… no traces of bodily fluids…
… in the afternoon, the subject engaged in a phone call with a journalist who had managed to track down her new phone number. The subject claimed that she was on simple holiday, and colorfully asked the journalist to cease his harassment. After hanging up, the subject recovered the photograph of J. P. from underneath the bed and briefly covered her face with her hand. After this episode, the subject ordered pad thai from a local…
… based on Zdeněk K.’s deeply intimate relations with another man outside the bar Kleo, it is clear the subject was not engaged with Zdeněk K. on any level other than friendly and platonic, and thus J. P. can rest easy knowing that he was not abandoned for another man, at least not this one…
… eight o’clock in the morning, the subject walked to a local ob-gyn office. Agent was not able to penetrate the building in a manner that would allow eavesdropping on the conversation between the subject and the healthcare provider, but another sweep of the subject’s apartment revealed a positive pregnancy test wrapped in two Kleenex tissues. Might indicate subject is in the early stages of…
… agent sent urine sample for analysis to ensure it belongs to…
For a moment, I lost my vision. The black letters and white background spilled from the screen and coated my surroundings. I bent over and with a great force of will suppressed the bile building in my throat. I coughed and felt chunks of acidized tortilla at the tip of my tongue. Hanu? floated behind me.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I told Hanu?.
“The human cub could be yours, skinny human,” Hanu? offered.
“She wouldn’t be gone, then.”
“As I have learned from all self-reflecting resources of humanry, your motives are not drawn as line segments.”
“I don’t understand anything,” I said.
“The cloud of Chopra is days away, skinny human. All other things can be understood later.”
I responded to the report: Is the child mine? And can I get a picture of her?
A response came almost immediately: Will find out. What kind of picture?
A nice one, I wrote.
I pressed my middle finger onto the screen and closed the browser. In the kitchen, I counted my remaining whiskey bottles. Three.
Damn Central and their regulations. Dr. Ku?ák’s asinine obsession with every human being as an alcoholic in training. The bottles were not enough, but I decided to drink properly instead of saving the goods to spread throughout the rest of the mission. Yes, wasn’t this the way to live in modern times, to consume and forget the rest? Civilization could fall apart any day now.
As I opened the bottle, Hanu? appeared behind me.
“Want some of this?” I asked.
“Ah, Earth’s spiritus frumenti. I have read much about its destructive effects.”
“You must’ve skipped the chapters on healing.”
I offered the bottle. Hanu? closed his eyes.
“I am afraid I have already sacrificed my impulses to hazelnut spread, skinny human. I do not desire further disruptions to my functioning.”
“More for me,” I said, and slurped.
“You grieve over your human love,” he said.
“Can I ask you something? Or do you already know?”
“I may or may not, but do ask. Your speech comforts me.”
“When I caught you in my room. Looking for the box.”
“Yes. The ash of your ancestor.”
“Why?”
Hanu? made his way out of the kitchen, and I followed him into the Lounge. There, he tapped on the computer screen, activating it.
“Please, do open the window,” Hanu? said.
I pressed the command button for the window cover. Ahead of us, the universe opened.
“I am interested in human loss,” Hanu? said. “It pertains to me and my tribe in a particular way.”
“What are the particulars?”
Hanu? turned toward me, and for the first time, his eyes split in two different directions—the left half looking directly at me, the other staring absently into Space.
“I have deceived you, skinny human, but I cannot any longer. I do not approve of the physiological sensations associated with such actions. I will not be bringing the news of Earth to my Elders. I cannot.”
Hanu?’s form sagged toward the floor. He gazed out the window with longing, reminding me of those weeks I had searched for my parents, as if eyesight alone could penetrate space and time and the edges of mortality. His was the look of not knowing, a look that seemed to be shared and recognized by all species.
“I have traveled through galaxies,” he said. “I have raced with meteor showers and I have painted the shapes of nebulas. I entered black holes, felt my physical form disintegrate with the chants of my tribe all around me, then appeared again, in the same world but an altered dimension. I traced the outlines of the universe and witnessed its expansion, a turn from something to nothing. I swam in dark matter. But never in my travels, or in the collective memory of my tribe, have I experienced a phenomenon as strange as your Earth. Your humanry. No, skinny human, you were not known to our tribe. I was not sent here by them. We considered ourselves the only spirits in the universe, privy to all of its secrets—but you were kept from us. As a human would say, I encountered you by pure coincidence. Not by mission.”
I slurped at the whiskey. Zero gravity or not, the burn was the same: gut full of cotton, blood vessel dilation, bliss. “Go on,” I said.
“Naturally, my curiosity led me to begin my research of humanry immediately. I have lived in your orbit for a decade of human years. I have visited a few astronauts, but all three either ignored me or prayed. The senseless chanting, I confess, repulsed me. I was content as a quiet observer until I learned of what you call comet Chopra.”
I strapped myself into the Lounge chair to make my drinking easier. My calves were numb. Hanu? was truly speaking about himself for the first time. I felt justified to drink the entire bottle. What better response to such progress?
“You see, this comet, it comes from my home world. I was not sure before, but now I am certain. In a way, the dust of Chopra is tied to all of us, and to the Beginning. I must see it, skinny human. I must see it before certain events unravel. Before they come for me.”
“Who? Please, tell me,” I said.
“The Gorompeds will come. I cannot say more. Not yet.”
The Flat monitor pinged. Another email from the ministry of interior, this time with an image attachment. I dropped the bottle, allowed it to travel, its contents spilling all across the Lounge, splashing over my technology, the window, Hanu?’s belly.
I opened the email.
… physician agreed to provide confidential patient information for a sizable payment. It is confirmed that the test was a false positive, and the subject is not pregnant, nor has she been since beginning to visit Dr.…
… then confirmed that this was a case of so-called phantom pregnancy, in which the subject’s body begins to react to the brain’s certainty about conceiving…