Second Suicide: A Short Story (Kindle Single) by Hugh Howey Read Free Book Online Page B

such wedges.
    I turn in my
seat. Past the pilot I can see my new home, a similar craft, practically
identical. And beyond that, a disc of illumination brighter than the
neighboring stars—the planet that all the fleet has its pointy bits aimed
at.
    The pilot
docks, lazily and with loud, jarring clangs. I thank him as I enter the
airlock. Onboard the new ship—with some struggle and crappy directions—I
find my bunk. My mate is not there. On shift, no doubt. I leave my things on
the stained and bare mattress of the upper bunk, wondering idly if this is
where the girl of the second suicide slept, or if perhaps my new bunkmate has
been waiting for this day to claim the lower. The suicide girl probably passed
me in another shuttle, is at this very moment surveying my empty bed. Or lying
in it. Or she is dangling by a tentacle from my old air vent.
    I can’t stop
thinking on the suicides. As I wend my way down foreign corridors, placing a
tentacle here and there on the unfamiliar pipes and plates that squeeze in
around me, I wonder what madness in some strange woman brought me here. Not
that I haven’t killed myself, but that was a very long while ago, after my
second or third invasion. I remember waking up in the same body the next
morning—same but newer and still smelling of the vats—and realizing
the futility of it all. My Supervisor at the time— Yim ,
I believe—sat me down and explained that bodies weren’t cheap and to cut
that shit out. I soon realized that taking a blaster to my own head was no
different than falling in battle, just more expensive. It took centuries to
work off that debt, what with the interest. It only takes once to know the
headache is not worth it, that the numbness is not worth it. Going to sleep at
night is a more useful and less costly way to not-exist for some short while.
    Unless . . .
maybe this girl in my old bunk is so far in debt that more of it is hardly
felt. Maybe she enjoys the waking. Maybe she loves learning to use her
tentacles again. I remember that, the deadness in my suckers after reviving.
Like I’d slept on them wrong. That is not a feeling I crave enough to kill
myself for. But there are those much crazier than I.
    Eight days
to planetfall , and here I am lost on another’s ship
and thinking on nonsense. This will be one of those invasions where I am
useless, standing on the sidelines and watching, no time to adequately prepare.
I’m comfortable with that. No one can blame me. The late transfer is not my
fault.
    I pass a
woman in the corridor and notice the way her stalks follow mine. Hey, maybe a
new ship will be good for me. Maybe my bunkmate is lousy at gambling. I can get
used to this life, as I have so many others. This is what I tell myself, that I
can be happy in this skin of mine. For what other choice is there?
    #
    I find
Supervisor Bix in the Sector 1 command hall, near the
front of the ship. A terminal tech points him out through the glass. There are
three men and two women bent over a table that glows with a land map.
Stretching my stalk, I can see Sector 1 and part of Sector 2. I watch these
supervisors argue, can hear their muffled annoyance through the glass, and I see
that things operate similarly here as everywhere else—with very little
grease and a lot of grind.
    The more I
watch, though, the more I note the added stress among Bix’s superiors, those men and women wearing emblems of High Command. I don’t know
these commanders personally (nor anyone of their rank—I report to those
who report to them) but I can clearly see the tension in their tentacles, in
the twitch of their stalks, and I do not envy them their jobs.
    The display
screen is centered on the fat land of my new sector. I see great swaths of
blue, and then the coast of my old sector at the very edge of the map. The men
and women inside the room seem nervous. Tentacles are waving, and I can hear
shouts through the thick glass. Eight days to planetfall ,
and this must be the stress