Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

“No kidding.”

He spares me a knowing smile, then commands the tube to take him to the Keeper Level. It sucks him up, and he’s gone before I can blink. I step up onto the base as well. For a moment, I turn and look out at the Feeder Level. This is the largest level of the whole ship, with acres and acres of farmland, all wrapped in steel and soaring through space. This is what we need to survive—farms and produce and even livestock.

This is my kingdom.

Or, it will be. And even though I’ve grown up knowing that I was in line to rule, I never quite realized that it meant…all of this.

I command the tube to take me up, too. The grav tube manipulates the simulated gravity on the ship, enabling my body to rush upward much faster than the elevator in the hospital. I strain to keep my eyes open, focused on the green and brown of the Feeder Level, but soon I’m sucked all the way up to the Keeper Level.

I’d been there before, but not like this. Not when I was the only Elder.

Eldest waits on me. The tube ends in a small room with a wooden table—a real wooden table, an antique relic from Sol-Earth, where they had trees—and blue plastic chairs and an ancient-looking globe. Eldest slips the robe from his shoulders and breathes a sigh of relief. The robe drops and crumples, just like the old Eldest did.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I wanted to warn you—but Eldest said it would be better to say nothing…to let you experience it blind, so to speak.”

He sees my eyes staring at the robe, remembering who else wore it. He bends down and carefully picks it up, smoothing out the wrinkles and folding it until it no longer holds the shadow of a dead man inside. He lays the robe on the table.

“This is the Learning Center. We’ll begin proper lessons here.”

“I’ve had lessons.”

“You’ve had some.”

Eldest opens the door to the Learning Center, and I see a giant room with a curved ceiling. “This is the great room,” Eldest says simply, and he turns to a nearby door. “This is my chamber now,” he says. “And this is yours.” He nods for me to open the door, so I roll my thumb over the biometric scanner and watch as it zips open.

The room has been neatly made up, and there are two bags sitting in the center of the bed. My belongings—clothes, a few mementos. I’m ashamed to note that the old blanket, the one I’ve had since I was a baby, is draped over the second bag. I don’t want Eldest to think I’m a baby.

Eldest moves forward, so I go all the way inside the room. He steps around me and sits down on the bed, picking up the blanket and fiddling with it. I wish he wouldn’t. I wish he’d pretend it’s not there, that mangy, holey scrap of cloth.

“When Godspeed left Sol-Earth,” Eldest says, twisting the fabric between his fingers, “we had a clear mission. Our ancestors were to run the ship and, while it traveled, develop new, better ways to colonize the planet when it eventually lands on Centauri-Earth. Originally, the Feeder Level was designed for biological and agricultural research. The Shipper Level was for other scientific research. This, the Keeper Level, was used for navigation and offices for the captain of the ship.”

We have no captain now. Instead, we have Eldest.

“Of course, Godspeed is essentially a biodome. We are a self-sustaining environment, able to produce the necessities of life in a constant cycle. But our original mission was not just to find the new planet in the Centauri star system: it was to take the methods of Sol-Earth—the science and philosophy and everything else—and make it better. Our ancestors were creating a perfect world, an enclosed world, where we could become the perfect people. We separated ourselves from Sol-Earth and Sol-Earth’s problems, and we became a society worthy of the new planet.”

He puts the blanket down on the bed.

“There are three rules on Godspeed ,” he says, meeting my eyes.

“I only know two of them.”

“Tell me.”

I don’t know why—does he want me to remember the second rule now, the way Eldest told it to me before he died?

“Rule one: No differences. Rule two: Without a leader, the ship will fail.”

“Rule three,” Eldest says. “No one is allowed individual thought.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “What?” I say.

“Haven’t you noticed? The Feeders. How empty, emotionless they are? We have ways to control them.”

Something inside of me lurches, a sick feeling not in my stomach, but deeper, a feeling that makes me want to expel myself from myself. “They’re controlled?”

“They have to be. Elder, you know the size of this ship. You know the importance for control.”

I think back to the “celebration” and remember the way the Shippers seemed to know what the old Eldest was about to do before he did it. “What about the Shippers?”

“We need labor to feed us, and we need minds to keep us moving forward. The Feeders have what they need: strength and obedience. The Shippers have what they need: intelligence.”

The way he says “need” strikes a chord deep within me. “Genetic modification?”

Eldest nods. “Among other things. Whatever it takes to maintain control.”

“You…” I taste bile in the back of my throat. “You’re a monster!”

Eldest smiles sadly and stands up from the bed. On the dresser beside it is a digital membrane screen. With a swipe of his finger, the screen comes to life. Eldest taps on it quickly, scans his thumbprint for access, and taps again.

“This was the ship before the first Eldest,” he says, handing the screen to me. While I look down at it, Eldest walks out of the bedroom, and the door zips closed behind him.

“Locked,” the computer by the door chirps.

I drop the screen on the bed and roll my thumb over the biometric scanner. “Access denied,” the computer chirps.

Shite. Eldest has locked me in here with my thoughts and whatever is flashing on the screen.

I hit the door once, hard; hard enough to make my hand hurt. I pick the screen back up with my other hand.

These are vid feeds from across the ship. The people here are all different—different ages, different sizes, different skin and hair colors. There’s no sound, just visual, but I can tell that there’s vibrancy in their lives, something beautiful and strange that I’ve…I’ve never seen before.

But it’s also terrible.

Because they’re all fighting.

It is worse because there is no sound. The vids switch from camera to camera, flashing different scenes. I recognize some things—the Hospital is the same, but there is no garden, no statue. Instead, there are people—wounded, brutalized, bleeding, broken people. The City has all the same buildings in the vids as there is now, but they are cluttered and filled to the breaking point. Some are on fire—and I think about the new buildings in the weaving district, and how this is the reason why they are new.

And over and through it all: fighting.

Groups form. I recognize some of the same people—I start to seek them out in the vids, watch the way they fight, see who they are fighting with. This is a battle.

A battle for the ship.

Eldest made it seem like the mission of the ship was to separate ourselves from the past—but it seems to me as if the past followed us here.

There are two people who show up over and over again. One is a woman—a tall, dark, wild-haired woman who always wears red. The people who follow her also mark themselves with red—scarves on their arms, bandannas around their heads, even just threads woven into the fabric on the hems.

I look down at the clothes Eldest gave me today. Black—with red stitching at the hem.