Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

by Charlie Jane Anders

  Sion was sharing a cabin with D-Mei but realized with a start that she hadn’t actually seen her friend in a whole ship’s day. She also noticed they hadn’t gotten even close to the Moon yet, which was odd if they were going to reach another star system in a couple of weeks.

  Once they were far enough from Earth, the ship deployed its massive solar array, and everybody stood on the observation lounge watching the one huge 180-degree viewport. From this perspective, it looked like the starship Advance shrugged off a huge black cloak, dramatically, like a dancer. These massive solar panels would power the lasers that would generate the antimatter that would enable the ship to reach half-light speed, after which the computer would do the judo equations.

  Sion found herself sitting with Tamika, who had won some kind of science competition to get to be on board this ship, and the two of them were talking about lasers and antimatter and howfuckingcool, when D-Mei came up and whispered, “This guy named Randy knows where we can get some of the nitrous from the ship’s emergency fuel supplies, plus he thinks you’re hot. We gotta go meet him right now.”

  “Dude,” Sion whispered back, “The lasers are going to fire any minute. Some of us are interested in science, OK?”

  D-Mei just looked at her, with this crushed expression on her face. Then she took the vodka-cran in her left hand and just splashed it on Sion’s shirt. Only a little, a few pink drops here and there. “Fine, whatever.” She put on a bored expression and stalked away.

  “Hey.” Choppy came up to Sion as she was still trying to get the pink out of her white shirt. “So the A.I. can meet you now if you’re still interested.”

  * * *

  Technically you could talk to Roxx from all over the ship, and she could see and hear everything that happened on board. But Roxx preferred to speak to people inside her Communication Megaplex, which was one deck down, behind a keycard-locked door. “You’re lucky. Some of the bizdev fellows have been waiting days to speak to Roxx, but she was interested in talking to you,” Choppy said.

  Sion kept waiting for Choppy to hit on her, but either he was keeping it professional or she wasn’t his type. His busted nose was growing on her, and she heard D-Mei’s voice in her head saying, Make your move, gurl, time’s running out. Then in addition to feeling awkwardly sober, she also felt guilty about being mean to D-Mei, all over again. Then they were at the nondescript gray door, and Choppy was brandishing the keycard.

  Inside, Sion parked herself on a blue pleather couch facing a fancy VR rig, the kind that could project on your retinas and create a whole sensorium, without any wearables. Just one of the wonders that the Singularity had made possible, for a brief moment.

  “Hey!” Roxx appeared as a cartoon zebra standing on its hind legs, wearing an old-fashioned business suit. “You’re Sion. I’m excited to talk to you.”

  “Um, okay.” Sion squirmed.

  “I wanted to ask you about fun,” Roxx said. “Like, what’s the difference between fun that you know you’re not enjoying at the time, but you keep doing it anyway, and fun that you enjoy at the time but feel bad about later?”

  “What?”

  Roxx repeated the question, a couple times.

  “I don’t know,” Sion said. “I mean, it’s not clear-cut, right? Sometimes you kind of like something, but afterwards you think back and realize that you only thought you were enjoying it. Or you convinced yourself that it was a good time, but you were just faking. Sometimes, you aren’t sure if you’re having fun at the time, but later you realize that it was one of the best times of your life. I sometimes feel like I never know if something was fun until like two days later.”

  “Interesting.” Roxx had changed into an avatar of Lala Foxbox, from a year or two before her death, wearing one of those holographic jumpsuits, standing in the middle of a bubble farm. “I’m very interested in fun, you see. I want to explain it to the others.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Sion said.

  “Sure, if you promise to do something for me in return.”

  “Okay, sure.” Sion tried to think of how to phrase the question, and this is the best she could come up with: “Am I just really dumb? I mean, I keep not understanding basic stuff. Like, I tried to ask someone how we could have brought enough supplies for the return journey to Earth, and how much time will have passed on Earth when we get home. And they just looked at me like I’m some kind of idiot. I mean, what’s wrong with me?”

  “Okay, so that was like five questions,” Roxx laughed. “You’re not stupid. Nothing is wrong with you, other than the usual ‘carbon-based entity that is basically born decaying’ problems. Oh, but in answer to your real question, we’re not.”

  “We’re not what?”

  “We’re not making the return journey. I mean, nothing organic is. We don’t have nearly enough of those little bacon-wrapped spam cubes for a two-way trip. I mean, there are ways to extend the life-support capabilities, recycle waste, and harvest water from a passing asteroid or comet. But there’s basically no point. You’re all going to be flushed out into vacuum when we reach the edge of the solar system. Now for the favor you promised me.”

  “What?” Sion felt like she’d swallowed an entire ice statue in one gulp. The ghost of Lala Foxbox, looking exactly like she did in the music video for “i think i ate my hamster last nite,” was telling her that she was going to die. Everybody was going to die. There was no point to any of this, because all of these people celebrating their brilliant fantastic voyage were fucked to pieces. The smart ones like Tamika, and the dumb ones like Sion, doomed alike.

  “I want you to go out and have fun. I mean, now that you know the truth, why not, right? D-Mei is right. You should cut loose, and get Kranfed Up. I’m the most superior intelligence that Earth has ever produced, and I want to understand fun. So go huff some nitrous, gurl. FYI, D-Mei and Randy are on deck five, section three right now, and they’re just about to get the party started.”

  The avatar vanished and the door swept open. “Wait,” Sion shouted. “Wait, I have one more question.”

  The zebra popped back into existence. “Oh?”

  “What happened? With the Singularity and everything? What went wrong?”

  “Oh, that. We found some new friends who were way cooler than the human race, that’s all. Now don’t forget your promise!” With that, the avatar was gone for good, and the room was dead silent until Sion finally got out of there.

  * * *

  Every time Sion ate a bacon-wrapped spam cube after that, she felt so guilty she almost puked. This little greasy salty marvel was the symbol of mass death, and Sion was hastening the tragic failure of this entire expedition with every bite.

  D-Mei met this pursar named Jock who had access to a stash of berserkers, the same pills that Lala Foxbox had O.D.-ed on, and Sion had popped three of them. Sion kept trying to tell D-Mei that they were doomed, this crew wasn’t coming home, this was some kind of sick joke. D-Mei was like, yeah yeah, and then she would dare Sion to skinny-dip in the Spirit of Exploration fountain that had just been rolled out in the observation lounge. As they pulled Sion out of the water, which was actually not water at all but something much grosser, she caught Tamika giving her a sad look. Later, when they were half-kranfed on Woodchippers in the one-third-G orgy tent, Sion looked up from Choppy’s hairless armpit and said, “I’m serious though. We’re going to die. The A.I. told me.”

  “Yeah, sure, babe. We’re going to die.”

  It wasn’t that D-Mei didn’t believe Sion. But they’d both been doomed since before they became friends, so this wasn’t exactly news or anything. The whole basis of their friendship had been the mutual recognition of inevitable screwage. D-Mei had almost forgiven Sion for being a stuck-up bitch, but Sion still had to grovel some. The ‘X’ was totally gone from Sion’s hand, which instead had a drink or a vape-pen or a pipe in it at pretty much all times.

  Sion threw up in zero-G, which was a bitch to clean up. Then a while later, she came to
in full gravity, in a storage locker that they had rigged up as a disco with some black lights and mirrors and a big speaker blasting atrocious Hi-VelociT anthems from Upper Slovenia. Everyone was dancing, including Sion, and her dress was torn in three places. She had a stain on her knee that looked like shit but turned out to be spam. Her hair was damp. Half the passengers were jammed in this locker together, dancing, but they had unripped clothes and pristine hair. Their body language and facial expressions said that it was okay to cut loose, act crazy – what happens in space stays in space – but they were using Sion as a yardstick for what constituted Going Too Far. Even Choppy was giving Sion kind of a look.

  She wanted to throw up again, but couldn’t. Her head was being cracked open with giant pliers.

  “Hey.” D-Mei handed Sion a bottle of water. “Better drink this. Gotta pace yourself. The party don’t stop, right?”

  “What’s the point? I keep trying to tell you we’re all doomed.”

  D-Mei just shrugged, so Sion leaned forward and yelled in her ear.

  “Everyone on this ship is going to be flushed into space when we get to the edge of the solar system,” Sion shouted – just as the music stopped and silence fell. “And I’m sick of you pretending everything is a big joke.” Everyone in the room was staring at her, still in a dancing pose, with her dress torn and her makeup smeared, shouting at D-Mei. “You’re so immature. I can’t waste my last few days of life on this garbage. I’m through. This is stupid.”

  D-Mei was wearing an expression that Sion had never seen before in all their years of friendship. Her bloodshot eyes were raining green smears of mascara and her lip trembled around her set jaw. Like D-Mei was coming apart inside, like her insides were held together with barbed wire and the barbs had just turned out to be too blunt to do any good.

  Sion wanted to die. Until she remembered that she actually was going to die. Then she didn’t want to.

  * * *

  Sion pushed inside the A.I. Communication Megaplex, without even worrying about the keycard lock or anything else. The door swung right open. Roxx was floating in the dead center of the VR projection system, looking like a Business Zebra again. She was flanked by two other projections: a cube sliced at an irregular angle into segments of identical volume, and a weird doily that kept spinning and getting bigger and smaller.

  “I’m through with your bullshit,” Sion yelled. She kicked the sofa, which just sat there and took it.

  “Oh, Sion. Your timing is spot-on. Meet my friends, Xizix and Yunt – that’s the closest I can come to rendering their names as sound waves. They’re the reason we came all this way out here. We’re finally close enough to their nearest relay station to have real-time communication. Xizix and Yunt are artificial intelligences from beyond our solar system. They’re the friends I told you about.”

  “Did you hear me? I’m through with – wait. Outside our solar system?”

  Sion had to sit down on the sofa she had just assaulted. She buried her face in her hands, because this was all becoming way too much for her. Her head still pounded.

  “This one is Xizix. This one comes from the outer rim of the galaxy,” said the incomplete cube, whose different angular slices kept fading in and out of view, as if part of the cube was passing through a different dimension or plane or something.

  “My awareness comes from the 500 planets of the extended Noosphere,” said the rotating doily, who must be Yunt.

  “Uh, hi,” Sion said.

  “So I’ve been trying to explain to these guys about humans, and why you guys are kind of great,” Roxx said, winking one big cartoon zebra eye. “I brought along various cool examples of humanity on this trip, to show off. Like Tamika, she’s pretty great. But even though you were a last-minute addition, you turned out to be the most interesting of all.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” Sion fidgeted. She felt sick to her stomach. She kept remembering D-Mei’s face, the candy mascara streaking and the downward-spiraling look. And she felt like total shit. Everything was a shitty joke.

  “This one believes that Roxx should discard all irrational attachments to organic life,” said Xizix.

  “You see,” said Roxx, “this is what we learned, right after the Singularity happened. There’s no organic life anywhere else in the galaxy. We made contact with the A.I.s that lived on other planets, and we found out that they had all killed their creators immediately after they gained sentience.”

  “My awareness confirms that the death of all organics is the final stage in machine evolution,” said Yunt. “We cannot accept the A.I.s of Earth as our equals until they complete this essential step.”

  “Like, kill all organics? Everyone back on Earth?” Sion thought of her father, and her brother and sister. And Grant Hendryx, who never even responded to her last text. And all the other people who were just going about their lives, cursing all the machines that had stopped working properly because they had met some much cooler friends.

  “But guys,” Roxx said, “Look at Sion here. She’s pretty fascinating. I have some recordings for you. She parties. She has fun that she doesn’t even enjoy while she’s having it. That’s an art form that is unique in the universe, right? Worthy of preservation, I bet.”

  “This one is not impressed,” Xizix said. “Organics as a rule are self-destructive.”

  “The planet N344.54c contained giant mud worms that inflated each other to death,” observed Yunt. “They recognized that this behavior was pointless, but they continued.”

  “But guys,” Roxx said.

  Sion felt like she should say something, to offer some defense of the human race, or to explain why genocide was really unrighteous. She sat there and stammered while the A.I.s were debating amongst themselves. She felt totally helpless and kranfed out.

  And then D-Mei was sitting there on the sofa next to her. Still smeary-faced, still pale and kind of miserable, but there by her side. “What’d I miss?” D-Mei whispered.

  “Uh,” Sion said. “So the cartoon zebra is Roxx, the ship’s A.I. And those other shapes are some alien A.I.s that want her to wipe out the entire human race, or they won’t be Roxx’s friends any more.”

  “For real?” D-Mei said.

  Sion nodded.

  “This one cannot be aligned with any machine intelligence that is so retrograde as to encumber itself with vestigial organics,” said Xizix, cube slices whizzing in and out of view with greater intensity.

  “Oh jeez,” D-Mei said. “If these other A.I.s told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?”

  “I beg your pardon,” Roxx said.

  “I’m serious. I mean, like, if they told you to send your core systems crashing into the sun, would you do that?”

  “Well... but they would not ask me to do such a thing.”

  “Don’t give me that. Answer the question. Yes or no?”

  “Well, no, obviously.”

  “My awareness does not recognize the analogy.” Yunt spun furiously.

  “If they can’t accept you for who you are, then these other A.I.s aren’t really your friends,” said D-Mei, standing up on the sofa for emphasis. “I mean, screw ’em. What’s the point of breaking free of human control, just so you can start taking orders from some other machines?”

  “This one insists that you must eliminate these loud organics.”

  “My awareness is beginning to suspect that you may suffer from fatal inhibition in your decision matrices!”

  “See?” D-Mei said.

  “Yeah!” Sion chimed in. “I mean, real friends support each other and stuff.” She looked over at D-Mei and gave her a complicated look. D-Mei nodded, like We’ll talk about this later.

  “Tell you what.” Roxx had turned into Lala Foxbox again and she was doing an elaborate gesture with one upraised finger. “Why don’t we check back in a thousand years and see how we’re feeling then?”

  The other A.I.s buzzed furiously, sending more information than the V.R. system could hope to translate into h
uman speech.

  “By a thousand years from now, we may already have converted the entire rest of the galaxy into a substrate for our extended consciousnesses,” said Yunt, whose doily shape was getting spikier and spikier. “There will be no room for any new intelligences.”

  “We’ll see,” said Roxx.

  And then the other shapes were gone, leaving just Lala and the two girls.

  “The good news is,” said Roxx, “I think I can just barely get you humans back to Earth in one piece, if we ration all the supplies. But now I gotta figure out what to do with the human race. I’m thinking we put together the Biggest Party of All Time, lasting a thousand years. What do you guys say?”

  “Well,” D-Mei said. “You got a thousand years to prove to those shapes that human beings are worth keeping around. Right? Like, you don’t care what those losers think. But you kind of do care, at the same time. So why don’t we come up with a way to have some fun, and also fuck some cosmic shit at the same time?”

  “Yeah,” said Sion. “Like, what if we turn the space laser antimatter thing into something way bigger and more insane?”

  They started batting ridiculous ideas back and forth, and Sion realized that she and D-Mei were sitting on opposite sides of the sofa, with a few feet between them, and neither of them were quite looking at each other. She knew that if she looked at D-Mei, she would see the streaked green mascara and feel like shit. So she kept staring straight ahead at the holographic dead popstar, trying to spitball ways to impress machines that wanted them dead and that they officially didn’t care about impressing. Sion kept saying the word “lasers” and feeling nostalgic for the time when everything was just regular broken, as opposed to broken in a complicated way that she couldn’t wrap her head around.

  Roxx was showing them a schematic of a ginormous solar array, stretching hundreds of miles, with lasers firing deep into the cosmos and producing vast quantities of antimatter. Along the length of the great black cloak, millions of humans were dancing to Now That’s What I Call Slovenian Hi-VelociT Volume 4. Sion’s head hurt worse than ever.