Turing's Delirium

by Edmundo Paz Soldán

  "I've worked at the Black Chamber since its inception," you say, your voice firm. "And I can swear that Albert did not know Barbie. Barbie came on the scene in the eighties, with García Meza's government. He was a DOP adviser, but he had nothing to do with the Black Chamber."

  "Makes you wonder," Baez says. "Barbie came to Bolivia in the early fifties. You can't tell me that he spent thirty years here doing nothing. How can you be so sure that he wasn't a secret adviser to other military governments before the eighties? Maybe he felt secure enough during García Meza's time that he came into the limelight, but remember that as a Nazi fugitive, it was in his best interests to keep quiet. His big mistake was to have had the nerve to come out into public life."

  "Please excuse me."

  You stand up suddenly and look for the door. You appear to be upset.

  "Is something wrong?" Baez says, trying to stop you. Both seem surprised. They are used to the calm demeanor with which you usually accept everything, the way the muscles of your face do not show emotion when they seem to be making fun of you. But that is one thing. It is another, altogether different thing to make fun of Albert.

  "I'm not going to tolerate you two offending Albert."

  "I apologize," Baez says. "Honestly."

  "Me too," Santana says. "We were just talking. No offense."

  You accept their apologies with a faint smile and leave. Far too talkative, both of them; they won't last long in this profession.

  You still have quite a while before you have to go back to work, so you decide to visit Albert. It is your monthly visit, pushed forward by a couple of days. Perhaps he will be able to help you decipher the enigma of the messages you have been receiving. Perhaps, as in other times, a few phrases from his delirium will illuminate certain things for you.

  Albert lives on the second floor of a modest house on Avenida de las Acacias that has a garden of dried roses and a scrawny rubber plant. The walls are painted blue and covered in a listless creeper. The first floor is vacant; an exterior staircase leads directly up to the second floor. A policeman guards the entrance, allowing in only those who have been authorized by the government.

  It takes you a while to get there. The avenue is blocked; they won't let you through, so you have to park your Toyota at an intersection and then pay them a few pesos. A young man hurls insults at you after he takes your money. "And don't you dare say that you gave us a handout!" You do not reply. You are looking at the face of the Liberator on the bill. He is staring at you fixedly, wanting to tell you something. What? What, for God's sake, what? "Think about what you're doing, and next time stay at home! The city has been shut down and you're incapable of joining a widespread civil movement!"

  You are thinking about the indestructible face on that bill and have to force yourself to come back to the here and now. You continue on your way without responding to the young man; you hate confrontation. And anyhow, you aren't really even sure what they're protesting. The capitalization of the power company? The increase in the monthly electricity rates? With as many strikes and protests as there are, it is hard to differentiate the relevant from the irrelevant. Everything would run more efficiently if there were more respect for authority, if time and money weren't wasted arguing about it and not recognizing it. You are living in difficult times.

  The police officer stops reading Alarma and greets you with a slight nod. His eyebrows are white and his skin a discolored pinkish. A genetic defect, a poorly written code. He knows you but still asks to see your ID card. You hand it to him respectfully. You stand staring down at the front page of Alarma. "Strangled His Son While Sleeping." Who was sleeping, the son or the murderer? You picture a sleepwalking killer, his body moving even though he is absent, incapable of taking responsibility for his own actions. You picture his mind working amid dreams, thoughts jamming together of their own accord, far from the rational being who is capable of controlling them. Perhaps we're all sleepwalkers, you think, our acts, ideas, and feelings guided by something or someone outside ourselves, or someone who is inside us. The effect is the same. "Strangled His Son While Sleeping." That something or someone inside or outside us who controls us tells you that within those words is a message that could help you to understand the meaning of the world. You will wear yourself out looking for the code that will unravel the phrase, that will return order to a little piece of the universe arranged by some First Cause.

  "It must've been hard to get here," the guard says, looking at your identification. "They're not letting anyone through. The army should intervene—tear-gas them. That'd make them as quiet as church mice."

  You nod. At one time you wondered where your respect for authority came from. You had had a privileged childhood. Your dad was an engineer with a good job at the national petroleum company. He was tall and heavyset, his voice firm, intimidating; he was always organizing his colleagues and subordinates in an attempt to obtain better working conditions. His mistake, if you can call it that, was to join a hunger strike by the regular workers. The other engineers decided not to back the strike, because they said it had nothing to do with their demands. Your dad was the type to be easily moved and could not do the same. A lot of his workers were his friends. The administration gave him several opportunities to reconsider his position, but he stood firm on his principles. In the end, they fired him. He could have forgotten about the matter and looked for work in the private sector, but he did not want to; he decided to appeal his dismissal to the very end. Lawyers' fees ate up Dad's savings, and your family slowly lost its privileges. The company's management, backed by the government, would not concede, and your dad was defeated, became a resentful man. You can remember him mumbling insults as he watered the lawn. Wandering through the house at night, unable to sleep, his lips trembling. Perhaps that is when your respect, your fear of authority, began. Or perhaps there was something innate that made you learn that lesson from that experience, because another temperament might have learned the opposite lesson.

  "Go ahead," says the police officer, going back to his newspaper. "But please don't stay too long."

  The room smells of eucalyptus leaves and medicine. Albert is lying on his bed, the covers pulled up to his chin. His eyes are open, but you know that he is sleeping. Several tubes connect his body to a cream-colored machine on one side; the tremulous geometry of his vital signs blinks on the screen. You still feel humble and insignificant before that reverential, once so powerful figure. The first few times you came, fooled by his eyes, you thought he was awake and tried to strike up a conversation, to no avail. Now what you do is tell him, without stopping, everything that has happened at the Black Chamber since the last time you saw him. And that face scored by wrinkles, that body closer to death than to life, lets you talk just as it used to, even though you never take full advantage of the opportunity. Sometimes, all of a sudden, his lips will make an effort, and a few words or phrases issue forth. At first they seemed incoherent to you, but visit after visit, you've discovered that, like an oracle, they tell you something illuminating about your current situation. A sort of personal I Ching, your own private sibyl. Albert had been interested in discovering how thought thought; he wanted to find the algorithm, the logical steps that led from one idea to another by way of predictable nervous ramifications. We would save so much time, he said, if we could control the noise of the world; it would be so much easier to learn of our enemies' plans. It is logical, then, that there is some coherence to his delirium. It is logical, then, that his delirium be interpreted as a code that is aware of the world.

  You sit down on a chair next to the door. The walls seem barer than usual. A few photos, three or four, have been taken down. Someone from the Black Chamber had assembled a biography of Albert in Bolivia on those walls. Albert in his office, the ever-present cigarette in his mouth. Albert shaking the hand of a young, ambitious Montenegro. Albert with the Enigma machine that he had put in his office for inspiration. There was even a photo with you and other colleagues fro
m the early days. Which pictures were missing? Your memory will soon tell you.

  The first time Albert became delirious was two years ago. You were in his office, talking about Montenegro's vice president, who had met with Albert to tell him that they had approved his plans to reorganize the Black Chamber. Albert did not like the vice president—too Americanized. But he trusted Montenegro: after all, Albert had stayed in Bolivia thanks to him. And the Black Chamber existed thanks to Montenegro. All of a sudden, you heard him mumble a string of incomprehensible words. He said that he was called Demaratus, that he was Greek and he lived in Susa. He had invented stenography. He said he was called Histiaeus, ruler of Miletus. He said he was Girolamo Cardano, creator of a steganographic device and the first autokey system. He said he was immortal. He could not stop talking. You gathered your courage and threw a glass of water in his face. He reacted. He apologized. But it was too late; two days later the same thing happened, only this time in the Vigenére Room, in front of a group of cryptanalysts. After several minutes of a disjointed lecture, they realized that something strange was happening to him. Somebody approached Albert to ask him to take a seat, to calm down, but Albert reacted with fury and tried to hit him. He threw folders and pens to the floor, tried to kick anyone who was in his way. Three cryptanalysts wrestled Albert to the ground and held him down until an ambulance came. They took him away in a straitjacket. He lost consciousness, and when he awoke, he was no longer the same. His eyes were vacant and he could not talk, except, every now and then, wandering phrases that you tried to understand. Ever since then he has been secluded in the second floor of this house on Avenida de las Acacias.

  You cross your hands and begin to speak. You tell him that you miss his presence, symbol of security and confidence for everyone at the Black Chamber. And you tell him about the latest happenings. About Kandinsky and the Resistance. About Ramírez-Graham and his disrespectful changes to the rules instituted by Albert. About the inexplicable codes you are receiving. Insulting, unjust phrases. All those years of service to the country don't deserve such a reward. You ask him to help you. If he were by your side, you would feel stronger and could easily dismiss any insults.

  From the street you can hear the sounds of the few cars still in circulation. Through the window you can see the mountains on the horizon, which always surprises you. You wait. There is no response. For a moment you wonder if Albert has ceased to exist. Then you see a slight movement under the blankets, the exhausted stirring of breath in his body.

  "Kaufbeuren," Albert says out of nowhere, startling you.

  "Kauf...?"

  "Kaufbeuren. Rosenheim."

  "Ros ... Ros...?"

  "Kaufbeuren. Rosenheim. Huettenhain."

  He is quiet. You memorize his words, or what you understood of them. Kaufburen. Rosenheim. Wettenhein. You would like to stay a little longer; perhaps Albert will say something else. But you can't; you have to get back to work. You will leave wondering what those words mean.

  At least, in the silence, you will remember which images on the walls are missing. And you will discover that deep down there had been a motive for your visit today, something your unconscious knew before you did: you wanted to confirm or deny what Baez and Santana had said.

  One of the black-and-white photos on the wall is of a group of men. You have never paid much attention to it; the faces are somewhat blurry. There are nine men in two rows, five wearing army uniforms and the other four in shirts and ties. One of them, on the far left, is Albert. The person next to him, you suspect, you sense, is Klaus Barbie.

  Chapter 24

  FLAVI A STEPS into Portal to Reality. The first floor is glowing with red and yellow lights; trance music by Paul Oakenfold is blaring from the speakers. School and college students face the monitors of Gateway computers that are lined up in three rows. On the walls are posters of The Matrix, Penèlope Cruz in a scene from Abre los ojos and another from Vanilla Sky, and various covers of Wired. An ad in orange letters proclaims Now we rent cell phones! At the counter, Flavia asks for a computer in one of the private cubicles on the second floor, if possible. A redhead with a safety pin in her lip informs her that they cost double what the computers on the first floor cost and hands her a number without taking her eyes off her monitor. She is playing Lineage. The first time Flavia came to this café, the girl who waited on her made her nervous; she had a metallic arm and used it as if it were nothing. It was the strangest thing. She was born that way, she had said, that arm was normal to her, and what seemed strange was to have two arms like Flavia. Flavia wound up staring at her own arms as if they were some rare beast for a whole week, touching them, even biting them.

  The atmosphere seems pretentious to her, out of place in Bohemia. But she has to admit that Bohemia isn't like it used to be, and what once would have been out of place here is now part of the norm. The neighborhood has become popular as a result of the cafés that surround a plaza with a statue of Bob Dylan in the middle. University students and backpackers were the first customers in those places with an alternative air to them, where the Aymara worldview, new Mexican cinema, and Bjórk's music were all topics of conversation. Then the clubs with their techno music had come on the scene, and Daddy's little girls in the latest fashions—high-heeled platform boots, plastic miniskirts, and tops that were more like lingerie—and the rich kids who frequented Playground, armed with their cell phones imported from Japan. Gaining notoriety was the easiest way to lose originality.

  She walks up the stairs. From what she could make out on the paper that Ridley gave Erin, Rafael should be in one of the cubicles on the second floor. But she can't picture him in a place like this. He is like her, someone who prefers the empty Internet cafés in the Enclave. If her suspicions are right, Rafael has something to do with the Resistance, and a place like Portal to Reality would be anathema to hackers who are part of that group.

  The atmosphere on the second floor is completely different from that on the first. There are no glowing lights, no posters. Twelve cubicles, most of them empty. Flavia's steps waver. She surreptitiously looks inside cubicles where the door is ajar. Nothing here, nothing there. She will go down to the last cubicle, just get it out of her system, and then go home.

  Behind her, she hears someone whisper her name. She stops and turns around; a door to a cubicle has just opened. She approaches; a few dreadlocks fall over her forehead. Sitting on a black leather chair is Rafael, who with an imperious gesture motions her to hurry. Flavia enters the cubicle and Rafael closes the door. There are black circles under his eyes, and his pupils dart anxiously from side to side. Flavia notes that this Rafael is very different from the calm, self-confident one she met a few days ago on the bus.

  "Smarter than I thought," Rafael says. "You found me. At times I didn't think you would, that the message from Ridley to Erin was too cryptic, that you wouldn't realize it was really a message for you, et cetera."

  "If you know as much about me as you think you do, then you should have a little more faith in me," Flavia replies, now sure that one of the things she finds most attractive about Rafael is his sonorous, masculine voice. She could never fall in love with him just in Playground, but maybe soon you won't have to type to communicate there, you'll be able to chat out loud, like talking on your cell phone. So many technological breakthroughs, and yet we write more and more; it's a bit old-fashioned if you think about it.

  "There's no time to waste. If you got here, that means they could read the message and find us too."

  "Who are they?"

  "The Resistance."

  "You could've arranged to meet in a less obvious place."

  "I picked a place like this precisely because it is obvious."

  "What does the Resistance have against you? And what does the Resistance have to do with the Restoration?"

  Rafael takes a deep breath. The chair squeaks.

  "The Resistance and the Restoration are the same thing. The Restoration was a virtual group that came togeth
er to stage resistance in Playground. The people who controlled the avatars were hackers, who then formed the Resistance, to make the leap from virtual space to reality."

  Flavia furrows her brow, trying to understand. Steps can be heard outside the cubicle. Rafael puts his right index finger up to his lips. The steps fade away.

  "Man, you're paranoid," Flavia says.

  "I know them well—I was one of them. For me, it all started out as a game. Maybe it never stopped being one, and that's my problem. It's just the way I am. It's hard for me to take things seriously. Even if it's a matter of life and death. That's why I spent hours and hours in Playground. Because in a sense, everything on screen becomes a game. And because I could get information there. You know I'm a Rat, right, or if you didn't, you suspected. A good Rat, the honest kind."

  "You're not a hacker?"

  "A means to an end. I do it to get information, as a last resort."

  Rafael looks at her as if he has neither the time nor the patience to explain everything in detail. Flavia wonders what she can do to help him. She also realizes that this feeling is new, touching a man's hands and not being overcome by hostility. When she was fifteen she tried dating, went to the movies and parties with a few different boys, but she hadn't been able to go too far. As soon as they touched her, she felt repelled as if by a negative force.

  "It all started out as a game," Rafael continues, "until I let myself be charmed by BoVe. And I became part of the Restoration."

  "In Playground."

  "Exactly. It was sort of a test, to attack the government of Playground, develop a model of resistance that would later be put into practice in the real world. Sure, it wasn't easy to figure out the model—there's no direct correspondence between one world and the other—but at least we tried. I became part of Kandinsky's inner circle in the Resistance. Because, as I'm sure you figured out, BoVe was Kandinsky's avatar in Playground. I was the one who could get things in Playground that would later be sold on the black market to finance our activities. Don't ask me how I did it. Let's just say it's one advantage of being a Rat.