The Darkness Outside Us

He’s a stranger, a lover, and my life partner. We have lived and died lifetimes together, and it makes me shiver every time that odd truth comes over me.

Intimacy is the only shield against insanity. Intimacy, not knowledge. Intimacy, not power.

Plenty of organisms live for a season, in order for those who come next to have a chance, Mayflies, daffodils, the octopus. We can accept that?' 'Well, we're hardwired not to accept our own demise. Daffodils are a lot more chill about it.' 'Okay, but we can be like daffodils together.

This lifetime is yours to make what you will of it

Emotions have their effects even after you try to bully them out of existence.

I am in a waiting room without end, without location, without time or place. If I go outside, I die before I get any answers. I exist only in a theoretical way, like a point on a coordinate plane. I am the simulation.

Insanity used to be a stranger that lived on the other side of the world. Now it's moved next door. It's only a matter of time until it becomes shipmate, lover, self.

Kodiak shrugs. "I work out." I roll my eyes. "I noticed." "I noticed you noticing," he says, his eyes suddenly back on mine.

I can offer you water or, um, water. Some of the pouches have a slightly different font, so you can choose serif hydration or sans serif hydration.

The stars! All those nuclear explosions sending out light waves, a very few of whose fate is to dissipate on my retinas. I look into the voids in between, a nothingness more absolute than any vacuum on Earth. In space, without any atmosphere to cloud my view, even that void resolves into more distant pricks of light. Nowhere is truly empty. The thought makes me feel lavishly alone. Somehow, space is so deeply melancholy that it's not at all sad, like a note so low it ceases to sound. Even my sorrow about my insignificance is insignificant.

Kodiak is dead. The tumor Rover extracted was just a hint of how much was growing in his body. The universe has no light in it anymore. I will join him tonight. Hug your Kodiak close to you. I love you. - Ambrose #13

You think of love as dizzy electricity. You think if you aren't in this heightened state, that the relationship is failing. This is a lie, an infection you contracted from popular music and fantasy reels, that doomed all your short romances in the academy, like with poor Sri. The bonded support you and Kodiak feel for each other isn't about skin skin skin, though it's related to that. It isn't the heat of his body against yours at the bottom of the water tank. Instead, it's the fact that you two are together at the bottom of the water tank.

Settle into kissing Ambrose as soon as possible. You'll enjoy it very much, and you'll only have time for so many kisses.

I could stare at this forever: swirling stars in the background and a human being, a real live human, lost in a task.

He looks like he spends his day crushing warriors under the shield of Aeneas. Muscles band his arms and neck. Thick, lustrous hair falls in blue-black waves along his cheeks, his eyes a speckled tan, nestled deep. His olive skin is smooth and unmarred, except where thick stubble shades his jawline. Even his stubble looks like it could take me in a fight.

This planet isn't my new home, it's the only home I've ever had.

Your original learned in childhood what attraction leads to, and that love is a loss of power. These lessons hold more influence than you think they do, and you understand them less than you should. You prefer the emotional patterns you know, and these were set at the orphanage for Kodiak, with your Cusk siblings and caretakers for you. Ambrose, "first sight" love is when you meet someone who accords with your childhood lessons, learned from your parents, of what you think love should look like. What did your mother teach us? Who kept her son but sent his clones off to live a season at a time with a stranger, with no thought to their suffering? Who felt her and Ambrose's legacy was worth putting so many copies of him through this torture? Kodiak does not match the models you learned as a child, and you don't match his. But that seemingly natural sense of "fitting together" is a construction. The love Kodiak and I share in this lifetime is proof of it.

I like my hand, my blipping brain decides. It's a beautiful hand.

It’s weirdly reassuring: when adoration is selfish, it’s not going anywhere.

Sorry. I seem to have caused a mess our last time around.

Between those times we'll fight to live.

Future Kodiak: One, you don’t like manicotti as much as you tell Ambrose. It’s just your way of having something to say. Two, you don’t need to spend as much time getting ready for when you’ll see Ambrose, since he’ll only start to tease you for being so vain. Three, settle into kissing Ambrose as soon as possible. You’ll enjoy it very much, and you’ll only have time for so many kisses.

As long as I’m alive, someone loves you.

When people assume there is no one listening who cares, they put up walls. You have many, many walls. Indirectness is one of them.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being here with you. I am in awe of what we’re doing together. It’s terrifying and wonderful, all at the same time. But it’s ours. Not theirs. Ours.

My Kodiak,” I say, crying. “I love you.

The space between us becomes a projection of our rotating ship, surrounded by stars.

That was how life on Earth worked, too. People did a lot of tasks and tried to keep death as far away as possible.