Across the Universe by Beth Revis Read Free Book Online Page A

reallocated some of the rooms, and reserved the Keeper Level for the Eldest and Elder, but that’s all. Or at least I thought that was all. That hidden star screen must have been hidden for a reason . . . .
    Orion leans in closer. “See, that’s what interested me, too. Look.” He reaches up and taps the “After Plague” option. A diagram brightens the screen: a cross section of the ship, a big circle divided into levels. There’s nothing unusual there. The top floor is marked “Keeper Level.” It’s simple and vague—there’s just an outline of the rooms that Eldest and I occupy. Underneath that, the Shipper Level is more complicated, with space set aside for the engine room and the command center, as well as all the research labs used by the scientists. What is now the Feeder Level takes up more than two-thirds of the chart. The diagram is old; it shows the buildings that were a part of the ship’s original design, including the Hospital and the Recorder Hall, where we are now. But it doesn’t show the new additions made since launch—the grav tubes, developed two gens before Eldest, aren’t on the diagram. Instead, there’s a set of stairs connecting the Feeder Level to the Shipper Level, which were torn down when the grav tubes were made.
    My eyes drift down. “Was this what you were talking about?” I ask, pointing to the unlabeled part of the diagram under the Feeder Level. “It’s probably just electrical stuff, or pipes, or something.”
    “I thought that, too,” Orion says. “But look.” He taps the screen and goes back to the main menu, then taps “Before Plague.”
    The same chart shows up, but everything’s labeled differently now. The Keeper Level is now labeled “Navigation,” just like on the plaque I saw on the screen hidden under the ceiling. The Shipper Level is sectioned off into three portions: technological research (where the labs are now), the engine room, and something called a “Bridge.” That’s not far off from what we have now, just different words for the same things. It’s the Feeder Level where things really start to change. The left side, where the City is, is marked “Living Quarters (inclusive)” and all the rest of the Feeder Level is labeled “Biological Research.” Biological Research? That’s what they used to call goat herding and sheep shearing?
    But it’s what’s under the Feeder Level that really fascinates me. What was blank space on the other diagram is now all filled in. It’s like there really is another level of the ship below our feet, a level I never knew of, one that has, apparently, a genetic research lab, a second water pump, a huge section marked “Storage—Important” and a very small area labeled simply “Contingency.”
    “What is this?” I ask, staring at it. “I know they changed the names of the levels and moved some things around after the Plague, but this? This is more than just rearranging. There’s a whole other level .” What I don’t say is: Why didn’t I know about this already? Why didn’t Eldest teach me? I already know the answer: because he doesn’t think I’m ready or—worse—he doesn’t think I’m worthy of knowing the secrets of the ship.
    “They changed a lot of things after the Plague,” Orion says. “There was no Eldest system then.”
    I know this much, at least. Everyone knows about that. After the Plague killed off around three quarters of the ship, dropping our numbers from over three thousand to little more than seven hundred, the Plague Eldest took control and remade the government into the peaceful, working society we have now. In the gens since then, we’ve rebuilt our population to over two thousand, developed new tech like the grav tubes, and maintained the peaceful society the Plague Eldest originally envisioned.
    But I hadn’t known just how much he changed the ship, or what all of those changes meant.
    “Don’t you want to know what’s down there?” Orion asks, staring at