Chapter
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.