Jaroslav Kalfař - Spaceman of Bohemia

“I became so enthralled by the search that I forgot to monitor your movement. I am ashamed, skinny human.”

“I thought you were gone. Cured by sleep.”

“Do you intend for me to depart?”

“I don’t know. What are you doing?”

“I am looking for it. The ash of your ancestor.”

“You were… studying me again. I felt it.”

“I apologize. I could not help myself. A researcher cannot escape his subject, can we agree? But I’d like your permission, skinny human. Permission to study you.”

“What’s in here doesn’t belong to you. I don’t want you to do it anymore.”

Petr’s voice sounded through the intercom. “We need to talk,” he said with some distress.

I muttered gratitude for the interruption and left the creature behind, floating into the Lounge and strapping myself down in front of the Flat. I picked up Petr’s call.

“Hey,” he said, “people from PR are miffed about you canceling the video session. Lot of civilians lined up to talk to you.”

“I couldn’t do it. Not today.”

“I told them I’d take the hit for it. With Lenka, and all. But there’s something else—the air filters are detecting a foreign substance. Unable to determine what it is. Do you see anything unusual in Corridor 3? Or anywhere else?”

I glanced toward the filter shaft in the corridor, then at the creature floating toward the kitchen.

“Nope,” I said.

“Okay, well, we’re going to purify, as a safety measure. You know the drill.”

I made my way to the lab. To avoid contamination of the samples, the room ran on a separate filter, and thus provided a safe haven during emergency cleansings. I passed the kitchen and saw the creature’s face buried in the freezer, rifling through Popsicle packets. I considered whether I should give it a warning. Didn’t it already know what was about to happen?

I closed the lab door and ran the filter analysis on my e-tablet. No foreign substances found. I pulled up the call with Petr on the screen.

“Can I ask you for a favor?” I said.

“We’re sealing you off. Cleaning in two. What?”

“Can you have someone track her down? I want to know she is safe.”

“Minute and a half. Listen, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. She needs some time.”

“Hell, I can’t just not know where she is, what she’s doing. She couldn’t even stand to talk to me, Petr.”

“Thirty seconds. I don’t know, Jakub. Give it some time. Once we start poking around, people will talk. Before you know it, this is a scandal on the front pages of gutter magazines.”

He was right, but being humiliated by the nation’s notorious gossip rags seemed worth knowing how Lenka was doing. Why in the hell she had left me to wonder and agonize.

“I can’t be up here without knowing anything. You need to figure something out for me.”

I looked around the lab. On the left wall, drawers of Space dust particles already analyzed and cataloged, brought for comparison to the new dust gathered from Chopra. Highly processed pieces of the cosmos, containing H 2, magnesium, silicon, iron, carbon, silicon carbide, often mixed with asteroid and cometary dust, the latter always carrying hope, as comets are the universe’s dumpster divers, vagrants pushing their carts of intergalactic junk tirelessly over the centuries. It was in those carts that we were most likely to discover new organic particles hinting at traces of other life within the universe, substances that would clarify the formation of planets and the structures of other solar systems, perhaps even a touch of what had occurred during the Big Bang. But all of these samples were old news, offered no stimuli for my imagination. On the right side of the room awaited empty glass and titanium containers, sterile, expertly shined, ready to be filled with the pieces of interstellar dust that had come to us from the unknown.

“Let me sleep on it,” Petr said. “I can probably get the interior ministry on it. You need to regain your focus. You’re flying on some serious currency. And the people are watching.”

The familiar mist shot out of the filter vents, a slightly yellow substance. Bomba!, a revolution in home cleaning and mission sponsor. No more antibacterial wipes, no more Lysol. Once a week, the good housekeeper could place the blue square of Bomba! in the middle of his or her household. Activate, depart the house for five minutes. Meanwhile, the mist would spread around the house and eradicate 99.99993 percent of all bacteria, a ruthlessly efficient genocide. Afterward, the substance would transform itself into harmless nitrogen particles, leaving behind a pleasant citrus scent. Together with the creators of Bomba!, SPCR engineers had developed a new version of the substance to combat any known harmful particle an astronaut might encounter. Bomba!, the commercials cheered. Now in Space! I wondered whether the creature would be affected, whether I would find its dead body and drag it back to Earth. The mist grew thinner.

“All clear,” Petr said. “No trace of foreign substances.”

Behind me, a soft tap on the door.

“Great. Can I get off the grid?” I said.

“I need you stable, Kubo.”

Kubo. What my mother used to call me.

“I get it. I’ll pull it together. Just give me a break and try to find my wife.”

Pause.

“I’ll check on you in three hours,” he said, and his face disappeared from the e-tablet screen.

Another tap. I opened the sealed door. The creature looked like schnitzel just before frying—its skin was covered in fine white powder, its hair dripping eggy yellow mucus. Its lips were a sickly blue. One of its legs was stuck in an empty jumbo jar of Nutella.

“You ate my dessert,” I said.

“My apologies. I found no ova of the aviary type. I toured around the edges of your memory—only for a small amount of time, I promise—and I became what your kind calls depressed. ”

“I told you I didn’t want you to do it,” I said.

“Delicious, this spread of Nutella. Rich and creamy, like the Shtoma larvae back home. Crack them open, suck the fat.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“I do not blame you for your curiosity, skinny human. I experienced no pain in my encounter with Earth’s cleaning liquids.”

I swam toward it, wishing the creature wouldn’t disappear. Its lips were closed, and I wondered what kind of cosmic evolution could lead to this species. Did my association of its body parts with Earth’s animals signify a connection, or was I simply reaching desperately for familiarity? Perhaps I was a lunatic for having these thoughts in the first place. I sucked blood from my teeth and rubbed my sore eyes.

“I’m really not happy about the Nutella,” I said. “I only have one jar left.”

“I accept responsibility,” the creature said, “though I do feel my excuse is valid. Your species considers the size of things around you in a comparative context. Things that are bigger than the reflective capacity of your brain terrify you. I found that fear uncomfortable, like sleeping on a bed made of empty Shtoma shells. It infected me. Along with you, I made love to your wife and stalked her as she urinated on pregnancy-detection devices. Along with you, I considered the thing you call death and the existential dread that comes with your ambition. Strange—the spread made of hazelnut felt sticky around my teeth, my stomachs were satiated, and this made my realizations seem less unpleasant. What pains me most, skinny human, is that I now share your fears, though I do not understand them. What will happen when I perish? Why ask such a question when, as the Elders of my tribe declare, certainty is impossible?”

A hallucination could not be full of thoughts that had never occurred to me, could it? Could not be dripping yolky cleaner and bringing on memories in a way that was nearly cinematic, lived in through frames and edges, as if I were at once in a theater seat and strolling around on the screen. Yes, fear was present, and I had no deities to call on for favors, but the sooner I brought on the moment of proof, the sooner I could bear the consequences of either discovering new life within the universe or finding that I had lost my mind.