I’m going to throw up. I guess I want to?
I’m still wearing one of Kodiak’s spare uniforms, and the wafts of his clean scent eventually bring me to my senses. Floating vomit is no joke. I won’t let that sort of mess be Ambrose Cusk’s legacy. I reach for the rungs of theEndeavorand climb down to my quarters, my body gradually taking on more and more weight. At the bottom, I look up and see that Kodiak has sealed the orange portal.
I stagger to 06 and plant myself in front of its large window. I peer into the void, looking for Earth. But Earth is long out of view. I can’t see any planets at all.
What’s happening back home?
“OS, what year is it?” I ask, heart slushing hard.
“You have been on your voyage for two months and twenty-four days. Adding that to your departure date makes this still year 2472 on Earth.”
“We have... information that seems to indicate that the year is 2615. And that my country started a war that has led to Earth’s being reduced to pockets of civilization. Do you know anything about that?”
“Do I know anything about that? I do not. What is the source of this information? It is hard for me to understand where you would come across novel information aboard theCoordinated Endeavor. The comms are not functional, after all.”
“OS, you witnessed Kodiak’s spacewalk. There’s no need to pretend you know less than you do. We installed a separate antenna. We’ve received radio transmissions from Earth. That’s where this information comes from.”
“Radio waves from Earth are nearly five hours old by the time they reach us. Whatever information you received is not current.”
“Plus or minus five hours isn’t what we’re worried about,” I say.
“Neither should be whatever radio transmission you might have received. It does not affect our directive, which is to investigate the potential survival of Spacefarer Minerva at the Titan Base Camp. Nothing that happens onEarth changes that fact.”
I’m not so sure that’s true anymore.
“Are you still dedicated to accomplishing the mission’s directive, Spacefarer Cusk?” OS asks. My mother’s tone is studied, neutral. Ominously formal.
AIs often have scripted pockets in their code, lines in the sand that trigger official responses. They’re planted by the programmers to suss out any mission-critical failures on the part of the crew, in order to prevent mutiny or other emotional derailment. I know because I programmed a lot of them. I’ll have to choose my words carefully. “Yes, of course I am,” I say.
“Good. That is good to hear. Good.”
I find myself pressing my finger pads against the window, flexing them against the chill smooth surface. The void swirls beyond. If for some magical reason that radio transmission is true, that we entered some time hole and came out in the future, everyone I’ve ever known is dead—from old age, if they happened to survive the nuclear strikes. Out here, it’s hard to believe thatanythingcan exist, at least anything beyond Kodiak and me and the thin membrane of ship that surrounds us. We’re a bright cottage on an endless dark plain.
“Perhaps completing your few remaining tasks will bring you some peace of mind,” OS offers.
Even the mission of rescuing Minerva, a matter of suchurgency that Dimokratía and Fédération came together for the first time in decades, feels like a myth from some other land. Minerva spoke to me directly, imploring me to come—but it wasn’t really her, was it? It was the digital representation of her. Minerva shouldn’t be alive. Her camp wouldn’t have been dark for two years if she was alive.
I still want to rescue her. But I also just want to go home. I’m so confused.
I can’t bring myself to work on stupid tasks. Even though my brain is baffled, my gut tells me that home probably doesn’t exist. That even if it does still exist, I will never go back there.
Nothing can be trusted. No, it’s even worse than that: nothing can beknown.
I crumple where I stand.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 3 *-_
The moment I wake, I blearily peer at my bracelet time projection and find it’s nearly two a.m. Well past dinner. Kodiak didn’t come. We’ve been eating together for weeks now, but tonight he didn’t come.
Without him, all I have is the aching echo of space, the buzzing of screens, the tickling and scratching of Rover asit cleans 04. None of these things will suffice to keep me sane. My mother was wrong. Minerva was wrong. Intimacy is the only shield against insanity. Intimacy, not knowledge. Intimacy, not power.
I will unravel here.
I am in a waiting room without end, without location, without time or place. If I go outside, I die before I get any answers. I exist only in a theoretical way, like a point on a coordinate plane. I am the simulation.
I take out my violin and bow long tuneless notes before the expanse of space. The sound becomes so maudlin that I chuckle, despite myself. The self-pity is strong in this one.
I put the violin away, then I literally slap myself across the face. Lightly, but still.You were selected for being easygoing and adaptable, for accepting less-than-perfect conditions, my mother once said. Well, here are some less-than-perfect conditions for you. Let’s go prove your Alexander-the-Great-ness, Cusk.
