When you board a galaxy ship, you sign a document; a bill of vows.
The vows are community guidelines; mandates. Vow eleven concerns passenger safety and I quote:
I acknowledge the galaxy ship is a spectacularly advanced invention developed by the Javan Foundation. I understand the limits of my own mental capacity prevent me from understanding how complex and delicate the ship's engine system is. Therefore, and in accordance with overall ship health and passenger safety, I will never, under any circumstance, break into the ship's technician corridors, also known as The Pipes.
Katie was born on the Galaxy ship, born into a one-way journey towards hope. Therefore, she didn't necessarily have a choice as pedigree grandfathered her into acknowledging The Bill. No passenger had ever refused to sign it; The Bill was just a life ritual all passengers went through - like puberty. So, like all the other kids in her school, Katie signed the bill at seven years old and even though it had been two years since the signing, she was still quite aware that she was forbidden from The Pipes.
Yet, there she was.
The Pipes were grated-metal halls of snaking wires, and engine parts all working together to propel the ship through space at near-light speed.
It wasn't as if The Pipes guarded some catastrophic secret from the passengers.
Though Katie knew if she were caught there, or worse, if she broke something while trespassing, her fresh food privileges would be taken away for the remainder of their journey to planet of salvation, Exagora. There were only a few weeks left of their twenty-year travel time, so Katie was willing to take the risk, however. The powdered meals (just add water!) weren't so bad - if you weren't that into food, anyway.
The Pipes connected the entire ship, like veins pumping plasma to every organ in a body. Therefore, the Pipes offered shortcuts to get anywhere on the ship in a flash, especially useful when on a super secret spy mission.
And Katie was the best nine year-old spy of them all. It was something she took pride in. Katie didn't particularly excel at communication, though she was great at listening. At a young age, listening proved quite beneficial. She learned to pick up on nuances, read body language, tones, and tune out distractions. She approached listening with an analytical lens, developing her curiosity for humans; creatures with public and private faces... Listening eventually led to hiding, spying, and learning the various secrets hiding beneath the surface of the Galaxy Ship...
She'd have told you it wasn't her fault she wound up in The Pipes, anyway. It was her dumb brother, Lenny's fault.
Lenny was good-looking with golden hair that lay flat and glistened, a stark difference from Katie's mop of wiry brown tangles. His tan skin brought out his blue eyes and drew swoons from the breeder girls in their fourth-grade class. Boys hardly noticed Katie's brown eyes because she was always hanging her head, nose-deep in a book.
Lenny was smart in Algebra, quick in dodgeball, and kind in community awareness club. He was popular with students and teachers alike. But they didn't know Lenny like his twin sister knew Lenny and Lenny was actually not very nice at all. Lenny was an evil robot sent by the gods of bad karma to inflict a life of suffering upon Katie, or at least that's what she thought. Lenny was her twin of nine years and arch nemesis.
"Why couldn't you be more like Lenny?" Katie was asked on more than one occasion when someone would contrast Katie's erratic and rogue public behavior to Lenny's demure.
Katie was sick of the pressure and felt compelled to hide away in the veins of the Galaxy Ship, as if she were consigned there by decree of General Stockett for being so detrimentally unlikable. She wanted to escape and didn't care if she was caught. Danger sprinkled onto thrill proved a delicious dessert and she felt like binging. Besides, she wasn't that worried anyway. Katie knew technicians and engineers hardly ever hung around The Pipes unless there were an issue with the engine.
Everyone knew everyone on the Galaxy Ship and if you were unpopular, everyone knew that too. It was nice to escape to a world where popularity didn't exist. Portholes dotted the walls and offered the only chance to see like a pilot would: the vast expansiveness of the cosmos through which the ship traveled.
Here, there wasn't anyone to knock you down, throw you shade, or compare you to an overachieving sibling. It was daunting and humbling to look out into space and dream of people outside the ones on the ship. It gave Katie hope. She was hopeful to start a new life. She was hopeful about growing up and having her talents appreciated. She was hopeful for Exagora.
Katie pressed her hands against the porthole and widened her eyes to take in the darkness, searching for even the faintest of lights. But there was nothing. It was as if a vacuum sucked out all the light, debris, planets and moons from the space around them. Of course, the ship wasn't flying into a black hole or anything, it was just moving close enough to light speed that Katie's brain hardly had time to recognize the light emitting from stars in the distance.
After a moment of peace, Katie continued down the ventilation corridor, dodging wires sticking out of the walls and making her way toward Gladys's Garden.
Gladys Fiore was a round, stout woman with a jolly laugh, rosy jowls, and buckets of brio. Fiore alone was the caretaker of The Garden, the galaxy ship's farm - yes the ship had a farm, how else would it feed its 10,000 passengers? Here, one could pick avocados from tall trees as you swung from its branches, only to land in a cabbage patch, but Katie's favorite thing to do was pick strawberries from the bushes. The tiny ones were especially tart.
Fiore was a stern woman with a good heart and she turned her head the other way when Katie would show up, having broken into the greenhouse from the ventilation halls. Fiore recognized the same fiery spirit in Katie she once possessed as a little girl and therefore would allow Katie to stay in the greenhouse and even play with her dog if Katie would assist her with some gardening.
A fair trade, both thought.
This time, when Katie burst through the loose panel near the corn fields, Fiore couldn't be found anywhere in the Garden. This wouldn't have been completely out of the norm, it was entirely possible Fiore was with the animals in the barn. Katie slowly made here way there, her Galaxy sneakers clanking on the metal grates below her feet.
But a quick gander there proved Fiore was not in the barn.
A sense of alarm struck Katie. A grating, cracking sound quelled behind her. She turned around, horrified. A door was beginning to appear on the wall across from the cow stable, almost as if it were pushing itself through space and time. Katie covered her mouth to silence her shriek and deftly glided out of the barn, into the thick copse of corn stalk, near the loosened panel.
Voices carried in the distance.
"... I need to know, if we herd the animals onto a Life Ship, how will they react, especially when our Galaxy is being attacked by aliens?"
The next voice carried the unmistakable gilding of Fiore's wisdom. "They're animals, General. How do you expect them to react?"
"I need you to tell me they'll remain calm and not cause any ruckus when they're being transported."
"I could but if I lied about the animals, I could lie about anything and our conversations would be meaningless. We wouldn't want to have that, would we, General?"
"Damn you, Fiore. This is no time for your sarcasm. We are in grave danger. How do you think our passengers are going to take it?"
"Take what, exactly?"
"The truth."
"Ah, the truth, a subjective thing if I ever heard of one."
"Well it's pretty objective to me that the inhabitants of our salvation planet want us dead. We're in close enough range to hear the radio waves of distress. Our forefathers are warning us, Fiore."
"What would you have me do? I'm just a farmer."
"I'm warning all Captains aboard tonight. We have about a few weeks until we're in shooting range from Exagora."
"I'll begin packing sprouts that can be easily transported. We'll be thankful we took the precautions."
"Anyway to do that to a big ol' hog? I prefer bacon to Brussels sprouts."
Katie gasped quietly and shuffled back, deeper into the thicket of corn husks.
"Who's there?!" yelled Fiore.
But it was too late, there was only the rusty sound of a wall panel locking back into place and faint thrumming sound of Galaxy sneakers pounding along metal pipes.