PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 13 Blindsight
not in the Kuiper Belt where you belong: you're high above the
ecliptic and deep into the Oort, the realm of long-period comets
that only grace the sun every million years or so. You've gone
interstellar, which means (you bring up the system clock) you've
been undead for eighteen hundred days.
You've overslept by almost five years.
The lid of your coffin slides away. Your own cadaverous body
reflects from the mirrored bulkhead opposite, a desiccated lungfish
waiting for the rains. Bladders of isotonic saline cling to its limbs
like engorged antiparasites, like the opposite of leeches. You
remember the needles going in just before you shut down, way
back when your veins were more than dry twisted filaments of beef
jerky.
Szpindel's reflection stares back from his own pod to your
immediate right. His face is as bloodless and skeletal as yours.
His wide sunken eyes jiggle in their sockets as he reacquires his
own links, sensory interfaces so massive that your own off-theshelf
inlays amount to shadow-puppetry in comparison.
You hear coughing and the rustling of limbs just past line-ofsight,
catch glimpses of reflected motion where the others stir at
the edge of vision.
"Wha—" Your voice is barely more than a hoarse whisper. "…
happ…?"
Szpindel works his jaw. Bone cracks audibly.
"…Sssuckered," he hisses.
You haven't even met the aliens yet, and already they're running
rings around you.
So we dragged ourselves back from the dead: five part-time
cadavers, naked, emaciated, barely able to move even in zero gee.
We emerged from our coffins like premature moths ripped from
their cocoons, still half-grub. We were alone and off course and
utterly helpless, and it took a conscious effort to remember: they
would never have risked our lives if we hadn't been essential.
"Morning, commissar." Isaac Szpindel reached one trembling,
*