The Island - Peter Watts

Peter Watts 4 The Island
long have I been dead?
How long? It's the first thing everyone asks.
After all this time, I don't want to know.
He's alone at the tac tank when I arrive on the bridge, his eyes
full of icons and trajectories. Perhaps I see a little of me in there,
too.
"I didn't get your name," I say, although I've looked it up on the
manifest. We've barely been introduced and already I'm lying to
him.
"Dix." He keeps his eyes on the tank.
He's over ten thousand years old. Alive for maybe twenty of
them. I wonder how much he knows, who he's met during those
sparse decades: does he know Ishmael, or Connie? Does he know
if Sanchez got over his brush with immortality?
I wonder, but I don't ask. There are rules.
I look around. "We're it?"
Dix nods. "For now. Bring back more if we need them. But…"
His voice trails off.
"Yes?"
"Nothing."
I join him at the tank. Diaphanous veils hang within like frozen,
color-coded smoke. We're on the edge of a molecular dust cloud.
Warm, semiorganic, lots of raw materials: formaldehyde, ethylene
glycol, the usual prebiotics. A good spot for a quick build. A red
dwarf glowers dimly at the center of the Tank. The chimp has
named it DHF428, for reasons I've long since forgotten to care
about.
"So fill me in," I say.
His glance is impatient, even irritated. "You too?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like the others. On the other builds. Chimp can just squirt the
specs but they want to talk all the time."
Shit, his link's still active. He's online.
I force a smile. "Just a— a cultural tradition, I guess. We talk
*