Eldest

"Mutiny. It's mutiny, Elder. More than technical error or ship malfunction or outside dangers, mutiny is the greatest threat to this ship. So, after the Plague, the Eldest system was created. One person, born ahead of the people he would lead, to act as patriarch and commander to the people younger than he. Each generation has an Eldest to lead. You will one day be an Eldest. You will be the strong central leader who prevents discord, who preserves every living person on this ship."

- Eldest to Elder about leadership. "You never had a mother! We're the same person! Elders are cloned—same DNA, same everything. All I did was pluck you from the jar and put you into a tube sixteen years ago."

- Eldest reveals to Elder that they are both clones of the Plague Eldest.

Eldest is a major antagonist in the novel Across the Universe. He is the evil captain of the spaceship Godspeed which is traveling to a new planet called Centauri-Earth.

Biography
At first, Eldest calls Elder about the latter throwing the Keeper Level of Godspeed into lockdown, and releases the lockdown himself. When Elder tries to explain that he scanned his access and that caused the metal screen with sparkling lights resembling stars to open, Eldest furiously demands Elder why he was messing around with it, and closes the metal screen with the biometric scanner. Following this, he teaches Elder some leadership lessons. He talks about a different Elder before the current Elder, one who was very foolish, which got him killed. He also shows Elder the wi-com map, and that the wi-coms are implanted behind people's left ears, and are used to call and locate one another. After that, Eldest tells Elder that all 2,312 Shippers, the passengers of Godspeed, are his responsibility, and teaches him the three causes of discord. He tells him that the first two are difference and lack of a strong central leader, but leaves him to find the third cause of discord all by himself.