Another shudder, and then I’m deafened. The world becomes a roaring dark, cold and stinging. Then it doesn’t feel cold; instead it feels boiling hot.
The force of the vacuum yanks at our arms and legs, wrenches them in their sockets, sets our bodies hurtling against the restraints. Surely the belts will rip free, surely our muscles will pulverize and their gore will seep throughthe fabric. I don’t want space to have us. I want to die here, in this bed.
I use my last effort to force my arms back toward my body, to clutch Kodiak even tighter to me, and then the boil inside me gets so hot that it’s not painful anymore, it’s my senses rising from me, it’s only the boil and not the pain of the boil, and for an instant I’m above myself, above both of our dead bodies.
Death arrives with a roar. It is a sudden storm.
Part Three
AMBROSE: 12 REMAINING.
KODIAK: 12 REMAINING.
“191 DAYS UNTIL TITAN.”
Minerva’s voice turns urgent:You let me go alone. I need you. Save me, little brother!
I’m choking. Have I been the one drowning?
_-* Tasks Remaining: 1872 *-_
I finally spy the other spacefarer. I’ve been looking for him for days, but only now do I catch the barest glimpse. Within his half of the revolving craft I see a stretch of dark hair, a red nylon suit. He’s facing away from me, looking up. Like he’s listening to something. For a moment his head inclines my way. Then he stalks off.
Stranger. Why have you thought of me?
I will him to return. I don’t want him to find me watching and waiting, though, so I force myself to leave the room. For solace, I pick up my violin.
I seem to have lost my calluses, and just a half hour of playing becomes too painful for my finger pads. It’s also strangely quiet; for some reason they’ve packed my violin out with a polycarb bridge. I put the instrument away, then plant myself in front of 06’s window and stare out into space. It’s disorienting and obliviating. I could stare at it forever.
I imagine this other spacefarer beside me. Conjure that glimpse of skin and hair and body.
All I can say is that it’s giving me feelings. Mission control didn’t send me out with porn, not exactly, but they were well aware of the, um, physical needs of a teenage boy out in space, and uploaded plenty of images of scantily clad people into the partial internet image that’s saved in the ship. Inspired by the intriguing boy I just saw, I do a search for “Dimokratía Spacefarer.”
There isn’t an exact match, but I do find all sorts of Dimokratía soldiers in prestige propaganda shots, government reels made to show how healthy and young and beautiful it can be to die for one’s country. An even mix of male and female, unlike their actual army. Very few blur gender expression, just as I’d expect from Dimokratía. I take a while to scan through them all, looking for the elfin, the sensitive. Eventually, even within the strict gender coding of Dimokratía propaganda, I find what I’m looking for.
They’re in a military uniform, a canvas survival bag slung over their shoulder, hiking along a canyon of towering old-growth trees. Their breath comes out in clouds, and their cheeks are rosy from the cold, but still their shirt is open to the navel, and the light dapples a muscled belly. The lean aesthetics are just right. I can imagine a film crew at the ready with a blanket as soon as the shoot is over.
I watch as they forage, selecting chunks of edible bracketfungus to place in the bag, picking through mosses, labeling some of them before placing them, too, in the survival bag. It’s all very calming, very compelling, very sexy. The moving image is hyperreal—it resolves wherever I focus. It’s even more sensual than real life, which is why we have rehab centers back in Fédération for people trying to break free from hyperreal porn addiction.
I could definitely get into this wandering soldier. I run a hand over my throat as I watch them forage, focusing the reel in on the corner of lips, the hollow of shoulder, the flexing of ankle.
There’s no sound, strangely. The data must have been corrupted, or only partly uploaded. I turn up the volume on my bracelet. Whenever I’m looking at, um, heated material, I turn to my earpieces for sound, to get myself a scrap of privacy from OS.
Only a hissing noise. I turn it up higher. Now there’s something within the static. A voice.
My voice.
The reel is still going. The soldier relaxes against a tree, the camera panning sensually over their body. But what my voice is saying has nothing to do with a vigorous forest outing.
What my voice is saying is definitely not sexy.
“I knew I’d find you here,” this fake me says. “I can predict your tastes, because they’re my own. Because youareme. You’re probably on day eight or so. You’re watching the very half-porn I chose to calm my own nerves early in my voyage. I’ve uploaded this audio track with the right sampling rate so the file size is equal, hoping the change is undetectable to OS. I know you’re listening with your earpieces, because that’s how I did it, too. I’m about to explain something to you. Pause this and come back if you feel overwhelmed at any point.”
I’m smiling. Once vocal skins became widespread, it was a popular prank to send fake messages to friends with someone else’s voice. “This is Devon Mujaba, send me nudes,” that sort of thing. At the height of that fad, unless you saw the human in front of you speaking the words, it was better to assume someone was taking the piss out of you. This is an elaborate prank indeed, but a lot of the people in mission control are former classmates of mine, and know uploading “a message to myself” is just the kind of practical joke that will make me feel right at home.
While the waify Dimokratía soldier rinses their body in a mountain stream, dipping a piece of moss in glacial water and running it over their ribs, I listen to my words.
The fake me tells a fabulous tale of clones and multiple lifetimes, of a heated connection with the Dimokratía stranger across the orange door. I smile. Clearly I’m being set up to run out and embarrass myself.
