Summary

Chapter 8 begins with Jakub’s description of a cigar box in which he kept his grandfather’s ashes. It “weighed exactly two kilograms and thirty grams” (109). Jakub imagined how his grandfather would cope with space, and he concluded that his grandfather would not enjoy it. Jakub had arrived at the space cloud, and he wanted to disperse his grandfather’s ashes there.

Jakub started a live video stream with mission control. On earth, the room was filled with politicians and engineers, and they were all ready to celebrate. Hanuš was floating just outside of Jakub’s camera frame. As Jakub approached the cloud, cameras started live streaming the approach across the world. Jakub’s brief moments of panic were stifled by the opera music, “Rusalka” (113), that he had chosen to honor his grandmother.

Jakub’s shuttle made contact with...