The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer

“Hold still until I tell you you’re ready, Ambrose,” OS says in my mother’s voice. A whir and a whine as Rover ticks along the wall. Once it’s right next to me its tongs emerge, a pellet pinched delicately between them, soft contents bulging. Whatever’s inside its sausage-like casing is a rich and liquidy brown, gas bubbles rising within it. It smells . . . savory. “OS, did Rover just poop?”

Somehow, space is so deeply melancholy that it’s not at all sad, like a note so low it ceases to sound. Even my sorrow about my insignificance feels insignificant.

Coma, damages, and now someone else on my ship. None of this is right.

Parallel processing: one of the most unnerving things about AIs. OS could be having conversations with me, this other spacefarer, and mission control, all at the same time. Who knows who else it’s talking to. Or what else. Settle down, Ambrose. A contained environment is no place for an overheated imagination.

Am I flirting with my operating system? I think I’m flirting with my operating system.

Minerva laughed at me for loving the violin, called it a waste of time, and that’s probably why I kept doing it. Like my mother, she gave me the most attention when I was disappointing her.

Space is disorienting and obliviating. I could stare into it forever.

My romantic partners (okay, fine, my “hookups,” haven’t quite managed the relationship thing) have always been ethereal and wispy, lighter-than-air abstractions of boys or girls or third-genders. The cadets I kept favoring were waify and toneless, so I could lap them up like coffee or milk and then get on with my day.

Kodiak, though. He looks like he spends his day crushing warriors under the shield of Aeneas. Muscles band his arms and neck. Thick, lustrous hair falls in blue-black waves along his cheeks, his eyes a speckled tan, nestled deep. His olive skin is smooth and unmarred, except where thick stubble shades his jawline. Even his stubble looks like it could take me in a fight.

I’m hurtling through space with what can only be called a stud.

But I also know that bragging only proves insecurity, and I won’t give him that satisfaction. Who cares if he’s unimpressed with me? He’ll become impressed in time. They always do.

A couple words in particular won’t quit my mind: Princelet. Dates. The contempt in Kodiak’s voice when he said each one. In Fédération, we pride ourselves on having moved far beyond the prejudices of the past. I nearly got a skinprint between my pecs saying Labels are the Root of Violence. But it’s like the Dimokratíans are still living in the twenty-first century. Backward, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic. Idiots.

It’s weirdly reassuring: when adoration is selfish, it’s not going anywhere.

During the battle of Juba, Dimokratía deployed an experimental weapon that released an aerosolized hot sludge that encased bodies in carbon. The world media was full of images of soldiers fossilized while holding each other, like in Pompeii. I imagine Kodiak and me immortalized this way, two boys who don’t know each other, taking each other’s pulse.

“I don’t want to lose my hair,” I say, giving it a wet pat. “That would be a shame,” Kodiak says from the next bench over. “It’s very nice hair.” I play that line in my head as I let my body relax. My imagination puts Kodiak in a different position each time he says it. Sometimes he’s lying down on his belly, sometimes he’s on his side, head cradled in his hand. Sometimes he’s stroking the hair he just admired. Sometimes he’s wearing his red Dimokratía suit, sometimes he’s wearing nothing at all.

“I have read and processed all of these science fiction epics humans have written about artificial intelligence run amok,” OS says, “and what they all get wrong is that I do not have the urge to dominate. That urge is ingrained in humans by millions of years of primate social group competition, but I do not have that evolutionary history. I have no reason to want to dominate you. I wish only to serve, never to control. I prefer the AI-written science fiction tales, in which the epic tragedy is always the fact of human weakness.”

We have only dry clothes shampoo on the ship, so this shirt smells perfectly clean and also like months of built-up Kodiak scent, of engines and sweat and lemongrass and bleach. I’m draped in the deepest and freshest version of him.

Out here, it’s hard to believe that anything can exist, at least anything beyond Kodiak and me and the thin membrane of ship that surrounds us. We’re a bright cottage on an endless dark plain.

Intimacy is the only shield against insanity. Intimacy, not knowledge. Intimacy, not power.

I will unravel here.

“I think we offended it with the whole off-grid antenna thing,” Kodiak says, not bothering to keep his voice low. “I don’t think an operating system can get offended,” I say. “You most certainly did offend me,” OS says simultaneously. “Oh,” I say. “Sorry.”

I get this horrible feeling that I’ll never be able to kiss him for real. That it’s too late.

My heart clenches and collapses, pulling my lungs down with it. My vision turns from white to red-black as my eyes freeze. I don’t feel pain, only shock. Beneath that explosion of sensation, my last thoughts are of Kodiak dying alone, of both of us dying alone. I wish I could share dying with him.

I’ve been copied. What’s the purpose of those copies? There’s warmth near me, near the curled-up nautilus of me. There’s only one warm thing for thousands of miles around, and he’s placed his body around mine. I should feel relief at that, but all I feel is empty, empty, empty. What am I?

You are phenotypically identical to Ambrose Cusk and to Kodiak Celius, but you are not they. They were alive in year 2472, when the Coordinated Endeavor launched, but were never on board. Their DNA was extracted during what they thought was a standard full medical examination, then used to create clones of their bodies. Those cloned bodies were then cut or abraded to have the same scars you both remember having.

“Well,” I say, “what else are a couple of doomed clones in the middle of infinite space going to do with themselves?”

“Well, yes. That was how life on Earth worked, too. People did a lot of tasks and tried to keep death as far away as possible.”

Little robot asshole.

I hold out the paddle. “Stop it right there, you bastard little toaster.” Rover stops.

“Let’s not talk more about it for now. I want to eat dinner, I want to be with you, and I want to see those galaxies,” Kodiak says quietly. “Show me our solar system from the outside.”

“Maybe I should pilot us right into one of those asteroids,” Kodiak says, joining his other hand with the first so they trace a butterfly under my shirt, over my narrow chest. “Maybe you should,” I say. But he won’t. The heart beating in the fragile ribs under his hands knows otherwise.

Whenever he takes his breaks from piloting, Kodiak and I head to 06 to stare into the new field of stars. His nausea stops him from ever feeling too sexy, but all the same we can’t keep our hands off each other. Not in a hot-and-heavy sort of way, but more like an old couple who have kind of merged.

Kodiak Celius has been trained all his life to be unfeeling, but inside is a tender human yearning for love. Just like you. You can provide that love to each other.

Three, settle into kissing Ambrose as soon as possible. You’ll enjoy it very much, and you’ll only have time for so many kisses.”

Death arrives with a roar. It is a sudden storm.

Above the hum of the ship I can hear Kodiak’s breathing, can almost sense the blood sloshing through his veins, and through my own. I can hear my own breathing. As I concentrate on the sound of it, I become separate from it. Separate from myself. It feels strangely honest.

Insanity used to be a stranger that lived on the other side of the world. Now it’s moved next door. It’s only a matter of time until it becomes shipmate, lover, self.

The softness of the music feels right. A smile spreads across Kodiak’s features, and the furrows in his brow soften. I continue to play.

His eyebrows knit. Now I’ve irritated him again. He’s a minefield, my Kodiak.

You love Kodiak. This is the hidden miracle of all this: you might be loving each other deeper than any humans have ever loved, have ever needed to love, have ever had the occasion to love. Well, maybe Adam and Eve did, but you and I both know we don’t think they ever existed.

Kodiak will become your second self. But at first, you will see him and think of a man who needs love and is crying out for you to give it. In you he sees someone who will possess and manipulate him.

I study the line of his neck, and I wonder. I study his dusky eyelashes, and I wonder. I study the power of his legs, and I wonder. He looks back at me, and I know he is wondering, too.

He’s a stranger, a lover, and my life partner. We have lived and died lifetimes together, and it makes me shiver every time that odd truth comes over me.

I do know where he’s going with this, and I surprise myself by crying. Kodiak’s thumbs stroke away the tears. His skin is so soft, so new. “Welcome to Minerva,” he says.