his blood emerges from his slashed throat in a fine line of bubbles. Kodiak slices deeper. Even though this creature was never alive I have to look away from the butchery. “I won’t stop,” Kodiak says, straining with the exertion, “until I’ve cut the spinal cord. Then . . . we’ll know . . . this is really over.”

  I lay a hand on his back, struck dumb by the magnitude of what we’re doing.

  We will destroy ourselves.

  If we destroy our other copies, all but the last set, then OS will have no option but to keep us alive as long as possible. It will also have the resources to do so, since there won’t be many future clones to feed.

  OS can’t afford to kill us off early, not when there’s no relying on further copies. We might not make it off this ship—we definitely won’t make it off this ship—but we can live out our small existences in peace.

  “There, it’s finished,” Kodiak says, leaning back from his work.

  “It’s horrible,” I say quietly.

  “That it is. Now. What is that sound?” Kodiak asks, cocking his head as he bats away floating globules of blood and gristle.

  “OS. OS is screaming.”

  _-* Tasks Remaining: 3010 *-_

  We return from our killing missions numb. Now that we’re done, OS has gone silent. What would it say? There’s no going back now, nothing to talk us out of or into.

  I find it hard to muster the energy to move, and yet all the same my body is quivering. The enormity of what we’ve done keeps washing over me.

  I’m desperate for a distraction. I’m desperate for a connection. I’m desperate to know that I’m not alone.

  I pull us to the floor, drape a blanket over us. The diffuse light sets Kodiak’s skin glowing. I cup his chin. Within the blanket shading us, the simple gesture feels shockingly intimate. Shockingly intimate is just what I need.

  May 1, 18281 Common Era

  (2,199 tasks left)

  Dear Ambrose,

  Happy Annihilation Day! It’s been a year since we destroyed the clone bodies, so we decided it would be a good occasion to update our messages to our future selves.

  The ceremony just ended—more on that in a moment—so I’m feeling a little down. Not quite down, actually, more like moved. A whole combo of things. I keep looking out into space, hoping to see my body out there, but once it was away from the lights of the Coordinated Endeavor, it basically vanished.

  We rigged the portaprinter to deposit text on the walls of the ship, so you’ll wake up to this writing everywhere. So far Rover has let us—there’s no more need to pull one over on future clones, after all, since there’s only you left. OS will probably wake you up at the last possible minute, to increase the chance of the mission succeeding. If that’s the case, you’ll be human-ing a sinking ship.

  I am sorry about that.

  Kodiak says hi.

  What else? It’s been a quiet year, probably the quietest that any of us clones have ever known. After the “massacre,” OS went docile. We were no longer disposable, and that seems to have changed everything. The screens blinked and then went transparent, displaying the actual stars around us. (“At least we assume they’re the actual stars,” Kodiak is pointing out as I write. He’s not the most optimistic guy, as you’ve probably figured out.) We found out that we have around twelve thousand years of travel to go before we arrive at the exoplanet. We’d better get moisturizing if we want to look good when we arrive. Anyway, nice to have some solid information for a change.

  Our life spans won’t bring us near any stars, and definitely no planets. We’re in the equivalent of open ocean, clear medium all around us, no landmarks in sight. Kodiak and I are our own landmarks. He laughed at me when I just read that aloud. Apparently, I’m overdramatic.

  We’ve kept the bodies in the cold radiation-shielded center of the engine, and we decided to give them burials in space. That’s the ceremony we just had. Clone corpse vented from airlock while I play the violin. We’ll have one funeral each year, until we run out of clone bodies. We’ll mourn the lives that never were. We’ll toast the future, the chosen clone. You. The glory to come from all of this suffering. (Don’t start with me about the dramatics, Kodiak!)

  You were the second Ambrose from the back, but for some reason you’re the one we chose. I liked your frozen stare. There was some far-seeing quality about you. Stupid thought, I know.

  I realize that we’re turning into cabin fever weirdos, maybe? Having a funeral for the potential of a thing, mourning the loss of someone who never lived, all weird. Sometimes I watch old reels from Earth, and I can’t imagine any of those ordinary humans doing what we’ve done. But they weren’t cloned and sent up into space on a lie. So who are they to judge?

  All the humans that made those reels, all the humans that they produced in later generations, are dead. Their normal didn’t work out for them. We are the new normal, because we are the new human. The only human.

  I’ll update this more as we go. Wish me luck with the cabin fever. I love you.

  Sincerely,

  Ambrose #13

  May 1, 18282 Common Era

  (1,470 tasks left)

  Happy Annihilation Day! Another year in the life over here. We sent out a Kodiak body this time. He disappeared from view a few hours ago. He had an arm scar, like all the rest. That wouldn’t emerge in cloning—some lab intern on Earth probably had to carve those in, then stimulate the growth of scar tissue. This one was a little messier than the others, looks almost like a cross. That intern must have been having an off day. Or maybe this Kodiak was their first attempt.

  Anyway, Kodiak spent the first months of our lifetime emotionally disengaged—I’m sure he’ll do the same in yours, too. Then, surprise surprise, it became my turn to withdraw. I just got so irritated by every little thing he did. Cracking his knuckles, biting his cuticles (sometimes at the very same time! How does he pull that off?!), eating with his mouth open, saying “erm” whenever he wasn’t sure what to say next, snapping at me if I even remotely interrupted him. Anyway, one night out of nowhere I dragged him out of his bunk and tackled him, sobbing and raging. We decided I should go on a retreat. While Kodiak took care of the ship, I moved into the Minerva beach reel, hiking a digitized beach. The reel was large, so I was able to walk all the way from Mari to the Indian Ocean. I didn’t see Kodiak for six weeks.

  I really hated him when I left. Full-on hate. I wanted to bite him, hurt him, break him. There were flashes when I wanted to kill him, and I couldn’t have told you why. My rage was terrifying. But at the end of that vacation, Ambrose? I tackled him again. Only this time it was my arms holding him as tight as I could, my lips kissing every stretch of skin I could reach, crying at the relief of his company, at the relief of him.

  You love Kodiak. This is the hidden miracle of all this: you might be loving each other deeper than any humans have ever loved, have ever needed to love, have ever had the occasion to love. Well, maybe Adam and Eve did, but you and I both know we don’t think they ever existed.

  Surprise Kodiak by sucking on one of his fingers, from out of nowhere. He’ll like it.

  Yours sincerely,

  Ambrose #13

  May 1, 18290 Common Era

  (399 tasks left)

  Happy Annihilation Day! We’re older than we’ve ever been. Twenty-four! Well, maybe the original Kodiaks and Ambroses made it to old age before human civ ended. But we’re certainly the oldest clones the ship has produced.

  I’m recording video of us to the ship’s computer, in case you want to know what you’ll look like someday. I hope OS doesn
’t delete it. In its current mindset, I don’t think it will. Now that it doesn’t need to lie to us, it’s really not the enemy it once was. It’s been defanged.

  You know what? All these carefully balanced and portioned-out meals will work very well for you. But it turns out that seventeen-year-old Kodiak has a much higher metabolism than the twenty-four-year-old one. It’s hard to imagine, but that washboard body you’re around right now has a tendency toward puffiness. He’s cut his rations down by a third, trying to get back in shape. I tell him not to worry about it, but he insists. I find Fat Kodiak just as sexy as the old one, by the way, so you probably will, too. A little extra bubble to the butt, if you know what I mean.

  This life? It feels surprisingly complete. There was some pain, but we’ve managed to start looking at our ship like a homestead on the frontier. Like a smaller version of how your exoplanet will feel?

  Love,

  Ambrose #13

  May 1, 18301 Common Era

  (1 task left—we’re not going to test OS by going down to 0)

  Happy Annihilation Day! Big updates of the year: radio signals from Earth have a clear path to us again, so our transmitter started receiving old Earth news. Some pockets of humans must have survived the worst of the war’s devastation, because radio programs were back.

  There was one mention of the spacefarers sent to settle the exoplanet, as a trivia item on a quiz show. Then we were never mentioned again. OS searched all the bands. This radio wave had traveled a long way to get to us, so it represented many thousands of years post-launch. We’d been forgotten, lost in the noise of the war between Dimokratía and Fédération.

  There is no mission control anymore. There is just you. No one will know if you succeed or fail. No one will notice your landing day.

  This lifetime is yours to make what you will of it.

  Love,

  Ambrose #13

  May 1, 18303 Common Era

  (1 task left)

  Happy Annihilation Day! We’re thirty-seven now, how about that?! I honestly didn’t think we’d survive this long. Kodiak has a thyroid tumor that I had to learn how to remove, but he’s healing well, considering. Rover makes a surprisingly good nurse.