Jack grumbled to himself as he tried to shove the map drawer shut. The cabinet was so old that the drawers were warped and difficult to open and close. The drawer suddenly slipped under the pressure of Jack’s pushing and wedged at an angle, pinching Jack’s finger in the process. Jack shoved his finger into his mouth and hopped around while cursing in that odd language you suddenly know when you pinch your finger. “Mmmph muggzp tupth dupethhh!” Jack kicked the drawer, then pulled his finger out of his mouth and shook his hand, because everyone knows shaking your hand after a good pinch is the proper first aid procedure. He glared at the offending cabinet as he slowly maneuvered the next drawer open. The map wasn’t in that drawer either, nor the next. He did find the map eventually, it was rolled up on top of the map cabinet. He gave the cabinet another kick for good measure. He dragged the over-sized map across the room and up onto the large worktable in his office. The map was large enough that he could have used it as a blanket, or a space capsule re-entry parachute. It was a challenge to use anything that was sized with a Ruk in mind. A crate shoved next to the table served as a perch to view the map from above. The original RS-40’s Deck Zero had served as both storage, and the flight deck, but by the time of the Great Rebuild when the new world ships were built, the flight deck had become unusable due to the clutter of artifacts. The problem was solved during the building the new RS-40 with its flight deck at the top of the ship, and storage at the bottom. He’d read an account of The Great Rebuild about the transfer of artifacts from the old RS-40 to the new RS-40. It had been clear before they even began that manually transferring everything by hand wouldn’t work. An army of robots had been built to not only transfer the stored artifacts, but also to build the ship. The building of the new RS-40 had gone well, but not so the transfer of artifacts. Most of the collection was uncatalogued, so the simple A.I. minds of the robots had improvised, and robots don’t improvise well. The result was the beginning of the Deck Zero maze it was today. He held up the hand-drawn map the Captain had given him and tried to match it with somewhere on the big map. Maybe the Captain had thought it self-explanatory, but Jack couldn’t see it. The ship was so big, how could anybody find anything? Jack found a spot on the map that looked like the hand-drawn map might fit. At first he’d thought the device the Captain mentioned might be a Jump Gate, but he’d discarded the idea; there were no missing Aeden Gates, and the Aeden Gates had self-defense measures to prevent theft. He checked the map again, then had Aya, his A.I., take a picture of the big map so he could reference it again later. He needed a plan now. The section where the two maps lined up was over in Blue Sector; Jack’s section was Green Sector. The start of Blue Sector was seventenn miles away, and that could take a month to try to find a way through the maze of Deck Zero. The red X on the map the Captain had given him was about six miles from the Blue elevator, but only two miles from the Red elevator, being that the X was on the border between Red and Blue Sectors. “Okay, so if I take the Green elevator up to Deck 186, then take the Hyperloop train all the way around the ship to Red elevator, and then down to Red Section on Deck Zero, I’ll be there in twenty-minutes. Easy Sneezy!” It didn’t end up being Easy Sneezy. Jack grabbed his pack and headed back to the elevator, but he’d forgotten a crucial bit of information; everyone was headed to work or school. The elevator stopped at every single deck. The Ruk had solved horizontal travel along the X axis of the ship, but not vertical travel along the Y axis of the ship. The trip up to Deck 186 took a little over an hour. When he finally reached Deck 186, he jumped off the elevator and ran along the main corridor to the Hyperloop platform. Everything looked good, there weren’t many people at the platform. Jack found out why as soon as he boarded the train. Everyone commuting from their living quarters to their place of work, or school, were already on the train. The trip to the stern, then across to the starboard side of the ship, and then back to the Red Elevator in Red Section took 3 hours. The Hyperloop train was capable of speeds in excess of seven-hundred miles per hour, but never got anywhere near that speed, because it had to stop at every platform. The subsequent trip down the Red Elevator also took another hour. It had taken five hours to get from one side of the ship to the other. It certainly explained all the hostile glares he’d gotten when they had first arrived and moved into their apartment. They had supposedly won the Deck Lottery to get a very rare apartment opening up within walking distance from his school, and the restaurant Tan worked at. Jack hadn’t realized how horrible the commute to work and school was for some people. The Red Elevator stopped at the lowest public deck, Sub-Deck 14. There were a group of people waiting to board the elevator and start their trip home. Jack held up his Survey Team ID. “I have to go down to Deck Zero, it’ll only take a minute and I’ll send the elevator right back up.” The hostility from the group was so palpable that Jack could have cut the air with a knife. Apparently, Elevator Rage was a thing. One man cursed in a dialect Jack couldn’t understand and started towards Jack. Jack quickly shoved his pass key into the elevator over-ride lock and closed the doors. Once the doors were closed, he entered the passcode to send the elevator down to Deck Zero. Jack was so absorbed with sending the elevator back up to people waiting, that he didn’t pay attention to what was in front of him when he stepped off the elevator, if he had, he would never have got off the elevator. He reached around and pressed the ‘close doors’ button to release the elevator. He watched the doors close, then turned around to check out the Red Sector of Deck Zero. His eyes didn’t need to adjust, the bio-luminescent plants provided more than enough light to see he was somewhere so alien and primordial that his instincts were screaming for him to flee. Massive trees rose above him to form a canopy that blocked the sky. Vines hung down from the trees in thick clumps, and things… creatures… were moving along the branches of the trees. He could hear their jaws clicking as dozens of sets of eyes watched him. A primal scream made Jack jump. He tried to form a ball of plasma in the palm of his hand, but a sense of fear so deep prevented him from creating more than a dull light. A man wearing a loin cloth of leaves and a necklace of small human skulls around his neck dropped down from the nearest tree. The man had a vicious spear in his hand. The man was old, very old. His hair was silver and nearly touched the ground. The man lowered the spear at Jack and charged with another bloodcurdling scream. Jack was so frozen in terror that he only stood and waited for the end to come. Another figure dropped from the tree, but directly in front of Jack and facing the old man. It was a girl, maybe around his age, and dressed like any normal Ruk girl, but she was not a Ruk. The girl raised her arms and waved them while screaming at the old man. Jack thought it looked like something you might do to chase away a charging Grizzly Bear. The old man stopped his charge and screamed at the girl. The two aliens shouted at each other in a language Jack had never heard before. Jack realized they were Sunth, but different. Were there different races of Sunth that he hadn’t known about? The man gave a last defiant grunt and walked away as if nothing had happened. The girl turned around and looked at Jack. “You maybe want to get off my Grandfather’s roots now,” said the girl. The girl had a thick exotic accent. Jack still couldn’t move, it was as if every muscle in his body were frozen. The girl rolled her eyes. “That’s what you get for standing on a Great Tree’s roots, your nervous system is frozen.” The girl grabbed Jack by the arm and pulled. Jack stumbled forward and took a deep breath. He hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath. Jack stared at the girl. “What the heck? You just physically pulled me. How did you do that, you don’t exist in my reality?” “I’m a Great Tree, duh.” “But…I thought Great Tree meant ‘old tree’.” The girl cocked her head to the side and gestured at herself. “Do I look old? My grandfather is a Great Tree, and my father is a Great Tree, and my mother, and me, and my brothers, and sisters. You’re not too smart, are you?” “I…uh…but…” “Yep, you’re dumb. The Lesser Trees are the ones that can’t enter your reality, they have to stay in the Sunth neural world.” A thought occurred to Jack. She had said, Lesser Trees? The Aeden called less advanced humans, Lesser Humans. Had the Aeden gotten the term from the Sunth long ago in the time of Jacuub and been using the term wrong ever since? Jack pointed at the tree she had jumped out of. “Is that your tree?” The girl gave him a look as if he were the dumbest creature she’d ever met. “That tree isn’t really here, and unless we’re outside, our trees are kept inside Sun Chambers. You’re that Aeden kid, don’t you know anything about the Sunth?” The girl pointed at a tall column Jack thought was one of the engine support columns. “That’s my grandfather’s Sun Chamber. And that’s my Sun Chamber over there.” The girl swung her arm around to point at a much smaller column. “I thought those were engines,” said Jack. The girl shook her head. “If you can’t tell a Sun Chamber from a spaceship engine, I can understand why they threw you in the basement out of the way.” Jack turned bright red. “I…um…” “Why are you in Red Sector?” the girl asked, ignoring Jack’s discomfort. “This is Sunth territory, you’re not supposed to be here.” “I was going to Blue Sector,” replied Jack. The girl gave Jack a smile that said, ‘yep, that cinches it, you’re an idiot.’ “Did you know that the Blue elevator goes to Blue Sector? You should work on your colors, after you finish learning to tie your shoes.” Jack looked down at his shoes, and realized too late she’d just suckered him into insulting himself. Jack screwed his mouth into a half grin. He’d had people insult him before, but never had anyone ever actually managed to make him feel dumb. This girl was awesome.