Across the Universe

Oh. I see his point. My life, my former life, already is history. What will it be like to see the things I loved and lived in a history book? What if I flip through the pages and recognize someone? What if I recognize myself, staring up at me from the pages of a history tome older than I am?


“I was on the cross-country team,” I say. The doctor looks at me blankly. I realize the phrase “cross-country” means nothing to him, here on a ship where there is no country to cross. “I ran. It’s a sport where you run.”

The doctor looks skeptical. “You can, of course, ‘run’ whenever you’d like. But...” His gaze roves over me. “It may not be advisable. You will stand out on board this ship... I cannot vouch for your safety when you leave the Hospital.”

My stomach clenches. What kind of people are these? And what does he mean by “safety”? Does he think I’ll be attacked?

The doctor, however, seems oblivious to my uneasiness. “What other activities could you do?”

“I was on the yearbook staff. I like photography,” I say, still a little distracted by thoughts of how I’m going to be treated when I go outside.

“Hmm.” The doctor sounds disapproving. “We do not actually allow photography on board the ship outside of scientific uses.”

Even though I’m determined to prove to the doctor I can be calm without medication, I can’t help but show my disbelief. “Are you serious? Photography’s banned?”

“What other activities do you enjoy?” he says, completely ignoring my question.

“I don’t know,” I say, throwing my hands up. “What do most of the teenagers around here do? Clubs? Parties?”

“We do not have school or parties or anything of that sort,” the doctor says slowly, replacing the two stray pencils on his desk into the cup, “because we do not have children aboard the ship. Not currently.”

“What?” I ask, leaning forward, as if by doing so I will actually understand what he is saying.

The door behind me slides open.

The doctor stands to greet the man walking through the door, but I don’t. He’s old, but he walks into the office as if he owns it, despite a slight limp.

“This is Amy.” The doctor sounds out my name as if he’s unsure of its pronunciation, even though it’s only three letters long.

“Obviously,” the man replies. He remains standing, sneering down at me. “Tell me what you know about Godspeed.”

“Is that the name of this ship?”

He nods impatiently. It seems so weird to me, that this ship has a name with “God” in it. This too-neat office that smells of disinfectant and something soured doesn’t remind me of God at all.

“They called it Project Ark Ship before I was frozen. All I know about it is that I’m on it. We’re heading to a planet in the Centauri system that NASA discovered a few years before I was born. It’s a generation ship—you all are supposed to have been born on the ship, keeping it running and all, until we get there and my parents and the rest of the people from the mission can terraform the new planet.”

The man nods. “That’s all you need to know about Godspeed,” he says. “Although you should also know this. I am Eldest.”

Good for you, I think. Congrats on being old.

He takes my silence as a cue to continue. “This ship does not need a captain. Its path was determined long ago, and the ship was designed to operate without need of human interference.” The old man sighs. “But while the ship doesn’t need guidance, the people do. I am the oldest. I am their leader.” The old man picks up a round paperweight from the doctor’s desk. He contemplates it as if he’s holding the world in his hands, and I realize that to him, the world is this ship.

“Okay.”

“As such, everyone follows my rules.”

“Fine.”

“Including you.”

“Whatever.”

Eldest glares. He slams the paperweight back on the doctor’s desk—but not in the same place it had been originally. The doctor’s hands twitch as if he’d like to move it to its proper place, but he restrains himself.

“To that end,” he continues, “I cannot let any disturbance disrupt the lives of the people. And you are a disturbance.”

“Me?”

“You. You don’t look like us, you don’t sound like us, and you are not one of us.”

“I’m not some kind of freak!”

“On this ship you are. First,” he says, before I can protest, “there’s your physical appearance.”

“Huh?”

“We’re monoethnic,” the doctor says, leaning forward. “We all share the same physical features—skin, hair, and eye color. It’s to be expected on a ship where there’s no new blood; our features have genetically merged.”

I glance down at my red hair falling over my shoulders, at my pale, pale skin that always freckles too much. It’s a long-shot difference from the dark olive skin and graying hair that still holds traces of deep brown on the doctor. Eldest’s hair is mostly white, but I can tell it, too, was once dark to match his skin and eyes.

“Not only are you freakishly white with weird hair,” Eldest adds, “you’re also abnormally young.”

“I’m seventeen!”

“Yes,” the doctor says slowly, as if even my age disgusts him. “But, see, we regulate mating.” He’s attempting to speak with a calm, kind voice, but he keeps looking nervously at Eldest.

“Mating?” I say, incredulous. They have rules about sex?

“We have to prevent incest.”

“Oh, ew!”

Eldest ignores me. “And control is more easily maintained with set generations. The younger generation, which applies to most of the people in this Ward, are in their twenties and on the cusp of their Season. Doc’s generation—the older generation—are in their early forties.”

My brain whirls. “You’re telling me that there are two generations on the ship, and everyone is either twenty or forty?”

The old man nods. “There’s some variation; some children are born a little late or early, some families have multiple children. We’re still recouping our population loss from when a great Plague hit several gens ago.”

“A plague?”

“A devastating one,” the doctor jumps in. “It killed over three-quarters of the ship’s population, and we still haven’t recouped our losses.”

I think back to my last year on Earth. Daddy took me to the observatory in Utah to celebrate the completion of Project Ark Ship. They had built the ship primarily in space, using a series of several hundred shuttle launches to take materials and people to the build site in orbit around Earth. It was the largest space project ever attempted by any nation.

But it just looked like a bright round blob in the telescope to me.

“About twenty-five years ago, the International Space Station took over a decade to complete and was around three-hundred-feet long. Now we have a ship that took less than four years to complete and is larger than the entire island of Iwo Jima,” Daddy had said, pride ringing in his voice.

I didn’t like associating a ship I would be on for three centuries with an island known for a bloody battle in a bloody war.

Now, staring up at these two men who have lived their whole lives on this ship, who have in their history a plague that nearly decimated it—now the comparison seems apt.

“But as we were saying,” the doctor continues, “most of the people on board are either in their early twenties or early forties.”

I look up at the old man. “You’re not in your early forties,” I say. The statement comes out much more obnoxious than I’d meant it to. The old man’s eyes bore into me with a look of either speculation or revulsion—I’m not sure which.

“I am fifty-six.” I hold back a snort; the old man looks way older than fifty-six. “I am the Eldest of the ship—the oldest person, and the one with the right to rule. Before each generation, an Elder is born to be that generation’s leader.”

“There’s no one on the ship older than fifty-six?” I ask.

“A few grays still exist, all sixty or so, but they won’t last much longer.”

“Why not?”

“Old people die. It’s what they do.”

This doesn’t seem right to me. I mean, yeah, sixty is way old... but it’s not like people reach a certain age and just die. Lots of people are older than sixty. My great-grandma was ninety-four before she died.

“What about that boy?”

“What boy?” Eldest asks.

“She’s talking about Elder.”

Eldest grunts.

“Amy,” the doctor says, “Elder was born between the generations. He is sixteen years old. When the Season starts and the young generation begin to mate, the children born from that will be the generation that Elder rules after Eldest passes to the stars. The boy you met is the next Eldest.”

“Where’s the other one?” I ask.

“Other what?” The doctor weighs his round paperweight in his hands and carefully puts it back where it was before Eldest picked it up.

“Other Eldey-thingy. There’s you,” I say to Eldest. “You’re in charge of the doctor’s generation. And the boy I met will be in charge of the new generation. But what about all those twenty-year-olds? Who’s in charge of them?”

The doctor and Eldest exchange a look.

“That Elder died,” Eldest says. His face is dark, set. I glance up at the doctor. His face is downcast, the folds of his crow’s feet crinkling deeper.

I wonder just how that Elder died.

“Clearly,” Eldest says, a tone of finality in his voice, “you are different. Freakish appearance, abnormally young.”

“So?”

“I do not like differences. Differences cause trouble.”

The doctor twitches nervously. He starts rearranging his desktop again.

“Gee, I’m real sorry about all that. But, you know, it’s not like I wanted to be here.”

“Regardless. The easiest thing to do would be to deposit you among the stars.”

“Eldest!” The doctor steps forward, a look of shock and concern on his face.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“We have release hatches.” Eldest speaks slowly, as if talking to someone stupid. “They open up to the outside.”

The meaning of his words sinks slowly into my skin until I have absorbed it with all that I am.

“You want to just dump me in space?” My voice is low, but not for long. “It’s not like I’ve done anything wrong! I didn’t wake myself up, you know!”

Eldest shrugs. “It would be by far the simplest solution. You are, after all, nonessential.”

“We can’t do that,” the doctor says, and I totally forgive him for being creepy and threatening me with drugs. At least he doesn’t want to let me implode in space.