Across the Universe

The blanket slips down my legs. I sit up, my abdominal muscles pulling me forward with relish. I am bare from the tops of my thighs down, and above that all I am wearing is a blue-green hospital gown, the kind that doesn’t close in the back.

A boy sits beside my bed, breathing in a slow steady way that drifts in and out of snoring. I pull the blanket all the way up to my shoulders. He fell asleep while sitting in the chair and is slouched over in a way that looks uncomfortable. He must have been watching me. I hate the idea that he was there, awake and conscious, while I slept. It creeps me out.

It’s the same boy who was there when I first woke up inside the glass coffin. His face is soft but has an edge to it that belies the innocent appearance he has while sleeping. I’m not sure what race he is—not black, but not white; neither Hispanic nor Asian. It’s a nice color, though—dark in a creamy sort of way that compliments his almost-black hair. The high cut of his cheekbones and the strong curve of his forehead make him look instantly trustworthy, maybe even kind.

“Who are you?” I say loudly. For the first time since I woke from my centuries-long slumber, my voice does not crack. They must have done something to my throat. A dull, throbbing ache fills my body.

The boy jumps, a look of guilt or wariness on his face when his eyes focus on me. He looks around as if he’s surprised I’m talking to him, but he’s the only other person in the room.

“I’m uh... I’m Elder. I’m the future, um, leader. Of the ship. Um.” He stands up, but I don’t, so he sits down again awkwardly.

Future leader of the ship? Why does the ship need a future leader?

“Where am I?”

“You’re in the Ward,” he says, but I can barely understand him. There’s a strange clipped quality to his words, and they’re inflected with a singsongy intonation. His short speech sounds like this: “Yar in-tha Wart,” with a lilt at the end of each word.

“Where’s the Ward?” I ask.

“The Hospital.” (“Thas pital.”)

I look around. This isn’t what I expected. “Why am I in a hospital? What are you doing here?”

I’m not fully concentrating on what he’s saying, and I don’t really catch everything he says in reply. The room suddenly feels colder, and I clutch the blanket tighter to me. Something about being a future leader, again, like that has any weight to it. Future leader of the ship. Well, of course he is. I inspect him closer. He’s got wide, broad shoulders with just enough muscle that it isn’t too obvious under his shirt-tunic thing, although I can see the hard corners of his biceps. Tall—much taller than me, but a few inches taller than most people, even though he’s probably about my age. He slouches, though. His face is narrow but inviting, with almond-shaped eyes that pierce. All of this adds up to a certain something that makes him just look like the kind of guy who could lead a ship. It’s almost as if God had known Elder was going to be some sort of leader or whatever, so He gave him the right face and body for it.

I turn in the bed so that my feet touch the floor. The floor’s cold, though, so I raise my knees to my chin—under the blanket, of course, since the hospital gown does little to cover me. “What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?” (“Waz-wa lick?”)

“The new planet.” And even though I didn’t want to come here in the first place, and even though I hated every moment of my frozen years to get here, there is a little awe in my voice that even I cannot hide. A new planet. We are finally on a new planet. A planet no human being has ever been on before.

The boy stands up. He’s so tall, it doesn’t feel fair to call him a boy, but at the same time, he’s got a bit of a baby face, as if he’s never seen or done anything to make him grow up, to make the angles of his face sharpen with the harshness of age. He walks to the far wall, his back to me. He is towering in this small room; it can barely contain him. He reminds me, in a small way, of Jason. Not in how he looks—this boy is darker and more muscular than Jason—but in the way he stands and walks, as if he knows his place in the world with absolute certainty. He leans against the wall, facing a rectangular piece of metal hanging there. Light peeps out from around the edges of the metal. It must be some sort of window covering.

“Ware na onnda plant yeah,” he says. I had not realized how confusing his accent was until he was facing away from me, unintentionally shielding his lips from my view.

“What?” I ask.

He turns to me; this time when he speaks, I am able to decipher his words. “We’re not on the planet yet.”

“What... do you mean?” Cold, the coldness of ice and hell, fills my empty stomach.

“We’ve still got about fifty years before we land.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry; 49 years and 266 days. I’m sorry.”

“Why did you wake me up early?”

“I didn’t!” the boy protests, flushing deeply. “It wasn’t me! Why did you accuse me?”

“I just want to know why we were all woken up 49 years and 200-some days early! And where are my parents?”

The boy lowers his eyes. Something in his look makes the ice pit in my belly churn.

“You weren’t all woken up early,” he says. His eyes beg me to understand what he means, to quit asking questions.

“Where are my parents?” I repeat.

“They’re... below.”

“I want to see my parents. I want to talk to my parents.”

“They . . .”

“What happened to my parents?”

“They haven’t been reanimated yet. They’re still frozen. Everyone else down there is still frozen but you.”

“When will they wake up? When do I get to see them?”

The boy edges to the door. “Maybe I should get Eldest to come explain?”

“Eldest who? Explain what?” I am shouting, but I don’t care. The blanket has slipped from my legs. My brain is racing, falling into place, crashing against the words I think the boy will say, the words I dread hearing, the words I must hear him speak aloud before I will believe them to be true.

“Er... well, uh... They’re not going to be woken up until we get there.”

“Fifty years from now,” I say hollowly.

The boy nods. “Forty-nine years and 266 days from now.”

I have been frozen in ice for centuries. And yet, I have never felt more alone than I do right now, at this moment, when I realize that I am alive and aware and awake, and they are not.

16

ELDER

SHE STARTS CRYING. NOT SOFT, SAD TEARS, BUT THE ANGRY sort, like she hates the whole world, or at least the ship that’s now her world. So, I do what any reasonable person would do when faced with a crying girl.

I get the frex out of there.

A familiar beep, beep-beep fills my left ear. “Com link: Eldest,” says the soft female voice of my wi-com.

“Ignore.”

Eldest had left the Hospital as soon as Doc had begun administering post-regenerative meds to Amy. He hadn’t helped set up the IV bags or watched as they slowly dripped three full bags of nutrition and fluid into her. He wasn’t there to help us lift her onto the new bed in the Ward that Doc made up for her. He wasn’t there when she woke up, having stayed by her side for more than seven hours just so she wouldn’t have to wake up alone.

I don’t really care what he has to say right now.

What I care about is Amy. Maybe if she sees more of Godspeed, she won’t cry so much. If I can bring her a piece of her home, something that reminds her of Sol-Earth, maybe she’ll...

I head straight to the garden just behind the Hospital. The garden is full of blooms right now, but I know what I want—the large yellow and orange flowers growing near the pond, the ones with streaks of color almost as brilly as Amy’s hair.

It takes me a moment to find them; there’re only a few blooms left, their big heads drooping toward the pond water. I kneel, ignoring the muddy stains seeping into my trousers, and break the stems of half a dozen flowers. The petals are as long as my fingers, curling at the ends, and their honey-like scent drifts lazily to my nose.

“Elder.”

Shite. I turn to face Eldest, my fingers tightening around the stems.

“You ignored my com.” His voice is low, monotone.

“I was busy.”

His cold eyes drop to the flowers in my hand. “Clearly.”

I start back toward the Hospital. Eldest follows me.

“You’re forgetting your duties. You have yet to complete the assignment I gave you yesterday.”

“It can wait.”

I start to climb the steps leading back to the Hospital, but Eldest grabs my shirt collar and drags me back.

“Being leader of the ship is more important than any girl.”

I nod. He is right.

“She shouldn’t even be here in the first place,” Eldest mumbles. “What a nuisance.”

I crush the flower stems into my palms.

“A nuisance?” Now my voice is a low monotone.

“Her presence is bad for the ship. Difference. The first cause of discord.”

Something roars in protest inside me. This is not the kind of leader I want to learn to be—one so coldly indifferent to Amy. Yesterday, Eldest told me that it was my job to protect the people. I didn’t know he just meant our people.

“Now go back to the Keeper Level and work on that assignment.”

“No.”

Eldest’s eyes widen, then narrow. “No?”

“No.” I rip myself from his grip and head to the Hospital elevator. Before the doors slide shut, Eldest steps inside with me.

“I don’t have time for your childishness. I’ll tell you once more. Go back to the Keeper Level.”

“No,” I say, still smiling, but it’s all a front to hide my fear. Eldest cannot stand rebellion, and I’ve never pushed back at him this hard before. Part of me wants to take it all back, apologize, and obey him like I always have. Part of me wishes he’d take a swing at me so I could punch him back.

Eldest raises his left hand to his wi-com button.

“Keeper override; Eldest clearance,” he says, and my stomach lurches. This can’t be good. “Command: apply noise modification enhancer to wi-com Elder. Vary tone and pitch. Intensity level: three. Cease at subject’s entry to the Keeper Level.”

Immediately, a low-pitched buzz fills my left ear. I clap my hand over it, but the noise isn’t coming from outside; it’s coming from inside my ear, in my wi-com. The buzz rises into a screech for a second, dips back into a buzz, then makes a grating, teeth-jarring scratching sound against my eardrum.

I jab my finger into my wi-com. “Override!” I say. “Command: stop all sounds!”

“Access denied,” the female voice of my wi-com says over a sound worse than the squelching noise of a cow giving birth. Augh! This isn’t like the biometric scanner where I have the same clearance as Eldest. Wi-coms are different, unique to each of us. The only thing that can stop mine from bugging out is Eldest’s.