Providence - Max Barry Page 0,16

But screw him. She was incredible at this. She cried genuine tears for You experience an intense fear reaction if the exterior door is opened. When she played Your commanding officer is severely depressed and will order a suicide mission if not stopped, people leaned forward in their seats. Everyone died in that scenario because they wouldn’t listen. “I don’t even know what you’re doing here,” a girl told her. “You should be, like, famous.”

That was maybe overselling it. That might have been the girl thinking, I wish stupid Talia Beanfield would go be an actor so I can make crew. But she was happy to be the big fish in the small pond of Camp Zero Life candidate roleplays. She had played piano as a kid and meant to make a career of it right up until she attended a state conference with approximately two hundred kids who had more talent and discipline and a fascination for music she found slightly frightening and which made her own interest seem, on reflection, more like a fondness for public approval and applause. So this was fine.

Especially fun were fraternization scenarios. These began in her second year, once they’d weeded out the candidates better suited to Intel or Weapons or, let’s be brutally honest, something far, far away from a Providence. They were kind of silly, because policy was clear enough: Don’t have sex on the ship. That seemed hard to get wrong. Of course, six months or so in, thirty trillion miles from home, it started to feel less clear. She had begun to have thoughts like, Fraternization, is it really so bad? and Would anyone even know? But she had a handle on it. It helped that her choices were limited to Anders and Gilly, who were, respectively, offensive and oblivious. Or maybe it really was the roleplays.

Hey, Oscar. I really enjoyed last night.

Me too, babe.

I was thinking, maybe you and me could hang out. Just talk, you know. Open up. Really get to know each other.

Uh, yeah, I don’t know, babe, I’ve got a long tasklist today . . . all these hydrate filters needing changing . . .

But Oscar, I already checked your tasklist. I can track your movements, you know. I can see every room you go into. I know you have nothing to do right now except spend time with me.

To be honest, I just want some space, Talia.

Space? There’s plenty of that outside, Oscar. Why don’t you take a little walk from the airlock, then? Get all the fucking space you want!

Can we stop? I’m not comfortable with this roleplay.

And . . . scene.

Good times. She actually enjoyed fraternization roleplays more than the real version. All she had in reality was a long-distance boyfriend who broke up with her approximately eight months before informing her about it, and a series of stilted relationships with other Life candidates. Two in a row had had erectile dysfunction. One, okay, but two, she couldn’t help feeling like that was on her. “Just don’t look at me,” he said, and she protested, because what were they doing here, and he confessed, “I feel like you’re always analyzing me.”

She got better at hiding that.

Being on the ship was performing all the time. It was roleplays around the clock. There was no conversation where she wasn’t noting tone and word choice and body language. That joke from Anders, how much of that was serious? Gilly’s gaze is drifting, does he need more mental stimulation? And as much as she enjoyed the work, it was exhausting. She would like, just for a minute, to hang out with someone she wasn’t responsible for. She would like to relax. Talk like a normal human being. That was the part she hadn’t thought through: She had gone into Life because she loved other people, yet gotten herself sent into space with only three of them.

Not a big deal. This was what she’d signed up for. Duty to protect humanity, etc.

But VZ was going to be hard.

* * *

—

“You fucked up,” Anders told her.

It was the day after Jackson dropped the news about VZ