Across the Universe

“No,” I said hollowly. “Amy.” Who was Kristen? Why’d she think my name was Kristen? Was Jason seeing Kristen on the side?

“My bad,” Erin said.

Was that pity in her eyes?

I left the line. Screw smudged mascara.

But when I sat down at the table, Jason laughed and passed me a napkin, and then he licked the corner of it and wiped my eye himself, and he brushed my cheek with his fingers, and his eyes lingered on my lips.

And I remembered saying goodbye to him, earlier that night.

Part of me wanted to demand who Kristen was. To find out who he’d been texting, earlier, when he wouldn’t let me see his phone. What his friends had meant about “big plans” next Saturday. After I’d be gone.

But another part of me said it was too late. We’d already… said goodbye.

Wouldn’t it be easier to believe Jason was my Jason, not a cheater, not a scumbag?

At the time, I didn’t think it would matter.

But now, my only regret is that I didn’t demand the truth.

46 ELDER

“SHE’S NOT HERE,” HARLEY SAYS. HE’S SITTING IN THE WARD common room, staring out the window at the wheat fields in the distance.

I head to the door that leads to the private chambers. “Don’t bother,” Harley snarls. “She wants to be left alone.” I open my mouth to ask why, but he adds, “For that matter, I want to be left alone too.” He rubs the side of his face, and I notice a dark bruise under his eye.

I make a mental note to check with Doc about the last time Harley took his meds. It’s not the standard mental meds I’m worried about — it’s the other pills Doc gives him, the ones that hold back Harley’s dark moods, make him less loons.

So I leave the Hospital alone. I pass the statue of the Plague Eldest, but I don’t pause. I don’t want him looking down on me, too.

Instead, I head up the path to the Recorder Hall. I see the people, still in full swing of the Season, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach, knowing that all of this is just contrived through Eldest’s water pump.

When I get to the Recorder Hall, I have to step over a pair of intertwined bodies to get up the stairs. Victria sits on a rocker on the porch, watching them, occasionally writing something in her small leather-bound book. I’m surprised she’s not with Bartie, not doing what the couple on the steps are doing, but Eldest did say the hormones affected the Feeders more than others.

Orion stands with his back to me, facing the picture of Eldest that looks out over the vastness of the Feeder Level. Before I can say anything, however, he lifts the picture from its nook on the wall and leans it against the floor of the porch.

“What are you doing?” I ask, shocked. The wall of the Recorder Hall looks naked without Eldest’s falsely welcoming face peering down from it.

“Time for an updated picture,” Orion says, picking the painting up and heading back inside the Hall. That makes sense. The painting of Eldest is at least a decade old. In the painting, his hair is still mostly brown, his eyes still clear, only a hint of wrinkles on his brow. I wonder what the new picture will show. Long white hair? Stooping shoulders that slope more because of years of limping? Maybe I’m off entirely. Maybe his age will make him regal.

“Hey,” Victria says without looking up at me from her book. She’s not talked to me much since Amy arrived, although we were really close before, when I lived in the Ward. She looks meaner now, more bitter than three years ago, when she was seventeen and I was thirteen. She was my first crush, then, but I don’t know why anymore.

“Hey. Writing another book?” Victria has authored nearly a dozen books and uploads them to the floppy network. They’re great — I don’t know how she does it. Really amazing stories about heroes during the Plague. Tragic stuff. My stomach sinks. I guess Eldest gave her “writing” goo before she was born.

“Not exactly.” She snaps her book closed and tucks it into the large pocket on her jacket. She doesn’t turn to me, though, she just stares out at the perfectly square and measured fields in front of her, dotted with couples.

I follow her gaze. “Hey, be careful out there. The Season’s pretty wild right now.” I’m glad Amy’s safe with Harley.

Victria doesn’t look at me. “Luthe walked me over. Orion’s here now; he can walk me back.”

Shrugging, I turn back to the wall and am surprised to see that the old painting of Eldest hid a plaque.

Hall of Records & Research Built 2036 CE Funded by FRX

Underneath that are letters I don’t recognize — from the Cyrillic or Greek alphabet, I’m not sure which. Then, beneath that:

“If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.” — Aristotle

There are eight other lines of text, each in a different language, two of which are nothing but unrecognizable symbols, but it’s not hard to guess that it’s the same quote in other languages.

“This is old,” I tell Victria, who doesn’t seem to care. “Really old. This has been here since the ship’s creation.”

She grunts to acknowledge that she’s heard me.

I think about the plans of the ship Orion showed me a few days ago. How once, the Feeder Level was focused on “Biological Research” and this “Hall of Records & Research” was its hub. The couple I had to walk over to get to the Recorder Hall are moaning, loudly.

This can’t be the kind of records and research the ship builders intended.

Eldest talks so much about how we’ve progressed, how much better we are with monoethnicity and our strong system of leadership. But right now, it seems to me that the austere words of this Aristotle sneer down at us, at how our research isn’t more than fornication.

I wonder at the timing of the new painting. This is twice now that Orion has led me to discover something new about the ship. How much do I know about him, really? I’ve hardly ever seen him anywhere except for the Recorder Hall, and even there he mostly stays hidden behind books and shadows, a ghost among words and digitized information. I may know everyone aboard this ship — their names, even their faces — but do I really know any of them? He could be anybody.

“You think they love each other?” Victria’s voice cuts through my thoughts. She’s not looking at me — she looking at the couple finishing on the Recorder Hall steps.

“No,” I say.

“It’s disgusting,” Victria mutters. “Can’t they control themselves?”

No, I think. They really can’t.

“Orion says it’s human nature.” It’s not, I think.

“It’s not,” Victria says.

I look at her, surprised.

“If it was, I’d be like them,” she says, nodding at the couple by the steps. Well, frex. She’s right. “But I’m not. I have no… desire to be like that. Not with anyone I don’t—”