Across the Universe

19 AMY

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE ROOM I HAVE BEEN GIVEN BY THE doctor is an odd mixture of personal and industrial. The colors are bland — gray and white — but someone has stenciled in a peeling green ivy chain around the doorframe and hand painted a vine of flowers along the baseboards. The attached bathroom is cold and decorated with plain white tile and chrome, but the towels smell of lemons and lavender.

The best way to clear my head of all these disturbing thoughts is to take the hottest shower I can stand. I peel off the clothes the doctor gave me earlier. They are shades of brown, a pale taupe tunic and chocolate pants. I think they are homemade. Although the stitches are even and clean, they’re not machine made. The cloth is smooth and not itchy, but there are tiny pricks and flaws in the fabric that imply craftsmanship, not manufacturing. It’s so weird. I kind of expected space suits and shiny material. The weekend before we were frozen, Mom and Daddy and I stayed up all night watching ancient sci-fi movies—Star Trek and Star Wars and Star-something else. I envisioned everyone wearing uniforms or with crazy hair or something, but I’m wearing stuff that could have been made for a Renaissance fair.

It takes me a moment to figure out the shower. There are buttons, not knobs, and more steam than water pours from small mesh squares embedded in the walls of the shower stall. Two bars of soap line a tiny shelf near the top of the shower. There are no shampoo or conditioner bottles, but the round bar of soap lathers in my hair when I test it.

I mash buttons, trying to figure out how to get real water — the steam’s not rinsing the suds from my hair. Suddenly, I hit the right one, and a jet of cold water shoots out of a nozzle near my face. I sputter, and for one horrible moment, the shower reminds me of when Ed and Hassan filled the glass box with cryo liquid before I was frozen. I have to remind myself I’m not drowning, I don’t have to breathe in the liquid, I won’t be frozen again. It happened centuries ago, but the memory is still fresh to me. My knees wobble. I have to lean against the warm tile for several minutes, breathing deeply, before I can stand on my own again.

When I leave the shower, I stand in the room, a towel wrapped around my body, my hair dripping. It feels very quiet and alone. I think back to the boy who was here when I woke up, Elder, and I’m surprised to realize that I actually miss him. Now that he’s gone, this room makes me feel like a trespasser.

I wrap the towel tighter around me. Nothing here is personal, other than the ivy decorating the baseboards in chipping green paint. No books, no TV. There is a desk, and on it is a floppy piece of plastic about the size and thickness of a legal-size sheet of paper. When I was on the yearbook staff in high school, I took the drama club picture. They all posed with these things called color gels — really thin pieces of plastic they could attach to the stage lights to change the color. This piece of plastic on the desk is just like the color gels, but clear, and when I touch it, a screen flashes on, requesting my ID. This is a computer?

On the opposite wall is a shelf and, to the right of it, the door. Beside the door, where a light switch should be, is a small metal square inset with a bar. I push it. Nothing happens, but the bar spins in place.

“Identity unknown.” A tinny female voice emanates throughout the room. “Voice command.”

“Umm,” I say.

“Command unknown,” the computer voice says. “Prompt command: lights, door.”

“Lights off?” I try.

The lights in the room flick off.

I roll my finger over the bar again. “Identity unknown. Voice command.”

“Lights on,” I say, and the lights turn back on.

Beside the rolly-bar that controls the lights are two rectangles of metal built into the wall, one about the size of a Post-it note, the other larger, roughly the same size and shape of an envelope. As I get closer, I notice a small button under each rectangle. I push the button under the small rectangle, and the metal disappears, showing a cavity just large enough for me to fit two fingers into it. It’s empty. When I push the button under the larger rectangle, though, the door doesn’t slide open. I push again, harder. A small beep! echoes through my silent room. I have just enough time to panic — have I done something stupid? Have I set off an alarm? — when the door zips open.

Behind the door is another cavity, just like the smaller one. But it’s not empty. Inside is a fat, steaming roll of bread that oozes a bit at the side. It reminds me of a Hot Pocket, but no Hot Pocket ever smelled this good. I reach inside, my mouth already watering. The bottom of the cavity peels away under my touch — a napkin. The pastry is warm, and I can’t resist — I eat three or four bites of it before I really taste it.

But once I do taste it, it becomes hard to swallow. It’s a meat pie, filled with gravy and some vegetables I can recognize. But the round green things that look like peas are larger and chewier than any peas I’ve ever had. And the chunks I took for potatoes aren’t potatoes at all. They’re something like tofu, but thicker, and when I suck the gravy off a chunk, it feels like rubber on my tongue and tastes about as appealing. There is very little spice in this meat pie — definitely salt, and something sort of sweet, like cinnamon, but no pepper, nothing with kick.

And the meat… it’s not any meat I know. Red meat, but no fat on it at all. Each piece is a perfect cube, and I can’t help but wonder — is it that way because of some skillful cook who cut it, or is it that way because it’s not really meat? I imagine ice trays filled not with water, but red gooey meat-like substitute, and I gag and drop the remains of the pie into the small canister by the door that looks like a trash can. As soon as it lands in the trashcan, the bottom of it zips away, revealing a long, black tunnel that sucks the meat pie and napkin away.

Nothing remains but a waft of steam from the rectangle metal by the door and a scent of unseasoned gravy in the air that is both strangely familiar and deeply alien.

I shake my head. This technology is better than anything on Earth. Another sign that I don’t belong here.

I wish I had someone to share all these discoveries with. My eyes drift to the chair, and I can almost see Elder sitting there. Elder, with his kind eyes. The only person on this ship who doesn’t seem to wish I was off it.

I think about my parents. They are on this ship too, but they are still fifty years away.

I screw up my eyes and will myself not to think anymore.

And then I think about how I was unplugged, and how they might be too.

I shiver, and I tell myself that it’s just because it’s chilly in here. A wardrobe stands against the far wall, beside the large piece of metal hanging from the wall that I think covers a window — light creeps in around its edges. The clothes inside smell musty, but when I shake some of them out, they seem to be clean and in good shape. I cannot find a bra in any of the drawers, but one drawer is filled with cotton panties. I am a little grossed out, putting on panties when I don’t know where they came from, or if they once belonged to someone else, but they don’t look old or used. I let the towel drop to the floor and wiggle into a tan tunic and dark pair of pants, both of which have been decorated at the hems with tiny painted yellow flowers. When I drop the towel inside the hamper by the wardrobe, the lid snaps shut. A puff of steam emerges from under the lid, and then the hamper pops open. The towel inside is dry and clean.

There is too much about this ship I don’t know. That will be what I do first: find others, learn about the ship, and figure out what to do to protect my parents from whoever unplugged me. Because even though I want them more than anything right now, I don’t want them to wake up cold, alone, and drowning under glass.

A crack of light lines the carpet under the square piece of metal hanging on the wall beside the wardrobe. When I touch the thin raised metal, it whirrs away, revealing a smudged, dirty window looking out onto bright green fields.

So this is where I will spend the next 49 years and 266 days.

It’s not ugly. It’s not what I expected. There is green here. Rolling hills spread out from the lawn of the Hospital down a dusty dirt road. The pastures and fields are divided by dark green hedges or brown fence posts. The cows are the closest, and I assume the white fluffy dots further down are sheep or goats. Neat rows of vibrant verdant plants spread out like a crazy quilt. And there, on the edge, is something that looks like oversize stacked LEGOs — train cargo cars or the trailers on big rig trucks stacked upon each other in rows, each painted a different bright color. The jumbled stack of colors reminds me vaguely of Walt Disney World. When I was little and lived in Florida, my parents took me there every summer. It seemed massive then, giant, like a whole country in a theme park, but I realize with a shock that Cinderella’s castle would fit in this metal bubble, and that this level is easily fifty times bigger than the whole Magic Kingdom.

I try to count the trailers, but can’t. Just how many people live on this ship? There’s room there for at least a couple thousand.

I wonder if Elder lives in one of the colored boxes.

My eyes drift toward the horizon.

There is no skyline. Because there is no sky. Cool gray metal rises over the brightly painted boxes. The metal curves over the city, arching over everything. Near the top, a sickly shade of blue replaces the gray. I suppose they were trying to make it look like a sky, but they didn’t do a good job of it.

Smack in the middle is a bright yellow-orange ball of light. It doesn’t hurt to look at it like it hurts to look at the sun, but it’s still painful. Maybe if I’d never seen the sun, I would be impressed by this glowing source of light and heat made by man. But I have seen the sun, and it is not this tiny false thing, it is so much grander than that. I stare at it until my eyes prick with water, and when I blink away, I keep my eyes shut longer than I need to.

Images of broken light dance behind my eyelids. How could this giant lamp compare to the sun?

Everything is wrong here. Shattered. Broken.

Like the light.

Like me.

I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn’t have one.

I am surrounded by walls.

I have just replaced one box for another.