Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

We run. And run and run and don’t care where. All of a sudden, here’s that little two-room school that looks like a house. This time I don’t think twice. I break a window and we fall inside, all worn out.

We lie there the rest of the day feeling sad…about Eppie being gone, but glad we’re here together. We don’t even worry about not having anything to eat. When it gets dark, we sleep.

But in the morning, we’re hungry and thirsty. There’s no water here that works. Everything is turned off. No electricity. I find how to turn the water on under the house. I know about that from home, but I don’t know how to turn on the electricity. At least we have something to drink.

I don’t know what to do or where to go or how to get food, and then I think about that lady who said I’d be a good helper.

Mrs. Sindee feeds us and I get hired and I’m going to get paid.

Things do get worse. Everybody wonders where fall got to and if it’ll ever cool off. And there’s earthquakes where they never had them before, even one right here, and then Mrs. Sindee gets flooded out. I help her clean up after the water goes back down. Good thing is, people go on wanting their animals clipped and boarded sometimes, and it finally does cool down. In fact it gets too cold. Mr. O’Brien and I and even Mrs. Sindee…we don’t even care. We wear our long underwear and Mr. O’Brien grows a heavy coat of new fur.

Mr. O’Brien and I live in that old school, and so far nobody has found out. And whenever we find a wounded bird or cat or whatever, we rescue it. And everything we rescue turns out to be the best there is, just like Mr. O’Brien. We’re all making do with less, but we already have seven books.

I wonder if they’ll ever reach Proxima Centauri.

THERE ARE THREE RULES ON GODSPEED . I ONLY KNOW ONE, AND I’ve already broken it.

Rule One: No differences allowed.

And when you’re the youngest person on an interstellar spaceship, you’ve definitely got some differences. I grew up knowing how different I was—when I was a six-year-old boy, the next generation up was ten, and even though they should have obeyed whatever command I gave, none of the ten-year-olds would play with a six-year-old. Or maybe it wasn’t just my age—maybe they wouldn’t play with me because they already knew, even more than I did, that the real reason I am different isn’t just my age, but also my position.

I am the Elder. Not their Elder, of course: I will be Elder for the future generation of children born, and I will rule them. The generation above me follows the next Elder up, and the generation above them follows Eldest. My gen won’t be born until I am sixteen, and that feels forever away even though it’s only three more years before the gen above me has their mating season.

The other Elder came to the Feeder Level this morning to fetch me. This is rare—he and Eldest live on the Keeper Level. Eldest trains him and they deal with all the problems and people on the ship—the scientists, engineers, and researchers on the Shipper Level, the farmers and manufacturers on the Feeder Level. The two of them keep the ship running smoothly, and I am just the awkward kid who will maybe (absolutely must) one day become good enough to join them.

Elder’s grin is lopsided when he walks up to the rabbit farm where I am living now. As a future Eldest, I am never allowed to know who my parents are or to stay with one family longer than another. I am supposed to be using my life now, before I really become an Elder, to find compassion for the people I will one day rule, by living among them, living as one of them, without staying long enough to form attachments to anyone in particular.

“You know what today means, right?” the other Elder asks me after he lifts me up in a hug.

I shake my head.

“You’re coming up to the Keeper Level.”

“Really?” I ask. My voice cracks over the words, but I don’t care.

The other Elder nods. “I will become Eldest. And you’ll be the only Elder.” There is an odd note in his voice; his lips still smile but his eyes are sad.

“I can pack now,” I say. “I can go up to the Keeper Level with you now.”

The other Elder shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says. “You need to get ready for the changing ceremony tonight.”

This is the first I’d heard of it—the rabbit farms are as far away as possible from the City, and besides, the Feeders rarely celebrate anything. I’d been expecting nothing special on my birthday, and the farmers I live with now had shown no excitement.

Not that they show much of any emotion.

That is another difference I have with all the other Feeders: I care about things. I cried at the pig slaughter; I remember the lurch in my stomach when I saw the first calf born on the cattle ranch. But no one else shows emotion…and (I suspect) no one else has emotion. The flicker of sadness on the other Elder’s face had only been noticeable because no one else on the Feeder Level had even that.

The other Elder gives me a present: new clothes, a dark set of trousers and matching tunic with red stitching on the hems. As I change clothes hurriedly, I can hear the start of something big happening outside—a sort of vibrant excitement leaking into the air. When I leave the farm with the other Elder, I can see why: everyone on the whole ship, from the Feeders to the Shippers, is gathering in the garden behind the Hospital.

On a ship somewhere between two inhabitable planets, there’s not much wasted space. The Hospital garden is the only exception. It’s the only place on the ship where flowers grow instead of food, where the paths meander aimlessly rather than going straight between the City and the farms, where there is nothing to do except be . It is one of my favorite places on the whole ship, in part because so few people ever come here.

Not today, though. Today, the garden overflows with nearly two thousand people. They stand in the flower beds, crushing the blooms. They spill out onto the lawn beside the Hospital, all the way to the heavy, metal wall on the side, painted blue and dotted with rivets. Even though the Feeders almost never show any emotion besides calm , today they are chatting, alert, eager; and the Shippers, who’ve descended from the level above this one for the celebration, are practically vibrating with anticipation.

“What’s going on?” I ask the other Elder in a quiet voice. He steers me away from the garden and toward the grav tube, a fairly recent invention on the ship, makes traveling between the levels simpler.

Eldest is waiting for us at the base of the tube. He’s wearing the Eldest Robe—a long, elaborately embroidered robe that holds all the hopes of our society. I have only seen it once before, long ago, when I first started asking questions about why I was shuffled from home to home, why I was at least four years younger than everyone else and no one was born after me, why I was, in short, different , when the very first rule of the ship was not to be.

The Eldest Robe is decorated with the dreams of the whole ship: fertile fields on the hem, open skies at the shoulders. When Godspeed left Sol-Earth, it was bound for a new home in a new world, but in the meantime, Godspeed became our home. Generations later, the ship is still in transit, but even though we are caged behind the curving metal walls, we have not forgotten our dreams for a sky that never ends.

Eldest smiles at me, and his face holds the same sort of sadness as the other Elder’s had. He is truly the oldest man on the entire ship. His age gives him wisdom, and his presence gives us all strength. When he strides toward us, his shoulders are thrown back, and he carries the weight of the robe as if it is nothing, even though I feel certain that it would suffocate and crush me.