Chapter Text
“By the time your amnesia wears off,” Stratt says, “you guys might have already sent the beetles back. And if not, my guess is that you’ll be too far invested in the project to give up.”
“Your guess?” I laugh. I’m hysterical. “You just said you couldn’t rely on 99 percent certainty and now you’re guessing? Well, let me tell you something. I promise, 100 percent, that as soon as I remember this conversation I’ll do exactly what I said I would. You send me, and you’re risking everything on the chance that I won’t remember in time to destroy the mission.”
I don’t know if I mean anything I’m saying right now, but I have to say it regardless. It’s my only hope for getting out of the mission.
“I see,” she says. “Well, if you really feel that way, I could always give you multiple doses, spread out. I could have the computer put them in your food.”
“If you wipe my memory over and over I won’t be able to learn anything and solve the problem,” I say. “Give it up, Stratt. You can’t send me and you know it.”
“The drug doesn’t erase skills, and when you, Yao, and Ilyukhina realize your memory resets periodically, you’ll set up systems to make sure information doesn’t get lost.”
I’m losing hope. I’m at the end of my rope now. “But we’ll figure out it’s the food,” I say weakly. “If it always happens after I eat, we’ll know. We’ll find a way to stop it, and I’ll get better, and then you’ll be sorry!” I started out weak, but by the time I finish the argument it sounds pretty convincing to me, and I’m feeling better about my chances again. Maybe I can still get out of this.
“The drug has a delayed reaction,” she says. “It causes you to pass out about five hours after you take it, then resets your memory while you sleep. There will be enough time between the food and the sudden sleep that you’ll never realize it’s connected, not when you think it’s a coma side effect.”
That’s it. I’m going to die.
I stare at her in horror. My throat hurts from yelling…
A long time later, in a solar system far far away.
I wake up to a loud, blaring alarm. I sit up and cover my ears. It’s so loud. Oh, God, make it stop. I look wildly around the room for the source of the alarm, and I realize as I do that I don’t know where I am.
At all.
Like, I’ve never seen this place before in my life.
The alarm stops, and I relax a bit. Then a nagging worry replaces the pain in the ears. I should know where I am, right? What’s the last thing I remember?
Nothing at all. I don’t remember anything at all. Well, crap.
Then I hear a clicking sound, and a voice starts talking.
“Hello, future me, this is past you talking. Our name is Ryland Grace, and we pass out every night and wake up with amnesia. You may have noticed that everything’s a bit heavier. That’s because you’re in outer space. Sorry to tell you this, but you’re in another solar system, actually.”
Oh, no way. No freaking way. This has to be a practical joke. This isn’t funny. But if that is me talking to myself, and I know I have amnesia every night, then I would have known it wouldn’t be funny. And I do feel really heavy. Oh no. What if he’s telling the truth?
I start to hyperventilate.
“Calm down,” he says. “You’re okay, for now. Nothing bad has happened to us for the past eight days, or nothing that we’ve written down, anyway. I have a bunch of notes on the laptop by the bed with everything we’ve figured out in the past eight days, but (I hate to break it to you) we still don’t know why we’re here. We think it has something to do with the Petrova Problem, which is something really scary that you can read about in the notes. I don’t know how our being here is supposed to fix it, but we must have thought we could do something about it, because the reason we’re here is obviously important, because we’re on a suicide mission. One of us checked the fuel stores and we don’t have enough fuel to get from any other star back to Earth, so regardless of what solar system we’re in, we’re not coming home.”
I freeze in bed and stare at the wall. I’m going to die. I’m going to die and I won’t even remember this moment when that happens. Can I go back to sleep and forget about this again now? I don’t want to know I’m going to die. Why did I record a message to tell myself that right after I wake up? Stupid.
“Anyway,” he continues, “Now that you’ve had a moment to process your impending demise, I have exciting news for you. Today is the big day! It’s the day the engines are scheduled to shut off. So you’re the one who’s going to have to deal with zero g for the first time. Hope you can figure out why we’re here today. I sure couldn’t. Good luck. Bye!”
It’s a good thing I can’t go back in time, because if I could I think I would murder my past self. He botched that message so badly.
I’m going to die.
I put my head in my hands and look at the floor from between my fingers. I can feel myself tearing up.
I have amnesia every day. I’m going to die not knowing anything.
I start to sob.