Jemma laughed. “Oh please,” she said. “I talked to your friend. Gomez? The pilot? I know why you signed on to this mission.”
“Oh,” I said. “Um…”
She laughed again. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to tell anybody important. Your reasons for going are probably at least as valid as his, or Marshall’s, or any of the others’. I hope you know, though, that this is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”
“Isn’t that what they say about suicide?”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Mickey. Let’s get back inside. We need to have a talk about John Locke.”
* * *
MY FIRST BACKUP came on the morning of my twelfth day on Himmel Station. The physical part was pretty straightforward. They took a blood sample, snipped some skin from my belly, tapped my cerebrospinal fluid, and then stuck me into a scanner that spent three hours mapping out the distribution and chemical makeup of every cell in my body. Jemma was waiting for me when I came out.
“Hope you’re having a good hair day,” she said. “The way you look right now is exactly how you’re going to look every time you come out of the tank for the rest of your life.”
“Huh,” I said. “This is a onetime thing?”
“Afraid so,” she said. “That scanner draws an unbelievable amount of power, and the recon software will be running for almost a week now sorting out the information it extracted. Also, you just absorbed what under normal circumstances would be a problematic amount of radiation.”
“Oh.”
She grabbed a handhold and pushed off down the hall. I followed.
“Wait,” I said when we reached our next stop. “What did you mean, that ‘would be’ a problematic amount of radiation?”
She gave me a sad half smile. “You’ll see.”
* * *
THE PERSONALITY BACKUP, which I’ve been repeating on a regular basis ever since then, was both simpler and stranger than the physical one. I sat in a chair, and a technician placed a helmet on my head. The outside was smooth and metallic. The inside was covered in dull-pointed spikes that pressed into my scalp and forehead.
“This is a squid array,” the technician said. “It’s a little uncomfortable, but it won’t hurt you.”
I later learned that a squid, in addition to being a surprisingly intelligent marine invertebrate from old Earth, is also a superconducting quantum interference device. I hope that means more to you than it did to me.
The tech was right that the backup process isn’t painful. It is, however, profoundly weird. Routine backups are just updates. They take about an hour to get through. That first one, though, took almost eighteen, and it felt much longer. The backup process is like a fever dream. Bits and pieces of your past flit by, pictures and sounds and smells and sensations, all out of your control and all too fast to process. The thing I remember most vividly from that first upload is a close shot of my mother’s face. She died joyriding in a flitter when I was eight, and I barely remembered what she looked like … but in that image she was young and vivid and beautiful, and when they finally took the helmet off of me, I was sobbing.
When that was done, Jemma took me to the officers’ mess, got us a table, and told me to order whatever I wanted. When I asked what was going on, she gave me that sad smile again and said, “We’re celebrating, Mickey. Today’s your graduation.”
“Really?” I said. “When’s the ceremony?”
She looked away. “As soon as we’re done here. Take your time.”
I still remember that as one of the strangest hours of my life. The food was pretty good, considering that most of it was vat-grown and it was prepared in zero-g. The conversation was awkward, for reasons that I totally misunderstood. I knew the Drakkar was almost ready to begin loading. Believe it or not, I actually thought Jemma might be sad because she was going to miss me when I was gone.
When dinner was over and Jemma had settled up, I thought I’d head back to my sling to catch up on my sleep. I hadn’t actually been awake for the entire time I’d been uploading, but I hadn’t really been resting either. I wasn’t tired, exactly—more like stretched out and worn thin, and not quite connected to reality anymore. Jemma caught my arm when I started down the corridor, though.
“No,” she said. “Your graduation ceremony, remember?”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought that was a joke.”
She stared at me for a long few seconds, then shook her head and pushed off back down the corridor toward our closet. I shrugged, and followed.
* * *
“SO,” I SAID when she’d closed the door behind her. “Do I get a cap and gown, or what?”
I drifted closer to her.
I thought we were about to have sex.
Yes, I am exactly that stupid.
Jemma’s face was as blank as a wooden mask. She reached into a pocket of her jumpsuit, and pulled out a shiny black … something … a little bigger than her hand.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She held it up. It had a pistol grip and a snub nose with a white crystal tip. For the first time in almost two weeks, it felt like I was falling again.
“It’s a burner,” she said. “Low power, so it’s safe to use onstation. It won’t cut through metal, but it’ll do a number on pretty much any kind of organic matter.”
She held it by the nose and offered it to me. After a moment, I took it.
“See the red switch on the side of the grip? That’s the safety,” she said. “Slide it forward.”
I did. The tip took on a dull yellow glow.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s armed. Careful with the trigger. It’s that nub next to your index finger.”
I turned the weapon over in my hand. “I don’t understand,” I said.
But then she gave me that sad look again, and I did.
“This is your graduation, Mickey. Time to prove that you understand what it means to be an Expendable.”
I looked at her. She looked back.
“You’re not serious,” I said.
“You want this to be quick,” she said. “Turn your head as far to the side as you can, and press the tip against the soft spot just behind your ear. Try to angle the weapon slightly upward. It’s set for a fan beam. If you do it right, you’ll take out your entire medulla oblongata and a good chunk of your cerebellum with one shot. I promise, you won’t feel a thing. If you miss, I might have to do cleanup for you. Neither one of us wants that.”
“Jemma—”
“This isn’t really your graduation ceremony,” she said. “It’s more like your final exam. If you don’t do this, you’ll be on a shuttle back down to Midgard in the morning, and I’ll have to start over with a conscript tomorrow. Neither one of us wants that either. I’m sorry, Mickey, but this is what you signed on for. Immortality comes with a price.”
I thought about it. I thought about going back to Midgard, back to my shitty apartment and starvation subsidy. I thought about telling my friends that I wasn’t going with the Drakkar after all.
I thought about Darius Blank’s torture machine. “It’s just like going to sleep, right?” I said. “I do this, and I wake up in my sling, good as new?”