“Columbus wasn’t so great.”
Speaking to the creature felt more appropriate while my face was concealed. I was only a man mumbling to himself under the blanket, a thing no less common than singing in the shower. So what if something spoke back?
“What is it you’re exploring?” I asked.
“I have been circling your orbit. Learning the secrets of humanry. For example, the commitment of dead flesh to the underground. I would like to bring such tales for the amusement and education of my tribe.”
“I’ve really gone past the breaking point.”
“The cardiovascular organ managing your biological functioning is setting off irregular vibrations—a bad sign, I think. I will leave you to rest, skinny human, but tell me, does the ship’s pantry have ova of the avian kind? I have heard great things, and I would delight in consuming them.”
I shut my eyes aggressively. In the videos I had watched in training, a retired Chinese cosmonaut said that falling asleep on Earth was never the same after he returned. In Space, sleep is the natural state of being. Because the environment is unresponsive to human action—the vacuum has little patience for attempts at conquest—life becomes a specific trajectory of very basic tasks, aimed at bare survival. In Space, we submit reports, repair machinery, struggle with dirty underwear. There are no sexual interests, no work presentations to dread the next morning, no car accidents. The closer we are to the stars, the more controlled and boring our routines become. The old astronaut said that being in Space meant sleeping like a toddler once again. So unburdened, one was tempted to suck one’s thumb.
But sleep would not come. I reached into an inside pocket of the Womb and removed a bottle of Sladké Sny, powerful sleeping drops developed by Laturma, major pharma manufacturer and mission sponsor. Their use was restricted to bouts of insomnia threatening to interrupt the astronaut’s lifestyle cycle—frequent use would lead to dizziness, confusion, and addiction. Since I was already suffering from the first two symptoms and couldn’t care less about the third, I took a triple dosage, spreading the bitter liquid along my tongue and swallowing with a brief choke. Within seconds, the tips of my fingers felt numb and my thoughts lost focus. As I hibernated, I could still sense it out there, a tension around my temples keeping tabs even when the creature could not see me. Though I blamed the awareness on the chemistry affecting my brain, it couldn’t be denied—for a moment just before my loss of consciousness, I was glad. Glad that the creature was with me, real or not, searching the kitchen for eggs.
I AWOKE TO the darkness of the Womb, but I could not move a single limb. I was acutely aware of my spine, the snake of vertebrae holding me together, and I imagined what it would be like if someone peeled it off like a layer of string cheese, whether my bones would burst out of my flesh and the idea of self would collapse into a pile of perfectly unraveled parts. Did people with actual paralysis perceive their spines in the same way? I felt horror for them. The creature was strumming again, bringing about thoughts without my consent, but there was nothing I could do but take it, take it until the paralysis subsided and I would be, once again, protected by slumber.
The creature found it. The moment that had propelled me upwards.
Seven years into my marriage, I published my findings on particles within the rings of Saturn, the first tangible payoff for my lifelong obsession with cosmic dust. I toured Europe to lecture, and I was offered tenure at Univerzita Karlova for an assistant professorship in astrophysics. Four years into my somewhat satisfying tenure, Senator T?ma summoned me to his office to “make an offer.” I arrived in a black tie and a new sweater-vest, certain that the government intended to recognize my achievements with a grant or an award.
T?ma was from the new generation of senators. While the old boys wore ill-fitting suits to disguise beer guts, combatted balding by wearing bigger eyeglasses, and blamed their public alcoholism on stress-related illness, T?ma was a dedicated vegetarian, a weight lifter, and a skilled rhetorician. The day the senator spoke to me was also the day he had first caught the attention of the media. Earlier that morning, the minister of the interior had been arrested for corruption and the coalition government had been attacked by the opposition for attempting to bury the scandal by buying off witnesses. Being a member of one of the coalition parties, T?ma made a statement on the stairs of Prague’s district court while pouring coal ashes over his own head. This was a vintage gesture, appealing to those Czechs who favored conventional wisdom over the uncertainty of progress, symbols over factual integrity. With the gray specks covering his shoulders, hair, and cheeks, T?ma declared that Czech politics had become those of individual interest, catering to whoremongers, greedy swine, and common thieves. Hand over heart, T?ma pledged to shake up the coalition from within. I did not much care for politics.
T?ma entered the office and brushed the ashes off his suit with a handkerchief. His assistant brought him a wet towel and a can of diet cola. With his eyebrows still wet and his suit pale, he looked me over. I laughed at him when he told me that the country was building a space program. He laughed too, and poured me a bit of cola, asking whether I’d like rum or fernet in it. I declined.
T?ma walked to a table by the office window, and tugged at a curtain covering something tall and slim. The cloth fell to the ground and there it was: three thick cylinders connected by flat panels, a dozen solar wings extending to the sides, a beautiful dark blue finish. The entire model resembled an insect one might expect to find in the era of the dinosaurs, when nature was at once more creative and more pragmatic. Emblazoned on the middle cylinder was the country’s flag—a blue triangle for truth, and two horizontal lines: red for strength and valor, white for peace—and next to it rested those words: JanHus1. I asked if I could touch it. T?ma nodded with a smile.
“Surely we can’t afford this,” I said.
But we could. T?ma named the long line of corporate partners willing to burn capital on mission sponsorship. He was to present the mission to the Parliament the following day. The Swiss were prepared to sell an unfinished spacecraft they no longer needed.
“You want us to try to reach the Chopra cloud,” I said.
“Of course I do.”
“You want us to go first. Even if we might not come back.”
“But Gregor made it back, and look how well he’s doing!”
T?ma traced the edges of the cylinders with his finger, studying me as I took the spacecraft in. A child’s voice inside me encouraged me to pick it up, run outside the office, and find a quiet room in which I could admire it alone.