It doesn’t move, just keeps its arms out, ready to jolt us. Two Rover arms are more than enough to defend the narrow space.
If our previous selves hadn’t prepared us for this combat.
Kodiak makes two quick steps toward Rover. It’s instantly in motion, whipping its arms forward.
...which is when I toss the EMP bomb.
It reaches Rover before Kodiak does—and, since the robot is busy attacking Kodiak, it can’t defend itself from the projectile. When the coil hits Rover’s casing, the thin polycarb surrounding the battery shatters and triggers 1000kV. Not enough to do any damage to the rest of the room, but enough to take out Rover. With a white flash, its arms clatter to the ground.
“Thanks for the schematics, old Ambrose,” I whisper.
“Up and at ’em,” Kodiak says, body-slamming his way through the printed covering of the engine room and into the zero-g space beyond. “Hurry up, before OS can get another Rover online to send after us.”
“Don’t have to ask twice,” I say as I follow him into the engine area.
It’s a warren of hissing metal surfaces. Strange pounding sounds surround us, from outside the dim shaking light of our headlamps. Following the directions left by our past selves, we navigate our way to the rack, where, sure enough, there are seven Kodiaks lined up, one after another.
“Abominations,” Kodiak spits.
I float along the stack, looking at Kodiak, Kodiak motionless and Kodiak repeated, his handsome face made horrifying by sealed plastic and preservative juices.
Kodiak gags as he puts a hand on the first one. He uses a jagged piece of polycarb to slice into the plastic. “Don’tyou want me to do it?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “I should be the one. I don’t want you to have to live with killing me. You can do you.”
The top of the plastic coating is open now. The clone’s head lolls. Kodiak places a palm against his own forehead. For a moment the Kodiaks are facing each other, near-exact copies of themselves.
OS’s voice comes from elsewhere in the ship. For us to detect it here, within the inhabited areas my mother’s voice must be positively thundering. “Do not do this! You are jeopardizing the only future for humankind.”
Kodiak holds the polycarb blade to his clone’s neck.
“This is murder!” comes OS’s drowned cry. “History will judge you harshly.”
“Go judge yourself,” Kodiak mutters as he drags the blade across the clone’s throat.
There’s no heart beating in the clone, and no gravity, so his blood emerges from his slashed throat in a fine line of bubbles. Kodiak slices deeper. Even though this creature was never alive I have to look away from the butchery. “I won’t stop,” Kodiak says, straining with the exertion, “until I’ve cut the spinal cord. Then... we’ll know... this is really over.”
I lay a hand on his back, struck dumb by the magnitude of what we’re doing.
We will destroy ourselves.
If we destroy our other copies, all but the last set, then OS will have no option but to keep us alive as long as possible. It will also have the resources to do so, since there won’t be many future clones to feed.
OS can’t afford to kill us off early, not when there’s no relying on further copies. We might not make it off this ship—wedefinitelywon’t make it off this ship—but we can live out our small existences in peace.
“There, it’s finished,” Kodiak says, leaning back from his work.
“It’s horrible,” I say quietly.
“That it is. Now. What is that sound?” Kodiak asks, cocking his head as he bats away floating globules of blood and gristle.
“OS. OS is screaming.”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 3010 *-_
We return from our killing missions numb. Now that we’re done, OS has gone silent. What would it say? There’s no going back now, nothing to talk us out of or into.
I find it hard to muster the energy to move, and yet all the same my body is quivering. The enormity of what we’ve done keeps washing over me.
