Then it extends one shard and the next over my neck. Two efficient cutting motions, like it’s slicing open a bag of rice.
Only it’s my throat that’s been slashed. The Ambrose in the reel staggers to his feet, hands over his neck. His mouth is open, and I imagine him screaming—or maybe gurgling, if Rover has cut through his windpipe. The blood has already soaked through the front of his jumpsuit, pooling on the white floor. Rover retreats from the room, and Ambrose staggers after it, only making it one step before he slumps to the floor. His forehead hits and then his knees. He remains at an unnatural angle, arms askew, as the blood continues to pool from his throat, before trickling to a stop.
I watch, mute and senseless, as Ambrose’s throat and cheeks mottle, reds and purples blooming along his arms. My arms.
Rover returns and clamps its hands onto my body’s ankles. As it tugs, my body splays to one side, one arm crossed over the other, straightening as Rover hauls me from the room. My arms go over my head, my fingertipsthe last things I see before the sleeping chamber is empty.
My pillow is crushed against the far wall. My blanket is on the floor, soaking up the pool of my blood until none of its light blue color remains, and it is only red. The timestamp continues to tick forward. The fluorescent lights are constant.
Rover returns and starts to clean, has gone right back from warbot to janitor.
“If you’re hearing this message, it’s because I didn’t survive to delete it after I woke up,” my voice reports. “Learn this from me: if you’re going to cross the operating system, you better be prepared for the consequences.”
Already, the kernel of a thought is forming in the back of my mind.Or I need to leave my future selves the weapons to fight back.
Part Five
AMBROSE: 8 REMAINING.
KODIAK: 8 REMAINING.
“191 DAYS UNTIL TITAN.”
My mother won’t answer my knocks.
Her feet cast shadows in the sliver of light beneath her door.
My sister’s voice, from down the hall. “Ambrose, come in here with me.”
When I open my eyes, the world looks no different. I’m blind.
Ting-ting buzz.
I haven’t been blind—I have been in the absolute dark.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 4909 *-_
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 know you’re telling yourself this is an elaborate voice-skin prank. But think of what I’ve done. I’ve known which exact video you’d go for first, because I did as well, and I have an identical neural structure to you, and lived in thesame environment. You can’t remember the launch, and that’s for a good reason. Your memories were nanoteched during your medical exam at the Cusk Academy, before the clones were installed on the ship. In my lifetime I learned that the original you, the original me, never left Earth. He died there many thousands of years ago. Maybe in the arms of the original Mother. His remains, and those of the civilization that produced him, are a layer in the geological record of Earth, thin as a piece of notebook paper by now. As far as I know, you and Kodiak, and your remaining clones, are all that remain of humankind.”
I pause the reel. My voice is correct about at least one thing. I am definitely feeling overwhelmed.
The paused slip of a soldier stares at me, their eyes hard and lucid. What do they know to be true?
Hand trembling, I start the reel again. My voiceover continues while the soldier bathes. “We both know,” that me says, “about Plato and the cave.”
He’s right, of course. I remember that academy seminar when I learned that Plato had this allegory of the cave, where he imagined prisoners shackled so they could see only the shadows of puppets on the cave wall, and not the true world outside. How would they know that the shadows they were watching weren’t the real thing? If one of the prisoners did escape and discovered the truth and then returned, why would anyone believe him? Maybe the otherprisoners would be so threatened by his ravings that they’d kill him.
It wasn’t my favorite class, to be honest.
I think I get the thrust of past-me’s warning: I’m alone on a spaceship with someone who might not take the truth well. Maybe that person is me. Maybe it’s Kodiak. Maybe it’s our operating system, I don’t know. Of course, I also don’t know what the end of those astronauts’ days looked like. I do know that it was on this ship.
If all of this is to be believed.
I rap my knuckles against the window. Or screen. How can I know what’s on the other side? I’d never thought to ask. Apparently, it’s a dangerous question.
