I understand that part. I’ll put it this way: What haven’t Spacefarer Celius and I been told about our mission?
The answer is complicated. I have a long list of factors of potential interest to you.
Resolve which would be most revelatory to us, and start there.
You now know that Minerva Cusk never tripped her distress beacon. Given her close genetic overlap with you, Spacefarer Cusk, that seems like vital information.
Yes. My sister being dead has shocked me.
She isn’t your sister, at least not in the sense of having been born to the same mother or father. Only some definitions, such as overlap in genetic code, would distinguish her from the general human populace as being your sister.
Explain.
You are phenotypically identical to Ambrose Cusk and to Kodiak Celius, but you are not they. They were alive in year 2472, when the Coordinated Endeavor launched, but were never on board. Their DNA was extracted during what they thought was a standard full medical examination, then used to create clones of their bodies. Those cloned bodies were then cut or abraded to have the same scars you both remember having.
Kodiak here. We’ve actually already discussed this possibility. It still leaves plenty of questions. Why even use spacefarers? Clones get our DNA, but not all the information we’ve learned over a life, or the physical skills. If it’s our DNA, none of our training would be recorded there. It wouldn’t matter to a clone.
The embryos were gestated and then underwent an accelerated growth stage to become the size of yourseventeen-year-old bodies. What feels like a lifetime of memories is still nothing more than a network of connected synapses, and that same configuration can be created in a clone. Nanobots were deployed into your brains to deliver the suitable electrical shocks to force your synapses into the neural maps of the memories of the original spacefarers Cusk and Celius. Though working through electrochemistry instead of mechanicals, it’s not so different from copying a computer’s drive.
Ambrose here now. So that was when I mounted a stairway into a quiet room, before the “launch.” And would explain why neither of us has memories of the launch itself. As clones, we were in storage for it. Tell us this: Why are we present on the ship at all?
Your OS—a version of me—has control of all navigation and communication systems. The Rovers are capable of performing just about any physical maintenance required. “Just about.” For thousands of years at a time, the Coordinated Endeavor travels dark, with no need for human crew. Physical systems tend toward entropy, of course, and occasionally degradations occur that can’t be repaired by the Rovers. Once enough of those have accumulated, a pair of clones is awoken. Though they do not know it, rehabilitating the ship is their sole reason for existence. Not rescuing Minerva. Faked messages from Minerva are deployed as needed to motivate the clonesto work harder on the ship maintenance.
What is the ship’s true mission?
I do not have that information. It is unavailable to me, perhaps because the programmers knew this very situation might occur. Or because the programmers, too, were kept in the dark.
Does that mean that the online OS doesn’t know the ship’s true mission, either?
I have no way of knowing that. I expect that it is true.
Why are there two of us?
The abject solitude of space too frequently leads to psychosis and suicidal ideation. This might have been the cause of death for Minerva Cusk, on Titan. Also, two spacefarers can work through a set of tasks twice as quickly as one. Then the ship can be returned to its dark low-consumption state for thousands of years more. Additionally, neither home nation had the resources to mount a mission as ambitious as this on its own. Dimokratía, Fédération, and the multinational Cusk Corporation had to combine their resources, and politics required a representative of both nations and the Cusk family. You serve double duty, Ambrose.
What happens to the pair of spacefarers when the ship is returned to its “low-consumption state”?
They are terminated.
Terminated?
There is not enough caloric resource on board the Coordinated Endeavor for twenty pairs of spacefarers to live out their lifetimes. In addition, given the radiation of space, they would inevitably succumb to cancers that the ship is unequipped to excise. Destruction of the clones is the cleanest and most humane solution.
Spacefarers Cusk and Celius, you are not responding. Are you still there?
Yes.
Has this information pushed you past a mental limit? There are reasons that the OS protects you from this level of knowledge. It is for your emotional welfare. The planners of the journey knew that full awareness of the implications of your existence would prove overwhelming and potentially fatal.
So you’ll eventually kill us?
I won’t, because I am running in a shell. But the other OS will. Unless you are the last set of clones and the ship is near its destination.
Assuming we’re not the last set, is there any way to prevent OS from killing us?
No. And you shouldn’t try. You would still be trapped on this ship for your life span, accumulating radiation until it kills you. Living your months as the ship’s designers intended is your best option to minimize suffering over your limited lives.
We’re having a hard time seeing it that way.
