“I think you’re a clone,” Kodiak says flatly.
“Wait,” I say, biting down nausea, counting and breathing, the techniques I learned back in training. Was I everintraining? “You mean right now I’m a clone?”
Kodiak squats next to me, bare ankle and hot breath on the back of my neck. “Listen to me. The blacked-out memory, the missing spacesuits, the copies of you we saw in storage. It’s not such a leap.”
“Those were copies waiting to be used, fine. But I’m not a clone. I’mme.”
He doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t need to. I hear the absurdity of my own words. A clone wouldn’t think it wasanything but itself, a person, the only interior thing in the world, more real than any other.
I let out a long breath. “Kodiak,” I finally say, “would you fetch my violin?”
“Of course,” he says.
Soon the wood is in my arms. I don’t play it. I hold it.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 80 *-_
I dream of the swirling stars, of the Mari beach, the beach I was onceon, that I had to have been on, otherwise how could I remember it now? I try to take deep breaths, five seconds in and five seconds out, but my thoughts skid and I start panicking all over again, and have to drag myself back out and into breathing again. I wonder if natural-born humans dream the way I do, or if I’m having clone dreams. There’s no way to know. It’s impossible to live as someone else. We only get one consciousness, and then we eventually lose even that. Even clones do.
I clutch Kodiak’s forearm, press my forehead into his flesh, my fingernails gouging skin. He gasps in pain, but then is quiet. He doesn’t remove his arm. I press my lips against the soft flesh covering his pulse.
Then my neck is in pain because I’ve slept on the floor.I concentrate on this sensation, ground myself with it. This pain is real. It’s confirmation and it’s consolation.I am a creature that can feel pain.
Kodiak has laid a light blanket over me. “Thank you,” I mumble as I sit up. But he’s not there. I call his name.
The only response is a clanging sound from deeper in theAurora.
I make it to my feet, anklebones creaking, and stretch out my limbs. I lumber toward the sound, past the blind room, around the edge of the water reservoir’s silvered surface, into the tunnel leading from theAurorato the center of the joined ships. There I find the source of the sounds.
Right where the yellow portal would be, if theAurorahad one, Kodiak has busted through the wall, revealing a wire-clogged passageway, just like on theEndeavor. “Kodiak?” I call.
“I’m here,” he responds from somewhere inside the ship. “Don’t move, I’m on my way out.”
Feet, legs, hips, and finally all of Kodiak. He hops down and gets to his feet, frowning as he looks at me. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yes, fine,” I say impatiently. “What were you doing in there? You busted another hole in the ship!”
“A little reconnaissance. And it’s as I suspected.”
“What’s as you suspected?”
“You’re not the only clone around here.”
Long seconds go by as I stare at him. Finally I manage to speak. “Oh.”
“At least we’re not alone in it,” he says, cracking his knuckles.
“You don’t seem as cut up as I was.”
“I spent my whole life feeling like I was a robot pretending to be a human. It just got confirmed.”
I shake my head. “Everyone feels like an imposter, even when they’re real people. That doesn’t count.”
He holds there, impassive.
I crack my neck. “Well, if you want to curl up and wallow for a few hours, I owe you one. Thanks for laying a blanket on me.”
“I’d like to take credit, but that wasn’t me,” Kodiak says. “It must have been Rover.”
