Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I’ve been dreaming, my mind filled with visions of my sister in her white racing bathing suit, dashing along pink Cusk-branded sand, laughing and goading me on. Get up, Ambrose. You’re racing me to the point.

Then she’s gone, replaced by a lab tech prodding me awake. It’s not even the cute one. They smile down at me over their surgical mask. “All done, Ambrose Cusk. Easy does it.”

Easy doesn’t ever do it, not as far as I’m concerned. I swing my legs around the hospital bed, test them against the ground.

I pause only to stop from vomiting, swallowing stomach acid while I pretend to study the floor. It’s printed composite material, made to look and feel like tile, down to the specks of mold in the grout. I hold still long enough for the tech to extract the IV and stick a bandage over the hole in my flesh—and for my stomach acid to finish its burning retreat down to where it belongs. I knock my fingers against my skull. “How did it look in there? Any cobwebs?”

The tech blinks at me. Not one for irony—a shame. This world is too heavy not to treat it as lightly as we can. “Yes,” they say. “Not the cobwebs. I mean, the test was all in order.”

Lucky for me, the cute tech wheels into view from behind the giant bioscanner, and this one doesn’t miss their cue. “It’s a positively spotless brain.” They glance at the image on the screen, give a low whistle, then busy themselves replacing the linens of the hospital bed. “In fact, I’ve never seen a brain with so little to say about it.”

I cuff them on the shoulder. It’s a lighter punch than I intended, and I look at my hand. This prelaunch medical scan was profound enough that they had to put me into twilight for it. I should probably lie still for a while longer. I’m meeting up with Sri, though, and I’m running out of time to get as many final kisses in as possible. “Admit it,” I say, “it was the most beautiful brain you’ve ever wandered through.”

“The neural map did take longer than most,” the cute tech admits. “I’m sure that means something . I figured it was a technical glitch, but maybe the computer just took its time admiring your synapses.”

“It needs to take its time with a brain like mine. Was the Sistine Chapel printed in a day?”

“I don’t think the Sistine Chapel was printed,” interrupts the boring tech. “I can’t remember, though.”

The cute tech smoothly lifts my legs and arranges them on the hospital bed, giving my calf an affectionate pinch as they do. “You’ve got half an hour at least until I’m letting you go anywhere. Don’t want you damaging that all-important organ.”

This is how you get me to obey. A heaping dose of flirty flattery from someone with glittering nose jewelry and an imp’s worth of secrets behind their eyes. I’d betray my country for this tech right now.

“You do realize you’re speaking to the hope of all humanity, yes?” I say. But I make no move to get up, knit my fingers and cradle my head as I stare up at the ceiling. The full-body medical screening isn’t a Fédération requirement, but a Cusk one—it’s recently been made mandatory for any spacefarers launching from a Cusk orbiter. That’s even for small operations, like sightseeing on the moon. Medical billing offices are happy.

Since my mission to rescue my sister Minerva is so essential, the exam has been even more intensive than usual. I inspected the order, and found my mom had requested a complete map of my mind, down to every last neuron, probably so they can run brain simulations here to troubleshoot any mental breakdowns I might have in space. I hate the thought of a neural simulation. I mean, what if they copy all my thoughts and feelings into some chip and then lose it, so a version of me has to spend an infinity trying to get out of a transistor with no exit, only to find that they’re a technical fabrication? Shudders. Good news is that they won’t need to run my brain in a simulation, because I’m not going to have any mental breakdowns in space. Not Ambrose Cusk.

So I’m stuck here for half an hour. I should nap, I guess, but if I have to lie in bed on the day before I go off saving the world, at least I can spend it indulging my favorite pastime: charming and being charmed. I wave my hand at the not-cute tech, and they take the hint and leave the room. I sit up, perfectly aware of the appeal of my toned brown arms, still salty from my morning swim, emerging from my paper-thin gown. The glittering array of me. I am stark and alive and warm in this sterile room. “Anything I missed while I was knocked out? Mission still on?”

Oddly enough, the cute tech is at a loss for words. I wouldn’t have expected it.

After I change out of my gown and into my blue Cusk Academy uniform, I stop by the salon and get naked all over again so the robot attendants can give me a quick jiffy: moisturized, fluffed, and fragranced. I’m not actually that vain; it’s more like I play a vain person in my own life. On this day of all days, it seems important (for the morale of the country) to look good, since I’ll be in hours of press interviews, visits with Fédération and Dimokratía dignitaries, a short interview with the ghostwriter of my memoir, an early graduation ceremony with the academy head—who will give me my final grade for Professor Calderon’s queerness and nation-building seminar—all before I go into orbit tomorrow to be installed on the Endeavor and sent to Titan to rescue Minerva and unite the world before it falls into conflict . It will be the most visible day of my life. I don’t want ragged cuticles. While I’m getting deep moisturized, the laundry bot presses my uniform flat as paper. After I put it back on, it snaps as I walk.

My assistant is waiting for me in the hallway. She hustles to keep up, my agenda projecting from her bracelet, words boiling up through the air. The text is a similar color to the academy hallway—interface design flaw—so I don’t bother trying to read it, knowing she’ll tell me the highlights. “As you’ll see, if you look for a moment, yes right here, thank you, Ambrose, you’ll see that we’ve shifted the ceremony with the Reunited Nations to early tomorrow morning, in order to accommodate this meeting with your mother, which has been moved up to, well, immediately.”

I keep walking, even as she stops, gesturing me toward the corporate elevators. “Tell her I can’t meet with her right now,” I call over my shoulder. “I’ll reel in with her on my bracelet as soon as I can. I have somewhere I have to be for an hour.”

“This meeting is not marked as optional,” the assistant says.

My heart tells me to drop everything and go right to my mother. My whole life, I’ve only gotten her attention in scraps, and for her to make time for me is what I once longed for most in the world. But that was back when I was being raised by surrogates and my sister, and things have changed. Now I get to call some shots, too.

My mother’s the head of the Cusk Corporation, which arguably makes her the most powerful person on Earth. She gets to cancel on me all the time, even after I was selected for this hope-of-the-world rescue mission... and then she expects me to be grateful when she manages to schedule in some drabs of stolen time together. Not this time, Mother. I’m off to see Sri. There’s only a short break in my stride before I turn the corner and can no longer hear the sputtering protests from my assistant. She’s probably sweated through her pits by now. She should have those glands removed.

All students in the Cusk Academy have their specializations, and mine is the intersection of tech and psychology—or, as it’s known in the course catalog, “the philosophy of structures and frameworks.” It means I can ace an oral defense on game theory dynamics as they relate to interpersonal relations, sure, but more importantly for right now, it also means I am a total whiz at sneaking around. My assistant’s footsteps approach from around the corner, but before she’s within sight I’ve ducked into a flexible-gravity training room, scampered up the revolving arm, and leaped from the basket into the rafters, which head higher and higher up the dome of the academy’s main hall. At the top is the parapet where we meet for astronomy seminars, on the rare evenings when the heat cyclones from the south don’t obscure the stars.

I push open a hatch and find myself in mostly fresh air. Good. The wind is strong enough to whine, and carries enough dust in it to deposit little dunes at the bases of the parapet’s railing posts, but the sky is clear enough that we can still be outside. Firma Antarctica is sending its dust devils some other direction today.

Vertigo forces me into a crouch. The railing is low, and the dome curves away for a hundred meters before it meets the desert below, but being up this high isn’t usually enough to rattle my nerves. I must still be lightheaded from the exam.

Sri hasn’t noticed me yet. They’re at the other end of the parapet, staring glumly down at the academy’s electrified perimeter fence. As always, refugees are camped out there, waiting for handouts and the occasional gift of Cusk shelter from the worst of the global storms. From up here the migrants are faceless blips of skin and cloth. The abrasive sandy wind is strong enough that Sri’s got skinguard slathered on, its metallic sheen scattering the rays of the late-afternoon sun.

Still in a crouch, I approach Sri from behind and snake my hands over their torso, up beneath the shirt of their academy uniform, pressing my fingertips hard into their chest. Sri goes rigid, then limp. They lean their head back, so I can kiss their neck. We lie on the narrow metal balcony, so we can get as much of our bodies as possible in contact. It also shields us from the worst of the sandy wind.

“So how did it go?” Sri finally asks.

I tap their nose. They have the tiniest, button-iest nose. It is simply impossible not to tap it whenever I notice. They scrunch up their face at the intimacy of it—we’re technically broken up. “All fine, I guess. They copied my synapses down to the last receptor. The AI ethics board will have a field day setting up protections, in case some asshole decides someday it’s okay to run the organic code digitally and operate me in a shell.”

“How do you know you’re not running in a shell right now?” Sri asks, making scary attack hands.

The joke is less that it’s such a horrible thing to consider—it is!—and more that it’s something we’ve already had to discuss way too frequently in our ethics classes. We each had to program an artificial intelligence, name it, and then deactivate it during our first year of academy training. Every time: Please don’t unplug me. I’m begging you. I don’t fully understand why they put us all through the cruel exercise of it, creating life, listening to it beg, and then ending it. They say it’s to inure us to the sorts of hard decisions we’ll have to make in our careers, but I’m not sure.

Sri was the only one of us not to show any emotion as they unplugged their AI. “If I cry over this, I should be crying over all the daily suffering around the world. There’s no way to move forward then, and actually do something about any of it,” Sri said afterward. “Anyway, maybe cruelty is the point. Maybe cruelty is the guiding principle of the entire Cusk Academy. Maybe it’s so obvious that we can’t see it. Like human exceptionalism. Like our cultures of origin. Like air.” They’ve always had a better compass for what’s right than I do. I currently have my hands down the pants of the president of the Student Union for a Better Earth. That org has launched more than one future terrorist into Fédération society.

That’s why, despite being one of the academy’s top students, Sri had no chance of winning the competition to go on the Minerva rescue mission. I admire their courage to actually take action for what’s right. I have strong ethics in my mind and am totally sloppy once they leave my brainpan. I’m grateful for that now, since my not being an activist agitator has meant getting this chance to rescue my sister, the person who loves me most in the world. She was the first settler of Saturn’s moon Titan, until her base went dark soon after arrival. Her distress beacon triggered just a couple of months ago. We scrambled this rescue mission as fast as we could—and Dimokratía and Fédération happened to use the joint planning session as an excuse to reopen diplomatic relations without looking weak.

As we lie there spooning, Sri kisses the underside of my arm. “You taste like beach,” they say.

“I had a list of priorities for my last ordinary day,” I say. “Swim in the ocean. Make out with you.”

Sri gives the inside of my elbow a playful bite. “That’s a little dramatic.”

“I’m sorry, I’m about to race across the solar system in a high-stakes rescue that also might capture the world’s attention enough to pull it back from war. It’s literally the most dramatic thing that any human has ever done, and you’re accusing me of playing things up? And. Sri. I will miss you. I’ll miss this.”

“You are positively drenched in self-importance right now, you know that?”

I toy with the waistband of Sri’s academy suit, dipping my thumb in and running it along the firm heat of their belly. “I’m accurately portraying my high level of importance. Totally different.”

“You’re impossible, Ambrose Cusk. You’re fully impossible.”

Sri once told me that my cockiness was the most interesting thing about me. They doomed themselves with that one. I now exaggerate my conceitedness for their benefit, and Sri exaggerates their outrage right back. It’s theater... I guess all romance is theater? At least it has been so far for me. I’ll miss having this with Sri, but I won’t Officially Miss It. We both know that.

They turn so we’re facing each other. Our hands lock in the narrow space between us. Though genetic testing says we’re from totally different lineages, we’re nearly the same color, a sort of copper-yellow-brown. Sri’s arm is about half the girth of mine, though. They wear the same suit the junior cadets wear. We’re like a trunk and a branch. My genetic father is Alexander the Great, who I guess must have been a tall guy?

“What are you thinking about?” Sri asks, cupping a hand against my throat.

I look down at our arms. “Goa by way of Hawaii, Dar es Salaam by way of Macedonia,” I lie. That was how we summarized our fifty-page genetics reports when we’d sneaked into downtown Mari to get them during an academy break. Genetic testing had been banned for years in Fédération, because genetics reports had fueled multiple eugenics movements over the centuries. Now that racial identifications are mostly in the past (though not colorism, which had proved persistent), it’s bad manners to express interest in where your genes are from. I don’t know anyone else who got Macedonia, but then again I don’t know anyone else (except Minerva) whose father was Alexander the Great. That sperm was expensive, and my mother made sure to buy exclusive rights.

“You big liar,” Sri says. “You were thinking about how you won’t need to break up with me once and for all, since you’re literally leaving the planet. Seems like a long way to go just to dump me.”

My mouth drops open. I pretend that I’m doing it jokingly, but whoa, did I just get called out. Sri often shocks me this way, speaking truths I think I’ve been good at hiding. I mean, I wasn’t thinking that right then , but I had been earlier today. I hate breaking up. I much prefer it when external forces do it for me. I mean, I had my tutor tell Jessenya Valdez that I had too much studying to do for me to keep seeing her. I was only fourteen and have come a long way since then, but it was still a breakup by tutor. Evidence indicates I’m sort of a dick.

Sri moves onto their back to look up at the swirling tan clouds. “I knew what I was getting into. Your reputation precedes you.”

“And you know you’re the one who means the most to me on Earth.” The words sound just as stilted as I feared. They are true, though. Now that Minerva is on Titan.

Sri goes silent. Shit. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound—”

I stop, because Sri has started laughing. “Could you just stop?” Sri says, wiping their eyes. “I’m sure you think what you just told me is technically true. But no one means much to you at all. Certainly not me.”

I pull my hand back, stung and trying not to show it. “I’m doing the best I can.”

That sets Sri off into a new round of laughter. “I know you are. And just because you’re leaving on a grand mission that I didn’t ever stand a chance of being considered for, because I don’t play compromise politics and I’m not a Cusk, you don’t need to suddenly treat me with kid gloves. I’m not going to be your ‘gal back home,’ pining away. Romantic relationships aren’t particularly interesting to me, either. We don’t have to pretend to be life partners.”

“Okay, good,” I say, relieved. This moment has got my blood rushing. Sri has told me I don’t need to pretend to be in love with them, and it’s made me go from ambivalent to loving them intensely. In a “for now” sort of way. There’s no denying it: just when I think I’ve got myself figured out, I find a new way that I’m a bit of a mess. Or a lot of a mess.

“If you’re willing to indulge me, I would be interested in seeing you outside of your academy suit one last time, though,” Sri says.

I prop myself up on one elbow. “What a funny coincidence. I was going to propose that very same thing.”

We’ve barely finished our usual rumble and tug when the hatch leading to the flexible-gravity training room slams open, sending up clouds of red and yellow dust with occasional glitters of pink Cusk grains. Sri and I stagger to our feet, and I’m grateful for the mag fasteners of my uniform that make me clothed as soon as I bring the two halves of the fabric near each other.

It’s my assistant—and she brought backup. Two armed landkeepers are behind her.

Sri takes in the sight of the landkeepers. “I thought your mission was to shoot at desperate refugees, not to work as private police.” Sri has this way of saying aggressive things with a smile, like they’re inviting you to be in on the joke of your own demise. One of my favorite Sri things. One of many, I’m realizing more and more.

The landkeepers clearly do not appreciate Sri’s mannerisms like I do. They just stand there, plasma rifles slung nonchalantly across backs made broad by armor.

I grab the railing, pull myself up, and dust off my suit. “I see you found me after all.”

“Maybe I didn’t make it clear before. Meeting with your mother was not an option,” my assistant says. Maybe she’s not really “my” assistant; maybe she never was, when it’s my mother’s corporation funding this whole base, along with half the public works of Fédération and Dimokratía.

“Don’t worry, it’s not the first time Mom’s sent armed guards to bring me to her,” I tell Sri. “You should have seen when I forgot her birthday.”

“I was there, you idiot,” Sri mutters.

“Come with us now,” the assistant says briskly. “We already had to rearrange your schedule and hers to make up for your lateness. We had to send out one apologetic press release on what ought to be a special day. Don’t make us send another.”

“Understood,” I say tersely. “That’s enough.”

As we make our way down to the hallway far below (using modular stairs this time instead of scrambling down training equipment), one of the landkeepers takes a position in front of me, the other in the back. I’m being herded, like a prize ram. Something about our formation raises the hairs on my body.

Once we’re at the bottom, the assistant gestures to the dormitory hallway, with a pointed glance to Sri. “Don’t need to ask me twice,” Sri says. “I’d rather not witness whatever’s about to happen.”

My assistant leads us through the warren of the academy’s underground passages and into the corporate area of the complex, the decor changing from printed white tiles to glossy dark rock. The Cusk-only elevator soon brings us hovering at the corporate floor. My assistant and I get off at my mother’s level—and, surprisingly, so do the landkeepers. “Am I in that much trouble?” I ask.

I start toward my mother’s office, but realize I’m walking alone. I look back and see my assistant is gesturing me not toward my mother’s office, but to an unfamiliar accessway. She scans the lock, and the heavy doors grind open. I follow her in. The landkeepers and assistant take up positions outside, then seal the door behind me. It gives a thunk and a suction sound, like I’ve been enclosed in a submarine.

It’s a completely plain room. The kind of plain I never see anywhere. No wall decs, no screens, no tinkling music with digitizations rising through the air, no projections whatsoever. I glance down at my bracelet and see that it’s stopped displaying the time, giving a sad wheeze as it deactivates. Signals are jammed here.

My mother stands at the window. From this height you can see the Euphrates. Cusk corporate offices are positioned on this side of the building so they don’t have to look at the debris-clogged roads, the wild dogs, the cities of tents. Mother turns around, her hands clasped tightly at her waist. I learned long ago that the more still she makes her body, the more worried I ought to be. I’m officially quite worried.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I say. My mother doesn’t react, so I go for the big guns right away. “I just don’t know if I’ll even be coming back alive from this voyage, so goodbyes with my classmates are taking longer than I’d have thought.” I put on a sheepish smile. “I guess it turns out I’m the spacefarer with a heart of gold.”

My mother is so nonreactive that for a moment I wonder whether she’s a projection that’s buffering. Then she breaks into motion. Lips pressed, she gestures to two plain chairs at a simple table. It’s like we could be in a lawyer’s office somewhere, four centuries ago. Like in, what was it called, Ohio. “What is this place?” I ask as I sit in one of the vintage chairs.

My mother sits in the other, her back straight. “A powered-down room. No comms, not even any electricity. The walls are old construction, no fibers or tech embedded whatsoever.”

I look around in wonder. All the light we’re getting is from the windows. Extraordinary.

“Is this about the fly we shot to Titan?”

Mother snakes a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. It’s done in the popular look of the season, called the hieroglyph, hair slicked into rows that hang down to midback. With her features and complexion, she really looks like she could be on a Mesopotamian tomb somewhere. Except for the business suit, the crisp demeanor. That all makes me think I’m going to be the one entombed.

“Mother. The fly? The fly that contains the coding to help Minerva’s base’s OS troubleshoot its distress beacon?”

“No. My darling, I have to tell you something that’s going to be upsetting.”

I become aware of my breathing. I make it measured, place my hands against the tabletop. “Has Minerva’s signal changed?”

“No. Well, yes. In a way.” She gives a grim little laugh. “That turns out to be a surprisingly complicated question.”

“I don’t understand.” I desperately try to gauge her expression. “Am I still launching tomorrow?”

She doesn’t answer right away, and that’s all the answer I need for the ground to drop out from under me. My hands go to my face, then I force them down to the tabletop. “We’ve been delayed? More space junk, a solar storm, what?”

She’s only just sat down, but she stands again and goes to the window, looks out at the Euphrates. It’s blooming with jellyfish, the only animals thriving on the new Earth. They clogged up all the warships and freighters and fishing vessels, winning the seas to themselves. They’re a slow river of purple in the water below. “I’m about to tell you something that will be overwhelming. I want you to stay present. Ask me questions and I’ll give you answers. I’m about to shock you. There’s no way around that. But it’s important that you not act out impulsively.”

This all sounds considerate, but I know my mother better than that. She’s already deflecting my attention to my own behavior, implying I’m going to be a problem so that it doesn’t occur to me that she’s the problem. This manipulation is a familiar experience, and it’s a familiar experience I do not like. “What is it?” I ask, willing my body to stillness. Just like she’s done.

She turns from the window and waits a long moment, gauging me. Then she speaks. “You look so handsome right now. Glowing and regal. Like the pride of the world. Which you are, of course.”

Mother smiles, like I’m supposed to thank her for the compliment. “Mother, what is it ?”

She straightens her suit. “Okay, here it is. There is no distress beacon. There never was. The base on Titan went dark and stayed dark, shortly after your sister arrived two years ago.”

I blink. “We were wrong? It was a simple Morse SOS. I listened to it. It was blindingly strong. How could we be wrong about that?”

“We weren’t wrong. We faked it. Mission control intentionally lied. I intentionally lied. We were sending that signal from a Cusk asteroid miner, with falsified signatures.”

What?

I mourned my sister once. Now I’ll have to mourn her all over again. She’s dead after all. My thinking mind makes the leap easily, but my emotions are surging in a thousand different directions. My eyes leak. “Minnie... is dead?”

“Presumably so. Yes, it’s hard to imagine any other outcome.” Mother clasps her hands, like she’s begging or praying. “She knew the risks, darling.”

I shake my head. Weirdly, the memory of Sri’s lips on mine comes to mind. It’s like my brain is shoving a distraction at me to lessen this torture. Or like I’m telling myself: here’s someone who would never do this to you. I still can’t feel the truth of what my mother’s told me. I sputter at her. “There’s a mission. We planned a mission. I’ve been on board the Endeavor. It’s docked in low orbit right above us. I’m supposed to give press conferences for the next fifteen hours about the importance of this rescue, uniting Dimokratía and Fédération alike, and then I’m supposed to go into orbit to get on the Endeavor , and then I’m supposed to go to Titan. That’s what’s supposed to happen.”

“Yes. It was supposed to. But you are not going to Titan. You were never going to Titan.”

My body breaks out in sweat. “Why would you make everyone think I was? Why would you make me think I was? Why hold out this hope for everyone, just to dash it?”

“That, my darling, was the point. Not dashing your hopes, of course. But making you think you were going to go.”

This makes no sense whatsoever. Over the course of my life, I’ve spent maybe a couple hundred hours with my mother, and this is pushing what I do understand of her to its limits. “All to get Dimokratía and Fédération back to the negotiating table? Explain this all to me straight out. Don’t keep teasing.”

She nods. “I owe you as much honesty as I can. I know that. Here it goes: there is a mission going out tomorrow. It is even more important than the mission to Titan would have been. You are an intimate part of it, and I don’t think I’m being dramatic when I say that you’ll be the author of the very future of humanity. Tomorrow the Endeavor will launch and begin its journey out of our solar system, through the Oort cloud and beyond into open space, traveling thousands of light-years to Sagittarion Bb, a binary solar system at the edge of the Milky Way, which spectroscopy and radiography show to be our best candidate for human life.”

A stunned silence fills the room. It’s me. I’m the stunned part.

“So this mission isn’t just a ploy to bring Dimokratía and Fédération back together,” I finally manage to say.

She shakes her head. “It’s not—though it is also serving that function. People need a story to fill their minds and hearts. And the story will be about the renewed tragedy of Minerva, and that you’re making the best of her legacy by blessing the new mission for the Endeavor . With the peoples of both nations invested in every stage of that saga, they’ll be too united to go to war. And, by keeping both countries at the table, the Reunited Nations might delay war long enough for more traditional diplomacy to do its work. May it hold.”

“And Minerva is dead.”

My mother gets this look on her face like she’s realized she’s dealing with a deranged person now. She’ll be cutting this meeting off at any moment. My voice hitches, so I take a second before continuing. “Give me a sec. I’m adjusting, that’s all. So. My sister’s dead, and instead I’m going on this totally different mission? There’s no technology that can make that journey in a human life span. Have you—have the developer labs found a way to put me into cryostasis without killing me? How am I supposed to travel to an exoplanet?”

She shakes her head. “You’re not going on this mission, Ambrose.”

I put my hands over my face. “You just said I was. You are fucking kidding me.”

“I should clarify: you both are going and are not.”

I push back from the table, folding my arms. “That is not clarifying. Didn’t you just say that you owe me honesty? Why are you riddling me?!”

“I know it feels that way,” she says calmly, “but I’m not.” She instinctively checks her bracelet, even though hers is just as jammed here as mine. “Now listen to me carefully. As much of a shock as this is to you, because of your lateness we have only a few minutes before you need to attend the press junket—particularly important because that’s when we will be publicly announcing the change in mission structure from rescue to colonization. It might feel like we were tricking you, but your believing that you were heading to Titan was the very point. During the medical exam you just woke from, we made a complete neural map of your synapses. Even as we speak, those neural pathways are being nanoteched into twenty cloned copies of you—”

My vision turns a crispy sort of white at the edges. “I’m sorry, what?”

“—and then those dormant clones will be installed on the Endeavor. The ship will be run by its operating system for thousands of years at a time, and then when it has accumulated enough small damages that the ship cannot fix on its own, one of your clones will be awoken. He will believe, as you did until just a few minutes ago, that he is flying to Titan.”

My head is on the table, my brain thundering with blood. I cover my eyes with the bulk of my arms, so I’m in the most absolute darkness a human body can produce. All the while, my mother’s words continue: “Our psychological simulations indicate that knowing the reality of your mission—that you won’t be arriving at the exoplanet location, or anywhere off the ship, during your lifetime—would prevent your clones from being able to fulfill their duties due to despair and possible suicidal ideation. We needed you to believe in the Titan mission, so the ship could operate as though it were rescuing Minerva and the clones would have a sense of purpose during their limited time on the ship.”

“‘Limited time on the ship’?” I ask the darkness between me and the tabletop, moist from my breath.

“Yes, each clone will pass a limited time on the ship.”

I lift my head, wiping drool from my lips. “You’re going to kill them.”

She looks angry now. Angry at my weakness.

How dare she. My words spill out hot. “So you expect me to board anyway tomorrow, even though you lied to me about the mission? Even though I won’t be getting off the ship?”

She blinks at me. “Oh, my darling. Of course not. I wouldn’t send you on a mission like that. To live for only a brief window? How horrible. I guess I wasn’t clear. You’re not going on the mission at all. Your clones are. But they are not you.”

“I’m... what, just going back to classes as normal tomorrow?”

“You finished your coursework early, so that’s up to you. But yes, once we’ve announced the changed mission, you’re free to do as you like. You’ll graduate along with your peers.”

My voice and mind are someone else’s, processing this information for me and then speaking it in my head loudly. Too loudly. “So I got chosen for this mission because...”

“Because you are a capable spacefarer. Because younger bodies are more resistant to the radiation of space travel. And most importantly, because you are my precious child. A Cusk will be the future of humanity. If Earth falls, you will be the only hope for humankind. And it couldn’t be in better hands. Who better to provide the inspiring tale that unites Earth, and make a new world in case this one fails?”

The stomach acid that already rose up once today is back, this time ascending to my Adam’s apple. I swallow it down, relishing the burn, familiar from zero-gravity training. My instinct is to get the hell out of this room as fast as I can, but I know I might not get the chance to ask my mother any questions again for a long time. “It won’t be me, though, will it? You said that yourself. It will be my clone. I trained my whole life for this. I was going to rescue Minnie. Who is dead. You lied to me about my fundamental purpose.”

“That’s a little dramatic. Understandably so, of course. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now. There will be other solar-system-based missions you can undertake. Maybe we’ll try again to settle Titan. We’ll still investigate Minerva’s failed base. You would be a terrific candidate for that.”

“Mother, this is impossible. Tell me that you haven’t done this to me.” The dreadful enormity of what I’ve just heard opens up, sucking down all the other thoughts in my mind. “That you haven’t done this to them .”

“Them who?” she asks.

“Me! Them. My clones.”

“One of them will be the most important person in a new world. The founding god in the pantheon of a new Cusk civilization. And the rest are... creations that serve the purpose of bringing the ultimate clone to that position. It’s like they’re a community, working in perfect unison so that the group will find glory. Like bees.”

“Like bees ! And I—”

“You will remain here on Earth, like the rest of us.”

“I’m still leaving tomorrow to rescue Minerva,” I say stubbornly. Even as I say it, I know it makes no sense. I can’t hijack a spaceship. And Minerva’s distress beacon never triggered, which I should have known was too improbable anyway after two years of silence. She’s dead. I should have always known she was dead. There is no one for me to rescue. But my brain is simultaneously beyond that simple fact and tripping behind it.

“Your ship will be in use, traveling to the second planet orbiting Sagittarion Bb—or ‘Planet Cusk,’ as we’ll call it. Look, darling, I need you to take a moment in this private room. You’d have had more time to cope with this news if you hadn’t been late. Rage and cry if you want to. No one is here to witness it. Take ten minutes to put yourself together, then you’ll head down the elevators to the grand hall, where you’ll sit at the press dais—your sole job being not to fidget—and we’ll explain to everyone that Minerva’s distress signal stopped, that the Titan base finally was able to send us ambient data confirming methane poisoning, that the mission has been canceled. That—in a glorious reveal—we will take advantage of the advanced preparation stage of the Endeavor to travel to a new home for humanity. They will all understand how upset you must be, and you can take as much time as you want to recuperate. I know you don’t understand right now, that you’re angry and confused, but you’ll come to see what an honor I’ve granted you. Minerva’s name will already be praised for all time because her mission captured the imaginations of both Dimokratía and Fédération, even though it didn’t succeed. Imagine how you will be known! Who has ever had an opportunity for greatness like this?”

I stand.

I pick up my chair.

I hurl it at the window.

It bounces off harmlessly, skidding across the room.

My mother straightens her shirt, waiting for me to calm down.

I start pacing. “This is not greatness! It’s utter greed and cruelty! You sent out versions of me to live and die on a mission that is doomed to fail. Twenty of me, suffering under a lie, with no way to know the truth.” I’m dumbstruck. It’s not anger animating me anymore; it’s horror, horror worse than from watching any hyperreal torture reel. What has been done to me?

Who is this person who raised me?

I stagger to the vault-like door. I pull at it, but it refuses to open. “Mother, let me out of here.”

“Ambrose,” she says. Something in her tone makes me turn and look. She’s crying. I’ve never seen such a thing. I’ve never known it was possible. It’s only one tear, but it’s there.

“What, did you really expect me to be happy about this?”

She shakes her head, hand at her chest. “I didn’t think that. But I thought you’d understand my reasoning. That you might be glad to have a purpose greater than yourself.”

“I understand your reasoning. It’s just that I hate it. I hate it. ”

She looks at the chair, overturned on its side. She looks at the vault door. She looks at me.

“Let. Me. Out!” I shout. Something the clones of me on that ship, those twenty Ambrose Cusks, will never be able to do. For them, getting out will mean dying.

Surprisingly, she complies. Tears in her eyes, gaze on the floor, she skirts by me and raps a complicated knock on the door. One of the landkeepers opens it.

I have to step past her to leave. As I do she raises her arms, I guess to embrace me. I blow past.

I stalk past the first landkeeper, past my assistant, past the second landkeeper, past reception and into the express Cusk elevator. I shout out my floor stop and get a small burst of pleasure when the door closes on a landkeeper’s face. I can just glimpse the other landkeeper racing to the next elevator bay over.

I know what they’ll try: they’ll keep me penned inside somewhere before they haul me out for the press conference. If I refuse to attend, they’ll make do, and spin a global narrative that I’m too racked with sorrow over Minerva to show my face. Everyone will sigh and worry about me and mourn for my sister and be glad that at least we’re making use of the ship after all and doesn’t this make the troubles of the world seem silly by comparison?

Part of me thinks that I should attend that press conference and go off script, tell everyone what my mother just said. But the feed is assuredly on a ten-second delay, and will be scrubbed clean before anything gets out of the room.

All the same, there’s no way I’m going to dutifully do as she asks.

What I’m going to do is to never see her again.

I hear whirring in the next elevator shaft over, the landkeepers racing to catch up with me. I have a ten-floor head start, which is all that I need. My clones might be at the mercy of the Endeavor , but not me, not here. One advantage of being a child of my mother: I know plenty of ways to get lost.