Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař

Author:Jaroslav Kalfař [Kalfař, Jaroslav]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fantasy, Adult, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780316273404
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Claw

I PASSED THROUGH the knot of time like sand slipping away inside an hourglass, grain by grain, atom by atom.

Time was not a line, but an awareness. I was no longer a body, but a series of pieces whistling as they bonded. I felt every cell within me. I could count them, name them, kill them, and resurrect them. Within the core, I was a tower made of fossil fragments. I could be disassembled and reassembled. If only someone knew the correct pressure point, I would turn into a pile of elements running off to find another bond, like seasonal farmhands journeying from East to West.

This is what elements do. They leap into darkness until something else catches hold of them. Energy has no consciousness. Force plots no schemes. Things crash into one another, form alliances until physics rips them apart and sends them in opposite directions.

The core offered no wisdom. It took away my senses. It made me live inside my own body, truly, made me a flash of matter without the power of reflection. I wasn’t a human. I was a stream of dust. What did you expect? the core asked me. No, I asked that of myself. Another projection. My desperation to ascribe personality and will to capricious outcomes of chaos. The true kings of the world, elements and particles, had no agenda except movement.

I regained sight just as the core ejected me, then my wits as I passed the core’s calm atmosphere and collided with the storm of raging dust. The core had ejected me back into the world at the speed of a launching shuttle. The spiraling dust particles cut into my gloves and chest, forced cracks into my visor. I set my hands upon the helmet’s lock, considering a swifter end.

Death in Space would be a brief affair. For ten seconds, I would remain conscious. During this time, gases in my lungs and digestive system would cause a painful expansion of organs, leading to a rupture of my lungs and the release of oxygen into my circulatory system. Muscles would bloat to twice their current size, causing stretch marks and bruising. The sun would burn blisters into my cheeks and forehead. Saliva would boil off my tongue. After these ten seconds of agony, my brain would asphyxiate and my consciousness would melt into the surrounding darkness. Cyanosis would turn my skin blue, my blood would boil, my mouth and nasal cavities would freeze until finally, the heart would cease to function, rendering me an exquisite corpse, a dry, gaseous Smurf at the altar of the Milky Way.

I was ready for this quick passage when I felt a tap on my back. Hanuš was soaring with me, his skin gray and shriveled, like a potato cooked in hot ashes. A blister appeared above his right lip. We were to move on together. I removed my hands from the helmet. Soon enough, the dust would cut through the suit far enough to depressurize it, and I could still have a cosmic death.

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