Chapter 4 Owl

We’re in the Aurora ’s room that has the broad windows that once looked out into space. Or, for most of the dads’ clones’ voyage, showed a false digital representation of space. Dad is sitting up on his mattress, which we’ve transferred here, while Father sits at a console, monitoring the ship’s air quality as he knits. The baby malevor, who will one day be the source of his yak wool, is curled at his feet. Yarrow is in the corner, bandaged and with a hydration IV but still restrained—at his insistence. We switched the horsehair out for a rolled-up blanket, for comfort.

The comet struck the other side of Minerva nearly two hours ago, according to OS. We haven’t felt even a slight tremor in the soil around us—yet. “The shock waves move at a non-instantaneous speed,” OS explained. “This is a big planet. They will take time to reach us.”

We left unsaid all the worries that a shock wave raises, like whether it will rupture the hull of the Aurora . Cusk engineers designed a ship that could withstand a variety of conditions, but it’s unlikely they planned for underground shock waves. Even if they had, the Aurora is an antique, long past its designed life span. OS claims it will hold. OS is very good at predictions. But it’s also good at manipulating our emotions around difficult outcomes, particularly when there’s nothing we can do about them. OS well knows that hopelessness is its own terminal condition. It saw multiple pairs of the dads die of it.

Rover is in what used to be called the “blind room,” but which is now just a regular chamber with the annoying trip hazard of a printed barrier along the doorway. It’s busily printing away based on the schematics saved to the ship’s memory. The smell of burnt hydrocarbon is in the air, which in my hungry state smells oddly delicious. A bit like the smell of roasted dead malevor.

If all goes well, within a couple of days the nanotech device will be online, and Yarrow will have recovered enough to go first. The same tech that created the memories in the minds of the cloned Ambrose and Kodiak will edit the connections in Yarrow’s cranium. I’ll go second, with only two weeks to spare before my sixteenth birthday. I’m not even sure that anniversary matters, though it certainly did for Yarrow. The operation is horrifying, risky, and might save us all.

I’m incessantly pacing the room marked 06. It’s clearly driving Father bonkers, but I can’t help it.

“Owl...,” Dad says.

“I know, I know,” I say, forcing my feet to stop, even though my body keeps saying go, go, go. I pick up the piece of alien wood from where it lies in the corner, look at it, then put it back down. I’ll use some of this bunker time to figure out how to use it to make a new violin for Dad. But I can’t possibly think about that right now.

“No, I don’t mean your pacing, although that is indeed infuriating,” Dad says. “I just want you to come here for a second.”

I perch at the foot of his bed. The moment I do, my every instinct is to leap back to my feet. Dad is recovering from being shot by my brother, that brother is in restraints, a shock wave is bearing down on us through the dense core of an uncaring planet—it’s a little hard to relax.

“We’re going to be in here for three years,” Dad says. “Not going anywhere, but still on a sort of voyage.”

“A voyage through time and not through space,” Yarrow says from the corner, putting on a mock documentarian tone. It’s undeniable: even though he’s now literally the most remorseful human in the universe, he’s still a little creepy. That brain edit can’t come soon enough. We also don’t know yet how long-term the effects of his time out under the comet’s radiation will be. He’s got plenty of reasons to be deep in his feelings.

“There will be much to do,” Dad continues, “and you’ll have your studies and recovery from your upcoming surgeries to occupy you. For the remaining time, I have a plan.”

He pauses. While I wait for him, my mind races between the various ways we’re going to die. I look at him, replay the words he just said and actually process them this time. “You have a plan? What’s the plan?”

Dad smiles, which turns into a wince as the movement triggers some soreness in his gut. “There’s a feature of the Coordinated Endeavor that was once used to trick us, but which you might now enjoy.”

I squint. “Dad. What are you talking about?”

“Yes, what are you talking about?” Father asks, not looking up from his knitting. He’s making a blanket for Yarrow, to replace the one that’s now binding his wrists.

I wait for Dad to answer. He goes motionless, like he’s been paused. Ever since his gut wound, he sometimes drops out of the world for a few seconds.

I listen to the hum of the Aurora ’s reactor while I wait for him to speak. The ship will never move through space again, but we’ve activated its life-support system to provide light and air. Since it was designed to be operated in a dark vacuum, the ship is perfectly suited to being underground. We have artificial daylight to keep our algae growing to augment our stored supplies, and we will capture moisture from the air and recycle it, just like on the ship’s original voyage. The Aurora ’s nuclear reactors can keep going for a few hundred thousand years more. Hopefully it won’t take that long for the comet’s aftermath to finish. Three years sounds much more tolerable.

The most surprising thing: the Aurora turns our atmosphere into an approximation of Earth’s surface, not Minerva’s. I’ve never experienced it until now. Less nitrogen, more oxygen. It makes my brain feel fizzy and alive. I could definitely get used to it.

Dad finally starts speaking again. “I thought maybe you could use... some distraction while you wait to emerge and go exploring what remains of the Minervan high seas.”

“Yes, definitely. So what is it?” I say impatiently.

He coughs and looks toward the ceiling, as if he can see through it to the searing surface of the planet, its stormy red seas of melting rock. To the ocean Yarrow discovered, vaporizing as we speak—hopefully to re-form, with some of the life inside it surviving. “OS, simulate the trip to Saturn’s moon Titan, as experienced by Ambrose Cusk and Kodiak Celius, supposedly in the year 2472.”

The windows were black before, just showing us the tightly packed soil on the other side of their surface. Now they spark into life, displaying images.

Images of space.

These are stars in formations I’ve never seen before. A beautiful and random pattern of lights, rotating with the simulated motion of a ship. Like they once did for my fathers’ clones. One cluster of lights looks like a dipper. People on Earth used to talk about this dipper.

“I wasn’t sure which part of the voyage you wanted,” OS says, “so this is the moment when the clones were first awakened. Still well before nearing Saturn. With quotation marks around ‘nearing Saturn,’ of course.”

Dad and Father, waking up on opposite sides of the ship. Not yet aware that the other even exists.

“Highlight Saturn’s position,” Dad requests. Yarrow sits taller, rapt. He’s getting one of the no-filter history lessons he spent the last year craving. He might not have predicted that his hands would be bound while he got it, though.

OS places crosshairs on what at first looks like a star wheeling through the sky. Apparently that’s actually a planet. I think I can see a ring around it, now that I’m looking closely. “Highlight Earth,” I request.

The crosshairs switch to emphasize a small blue circle, a moon tagging along it like a faithful pet. “That’s our home?”

“No, this is home. Minerva is home,” Yarrow says. Typical Yarrow, earnest in the midst of all this, even with all that’s happened, the shame of what he’s done and the pain of his burnt skin.

“I can request OS make it so that this simulated journey to Titan lasts approximately the same time as it will take us to emerge post-comet,” Dad says. “I thought we could all take that journey together.”

“But only in a fake way,” I say, suspicious. I press my forehead against a screen, looking left and right. Nary a pixel. No wonder the dads’ old clones believed so fully that they were on their way to rescue Minerva.

It’s easy to imagine convincing myself even just a week from now that we actually are on a voyage across Earth’s solar system. How could we find any evidence otherwise? It’s not like we can go outside for confirmation. No wonder some of the dads’ clones lost their minds.

Dad means for this to be a pleasurable distraction during the time we’re stuck in the Aurora . A pretend rescue mission. I don’t think he’s wrong—any distraction will be welcome, I’m sure. But it’s also horrifying. And it’s giving me a little vertigo.

“You know who also took this journey, once upon a time?” Dad asks.

“This simulated journey, you mean?” I say.

“Simulated for us, sure. But real for that person, who lived long ago.”

“Who?” I ask.

“ You , Owl,” Yarrow says.

I know who they mean now. I shake my head violently. “No. Minerva was not me.”

“Your original, then,” Yarrow says, more gently.

I let out a long breath, staring out at space. No, not out at space.

Once upon a time, a young woman was the hope of Earth. She looked just like me. She went to settle a moon called Titan, and died shortly after she arrived. Her legacy was used to fool and mislead, and also to inspire. I never really knew her full story, but now we have access to all the history in the ship’s storage, and if we survive the comet strike, I’ll have plenty of time to learn about—to live—the experience of my previous self. Like the dads did with their former selves.

“Thanks, Dad,” I say quietly. “It’s a good idea. I like it.”

Father chuckles darkly from his knitting. “As long as OS doesn’t vent us into space at the end of it.”

“I would never do that,” OS says. “It’s not necessary, and not even possible underground.”

“I know, OS,” Father says. He gives Dad a warm look and then spreads the blanket out over his knee, inspecting it for any dropped stitches. “This is fun. Good idea.”

“Thank you, flufferskunk,” Dad says.

Father takes a steadying breath at the nickname, then gets back to work. “By the way, Owl,” he says, “I have been meaning to say thank you. Without what you found out there, we wouldn’t have a chance of surviving this.”

“Are you saying I was right? About exploring?”

Father nods, continuing his knitting. Dad gives me his don’t push it look.

I smile as I peer out. We’re on our way to Saturn. We’re also surviving a comet strike on Minerva. I am Ambrose’s sister, and I am his daughter. Yarrow is not Yarrow, but he will be soon. We might be the last humans to exist, unless we emerge alive from this isolation, get a new gestation device made, and implant it with the edited zygotes.

Once we do, I will investigate what remains of the seas of Minerva.

I rest my forehead against the nearest screen and peer deep into the stars, moving my head to one side so I can stare at our “destination.” Even though she died over thirty thousand years ago, Minerva is surviving on a distant planet, just like the original mission planned. I’m going to Titan.