Spaceman of Bohemia

Hanu? grinned as widely as I had ever seen. Central’s call came from the Flat. I strapped myself down, ran my hand over my freshly shaved skull, and accepted the call.

On the screen appeared the main operations room of the Space Institute, a U-shaped auditorium stuffed with monitors and bodies. The crew of this room, thirty engineers with Petr in the lead, was responsible for the entire mission, from running the automatic functions of JanHus1 to analyzing my stool. Today the room was hosting a much bigger sampling of the country’s finest, along with bottles of champagne, cocktail servers, and tables holding shrimp and tea sandwiches. Next to Petr stood Dr. Ku?ák, a notebook in his hand ready for note-taking, along with members of the board of trustees, CEOs of partner companies, Senator T?ma (tanned, slim, ready to become prime minister) with other members of the House I’d seen on television, and, ahead of them all, President Van?ura himself. These important men and women, together with the members of the press loyally snapping pictures and recording video, formed the core of a larger circle of the institute’s employees, engineers and bureaucrats alike, all applauding for me. Behind the Flat monitor, out of view of the camera transmitting my likeness to Earth, was Hanu?. The greatest discovery in human history was about five feet away from becoming a reality to the rest of Earthlings. My role was to sit and pretend he wasn’t there.

The sound of gentle flutes filled the hollow spaces of JanHus1, followed by English horns. This was the cue.

“What is this sound, skinny human?” Hanu? asked.

“Rusalka,” I replied. “It’s an opera. I chose it to announce this moment.”

Hanu? nodded, and already Petr had begun to perform the rehearsed lines that public relations had given us:

“JanHus1, confirm functionality of filtering systems. Countdown to contact begins: twenty-nine minutes, three seconds. Report…”

I tuned in to TV Nova’s live stream of the Pet?ín Hill festivities, and here, on the hill where the nation had witnessed my ascent four months earlier, the people once again gathered with brews and fast food in hand. This time their attention was turned toward a magnificent IMAX screen installed on top of the hill, courtesy of Tonbon, major operator of the country’s largest cinemas and mission sponsor. A trio of streams appeared on the display: one of my face, its imperfections processed by airbrushing wizards, so large that I saw the sweat upon my earlobes; one that cut between the main operations room, containing the politicians and scientists responsible for the triumph, and Czech actors, singers, and reality stars giving interviews from their own exclusive podium on Pet?ín Hill; and a third showing the footage captured by JanHus1, which closely resembled what Hanu? and I were seeing from the observation window, with the contrast adjusted and some kind of special effects glow added to emphasize a science fiction experience. All three streams were intercut for internationally televised programming interrupted briefly by commercials from all mission sponsors. If only there were a way to contact the mysterious government agent now, ask him to run over to Lenka’s apartment and peek through her window, see if she was glued to the television, eager to partake in my triumph.

It was nighttime in Prague, and though the massive stadium lights surrounding the hill massacred much of the horizon, on the crowd’s screen Chopra announced itself in the form of a watercolor hue melting into the atmosphere. But on my screen, the coloring, so distant and so foreign, looked like an ominous stain. It seemed much more befitting that cloud Chopra would attach itself to Venus and remain there forever, keep away from our home and cease to alter the comforting nighttime darkness that humans had embraced for centuries. Panic seized me. I looked around the Flat panel, seeking the button that would instantly parachute me back to Earth, directly to my bed four or five years ago, when stipend cash was enough to pay for spaghetti, and Lenka and I had little but our sex and our books and a small world that seemed knowable and kind. A time when the universe was black and glossy on the pages of overpriced textbooks.

Rusalka continued to play, a series of violins and horns, reminding me of the gentle comfort of music playing on elevators, inside shopping malls, hotel lobbies. I touched the sleek material of the desk before me, tightened my chair straps such that I could truly feel the support pushing into my back. Panic gave way to momentary bliss. The megalomania of the possible discoveries that lay ahead, even the simple act of witnessing, overshadowed everything else. I had leaped over the canyon on a motorcycle. I was about to land, and the rush of blood into my ears and eyes blocked out the audience, strangers and loved ones, their applause and chants, the explosive piping of eagles flying above our heads, the roar of a teased engine and the crashing of my bones against gravity, it gave me three, four, five seconds of complete detachment from what the world asks and what it provides, making the fact of living purely physical, a soaring of the body through the elements. I was grateful.

The cloud would make contact any minute now.

“Last remote analytic data coming in,” Petr said. A close-up of his face split my screen in two, taking attention away from the festive panorama of chattering politicians. “You are at one hundred percent, JanHus1.” He paused to chew on his mustache. “Jakub, are you ready?”

Ready. What a question. A smooth American astronaut would have given a thumbs-up and shown a row of bleached teeth. I closed my eyes and exhaled and nodded.

“I have never experienced humanry being this quiet, skinny human,” Hanu? said. “For the first time, I cannot hear the hum of Earth.”

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