I twine the cord between my fingers and marvel. I kid you not: he’s rigged these headphones so they’re linked by a true and actual wire. Putting them on, I feel like I’m a character in a vintage reel. Like I really am in The Mummy.
Kodiak adjusts a dial that he’s rigged from vintage parts. A real, retro, manual dial! The static changes tone as he goes. He nudges it gently, like he’s testing the wing of a tumbled bird.
The static jumps and glitches. I listen to the high-color noise, so unlike the womb-throb of the ship, and startle when I hear a word, or part of a word. “—ax—”
I slap Kodiak hard on the shoulder. He rubs it, scowl soon slackening into concentration. His movements on the dial get even more delicate. “—in—dal—tion—”
“Do you know what it’s saying?” I whisper.
Kodiak shakes his head, continuing to tune the dial. But we can’t get the transmission any clearer. Anytime he touches the knob we lose the signal completely, and it takes a while to get back even the unintelligible shreds we were hearing before.
Finally Kodiak removes his headphones. I do the same. “Kodiak, that was—” I say. He places his hand over my mouth and points to the open portal. Technically I’ve programmed OS not to have any consciousness of this room, but just in case I get up and close it. “Kodiak, that was amazing,” I say once we’re in privacy. Or what might be privacy. Probably isn’t privacy. I can still feel his fingers on my lips. “You made us our own radio.”
“Just the receiver. I don’t think there’s any way I can rig up the ability to transmit. But yes!” He jabs his thumb at his chest, exaggerates his accent. “This Kodiak Celius is pretty useful guy.”
“Is there a way we can strengthen the receiver?”
Kodiak shakes his head, rapping his knuckles against the wall. “Because there is no atmosphere in space, radio signals can reach this far without much distortion, but this hull is heavily shielded. I have to get this device to the exterior, or at least rig an antenna out there.”
I look through the tiny window in the workshop, into the stars wheeling before the dark. “That means a spacewalk,” I say.
“An unauthorized spacewalk,” Kodiak adds. “I’ll have to set up the antenna, affix it to the ship, and run independent wiring along the hull. Not easy, but not especially complicated, either.”
“Not for Kodiak Celius, ‘Pretty Useful Guy,’” I say. My voice trails off. “Except, Kodiak—these are all things OS won’t want you to be doing.”
“OS’s list of tasks is shrinking, but I still have a few exterior damages left to repair,” Kodiak says. “I can attach the antenna next time I’m out. We have little hope of tricking OS, but at least the spacewalk itself won’t be suspicious.”
“We’re still at the mercy of a shifty computer. I don’t like the idea of your going out there.”
“Well, yeah. I’m not exactly thrilled about it, either.”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 71 *-_
“Tell me what you were discussing in what you call the blind room,” OS says as I head to my own quarters to suit up.
“We like to have privacy for some conversations,” I say, taking time to choose my words. “I know you’re fully aware of the human need for privacy, OS.”
“Yes, of course I am aware of this human need. I would like to know if there’s anything you discuss that I might be able to help with. When I can’t hear you, I can’t assist you.”
“It’s just human stuff, OS.” My mouth screws up at the odd words.
“Rover cannot get into Kodiak’s workshop to clean with the polycarb barrier you have erected. I could easily melt it, of course, but that would appear to you to go against your will and would be upsetting to your sense of control. Am I correct?”
“Yes. It would harm our fragile human morale. Leave the workshop blocked.” OS and I are dancing a familiar two-step. We’ve had this conversation before.
“Once I am able to communicate with Cusk mission control, I will have to tell them what you have done.”
“Of course you will,” I say. Come on, pulse, stay even. “We understand.”
I take my spacesuit off its hook, getting an inadvertent whiff of the lining while I remove the helmet. Since I’m a bundle of nerves whenever I’m inside the suit, it’s pretty rank in there, and only going to get worse.
“Kodiak has informed me that he plans to finish his current list of maintenance tasks on an unscheduled spacewalk today. This will take many hours,” OS says.
“Yes, he told me about it, too,” I say.
“I’m glad that you two are in such good communication now,” OS says. I’ve heard all of OS’s various intonations a hundred times each, but this one sounds like something new. Chipper, I guess I’d call it.
“Thanks, OS,” I say, pulling the first leg of the suit up over my knee.
“There is a one-hour spacewalk limit set by Cusk mission control,” OS says. “This is to prevent accidents from fatigue, and also to prevent too much buildup of radiation within your soft tissues. When Kodiak comes against the edge of this time window, I hope you will join me in convincing him to return to the ship.”
“Yes,” I say. “I don’t want to see him injured any more than you do.”
“Of course you do not,” my mother’s voice replies. “I did not mean to imply anything of the sort.”
The hairs on my arm rise, tickling the sleeve of the suit as I pull it on. “Do you think Kodiak will be safe out there?” I ask.
“Kodiak will be within the usual window of risk.”
“Okay, then,” I say, placing my helmet over my head and taking up my usual position at the window. “I guess that’s the best we can hope for.”
Kodiak emerges from the far side of the Coordinated Endeavor, gripping the edge as the ship’s centrifugal forces push him away. Exit and reentry are the most dangerous parts of the spacewalk.
“He is doing very well, isn’t he?” OS asks.
“Yes, he is.”
“Spacefarer Celius is skilled,” OS says coolly. I remember how my mother would so often praise Minerva in front of me, goading me to rise to her standard.
Kodiak starts with the minor repairs, working his way along the exterior of the ship, filling small holes and smoothing the hull using a portaprinter. Then, once he’s made his way to the center, he unreels the flexible antenna from a pocket.
After he’s fixed one end of the antenna to the ship, he runs the cable to the edge.
“Kodiak is not responding to his helmet comms. What is he attaching outside me right now, Ambrose?” OS asks. “I have not scheduled any work for him on this part of the ship.”
I consider my words. “We decided to build redundancy into our radio capabilities. You know how serious it is that we’ve been out of communication with mission control for this long. We’re working to receive radio communications from mission control some other way. And to double our chances of catching any transmission from Minerva.”
A micropause. “This is wise. Even though a continuing solar storm would influence both antennae the same way, it will make you feel better to know you have investigated another option. I should have suggested this before.”
“That’s okay, OS,” I say with false cheer. “You can’t think of everything.”
Kodiak makes a gloved thumbs-up in my direction, and then begins his return to his airlock. As the gravity increases, he has to grip tighter and tighter. At this point in a spacewalk it’s nearly impossible to take a break, since the force of the rotating ship drags hard on the body. Still, I watch him rest between every step, hands wrapped around the rungs, like an exhausted swimmer clutching a buoy.
Then he’s made it inside. The closing airlock door reverbs all the way to my side of the spacecraft.
I strip off my stinky spacesuit and hurtle through the ship, slowing only as I cross the zero-g center and descend into the Dimokratía half.
When I get to the Dimokratía airlock, Kodiak is still in his spacesuit. He’s
released his helmet, and is leaning against the wall. I race right up to him and stop myself only just before I throw my arms around him. Instead I do this awkward kind of lean. I’m in my undergarments, soaked through with sweat and sticking to the skin, and his body is bulked twice over by the suit. He’s freezing, but I need the assurance of his body against mine, the proof that he’s there.
He goes still for a moment, then his gloved hands cross over my back, fingers linking over my soaked shirt, and he presses me tight to his suit. I’m shivering before I know it—the chilled surface is sucking my heat away. Once he realizes what he’s doing, Kodiak releases me and steps back.
A complicated expression is on his face. He looks surprised and fascinated and somehow assaulted, too, like I’ve blurted out some intense secret from his own past. “So,” he says.
“So,” I respond, wrapping my trembling arms around my chest, rubbing my chilled skin. When these filmy cotton suits are wet, it’s like wearing tissue. I turn away, then realize the back is no less revealing. I turn around again.
“Do you . . . want something to change into?” Kodiak stammers.
I nod, still shivering.
“Take a jumpsuit from my closet. I’ll meet you in the workshop,” he says, unclipping the collar of his spacesuit.
“Did everything go okay?” I ask, teeth chattering.
“Yes,” he says. “Please, Ambrose, go change. I don’t want you sick.”
I nod and shuffle toward Kodiak’s sleeping quarters, hands masking my butt cheeks.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 3 *-_
I’m waiting for Kodiak in his workshop, wearing—deliciously enough—one of his jumpsuits. The sleeves hang to the middle of my fingers. 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.
I run Kodiak’s soft shirt collar over my cheek while I wait for him in the blind room, then drop it as I hear him approach.
“Are you ready for this?” he asks, powering up the receiver.
My heart surges for reasons beyond radio transmissions, but before I can figure out just what I’m feeling, what I discovered about my feelings for him as I watched him spacewalk, he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor again, knees against mine, in his matching Dimokratía jumpsuit. I put on my headphones while Kodiak works the makeshift dial.
While he tours the static, I lay myself down, feet flat on the floor, staring at the pinpoints of old light swirling outside the window. I tug at Kodiak so he’ll come beside me, but he bats my hand away, focused on the dial.
Static in and static out. He hovers over the knob.
A clear signal.
Kodiak darts his hand away, like the knob has burned him.
“—to our retro radio hour, where the holos are down and the screens are black. Pull out your old Amérique du Nord chair, split a coconut, and swirl some milk into your yerba mate. I’m your host, Ibu Putu. Remember, our intelligence might be low, but at least it’s not artificial.”
Over the sounds of banjo, the host goes on to describe where they’re broadcasting from—something they call the Isotope-Free Zone, which is no name I’ve ever heard before. Their accent is unusual, too. It sounds like some distant form of Portuguese that I’ve never encountered in any reel.
I kind of like the music and start bopping my head. Kodiak shakes his chin severely, though he’s smiling in his eyes.
“Up next, news relayed across Isotope Alley to our international headquarters in Ubud.”
Kodiak and I lean in while the transmission turns to static. It cuts back in. “—has been at the forefront of the archiving movement, and before the most recent conflict was accumulating empirical evidence of strikes to someday bring against Fédération in war crime proceedings, for launching the volley that many consider to be the trigger for Disassemblement, the Isotope Alleys, and our eventual fracture. How has that work been going?”
Another voice laughs. “Not so well, Ibu, as you can imagine. That work was begun under the assumption that Fédération would somehow reassemble and could therefore be held accountable. But the capitals and the thousands of miles around them were worst hit and are right in the middle of Isotope Alley. It’s hard to throw a punch at a ghost.”
“Well said and thank you, Anuk. Stay rad-free.”
“Stay rad-free, Ibu. Thank you for having me on.”
“This concludes our broadcast for today, Tuesday, March twenty-seventh, in the year 142 of this era of Uranium, 2615 Common Era.” I whip the headset off, reeling. That’s impossible. It’s more than 140 years into the future. We’d be dead. Then my surging heart calms. It’s just a transmission. It might be a joke. Kodiak hasn’t removed his headset. Not wanting to miss out, I put mine back on. “This recording, like all previous, will be archived and kept on record in our headquarters. Good evening, or morning, or whatever the sky looks like in your spot in the alley. This broadcast will revert to music, AI’s choice, until we begin tomorrow’s transmission.”
The radio switches to choral classical music.
Kodiak removes his headphones and lets them hang around his shoulders. When he unplugs our sets, the sound leaks out of the tinny speaker instead. I remove my headphones, stomach knotting even as my brain spins.
I feel what I’m coming to recognize as space vertigo, when the universe spins out from under me. I have to say something, to prove we still exist together. “I think that’s Brahms the radio AI’s playing,” I say.
Kodiak rests his forehead against his knees.
I try again. “A German Requiem. I think.”
“I don’t care whose fucking requiem it is,” Kodiak says, punching the floor.
“Why are you angry?” I ask. My voice speeds up as I wait for him to look at me again. “I honestly can’t make any sense at all out of what we just heard. We’re not going nearly fast enough for time to bend—that’s the stuff of reels. It’s some prank or a glitch.”
Kodiak punches the floor again, fists bloodless and gray. He doesn’t want to talk. But I need to. He’ll have to bend to my needs this time. “Don’t take anything to heart until we understand more,” I prattle on. “Could it be that the OS is playing with us? Maybe it made up that transmission to punish us for trying to get our own communication relay up?”
“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.”
As I back out of the blind room and make my way to my side of the ship, I pause in the zero-g center. This freewheeling weightlessness is dangerous to the human body. It deteriorates our corneas, drains our muscles, leaches calcium out of bones that no longer bear loads. But all I want right now is to feel weightless, directionless, free-floating, doomed. This feels honest. I set myself spinning, tucking my knees in so I spin even faster.
I’m going to throw up. I guess I want to?
I’m still wearing one of Kodiak’s spare uniforms, and the wafts of his clean scent eventually bring me to my senses. Floating vomit is no joke. I won’t let that sort of mess be Ambrose Cusk’s legacy. I reach for the rungs of the Endeavor and climb down to my quarters, my body gradually taking on more and more weight. At the bottom, I look up and see that Kodiak has sealed the orange portal.
I stagger to 06 and plant myself in front of its large window. I peer into the void, looking for Earth. But Earth is long out of view. I can’t see any planets at all.
What’s happening back home?
“OS, what year is it?” I ask, heart slushing hard.
“You have been on your voyage for two months and twenty-four days. Adding that to your departure date makes this still year 2472 on Earth.”
/> “We have . . . information that seems to indicate that the year is 2615. And that my country started a war that has led to Earth’s being reduced to pockets of civilization. Do you know anything about that?”
“Do I know anything about that? I do not. What is the source of this information? It is hard for me to understand where you would come across novel information aboard the Coordinated Endeavor. The comms are not functional, after all.”
“OS, you witnessed Kodiak’s spacewalk. There’s no need to pretend you know less than you do. We installed a separate antenna. We’ve received radio transmissions from Earth. That’s where this information comes from.”
“Radio waves from Earth are nearly five hours old by the time they reach us. Whatever information you received is not current.”
“Plus or minus five hours isn’t what we’re worried about,” I say.
“Neither should be whatever radio transmission you might have received. It does not affect our directive, which is to investigate the potential survival of Spacefarer Minerva at the Titan Base Camp. Nothing that happens on Earth changes that fact.”
I’m not so sure that’s true anymore.
“Are you still dedicated to accomplishing the mission’s directive, Spacefarer Cusk?” OS asks. My mother’s tone is studied, neutral. Ominously formal.
AIs often have scripted pockets in their code, lines in the sand that trigger official responses. They’re planted by the programmers to suss out any mission-critical failures on the part of the crew, in order to prevent mutiny or other emotional derailment. I know because I programmed a lot of them. I’ll have to choose my words carefully. “Yes, of course I am,” I say.
“Good. That is good to hear. Good.”
I find myself pressing my finger pads against the window, flexing them against the chill smooth surface. The void swirls beyond. If for some magical reason that radio transmission is true, that we entered some time hole and came out in the future, everyone I’ve ever known is dead—from old age, if they happened to survive the nuclear strikes. 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.
The Darkness Outside Us Page 10
