The ship hums. OS’s prattle sounds very far away. “Kodiak?”
There he is, near his airlock, body tall but shoulders slumped. A jagged shard of polycarbonate is in his hands, its edges sharp enough that they’ve laced his palms with cuts. The skin of Kodiak’s knuckles, too, is red with the blood that’s risen under the surface. The section of wall that leads to the hidden interiors of the ship has been hacked further open, the polycarb bent and fractured. Despite Kodiak’s strength, he hasn’t been able to do too much damage. Fists and polycarbonate are only so effective against ship-grade walls.
“Hey,” I say. “Give me that.”
He looks down at the polycarb in his own hands, surprised, then holds it out. I take the bloody shard from him, lay it on the wrecked tabletop, then hold my arms open, letting him know that he’s free to come to me.
His shoulders slump further, but he doesn’t take a step.
“Come here,” I say.
Two quick heels on the floor, then Kodiak’s in my arms. I’m surprised by the weight of him, and lean on the broken table, easily ignoring the pain of the broken polycarb against me when I have the warm mass of Kodiak wrapping itself around me, chin pressing into the top of my head, my face crushed against his chest, the soft feel of skin, the pulseof blood, the scent of hair and flesh.
He’s crying, and it’s almost soundless except for the body motion of it, hiccuping heaves and tears moistening the flow of air. I hold him as he weeps, my own eyes dry but my body heaving in time to his, its own sort of sobbing, so ferocious that it skips tears and heads right into convulsions.
We slump together to the floor, onto our sides. I’m only just able to breathe against him. His body lifts away, and I assume it’s because he’s making space for me. “I’m so glad that you—” I start to say.
His lips are on mine. For a moment I’m too startled to react, then I give back as hard as he’s giving me, pushing his head back, leaving his lips so my mouth can travel along his neck, the lines of his shoulders, the V where the skin of his chest appears over the top of his shirt. He gasps, then tilts my head so he can look into my eyes, the tans of his irises flashing as his gaze travels my body.
Then his hands follow, and he’s unfastened the front of my jumpsuit so he can press his fingers against my abdomen, snaking along the inside of my hip, the other hand traveling up to stroke my chest.
I’m crying again, at the sudden joy of being touched, at the longing that’s finally been released. I’m outside my mind and outside my thoughts. Emotions are all I contain.
Kodiak sits up to look at me. “I’m sorry, is this okay?”
Now I’m laughing, great heaves fueled by agony as muchas joy. “I don’t know, Kodiak,” I manage, “is this the right time?”
He slaps the side of my rib cage, then his hand rubs that same spot, as if healing it, his fingers under my back even as his thumb presses into my chest. His voice hums as he returns to kissing the base of my throat.
We spend I don’t know how long rubbing and grinding, jumpsuits still partially on but parts of them spread open so we can explore snatches of body, so we can kiss stretches of exposed skin: ankles, the insides of elbows, hips and the valleys between shoulders. We toy with the fasteners that would remove our clothes entirely, but we each hold back without saying a word. Neither of us can know the first thing about what we’re really feeling, not in the intensity of this shock. We’ll still be around tomorrow. No need to rush.
It’s so calming, this feeling, this sweaty-haired, tousled, body-entangled proof of shared existence. I rub my chin, red and irritated from Kodiak’s stubble.
He grazes the tender spot with his fingertips. “I’m sorry.”
“It was definitely worth it,” I say, kissing him again on the lips even as the skin on my chin lights up.
“That was unexpected,” Kodiak says, his eyes again running along the whole of me, wrinkled sweaty jumpsuit and all.
“Well,” I say, “what else are a couple of doomed clones in the middle of infinite space going to do with themselves?”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 80 *-_
Ever since Kodiak and I came together, OS has been totally silent.
We’ve ripped up the remainder of the furniture from theAuroraside of the ship, hacking away at joints and seams with the best tools we have over here, which, unfortunately, are just shards of polycarb. It’s exhausting, ineffective work—and yet there’s also something calming about it. Shoulder to shoulder, hunched over our labor, it’s sort of like we’re in a frontier house. Survival is the dominating question—any mistake could mean the end of us—but we’re together in finding the answer. We’re somehow more together because we know our lives are ending.
Once we’ve barricaded the blind room, we stand at the edge and stare out. My arm is around Kodiak’s hips; his is around my waist. I’ve got my other arm braced against the wall, as if that will be any help if OS starts to vent us out. TheAurora’s airlock is on the secure side of the blind room, and the orange portal is shut, but it would only take running a few lines of code for OS to open that portal and send us sailing into space. We’d slam into a few walls on the way out, but our mangled bodies would make it out there eventually. If not, we’d just freeze inside the ship. Or suffocate. Or freezeandsuffocate.
But OS doesn’t seem to want to destroy us yet. Makes sense—we still have work to do on the ship, and it’s only got so many copies of us to use before they run out.
I’m surprised that OS hasn’t tried to reason with us, to bargain or coax or threaten. It’s just left us in silence.
Maybe all its forecasts end with our eventually complying?
“What’ll we do if that door opens and Rover comes through?” I ask.
“We retreat into the blind room. We prepare to fight,” Kodiak says.
