Chapter 1 #2
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.
“From 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.”
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 be 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.