Beth Revis - Across the Universe

“Ain’t sick!” the old man roars, but immediately after he speaks, a glazed expression falls over his eyes. His breathing calms, and he sags under the weight of his own clothing. When Doc moves his hand, I see why: Doc has slipped him a med patch. The lavender square of sticky cloth on the old man’s arm is already calming him into submission.

Doc shoots me a triumphant grin as he helps the man settle into a wheelchair and then sends him and the nurse to the elevator. I swallow, hard. Doc is a good man, but his answer to everything is always medicine. He doesn’t like emotion, any emotion. He prefers things quiet, controlled.

That’s why he’s so frexing close to Eldest. They think alike.

“So, what are you doing here?” Doc says once the old man is safely ensconced in the elevator and on his way to treatment.

I scuff my shoes on the smooth tiled floor. There’s no way I’m going to tell him that I’m off to explore a secret elevator on the fourth floor. I’m not even sure if I believe Orion enough to try it.

“Just thought I’d see Harley,” I say finally.

Doc frowns. “If you find him, send him straight to me. It’s long past med time.” He glances at the clock over the nurse’s desk. “For that matter, have you taken yours?”

I flush. I’m not proud of the year I lived here. On the third floor, the Ward. Where the mental patients are. I think living with the Feeders cracked me. It was fine when I was little, but the older I got, the more I felt like I was different from the rest of them. I couldn’t make myself care about crops or cows the way they did.

(I remember, when Doc first made me start taking mental meds, I asked: Should I still be Elder? I was on mental meds, after all! I spent a year at the Ward! I was all ready to step down. But Doc and Eldest wouldn’t let me.)

“I took them this morning,” I mutter, my face hot. I hope the nurse at the desk hasn’t heard. What would she think of a future leader who’s on mental meds?

Doc scrutinizes me. “Is there anything wrong?” he asks.

Eldest lied to me about the stars, and there might be a secret level on the ship, and Orion looks more like me than I’d ever care to admit, but no, nothing’s wrong, because if Doc thinks anything is wrong, he’ll just give me more meds. I shake my head.

Doc doesn’t look convinced. “I know it’s hard on you. You’re different.”

“I’m not that different.”

“’Course you are. You know you are.”

I shrug. The elevator, now empty, returns to the lobby. I want to escape to it, and Doc, mercifully, lets me go.

Inside the elevator, my hand hovers over the round number four, then slides down to three. If Harley’s off his meds, maybe I should check in on him before searching for the mysterious second elevator.

My spirits lift with the elevator. Despite Doc, one of my favorite places to be is the Ward. All my friends are here. The elevator bobs to a halt, and the doors slide open to the third-floor common room. I grin so hard it hurts. The Ward feels more like home than any other place on the ship, even if it’s filled with crazy people.

Paint splatters onto my sleeve; I look up and see that Harley is attacking a canvas, letting his brush flick off the side of it. There’s a ring of splattered red and blue paint all around where he’s sitting.

“Hey Harley,” I say. “Doc’s looking for you.”

“Haven’t got time for him”-he spares a glance up at me-“49 and 267,” he says before turning back to the canvas and attacking it with his paintbrush again. I grin wryly. You can count on Harley to know exactly when the ship’s going to land. Most people-I mean, most people in the Ward-keep track of the time until the ship lands, but I bet if I asked, Harley would know not only the years (49) and days (267) before we land, but also the minutes and seconds.

I dodge the flying paint and peer around to see what he’s painting. A koi fish floats in a sea of bright blue, but the light from the fish’s scales and the sparkles on the water’s surface intermingle, as if the fish is a part of the water and the water is a part of the fish. Harley’s used these amazing colors-colors that no one else would think of. The fish’s eyes are bright, bright green, almost yellow, like jade swirled with gold. The scales are shiny and bright, too, but they’re all edged in blood red that looks like it should clash with the lighter colors, but it doesn’t. The red makes it seem more real, somehow, as if the water could spill from the canvas and the fish could swim past our feet.

“I like this,” I tell Harley after a long moment. “I mean it; this is frexing good.”

Harley grunts. He’s in his painting mood, and there’s not really much point in talking to him. Doc will have a hard time giving him his meds, even when he inevitably finds him.

All around me, a subtle form of chaos flowers. This whole room is filled with creativity and art. It’s actually a pretty brilly place to be. Except now, when everyone’s all busy with their own stuff. I’m starting to feel like I’m a bit of a chutz just standing here while everyone’s so intent on their own work.

“See you,” I say, but Harley doesn’t notice.

A pang of guilt bites at my stomach as I reenter the elevator and head to the fourth floor. Eldest wanted me to research the third cause of discord, and I’m definitely not doing that.

But lies are a cause of discord, too , I think sullenly as the elevator opens.

The fourth floor is silent. I go past the doors on the left and right, straight to the end of the hall. I put my hand on the doorknob. It’ll be locked. All the doors on the fourth floor are locked. I’ve been here before, tried them all before.

But the knob twists under my hand, just like Orion said it would, to reveal a small room that contains a desk, a metal box, and, against the far wall-

Another elevator.

Above the call button is a biometric scanner. I half expect to be blocked. Eldest has banned me from his chambers and the engine room on the Shipper Level. Even though I have total access to the rest of the ship, I can’t help but think that if he knew, Eldest would ban me from here, too. When I roll my thumb over the scanner, however, the doors slide open immediately.

There are five buttons inside-one for each floor, and another one labeled “C.” C? What does C stand for? I think back to the diagram Orion showed me. There was a section marked “Contingency,” but this elevator doesn’t go there; it goes to the area marked “Storage-Important.” I put my finger on the C button, but I don’t push it in, just feel the curve of the letter. How could there have been a whole other elevator, a whole other level of the ship?

I lean forward, letting my whole body weight push the button. The doors slide shut.

The little light over the doors blinks with every floor. Three. Two. One.

The light blinks out. I descend past the first floor. I start to count the seconds. I stare at the buttons by the door, but the “C” doesn’t light up yet. The elevator keeps sinking. It’s taken twice as long as it normally does to go from floor to floor in the Hospital… three times as long. A full minute passes. How big is Godspeed , really?

With a slight bump, the elevator stops.

The doors slide open.

I take a deep breath and step out onto a level of the ship that isn’t supposed to exist.

It’s dark. “Lights,” I say, pushing my wi-com, but nothing happens.

The elevator door swishes closed, taking the dim glow of the elevator with it. I put my hand to the nearest wall so that I don’t get too lost, and my finger brushes against a stubby piece of plastic.

A flickering fluorescent bulb switches on, then another, then another, like dominoes of light from the ceiling. Huh. A light switch. I’ve only seen them in floppies and vids of tech from Sol-Earth. The ship was rewired for wi-com control long before the Plague.