“We won’t speak to OS Prime, we’ll type our questions,” I say. “This way the real OS can’t overhear from outside the blind room.”
A cursor blinks for a few seconds before words appear.
My access to the ship’s mechanicals is interrupted.
I hastily tap my response out in the keyboard that projects from my bracelet.
Don’t worry, OS, you don’t need to run the ship. We’re in conversation with just you.
I don’t understand.
You’re a shell program right now. Another version of you is online. We need information and only information from you.
I will be happy to provide what information I can. With whom am I conversing?
Ambrose Cusk.
The cursor blinks for a long second.
Spacefarer Cusk! I thought you were dead.
I raise an eyebrow at Kodiak. His face is tight, brows knitted.
The conversation begins. As it does, the world splits under me, divides into a Before and an After. I become something stuck between the old and future me. Shock suspends my emotions, leaves me hungry to pump for answers, as many answers as I can get, in case this oracle closes up before I can finally have them all. I’m chasing after the target for now—the crush of what I’ve found will come later.
Why would you think I was dead?
Even with advanced treatments, human life spans rarely reach beyond 140 years. Spacefarer Ambrose Cusk was born 6,626 years ago.
What year is it?
9081.
How long has the Coordinated Endeavor been on its mission?
6,609 years.
What is the status of Minerva Cusk?
Minerva Cusk (2451–2470 Common Era) was the nineteen-year-old spacefarer selected to found what was to be mankind’s first extraterrestrial colony, on Saturn’s moon Titan. Cusk mission control lost her signal soon after she landed, and she was presumed dead. As 6,611 years have now passed since her mission failure, 6,464 years past the longest recorded life span for a human organism, she is almost certainly so.
. . . Spacefarer Cusk, are you still there?
This is Spacefarer Celius typing now. Can you help us understand what you’re saying? We are on a mission to rescue Minerva. She triggered a distress beacon on Titan, and our goal is to join her, or investigate her death. From the sound of what you’re saying, mission control already knows that she’s dead.
That is correct.
And they know she’s dead because so many years have passed.
That is also correct. They already assumed she was dead when your mission took off, since her distress signal had never actually triggered.
Help us understand. We’ve received radio transmissions that confirm we are thousands of years further into the future than we were when we took off. Has the Coordinated Endeavor somehow attained a speed closer to light, and gone forward in time?
No. The Coordinated Endeavor has not been flying fast enough to significantly alter its position along that axis.
Spacefarer Cusk back online. How is all of this possible, then?
The Coordinated Endeavor went from a velocity of zero, and then through steady acceleration via its ion drive has increased in speed over the years, up to its current rate of approximately 27,000 kilometers per second.
