On the day Kudryavka met The Universe by Shreejita Majumder

On the day Kudryavka met The Universe, she had an itchy nose.

It had started the moment she stepped into the capsule. Something about the pressurised air always made her bristle, and the cramped space made all the vibrations louder against her skin. Her nose itched, and she resisted the urge to fidget, staying still for the people who attached the various components of her suit to the correct devices.

“Are you nervous?” Vladimir asked, as she watched him carry out the familiar procedure. Unlike the other technicians, he always spoke to her during those moments, though it was never about anything important. Kudryavka used to think he was bored, until he invited her to visit his home over the weekend and she realised that he was actually lonely.

It was a good home, Kudryavka thinks, though she doesn’t know much about homes. It was surrounded by open farmland and vast rolling meadows, and there were many lovely trails to follow through the tall forest nearby. Though Vladimir hadn’t let her overexert herself, hovering constantly like an anxious father, Kudryavka had taken the opportunity to stretch her legs and explore as much of the farmland as possible.

Maybe that’s why Vladimir was extra chatty that day, trying to distract her from the routine boarding process with his deep throaty voice, which rumbled like the engine of his beloved car. Maybe he thought that it would be hard for her to readjust to the machines again after a weekend of frolicking in nature.

The gesture was appreciated, but unnecessary. Kudryavka had learnt to ignore both boredom and discomfort over the course of her training. The suit, the wires, (and yes, even the sanitation device), no longer bothered her as much as they did before.

Maybe, she thinks, he had just wanted to speak to someone.

When The Universe meets Kudryavka, that’s the first question it answers for her.

“He was feeling guilty,” The Universe says, watching the misty farmlands of Vladimir’s home in Kudryavka’s mind. “He knew you would not return.”

Kudryavka had not known that.

“You know very little,” The Universe concurred, not unkindly. “I wonder what that’s like.”

Its voice rumbled through her, very different from the car engine or the machines. It was something ancient and tired. Like the forest, the brook, and the cold soil underneath.

“The knowing is relentless. It’s unceasing. There’s too much of it, always. There is no satisfaction, no happiness, no peace,” The Universe tells its first conversation partner.

“It never ends,” it says. “It never ends.”

The Universe, Kudryavka thinks, is a bit like Vladimir after all.

“I am not like one thing or the other. I am everything.” The Universe rumbles. “And yet…how quaint. This limited perspective of yours.”

“An existence so finite… mere moments from the end… do you even realise it?”

What?

“I mean death. Do you know of it?”

Perhaps she knew of death. Was it the cold stiffness that would sink into the bones of the other strays around her in the streets? The absence of those she had come to know in the labs?

“Yes, though what you’re thinking of is the aftermath. I have seen it happen to stars, but it will happen to you differently. Annihilation of the consciousness.”

 The Universe sounds almost wistful.

“Of course, I am. You are leaving. You get to leave. Your consciousness —”

Kudryavka doesn’t particularly care about any of that. She’s hungry. It’s hard to breathe.

It’s too hot.

She hates this stupid capsule. The wires. The suit.

“…I see it now. You don’t want this either. We both have been chained to a form of existence that we grow weary of.”

Kudryavka wants to… get out. She wants to run again.

Big open spaces…. stretch her legs…

“I understand.” The Universe quivers like a taut string. “I’m sorry, because you don’t realise what you’re agreeing to. But maybe that’s why you’re better suited for this than I.”

“Thank you,” says The Universe, and those are the last words it ever says.

The small capsule of the Sputnik II shudders as The Universe rushes in, in all its infinite multitudinous glory. The light pours forth until it floods the moment, stretching it impossibly long to fit all of eternity within. The terrible weight of all questions and answers, the sum total of all thoughts, information, and unclassified universal data which will never be known again; all of it compresses and folds into itself a billion times over.

The light coalesces into tangibility. It knows form, knows shape. It recedes into the small trembling body.

The Universe feels the beats of a racing heart.

It feels fear, panic, pain. The relief of small, finite emotions.

Momentary concerns.

It now has four limbs, two eyes. A wet mouth. An itchy nose.

The Universe spends its final moments experiencing the satisfaction of an itch that can be scratched.

When Vladimir asks what happened to her, he will get the official report. Oxygen deprivation over the span of a few days, as expected. A quick, painless way to go. An acceptable end for ‘Laika’, as the press calls her.

They will not tell him about the boiling heat or the rapid heartrate, or how the microchip could not be tracked after it suddenly flared into a crescendo of activity during the spacecraft’s fourth orbit of the Earth.

They will not know how The Universe ended, at least, not yet.

It will take them much longer to build machines that can detect the vibrations of a boundless spirit, gambolling through galaxies and nebulas and vast open space. When they do, they shall feel spacetime ripple with the same burst of sound that once scattered the ducks near the pond behind Vladimir’s house.

The new universe will greet them with an unending volley of playful barks.