The Island

He really doesn't know.

«We tried,» I say.

«And?»

«And your chimp shut off our life support.»

For once, he has nothing to say.

«It's a machine, Dix. Why can't you get that? It's programmed. It can't change.»

«We're machines, just built from different things. We change.»

«Yeah? Last time I checked, you were sucking so hard on that thing's tit you couldn't even kill your cortical link.»

«How I learn. No reason to change.»

«How about acting like a damn human once in a while? How about developing a little rapport with the folks who might have to save your miserable life next time you go EVA? That enough of a reason for you? Because I don't mind telling you, right now I don't trust you as far as I could throw the tac tank. I don't even know for sure who I'm talking to right now.»

«Not my fault.» For the first time I see something outside the usual gamut of fear, confusion, and simpleminded computation playing across his face. «That's you, that's all of you. You talk — sideways.Think sideways. You all do, and it hurts.» Something hardens in his face. «Didn't even need you online for this,» he growls. «Didn't want you. Could have managed the whole build myself, told Chimp I could do it —»

«But the chimp thought you should wake me up anyway, and you always roll over for the chimp, don't you? Because the chimp always knows best, the chimp's your boss, the chimp's your fucking god. Which is why I have to get out of bed to nursemaid some idiot savant who can't even answer a hail without being led by the nose.» Something clicks in the back of my mind but I'm on a roll. «You want a real role model? You want something to look up to? Forget the chimp. Forget the mission. Look out the forward scope, why don't you? Look at what your precious chimp wants to run over because it happens to be in the way. That thing is better than any of us. It's smarter, it's peaceful, it doesn't wish us any harm at —»

«How can you know that? Can't know that!»

«No, you can't know that, because you're fucking stunted. Any normal caveman would see it in a second, but you — »

«That's crazy,» Dix hisses at me. «You're crazy. You're bad.»

«I'm bad!» Some distant part of me hears the giddy squeak in my voice, the borderline hysteria.

«For the mission.» Dix turns his back and stalks away.

My hands are hurting. I look down, surprized: my fists are clenched so tightly that my nails cut into the flesh of my palms. It takes a real effort to open them again.

I almost remember how this feels. I used to feel this way all the time. Way back when everything mattered; before passion faded to ritual, before rage cooled to disdain. Before Sunday Ahzmundin, eternity's warrior, settled for heaping insults on stunted children.

We were incandescent back then. Parts of this ship are still scorched and uninhabitable, even now. I remember this feeling.

This is how it feels to be awake.

* * *

I am awake, and I am alone, and I am sick of being outnumbered by morons. There are rules and there are risks and you don't wake the dead on a whim, but fuck it. I'm calling reinforcements.

Dix has got to have other parents, a father at least, he didn't get that Y chromo from me. I swallow my own disquiet and check the manifest; bring up the gene sequences; cross-reference.

Huh. Only one other parent: Kai. I wonder if that's just coincidence, or if the chimp drew too many conclusions from our torrid little fuckfest back in the Cyg Rift. Doesn't matter. He's as much yours as mine, Kai, time to step up to the plate, time to —

Oh shit. Oh no. Please no.

(There are rules. And there are risks.)

Three builds back, it says. Kai and Connie. Both of them. One airlock jammed, the next too far away along Eri 's hull, a hail-Mary emergency crawl between. They made it back inside but not before the blue-shifted background cooked them in their suits. They kept breathing for hours afterwards, talked and moved and cried as if they were still alive, while their insides broke down and bled out.

There were two others awake that shift, two others left to clean up the mess. Ishmael, and —

«Um, you said —»

«You fucker!» I leap up and hit my son hard in the face, ten seconds' heartbreak with ten million years' denial raging behind it. I feel teeth give way behind his lips. He goes over backwards, eyes wide as telescopes, the blood already blooming on his mouth.

«Said I could come back —!» he squeals, scrambling backwards along the deck.

«He was your fucking father! You knew, you were there! He died right in front of you and you didn't even tell me!»

«I–I —»

«Why didn't you tell me, you asshole? The chimp told you to lie, is that it? Did you —»

«Thought you knew!» he cries, «Why wouldn't you know?»

My rage vanishes like air through a breach. I sag back into the 'pod, face in hands.

«Right there in the log,» he whimpers. «All along. Nobody hid it. How could you not know?»

«I did,» I admit dully. «Or I–I mean…»

I mean I didn't know, but it's not a surprise, not really, not down deep. You just — stop looking, after a while.

There are rules.

«Never even asked,» my son says softly. «How they were doing.»

I raise my eyes. Dix regards me wide-eyed from across the room, backed up against the wall, too scared to risk bolting past me to the door. «What are you doing here?» I ask tiredly.

His voice catches. He has to try twice: «You said I could come back. If I burned out my link…»

«You burned out your link.»

He gulps and nods. He wipes blood with the back of his hand.

«What did the chimp say about that?»

«He said — it said it was okay,» Dix says, in such a transparent attempt to suck up that I actually believe, in that instant, that he might really be on his own.

«So you asked its permission.» He begins to nod, but I can see the tell in his face: «Don't bullshit me, Dix.»

«He — actually suggested it.»

«I see.»

«So we could talk,» Dix adds.

«What do you want to talk about?»

He looks at the floor and shrugs.

I stand and walk towards him. He tenses but I shake my head, spread my hands. «It's okay. It's okay.» I lean back against the wall and slide down until I'm beside him on the deck.