The more I think about it, the more convinced I am. These aren’t just some casual words Orion doodled somewhere. “Abandon all hope” is a specific phrase from a specific book written on a wi-com that Orion left specifically for me.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. It’s probably nothing. But I’ve had “nothing” for far too long, and I’m ready for something. Anything. I’d rather go to the Recorder Hall and look up the phrase in Dante’s Inferno than just sit here and stare at the walls some more. I zip my jacket all the way up, leave my room, and head to the elevator. I’m excited, and my legs want to run… but instead, when I get outside, I remember how running only makes me more noticeable and walk with my head down and the hood of my jacket pulled up. As I mount the stairs to the Recorder Hall, I glance up out of habit. In a cubby by the door hangs a painting of Elder, one of Harley’s last works. This is the closest I’ve come to seeing Elder in days; the more time that passes, the more wrapped up he is in running Godspeed. In a lot of ways, he’s more trapped than I am.

Painted Elder peers out from the hall at his enclosed kingdom, and I turn, following the path of his painted eyes.

The solar lamp’s glare blinds me for a moment, and in that split second of darkness, I realize something I didn’t know before: I don’t need to see the landscape to know every inch of the Feeder Level spread out before me. I close my eyes, and I can still see the rolling fields in perfectly spaced hills. I know the precise pattern of colors of the trailers that make up the City on the far side of the ship. I know the exact point in the metal sky when the rivets holding the roof together get so far away, I can’t really see them anymore. I know the shape of each painted cloud.

I try to dig into my memories for what my house looked like in Colorado, but I can’t remember exactly. The shutters on the windows — were they more brick red or burgundy? What kind of flowers did Mom plant in the front yard?