<Mickey7>:Nasha?
<Black Hornet>:Yeah?
<Mickey7>:Berto’s right. I’m not retrievable.
<Black Hornet>:…
<Mickey7>:Nasha?
<Black Hornet>:You sure about this, babe?
I close my eyes again, and breathe in, breathe out. It’s just a trip to the tank, right?
<Mickey7>:Yeah, I’m sure. I’m buried deep here, and I’m pretty badly banged up. Honestly, even if you managed to get me back, they’d probably wind up scrapping me anyway.
<Black Hornet>:…
<Black Hornet>:Okay, Mickey. This is your call.
<Black Hornet>:You know I would have come for you, right?
<Mickey7>:Yeah, Nasha. I know.
She goes silent, and I sit there watching her signal strength rising and falling. She’s orbiting the drop site. She’s trying to triangulate my signal, trying to pin down my location.
I need to end this.
<Mickey7>:Go home, Nasha. I’m checking out now.
<Black Hornet>:Oh.
<Black Hornet>:Okay.
<Black Hornet>:How’re you gonna do it?
<Mickey7>:Do what?
<Black Hornet>:Shut down, Mickey. I don’t want you going out like Five did. You got a weapon?
<Mickey7>:Nope. Lost my burner on the way down. Honestly, I don’t think I’d want to use one of those things on myself anyway. I guess it would be quick, but …
<Black Hornet>:Yeah, that’s probably a good call. How about a knife? Or an ice ax?
<Mickey7>:No, and no. And what exactly are you expecting me to do with an ice ax?
<Black Hornet>:I don’t know. They’re sharp, right? Maybe you could chop yourself in the head or something.
<Mickey7>:Look, Nasha, I know you’re trying to be helpful, but— <Black Hornet>:You could just pop the seals on your rebreather. Not sure if the low O2 or the high CO would get you first, but either way it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
<Mickey7>:Yeah. I know I haven’t tried it, but somehow I don’t think slow suffocation is my thing.
<Black Hornet>:So what’re you gonna do?
<Mickey7>:Freeze to death, I guess.
<Black Hornet>:Yeah, that works. Peaceful, right?
<Mickey7>:I hope so.
Her signal dwindles almost to nothing, then hovers just above zero. She must be hanging just at the edge of transmission range.
<Black Hornet>:Hey. You’re backed up, right?
<Mickey7>:Not for the last six weeks.
<Black Hornet>:Why haven’t you been uploading?
I really don’t want to get into that particular question right now.
<Mickey7>:Just lazy, I guess.
<Black Hornet>:…
<Black Hornet>: I’m sorry about this, babe. I really am.
<Black Hornet>:Want me to stay on the line with you?
<Mickey7>:No. This might take a while, and if you go down out there, you don’t get to come back, remember? You should get back to the dome.
<Black Hornet>:You sure?
<Mickey7>:Yeah, I’m sure.
<Black Hornet>:Love you, babe. When I see you tomorrow, I’ll let you know that you went down like a pro tonight.
<Mickey7>:Thanks, Nasha. Love you too.
<Black Hornet>:Goodbye, Mickey.
I blink the window closed, and watch as Nasha’s comm signal dwindles the rest of the way down to zero. Berto’s already long out of range. I look up. The opening is staring down at me like the devil’s anus, and, backed up or not, I’m suddenly not cool with dying. I give my head another shake, and climb to my feet.
* * *
HERE’S A THOUGHT experiment for you: Imagine you found out that when you go to sleep at night, you don’t just go to sleep. You die. You die, and someone else wakes up in your place the next morning. He’s got all your memories. He’s got all your hopes and dreams and fears and wishes. He thinks he’s you, and all your friends and loved ones do too. He’s not you, though, and you’re not the guy who went to sleep the night before. You’ve only existed since this morning, and you will cease to exist when you close your eyes tonight. Ask yourself—would it make any practical difference in your life? Is there any way that you could even tell?
Replace “go to sleep” with “get crushed, or vaporized, or set on fire” and you’ve pretty much got my life. Trouble in the reactor core? I’m on it. Need to test a sketchy new vaccine? I’m your guy. Need to know if the bathtub absinthe you cooked up is poisonous? I’ll get a glass, you bastards. If I die, you can always make another me.
The upside of all that dying is that I really am a shitty kind of immortal. I don’t just remember what Mickey1 did. I remember being him. Well, all but the last few minutes of being him, anyway. He—I—died after a hull breach during transit. Mickey2 woke up a few hours later, sure as shit that he was thirty-one years old and had been born back on Midgard. And who knows? Maybe he was. Maybe that was the original Mickey Barnes looking out through his eyes. How could you tell? And maybe if I lie down on the floor of this cavern, close my eyes, and pop my seals, I’ll wake up tomorrow morning as Mickey8.
Somehow, though, I doubt it.
Nasha and Berto might not be able to tell the difference, but deep down on some level below reason, I’m pretty sure I’d know I was dead.
* * *
THERE’S PRETTY MUCH nothing in the way of visible-range photons down here, but my ocular is picking up just enough in the shortwave infrared to get a look around. As it turns out, there are a half dozen tunnels leading out of this chamber. All of them slope downward.
That shouldn’t be.
None of this should be, actually.
The tunnels look like lava tubes, but according to the orbital survey, there isn’t supposed to be any volcanism within a thousand kilometers of here. That’s one of the reasons we picked this place for our first base camp, even though it’s far enough off the equator that the crappy climate of this stupid planet is even crappier than it has to be. I walk slowly around the perimeter of the chamber. All the tunnels look the same, circular tubes about three meters in diameter, glowing faintly in a way that tells my conscious mind that there’s a positive temperature gradient at work, and at the same time lets my subconscious know that they all probably lead directly to hell. I count six paces from each to the next.
That doesn’t seem right either.
No time to worry about it, though. I pick a tunnel and start walking.