Next stop was at the parrot cage, the São Bento Palace. There are always bands of crazy people, at the end of the staircase, demonstrating against anything. I stopped musing about love and activated the professional mode. I sent for a bigger vehicle to replace the limo, properly armored, with a water cannon on the top and yours truly at the wheel. She and her legs by my side and the Watermelon Heads crammed in the back, making faces.
Rita spoke low so they couldn’t hear us:
“I hope they make it.”
“What?”
“Don’t you know what they are discussing today at the Parliament?”
How couldn’t I know that? Everyone knew that. Even the foreign press was there covering it. The Grand Kale Leaf was going to make a speech to convince the representatives.
They were already convinced—bunch of fat bastards—to let the Greenies walk around freely. The reason for that was anyone’s guess.
Rita had her particular view of the whys and wherefores.
“Everybody is entitled to privacy. They’re tired of having curious people and tourists; it’s understandable.”
Do you know how I answered that, feeling very mushy inside?
“You’re so right. I totally agree.”
Wish fulfilled: the Special Charter for the Clorophylled People’s Colonies was approved with a loud fanfare. Anyone who was ready to live without ingesting solid food was being voluntarily segregated from the rest of the society.
I invited my colleague to a night out, under the pretense of celebration. We went to the terraces of the Belém Commercial Center, the only place where you still can drink a cuppa in the dying city. I dared arguing a bit, not too radically, though; I didn’t want to scare away my prey.
“Don’t you think they went a little bit too far? In practice, the colonies will be totally autonomous now, as if they were sovereign territories. Institutions, the government, us, nobody has a say there…”
She almost convinced me that it was all to protect the way of life of the grafted people.
“But you don’t think that the creation of ghettos might have a negative effect?”
“The beautiful village of Sintra—a ghetto?”
Yes, the beautiful village of Sintra, the Pilot Colony, where we wouldn’t be able to stroll down and eat a good cheesecake, not anymore.
“The situation is not that dramatic. We aren’t forbidden to enter the colonies,” she tried to dial it down.
“Sure, but we have to get an authorization first.”
Rita endeavored to explain it to me in simple terms.
“It’s a good deal for both parts. The government doesn’t need to worry about the clorophyllized people any longer. There’ll be more to distribute. In return for that, we leave them alone. Nobody will go snooping around there.
I ended up agreeing with her, but only because I was drunk.
“Yes, yes. You’re right. These people have very delicate noses. Imagine what their reaction would be if a savage got in there eating and having a beer and eating a ham sandwich!
And she laughed again.
Such understanding earned me company for the rest of the night. Also the next one, and the one after that, and the one after, until we started to wake up together every morning.
* * *
One day, Rita asked me upfront:
“Don’t you like pure clorophylls? They are so beautiful, so slender…”
And I lied.
“I don’t know—I never tasted them.”
The truth is that, on a certain occasion, I let myself be led by the ads. “Come pick a flower.”
It was on the last floor of a building with a view of the Tagus at dawn. The terrace had been transformed in a greenhouse. They strolled leisurely among the plants, clothed only in their smiles, very green, very thin, offering refreshments. It was funny, even. But to get something from the little flowers one had to make a certain investment. The thing was rigged so these little things could get their money. The therapies to reach vegetal purity aren’t cheap, no sir.
I chose one and asked for a private session in the solarium. Everything very delicate, songs to make you sleep, incense smoke. The rest of it was almost exclusively a massage, the chick wasn’t going further. I had to shake the tree all by myself.
In my opinion, this eternal crisis is to blame. These little bastards get themselves into this clorophllyzation stuff because they’re afraid of starving. They think, oh, at least the sun is an inexhaustible resource, unlike the rest. Damn, to each its own!
* * *
Things started to go south one day, when I was in the atrium of the headquarters, ready to go out, just waiting for Rita. My implant started to yell at me:
“Where are you going, jackass? Hold your horses and get your ass up here in the cabinet.”
Friday, 5 PM, and the boss wasn’t at the gym. Trouble for sure.
I trudged up the stairs until the fifth floor. We were right in the middle of the campaign “A week without elevators,” and public services to lead by example.
In person, the boss, wearing a suit and whatnot, looks at least as old as he really is. I think he pays good money to not retire. As good a way of investing his economies as any other. I like when he says:
“I wanna live until two hundred years old, work until one hundred and fuck all the women I can until one hundred and fifty.
A minute later Rita arrived, much calmer than I was. I was certain we would get scolded because we were dating, but it was something else.
“Aren’t you tired of pampering these limp dicks and dry cunts? Do you want a real spy job? To be infiltrated? In disguise, the whole package? I have just what you need right here: vacations in Sintra, full expenses paid for.”
I mentally smiled from ear to ear—imagining the Greenies in trouble—but I kept my poker face on the outside.
“Are they getting ill? Or the Great Leaf is plotting something?”
The old geezer frowned.
“They asked for our help. And you both are my more experienced agents in that area. I want full vigilance, but nobody can be the wiser. You’re going to enter the Colony disguised as acolytes.” And, to me: “This sissy boy here is going to become very slim!”
A week preparing. For Rita, it really was as if she had won a full vacation package all paid for; for me, the worst week of my life. They wanted me to be slim and dried out as a straw. They pumped my thyroid full of drugs until I had nothing but skin and bones, I spent hours with plasters on my skin so it could gain a bit of color, I was starved as a stray dog. With my girl, things went smoother: she had already begun her therapy before. Between transfusions, injections and radiation doses, they managed to change her species in due time. I couldn’t get worse, but she made it through with flying colors.
* * *
I think of that a lot: after all, what separates plants and animals? Plants have clorophyll and produce their own food; that’s what I was taught in school. But I know that there are dubious situations regarding those little things: beings that enjoy the best of the two realms. And now we do that with people. A new species.
But for me, nothing but a freak.
Rita was another thing entirely, of course. One must learn to distinguish edible from poisonous plants.
* * *
Finally I was thin as a rail. I showed up at the checkpoint of the Colony with a concocted story: elementary school teacher, radical Greenie, recently arrived to Oporto, in search of a greenhouse to lay roots. I was led right to the representative himself, who was also part of the scheme.
The Greenbeans stood up from the lounger on the marquee and took the trouble of wearing a bathrobe to welcome me.
“I know you’re not exactly an admirer,” he probed. “But you disguise it very well.”
Of course I did. And it cost me two weeks of my life. I was feeling like a reed in stale water. I didn’t like to be reminded of that and I responded badly to it:
“I, for one, like to feed the old
-fashioned way, with meat and wine, like the primitives. I don’t feel like spending the rest of my life with heartburn.”
He pretended not to take offense and started talking about practicalities.
“Mingle, keep your disguise and prick up your ears. Something or other will be said at the terraces, that’s for sure. But be discreet…”
Of course! Nothing could transpire out there; the Greenies were the best, the Pilot Colony worked in perfect harmony.
But I had priorities. The first one was to have news of my colleague.
The fellow looked at me with a stupid expression.
“Your colleague… It’s been two days since we last heard of her. I think this is another problem added to the basket…”
My blood froze.
I have yet to tell why they were so scared shitless at the herbarium. People were missing, that’s why. Without a trace and without having ever passed through the checkpoints. No clues at all. And the Artichoke Head was telling me that bald lie, that he didn’t know about Rita. It was all I could do not to turn him into soup.
And he kept on talking.
“Tell me what’s your plan. How long are you staying? How are you going to survive without eating?”
But I could barely hear him now.
The boss thought everything was a misunderstanding.
“No one disappeared. This was all a bunch of newbies that go wherever it meets their fancy and don’t tell anyone.”
The thing is, he considered that sect just a dumb fad. But I knew better: to me, I was dealing with criminals. People who do such a thing to themselves are capable of doing anything. What the hell! They torture themselves, graft a lot of shit into their bodies, just to spend their lives doing nothing. I prepared myself to find corpses.
I told the representative that I wanted to examine the dumpsters and the sewers. I also told him that I’d send for special brigades, because more help was needed.
He was shocked. He even started to drool a little, probably wondering what would happen to him if those Neanderthals managed to get in there. He quickly remembered what he could do to help:
“There is a group of constituents, members of the solar community, who’ve been acting a little weird lately…”
He ended up giving me a small list with names, addresses and favorite terraces. I promptly started to stroll around up there, where the Lizards compete for space with photovoltaic collectors.
I listened to them talking. All of them youngsters. All of it bullshit. Hormonal therapies here, enzyme supplements there… To really understand them you’d have to be a pharmacist. I heard college kids talking leisurely about the advantages of removing such superfluous organs like the spleen and the liver.
“But it’s a shame the procedure is so expensive,” one of them complained. “I have to check if the bank can lend me the money.”
To live without organs is not just expensive, but it’s also impossible, as far as I know. But if this madness goes on…
The afternoon came to an end and I couldn’t find any of the people on the list. I decided to do a stakeout in front of the house of the nearest one. I sat on a bench in the Garden and tried to look innocent enough, while comparing the faces of the passersby to the images I got from the office.
I recognized the guy as soon I as saw him and went after him. We walked around there, up one street, down another, until dusk. He entered a dark alley. I waited half a dozen heartbeats and then I slithered through the same door I saw him going through. It wasn’t locked.
Darkness and silence. I pulled my torch out. After the tiny hall there was a corridor. At the end, the kitchen. When I got in the ceiling was suddenly illuminated.
Small kitchen appliances lined the bench, pots, plates, and cutlery, a stove with an open cover, and traces of fat over the burners. On a corner, a bucket full to the brim with stinky garbage. On another corner, a shovel and a broom for sweeping crumbs away. The most common of kitchens. As out of context as a bill of one hundred in my pocket.
My belly roared. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate something.
I opened the door of the industrial freezer.
Rita was inside, her body chopped to bits disposed in plastic bags.
Armed, they came in.
“Gotcha! Raiding the freezer, huh? So you’re a Eat’n’Shit! We were pretty sure of that.”
I got my girlfriend’s head out of a bag by her hair and walked right to them so I could rub it in their faces.
Then I saw the barrels of two guns raised to my chest’s height. I remembered that the mission hadn’t ended. There was no mystery at all in the disappearances, just a crime, but what I still didn’t have was motive and details. I chose to have a momentary lapse of reason and animic force. I was ordered to go back through the corridor. I obeyed, and I was taken to the dining room.
An ample space, with a view to the gardened inner patio. In the center, a big table, with a cloth, china, forks and knives. There were roughly a dozen guests. They stopped talking upon our arrival. The man at the head of the table rose up ceremoniously.
“My dear Inspector, welcome to our social gathering.”
What an horrible display of people. Black, burned, with no meat in their gums. Some of them were so crinkled they seemed like those fossils that appear in documentaries. One of the specters asked me if I wanted to eat. The others started laughing like crazy, like rattling corpses.
“You sons of bitches!”
They laughed harder, damn them! A few presented themselves, saying their names and ages. The one who told me he was fifty-five assured me he was the oldest of the company. He looked like an unburied skeleton.
“Then you are pretty fucked up, man. You look like you owe a few years to the Grim Reaper.”
“It’s the price to pay, boy,” he said. “But it’s well worth it.”
I agree to dine with them. We had a lot to talk about. Who the hell could they be, and what could be the meaning of all that among those major league schizoids? They approved my decision enthusiastically.
“Excellent! Today we’re going to eat fresh meat. I’m tired of the frozen stuff already…”
I told you before: sometimes I’m so slow I must look like a retard. I only came to my senses when I heard the next words:
“Prepare him for tomorrow. There will be time enough for him to bleed all night. For dinner tonight, we’ll require just a few slices of the thigh.” Only then I knew I was going to be the main course.
I felt so confused.
“But…but you don’t need to eat!”
“No, we don’t, but we like it,” the fifty-five year-old decrepit geezer said. “We enjoy all the pleasures of life.”
A lady of horrifying appearance mocked:
“We are carnivore plants.”
Then, one of the other armed jackasses.
“It’s hard to get the freezer properly stocked here. Our salvation are the stray secret agents who stumble upon us. The other one was more tender, but you’ll do as well…”
There’s not much to tell after that. I started punching them freely. When they were all down, mumbling and whining, I stopped and pondered: what should I do now with such fine gentlemen and respectable ladies? Maybe crush them like grapes, stomp on them, squeeze them out of their lifesap.
But when I lifted my boot to start the party, I heard noise in the corridor. I thought their reinforcements were coming. Fortunately, it was mine. And, ahead of them, the imbecile representative.
“It looks like we got here just in time to save your skin.”
“Save? Me? Ten minutes more and I’d have wiped all the weeds from your garden.”
* * *
I came back to the HQ in Lisbon that same evening, after lots of friendly pats on the shoulder. The murderers were still there, guarded by their peers. Not a single word of what had happened to the gossip-happy people of the newscasts. In my belly, I felt the full weight of fasting and failure. Why failure, if the mission had b
een successful? Just a bad feeling.
I still managed to get some dinner and then started to work in my office without sleeping. It was almost dawn when the boss appeared at the door, on his way to the gym.
“Couldn’t get any sleep?”
I told him I wanted to dispatch the process right away. I was getting the evidence ready for Internal Affairs.
“Evidence? What evidence? What did I tell you to do yesterday? Go home, have some rest, take a few days off. I didn’t tell you to prepare a process, right?”
Indeed, he had told me to get some sleep and present myself at work at nine o’clock sharp.
“And shut your yap! You look like a fish outta water.”
I closed my mouth and sat down. I noticed that the old man was really pissed off, but I couldn’t fathom why.
“Are you crazy, boss? I want to see those cannibals in jail, the sooner the better.
And then he dropped the bomb.
“M’boy! Things don’t always happen the way we want them to. Take your nose out of that story if you don’t want it cut off your face. Let the Greenies take care of this their own way.”
“What? I had to face the representative and his stooges. All they wanted to know was if their pals were okay. They even threatened to sue me for excessive use of force… I’d rather gather a few friends and beat the shit out of them.
I had to hear a bitter scolding.
“The interests of the nation are more important than the interests of your cock. You’re here to give your blood for the Homeland and also to do whatever the fuck I tell you to do. If I tell you to drop a bucketful of shit over your head, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. If I tell you to let go of something, you’ll let go of it. This is a war between civilization and barbary. Your opinions are not welcome here.”
Suddenly all the pieces started to fit in the puzzle in my stupid head. I couldn’t avoid feeling sick. How stupid, how naïve! Those goons were all in cahoots. My boss included. They didn’t want dumb people dreaming that they were being eaten by dumber creatures. They were going to hide the crimes to protect the scheme of the colonies.
Clorophyll humans aren’t such a wonder, after all. Much less the next step, the great hope of mankind. They’re just another crazy experiment. They managed to get free because they have friends in high places. Friends? I wonder! Just another pathetic plan to save the planet. A plan doomed to failure; just see the pitiful state of the fellas just a few years into the procedure.
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World Page 6