Across the Universe

of crisscrossing lines. The interior of the ship itself is mostly round. A tiny sliver on top is the Keeper Level. Below that, slightly larger, is the Shipper Level, all chopped up into offices and labs. By and far the largest part of the ship is the Feeder Level. There are two blinking dots for me and Eldest on the Keeper Level, fifty or more on the Shipper Level. Eldest taps on the Feeder Level. On the right side of the circle there are several dozen dots for the people at the Hospital, but none at all in the Recorder Hall. In the middle, dozens of dots are scattered around, each one representing the people living at the various farms. Eldest taps the left side of the screen, where the City is. There are so many dots there that it would be impossible for me to count. Not that I need to. I know everyone on board the ship, all 2,312 of them.

Each one of those 2,312 blinking red dots feels like a pounding weight on my shoulders, each one crushing me down just a little bit more. They’re all, each one of them, my responsibility.

Eldest pulls the Shipper Level up again and rests his fingers on the level’s largest room, just where the engine is. “Between the engine and computers and the nav system and everything else, there’s a lot that can go wrong. This journey… it’s long.” He says this as if he’s felt all 250 years of travel. “The builders of the ship knew this; that’s why they named her Godspeed.”

I mouth the name with him, tasting it like metal on my tongue.

“It’s an old Sol-Earth expression for good luck.” Eldest snorts. “They shot our ancestors into the sky, wished them all good luck, and forgot about us. We lost com with Sol-Earth during the Plague, and have never been able to regain it. We can’t go back. They can’t help us. All the people on Sol-Earth could give us was Godspeed.”

I’m not sure if he means that they gave us luck or the ship, but they both seem a bit inadequate right now.

“But we need more than luck. The ship needs someone to protect the people, not just the ship itself. You will be that leader.” Eldest takes a deep breath. “It’s time for you to learn the three causes of discord.”

I scoot my chair closer. This is new. Finally—finally—Eldest is really going to train me to be the leader after him.

“On Godspeed,” he says, “do we all speak one language?”

“Of course,” I answer, confused.

“Do we have any differences in race?”

“Race?”

“Skin color.”

“No.” Everyone on board has the same deep olive skin, the same dark brown hair and eyes.

“You’ve studied the myths of Sol-Earth: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. Does anyone on Godspeed ‘worship’?” He says the last word with dripping derision.

“Of course not!” I laugh. One of the first lessons Eldest gave me when I moved to the Keeper Level was about Sol-Earth’s religions. They were magic stories, fairy tales, and I remember laughing myself silly when Eldest told me how people on Sol-Earth were willing to die or kill for these fictional characters.

Eldest nods once. “The first cause of discord is difference. There is no religion on Godspeed. We all speak the same language. We’re all monoethnic. And because we are not different, we don’t fight. Remember the Crusades I taught you about? The genocides? We will never have to worry about those types of horrific events on Godspeed.”

I am on the edge of my seat, nodding, but inside I’m hoping Eldest can’t see what a chutz I actually am. I remember those lessons. They were among my first lessons, when I was thirteen and had just moved to the Keeper Level to live with Eldest. Stars, I was such a kid then. I remember pictures on the floppies of people of different skin color and hair color, of people dressed in long gowns or loincloths, of the sounds of languages whose words I could not understand. And back then I thought it was all kind of brilly.

I slouch further down in my seat. No wonder Eldest has been slow to train me — clearly I never picked up the real lessons he’s been teaching me.

“The second cause of discord,” Eldest continues, “is lack of a strong central leader.”

He leans forward, reaching his gnarled, wrinkled hands toward me. “Do you understand the importance of this?” he says, his eyes watery from old age or something else.

I nod.

“Do you really?” he asks more urgently, gripping my hands so hard that some of my knuckles crack.

I nod again, unable to take my eyes from his.

“What is the greatest danger of this ship?” His voice has fallen into a raspy whisper.

Um. Maybe I didn’t understand. Eldest stares at me, expecting a response. I stare back.

“Mutiny. It’s mutiny, Elder. More than technical error or ship malfunction or outside dangers, mutiny is the greatest threat to this ship. So, after the Plague, the Eldest system was created. One person, born ahead of the people he would lead, to act as patriarch and commander to the people younger than he. Each generation has an Eldest to lead. You will one day be an Eldest. You will be the strong central leader who prevents discord, who preserves every living person on this ship.”

5 AMY

I AM AS SILENT AS DEATH.

Do this: Go to your bedroom. Your nice, safe, warm bedroom that is not a glass coffin behind a morgue door. Lie down on your bed not made of ice. Stick your fingers in your ears. Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me.

Because what if I am dead? How can someone without a beating heart, without breathing lungs live like I do? I must be dead. And this is my greatest fear: After 301 years, when they pull my glass coffin from this morgue, and they let my body thaw like chicken meat on the kitchen counter, I will be just like I am now. I will spend all of eternity trapped in my dead body. There is nothing beyond this. I will be locked within myself forever.

And I want to scream. I want to throw open my eyes and wake up and not be alone with myself anymore, but I can’t.

I can’t.

6 ELDER

“SO, WHAT’S THE THIRD CAUSE OF DISCORD?” I ASK ELDEST AS silence creeps around us in the Learning Center.

He contemplates me. For a moment, anger flashes in his faded eyes, and I wonder if he’ll strike me. When I blink, though, that crazy idea is gone. Eldest puts both hands on his knees and pushes against them to raise himself, creaking, into a standing position. The Learning Center is small, and with Eldest standing, it feels oppressively so. The chair he’s pushed back butts against the wall; the table feels like a chasm between us. Behind him, the faded globe of Sol-Earth looks miniscule, even smaller and more insignificant than me.

“I’ve told you enough,” he says, heading to the door. “And I’ve got work to do. I want you to go to the Recorder Hall, do some research, see if you can figure out some of the reasons Sol-Earth had so much discord. You’ve got the first two reasons for their reign of blood and war; you should be able to figure out the third. It’s not hard, not when you look at Sol-Earth history.”

I recognize the challenge in this. Eldest is testing my ability to be a leader, testing my worthiness to follow in