I don’t want to make it seem like I’m an idiot. I knew what I was getting into, more or less, when I put my thumb to the contract. I sat in the recruiter’s office back on Midgard and listened to her entire spiel. Her name was Gwen Johansen. She was a tall, heavyset blonde, with an expressionless face and a voice that sounded like she’d spent most of the morning swallowing gravel. She sat behind her desk, staring down at a screen in her hands, and read off a list of things that I might be required to do that would likely result in the death of that particular instantiation of me.
External repairs during interstellar transit was on the list. So were exposure to local flora and fauna, necessary medical experiments, combat against any hostiles we might encounter, and on and on for so long that I finally tuned out. The plain fact was that it didn’t matter what they were going to do to me. I didn’t have a choice if I wanted a berth. I wasn’t a pilot. I wasn’t a medico. I wasn’t a geneticist or botanist or xenobiologist. I wasn’t even a spear-carrier. I had no practical skills of any sort—but I really, really needed to get the hell off of Midgard, and I needed to do it quickly. This was the first colony ship we’d chartered since our own landfall two hundred years prior, and signing on as an Expendable was the only way I was going to win passage.
I knew that once I submitted my tissue samples and let them run my upload, I’d be first in line for pretty much every dangerous-to-suicidal job that came down the pike. What I didn’t really grasp even after hearing Gwen run through the entire litany, though, was how many dangerous-to-suicidal jobs there actually are on a beachhead colony, and how often I’d be called on to perform them. I mean, you’d think that we’d use remotes to handle most of the seriously stupid stuff—stuff like exploring possibly unstable crevasses filled with possibly carnivorous local fauna, just to pick a random example. That’s what they did on Midgard, which is why I thought this posting might actually wind up being pretty soft.
Turns out, though, that there’s a whole range of things, mostly involving lethal doses of radiation but extending to other abuses as well, that a human body can actually tolerate for a significantly longer period than a mech, and there’s a whole other range of things, mostly involving medical experiments and the like, that a mech can’t do at all. Moreover, an Expendable is actually a lot easier to replace on a beachhead than a mech is. We won’t have any kind of serious mineral extraction, let alone heavy industry, for a long time to come. Any metal lost is lost for good until we can get that stuff up and running. The raw materials they need to make another one of me, on the other hand, just require us to get our agricultural base online.
Not that we’ve accomplished that either. Getting anything to grow outside the dome on Niflheim is going to be a serious challenge long-term, and something in the local microbiota seems to be screwing with the things we’re trying to grow inside as well—but theoretically it’s a much more short-term project.
When Gwen was done listing off all of the awful things that might happen to me—several of which actually have happened to me, of course—she leaned back in her chair, folded her arms across her chest, and stared at me for a long, awkward moment.
“So,” she said finally. “Does this really sound like the sort of job you’d enjoy?”
I gave her what I hoped was a confident smile and said, “Yes, I think it does.”
She kept staring, until I could feel little beads of flop sweat forming on my forehead. Have I mentioned that I really, really needed this gig? I was about to say something about how I’d always been comfortable with risk-taking, how I was confident in my ability to stay alive in the most challenging circumstances, when she leaned forward and said, “Are you a total, irretrievable moron?”
That set me back for a moment. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so, anyway.”
“You heard what I said before, right? The whole list?”
I nodded.
“So when I said ‘acute radiation poisoning,’ for example, you got that. You understood that what I meant by that was that you might well be called upon to perform duties that would result in you deliberately being exposed to a lethal dose of ionizing radiation. You understood that subsequent to that, you would develop a fever, skin rashes, blistering, and eventually that your internal organs would more or less liquefy and leak out of your anus over a period of days, resulting in what I am led to believe is an exceedingly painful death. All of that was entirely clear to you?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but that wouldn’t really happen, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “It very well might.”
I shook my head. “Sure, I might get irradiated or whatever, but I wouldn’t have some long, drawn-out, agonizing death. I’d just kill myself, right? Take a pill, close my eyes, and wake up as a new me? I mean, that’s kind of the point of the whole backup thing, right?”
“Yes,” Gwen said. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? The fact is, though, that most Expendables don’t.”
I waited for her to go on. When it was clear she wasn’t going to, I said, “Don’t what?”
She sighed. “Kill themselves. My understanding is that that very rarely happens, despite the fact that it would make eminent sense. Apparently three hours of training lectures aren’t enough to overcome a billion years of ingrained instinct for self-preservation. Go figure. Also, in many cases the Expendable may be required to ride it out all the way to the bitter end, whether he wants to do so or not. Think about medical experiments, for example. Can’t short-circuit one of those with a premature euthanasia. Same with exposure to local microbiota. Command needs to know exactly what biological effects are produced, and they won’t let you check out until they’ve finished gathering data. Understand?”
I nodded. I couldn’t think of a more elaborate response. Gwen looked up at the ceiling for a long while. When she finally looked back down at me, I got the feeling that she was disappointed to see me still sitting there.
“So tell me, Mr. Barnes. What, exactly, do you find appealing about the position on offer?”
She set her elbows on the desk then, and rested her chin on her hands.
“Well,” I said, “I mean, even if I got killed once or twice, I’d basically be immortal, right? That’s what you said.”
She sighed again, louder this time. “Right. You’re a moron. Ordinarily we try not to discriminate, but the problem in this case is that the Mission Expendable is actually an extremely important posting for a colony expedition. Even a mind as simple as yours obviously is takes up an almost inconceivable amount of storage space. Prepping you for backup is an enormous investment of resources. If you take this position, yours will be the only downloadable personality and the only biological pattern that your colony will carry. That means that if things go badly, you may find yourself the last living thing aboard the Drakkar, solely responsible for the welfare of thousands of stored human embryos, among other assets. Is that really a burden you’re willing to accept?”
I gave her a nervous smile. She stared me down for what felt like a long time, then leaned back in her chair until the front legs lifted off the floor, folded her hands behind her head, and returned her attention to the ceiling.
“Do you know how many people we’ve had apply for this particular position?” she asked finally.