Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction

by Mariano Villarreal

  CONTACT

  with extrasensory beings.

  And poor Bob, in the end, doesn’t care either way.

  “There’s only one solution, and that’s to stop the receptive nodes of the epistemolia from continuing to multiply in her brain,” Check says as if he were speaking about a scientific experiment that went wrong. But that’s what Miranda has turned out to be, in the end: A daring trick of nature that we’re attempting to make fail. Attempting to put a dunce cap on the Great Maker.

  “How?” I ask in a display of originality. At least there’s no playwright nearby to throw my cliches back at me. Point and shoot.

  “By replacing the parts of her body that have atrophied with parts from another living, independent being. A being that has never untied with the epistemolia. Have you brought the suitcase with the medicine?”

  “Yes, of course, but...”

  And he looks at me

  With the most genuine expression of ta-daaaah!

  God, these double-entendres hurt, these hidden meanings, when they’re so obvious that hiding them in the back of your mouth is the same as shouting them at the top of your lungs.

  I am the solution, the part that Miranda needs. That’s what Check, the crazy surgeon, proposes. And he knows that if I love her enough, I’ll accept the sacrifice, the dance of the scalpel, the orgy of blood.

  I who made this trip to be one with my beloved, to unite with her and keep my identity, ours, both of ours... I’m going to have to disappear so that she can live.

  And you know what?

  I don’t care at all. The pleasure keeps flowing through my body, falling and picking up speed down the veins.

  I am me. Always. Forever.

  The only human being conscious of himself on the face of the Earth when the eternal promise of “one day after Calvary everyone will be brothers” is fulfilled.

  Me. The guy with the snake.

  4: ()

  Miranda awakes. The recurrent dream has returned. A giant tattooed eagle flew over the forest. It was huge, too big for one person’s sanity. Its feathers consume the night and spit fire. Its beak gleams with the gold of the Incas and the silver of the Aztecs. Two streams of vapor emerge from the tips of its wings, trails that follow its twists and turns between the clouds, above and below the storm, drying itself with lightning. The eagle is as old as the universe, as wise as the Everything that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s so infinite that it’s hard to understand.

  Then she forgets it, forgets the eagle the same way that all dreams that also might have meant something once are forgotten at Dawn.

  Miranda looks at herself. She’s on a cot in a dusty room. What’s she doing there? From far away she hears a kind of yelling, a jubilation made up of a thousand crowds that shout together, calling her, asking her to unite with them, to take care of them and spoil them and clean off their crap and make them happy. And the jubilation would be unbearable if there wasn’t a wall, a kind of barrier in her mind that shuts off the sound.

  It’s as if someone were inside protecting her from the deafening noise, making a wall with their hands.

  Miranda stands up and looks at the new day. The sun’s rays are warm. The dawn caresses her skin tenderly.

  Her skin.

  Then she asks out loud and no one answers, not even the ones far away that seethe in a hell of lamentations. Not even the one so close, whispering sweet things in her ear, telling her that now she’s safe, and most important, that she’ll be a single thing. A single being. A being made of two.

  No voice can explain why half of her body is tattooed with an enormous blue snake.

  Original Title: Enciende una vela solitaria

  Translated by Sue Burke

  1

  Juanfran Jiménez has won El Mundo newspaper’s digital edition short-short story contest twice and has been a finalist for the Domingo Santos award on three occasions —in 2002, 2008 and 2010. In addition, his story “Intercambio” [“Interchange”] was a finalist for the 2004 University of the Basque Country’s Alberto Magno Prize for Scientific Fantasy. He has published stories in several magazines and anthologies, including Artifex Cuarta Época and Antología Z. The Best Stories of the Living Dead 3.

  “Bodies” may be one of the stories that best fulfills the plot premise which gave birth to this anthology: stories centered on today’s human anxieties and quandaries in the near future considered from a critical and creative perspective and adapted to our present and its cultural references.

  This futuristic thriller is set at the beginnings of the 22nd century in a Europe that has become a globalized pseudodemocratic bureaucracy where laws are approved according to the interests of pressure groups and where neutrality, anonymity and privacy in communications are a thing of the past. Among the new opportunities that technology offers humanity is a chemical-tourist industry for the interchange of minds. The body market has been flooded with offers from “travel agencies” luring potential customers by openly hawking the pleasures of sexual tourism savored in an exotic location in a different, young, beautiful body: an exchange in which those who temporarily rent their bodies find a means to earn a living. Or, in the case of the Indian Padovani, a means to escape his past.

  “The international division of work means that some countries specialize in winning and others in losing.”

  Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano

  I

  Purgatory was a waiting room without magazines. Padovani, “the Indian,” checked the wall clock again. He wondered why no one published paper magazines anymore, yet clocks like that one were still analog. In Europe, maybe electronic books on a chain would be there to entertain people fleeing from hell. He ground his teeth.

  Three other men, all much younger, also endured the waiting room. Two looked like they missed a bottle, and not exactly to read the label. The third didn’t stop staring at him. He wore a new suit generously lent to him by someone two sizes fatter. Padovani smiled. The other man barely blinked. Probably dead with fear, he told himself, a victim or executioner, but in any case inexperienced. Practically a boy.

  If Padovani, an Amerindian, had raised any of his sons —in his defense, he at least tried with two of them until their respective mothers left him— he would have liked to teach them the art of disguise and trickery. The younger you start learning something, the better.

  The loudspeaker called George Bartolomé. That was the name on his fake passport, so he stood up and tried to walk naturally. He couldn’t avoid stumbling a little, but that was normal: less than an hour ago they’d made a hole in his head to install the network implant.

  He left the waiting room and walked down the hall. He still wasn’t safe. The man in the loaned suit or any of the men he had encountered during the medical tests could have been an assassin for Sink-Tooth, or a police informer, or both. He hadn’t seen a single familiar face: they were all too young. Anyway, he was glad to finally reach the security post at Customs. Another step in the right direction, the one that would take him out of the country and could save his life.

  “Is this the first time you exchanged yourself with a European citizen, Señor... Bartolomé?”

  Padovani had already filled out an infinitely long form with the appropriate lies —starting with his age— that answered those questions. It was the same paper that the Europol officer held with two fingers that weren’t quite as thick as the neck of a boa. To answer “Can’t you read?” wasn’t an option.

  When the Indian was 20 years old, which for him was almost like prehistory, he had spent some time in Madrid. Immigration laws were already tough back then, but you could still enter the Old World if you had enough money. Who knows if I have some grandchild kicking around the corners of Gran Vía right now, Padovani thought.

  “The first time,” he answered.

  It was the only truth on the form. He’d never made an exchange, not with a European or anyone. That’s why he had a fresh scar on his head and still felt
a little dizzy. He made an effort to pay attention to the police officer’s explanation, who had put a contract from FarmaCom on the table and was reading the most important clauses aloud. Now I’m the one who doesn’t know how to read, the Indian thought.

  “I remind you, Señor Bartolomé, that your special visa is strictly temporary and lasts one month. You may not leave the internment center at any time, or else you will be detained and expelled ahead of time.” He tapped his finger on a paragraph in the contract. “In addition, you will not receive your payment.”

  The Indian widened his eyes and tried to pretend that one thousand five hundred euros meant a lot to him. The officer set the papers aside and turned toward the computer screen.

  “If you know a European citizen, you may ask for scheduled visits in the internment center. Do you wish to do so, Señor Bartolomé?”

  The Indian had his own plans for visiting people in Europe. Specifically, one person whose name was not unfamiliar to the police. In any case, he would prefer to go to meet his old friend himself and not face-to-face in jail. Padovani pretended to be confused.

  “I don’t know anyone, sir.”

  The police officer marked a box on the screen, then left his seat, which squeaked, possibly in relief, to accompany him to the vacating room. It was smaller than Padovani had imagined, and a panicky feeling grew when the officer shut the door and pointed to a gray cloth chair that must have been acquired in an auction at some bankrupt dump. Padovani took a tissue from his pocket and tried to wipe off the grime before he sat down. He wasn’t surprised to see the police pull on some latex gloves big enough to put over his head.

  “Are you allergic to any medicine?”

  He answered no. He hadn’t taken much medicine in his life. On the other hand, he had experienced sporadic consumption of almost all the recreational drugs in existence and was still alive, which could be taken as a vote of confidence for his resistance to chemicals.

  “This is a pill for neuronal vacating.” The officer held it out so he could study it. “It’s a pharmaceutical authorized by the European Commission.”

  In a monotone, the officer recited a series of legal stipulations. He must have spent years repeating that same text out loud. He didn’t care anymore if his listeners were paying attention. Padovani licked his lips. He was very close, but that droning would never end. He began to get nervous.

  He tried to concentrate on not showing his nervousness and listening to the officer’s explanation. In spite of its name, the pill —whose components would be the property of FarmaCom even when they had been assimilated into his body, Clause 375.c— did not vacate the brain. They were actually used to improve neuronal plasticity until it exceeded human limits. The hardware and protocol of the IPv12 network did the rest of the work: codification, secure transport of the cerebral electrochemical map, reconfiguration of synapses. But the blessed pill was key to letting the rest of it happen. Without it, without the biological element, digital exchange of personalities was not possible. It was something Padovani would pay close attention to when he was finally in Europe.

  “Do you need a glass of water to swallow the pill?”

  The Indian almost grabbed it from his hands. His mouth was dry, but the game had been delayed for too long.

  “Not necessary, sir. I’ll take it rough.”

  The officer smiled for the first time. His teeth were so white that he seemed to be wearing a tooth guard. Padovani felt the pill move slowly down his throat. If it had been necessary, he would have pushed it with his fingers into his stomach. He wanted to shout for joy. But he still had to hide his euphoria for a while. How long? He still felt nothing in his head.

  “When....” he began to say. At that moment someone knocked on the door. The Indian clung to the chair to avoid jumping. Fortunately, the officer seemed annoyed by the interruption. He went to the door and turned a lock in the handle.

  “Occupied!” he shouted.

  The knocking on the door got louder. Padovani closed his eyes and clenched his teeth hard enough to hurt. He felt a buzzing in his head.

  “Open the door! It’s us!”

  The Europol officer’s face looked confused. He hesitated a couple of seconds, and then turned the lock into its original position. He had no time to do more. The two men on the other side came storming in, his local “colleagues.”

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Has he left yet?” One of the two new arrivals motioned toward the chair. “What’s his name?”

  The officer looked at the person sitting there. All the muggy heat of the whole damned country seemed to have suddenly entered the room, accompanied by a pair of sons of bitches from District Six. Mendoza and Salinas, although he didn’t remember which was which. They wore plainclothes, always the same rumpled suits. They never took off their jackets but they managed to make sure their guns were plainly seen. The worst part about seeing them again, the officer thought, was knowing that, whoever governed next month, liberals or conservatives, those two creeps would still be in the police. They wouldn’t even have to change uniforms.

  Their questions only meant one thing: someone had fucked up. On occasions like that, he thought about taking out his gun, starting to shoot, and sending a few people to hell ahead of time. No sense dreaming: they were even more used to shooting. No one in this country took risks, and even children were more dangerous than he was.

  The officer sighed deeply, wiped the sweat off his face, and touched the man in the chair on the arm. It was too crowded to move in the room, but Mendoza and Salinas didn’t take one step back.

  The man in the chair jerked, opened his eyes, and looked around. The officer thought the look on his face answered the first question they’d asked, but in any case he decided the best thing to do was to make it clear to the two jackals. They weren’t going to make him nervous and get the wrong guy.

  “Señor, do you speak Spanish?”

  The man in the chair swallowed a couple of times before nodding.

  “Can you say your name out loud?”

  “Julian....” The man cleared his throat. “Julian Marfleet. This is... weird.”

  The Europol officer turned to his colleagues and waited to see if they had anything to add. One of them moved his lips until he forced a smile that was worn out by the effort.

  “Welcome, Señor Marfleet. Let me accompany you.... You have to fill out some forms, but soon you’ll be able to enjoy your vacation. Ready?”

  He helped the man rise, offering his arm to help hold him up as he took his first shaky steps, until he could stand fully upright. They left the room together, leaving the other two alone.

  “The other one was George Bartolomé.” The Europol officer sighed. “Are you going to explain what just happened, or would it be better to forget it?”

  The man in the suit —Mendoza or Salinas— said nothing, but showed that he knew how to imitate a smile just as well as his partner.

  Take off the latex gloves, ball them up, throw them into the garbage: that was what the Europol officer wanted to do about George Bartolomé.

  II

  Commissioner William Jefferson Polanco. That’s what he wanted on his business cards, on his electronic signature, and on the door of his new office. He had already spent a month heading District Six. “I’m not one for exaggerated formality,” he had said to his subordinates, then added: “But let’s never lose respect for the democratic dignity of my position.”

  Mendoza and Salinas entered without knocking. The first one settled into the only chair for visitors, put feet on up the desk, crossed them, and knocked over a pencil holder.

  “Watch what you’re doing, bastard.”

  Mendoza took his feet off the table unwillingly. His partner gathered up the pencils and then grabbed the little frame that held a family photo.

  “Little Laura is sure cute.” He showed the photo to Mendoza. “Old Willy J is a lucky dad.”

  The commissioner took the photo from Salina
’s hands and put it face down on the table. It was going to be hard to impose his new rank on Mendoza and Salinas. The three had known each other since paramilitary times, although he’d moved ahead faster these days since he knew English. He decided to show them how it’s done: seriously and professionally.

  “What are you doing here? Who’s watching the hotel?”

  “Carlitos and that other black guy who’s with him.... We’re on break time now.”

  “The little Spaniard is very boring,” Salinas added. “He hardly even goes out.”

  Polanco searched among his papers.

  “Marfleet is Spanish?”

  Salinas shrugged.

  “Spaniard, from Madrid, right? That’s where he’s from.”

  “Now everyone’s European.”

  “And we’re hardly Americans.”

  Polanco stayed serious, concentrating on his papers.

  “Have you visually identified anyone suspicious?”

  Mendoza twisted his lips.

  “Affirmative, Willy J. Visual identification, as they say. And besides that, we’ve seen them.”

  Salinas laughed at his partner’s joke. Polanco strangled the papers to contain himself.

  “Old associates of Sink-Tooth who’ve never been arrested,” Mendoza continued. “I think that everyone who isn’t in jail has paraded through the lobby. Including that lawyer, the fucker in suspenders.... You know who I’m talking about? I think he’s with the Italian Mafia.”

  Polanco couldn’t suppress a sigh. “Yes, I know... the faggot in the suspenders.”

  “We’ve talked with him. Calmly. It’s not worth fighting over nothing. We need to wait until the little Spaniard finishes his vacation.”