We Are the End

by Gonzalo Garcia

  The metro gets to Baquedano and Tomás comes out and all the zombies come out behind him, and he walks quickly to the escalators to avoid any queues, and he can hear the echoes of their free education chants along the tunnels, their laughter and their insults against Piñera and the Right, and cheers for Marcel Claude and Allende and the Left. He turns right and left and walks up the stairs, and the echoes behind him disappear and are replaced by the same chants everywhere in the street in front of him, which is filled with other young zombies.

  He walks between painted faces, riot police, banners and chanting on megaphones and he starts his way to Yiyo’s shop. A zombie stops him and gives him a sign that says ‘This is The End, My Only Friend’ with a photograph of Piñera but with Jim Morrison’s hair, and he takes it and the zombie cheers and takes a photograph of Tomás with his phone.

  As he reaches Yiyo’s street, the crowd stops and listens to a zombie leader on a podium, and she’s wearing a green military jacket despite all the zombie cosplay, and she lifts her fist up and people cheer and play drums and then she says…

  ‘We will march peacefully today! And to show them how organised we can be, how afraid of us they should be, we, we will dance!’

  Everyone cheers and Tomás squeezes past more zombies and the rain gets heavier but zombies are immune to heavy rainfall, and he must get to Yiyo’s shop before all the face paints start to melt because then the riot police won’t be able to know who’s a zombie and who isn’t, and they’ll beat everyone up like they always do. He can see the shop and then Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ starts playing real loud on the podium speakers, and the zombies make a line formation and start doing the dance from the video, and this fat zombie yells something at Tomás and pulls him into formation, and he stomps to their rhythm but he doesn’t know how to do the dance at all and so he runs out of the crowd as soon as the bit with the sideways hip-shaking jiggle starts, and he pinballs between people and arrives at the shop, closing the door behind him.

  Yiyo’s bagging some drumsticks for a zombie. There are other kids trying out guitars and playing blues solos.

  ‘Jesus, man, I can’t stand this anymore,’ Tomás says, rubbing the rain from his face.

  ‘Hey dude, how’re you?’ Yiyo asks and comes to hug him. ‘Dude,’ Yiyo tells Tomás, holding his shoulders, ‘if it’s about fucking Fran, I didn’t know you guys had dated. She told me after we did it.’

  ‘You what?’ Tomás asks, and then just shakes his head. ‘No, man, I don’t care.’

  ‘OK, good. Well, how’re you then?’

  ‘I’m OK, just tired of all this shit outside.’

  ‘Oh, come on man, don’t be like that.’

  ‘So now you’re a protester too? You’re a fucking cliché, man.’

  ‘Nah, couldn’t give less of a shit about it… But every time there’s a protest I sell two or three guitars and a lot of gear, mainly bongos. Though who knows if I’ll ever sell that fucking blue drum kit. It was the worst decision of my life, buying that piece of shit. I wish they made a much bigger protest. Maybe I should paint a peace sign on the bass drum skin.’

  ‘You’ll sell it man.’

  ‘Yeah, whatevs dude. I can’t complain today.’

  A skinny zombie wearing a black Nirvana hoody takes some guitar picks and gives Yiyo the cash.

  ‘Free education, fuck Piñera,’ Yiyo sings, giving the zombie his change back.

  ‘Yeah whatever, old man,’ the kid tells him, leaving his change behind.

  ‘You see?’ Yiyo tells Tomás.

  ‘Yeah, well, I hope it’s the blue drum kit one day.’

  ‘So, what’s up? Come to get a guitar to start playing again dude? You know, you can always join me to texture my new songs. You probably can’t be a member. I mean, we can’t just kick out people who stuck around when things were bad. But you can definitely help at the studio.’

  ‘No, I actually came to tell you that I’m leaving soon.’

  ‘Where are you going to go, huevón? Did you sell your new game? Going to the US or something to promote it? We want to go to the US with the band too. Converse was interested in doing a deal with us, but Chino, our new bassist after you left, you know him? Nah, you don’t know him. Well, the guy has like, dactyl-something, or something-dactyl, who knows? Anyway, he like, can’t wear normal shoes and won’t wear fucking Converse, but man, me and the others, we’re like going to chop his foot off if it means we get to the US with a sponsor. It’s pretty cool isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, it sounds amazing… But no, I’m not going to the US. Although that might happen later. The game isn’t finished yet.’

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘I’m going to go get back with Eva.’

  ‘What? You got in touch with her? Did she tell you to go visit?’

  ‘Well,’ Tomás says, playing the strings of a guitar on a stand.

  ‘Wait, does she, does she even know about it?’

  ‘That I want her back? Of course she—’

  ‘No huevón, does she know you’re coming? Have you told her? And isn’t she like really fucking far in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘I thought, you know, it’d be better to surprise her.’

  ‘Dude, no, don’t do—’ Another kid comes to pay for a jack lead. ‘Free education and fuck Piñera,’ Yiyo sings quickly and the kid smiles. ‘Dude,’ he whispers to Tomás, ‘don’t do it. That’s so fucking lame. I can’t tell you how lame that is.’

  ‘Come on, I think she’d really appreciate me just going, being impulsive and taking initiatives and all that crap. Didn’t you once tell me to worry about stuff like that?’

  ‘But you were together then. And dude, you don’t even own coffee cups or a bed and you have the shittiest kitchen. Two electric hobs only. Jeez, what were you thinking?’

  ‘What? How do you know that?’

  ‘Fran told me.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘It’s a really bad idea, man.’

  ‘I thought you’d be happy.’

  ‘Let it go, dude.’ The zombie playing blues calls Yiyo. ‘I’ve got to work man. Hey, my band’s playing a show tomorrow at Bar Loreto in Bellavista. Come and we’ll talk about it some more. But don’t like, do anything stupid.’

  ‘Not sure I can make it to the show. I’ve got so much of my own work to do, man. Sorry.’

  ‘Alright, whatevs, whatevs.’

  ‘Alright.’

  Tomás turns and leaves the store to the sound of guitars feedbacking and a bongo solo and why couldn’t Yiyo just encourage him? Was it so difficult for him to appreciate the most important parts of Tomás’s life when Tomás had always supported his music projects, his mediocre music projects, just because they were important to him? Friends or not friends, everyone just does and says whatever suits them better and this is why Tomás should go, must go, because it is what he wants, who he wants, and Eva will appreciate the impulse despite the absence of cups and kitchenware because doesn’t the desire for one thing justify the lack of all other things?

  • • •

  IDEAS BOOK P. 40:

  Pajitnov invented Tetris in 1984 at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and it’s still played today. It’s so good that there are rumours online saying that Soviet officials had to lock up every single floppy disk they could find containing the game because it kept other officials from doing any work. Imagine something so addictive today, like meth, coke, FarmVille, but totally legal (FarmVille should be illegal), totally simple to play, suddenly getting locked up by police around the world. And he didn’t even do it for the money (unlike the makers of meth and coke and FarmVille). Nope. Pajitnov didn’t touch a cent until a decade later, when he claimed that all he really wanted was for people to have a good time. The man is pretty much virtual Jesus, and his lessons, much like those of real Jesus, have now been completely fucked over.

  Anyway, the guy believed in fitting parts. He was OBSESSED with them. He even made a game called Hatris, where you fit h
ats into people’s heads. But what is truly remarkable about it all is the fact that despite putting all his effort, all of his trust and artistry into every moving block, the game cannot be beaten! That’s right, his vision was not only to manipulate virtual space but also to transcend actual time. The max. score is 999.999 but even then it does not end. Most people top out at far less and try again. The sense of victory you get when you line up the shapes is a bit like when you line up the coke is the satisfaction that you’ve won at everything in life, you beat the machine that fed you random shapes and limited possibilities. And, when you lose you know it’s your own fault, your own doing, because you were not able to build anything resembling a simple straight line despite the machine feeding you random shapes and limited possibilities. The game is so fucking addictive and frustrating at the same time that a 1987 PC version included a ‘boss button’, which immediately left the game and changed your computer screen to display a generic spreadsheet so you could pretend to work.

  So how can we build a Tetris clone? The main design choice here is SHAPESSPEED/TIMELIMITED SPACE. It will be for mobile platforms, and using the touchscreen will move the shapes you will form different shapes, as if you were using modelling clay or plasticine. Instead of landing perfect lines to keep the game going, there will be parts already missing from a line of ascending bricks and you will have to form said missing parts yourself for the bricks to descend. The choice will be about which shapes you’ll spend your time forming first or, in other words, which shapes you will have to form just after and so on.

  But just like Tetris, the max. score will be 999.999 and no one will be able to beat it, not even a computer playing itself. In fact, once, an advanced AI was left to play Tetris by itself. Because even it couldn’t beat it, it decided to PAUSE indefinitely and never play again. It couldn’t stand the thought of losing, and it was too clever to know it couldn’t win. So it decided not to play at all. We will not be including a PAUSE function, though it’s impossible not to wonder, what would that same AI do now?

  • • •

  He closes his IDEAS book and crosses the avenue to the park by the Mapocho River to walk to Plaza Italia. The river’s full with rain but even with all the new water joining its flow, it still looks dark brown and smells like shit. But Tomás walks by the river anyway because the bad smell makes the zombie protesters gather up on the other side of the avenue.

  He considers throwing the banner into the Mapocho but he doesn’t because there’s a beggar watching him from under a bench. He always feels judged by hobos because they can always take the moral high ground since they have it so bad owning fuck all. Someone should find them all social housing so that Tomás can walk free of judgement. But then he feels like a total cunt for thinking this way. And beggars can’t even throw anything into rivers because that’s the opposite of begging and he doesn’t want to insult him with his own waste. He gives him some money and the beggar just gives him a dry grunt.

  So he crosses the avenue again to get to the bank to ask about the inheritance cheque before heading to the market. It’s closed because of the protests. For now, he’ll have to just browse at Abdul’s shop and he hopes he will agree to put things to one side for him so he can come for them later.

  He gets to the market and heads straight through the open corridors and into Abdul’s shop. There’s no one at the counter but he can hear people talking inside so he walks in. Abdul’s sticking price tags onto old tape recorders on a shelf at the other end of the hut and Jesús is sitting by the ski poles with a shoebox on his lap.

  ‘Hey,’ Tomás says, and they both look at him.

  ‘Piss! You made me stick the price all wrong and now it’s going to leave a glue mark when it comes off,’ Abdul says.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tomás says, and Abdul sighs.

  ‘Hey, man, how’re you?’ Jesús asks.

  ‘OK, I guess. A bit annoyed with the protesting and all that.’

  ‘I hear you bro. But the zombie costumes are pretty damn awesome. You got to give them that,’ Jesús says with a smile.

  ‘Zombie costumes. Awesome? You’re all children,’ Abdul says, sticking more prices. ‘Children, fucking children, children,’ he repeats after every tag.

  Jesús shrugs and begins tidying things in the shoebox again.

  Tomás starts to look at the shelves and he takes out his list. Under a shelf with old Thunder Cats action figures there are two kitchens with the oven doors open and all the hobs full of dirt.

  ‘Interested in this kitchen? It’s German. It cooks all your meals in half the time,’ Abdul says with one hand on Tomás’s shoulder.

  ‘I don’t think that’s true.’

  ‘You calling me a liar?’ Abdul says, tightening his grip on his shoulder.

  ‘No, but I’m not—’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Abdul laughs, ‘you’re too easy to fuck with, you know that?’

  Tomás laughs but he finds it hard to smile.

  ‘So, you want the kitchen?’

  ‘I’m looking for something smaller, portable even.’

  ‘I have some electric ones that are good. They’re really good actually. Not German though.’

  ‘I need a gas one. It’s for a trip.’

  ‘Well, we only have electric.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Where are you going? If you go to Argentina I have things I want you to deliver for me.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’ll pay you, I’ll even give you a good price on our best kitchen. Come on, it’s German.’

  ‘I’m going to Antarctica.’

  ‘Are you stupid?’

  ‘No,’ Tomás says, frowning at Abdul and stepping away from him.

  ‘I’m just fucking with you,’ he says. ‘Antarctica sounds nice.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘But why the hell would you go there?’

  ‘Work, actually.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I have a list of things I need to buy.’

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘No, sorry, it’s a personal copy, I only have one.’

  ‘Alright. Jesús,’ Abdul says, waving at him, ‘help him find what he needs. I don’t have time for this. ‘Going to Antarctica,’ he says! Fucking children,’ Abdul laughs, shaking his head.

  Jesús walks up to Tomás. He’s wearing a Cannibal Corpse T-shirt where a guy in black and white makeup is holding a shovel and is burying a priest alive who’s crying inside a see-through coffin.

  ‘How’s the flat? Fixed your roof yet?’

  ‘Getting there.’

  ‘So, what are you looking for?’

  ‘Anything that could be of any use in the Antarctic. Rope, snow axes, snow goggles, a compass, anything.’

  ‘We do have an axe somewhere, actually. I’ll get it for you.’

  ‘That’d be great, thanks.’

  ‘But it’s just a regular axe.’

  ‘I’ll check it out anyway.’

  ‘It’s so cool that you’re going there. I would love to go. I imagine there are no people there, as if the world were already ending. Maybe you can write about it. We really need a new theory as to how and when it’s going to happen.’

  ‘If I do I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll go get the axe. I’ll be two minutes.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Tomás walks along the shelves and looks at the toys, the tools, the tiles, the kitchens and the pans and the postcards and photographs in old tins with tags for food that no longer exists. All these things once belonged to someone until they became a waste of space or something that people grew out of. But doesn’t the fact that Abdul sells them mean that no matter how useless and how uselessly old a thing can be, they can always be rescued, always be put to some use in some room other than those they were intended for, without ever needing to be new again? Yes, this is what Tomás wants, to see Eva again in a new setting, to make new plans and new mistakes, without ever losing what made them so good to each other w
hen they were still together. He knows their relationship never ended. When Eva said she knew she could do better he hadn’t understood. She hadn’t meant she could find someone better. She had tried to tell him that he, he could be better and that she knew it too. Things don’t just end. They’re put on hold, like the toys on the shelf, waiting to be wanted again and Tomás is sure he’s never wanted anything so much in his whole life.

  He pulls a pair of gardening gloves from a hook on the wall and tries them on. They feel warm enough and he keeps them on to buy them later. Lucas and the typewriter girl come into the hut laughing together. They both have black and white zombie face-paints but all smeared with the rain. She’s wearing a tight black dress that stops just above the knees and black tights and a pair of black Vans and she reminds him about being young, when the women he knew would wear dresses and sneakers and he would wear jeans and sneakers too, before it all went to hell and everyone started to look like their parents, who no longer care about how they dress (even when they think that they do) because really, there’s no fixing age and the bodies time creates.

  She’s carrying a flowerpot without any flowers and Lucas, wearing the same polo and khakis as always, is carrying one too. Tomás waves at him but Lucas doesn’t see him and leaves through a door next to the ski poles.

  ‘Hey again,’ she says to him, coming closer.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, ‘the protest?’

  ‘Yeah, until the police started hitting people,’ she says with a smile.

  ‘Fuckers, fuck Piñera,’ Tomás says.

  ‘Yeah… Hey, nice gloves.’

  ‘Thanks, nice flowerpot,’ he answers, instantly wishing he hadn’t said a thing.