[Flash Fiction] The Astronaut in the Interstellar Museum of Sentient Species

The astronaut was sick again. Flushed and blue and pressing his face to the thick translucent walls of his cage. Jane waited to tell her supervisor the astronaut was sick, because she thought of opening up one of the sliding panels of his cage and walking across the floor littered with vacuum candy and dry ice-cream wrappers and the astronaut scuttling across the floor with his fever-limbs pressed backwards against his spine, flapping like fleshy, dense wings.

“Jane, they don’t scuttle,” her supervisor said, after demanding an explanation for why the astronaut was now being loaded on a gurney to get into the ICU when she should’ve reported the incident hours before. “How many times do I have to tell you that astronauts don’t scuttle? They don’t flap. They don’t fly. They don’t saunter. Maybe they’ll writhe a bit, and astronauts have been known on occasion to dance to music only they can hear. But for God’s sake-”

As Jane’s supervisor continued to berate her, she watched the astronaut laying prone on the gurney, his beleaguered breathing making his entire body tremor. He extended a hand toward Janey, and opened his mouth with a soft moan.
“What is he doing?” Jane asked.
“I think he wants to say something to you,” one of the medics said.

The astronaut stretched his hand further, and Jane thought of the robots at the dentist with their collapsible limbs, hidden underneath an almost seamless surface. Limbs that could without warning, rise up and assault you with power drills, pierce you with needles. Perhaps the astronaut had a limb waiting for her in his chest, waiting-
Jane pulled back. The astronaut gasped. Something that might have been her name, with a tongue warped by years of neglect. The medic shrugged and wheeled the astronaut down the hall.

“-putting you in Block B, with Ellen,” the supervisor was still speaking. “Because clearly you can’t handle the A block, and you certainly can’t handle your rounds anymore without someone shadowing you. I really ought to put you on probation, but you know I owe this to your father-”
“Wait!” Jane called, and ran toward the wheeled away astronaut, right before they closed the double doors and he disappeared into the elevator. She grasped the side of the metal gurney, and the astronaut turned his head, his eyes rolling up in his head, eyes the color swamp water, leaking gray.
He tremored, running his fingers through her long hair. She bent over him, hearing his chest rattle. He took a breath, and whispered in her ear:

“I. Fucking. Hate. Space. Icecream.”

Then the elevator doors closed, and the astronaut was gone. Jane picked up her supplies, her cheek like a cavern where he’d touched her, and went to block B where it was already feeding time. Ellen stood in front of the cage housing the sentient swarm of chessmaster arthropods, their shells a dense blue, multiple limbs evolved over the course of thousands of years to deftly pick up the different shapes of chess pieces. The floor of their cage was a white and black checkerboard, filled with large, styrofoam chess pieces.

“It’s fascinating, really,” Ellen said, feeding them a dense gray grain. “Their entire survival is dependent on whether or not they’re good at chess.Isn’t it strange, how something so inconsequential, trivial even, to one biological species can be the entire crux of another?”

“Yeah, I know,” Jane said. “It says that on the placard. I’m assigned to this block now.”
“Oh, I don’t need any help,” Ellen said. She always spoke like she was reading off placards, each word clipped and almost a question mark.
“Yeah, I know. But I think I killed an astronaut,” Jane said. “I forgot they didn’t scuttle.”
Ellen sighed, a clipped kind of sigh, and told Jane to take the other side of the block. Jane grabbed the food trays and went along the rows.
Jane did not like Block B, she’d been trying to avoid it on her shift for years. Block B was where the less popular creatures went, lingering in an excruciating, bored half-stasis, waiting for their limbs to be chopped off for research or for a child to smile at them. Everyone loved the astronaut. Everyone wanted their picture with the astronaut, The astronaut was what brought in the crowds and continued to fund their research on pain and symbiosis, pay the interstellar bounty hunters for capturing new species, keep forcing Jane to close her eyes when she pushed her hands through the cage, keep telling her “Keep breathing, this will all be over soon,” keep her wondering what the hell all of this research and maintenance was going to culminate in. Whether anything at all.

Jane fed the alt-lit his assigned meal of grits and champagne, then seeds for the birds with heads made out of hands.

I Fucking. Hate. Space. Icecream.

She picked up the blue’s musician - Catsup River Jones - assigned tray of food and pushed it through the belt. He’d busted his guitar again, and it lay in a heap on the white floor. Catsup River Jones didn’t look up when his food was delivered. His last tray was untouched as well. He pulled his threadbare blanket further over his head, revealing his split shoes.
“Catsup?” Janey whispered, and then when he didn’t respond. “Catsup River Jones?”
He grunted.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Catsup River Jones grunted again, and then slow, with his joints cracking, he rolled over to stare at Jane through the glass.
Jane swallowed. His eyes were even worse than the astronaut’s, a deeper kind of space blue.
“Do you not like catfish and hush puppies?”
He said nothing.
“Catsup?”
He closed his eyes. Opened them. His fingers tightened on the blanket.
“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Jane, I’m new to Block B,” she said.
Catsup took a breath, and for a moment Jane thought he’d lapse back into silence, pull his blanket over his head, and speak no more. But then:

“Jane, let me tell you something. I used to love catfish and hush puppies. It reminded me of my childhood back on the Delta. It was the kind of food my Momma would make real special like, just for me. She told me a boy needs to grow up on good food to be a good man. My daddy used to catch catfish in the afternoon and Momma would fry them up real nice like - with cornmeal coating, just right, crispy and light, squeeze a little lemon juice on there. And while she was cooking sometimes Daddy would lean over her while she stood at the fryer and kiss her on the back of her warm neck, wrap his arms around her. Just to let her know he was there, you know. In a way I think the catfish taught me about love between a man and a woman. And them hushpuppies, sometimes I couldn’t even wait for them to cool down before I put them in my mouth. Burned my tongue quite a few times. Momma made the perfect buttermilk mixture. And together the three of us would sit down around the table and after we ate our fill Momma would say, ‘Catsup, why don’t you play us some tunes?’ and I’d get out my two string guitar, little more than some fishing wire nailed to a board. I’d play songs and Momma and Daddy would get up and dance around the table in the summer heat, Momma’s red and orange skirts flying, Daddy’s face a smiling shadow underneath his wide-brimmed hat.”

Catsup paused. Ellen called out.
“You usually take this long at feeding time?” she asked. “I’m already almost finished with my block.”

“I’m hurrying!” Jane called, then turned back to Catsup with a whisper. “Then what happened?”

“Then I came here, Jane. They plucked me right out of the best show of my life, sent me on a spaceship, and I ended up in a damn zoo being fed catfish and hushpuppies day in and day out, sleeping on a cold bench, being prodded with needles and electric shocks, being asked questions in foreign languages I’d never know how to speak. You know, I used to be optimistic. I thought there was no way you could seep the magic out of everything, you’ve always got a little mojo left no matter how far you’ve dug yourself out. But now I know that I’m wrong, Jane, there are hopeless places in this universe, there are worlds where you no longer enjoy catfish and hushpuppies, and not even the faded memories of a world you used to love can bring back the enjoyment you once had.”

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