The fat kid’s parents shout less, but it’s just as loud because they have bigger pipes. They keep cracking the picket fence. The dad is wearing his polo shirt inside his trousers, the most common of all fat-people mistakes. There’s a cut to a sausage that the kid’s making from scratch, filling it with a mixture that he assures is so good that he can’t even wait to fill the sausage and he sweeps the bowl clean with his pinky instead. Then there’s a cut to the mum feeding her dog the dregs of some potato soup that the dog refuses to eat at first.
‘He always loved cooking. I’m terrible at cooking. But he’s so talented,’ the mum says, the dog almost biting her because she touched him while he licked up a potato.
‘I always said,’ his dad starts, a dart match playing in the TV behind him. ‘I always said he was the one. I wanted to cook but I had a lot of debt to take care of. My dad cooked.’ Another cut: black and white pictures of someone equally fat but without glasses. ‘He was so talented. I’m sure, I’m sure,’ the music stops, pictures of a newspaper about some accident. ‘My dad died in a kitchen fire. He had problems breathing, you see, and had clogged arteries, which made him fall asleep while the gas hob was still on. He’d be so proud,’ he says, and they blur a picture of the dead old man holding a cooking pot into the picture of the kid smiling in his school uniform. The music starts again and it’s back to the fat kid on the platform facing the chicken, the parents clapping behind him, shouting at each other.
‘This is a creation test,’ Chef Hannibal says, who has no eyebrows and wears a purple scarf even in the kitchen.
The timer starts and both kids begin to chop. Onions and carrots and potatoes sliced to a dubstep tune that goes mental when they pull out the juicer. Then they chop the hell out of the chicken, bones snapping to claps and the sizzling of onions and garlic.
‘What would you do with ten thousand euros?’ Chef Hannibal asks the skinny jeans kid, who stops cooking to look right into the camera.
‘I want to have my own food empire,’ he says.
‘But you’re ten!’ the presenter says with a smile.
‘I hate waiting,’ the kid says.
‘I want to help my dad pay his debts,’ the other kid says, even though no one asked him.
Action shots of everything: knives hitting chopping boards; Hannibal’s face as the knives hit the chopping boards; the kids running from fridge to freezer to oven; Hannibal’s face as they run; Hannibal checking his watch and smiling at the trophy on his table; the parents, the clapping, the shouting… And then the music stops and it happens. It happens and there are only fifteen minutes left.
There’s a close-up of the fat kid on the floor, trying to pick himself up to the tune of a lonely bassoon. The parents have their hands on their heads. Silence. The kid fell, his soufflé dish has hit the ground with the dubbed soundbite of shattering glass, which gets repeated four times as the camera closes in on the kid’s face and then the soufflé – it looks fucking terrible on the peach ceramic tiles. Violins start playing high notes. The other kid helps him up. The fat kid’s palms are bleeding because he fell on the sharpest plate shards to the sharpest violin notes. He wipes the tears off his face but smudges his cheeks with blood, and it bothers the microphone on his chest until only the ambient mics can pick him up. He goes back to cutting more of the chicken with the muted knife. He can still do it. His parents still cheer. Blood’s falling on the chicken and Hannibal comes in to look at his finger. He turns away from the camera so it looks like Hannibal’s putting the kid’s finger in his mouth to suck out all the blood. It’s just a plaster in the end but the bleeding just won’t stop. And Skinny Jeans is already adding the finishing touches to a plate of something perfect and small and he’s smiling. And the fat kid’s sweating so much he uses the napkin on himself, and the clock keeps going, Hannibal’s face, the trophy, the shouting, the clock, and then it all stops.
Skinny Jeans is taking his plate up to Hannibal. Fat Kid stands in his way, red napkin on his hand. They stare at each other for a second, and then the fat kid takes a handful of the other kid’s buttermilk potato mash and just sticks it in his mouth. Then another handful, and a third, and then Hannibal walks around the table to take him off the stage and Skinny Jeans starts to plate another…
‘I’m so, s-s-sorry,’ the fat kid says to the parents as he leaves, sobbing and choking on mash. ‘I’m so sorry I disa-dis-disappointed you, that you’ll be poor and fat for the rest of your fucking lives because of me.’ And as he passes by his kitchen counter, he stabs the chicken one last time.
The show has been in French and with no subtitles and who knows what the hell was going on. Whatever happened though, Skinny Jeans got the ten thousand euros, the fat kid sobbed and stole some mash, and his parents just wouldn’t look at him.
• • •
On his pre-work bench it now says ‘How did you like the snow?’ where Tomás’s name used to be. He erases it and writes ‘Tomás’ on it again. There’s no snow left, just a dark mush melting into gutters. Children still make snowballs out of it. There are people walking out with ski poles they never get to use. Others are stomping on ice puddles with boots made of plastic bags tied over at the knees. There are students flying drones to take pictures from heights in which what little snow is left would be invisible. Then there’s the church procession.
—Repent, Repent
The news said it had snowed in the whole continent, every corner of Latin America, even the jungles, and all at the same time.
—Repent, for the end is near
Some people died up in the mountains. They’d never seen anything like it before. They weren’t prepared to have something so familiar become suddenly so dangerous. They wanted less of it, and at a different time. Tomás can’t see the mountains. If it’s not the smog then it’s fog. If the country weren’t so thin, no one would even know the mountains were there. His coffee is too hot, so he removes its plastic lid and burns his hand with the drops.
On the news that morning, there had been people on TV saying that they were now seeing flowers in places where there had been nothing before. Animal protection agencies appeared too, clearing the roads of bird bodies and dumping them in already full trucks. There were stills of a white Amazonian forest, like a gigantic Christmas display, but with dead crocodiles spilling out onto beaches and monkeys gathering together for heat like penguins, their tails wrapped around themselves. ‘Animals suffer in silence,’ the scientist on TV had said, ‘that’s the saddest part of it all.’ Then, an aerial take of Machu Picchu, which covered in snow looks like a regular hill. All the tourists gone. The churches have also been full this morning. There have been adverts for fallout shelters on the radio, the thickest doors, water recycling technology to drink your own piss, power to last you two years (and after that you’re fucked, of course, and ice ages are longer, so you should consider upgrading). The Mapocho River almost burst its banks. His sopaipilla is as greasy as always, and he eats it in two bites to avoid the stains.
—Even an ice age cannot cleanse the fires of Hell
One of the news anchors cried as he read the news. His cat had frozen to death trying to eat all the frozen birds that were falling and sticking to tree branches. Pinpon, Pinpon, why did you always have to try and eat them? ‘Don’t eat the birds, don’t eat the birds,’ the Health Minister said when it was his turn to speak.
—Repent, repent
Tomás stands, lights a cigarette, and heads towards the office building. The Blue Peace people are out with their banners again, fencing off the religious procession by trying to outshout them. Their banners are now snowy mountains, but you can tell they just painted over the volcanoes because there’s still some red on the edges, and mountains don’t shoot out snow from the peaks. They also drew woollen hats on the poor brown kids who were riding tires before, now sledges, and facing storms of lava, now an avalanche.
—Free our Futures, Free our Futures!
Fear the snow for Satan cannot fool us
!
A girl with a highway-worker overall hands him a mountain banner as he passes by. He thanks her and she calls him comrade and gives him a fist salute, so he does the same.
Inside, the elevator’s still broken. He sighs, even though he expected it, and takes the stairs next to the healthiest man on Earth, who takes the stairs in twos and with a fucking smile and says hello as he passes by. And Tomás does a fist salute with a smile but the guy just rolls his eyes. By the time Tomás is on the third floor the other guy must have reached the sky. Thirty. If Tomás stops smoking before he turns thirty, he will also be able to climb things in twos and he will ask for his office to be the highest in the building.
Anna the secretary isn’t at her desk, so Tomás comes out from where he’s been hiding at the entrance and fast-walks into his office.
‘Hey, right on time, check it out,’ Jaime says. He’s wearing the same clothes as the last time they met.
‘What is it?’ Tomás says, putting down the banner by the bin.
‘Do you remember Bimbo?’
‘The elephant?’
‘Yeah, of course the elephant. Our elephant.’
‘Yeah, sure, what about him?’
‘I rendered him with the Unreal engine, man.’
‘Does he come back down when he jumps this time?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Well, at least Bimbo looks good.’
‘I know.’
Jaime’s moving a 3D elephant onscreen using the arrow keys. A three-dimensional failure is a failure no matter what angle you see it from. Even though the green field around the elephant is 3D too, Jaime’s only made it possible for the elephant to move forward and backwards. And so the illusion of depth, the whole point of 3D graphics, is lost.
Jaime looks out the window. ‘Really fucking weird, huh?’
‘What is?’
‘The snow. I was out power-walking but I had to stop. People started falling down and slipping over and shit.’
‘Power-walking?’
‘Yeah, it’s for my core. Anyway, I have to tell you something,’ Jaime starts.
‘What is it?’ He keeps moving 3D Bimbo and Tomás notices Jaime didn’t render its tail.
‘Had a meeting with the Head of School, with Pedro. They’re cutting our budget.’
‘Again? We’re already sharing an office. What happened?’
‘Don’t know man, who knows? Just how it is. And Pedro said that if we don’t finish a game that’s publishable in four weeks we’re getting fired.’ He turns 3D Bimbo off.
‘Fuck. Well, I guess Bimbo really doesn’t look that bad anymore,’ Tomás says.
‘Exactly.’
Jaime picks up his coat from his desk and combs himself looking at his own reflection on the black of the computer screen.
‘Come up with something. Please, man, anything,’ Jaime says.
‘But shouldn’t you work out the gameplay mechanics first?’
‘Well, no, I need a story first and then I’ll just build around it. Please just make Bimbo do something. Anything will do.’
‘Alright. How long have I got?’
‘Two weeks, and that’s pushing it.’
‘Done.’
‘OK?’ Jaime points at Tomás, his hand emulating a gun – what Jaime does when he knows Tomás is lying.
‘OK.’
Jaime walks to the door and turns around.
‘Oh, I forgot to ask you.’
‘What?’
‘About Fran. How was it?’
‘It didn’t work out.’
‘Ah, shame. Was it the language? I thought she spoke really good Sp—’
‘It was the language.’
Jaime sighs with a smile.
‘I’m off anyway. Get some work done man, please.’
Jaime puts his hat on and leaves. Tomás turns on the computer screen and looks at Bimbo. Two weeks for a story. He lies down under the desk. The chewing gum stars have moved, so he looks for the troll doll on the shelf and swears its hair wasn’t always that bright a pink, and that it wasn’t naked the last time he saw it.
What could he write about? Google says he should write about THE WORLD AROUND HIM. He should write about people, his people, their everyday lives, the walks in the park, the way they look forward to retirement by acting retired, the parties, last night’s party, sleeping alone after said party, shaving for himself, getting into jogging because that will help at the next party, and then sharing mild party successes with a grin that says next time, next time it’ll be his turn, despite the overwhelming evidence that luck always favours those who do not believe in turns. He should write about birds falling out of trees, write about frozen forests, suffering in silence, his comrades, suffering in silence, Bimbo, silence, pink dolls, silence, the hole in the roof, dripping and then, silent, the priests, hell, hoping for silence, Eva, himself, silence… It’s useless, so useless, to try and write about the world around him when it keeps changing every night, the sky falling in snowflakes, the river of shit bursting its banks, almost out of the one place where it can flow ignored forever (and in silence). No one can write about that crap. Once, Tomás gave Eva a diary, her own IDEAS book, but she said writing her thoughts down made her uncomfortable. It made her realise she was never happy, that she was always far from who she thought she was. ‘Let me be,’ she said, giving the diary back to him, ‘just let me be without having to know it.’
He gets up and closes Bimbo and goes on Amazon. He types in ‘Antarctic equipment’, but only books and documentaries show up: Notes from a Cold Climate: Antarctic Symphony, Under Antarctic Ice: Photographs from the Depths, Frozen Planet: Full DVD Series. They all sound like verses from a mediocre poem, but that’s because no one really goes there unless they’re dressed up like astronauts, and so they use words that could describe other planets. Tomás could go to that planet. He knows it’s fucking crazy but he wants her to know it too. Although right now he needs to start working, and so he orders the Frozen Planet box set and opens his IDEAS book on the last page.
Eva gave him his IDEAS book on the wrong day. She had baked a cake, even made the candles, God knows how. But his birthday wasn’t on that day. He hadn’t remembered to tell her the truth after they met, when, as a joke, he said his birthday was the week after. It had been months away, and when no one called him, or gave him a card or some other stupid gesture people only do at birthdays, she made a big deal about it. She cooked some French cake that tasted like Chilean cake, and gave him a Moleskine pad wrapped in Elle pages with a tasteful photograph of a rusty tin of flowers and an anaemic model looking over the Paris skyline. She said it was the most important thing she’d ever give him, that she couldn’t wait to see what he’d write, because that notebook is what writers and creative people use in Europe, where the best people write in the best way. It said so on the belly band. On the front page she wrote, ‘So you can write about us’. When his family appeared at the door to take him out to dinner on his real birthday (which they didn’t mention straight away), they asked what Eva had given him.
‘We have guests,’ Eva said to Angela, ‘we were planning on going to an expat bar with my French class,’ she said, and asked Tomás if he also thought that it was rude for them to all just appear uninvited. He agreed, but they wouldn’t go. They just came in and sat down, the way cats do when you open any door ever.
Later, when the cake came out at the restaurant, and the waiters dimmed the lights, and the fucking mariachi came up with a guitar the size of a basketball player, and then strummed and hit it at the neck with the beat, Eva just stared at him through the flickering candles. She took the first slice of cake, which now tasted French or just foreign, because his sister had picked it and it was made of straw or bits of carpet or some other vegan shit. And his parents asked, again, as if it fucking mattered to them, what Eva had bought for him. She said she had given it to him already, to which the mariachi laughed and his dad laughed, and some waiters whistled and even tried hi
gh-fiving Tomás, because when fuckable people talk about fucking, everyone loses it. And it was just a notebook, but Tomás couldn’t say it because he was already high-fiving a mariachi who had turned red with excitement. Eva stood up and left. His dad sighed and said something about women with attitudes being better than boring ones, and his mother asked if she was OK, and his sister looked at the straw cake, more than half of it still left, and she said ‘Namaste bitch,’ as Eva walked away, ‘Namaste. You could at least have said thanks,’ and…
He needs to work. WORK goddam it. He needs to write about THE WORLD AROUND HIM and… Before he does anything though, he YouTubes Radiohead’s ‘Let Down’, which Yiyo and himself used to play in high school breaks, when they took their guitars so that people would know that they played guitar. This was the song they claimed inspired them the most, whatever that means. The guitars start out at a distance, layers intruding on other layers, getting louder and louder, as if Thom Yorke himself was walking around your house, and then the beat comes in and the mess is a riff, a loop, and when the beat comes in now, Tomás looks out the window where the crowds of Blue Peace activists are gathering with their banners and pamphlets about global warming because, like him, they’re inspired by deadlines. Even they can look beautiful in a song, coordinated, all together marching in light steps, almost in slow motion, the angrier they are the better, and Hysterically useless, hysterical, Let down and hanging around, he writes at the top of the page, underlines it, and begins a new paragraph.
There’s a plane and it’s flying over the ocean. He has a limited supply of fuel and the objective is to reach a white island. The player has to choose whether to use the fuel to go as high as possible and then glide, or just fly straight on and… But why? What’s on the island? And is it really a choice? If you were faced with this dilemma, wouldn’t you fly as high as possible just to delay the fall? Wouldn’t you wish to then pass out before touching water? And how would Bimbo fit all of this? It’s useless. He turns off Thom Yorke, and all the Blue Peace anger is just anger, and the fake snowy peaks are just painted cardboard, and THE WORLD AROUND HIM is another smog-filled day in Santiago, another day at the office, another hour to pass before another night at the apartment. He lies under the desk again and checks his phone.
We Are the End Page 9