Across the Universe Read Online Free PDF Page A

showing me.
    It’s a floor plan of the Shipper Level—I recognize the main central hallway branching into the large rooms used for science and industry, manufacturing and research. Brightly glowing dots are scattered across the map, blinking and moving around.
    “You know what this is?” Eldest asks, taking the floppy back.
    “The wi-com locator map.” The wireless communication devices implanted behind our left ears not only allow us to com with each other and the ship, but also serve as locators.
    I lean over the table to better see the wi-com map. Eldest’s long white hair brushes my face before he sweeps it behind his ear, and I can smell a whiff of soap and something stronger that bites at my nose.
    “See all these dots? Each one is a Shipper. Each one has a very specific job: to ensure that the ship runs smoothly. The top Shippers are here.” Eldest points to the energy room, then traces his finger beyond that, into the engine room I’ve never been in, then farther, into a room past that. “The command center is here. Although the ship runs by itself, if anything goes wrong—”
    “You’ll steer the ship?” I ask, awed. I imagine Eldest as the brave commander, almost like the captain of one of those ancient Sol-Earth ships that sailed across water, not the uni. Then I imagine me taking the wheel.
    Eldest laughs. “Me? No. That’s ridiculous. Elders are not trained to run ships; the Eldest’s job is not to command the ship. An Eldest’s job is to command the people. These Shippers”—he gestures at the blinking dots—“all receive training in specific roles of operating the ship in the event of an emergency.” He glances up. His eyes are milky with age, but he can still see right through me. “You understand, don’t you? The Shippers run the ship—not us.”
    The image of everyone cheering me as I sail the ship to Centauri-Earth fades and dies.
    “The Shippers are here to take care of the ship, but the ship is just cold metal. You’re the one who has to take care of the people.”
    He taps the zoom-out box, and for a moment, the three levels of the ship all light up at once, a dizzying maze of crisscrossing lines. The interior of the ship itself is mostly round. A tiny sliver on top is the Keeper Level. Below that, slightly larger, is the Shipper Level, all chopped up into offices and labs. By and far the largest part of the ship is the Feeder Level. There are two blinking dots for me and Eldest on the Keeper Level, fifty or more on the Shipper Level. Eldest taps on the Feeder Level. On the right side of the circle there are several dozen dots for the people at the Hospital, but none at all in the Recorder Hall. In the middle, dozens of dots are scattered around, each one representing the people living at the various farms. Eldest taps the left side of the screen, where the City is. There are so many dots there that it would be impossible for me to count. Not that I need to. I know everyone on board the ship, all 2,312 of them.
    Each one of those 2,312 blinking red dots feels like a pounding weight on my shoulders, each one crushing me down just a little bit more. They’re all, each one of them, my responsibility.
    Eldest pulls the Shipper Level up again and rests his fingers on the level’s largest room, just where the engine is. “Between the engine and computers and the nav system and everything else, there’s a lot that can go wrong. This journey... it’s long.” He says this as if he’s felt all 250 years of travel. “The builders of the ship knew this; that’s why they named her Godspeed .”
    I mouth the name with him, tasting it like metal on my tongue.
    “It’s an old Sol-Earth expression for good luck.” Eldest snorts. “They shot our ancestors into the sky, wished them all good luck, and forgot about us. We lost com with Sol-Earth during the Plague, and have never been able to regain it. We can’t go back. They can’t help us. All the people on Sol-Earth could give us