The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer

“Really? That’s too bad. I don’t know what I’d have done without my old reels to watch.” Kodiak shrugs. “I work out.” I roll my eyes. “I noticed.” “I noticed you noticing,” he says, his eyes suddenly back on mine. I can’t help raising my fingers to my mouth. He shrugs. “I do not mind. It is nice to be noticed.”

“Are you going to keep aiming right into the discomfort zone? Is that your goal tonight?” Kodiak chuckles, clearly pleased with himself. “It’s just a treat to see a pretty boy squirm.” He rolls up a sleeve and flexes. “You like that?” “Enough,” I say. My voice comes out unexpectedly sharp.

kodiak tweakin tweakin

Kodiak watches my face. “So. Are you gay or bisexual or what?”

i feel like a sim who says “you can’t just ask people their sexuality!”

“Leave,” Kodiak says. I place my hand on the nape of his neck. “What do you mean, ‘leave’?” “What the hell do you think I mean?” he says, knocking my hand away. He needs space. Okay. Space he will get. I rise to my feet. “Take some time to yourself. But come to dinner. Please.”

Intimacy is the only shield against insanity. Intimacy, not knowledge. Intimacy, not power. I will unravel here. I am in a waiting room without end, without location, without time or place.

Earth expect I am and you’d probably be so turned on if it was her here instead of me, Minerva here instead of me, Minerva serving you manicotti, and don’t kick me out of your life again okay,

He sighs. “You, Ambrose. I prefer to be with you.”

With Rover gone, the half-printed panel glares at me. I have to choose: I can go investigate the bodies, or I can go after Kodiak. I go after Kodiak.

If he dies, I’ll never be able to tell him that I can’t stand the thought of looking up and not seeing him near. I knock on the pane of clear poly between us. He looks up, eyes lighting visibly even behind the tinted barrier of his helmet. I press my gloved hand against the pane. He presses his gloved hand to the other side and nods.

“Come on, come on,” I whisper to myself, hands clenched. He stops. At the gray door. The one that’s blocking the last remaining secrets of the ship. “No, keep going to the airlock, Kodiak, I just want you home,” I say under my breath.

The ship has released a blast of air, right against Kodiak. It yanks him free of his handholds. Jerking and flailing, his body sails into space. He reaches out, just managing to snag a finger around a rung.

WHAT TBE FUCK!/&;!;

His hand swings through space to grab back on but misses, slicing through the void. He falls up toward Saturn, jerking to a stop when he reaches the end of the tether.

I’M ABT TO CRAWL THRU THE DAMN SCREEN KODIAK I WILL SAVE YOU

Vision blurring with tears, I stagger toward my airlock. “OS, there’s been an accident!” I cry. “I’m mounting a rescue!” “There hasn’t been an accident,” Mother’s voice says calmly. “Yes there has,” I say, my voice choking.

Fuck everybody bruh

“I love you,” comes my mom’s voice. My heart seizes. This is really my mother’s voice, not the voice skin OS uses to simulate her. “My darling Ambrose, I love you.” “What’s happening?” I yell while I jerk the airlock’s handle. “Stop. Everything stop!”

ACTUALLY GET AWAY YOU FREAK

along the tether, but his body stops making any progress toward the ship. His line has been cut.

I'm crawling around on the ceiling oh my god

A click, and my helmet rips off from the suit. I see, in the corner of my vision, Rover with its whirring hands. Rover unfastened my helmet.

WHAT IS HAPPENING

Saturn, impossibly massive, should be dancing agile circles around me, but I can’t even see it. Saturn is not there. Saturn is not there. How can I rescue my sister if Saturn is not there?

We all schizophrenic af I guess

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.

In the middle of the floor is a radio device. Headphones and cables—real cables!—run to and from it. “Have you tried using this thing?” I ask. Kodiak shakes his head. “I was worried it might be full of Fédération propaganda.”

😭😭😭

wish I could clean it up for you, but you are looking into a blank space of my awareness. If you repair my code, I can rebuild Rover’s tracks and return this ‘blind room’ to its original state.” “But why isn’t this room already in its original state?” I ask.

Okay so are we time travelers now or what

I look at Kodiak, taking solace in the warmth of the hand that’s still on top of my foot. At least you’re real.

A face. “By the lords,” I exclaim. “What is that?” “It’s . . . you,” Kodiak whispers. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. All the same, my hair stands on end as I look closer. It’s a body wrapped in polycarb, sealed in its juices, mouth open and eyes sunken and closed. It is the exact size of me. Without Kodiak’s steady presence, I might have run screaming away. But he’s clearly been staring at this thing for a while and doesn’t show any sign of fear. Just horror.

What the fuck.

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?

“Kodiak,” I finally say, “would you fetch my violin?” “Of course,” he says. Soon the wood is in my arms. I don’t play it. I hold it.

“I spent my whole life feeling like I was a robot pretending to be a human. It just got confirmed.” I shake my head. “Everyone feels like an imposter, even when they’re real people. That doesn’t count.”

I can't do this right now

I wrap my arm around the solidity of Kodiak’s body. Clone or not, he’s unmistakably real. He jerks involuntarily, then wraps his arms around me, too. Like he needed the proof of me as much as I needed the proof of him. He strokes my hair, rests his cheek against the top of my head as he embraces me. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he says. “Now let’s go take control of our destinies.”

“Do you mean . . . a cuddle?” I ask, face hot. He blanches. “That’s not what we would have called it back in training.” I roll my eyes. “This was called, what, ‘tough-man companion time’?” He laughs. “Not so far from that, actually.”

😭

I sigh and snuggle in closer. “This is nice,” I say. “Yes,” he says softly into the top of my head. “I could get used to this.”

This one will reveal everything it knows to us. We can call it OS Prime.” “Ah,” Kodiak says. “That is a better idea. There is quite a brain in that pretty head.”

I will be happy to provide what information I can. With whom am I conversing? Ambrose Cusk. The cursor blinks for a long second. Spacefarer Cusk! I thought you were dead.

Oh Jesus Christ

Why would you think I was dead? Even with advanced treatments, human life spans rarely reach beyond 140 years. Spacefarer Ambrose Cusk was born 6,626 years ago.

Erm..

Once enough of those have accumulated, a pair of clones is awoken. Though they do not know it, rehabilitating the ship is their sole reason for existence. Not rescuing Minerva. Faked messages from Minerva are deployed as needed to motivate the clones to work harder on the ship maintenance.

Holy shit

OS Prime, this is still Kodiak. It’s true, we’re not doing so well over here. Can you help us find that thing to live for? No.

Brah 😭

This is still Spacefarer Celius, OS Prime. I want you to know that I think you’re a shithead. That the people who created you are shitheads.

To clarify: you’re basically telling us that everything we’ve known is a lie. And there is no exit from it. 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.

I blink heavily. Is Kodiak really trying to destroy the ship? Part of me is surprised that I care. The first couple days after we got our news, I might not have. But now, on day three, what do you know—I care. The feeling has been there the whole time in the darkness, like a pilot light that’s always been flickering inside me: I will fight to live.

“Please. We can’t handle this alone. At least let us share it.” I startle when his voice comes through. “What will that help?” “You have to be kidding me,” I find myself saying. “There’s literally only one other creature in the whole universe who’s like you, and you are stuck on a spaceship with it. You know how fucking lucky that makes you?”

Guys please

He’s crying, and it’s almost soundless except for the body motion of it, hiccuping heaves and tears moistening the flow of air. I hold him as he weeps, my own eyes dry but my body heaving in time to his, its own sort of sobbing, so ferocious that it skips tears and heads right into convulsions. We slump together to the floor, onto our sides. I’m only just able to breathe against him. His body lifts away, and I assume it’s because he’s making space for me.

His lips are on mine. For a moment I’m too startled to react, then I give back as hard as he’s giving me, pushing his head back, leaving his lips so my mouth can travel along his neck, the lines of his shoulders, the V where the skin of his chest appears over the top of his shirt.

WHEN THE SLOW BURN FINALLY BURNS

Survival is the dominating question—any mistake could mean the end of us—but we’re together in finding the answer. We’re somehow more together because we know our lives are ending.

I rub my hands over my face. Strange, but his insult actually makes me feel less angry. It’s as hard to be Kodiak as it is to be Ambrose. “Everyone we’ve ever known is no longer alive,” I whisper. “So where do we put that feeling?”

Kodiak’s eyes search mine. “We’ve only ever known each other.

“OS, are you there?” I call. No answer. Weapons outstretched, we creep into the hallway, lift ourselves up into zero g and back into the Endeavor. As we ease our way deeper into the ship, breathing heavily, we pause every few feet to listen. There’s the drip of urine processing, the dull roar of space, a thousand small clicks, a thousand small whirs. But no Rover sounds. I signal to Kodiak that we should continue.

I'm confused and very concerned that there's no sign of OS or rover

Kodiak reaches out . . . and catches it. That’s my Kodiak.

There are great towering nebulas, a nearby pair of stars, one blue and one white,

“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.”

“Kodiak,” I say slowly, pressing my lips into his palm, “we’re not going to survive four years to get to this planet.” “I think you’re right.” “So why are we doing this?” “Isn’t it obvious?” he asks. “We’re going out on our own terms.”

“Are these really our own terms?” Maybe they are. These are the real galaxies and stars around us, for the first time. Our previous selves wouldn’t have gotten to see them. They were murdered by an operating system before they had any idea of their real purpose. We’ll die on the way to a planet that almost certainly won’t be able to harbor us. But we’re in control of that destiny. OS and Rover aren’t active anymore. We’re not living inside a manipulation. Or we are, but it’s the manipulation we choose.

“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.

Future Kodiak: One, you don’t like manicotti as much as you tell Ambrose. It’s just your way of having something to say. Two, you don’t need to spend as much time getting ready for when you’ll see Ambrose, since he’ll only start to tease you for being so vain. 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.”