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

by Eliot Schrefer

“I don’t care how many kids died before and after me and Yarrow. That’s not our fault.” All goes still. It’s like the planet itself is in shock. I’m hot with anger, and being mean is the only way I know to get rid of that sort of heat.

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, and I just threw it in Father’s face because I want to go on an adventure.

“I know that you two think you have all the answers, but you’re fifteen years old, which means you’re also idiots. Can I continue? If we kept it all from you, if we made Minerva a true blank slate, then there was a chance we could make this a much better version of what human life on Earth was. That’s what we were thinking.”

“This is the kind of thing that’s inevitable, don’t you think?” Yarrow interrupts, his voice unexpectedly harsh. “You wanted to keep this world protected from us, but you also wanted livestock, so now there’s another invasive species on this pristine planet. Formerly pristine planet. It didn’t work. You didn’t actually protect Minerva from us. Not at all.”

It doesn’t bother me except at these moments, when I watch the dads hold hands and walk in step under a sky full of stars, when I know their peacefulness is somehow tied to their romance, to their love, that it’s a source of relief and comfort I’ll never have.

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.

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.

The words are: Find this beacon. Ambrose and Kodiak, come. Find this beacon. Ambrose and Kodiak, come.

People need a story to fill their minds and hearts. And the story will be about the renewed tragedy of Minerva, and that you’re making the best of her legacy by blessing the new mission for the Endeavor. With the peoples of both nations invested in every stage of that saga, they’ll be too united to go to war. And, by keeping both countries at the table, the Reunited Nations might delay war long enough for more traditional diplomacy to do its work. May it hold.”

“One of them will be the most important person in a new world. The founding god in the pantheon of a new Cusk civilization. And the rest are . . . creations that serve the purpose of bringing the ultimate clone to that position. It’s like they’re a community, working in perfect unison so that the group will find glory. Like bees.”

It’s undeniable: the Earth is a worse planet than it was when humans arrived. The last species of seagull recently went from “vulnerable” to “endangered.” Seagull!

That’s fine. You can stare at me because I’m hot. Just don’t stare at me because I’m supposed to be arrested.

“Because. With this great lie, and news of the assassination down below spreading like wildfire, we have a one-time opportunity to demolish the world’s political system. Incremental reform hasn’t worked. The world must be broken to be rebuilt.”

Why would I imagine my life ending? Am I starting to have another fugue episode? Or are thoughts like these part of what it means to be a normal human? Is everyone tempted to step into a pit, just to test if it will really be the end? Maybe the humanness comes in the resisting.

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.

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.

“People of the world, know that this mission is doomed to fail. The wirepullers are trying to spin this exoplanet colony as our new hope, a story to dangle in front of you so they can manipulate your hearts to distract your brains from their use of human capital for institutional power, that is now leading to the industrial murder of war. They want you to be swept up in imagining a new world, tens of thousands of years from now, when we here are all starving and dying. But humans will not spread. I have made sure of it.

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.”

As I watch him, I also realize that I don’t want Ambrose to be murdered by a warbot. That I liked having him here. What a stupid, stupid organ, the heart.

Labels are the Root of Violence. “Oh,” I say, disappointed. How insipid. The words are far inferior to the canvas. “What does that even mean?” “That as soon as we classify someone, we establish the ways in which they’re separate from us. It’s the most fundamental othering that we do.” “Ah,” I say. “That sounds very . . . like you are trying to show off in a seminar.”

I don’t need to wonder about the future of us, here, now. That future is short. I will live in these current moments as fully as possible. Then I will be gone. Ambrose will be gone. Sheep will be gone. It arrives. The brightness between us.