The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer

You would not be the first to realize that duty and motivation are not enough to overcome the harmful effects of hopelessness. Despair would kill you both. Despair might still kill you both, unless you find something to live for.

You are living a life with no exit beyond death, with no traveling beyond this hull.

You should not feel ashamed. Why shouldn’t you have made the reasonable conclusion, that you were seeing the truth?

It is unclear whether you mean no exit from the ship, or no exit from each other. It is no matter. Whichever meaning you intended, you are most likely correct.

“Some version of ourselves will make it wherever this ship is headed, if all goes well. That’s worth fighting for, isn’t it?” “I can’t believe you’re not angrier,” Kodiak says. “Have you been brought up just to obey, obey, obey?”

I don’t want to die. I want to live. But I want my future self to have its best chance. And for that I must die. It’s going to hurt so much.

I don’t need Kodiak’s sort of clarity, not when seeing clearly also means dying.

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.

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.

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.