The Brightness Between Us (The Darkness Outside Us, #2)

by Eliot Schrefer

I’m left with the fact that Father and Dad had a bunch of babies that filled them with love and hope, that those kids all died except two of us,

oh damn

Sparrow and Purslane failed to draw enough of Minerva’s air; Thistle fell into a pit; Kestrel never adapted to the extra nitrogen in the atmosphere, her lips nothing but blue; Crane had a fever that left her body only once she was dead. Children one and two, four and six and seven. Every one except Yarrow and me.

Okay but this makes so much sense because they're on a different planet! I mean, it sucks, but it makes sense.

If any one of us is going to survive whatever disaster you’re about to bring raining down on our heads, it’s the clone of Minerva Cusk.”

AHHHHH!!!

OS reports in a voice that I’ve been told is the chilled-out version of a long-dead pop star named Devon Mujaba.

lol Ambrose would

the malevors were too ferocious. They escaped our control and began living and mating on their own outside of the settlement.”

Okay, so picture a Yak, but like malicious. Evil Yak lol

Dad busies himself untying and retying the straps of his shoes. His face is turned away from me, so I can’t see his expression, but I think . . . his shoulders are shaking? “Dad, are you laughing at me?” I ask. “Tell me that you’re not laughing at me right now.” He doesn’t answer, just unties and reties his straps again. “You’re laughing. At your precious daughter who’s been maimed by a yak,” I continue. His whole body is shaking now. “Dad!” I say. “I can’t believe this. I nearly died out there, because you’ve kept a central reality of the world from me, just like your mother did to you, I might add, and my dad, my own dad, finds this state of affairs hilarious.

Ambrose is so good omg I love him, with his little ADHD mannerisms and the fact that him and Kodiak still disagree on so many things — but I love how he's the softer one, the healer, the gardener, it feels right.

“Do you really think one of them gave Crane her fever?” “It’s hard to imagine. But something made her sick.”

Is this our mystery?

after our parents are dead.

Had to do the math: A & K are about 35ish

“That’s right,” Father says. Is there a little twinkle in his eye? I think for a moment. “So . . . we’ll have to go search for metals.” He nods. “We’ll need . . . to explore?” “In order to search for metals, yes,” he says gruffly. The twinkle is still there.

Kodiak always was a bit more interested in discovery than Ambrose~

It’s a dazzling smile, especially once he let OS print a replacement for the canine tooth he lost when he tripped and fell onto Rover last year. He didn’t want to, but we’d all insisted. Life is better with Dad’s complete smile in it.

LOOOLLLL

When Yarrow leans back, I’m shocked by what I find on his face. My brother isn’t there. It’s like he’s someone else entirely. His eyes are dark, cold, lifeless. I’ve never met anyone new before, but it’s like a stranger has suddenly dropped into our family.

Oooo, what???

But there are still signs that he’s not himself. His brow is shiny. His hands are clenched tight. A thousand wrong things are hitting my brain in its subconscious parts, telling me that Yarrow isn’t quite Yarrow anymore. I see him see me see him. Don’t say anything, his expression says. He’s my brother, and I love him, so I don’t. But he’s also not my brother. I don’t know where my brother went.

God, Schrefer is SO GOOD at that Twist anticipation!

Meanwhile, I’m menstruating. We brought plenty of cloths, I just have to change to a new one and belt it on. Not a big deal, but each time I do it I’m reminded that I’m the only human in existence who can carry a child. It’s my least favorite feeling.

Mood.

Dad rests his forehead against his kneecap for a moment, then raises his head again with what I know before I see it will be his fake parental “I’ve got this” smile.

Ambrose again taking on the brunt of the emotional work and toil.

They’re particularly interested in Indonesia, the last country to disappear into the giant global globs of Dimokratía and Fédération—and, from the sound of the transmissions the dads’ clones picked up on the Coordinated Endeavor, the one to have harbored the known survivors of the nuclear war.

An interesting choice, Eliot. Why so?

Find this beacon. Ambrose and Kodiak, come. Find this beacon. Ambrose and Kodiak, come.

A message from Earth

This world is too heavy not to treat it as lightly as we can.

Another Schrefer Banger

what if they copy all my thoughts and feelings into some chip and then lose it, so a version of me has to spend an infinity trying to get out of a transistor with no exit, only to find that they’re a technical fabrication?

Whyyyyy would you even pose this, Am??

It’s not anger animating me anymore; it’s horror, horror worse than from watching any hyperreal torture reel. What has been done to me?

Ahahahaaa~ I said the same thing during TDOU

manicotti.

oh~

I get them to scribe a tattoo I’ve been wanting for months: Labels are the Root of Violence, in five-year black, reading vertically between my pectorals.

HE GOT THE TATTOO!!!

“A violin is something the ship can’t print anew,” my mother finally tells me. “Which means that we could be introducing discrepancies in the repeating timeline, if and when it degrades or is damaged. Even if the violin is kept in ideal conditions between lifetimes, it’s hard to imagine soft spruce wood surviving these thousands of years.” “So some Ambroses at the end might not have a violin, and some will. What’s the big deal?” I ask.

It's a kink in the armor that maybe PrimeAmbrose kinda did think about because he actually is very smart let's be honest with ourselves.

Montreal

Even French-Canadians know how to riot well—they were born from it 😈

whom I will never meet. Who are you?

I need them to meet!!!

tailed by one of the Dimokratía soldiers. I wave and smile at him, but he just broods back. I didn’t know that someone could brood actively until now.

My brain wants this to be Kodiak soooo bad

There are bright green trees around us, blackness and starlight above.

Some more good prose that elicits TDOU

Kodiak Celius.

AHHHH!

What was it that Dad once said? Intimacy is the only shield against insanity. Okay. But how can I be close to my family if they don’t want me to be who I truly am? Since I don’t want to witness their disappointment all day every day, my darkness must be a secret. And that makes me feel ashamed. It’s the dearest friend of loneliness, shame.

Oh Yarrow, you’ll be okay

When Father sees, he sees.

One of my favorite qualities of Kodiak

Father smiles, just from thinking of him.

Stupid in love and so down bad

without finding landmarks.

Don’t know if he meant it, but Eliot calling back to the “landmarks” is really something.

But he can’t finish because I’ve shot him. Right in the gut. He staggers backward, and I shoot him again. Two red blossoms on his tunic, spreading and merging.

WHAAAAAATTTTTT?????

Old Scotland was abandoned after the Fédération bombardment.

Scotland being Dimokratía just feels right actually.

I’m not religious at all, but surrounded by the hush of the forest, the weedy overgrowth of this farmhouse whose ruined roof dapples the sunlight from above, the moment does have a divinity to it.

oh~

Except Celius Li Qiang, who became my biggest ally and erotiyet, but he never spoke to me again after I beat him out for the Titan rescue mission.

Rude of him actually

“Shoo!” I say. It doesn’t work. I don’t want it to.

Pft so Kodiak—gruff on the outside, but soft on the inside

I smile at myself, at what I hold dear about who I am. This strong solitary hermit, destroyed in minutes by a freshly shorn, sweet-eyed sheep, hopping for joy while her sores clot.

That’s just how you are, Ko

There’s something . . . hungry in his gaze, as if he’s trying to see as much of me as he can, as if looking at me is important to him. At first I think he’s studying me as an enemy. This is how cosmology academy rivals would look at me before they attacked, trying to absorb as much information about their opponent as fast as possible. Then his expression looks like desire, like we’re the last two cadets in the changing room with nowhere to be until dinner. Then that doesn’t feel like what this is, either, and it’s something bigger and stranger. Like I’m the celebrity. He knew my name.

They ARE still two horny new adults hahaha

He wants to remind me that he knows my full name, that he’s sought me out specifically. I’d like to know how he knows who I am. But I will not allow him to decide the course of our communication.

This all feels VERY familiar

Ambrose sputters. “Your clones and my clones are going to spend lifetimes together. It seems reasonable for us to meet. Devon tried to make it happen, and he succeeded. It’s a kindness.”

I agree with Devon tbh

I guess I’m willing to trust him for now. I guess that’s what my mysterious, juiceless organ of a heart has decided.

They were always both quick to trust

That Kodiak is gone, though. Everything was stripped from him, and this new me was born. The one who is willing to talk to a sworn enemy. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that the “sworn” part is gone. Maybe the very concept of “enemy” has less heat to it now.

How very “Clone Think” of you, Kodiak

I used the distraction to sabotage those protozygotes. I inserted a virus that will replicate and spread in them as they gestate, altering the DNA it finds. Some will become unviable from the start. In case that spurs the new colonists to find a workaround, the virus will also code the zygotes’ adrenal glands to produce excessive amounts of testosterone over their lifetimes, influencing their amygdalae to turn them aggressive. I’ve done the same to the yaks they’ll raise—predisposed them to become killers. Since the zygotes are stored in an inaccessible part of the ship, beyond the gray portal, OS can’t repair them. The colony will fall from within.”

Broooooooooo!!! What have you done ?!???!!

but there’s Father, my father, and the malevor a few paces behind him, making its pathetic little bark sounds. Even in the utter chaos and loss of yesterday, there’s something left.

love the parallelism of Owl, Kodiak, and Yak and Kodiak, Ambrose, and Sheep