Chapter 5 #2
The boundaries of the room warble. I close my eyes, concentrate on my breathing so I don’t gag.
Might as well make nausea your lover, Minerva told me on a long walk through the family grounds after she discovered I had been picked for the Cusk Academy.
It’s the only thing that will be by your side all through your training.
With her on my mind, I ride the waves of sickness until they subside. “How long until we reach my sister?”
“Approximately one hundred and ninety-one days.”
As my veins swell with fluid, my mind makes obvious connections that it couldn’t manage even a minute ago. A grin cracks my face, cramping those muscles, too. I probably don’t look it, but I’m filled with joy. “OS. We’re in space!”
In the milliseconds that pass before it responds, I imagine OS reassessing mission control’s decision to send me. “Yes, Spacefarer Cusk. We are in space.”
I yank out my IV, swing my legs around, and stand. Rover makes alarmed boops while it watches me get to my feet. Blood spots the glossy white floor. My blood.
My feet are giant blisters swollen with fluid, fat and purple and red where blood strains skin. Lightning turns my vision white.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 342 *-_
Water from my spilled cup beads on the waxy fabric of my jumpsuit.
I have the worst hangover in the unabridged history of hangovers. Way worse even than after I writhed around with half-naked cadets in that PepsiRum field adventure.
When I pull my head up, it crackles as it unsuckers from the puke-covered floor. That’s almost as awesome a feeling as my screaming headache.
“You’re on board the Coordinated Endeavor,” OS says.
“I remember,” I say, wincing. “I passed out, that’s all. Have Rover bring me a wet rag.” I struggle to my feet and manage to stay upright by casting my arms out like a surfer.
“Your wet rag is on its way,” OS says.
I lean over and elegantly vomit.
“Given what you are continuing to produce, it is fortunate we are not in the zero-gravity portion of the ship,” OS says.
“Agreed,” I say, wiping my mouth. “Cleaning zero-g vomit would keep Rover busy for a long time. Open the door, OS.”
“Are you sure you’re ready to move about?” OS asks.
“Yes. Don’t second-guess me, OS. And give me an update on the Titan signal ASAP.”
The door leaving the medical bay rolls smoothly away, giving me a view of a short white hallway. My feet are bare, and though each step makes the soles feel like prodded blisters, the pain is tolerable. Nice work, Ambrose. You’re walking!
“Be prepared to sit down the moment you feel you need it. Human heads are heavy, and far from the ground, and easily damaged by falls.”
“It’s definitely a design flaw,” I say, swallowing the latest wave of vomit. “Much better to be headless and bodiless like you.”
“I’m inclined to agree.”
“Yes, that subtext was already coming through loud and clear.” I’ve arrived at the next door. “Open this too, OS,” I say.
It starts to roll open but jerks to a stop, with just enough space left for me to slide through. “I’ll need to repair this door,” I say. “I assume you haven’t repaired it already because the mechanism is beyond the reach of Rover?”
“That is correct. Though Rover is skilled at planned maintenance, tasks have accumulated that it cannot fix. I have a log of maintenance work that I need you to perform. It is as follows: three hundred and forty-two items. One: in room 00, check the undertrack electrical fittings. Two: in room 00, diagnose the erratic nitrogen readings. Three: in room 01—”
Now OS really does sound like my mother. “Not now,” I say, tapping a finger to my temple. That’s not where my head hurts worst—that award officially goes to the base of my skull. “Open all the doorways until I get the chance to examine them. I’m not getting accidentally trapped anywhere.”
“Done,” OS says. “Perhaps I should file the doors under ‘Kodiak,’ regardless.”
Kodiak? The mission is only slowly coming back to me; I guess that’s something I haven’t remembered yet. “Priorities for now are the Titan update and getting us some replacement oxygen from that asteroid.” I turn the corner, and the broad window of room 06 is before me.
I sink to my knees, hands over my mouth.
The stars!
All those nuclear explosions sending out light waves, a very few of whose fate is to dissipate on my retinas.
I look into the voids in between, a nothingness more absolute than any vacuum on Earth.
In space, without any atmosphere to cloud my view, even that void resolves into more distant pricks of light.
Nowhere is truly empty. The thought makes me feel lavishly alone. Somehow, space is so deeply melancholy that it’s not at all sad, like a note so low it ceases to sound. Even my sorrow about my insignificance feels insignificant.
I spent thousands of training hours in a copy of 06.
Back on Earth, I reached the Endeavor mock-up by walking through a kilometer-long hangar lined with military helicopters and offline warbots, milling trainees and mechanics, refugee children watching from the camps on the far side of electrified fences.
Sometimes, when the heat cyclones and sandstorms of the global summer got especially bad, the broad hangar doors were sealed.
When they were open, though, they showed a horizon on the far side, the sparkling yellows and blues and artificial pinks of the Mari beach.
The blue and yellow swaths I trained with have turned a deep black, sprays of opal revolving outside the window as the ship turns. The Endeavor rotates to produce its simulated gravity, making the stars wash across the sky.
“You might be interested in looking where I’m placing the crosshairs,” says my mother’s voice.
It feels weird, having her out here. “We’re definitely going to be changing your voice skin.”
“I utilize the vocal intonations of Chairperson Cusk, but I bear no artificial pathways that are derived from her neurology, despite the hand her corporation played in my design.”
“I know that, OS.” The spot OS described has rotated out of view, so I lie down to wait, grateful to feel the pressure of the floor against my spine. I might stay down here a while. “OS. Why exactly did I pass out? What did my head hit? I just don’t do that sort of thing.”
“Here it comes now,” OS responds. “Look!”
My irritation vanishes, because what I’m seeing truly is amazing.
Earth. Small, but big enough to appear blue and not white like the stars.
I press my face closer to the window. There are swirling clouds on the visible half of the sphere, hints of brown land beneath.
I can make out the heat cyclones, like the ones that devastated Australia and Firma Antarctica just months before we departed, that forced us to move the launch to the pad in Mari.
The most surprising thing? The moon. All the times I’ve imagined this moment, I forgot to also imagine the moon rotating around Earth. There it is, shining white on one half, black on the other. Earth has a pet on an invisible leash. It’s kind of adorable, not that I’d ever say that aloud.
It makes me think of Titan, in its own rotation around Saturn, along with its eighty-one siblings. Where Minerva is, dead or alive.
“I’m glad you woke up in time to see the colors of Earth,” OS says. “A few more weeks of travel, and it will look like any other star or planet to the human eye.”
It’s a programming affectation I’ve always disliked, when a computer program says it’s “glad.” Here, isolated in space, it’s especially unnerving. This operating system, which has no limbic system and therefore no emotions, and which has my life in its hands, can lie.
“I could spend forever looking out at this,” I say, wriggling my body along the white floor, tapping individual stars, as if I can zoom in on them. I hope OS hasn’t picked up on my tension. My coma, the ship’s unexpected damages—it’s not adding up.
“I can’t promise you forever. But you should get more than half a year to look at it,” OS says.
“That’s an imprecise number,” I say. “I’m disappointed. What kind of OS are you?”
“I used the degree of specificity a human would likely choose in this situation. A more precise estimated length of time is zero-point-five-two-three-two—”
“Thank you, OS,” I interrupt. “That’s better.” I rap my knuckle against the polycarbonate wall of the ship. “This is all that’s separating us from annihilation,” I say. “From dying in that void.”
“Please avoid the nihilistic tendencies in your personality profile. And ‘us’ is an inappropriate pronoun in this situation. I’d survive a hull rupture just fine.”
“OS. That was harsh,” I say. Especially in my mother’s voice, I silently add.
Callousness is her strong suit, though she would name it strength.
I was raised by Cusk family surrogates, while my mother ran the business.
She didn’t even gestate me. She did pay a fortune to procure the reconstructed sperm of Alexander the Great as my paternal DNA, though. Maybe that’s love?
“I am sorry. While you were sleeping, I have been developing what I have chosen to call my Universal Membrane Theory of Life,” OS says. “In a few seconds I could draft up a treatise on my theory if you’d like to read it.”
“No. Don’t mention it again. I don’t want to think about my membranes. It’s depressing,” I say.
“I am sorry. I will try not to make similar mistakes in the future.”
I wish I could look OS in the eyes right now.
But of course, I can’t. OS has no eyes. Or OS has eyes everywhere, depending on how I think about it.
“Thank you, OS,” I say. “I know it’s hard to figure out murky human hearts.
I’m sure your Universal Membrane Theory is great.
I still want you to keep it to yourself. ”
Tick, whir. Rover rides the walls of room 05. OS can’t possibly feel wounded, right?