“—is unshielded,” he finishes. “We knew that.”
Angry tears dot my eyes. “We didn’t think we’d be manually nav-ing. OS Prime is supposed to do that.”
“You programmed a shell to operate within the most sophisticated piece of equipment humankind has ever created,” Kodiak says. “I think you’ve done amazingly well.”
I run my hands through Kodiak’s hair, letting the strands that come free drift to the floor. He winces. I stroke his head again, hoping to erase his shame. He closes his eyes, leans his head against my stomach.
“I failed us,” I say.
“Stop it. That’s not a productive thought.”
What’s going to happen to us?
“We’ll alternate who pilots to prevent too much radiation from accumulating in our bodies,” I say.
Kodiak shakes his head, rolling it, forehead to crown, against the muscles of my stomach. “Absolutely not. It’s a long trip. I need you healthy, to eventually take care of me. If we both get our radiation dosing at the start, then you won’t be able to look after me once I can’t nav anymore.”
Something about his words doesn’t make sense. I feel I’m being manipulated, but I’m too exhausted to come up with the reason why. My brain still aches from when Rover electrocuted me.
“Let’s not talk more about it for now. I want to eat dinner, I want to be with you, and I want to see those galaxies,” Kodiak says quietly. “Show me our solar system from the outside.”
After we eat, Kodiak lumbers to my bunk and collapses flat. He says he’s napping, but I recognize the look of someone desperately trying not to puke. I hold his hand, careful to give him space. It’s the worst to have people crowding you when you need to throw up.
I sit on the floor beside him and run my fingers along his hand, its muscles, tendons, and joints. The long thumbs, the dusting of black hair on the backs of his fingers, the lifelines of his palms. Do our clones all have the same lifelines? Maybe I should sketch a picture for our later incarnations to discover and compare.
What is this life?
There’s a kernel of something in that thought, something that looks like a solution to our predicament. I can’t think of what it is in these conditions.
Instead I kiss that palm.
Kodiak inclines his head weakly toward me, eyes stillclosed. “I should get back up there. I need to check our heading.”
“What you need to do is rest,” I say.
“That is true,” he admits. “But I also need not to crash us into an asteroid at thirty thousand kilometers per second.”
“Kodiak,” I say slowly, pressing my lips into his palm, “we’re not going to survive four years to get to this planet.”
“I think you’re right.”
“So why are we doing this?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asks. “We’re going out on our own terms.”
I tease my teeth against the tight warm skin of his palm, run my lips over the calluses at the base of each finger. “Are these really our own terms?”
Maybe they are. These are the real galaxies and stars around us, for the first time. Our previous selves wouldn’t have gotten to see them. They were murdered by an operating system before they had any idea of their real purpose. We’ll die on the way to a planet that almost certainly won’t be able to harbor us. But we’re in control of that destiny. OS and Rover aren’t active anymore. We’re not living inside a manipulation. Or we are, but it’s the manipulation we choose.
“Kodiak,” I say, my eyes searching his for any clues to how he takes what I’m saying. “I want to die at the same time as you.”
He shuts his eyes heavily. “I want you to live.”
“Some versions of us will get to live their full lives. But us? We’re not going to make it to a planet we can survive on.”
Kodiak turns away from me, I figure so I can’t see he’s lying. “I’m not going to let you nav,” he says. “There’s a chance we’ll make it to land.”
“I’m not going to fight you on this,” I say, rubbing my cheek against his hand, “because I know it’s how you want to live. But I know what I’m going to do while you’re nav-ing. I’m going to record everything we know. Offline, on an actual surface somewhere. Somewhere Rover won’t ever be able to reach, not in the thousands of years that will pass before OS wakes up our next set of clones. I’ll give our future selves information, so they can make their own choices. Even if they’re doomed never to leave this ship, at least they’ll begin with the awareness that we’ve had to fight so hard for.”
