Kodiak pulls me in close. “Yes. We should leave. Are you okay?”
“You already asked me that! I’m fine!” As we turn, I see light glinting on more polycarb farther back. “What’s that?” I ask.
Kodiak looks at me with worried eyes. Pitying eyes. “I don’t want you to see the rest. We should go.”
“No, I’m looking now,” I say, floating forward and adjusting the hanging polycarb-wrapped body so I can see behind it.
My hand is still on the side of the first naked frigid body when the one behind it comes into view. Wrapped in polycarb, motionless. Identical to the first.
Identical to me.
“What’s going on here?” I stammer.
“I don’t know,” Kodiak says softly. “Come on, we’ll get you out of here.”
“It’sme,” I say stupidly, pushing this body to one side. There’s another behind it, hanging in matching polycarb,like something waiting to be picked up at the dry cleaner. Only it’s another set of organs and meat. Another human body.
As I sift through, the bodies I’ve released swing up and around. One nearly bowls me over, then the next finishes the deed, sending me sprawling against the engine cylinder. I’ve bitten my lip, sending beads of red spraying through the low-gravity air.
“There are twelve of them,” Kodiak says.
“Why?”I manage to ask.
“They’re probably in this precise spot because the engine’s mass shields them from radiation. And so we won’t see them. But as to why there are copies of you on the ship at all, I have no idea,” Kodiak says. He rubs his hands up and down my arms. “You’re freezing. And we’re getting irradiated. Let’s go, Ambrose.”
“I’m . . . that’s . . .”
“Now.” Kodiak grips my hand and pushes off the engine, leading me backward. I can’t even turn around, just let myself float along with him. “There’s some cold metal coming up,” he says gently, “so be careful you don’t frostbite yourself... there, that’s right, this way. Now you go first.”
At his urging, I get onto my belly so I can slither through the final portion of the passage. I tumble, barely catching myself as I enter gravity, landing on the floor at an awkwardangle that gives me no option but to roll into the wall.
I try to get up, but I can’t. I don’t want to see anything more, so I press the heels of my palms against my eyes, hard enough that my vision goes purple.
I’ve beencopied.
What’s the purpose of those copies?
There’s warmth near me, near the curled-up nautilus of me. There’s only one warm thing for thousands of miles around, and he’s placed his body around mine. I should feel relief at that, but all I feel is empty, empty, empty.
What am I?
_-* Tasks Remaining: 80 *-_
What happens next is all feeling and no smarts: Kodiak leads me places, and I go willingly, but my mind can’t process, can’t plan, can’t understand. My world has been cracked open. Scent of Kodiak, clacking of Rover, chill fluorescence of the ship’s lights, zero g and then gravity again as Kodiak lugs me to his quarters.
He wraps my fingers around a cup. I don’t drink. I watch the surface. I listen to the air.
Kodiak tells me to drink. I stare at him. I want to ask him why I should, but I don’t want to make him wrestlewith something that can’t be wrestled.
What chance is there of Minerva being alive, if my own existence isn’t what I thought it was?
I’m just going to leave this right here,I say, or I think I say, and place the cup on the ground. I lie on my side. The side that isn’t just mine. There are twelve more of me, hanging in polycarb, waiting to be used. Have already been used?
What thefuckfor?
Kodiak, I whisper,what do you understand? What do I understand?
There’s no answer. Kodiak’s hovering over me, but he’s not speaking. Maybe I didn’t say any words aloud. I try again.
