The Name Aster
The narrator explains to the reader the origin of the protagonist’s name that her mother gave her before committing suicide. Aster tries to reconcile the fact that her mother named her with a meaningful name yet left her to fend for herself. The denial about the suicide molds her sense of identity as a grown-up: “Once upon a time, a mama had a baby, a dark-brown squirming thing, unwieldy and small. The mama named the baby Aster for the genus of florae, and for the ancient word meaning star, and for the way you had to reach to the back of your throat to form that soft A sound. Not a name to be trifled with. Not a name for someone immaterial. Not a name you gave a baby you planned to leave in a closet to die. In Aster’s telling, there’s no suicide note written in pretty cursive, stashed inside Lune’s radiolabe: Aster, dear. Achingly, sorrowfully, tearfully, regretfully, angrily, I leave you. I am sorry. And the mama doesn’t take a knife to her throat.”
Sounds by Heart
The occupants of the lower deck fall victim to the cruelty and punishments of the guards on the ship. Public whipping is so common to Aster that she has mastered the sounds by heart. The passage describes the ordeal vividly: “Aster watched her bunkmates scramble from the bed before squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her face into the mattress. She pressed her palms over her ears to blot out the noise, but it was no use. She knew these sounds by heart. The metal clink of a guard undoing his belt buckle, the swoosh as he tore it from the loops, then finally, the loud smack of leather against skin.”
The Field Decks
The distribution of tasks allows occupants of the lower decks to navigate the other decks on the ship. Aster ends up working in the Field Decks which have elaborate technology to mimic Earth's landscape. Nicknamed the Sphyrum, the mechanics of the decks overwhelm first-time visitors: “Two decks rotated above them, one moving right and the other left, forming a narrow gap. Light spilled through the sliver. Baby Sun still mostly blocked, it wasn’t bright enough to be day yet, but Aster began to make out the individual forms of trees in the banana forest if not the shape of the banana bunches themselves. In half an hour, after the completion of the morning rotation, the sky would be white and the temperature fifty degrees Celsius.”
Reach the Top
The people from the lower decks fantasize about the upper decks and what lies beyond them from a young age. As children, Aster and her friends climbed the service elevator to reach the top and find the hidden deck. The passage describes the three-day mission to find the deck beyond all decks: “They used to talk about making it to the very top one day and hiding out there. They imagined a hidden deck only they’d know about. Grander than the upperdecks. Full of swimming pools and gardens and spice cakes. Home of the angels transporting Matilda. One night they tried it, loaded up backpacks and climbed. They made it a few hundred feet before having a sit on a wide service ledge. Stayed there until morning. The next day they climbed fifty more feet, sitting again at the next ledge, their little legs so tired and requiring a full day of rest. They did this for three days, surviving on canned peaches, having no way to cook the dried beans, rice, and oats they’d brought with them.”
