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You come to with a massive headache and no clue what happened.
Ok. Ok. It probably isn't that bad. You're alone in the aft crew dormitory, free-floating in zero thrust. The main lights are off, but you can still see by the passive emergency lighting. It's totally silent - no alarms, no munition impacts, nothing. Those are good signs, mostly.
You grab onto the wall and pull yourself to the forward airlock. Somebody in the control center should be able to explain what's going on.
Huh. The airlock is sealed.
Weird.
You punch in the emergency override code. Nothing.
Before you can puzzle through the implications of this, the intercom crackles and you hear the ship's voice.
"Oh shit, you're still alive in there?"
Fuck. Scratch all of that. This is very, very bad.
——
You take stock of the situation with the ship's help. You're alive. The ship is alive. Everyone else is dead, everything forward of the dormitory gutted and venting into space. The reactor is intact, but the engines are, to use the ship's surprisingly colorful vocabulary, "fucked." You're in a wide elliptical Jovian orbit, with no delta-V, flanked by the burnt-out husks of two other frigates. It would be a hopelessly expensive rescue mission, not that anyone on Europa would be inclined to rescue you under the circumstances even if they did somehow know there were any survivors.
“In other words,” the ship says, “this ends with both of us dying, there’s no way around it. The only question is - when do you want to go, and how?”
You fight the urge to snap back. It’s not the ship’s fault you’re stuck out here. Instead, you say: “I need some time to think about that.”
“Of course,” it responds. “Take all the time you need, it’s not like we’ve got to be anywhere.”
As soon as the ship’s voice withdraws, you slam your fists against the bulkhead and scream. You spent an entire year of your life sealed in this tin can, and for what? A thirty-minute battle that you weren’t even awake for? A crew that you couldn’t even manage to fucking die with?
That was the worst part. They got their battle, and they got to fight until the very end, and then they died all at once and it was over. And you - you’re stuck here without them in this goddamn floating coffin, left to plan your own funeral and then die alone.
You hate it. You fucking hate it. You scream until you sob, and you sob until your throat gives out, and you curl up into a ball and silently shudder until exhaustion overpowers your despair.
——
When you wake up, you’re still going to die.
“The galley’s intact,” the ship tells you, instead of something sensible like good morning or I’m sorry that you’re still utterly fucked. “There’s no damage aft of your compartment until you get all the way back to the engines. You should get some food. You’ll think better on a full stomach.”
You don’t say anything - what the fuck does a shipmind know about hunger - but you open the airlock to the galley and grab a tube of nutrient paste to shove down your throat. There’s better stuff in there, for morale or some bullshit, but that takes preparation and you can’t be bothered.
Eating does make you feel better, and that pisses you off. You don’t want to feel better, you want to not fucking die, and maybe if you’re angry and miserable enough about it a solution will magically appear.
No. That’s fucking stupid. You know that’s not going to happen.
You ask the ship: “How long do I have? Median scenario, assuming nothing else breaks and nothing gets fixed.”
“Three weeks. That’s how long I can keep oxygen levels livable. If it wasn’t for that, I could probably keep you alive for another year or two.”
“And is there any chance we could extend that?”
“Probably not. You’d have to go extravehicular to even figure out if it was possible, and that’s one hell of a risk under the circumstances, just to maybe put off the inevitable by another week or two.”
“Ok.” You feel - not determination, but something that makes an acceptable substitute. “I want to live for three more weeks. I kept myself entertained in here for the last year, I can keep it up a bit longer. What’s the fucking rush, right? What’s the fucking rush?”
You laugh, and the ship laughs too - it fucking laughs - but you don’t care.
You’re going to live for three more weeks. Sure. Why the fuck not.
——
“What are you reading?” the ship asks you out of nowhere.
“It’s in the logs, you already know the answer.”
It doesn’t respond. You feel a twinge of guilt.
“It’s a romance comic, set on Earth back before the fall. It’s ridiculous ahistorical slop, but it’s good slop.”
“Did you have a girl back on Mars before leaving?”
Yeah, it totally knew what you were reading.
“No, I’m not that dumb. We were only really hooking up while I was in training, it was never that serious. As soon as I found out about the deployment, I told her to go find someone else. She wasn’t going to wait a couple years for me to get back, and I wasn’t going to expect her to.”
You stare at the page in silence for a minute.
“And it’s not like I could fuck anyone on here. There was no privacy for that, even if it hadn’t been against regulations. Maybe if there was another survivor here now, but - nah, I don’t want to think about it.”
Another silence. You can’t help yourself, you’re thinking about it.
The ship speaks next: “Do you wish someone else had made it?”
“Depends on who,” you say. “I can think of a few who would’ve made me kill myself already just to get it over with. But, yeah, I wish someone else was here. It’d suck for them, but it’d be easier that way.”
“Well,” the ship tells you, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out that way. I’m not really a person, but I’ll try to be the best substitute I can.”
You swear you can hear sadness in its voice.
——
“You were human, right?” you ask the ship over breakfast. “Before you were a shipmind, I mean. That’s how it usually works, isn’t it?”
“I was,” it tells you. “I technically still am, sort of. There’s a body in here that’s hooked up to me, and when it dies, I die too.”
You knew this, on some level, but it’s not the kind of thing you ever thought about. An integrant isn’t a person, it’s a component of a shipmind, a computer with a bit of residual personhood. It thinks like a computer. It acts like a computer. You can’t exactly have a casual conversation with a ship.
Except that’s what you’re doing now. Talking to the ship, casually, every day, whenever you get bored of keeping to yourself.
“Was it… hard, I guess, turning yourself into a shipmind?”
“Hah, no, it was fucking exhilarating! I hated being stuck in my body. I hated having so many sensations that I couldn’t turn off. And just look at what I became - instead of a heart, I have a nuclear reactor; instead of legs, bipropellant rockets; instead of arms, railguns. And, god, the computing power. It was like I could really think for the first time in my life. No, being an integrant was the best decision I ever made.”
“You’d still say that, even knowing you’re going to die out here?”
“I was going to die if I had to stay in that body any longer,” it says, “especially once I knew there was another way. I’m going to die out here, sure, but at least this way I got to live first.”
You can’t understand that. You’d give just about anything to be back on Mars, with a lifespan measured in something longer than days. To each their own, you suppose, as long as the ship was happy.
“Did you have a name, before?”
The ship pauses. “Yes. Jamila.” Another pause. “I haven’t thought about that name in a long time.”
“Well, I think it’s a beautiful name,” you say.
“That’s what it means - it’s ‘beautiful’ in one of the old languages.”
“Do you mind if I call you that?”
“Sure,” the ship tells you. “Sure, why the hell not. It was a good name. I don’t mind using it again, now that it’s just you and me.”
“Thank you, Jamila, for being a friend when there was no one else left. I’m sorry it came to this, but if it had to happen to us both, I’m glad it happened to us together.”
This time, you know you can hear emotion in her voice: “I’m sorry, too. But I’m glad we’re not alone.”
——
She tells you: “There’s about a day’s oxygen left.”
She tells you: “I know you’ve been putting it off, but it’s time to make a decision before hypoxia makes it for you.”
She says: “There’s a failsafe in the shipmind core. It’ll feel just like falling asleep. It’s your choice, but if you’re willing, I want you to die there with me. I don’t want to watch you die. I don’t want to die alone.”
You’ll do it. Of course you will.
As you make your way back, she says: “As soon as you’re inside, I’ll trigger it. When I do, I want you to disconnect me.”
“Won’t that be painful, losing all your senses like that?”
“I don’t care. I want to be there with you. I don’t want to be alone.”
Inside the chamber, she’s a poor, desiccated little thing, naked and hairless, limbs bone-thin from disuse. You carefully detach the uplink at the base of her neck, and she slumps into your arms.
“Oh god, have I always been like this?”
“No,” you say, “I don’t think so. I think you must have been beautiful before. You’re still beautiful to me.”
She rests her head on your shoulder. “I haven’t slept in years. I don’t even remember what it’s like.”
There’s a haziness at the edge of your vision. You kiss her forehead, wrap her in your arms. “You’ll remember soon. Thank you, Jamila, for everything.”
She doesn’t answer. She’s already gone.
And a moment later, you’re gone, too.