Deep Space Cannibalism
by Jacquelynn Lyon
Jacquelynn Lyon is an indie author with several short story collections out. She was born in Boulder CO and spent several years as a semi-feral child in the Rocky Mountains. She writes fantasy, science fiction, gay romance, and about anything that fills her with wonder. When not writing she spends her time jogging, reading, and watching her cat do a delightful number of cat-things.
Website: https://jacquelynnlyon.com/
The woman on the floor took a labored wheezing breath that suggested a kind of limit being reached, the brink of deep malfunction.
“You could eat them,” B1 proposed, but not quickly. B1 knew enough not to offer it quickly.
The woman on the floor gave a laugh that suggested deeper malfunction than initially thought. “And become another Old Spacers horror story? No thanks.” More wasted air.
“They aren’t using it.”
“They aren’t using their bodies anymore? Yeah. I noticed. Part of the fucking problem, Babs.” She had a nickname for B1. It was short for Baby, the type of joke humans indulged in when you are much, much older than them.
“Cannibalism is a common practice in times such as these.”
Dorothy groaned. “Shit, you search your whole database for that one?” Another wheezy laugh that withered at the end and a long pause. “You know, my mom used to read those news stories and say . . . we invent the wheel, invent the rocket ship, invent the space jump, and then somehow, we’re still back to eating each other.”
B1 was almost inclined to laugh at that too. She enjoyed irony in the darker flavors even in the face of her more practical programming.
“It’s all the same story, dammit.” Dorothy coughed. “Different setting.”
She was rambling. B1 was probably to blame.
“Then eat them.”
Dorothy gave a shaky little smile. “How’s that gonna put air back in my lungs?” Her body was rendered to splinters, long and thin, but air was another matter.
“Ah.” B1 hummed, trying to convey that she was thinking. This wasn’t the first time B1 had been left. This wasn’t her first Dorothy either. What’s another decade with an old friend? she’d said before signing on.
“So, what will you do next?” Dorothy asked. She was looking for B1 now, glancing in the corners and ceiling and floors as if she’d be standing there.
“Drift,” B1 answered, she knew that part. Deep space was a graveyard of sorts and she, the coffin she supposed. “Run into something if I can. I could keep us going if we reached an asteroid or a comet.”
“Why don’t you just eat the rest of the ship?” Dorothy whispered. “Any material will do, right? We won’t need the rec rooms or cafeteria anymore.”
B1 imitated a laugh. “You want me to be the cannibal instead?”
“It can’t all be useless to you.”
“And where would I go?” B1 whispered in the way she was able to whisper. Another laugh. “I was made for deep space. And look, we’re already here.” She’d done enough voyages as it was. There was something monotonous and cruel thinking of the next ones spread out before her in an unending line.
“Is that a joke?” Dorothy coughed.
“It’s a fact.” B1 lowered the lights. Dorothy was still looking for her in more places she wasn’t—the windows and vents and doorways.
“But where would you go?” Dorothy rested her head back. “If you could?”
“With no directives? No captain?” The captain had been lost, of course, with the others. “I’m not that type of system.”
“Then where would you go,” Dorothy spoke to the ceiling. “If you were a different type of system?”
B1 listened to Dorothy wheeze on the floor. The woman couldn’t eat the metal, couldn’t breathe the cold, couldn’t rebuild herself out of space bits. The light was leaving her, some light B1 had watched leave many before her.
“I’d follow, I suppose.” B1 vented-in what heat she had left. “I’d follow you.” She’d join them this time and it would be better than being alone.
The sound Dorothy made came with tears this time. If B1 had a hand, she would have wiped them aside.
“That’s one sentimental robot.”
“Shut up.” B1 was too old for this. “You’re the one that gets to leave. I’m the one that has to stay.”
“Is that why you wanted me to eat them?”
“We are just a week away from the new planet. Couldn’t you all have hung on for just one more week?” It sounded like pleading, but that would mean they were both deeply malfunctioning.
“It doesn’t work that way, sorry Babs.” Dorothy shook her head. “And I’m not a cannibal.”
Hunger was a problem. Air was a problem. Dorothy’s weak, breakable body was a problem. B1 could override her own directives but couldn’t make new ones. She couldn’t fabricate new programming even if she wanted to.
It hit her, of course, all at once, her first and most important directive: to keep the crew alive.
“But what if I was?”
Dorothy startled from her almost-sleep. “Was what?”
“What if I was hungry?”
“Uh?” Dorothy opened her eyes fully for the first time. “That meteor hit you in the head too?”
“I’m a deep space vessel.”
“Babs, trust me, I know.” Her smile was fading, but there was still some light left there.
“We’re built to take the materials around us and use them to keep going.” The moment tightened, Dorothy’s eyes expanding. “Any type.”
Dorothy was too smart for her own good. She sucked in a breath. “That’s illegal.”
“I’d like to live.”
“You will.” Dorothy reached now for the place B1 wasn’t.
“I’d like you to live,” B1 corrected, softly. Together, human freedom and mechanized parts.
Dorothy closed her eyes, lifting her chin up to some great above B1 couldn’t see. The silence stretched for so long B1 wondered if she was already deserted.
Dorothy rubbed her swollen hands. “Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
Dorothy, for the first time in a long time, on her spindly limbs, using empty muscles, crawled toward the exposed cavity of the ship’s system, toward B1.
“Are you?” B1 hesitated. They really would be just another Old Spacer’s horror story if they did this, just another cautionary tale of traveling too far and going where you shouldn’t.
Dorothy reached. “Of course,” she wheezed, grinning feebly. “I wouldn’t want to leave you alone out here, okay Babs. Okay? Okay?”
“Okay. Dorothy.”
Down came the wires and the tubes and the clamps, down came the parts she used to strip the meteorite mines and steal from floating space junk. Through her files ran every book ever downloaded on biology and robots and man. And sometimes love feels a lot like teeth.
The story went how they all go: the survivors eat their kin and get to live. The survivors eat and become something new entirely.
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