A Million Suns

“I’ll check all our security feeds,” Second Shipper Shelby says.

“And we’ll need to start researching methods to add increased security to the floppy network,” Marae says. The rest of the Shippers break away from the group, a buzz of activity already drowning out the sounds of the churning engine behind me.

Marae touches my elbow and draws me aside. I can still see the bright white words on the floppy, mocking me.

“What are you going to do, Elder?” she asks.

I meet her eyes. “I really don’t know.”

6 AMY

THIS WI–COM IS SUPPOSED TO CONNECT ME TO THE SHIP, BUT all it does is make me feel even more disconnected from my past. But… I do need it, like Doc said. Because I’m not safe here.

My hand clenches around my wrist. The bruises are long gone, but other hands once held my wrists, forcing me down to the ground…

I release my hand and suck in a huge breath of air. I won’t let myself think of that. I can’t let myself think of that.

Instead, I look at the wi-com. I imagine the braided wires slithering apart, sliding under my skin, burrowing through my flesh. I’m wearing something that was once inside someone else. It’s like wearing a tooth on a necklace or making earrings from toenails. It’s even worse that it came from Orion. I want nothing more than to rip this thing that was once his off my wrist and destroy it… but something stops me.

At least, with the wi-com, I can reach Elder. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen him less and less — and I get it, really I do, I know he’s busy. But… I can’t help but smile. It will be nice to be able to talk to him.

I push the button on the wi-com and say Elder’s name. I raise it to my ear, waiting to hear his voice. Beep! “Com link denied,” a pleasant female computer voice says.

Well, it would be nice to talk to Elder. If he’d actually answer my com.

I look closer at the wi-com — small black letters are printed along one of the wires. I wouldn’t really notice them if I wasn’t inspecting the wi-com so closely. I dig my finger into the braided wires, separating the red wire from the others so I can see the letters more clearly.

It’s one phrase, three words repeated over and over and over in tiny print: Abandon all hope.

My first thought is, how did Doc miss this? He said he cleaned the wi-com. But, I suppose, this is just another mark of how disturbed — by which I mean downright psycho — Orion was. I wouldn’t be surprised if Doc saw the message and gave the wi-com to me regardless — words printed on a wire don’t actually change whether or not the stupid thing works. Doc cares more about practicality than whatever leftover bits of Orion’s insanity are braided up into the thing.

Beyond that, the phrase is apt. If there’s one thing I don’t have any more of, it’s hope. It’s almost like Orion left that message just for me.

And then I realize: he did.

Doc said the wi-com came with a note. It is, in a way, my inheritance.

My mind spins. Orion doesn’t have to tell me there’s no more hope for me aboard Godspeed; I figured that out on my own. But… maybe he meant something more… Because — I know where this phrase comes from. It is, according to my tenth-grade English teacher Ms. Parker, one of the most recognizable lines in literature, right up there with Rhett not giving a damn about Scarlett and Hamlet waffling on about whether to be or not to be. Abandon all hope is the phrase written above the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno.

And, since books were pretty much off-limits until Elder took over as ruler of Godspeed, that’s not something Doc would have known. Of everyone on the ship, I’m probably the only one who knows about books from Earth.

Other than Orion, that is, who spent most of his life hidden in the Recorder Hall with only words and fictional characters for company.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am. These aren’t just some casual words Orion doodled somewhere. “Abandon all hope” is a specific phrase from a specific book written on a wi-com that Orion left specifically for me.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. It’s probably nothing. But I’ve had “nothing” for far too long, and I’m ready for something. Anything. I’d rather go to the Recorder Hall and look up the phrase in Dante’s Inferno than just sit here and stare at the walls some more. I zip my jacket all the way up, leave my room, and head to the elevator. I’m excited, and my legs want to run… but instead, when I get outside, I remember how running only makes me more noticeable and walk with my head down and the hood of my jacket pulled up. As I mount the stairs to the Recorder Hall, I glance up out of habit. In a cubby by the door hangs a painting of Elder, one of Harley’s last works. This is the closest I’ve come to seeing Elder in days; the more time that passes, the more wrapped up he is in running Godspeed. In a lot of ways, he’s more trapped than I am.

Painted Elder peers out from the hall at his enclosed kingdom, and I turn, following the path of his painted eyes.

The solar lamp’s glare blinds me for a moment, and in that split second of darkness, I realize something I didn’t know before: I don’t need to see the landscape to know every inch of the Feeder Level spread out before me. I close my eyes, and I can still see the rolling fields in perfectly spaced hills. I know the precise pattern of colors of the trailers that make up the City on the far side of the ship. I know the exact point in the metal sky when the rivets holding the roof together get so far away, I can’t really see them anymore. I know the shape of each painted cloud.

I try to dig into my memories for what my house looked like in Colorado, but I can’t remember exactly. The shutters on the windows — were they more brick red or burgundy? What kind of flowers did Mom plant in the front yard?

I know Godspeed now better than I can remember Earth.

“Outta the way, freak,” a hefty woman says, shouldering past me as she leaves the Recorder Hall. I must look like even more of a freak than normal — wearing a jacket when everyone else has short sleeves, standing in the doorway of the Recorder Hall like an idiot.

A young man, slender and tall, stares at me openly as he follows the woman toward the path leading to the Hospital. I pull my hood farther down. He turns his head to look at me as he steps off the stairs, and something in his eyes makes me turn on my heel and rush into the Recorder Hall.

Godspeed has not just replaced Earth in my mind; it’s replaced my home. And it’s inhabited with people who hide dark thoughts behind staring dark eyes.

I shake my head, willing thoughts of both my old home and the man to fall from my cluttered mind. There’s no use thinking about either.

Inside the Recorder Hall is dark and quiet. There are people here, but they ignore me in a way they wouldn’t outside, where the false sunlight streams across my pale skin and the red hair peeking out from under my scarf. They’re focused on the information they’re seeing and understanding for the first time. They’re not concentrating on me.

That’s why I like it here.

There are crowds of people at each of the giant digital screens hanging from the walls. Even though Elder has opened up the entire Recorder Hall to everyone on board, most Feeders stick to examining the floppies — if they come at all. Few venture into the rooms past this one, filled with books; fewer still go to the second and third floors to visit the galleries.