Page 38 of The Brightness Between Us

The grand window is behind me, a dry plain with the Euphrates snaking in the distance, the sun blazing above it all. This morning’s rain is a distant memory. This will be one of the future-me’s opportunities to see what Earth looks like. I shiver. “Well, this is weird,” I say. I flick my eyes to the projection of the director. “Can you cut that line?”

“It’s human. I’d like to keep it,” he says. “Because thisisweird. Ambrose will know that.”

Ambrose will know that.My outrage brought me temporary vigor, but now it’s draining out of my system, leavingme queasy and sad. I shift my focus back to the camera. “I’m Ambrose Cusk. You know that. Because you’re Ambrose Cusk, too.” I whistle. Weird doesn’t even get halfway to the truth of this. “I’m the original. We split after I had that medical screening. They recorded my, our, brain there. Just yesterday. Now I know the truth. That Minerva’s distress beacon never triggered, that mission control lied to me. You needed to believe that, though, to have the will to survive each time you were woken up, so that’s why they mapped my neurons whileIstill believed, too.”

The director interrupts. “That was beautiful. I loved it. He will, too. Do you think you could maybe not say it was just yesterday, though? It makes it all seem very rushed, and we don’t want to shake his confidence.”

“Itwasyesterday.”

My mother moves so she’s behind the camera. I have a second director. Great. “It’s fine, we have a complete voiceprint for Ambrose, and can alter whatever we need to digitally in postproduction, as long as we have enough original footage to latch to.”

I drop my head into my hands. “I hate this.”

“What, that we’d deepfake whatever we need to give the future you his best chance?” my mother asks. “I’m not apologizing for that. Those stakes are far higher than whatever you’re feeling right now. This is about the future of us, long after these physical bodies are gone.”

I straighten in my seat. “I want my violin on board theEndeavor.”

“Your violin?”

“Yes. I can buy another one to play on Earth. But...” I don’t know how to refer to them. The other versions of me? I grit my teeth and just go ahead with naming them, despite my brain’s protests. “Those Ambrose clones are going to be surrounded by polycarb—”

The director interrupts. “—we’re calling them ‘human-originated hydrocarbons’ in the ship’s technical specifications. We want to have the technical language on Cusk evolve past the words of today.”

“Too late, you already nanoteched my mind yesterday, and I’ll be thinking of it as ‘polycarb,’ no matter what you tell me to think it is. Anyway, I’ll be wanting the feeling of something organic on that ship. I’ll be desperate for it. Put it on board.”

The director’s projection casts its gaze in my mother’s direction. I’m stepping into some complicated ongoing conversation. “A violin is something the ship can’t print anew,” my mother finally tells me. “Which means that we could be introducing discrepancies in the repeating timeline, if and when it degrades or is damaged. Even if the violin is kept in ideal conditions between lifetimes, it’s hard to imagine soft spruce wood surviving these thousands of years.”

“So some Ambroses at the end might not have a violin,and some will. What’s the big deal?” I ask.

The director casts my mother another glance:See?I seem to have inadvertently taken his side of the debate.

Mother has entered debugging mode; her mind is spinning fast, but it’s all on logistics. This zeal for process makes her a great chairperson for the Cusk Corporation. Parent, less so.

I don’t know what I’m gunning for, exactly. But Devon Mujaba’s—and Sri’s—call to action is resonating in me. I want to do something. I don’t know what it is yet. The key for now is getting access. The specifics can come later.

“I’m putting the violin on the ship,” I say. “Despite what you’ve done to me—both this me, thememe, and the ones you’ve created—I haven’t gone blabbing to reporters. All I ask in return is that you allow me on, to see where twenty of me will spend their sorry short lives. I’ll drop my violin off in person. You’ve captured my conversation in this room from every angle you need, my mouth shaping every syllable it takes to make me say whatever you like. You’ll have me say whatever you want to future Ambrose, I’m sure of it. You can pretend the violin was your idea the whole time.”

Mother shakes her head. “TheEndeavorhas been scanned and sealed. No one is going on board again before it launches.”

I check my bracelet. It’s a pointless gesture, though,since—like last time—its signal has been jammed in this room. “We have the rescheduled press announcement in four hours. Do you want me to be there?”

Her eyes narrow.Are you extorting me?

I nod.Why yes, I am extorting you.

“Fine,” she says. “This actually gives us a nice cover for placing you up in low orbit rather than down on the Earth’s surface.”

“And why would you want to have me in orbit?”

“You’ve seen the news,” Mother says. “Dimokratía’s secretary of defense has been killed. Brasilia is in open conflict, and it’s led to uprisings in Montreal and Minsk. The saga of the new mission to colonize a planet won’t have the pacifying power it had even yesterday. If the war spreads global, the safest place will be in orbit. I want me and my family safely in the Cusk secure satellite until things calm down. Your siblings are being transferred there as we speak.”

Fine. I’ll watch from low-orbit luxury as the planet blows itself up, if that’s what she wants. “I’m bringing someone with me, then,” I say.

She sighs, undoubtedly disappointed that I’m letting my emotions carry such weight in my decision-making. “Berths in orbit are restricted today. Everyone with any Cusk influence is trying to get a spot. I’m afraid that I can’t—”

“Do you want me at that press announcement or not?”

Unfortunately for her, she knows it’s no idle threat that I’ll go missing. And I know she can’t spare the precious minutes it would take to try to talk me out of it. She sighs. “Fine. Name them.”

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