Page 81 of Meet Me in Another Life

“Hey!”

Thora looks over her shoulder. A man in an Odysseum polo shirt stands watching them, arms crossed. “What are you doing?”

She sighs. “We are orbiting an exoplanet four point two light-years from Earth. We have lived more lives than we can count, and we are tired, and we are hungry. We do not have time for this.”

The man stares, lost. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You people never do.” Thora looks back at Santi. “Three, two, one—”

No one follows them inside. It’s as if the darkened mission hall is invisible to everyone else. Thora goes straight to the video wall, starved for a glimpse of reality. Are the two of them thinner than she remembers, or is she imagining it? The last time she stood here, Santi was dying twice over: on the video before her eyes, and back in their flat, sinking into a programmed oblivion. She blamed that illusory death for distracting her from finding a way out of the real one. She thought what she needed was a new self, a new perspective. But she stands here now the same old Thora, without any new ideas.

“It’s not easy.” Santi looks up in mingled awe and terror, likea worshipper witnessing saints in the flesh. “Seeing what we’ve come to.”

“But it’s real.” Thora watches the crawling green line of their hearts, listens to the deep, slow hum of their breathing. She knows she should be grateful that time in the simulation passes a hundredfold slower than time on the ship, stretching and magnifying their last days. But it’s tortuous too, a slow starvation made almost endless.

The image changes, showing a dim metal room. The only light comes from two glass panels, a face visible through each one.

“There’s another camera?” Santi asks.

Thora still can’t understand why he has spent all these years hiding in the simulation instead of confronting their real selves. “Outside our compartments.”

He steps closer. “What’s that?”

“What?”

“That dark patch on the wall.” He points. “Looks like a scorch mark.”

Thora lifts her hand as if she can touch the cold metal. “I think there was a fire. After the collision.”

Santi inhales sharply. “We’re lucky to be alive.”

“I guess good old P put it out before it could cause too much damage.” Thora fixates on their shadowed faces through the glass.

“Nice of them to give us windows to look out of,” Santi remarks.

“Not like we’d see much except our own reflections.” Thora stares at the video as it switches back to a close-up of their dying bodies. “It’s hopeless,” she says. “All we can do is watch.”

“So stop watching.” Santi touches her back. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Thora is expecting him to show her a particularly poignant mural, or, worst-case, a church. She isn’t expecting to find herself in his flat in the Belgian Quarter—a flat that, with its dark blue sofa and crochet blanket, could belong to almost any of the Santis she has known—while he makes her a cup of tea. As the kettle boils, she stares at the star map on the wall, willing it to dissolve, to reveal the wall of her compartment and the real stars beyond.

Félicette meows and rubs up against her ankle. Thora leans down absently to pet her, using her free hand to sort through the uncharacteristic mess on the table. A copy ofThe Last Days of Socrates, annotated in Santi’s neat hand. Sketches for murals in his usual dreamlike style. Other papers, less familiar: diagrams, schematics, logical flowcharts. Visual aids for his attempts to argue with Peregrine.

She looks up at him as he deposits the tea in front of her. “Nice place,” she says. “Anyone would think you actually lived here.”

Santi sits down. “I’ve been here seven years,” he reminds her. “Did you think I’d be sleeping in the gutter just to prove a point?”

“I didn’t think you’d be sleeping at all. I thought you’d be spending every second trying to find a way out.” She stares at him accusingly. “All this talk about waiting for me, about how you’re so sure we’ll figure it out now I’m here. It’s just another way of saying you’ve given up.”

“I haven’t given up,” he protests.

Thora points at Félicette. “You have a cat. Universal symbol forI’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m still trying.” Santi holds up a bundle of drawings and ideas. “I’ve been trying, all this time. I just don’t think we’re going to come up with a solution by constantly staring our deaths inthe face.” Thora looks away. He taps her hand gently. “Remember the times we were scientists? The answer wouldn’t always come when we were looking for it. It would come in the gaps, when we were busy doing something else.”

“We’re notforanything else.” Thora gestures at the flat, at Félicette, at his mother’s crochet blanket, so familiar she could remake it from scratch. “We left all this behind, Santi. Everything we knew. Everyone who loved us. Because we cared about being explorers, about touching the unknown, more than we cared about anything else. Maybe that’s selfish, but it’s who we are. It’s what we did. We can’t run away from that.”

“You’re right,” he says. “But there’s another way of looking at it.” He sorts through the papers until he finds the drawing he’s looking for. He turns it toward Thora. It shows the two of them tied back-to-back blindfolded, their hands and feet bound. But where a bright light casts their shadows, they are free, and they run.

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