Across the Universe

17 AMY

THE MAN IN FRONT OF ME HAS LONG FINGERS. HE WEAVES them in and out of one another, then rests his head upon them while he stares at me as if I am a puzzle he cannot solve. He seemed polite, almost sympathetic, when he’d fetched me from my room, but now I wish he’d left his office door open.

“I’m sorry you’re in this situation.” Although he sounds sincere, he just looks curious.

Even though that boy had explained everything to me, I still feel the need to have this “doctor” confirm it.

“We’re really fifty years from landing?” My voice is cold and hard, like the ice I am beginning to wish I was still encased in.

“About 49 years and 250 days, yes.”

It’s 266 days, I think, remembering what the boy said. “I can’t be refrozen?”

“No,” the doctor says simply. When all I do is sit there, staring at him, he adds, “We do actually have a few more cryo chambers—”

“Put me in one of them!” I say, leaning forward. I will face a century of nightmares if I can wake up with my parents.

“If you had been reanimated correctly, that might have been an option, and even then, it would have been dangerous. Cells are not meant to be frozen and refrozen. The body deteriorates with multiple reanimations.” The doctor shakes his head. “Refreezing might kill you.” He struggles to find a way to describe it to me. “You will become like freezer-burned meat. Dried out. Dead,” he adds when that gross image does not deter my eagerness.

For a moment, I’m crestfallen. Then I remember. “What about my parents?”

“What about them?”

“Are they going to be unfrozen early, too?”

“Ah.” He unwraps his fingers and straightens the objects on his desk, making the notepad parallel to the desk edge, the pens in the cup all lean to one side. He’s wasting time, avoiding eye contact. “You weren’t meant to be unfrozen. What you must understand is that your parents, Numbers 41 and 40, are essential. They both have highly specialized skills that will be needed when we land. We will require their knowledge and aid at Centauri-Earth’s developmental stages.”

“So, basically, no.” I want to hear him say it.

“No.”

I shut my eyes and breathe. I am so angry — so frustrated — just so pissed off that this has happened and that I can’t do anything at all about it. I can feel the hot, itchy tears in my eyes, but I do not want to cry, not now in front of the doctor, not ever again.

The doctor pushes the bottom right corner of his big notepad so that it is perfectly square to the edge of the desk. His long, twitchy fingers pause. There is nothing out of place on his desk. There is nothing out of place in his whole office. Except me.

“It’s not so bad here,” the doctor says. I look up. There’s a blurry film fogging my vision, and I know if I’m not careful, I’ll cry. I let him continue. “In a very real way, it’s better that you are here now, instead of there later. Who knows what Centauri-Earth will be like? It may not even be habitable, despite the probes sent before Godspeed left Sol-Earth. It’s not an option we like to consider, but it’s possible….” His voice trails off as his eyes meet mine.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What am I supposed to do now?” I say, my voice rising. “Are you just saying I’ve got to sit around? Waiting until the ship lands before I can see my parents again?” I pause. “God, I’ll be so old by then. I’ll be older than them! That’s not right!” I pound my fist on the desk. His pencils rattle in their neat little cup, and one of them does not settle back in line with the others. He reaches up to place it neatly against its fellows. With a roar of frustration, I grab the cup and hurl it at the doctor, who dodges just in time. The pencils fly like freed birds, then clatter to the floor like dead ones.

“No one cares about your stupid pencils!” I shout as the doctor jumps to pick up the fallen pencils. “No one cares! Why can’t you see that?”

He freezes, gripping his pencils, his back curved away from me. “I know this is difficult for you….”

“Difficult? Difficult? You don’t know what it’s been like! You have no idea how long I’ve suffered — only for it to amount to nothing! NOTHING!”

The doctor throws the pencils into the cup so violently that two pop back out again. He does not replace them, but lets them sit, disorderly and random, on the desk. “There is no need to react violently,” he says in a calm, even tone. “Life will not be so bad for you on the ship. The key,” he adds, “is to find a way to occupy your time.”

I clench my fists, willing myself not to kick his desk, not to throw the chair I am sitting in at him, not to pull down the walls that surround me. “In fifty years I’m going to be older than my parents, and you’re telling me to find a way to occupy my freaking time?!”

“A hobby, perhaps?”

“GAH!” I screech. I lunge for his desk, about to sweep everything on it onto the floor. The doctor stands, too, but instead of trying to stop me, he reaches for the cabinet behind him. There is something so calmly disturbing about this action that I pause as he pulls open a drawer and, after rummaging around for a bit, withdraws a small, square, white package, similar to the hand wipes I used to get from the Chinese restaurant Jason took me to on our first date.

“This is a med patch,” the doctor says. “Tiny needles glued to the adhesive will administer calming drugs directly into your system. I do not want to spend the next fifty years medicating you just so you stay calm.” He sets the white package in the center of his desk, then looks me square in the eyes. “But I will.”

The med patch lies there, a line in the sand that I do not want to cross. I sit back down.

“Now, do you have any hobbies or skills that you could put to use on the ship?”

Hobbies? Hobbies are something ninety-year-old men have as they piddle around the garage.

“I liked history in school,” I finally say, although I feel like a dork for thinking of school before anything else.

“We don’t have school here.” Before I can contemplate life without school, the doctor continues. “Not now. And besides, at this point, the life you lived is, well…”

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.

“No, Doc,” Eldest says. “It’s very important that you understand, that she understands that yes, we could just dump her in space. We could,” he repeats, gazing at me.

“But we won’t,” the doctor says firmly. “She can stay here in the Ward. That will keep her away from the general population. She won’t cause as much of a disturbance if she stays here.”

“You think so?” Eldest says, his voice soft but doubtful.

“I’m sure of it. Besides, the Season will begin soon. That will distract the others.”

Eldest narrows his eyes at the doctor. Something the doctor said there has struck the wrong chord with him, that much’s for sure. He opens his mouth, notices me watching him avidly, and glares at me. “Come outside with me, Doc,” Eldest commands.

The doctor looks nervous. Guilty.

“Oh, don’t go on my account,” I say, leaning back in the chair. “Go ahead and say whatever it is you want to say in front of me.”

Eldest turns to the door. “Doc,” he orders.

The doctor scampers up and follows Eldest out.

As soon as the door zips shut behind them, I leap from my chair and press my ear against the metal. Nothing. I go back to the doctor’s desk, dump out his pencils, and put the cup against the door, like they do in those old Disney movies. More nothing.

“—last time!” Eldest roars so loudly that I almost drop the cup. I cram my ear against the metal door, straining for sound.

“It’s not like last time,” the doctor hisses. He must be standing closer to the door — his voice is softer, but I can hear him better. I wonder if he’s moved closer just for my benefit.

Eldest, meanwhile, has lowered his voice, and I only catch snatches of what he says. “Really? — The Season starting… someone unplugged — again — and you…”

“You know it can’t be him again,” the doctor says. There’s some mumbling, a deep rumble of a voice, but I can’t discern it. I catch one word: “Impossible.”

“Whabout you?” Their strange accent isn’t helping my eavesdropping, either.

“Me?” the doctor says.

“You.” I catch the sneer in Eldest’s voice, even through the metal door. “You were sympathetic to him last time, don’t try to deny it.”

“—posterous,” the doctor mumbles, “… could as easily say it was you.”

Another low grumbling. It sounds almost like Eldest is actually growling.

“Well?” the doctor exclaims. “Elder told me you were teaching him about discord. How am I to know this isn’t all some sick trial you’ve devised to test the boy!” Something, something—stupid door makes it impossible to hear properly—“like last time.”

Eldest’s voice deepens and grows gravelly. There’s some sort of scuffling, and before I have time to move, the door zips open. The doctor bumps right into me, and I do drop the cup this time. It rolls across the floor, the only sound as the three of us stare at one another.

Eldest’s face is hard, harsh. “I’ll be keeping a close eye on this… situation,” he says, but he’s looking at Doc, not me. He straightens his tunic-like shirt and turns to leave. Then he pauses and looks back at me. “Don’t leave the Hospital grounds. I haven’t decided what to do with you yet.”

“I’m not some sort of prisoner!” I shout at him.

“On this ship, we all are,” he says, and then he’s gone.

“Don’t worry about him,” the doctor says, reaching over to pat my shoulder. I shrug him away. “He won’t put you in a release hatch.”

“Humph.” I didn’t quite believe that.

“I have set you up in a room with all the appropriate necessities. You will be living here, at least for now. Do you have any questions?”

Is he really going to pretend like nothing happened? Like I couldn’t hear what they were arguing about? All right, I didn’t hear most of it, but I heard enough.

“What happened last time?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” the doctor says, sitting down at his desk. He waves graciously at the chair across from him, and I slump down in it.

I give him a look, but he ignores it. “Come on. Really?”

The doctor starts straightening the pencils I dumped on his desk. He’s seriously OCD. But… I wonder how much of him is real. He’s as expressionless with me as he is with Eldest. I doubt he likes me — but he did stand up for me when Eldest threatened to throw me out the hatch. As for how the doctor feels about Eldest… I thought he respected him, maybe even feared him, but he seemed to move closer to the door when I was trying to listen in on his conversation with Eldest. Did he do that on purpose? Now — is he trying to get me to ask the right questions? Or am I just playing mind games with myself?

“Last Season,” the doctor says, “we had some trouble. But it has nothing to do with this.”

“It might. How do you know?”

“Because the person who caused trouble last Season is dead,” the doctor says. “Anything else?”

He’s getting angry, maybe already regretting that he promised not to throw me off the ship. He likes things organized, and I’ve already proven more than once just in this little office that he can’t organize me like he can his pencils.

“Yeah,” I say, unable to keep the aggression from my voice. “Why was I woken up early? What happened?”

The doctor frowns. “I’m not sure,” he says finally. “But it appears as if someone… disconnected you.”

“Disconnected me?”

“The cryostasis chambers are attached to a very simple electrical device that monitors temperatures and life support systems. You were simply… disconnected from the power unit. Turned off. Unplugged.”

“Who unplugged me?!” I demand, rising. The doctor’s hand twitches, inching closer to the med patch on his desk. I sit back down, but my heart is racing, my breathing shallow. Between that conversation in the hall and this revelation, it’s clear that something’s going on. And I’m stuck in the middle of it.

“We are not sure. But we will find out.” Then, so low I almost don’t hear it, he adds, “But it had to have been someone with access.” His eyes shoot to the door behind me, and I know he’s thinking of Eldest. Which is stupid: Eldest didn’t want me dead until I was unfrozen. But… why would anyone unplug me? To kill me? But why me? I am, as the doctor so kindly pointed out, nonessential.

And then another question, one much more important, rises above everything else. “What about my parents? Is whoever unplugged me going to unplug my parents?” I remember choking on cryo liquid; I remember believing that I would drown in that box. I don’t want my parents to feel the same thing. I don’t want to run the risk of losing them forever if their boxes are opened too late after the ice melts.

“Go back to your chamber to rest. Try not to think these disturbing thoughts. You can rest assured that your parents — and all the rest of the frozens — are protected. Eldest will see to that.”

I narrow my eyes. I doubt very much that old man will do anything to help anyone else. He’d probably think setting guards around the cryo chambers would be too much of a “disturbance.” And with his callousness, I wouldn’t be too surprised to find out that he unplugged me just to see if it would kill me.

But I cannot think here. I cannot figure out what to do. Even though I don’t want to rest, I do need to be somewhere alone with my thoughts. So, I leave.

A pile of crushed flowers rests beside my door. I bend and pick them up. The blooms remind me of tiger lilies, but they are bigger and brighter than any tiger lilies I remember from Earth. Even though they’re ruined, a part of me wants to set them in a bowl of water — they’re beautiful and their fragrance is sweet. In the end, though, I stand up and leave the broken flowers in the hall. They remind me too much of me.