Elysium - Geoff Woodhouse

Set on a cruise ship on her maiden voyage across the Pacific, we meet a drop-dead gorgeous Mexican stylist, a discreet private investigator, a Hong Kong-Chinese real-estate agent with a passion for strip-poker, a soul singer from Brixton, and an aspiring Parisian artist. Together they are the elite A-deck residents, all of them are successful, all of them have suffered. In accordance with tradition, on the day they cross the equator for the first time, they are appointed to the Court of Neptune to carry out a line-crossing ceremony. Intoxicated by the power bestowed upon them, they exploit their position to rule over the lower deck residents and the lowest-of-the-low passage guests.

As the voyage continues, cabin-fever sets in, and, inspired by the line-crossing ceremony, the A-deck residents invent a game of poker in which the winner gets to be King for a day, daring the loser bully and humiliate the lower deck residents and the passage guests. The artificial society of the Elysium, exacerbated by the line-crossing ceremonies, and amplified by cabin fever, had created a class structure with the A-deck residents as Untouchables and the passage guests as the Underclass.

Have the Untouchables lost their moral compass and were they out to get the Underclass as retribution for their suffering Before Elysium ?