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--
Esio saw it first.
[after 1 second]
Voice pitched high and cracking with excitement, he scrambled down the hall and towards the cafeteria, clamoring for the first adult he could find. Percy flinched at the sound, interrupted in tinkering with the hallway's atmosphere control display. As soon as Esio saw him, he began to shrilly demand Percy follow him back and see the thing in the viewport.
Within minutes, nearly everyone was clustered around the viewport and gawking at the sight of it. The object was chrome, the lights of the shuttle reflecting in bent streaks across its form, the shape of a conoid with a crooked beak. It was free floating like space junk, and yet pristine as if freshly polished.
It wasn't long until the spell was broken. Sy, under her breath, her gaze remaining fixed towards the viewport, mentioned the tractor beam.
They were all curious. That was the draw of it- no one was really afraid yet. Just curious.
The pellet was slowly spinning, drifting closer to the starship's hull at a speed difficult to see with the naked eye. The majority of the crew dispersed, Sy's shattering of the awed silence as a reminder that, yes, they did have jobs to do, and no, they didn't *need* to be in the cargo bay when the mysterious object was beamed in.
[[TRACTOR BEAM IT IN.]]
A few of them clustered in the cargo bay's viewing room, hovering over the tractor beam controls. Lee had joined them at this point. Their curiosity was overridden by concern.
"There was nothing on the sensors," Lee breathed, brow furrowed as they tried to make sense of the little chrome shuttle on the camera feed. "I have no idea what's in there." The light of the feed glinted on their teeth as they spoke.
Sy's mouth twitched, but she didn't say anything. Percy leaned over her shoulder. "And you still want to bring it inside? Are you kidding me?" He made an expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace, equal parts nervous and excited.
"...I mean, what else do we do?" Fareed stood in the corner and crossed his arms stiffly. "It's not explosive, it's not radioactive... and you know that, this far out in deep space, it isn't from us." His voice lilted at the prospect of *something* being out there. "It could be, I guess, but... If it is ours, what, did it go through a wormhole or something?" He uncrossed his arms, shifting forward to join their huddle. "No matter what, this isn't the kind of opportunity we're going to get again."
The weight of an unfathomable amount of nothingness pushed on the hulls of the ship. It creaked quietly and echoed, the groans of thawing icebergs. For the thousandth time, Fareed tried to reckon with the knowledge that, ignoring FTL travel, they were so far out in deep space that they could move at full throttle in any direction at all and never even get a tenth of the way to anything before their lives were over.
"I'm not saying we don't bring it in at all," asserted Percy as he looked up at Fareed. "I *know* all that, obviously, I'm just saying. If the sensors were saying nothing was even there, then who's to say we can trust that it's not radioactive? Or explosive? Or that there's something... hazardous there?"
> [[SERIOUSLY, JUST BEAM IT IN ALREADY]]
> [[WAIT. HE HAS A POINT. I THINK.]]It pulled into the bay slowly.
At last, the object was no longer spinning. Despite being an anomaly in every other way, it behaved normally under the tractor beam, guided inside by the wash of invisible force.
Percy gasped. As it was drawn into the light, a solid red symbol was illuminated, not visible to the crew until the beam had altered the cone's angle. The light bounced off of its growing form, and the stuffy air in the viewing room became heavy with disbelief.
In bold red lettering across the side of the object was 'CCCP', asterisked by a crossed hammer and sickle.
It slowed until it stopped. Sy adjusted the beam's slider until it reached the bottom. The outer doors closed, and the little metal cone was inside.
They stared past the reflections of their own fear in the glass and into the dimly lit cargo bay. There was a shared tension in the viewing room, everyone peering out at the object as if they were expecting it to move. It remained comatose in the center of the room.
Lee inhaled, about to break the silence. Before they got out a single syllable, they froze, interrupted by a noise ringing throughout the tiny cargo bay. If not for the speakers, they wouldn't have been able to hear it through the glass, but the sound system piped it in.
A dog's bark. It was muffled through layers of chrome.
{link to: 'II:', label: '...'}Fareed sighed, the tension leaving his shoulders. "No, you're right. I'm just... I don't like sitting and letting whatever just happen *to* us. I guess beaming it in makes me feel like we're... doing something."
He peered out towards the empty cargo bay. "But even still, beaming it in might be the best move at this point. If it can bypass our sensors completely like this, I wouldn't be surprised if our shields, especially in their current state, are completely useless against it as well."
Percy winced at this. The shields *had* been decent, months ago, but a recent dash through an asteroid belt at an unfortunate time had left them weakened.
"We might as well give it a shot with our internal sensors, collect some data while we're at it." Lee agreed. Over the course of Fareed's argument, Lee had gone from concern to a grim acceptance.
Fareed turned to face Percy, offering a smile. "Who knows? There could be something in there worth our while. Whatever's giving it the ability to completely bypass our sensors has got to be worth quite a bit, if it's salvageable. And... for lack of a better way to put it, I think if it was going to do anything, it would have done it by now."
Percy nodded, fairly convinced, and reached towards the controls.
{link to: 'SERIOUSLY, JUST BEAM IT IN ALREADY', label: 'BEGIN THE TRACTOR BEAM.'}The dog snuffed at his fingers through the metal grid of the kennel door.
[after 1 second]
Esio eyed the locking mechanism. He'd never seen one quite like it before, but it looked easy enough to figure out. More importantly, it didn't look like it had any electronic components that could sound an alarm. He wasn't sure he'd be willing to try to free the creature considering how easily anyone could view the room's security feed.
The others hadn't told him much, but his dad seemed weirdly afraid of the little dog. It was Esio's first time meeting a dog. He couldn't imagine her as anything dangerous, not with how friendly and cute the little creature was.
"Hello," Esio whispered. The dog was still wearing the harness they'd found her in, dotted leather bands splayed out to the side and skewed with tiny metal beams. Her fur was off-white, splotched with brown on her shoulders and head. A thin white strip of fur ran down her face and split her features in two.
She began to lick his fingers and wagged her tail, her entire little body shaking with the force of it.
Esio barked out a laugh, surprised. He remembered himself and began to instead giggle quietly under his breath.
"I heard the others call you Laika," he said. "Is that true? Is that your name?"
> {link to: 'IT MEANS BARKER.', label: 'YES.'}
> {link to: 'IT MEANS BARKER.', label: 'IT MEANS BARKER.'}
> {link to: 'IT MEANS BARKER.', label: 'THEY CALLED ME KUDRYAVKA FIRST. NOT ANYMORE.'}"You know, she didn't even die from asphyxiation." Percy's voice cut through the silence. He was drumming his fingers, and he turned to glance at the other from under his eyelashes. Fareed hummed questioningly.
"Laika, I mean." He paused. "The original one, I guess. The... the actual Soviet space dog." He spun his chair back towards the control panel. The blue lights caught the underside of his nose and glinted in his eyes. "That's what they said at first, and that's what people thought for a while, but it wasn't true."
"It was love, wasn't it?"
> {link to: 'LOVE?', label: 'LOVE! OF COURSE.'}
> [[LOVE?]]
> {link to: 'LOVE?', label: 'IT WAS NOT LOVE. AND IT WAS NOT ITS ABSENCE.'}
"Love?" Percy scoffed. As if it were a joke, and not one part irony and two parts truth. Maybe he saw the contemplation in the set of Fareed's jaw, because he laughed nervously and softened his tone. Internally, Fareed wasn't sure why he'd said that, or even what he meant by it. He was more tired than he thought. "Well. Um. I don't really think love had much to do with it."
Percy leaned back in his chair, and breathed out the side of his mouth. "I think... I think love had to do with it in that Laika probably had a lot of love for the people who trained her. They took her in and gave her attention... and for her, maybe for them too, that was love. She wouldn't have understood it, I don't think, as anything but."
He looked up and towards somewhere in the starfield before them. "Other than that? I don't really know. I don't really think so, right?"
He turned to look at Fareed, his gaze expectant and heavy. "She died about 6 hours into orbit. With what little time they had to build the thing, they didn't put any decent temperature controls in." Fareed lifted his head up and met Percy's gaze. Immediately, he was taken aback- Percy had a look about him that Fareed hadn't seen before, and he felt his heart catch in his throat at the burning stare. There was something there, underneath the surface. It was as if he had suddenly come to reckoning with the massive chasm between them, that divide that kept a person from ever truly understanding another as they understood themself.
Percy looked away. "It was hyperthermia."
{link to: 'after the shift', label: '...'}"Did you know that if humans put moisture under our noses, it makes our sense of smell sharper?" asked Esio. "Like how dogs and other mammals have wet noses. It, um, traps the scent molecules, and makes you smell better." He put his palms on his knees and leaned forward, sitting crisscross and peering down at Laika.
{link to: 'after fact', label: 'I DID NOT KNOW THAT. MY NOSE WAS ALREADY WET, BUT THEY KISSED IT ANYWAYS WHEN THEY SAID GOODBYE. (BON VOYAGE!)'}"Did you know that dogs can't sweat? And that's why they pant and stick their tongues out. It's to cool them down." He pulled the tablet back. "That's kind of crazy, huh? You don't sweat at all. I guess it's probably better than sweating with a bunch of fur..."
{link to: 'after fact', label: 'WOW! I DID NOT KNOW THAT.'}"Did you know that dogs are red-green colorblind? They can mostly just see yellow, blue, and shades of grey." He grinned and pulled the tablet back into his lap. "My dad is colorblind too. But it's pretty mild. Some shades of red look greener to him, and he can't see much saturation in reds."
{link to: 'after fact', label: 'THAT IS INTERESTING! I HAVE NEVER SEEN RED OR GREEN. BUT I DO NOT MISS THEM.'}"My friend from the Nauclerus told me that. She read a book about mammal facts."
They sat in the dark holding cell. Esio knew that no one would come to check on him for an hour or two, having become very familiar with the shifts and habits of each crew member by now.
Eventually, inevitably, Esio caved.
"Ok, Laika," whispered Esio. "I'm going to open the door, and you have to stay still and quiet. Okay?"
She sat close to the door, her ears alert and her dark eyes glued to the boy's. Carefully, Esio reached forward. He pinched the top and bottom of the mechanism. He could feel springs shifting and something give, but he let go and it closed right back.
"Hmm.." He reevaluated, trying to create a mental image of the mechanism. Esio wasn't in much of a hurry; he knew someone would undoubtedly find out that he'd freed Laika from the kennel, what with the cameras in the room. Instead, it was a matter of convincing them she was safe to be free.
He looked at the dog, who was still staring at him intently. "Do you know how to open this, Laika?"
> [[I THINK YOU HAVE TO PULL IT OPEN. I HAVE NEVER TRIED.]]
> {link to: 'I THINK YOU HAVE TO PULL IT OPEN. I HAVE NEVER TRIED.', label: 'I AM NOT SURE. IT IS OKAY. TAKE YOUR TIME.'}After his shift, it was closer to being early in the morning than late in the night.
[after 1 second]
Fareed stopped at the door of his son's room. The door opened silently, and Fareed stepped inside. He hadn't gotten a chance to say goodnight.
Esio was deeply asleep, slightly propped up by pillows at his back and sides. The soft blue lighting that circled the ceiling of his room cast sharp shadows onto his face, expression softened by sleep. He looked impossibly younger.
Fareed moved to the side of his bed and gently brushed his son's hair from his face. He adjusted the blanket to cover the rest of his torso, and moved his arm from its painful-looking crooked position.
Then, his hairs stood on end as he felt the pressure of being watched. He turned slightly, and out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Laika's politely sitting form resting at the foot of Esio's bed. How hadn't he seen her when he walked in?
Slowly, with his pulse pounding in his ears, he turned to face her. She peered at him, only feet apart. Fareed had never seen a dog look like that. It was like she was reading him. Not like an animal gauging their surroundings or apprehensive of his behavior, but like a human person would observe you if they thought you couldn't see. Calculating, considering. Thinking about your thoughts.
He wanted to mentally berate himself for being so terrified of a tiny dog, but there had been something uncanny about her from the moment they'd opened the vessel. More than the enigmatic nature of her arrival and existence, there was a weight to her presence that left his senses reeling with a primal sort of fear.
> [[AND FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, PLEASE DON'T LOOK AWAY WHEN IT STINGS. LET THE WATER WELL UP IN YOUR EYES. DON'T BLINK.]]"Hi," he said. "I'm just saying goodnight to Esio." He swallowed.
Now that he'd made eye contact with her, it was like he couldn't tear his gaze away. He wasn't even really seeing, but the thought of looking away was somehow even more terrifying than whatever was currently happening.
"I won't get to see him until probably lunch tomorrow, so I wanted to check in on him right now." Fareed had no idea why he was saying this out loud.
> [[IT'S OKAY. I DON'T KNOW WHY I BARK SOMETIMES. I THINK I GET EXCITED.]]"That's cool," he nodded. "I'll call you Laika, then. I'm Esio."
It was dim in the brig. The crew had never actually used it as a holding cell. Laika was the closest it'd held to a prisoner. In reality, it was a room with space to put a kennel, and it was easy to monitor. The irony was not lost on Lee and Sy when they decided to house her here, however.
The kennel was almost comically large compared to the tiny form of the dog inside. They were lucky to have found one lying unused in storage at all. Even though it was made to hold much larger creatures, they extricated it from the pile of unused someday useful items anyways.
"I don't really know what dogs like." He leaned back and peered at her. Laika laid down on the floor of the kennel and rested her head on her paws. "Petting? You like getting pets. Dogs like food, too." He tilted his head at her. "I like food. And hugs. I don't know if you like card games, or sea ships, but those are things I really like. I could show you my card collection if I could bring you to my room."
Laika looked up at him. Her nose twitched.
"What else? I know lots of animal fun facts. I even know some about dogs." He looked down and wrote intently on the screen of his tablet. "Which one do you want to hear?" Esio asked as he finished his scribbling and lifted the screen up to the kennel door.
> [[I WANT TO HEAR A FACT ABOUT MY NOSE.]]
> [[I WANT TO HEAR A FACT ABOUT MY MOUTH.]]
> [[I WANT TO HEAR A FACT ABOUT MY EYES.]]He nodded and brought his hand to the lock once more. This time, when it squeezed, he pulled it forward. Just like that, the door was open.
Laika lifted her head up and looked at the door's frame. She didn't stand, but her ears perked up and her posture tensed. Esio paused, and then scooted forward until the movement of his knees rattled the grid of the kennel walls. He opened his arms and gestured for her to step out. Laika stared at him. Her whiskers quivered, and her tail began to thump.
> {link to: 'III', label: '...'}Fareed didn't like taking night shifts.
[after 1 second]
He was very grateful that he didn't need to worry about taking them much anymore. They'd used to be his go-to, as it was more convenient for him and Percy than anyone else. After Esio was born, the crew had made the unspoken decision to take over so that Fareed could spend the time with his son.
By the time Esio was old enough to sleep on his own without supervision, everyone had already acclimated to the new arrangement. Now, it was a notable exception for Fareed to end up cooped up in the cockpit or engine room until dawn.
Unluckily for him, tonight was one of such nights. After Laika had arrived and Esio had taken her from the quarantine kennel, the boy earning himself quite a few lectures on listening to instructions and safety, the two had become inseparable. On the other hand, Sy had become almost obsessive about Laika's little shuttle. Fareed was covering one of her shifts after she'd pulled another all-nighter trying to crack the case. The nose of Sputnik II- that, or a perfect replica of Sputnik II, the uncertainty of its true origins the subject of Sy's furious investigation.
The ship was drifting with no current destination. They'd used FTL travel for most of the day. Now was the time for the ship to take a rest. Percy was monitoring the cockpit's systems, and Fareed had taken a break from working in the engine to visit the younger man. He looked at the stars outside the viewport, wondering if he could see them moving past if he stared for long enough. A comfortable silence stretched between the two, but Fareed didn't quite have the motivation to return to the engine room yet.
[[DRIFTING. I DID NOT THINK I WAS DRIFTING EITHER; THEY TOLD ME I WAS IN ORBIT.]]A strange thought entered his head unbidden as he remained frozen. What was it like to live in the 1950's, Fareed wondered?
It was a weird thing to consider, but if only the dog could speak, he thought, she'd be able to tell them so much. Not just about historical eras and her country, but her existence as Laika the space dog- what the scientists said to her, how they trained her. If they ever considered trying to bring her back.
Answers that had been otherwise lost alongside all those who had them so many years ago. Answers that only existed or not in the mind of a small mutt who, for a portion of her life, was called Laika. And beyond that, answers as to how she'd ended up here.
> {link to: 'I CAN TELL YOU WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE ALONE.', label: 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN? THEY PUT ME INSIDE, AND THEN THEY WERE GONE. AND THEN I WAS HERE. THAT IS HOW I ENDED UP HERE.'}
> [[I CAN TELL YOU WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE ALONE.]]
> {link to: 'I CAN TELL YOU WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE ALONE.', label: 'I NEVER ONCE SHARED A COUNTRY WITH THEM. EVEN IF I WANTED TO. MY COUNTRY WAS THE HOME I MADE UNDER THE LONG-FORGOTTEN GRATE IN THE ALLEYWAY, AND THEN IT WAS THE DARK SPACE BETWEEN THE STARS.'}
If she was waiting for a sign of submission, for Fareed to turn away and lower his head, she wasn't going to get it. Not because he refused to, but because he wasn't sure he could make himself do anything but stare back into her eyes. Finally, after a minute of silence, she sighed and stood up. Laika circled until she was comfortable and then laid down with her head tucked against the blankets. She looked so small and fragile, and not for the first time, Fareed felt a stab of pity for the creature.
He wasn't sure what he believed anymore, but at the start, he was stoutly in defiance of the idea that she could be the same Laika that should have died in the 1950's. The undeniable strangeness of her presence, regardless of her origins, had worn down his resolve and left him considering what really was or wasn't possible. Now, he entertained the thought more than he liked.
He remembered the first time he'd been willing to consider it. He brought it up to Lee. Fareed didn't realize Esio had been listening in until later, when he heard his son's whispered voice echoing in the halls, upset, and stopped just outside the open doorway of the brig to peer in.
"I don't want you to die, Laika." Esio's voice had cracked on the last syllable, and Fareed froze, swallowing thickly. "I don't think you're a ghost. Or an alien, or anything. You're just a dog." Fareed cursed himself for having the conversation with Lee in the cafeteria instead of somewhere Esio would have a harder time getting to.
"I wish those people never put you in space. Even if it means you don't get to be my friend." He shifted his awkward, squeezing grip around her shoulders. Laika didn't seem to mind. The tiny claws of her feet pressed against his arm. "I wish you were a normal dog that never had to be here."
She burrowed her head into the crook of his arm and huffed.
> [[IT'S OKAY. I FORGIVE YOU I FORGIVE YOU I LOVE YOU.]]Fareed had decided to leave Esio be and slipped away to his room. Maybe it was the wrong decision, but Esio was at an age where he cared more and more about not being seen as a 'baby'.
It was concerning, and Fareed was trying his best to dissuade him of the notion, but he also knew from experience that confronting Esio then would only cause him to become angry and closed off. He ended up carefully broaching the topic of Laika's origins and past as casually as he could the next day.
He was brought back to the present by Esio shifting in his sleep, sighing and prompting Laika to sit back up.
Fareed shifted his weight, contemplating. He stepped towards Laika. She was just beginning to settle back into sleep and shot back up again at his approach. She didn't seem afraid, just surprised. Fareed paused for a moment before continuing forward, placing his hand atop her small skull.
Her ears went flat, and her tail slowly wagged as he scratched the top of her head.
"I'm sorry, too," said Fareed. "I don't know what to say. I'm sorry."
She pressed her head into his hand. It was dark inside the room. And it was a sea of darkness outside of the room, cradling their tiny little vessel. And Laika was wandering through the streets and snapping at the other strays who got too close while she ate. And Laika played when the people brought her to the place with children. And Laika licked at the salt-sweet palms as the woman wept and was sorry, so sorry, and Laika pressed against the lips on her nose. And Laika was alone, and she whined with the creak of the world and the flames grew. And then, she could see again, and fingers pressed against the door before it opened and she was out. The darkness was lapping at the walls, deprived of its promised, but Laika was not alone anymore. And Laika was warm. Laika was loved.
**END.**