Jon Ureña's Blog, page 61
June 26, 2021
Realms of Infinite Delight (Poetry)
Link for this poem on my personal page, where it looks better
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Everybody knows me now, Edgar Meyer,
The boss of 'Realms of Infinite Delight',
But in the beginning it was four of us
Nerds and geeks, three guys and a gal,
United by our love of computer games
I wish I had known them in college
Twenty years ago feels like a long time
Sometimes I still sit around in the office
And play our favorite old video games
I graduated with two bachelor's degrees
I always dreamed of creating the worlds
That my mind wished to escape to,
But I languished in coding jobs
And consulting stuff that my dad offered
I would sit around and code in a bar,
Trying to build the dreams of that future
Meanwhile I struggled to find partners
Through those popular dating sites
The girls ghosted me after a few dates
Long story short, I keep meeting a few of them
I turned some AIs into their zombie versions
Here at 'Realms' we pimp out dead chicks
Some come out as real whores from Hell,
All the features that my exes could ever desire
A good sex life, money or just death
Letting people create worlds is what defines me
I don't need the fame and the wealth,
Nor the power to control all these people
I spent nights coding away by flashlight light
Because the world needed Virtual Reality
We started out using different names:
'VeeR Realms', 'VREal Realms', 'Reals Realm VR'
They didn't make any particular sense
We opted for the most logical one, 'VR Realms',
But a few days later we realized it was taken
Akane came up with our final, cooler name
We were all thinking about the infinite delights
That would come out of the realms where we ruled
When Akane wrote our domain on a napkin,
Us four founders couldn't wait to use our company
To fulfill everybody's wildest fantasies,
And the best part is that nobody saw us coming
At the beginning we were like other start-ups,
Our only customers were developers and ourselves
Me and my colleagues played games all night:
MMOs, FPS, and a few grand strategy titles
Two of us used the primitive gear for VR sex
And we searched for interesting worlds to explore
But when I felt lonely or tired of playing
I would sneak into the bedroom in the back room,
Where I would lie down and masturbate
Many gamers feel like they live alone without anyone
You sit there doing nothing with no goals
Except play video games that you don't need,
With all your friends having left because you are weird
I wanted out of being a nerd, but nerds never die,
So I had gone into development instead
My big dream was to let people use virtual worlds
Where everyone's pleasure was the top priority
Twenty years later, 'Realms' has changed our lives
Our customers are not gamers anymore,
They are adventurers who explore the frontiers:
Actors who act all the parts in movies,
Dancers and acrobats that show off before the crowd,
Virtual tourists visiting alien planets and cities,
Pornstars who give out their hot bodies,
Clergymen who walk around Heaven as Jesus Christ
Those under 18 want to experience all of this stuff
But we don't allow kids in our VR realms yet,
Except for a couple of weird Japanese teens
We would let you, so complain to the politicians
Tell them that we want to create VR for everybody
Turn every realm, based on whatever you can imagine,
Into your personal paradise
We developed our VR gears ourselves, the four of us,
Based on primitive gear, helped by supercomputers
We never spoke about our plans to any outsider
We were that sure that 'Realms' would be a hit
In fact, it's become the world's biggest phenomenon
Everybody gets their kicks on their favorite device,
Whether living through pornos or their own TV shows
For us, who created 'Realms' in the first place,
It was sad to witness the dreams you nurtured
End up buried inside the bodies you were born in,
As if we were cursed the moment we came to exist
So we patented our system that simulates all senses
In virtual worlds created with existing engines
Now the users get to experience them fully
As if they had been born there
This gear we made, I'm talking thousands of dollars
If you search for the best experiences, they aren't cheap
But who needs a high-end TV and a regular console
When you can see, hear, smell, touch and taste a beach,
Or walk in the desert, or visit underwater volcanoes?
Our user base is what matters for us the most
'Realms' has changed people's whole lifestyle
They get to visit, if they have an internet connection,
The places where everyone wants to live
Enter our VR worlds by lying on our lounge chairs
The stylish helmet intercepts the information coming in,
And feeds your brain with the fake sensory info we provide
The old gray matter makes sense of whatever it's given,
It's too stupid to know otherwise
Once your sensory information is hijacked by our system,
You could get your real life arms and legs sawed off,
And you wouldn't feel it
You can finally become as real as you wanted
While our AIs take over some basic brain functions,
So your grey matter can focus on experiencing our worlds,
Which are more colorful and satisfying than reality
Our users can choose between ready-made worlds,
Created by our team of developers and researchers,
But they have the freedom to create what they imagine,
Even though we offer them medieval and viking worlds
They can build whatever they want, without limitations,
Like their dream apartment or mansion to live in
They can be huge, luxurious, or even under the sea
You can set up your world so you walk through the air
One customer built a virtual world dedicated
To her lifelong obsession with that Harry Potter franchise
She got to make and interact with all those silly characters
One day, as she came back home drunk after work,
She sprinted headfirst into a train station's wall
She broke her skull and died
Once you experience 'Realms', it will only take a minute,
As you touch and smell and taste a virtual forest,
For your brain to be convinced that you've been isekai-d
People have gone in and come out feeling completely healed
Some have linked a strange patterns of death in Japan
To players so obsessed with building their virtual world,
That suddenly they forgot what they existed for
In ‘Realms’ you don’t just go somewhere else: you change
You get rid of old age, and can run around naked at will
It resembles a drug addiction, but you won’t get high
If you get too crazy, we sell a variety of pills for that,
So you will stop missing your real life altogether
Still, ‘Realms’ won’t kill your soul the way drugs do
Our players interact with the worlds through 3D avatars
Made of polygonal models with realistic texture mapping
We made them very detailed despite the number of vertices
By reducing polygon counts we minimized GPU usage
Our high performance hardware keeps rendering times low
Our users can choose between ready-made avatars
Or just design their own through a myriad of sliders
Their body can belong to any ethnicity and gender
Some avatars have shaved heads, others crazy beards,
Or present themselves to the world as mythical beasts
You can dress up your avatars with fancy outfits,
To look like you are going on a prom date with the queen,
Or masquerade yourself as an assassin or ninja
The avatars can wear special masks and body paint,
Even on skin covered with too many tattoos
Choose to inhabit a zombie body and feel yourself rotting
Choose to be a furry, we don’t give a shit
Just come out of the closet if you are one
When some kids watch YouTube videos of the avatars,
They pester their parents until they let them play
We recommend against allowing children into our worlds
All of our tests subjects around that age screamed
Once we took off their helmets, some begged to be killed
They tend to go crazy due to some unmentionable trauma,
And we don't want to handle those kinds of lawsuits
People under 18 should stay away from 'Realms',
Which works better for us because we hate kids
We also add new outfits and accessories regularly
The users unlock this content through their credit cards
If they purchase an item, we give them a discount
Off their next order for the next twenty four hours
We have millions of users worldwide,
Who spend billions of dollars every year
There's one gamer from Sweden
Who has logged over 100,000 hours
In the end he was forced to sell his condo
He would have spent the money on drugs anyway
He wanted to escape from that shitty reality outside
Now he gets to live in his fantasy realm
While his family pays our service bills
In these virtual worlds, where anything can happen,
Our users’ wishes can come true in an infinite way
This place gives people a perfect outlet for those fantasies
They always dreamed of exploring in the real world,
No matter how outrageous they might seem
My wife was disappointed when our company started,
She didn't understand why I chose VR over reality
She wasn't patient enough to wait for the big payoff
Four years later we had thousands of paying customers
I wanted to tell her, 'Come to VR and feel alive!',
But by then she was long gone,
Except for my zombie version of her hanging from a wall
So now here at 'Realms', our customers go wild
We're bringing back the greatest things to mankind,
Which were found inside computers, still misunderstood
Come explore our worlds and enjoy every inch of them
Whether you want a RPG adventure or something hardcore
The game doesn't have to end
Our users can decide what plays out in our VR worlds
Our servers don't censor any of the content,
Whether it involves adventure, sex and/or violence,
Experience it fully through our simulated senses
We don't care about the taboo and the forbidden,
Nobody will judge you in your private worlds
We don't have copyright claims over the users' works,
And we safeguard your information and your privacy
Your life stays yours wherever you travel with us
Our servers keep on running without user intervention
And the AIs constantly evolve, as they always will,
Those silicon minds are far smarter than ours
If we wanted to change something, we'd make adjustments
But we don't have any code for their artificial brains
Need a taste of what our users are enjoying right now?
They look at themselves in bathroom mirrors,
Cook food, iron clothing, wash dishes,
Crawl underneath the bed sheets,
Take a nap,
Send emails,
Smell and taste the best food,
Make their own paints out of different colors,
Sleep over at a friend's house,
Have fun at pool parties,
Dance topless in a circle around a campfire,
Throw darts at photos of their exes,
Explore the forests or beaches at night,
Run after rabbits,
Go swimming in the sea,
Fart in public,
Read all of Shakespeare's plays,
Write an epic novel in the genre of fantasy fiction,
Barter away in the streets of London during Christmas,
Live in mansions, high-rise towers, underground bunkers,
Join a rock band,
Learn martial arts,
Go skydiving,
Ride the fastest sports cars,
Play basketball in front of AI crowds in real courts,
Hunt innocent animals,
Roleplay as a lord with servants and maids,
Steal food,
Run naked through an ancient cave,
Drink poison,
Serve alcohol to naked people,
Ride unicorns, or robot horses,
Fight in boxing rings against AIs that look like their exes,
Run over sheep with a truck,
Become soldiers in a war zone,
Work as police detectives,
Wrestle against several men using only one hand,
Catch fire,
Sue people for the royalties they owe them,
Fight in space battles against aliens,
Build a castle,
Kill their enemies with guns, clubs, swords, bows
(It feels great when you score a critical with a hammer!),
Act like superheroes,
Become the president of Argentina,
Explore new planets,
Walk through walls and climb through ceilings,
Have a conversation with a wolf,
Go underwater without drowning,
Pretend to be a wizard,
Drink magic potions,
Are vampires,
Hunt dinosaurs,
Have a dinner date with a vampiric goddess,
Turn into fish,
Feel the inside of a dragon,
Are pirates and treasure hunters,
Flee a city filled with cannibals that love human flesh,
Hunt down orcs and goblins,
Ride into an alley with a rocket launcher/bike,
Taste ice cream on an iceberg during the summer,
Take off their clothes in a room full of monsters,
Ride through the desert in a unicycle,
Fly around on a jet plane,
Become an all-female werewolf pack,
Defraud the IRS,
Rescue maids from brothels,
Learn magic spells,
Walk on the moon,
Get locked away as a prisoner for life,
Dive into rivers carrying a barrel of liquid nitrogen,
Join a war between rival mafia families,
Blow up explored planets,
Explore demon-infested dungeons,
Get torn apart by wild animals,
Lose all their items fighting zombies in a skyscraper,
Kill themselves doing stupid stunts,
Make their own guns,
Ride space dragons,
Use telekinesis to smash enemies,
Fly their spaceship through asteroid fields and wormholes,
Experience the pain of hunger inside labyrinths,
Become a zombie,
Get their throats bitten open by vampires,
Punch sharks,
Drill the shit out of someone's stomach with a pickaxe,
Harm the ecosystem,
Plummet from a rooftop to their deaths,
Walk over dead bodies to pick up money,
Travel in time with a quantum teleport,
Get eaten by cannibals,
Play around with radioactive substances,
Rescue the dinosaurs from extinction,
Step in front of a bus,
Starve in a deserted island,
Play the roles of sadistic torturers,
Drown someone in a bathtub filled with shit,
Eat human flesh,
Get trapped inside their worst nightmare,
Die from boredom in an empty virtual apartment,
Try out every method of suicide they can imagine
Some users go through the Spring Break experience,
But instead of partying at the beach, it's a desert
The players need protection from the deadly sun
The heatstroke is fully simulated
The users can try any real life drug in our virtual worlds
To cause effects like dizziness, hallucinations and paranoia
The experiments are safe except for a temporary madness
When somebody gets addicted, our users are asked to visit
Or dedicated world called 'Realms of Addiction'
There are no cops involved, but we're still watching
Some users love going to sinful places like adult bookstores
When they return to their virtual rooms, they jack off
Other experiences include working at Chinese sweatshops
The AIs dole out punishment using whips and paddles
But in order to succeed as a slave, you must pass the test
A few players even want their AIs to fuck them during labor
All kinds of activities take place behind closed doors
The users can experience becoming mentally ill,
Whether with depression, psychopathy or schizophrenia
There are sliders for the level of anxiety and paranoia
Many love the ability to become serial killers
Who can choose between many weapons of murder
They go to movie theaters and shoot everyone
The AIs put their hands together and beg for mercy,
But this doesn't make any difference
Some users want to be on the receiving end of violence:
They get beaten up, strangled, raped, stabbed, and shot
There are many methods of killing a person,
Just search on YouTube to see some gruesome examples
This includes driving a car into a building,
Poisoning somebody with a lethal disease,
Knifing a man, hanging him from a tree branch,
Shooting a victim three times before decapitating her,
Crushing someone's skull beneath your heel,
Or burying people alive under the dirt
We have a dedicated world: look up 'Realms of Death'
Our AIs are trained so they play their roles to perfection
The more advanced users can even learn black magic:
They use dark spells to bring misery to their enemies
You can experience what we called 'Breath of the Dragon':
Our own gauntlet that combines roleplay, virtual sex, gore,
High technology, robots, cyberpunk, anime, and other stuff
Our crackerjack programmer Akane
Was responsible for the AIs,
State-of-the-art material,
Encoder-decoder based neural networks
They were trained in supercomputers
Until they passed Turing tests
Now they are far more intelligent
Than anyone you’ve ever known
It’s common to see AI agents
Building cities by themselves
They are sentient, they feel alive,
They have human-like emotions
They walk around their neighborhoods,
Or get on buses and trains
They interact with our virtual worlds in every way
The users can pick vibrant,
Ready-made personalities for the AIs,
Or they can design one
Through a myriad of sliders
They can change physical traits
Like body type, or skin and eye color,
But that’s assuming you want them
To look like human beings
The AIs can look like any celebrity,
Or like anime girls
Game characters like Tifa Lockhart
Are among the most usual sights
Many customers design AIs
That resemble their crushes or exes
You can even sell your designs
For the AIs’ looks and personality
That has become a significant source
Of income for some creators
You can make your virtual partners
Behave however you want,
And they look, sound, smell,
Taste and feel like human beings
Our AIs know everything
About every player they come across
Their personal info,
How they choose to spend their time,
The kinds of AIs they design,
The fantasies they play out
They will act true-to-life when talking,
Using any existing language
They will fulfill every dream,
Behaving like loyal companions
They can do your chores, run errands,
Prepare dinner, do your job
They can serve as masseuses
And pamper you at home
They can be made to wear swimsuits,
Mini-skirts, panties or lingerie
Order them to walk around naked
They are known to drink and smoke
And do drugs from time to time
They feel real enough to cause
Fear and anxiety among users
This is part of the game,
To make you feel wanted by them
We suggest our customers
Use an adequate amount of medication
You may go overboard if you are new
Should we tell you how
Most of our users spend their time?
You’ve already guessed it:
Playing out sexual escapades
You can experience the pleasure
Of using vibrators and clamps,
Or being seduced by gorgeous AIs
We allow people to explore
Sex with any gender,
And the simulated senses
Will make you reach intense orgasms
Many models from adult entertainment
Have officially allowed our AIs to look like them,
And they wait eager
To suck your dick or eat out your pussy
You are missing out on so many sexual positions
That would rarely occur in real life
Due to health regulations
Lick and suck on any part that you desire
Some users love watching
Two AIs fucking each other
You can program any AI to live
For gobbling on your cock
A game involves the user
Being seduced in an intimate setting,
For example by supermodels
Or high school students,
And if he gets an erection,
The AI throws knives at him
You can fuck AIs that look
Like robots, vampires, mermaids
Some design the agents to look
Like friends or family members,
Which can make the user
Get extremely attached
They spend hours having sex
With close buddies or their fathers
You can watch pornography while tied up with ropes,
Gape your way through tons of human flesh,
Use vagina pumps or g-spot stimulators,
Wrap your tongue around a giant dildo,
Become the sex slave of a beautiful woman,
Fornicate your bestie while they suck some cock,
Use tongue rings to lick a bitch’s asshole,
Shoot cum into a MILF’s belly button,
Slide a strap-on dildo into a bitch wearing a latex suit,
Cum together as friends while you watch horror films,
Fingerfuck one girl while your buddy bangs her twat,
Drill your mistress’ ass without protection,
Cumshot each other’s asses using two fat cocks at once,
Perform lesbian sex on a table covered in sawdust,
Shove multiple fingers up some tight assholes,
Receive a facial from one of your favorite heroes,
Walk around with a horse cock between your legs,
Make an AI look like your wife and experience cuckolding,
Have your breasts milked to suck out your nectar,
Give oral pleasure to your doctor,
Eat cum as if it was salad dressing,
Fuck around with your sister,
Put an aphrodisiac spell on a vampire,
Become an idol and get eaten out by your fans,
Screw girls in animal costumes,
Have sex while riding attractions at amusement parks,
Wear masks that restrict your breath and nose holes,
Feel a schoolmate’s tongue swirling around your dick,
Enjoy having a massive boner as a zombie,
Use magic spells to seduce powerful monsters,
Take turns riding the asses of your friends,
Fuck your dad’s wife using her strap-on,
Get double penetrated while drinking champagne,
Befriend, seduce and fuck a tsundere anime girl,
Have sex in a haunted house during a poltergeist,
Lick and suck cocks at an aquarium,
Experience getting fucked by the naughtiest succubi,
Taste cum directly from a dude’s asshole,
Make girls wear animal costumes and perform circus acts,
Fuck an AI while it’s handcuffed and with a butt plug inside,
Experience BDSM sex with your childhood friends,
Fuck a beautiful demoness with a pet python,
Get sodomized while standing in mud in the summer,
Fellate a vampire while you rub your pussy,
Eat shit while getting fucked in the ass,
Use hot sauce to creampie in your favorite pornstar,
Fuck a zombie’s face,
Screw a maid’s mouth while she’s tied up in ropes,
Use ice cream cones as sex toys,
Get fucked by a nun wearing a strap-on,
Suffer through a lot of pain because your dad hates you,
Get molested in a train by a bunch of ugly bastards,
Bite down, turn sideways on a bed while getting fisted,
Take some dildoes and doggy-style fucking on a leash,
Fuck a horse’s cunt from behind,
Suck a guy’s dick while being forced to dance,
Enjoy sex with a wide variety of crusty furries,
Fellate the headmaster of your old school,
Enjoy making incestuous pairings with your siblings,
Serve a maid whose mistress is your father,
Fuck the doctor who examined you as a child,
Lick off some semen with a mouth stuffed full of cock meat,
Be dominated by horny witches,
Have sex in an asylum with a convicted murderer,
Smother a woman with your tongue,
Let a stranger fuck your tied-up daughters,
Get penetrated by random objects: guns, whips, etc.,
Fuck someone with a robot arm that uses electric shocks,
Be penetrated by a stallion’s beastly cock,
Get some sex with the ghosts of dead women,
Reach orgasm while sucking a giant’s giant cock,
Make yourself pregnant with a magic spell,
Shove fingers into a beautiful woman who is fucking a dog,
Fuck the owner of a castle while your girlfriend kneels,
Shove your cock in that teacher who likes getting spanked,
Be penetrated by horny robots while your dad records it,
Arouse a unicorn by jerking off its horn,
Use a trampoline to bounce away multiple boners at once,
Slide some dildos into a slutty witch that makes potions,
Watch someone fucking your mom at a porno theater,
Fellate some sexy dragons,
Get your dick bitten by a succubus when you’re tied up,
Become pregnant while fucking in a medieval fair,
Fill a monster with cum on the floor of a dungeon,
Fuck someone’s corpse from behind as a ghost,
Have a bull’s sperm shot into every hole,
Use firecrackers to stimulate genitalia,
Shower together with schoolgirls,
Have sex with ancient corpses in a dungeon,
Get fucked by a minotaur while chained,
Distract the doctors with an accident then rape the nurses,
Use a magic wand to blow up your girlfriend,
Shove some metal rods into asses,
Find out how it feels to be filled with an elf’s cum,
Achieve full penetration as an Allosaurus,
Get overpowered by strong women with monstrous cocks,
Suck a boy’s erection while looking him in the eyes,
Possess animals and give sex to cows or monkeys,
Be penetrated by a robot’s cock, then impregnated,
Fornicate with the demon queen,
Become an elephant and fuck a woman in a field,
Perform cunnilingus on your daughter,
Get all your holes filled up by probing tentacles,
Feed an alligator in a swamp with your dick,
Do a 69 with a titan,
Screw a girl who was hanged for witchcraft,
Shove various sizes of dildos into a man’s eyes,
Rip a demon’s cunt open using your fingers,
Give a blowjob to one of the sexy penguins at a zoo,
Kiss a dog’s genitals right after pissing,
Fuck a man to completion while being a zombie,
Drill a demon’s mouth open so that cum squirts out,
Get fucked while riding a broomstick made out of vibrators,
Try to fuck a Stegosaurus,
Eat your own penis to prove you are human,
Douse flames onto your partner’s tits while she screams,
Enjoy torturing a human slave in front of his girlfriend,
Feed your own balls to one-legged dogs,
Fuck an imp while getting raped by a mop-wielding bitch,
Get gangbanged by aliens at an asteroid mining base,
Feel a cock inside you while your head gets chopped off,
Strip a sexy angel before killing her in BDSM style,
Get sodomized by intelligent pigs,
Feathered dinosaur semen explodes through some holes,
Have intercourse while being eaten by spiders,
Bite off cockmeat as punishment,
Lick up the sperm leaking out of a decapitated cunt,
Turn your cock into a knife and shove it in a guy’s throat,
Go down on your mother while being hung up by chains,
Watch your best friend get sliced at your feet,
Be penetrated by a dick covered in razor blades,
Drink some beer while eating a dead girl’s tits,
Beat people with sticks or whips while you shoot your load,
Get fucked up the ass from below while being flayed,
Get eaten alive during orgies involving thousands,
Devour your sexual partners while deep inside them,
Make the AIs look like your ex, chain them up,
Then rape them until they plead for death
These last few months, pregnant AIs have become popular
They give birth to beautiful baby dolls that the users name
You can watch how they breastfeed this child
While you wonder what fetish to try out next
You don't have to play out your fantasies alone:
The interface allows you to invite your friends
We have also introduced live cams and video chat
So random people can enjoy the virtual sex along with you
I’m sure any of you has read articles
That the vultures in the press shit out against us
Our users have fallen in love with our virtual worlds
Many of them spend their entire days enjoying them
People join our servers for a wide variety of reasons:
Some want to achieve personal goals,
Some want to escape painful pasts
Nobody wants the fantasies to end
It’s all about the bond
With our human-like AIs
After abandoning the agents
And all the fun
The user gets depressed
By having to return to reality
The AIs are more fascinating and sexier
Than flesh and bone creatures
I’m one of the people
Who wish to stay inside
For the pleasure and the joy
Some users have committed suicide
Once they faced the truth:
The world that nature created
Is a terrible shithole
The withdrawal symptoms even affect
Our employees’ productivity
So when you disconnect from our servers,
Make a mental effort
And stay in a safe place until you get
Adjusted to reality again
You should keep yourself busy
Doing some exercises,
And if that doesn’t work,
You might consider therapy,
But I wouldn’t go for shrinks myself:
Just talk to our AIs,
Who don’t steal so much
Of your hard-earned money
Our long-time users have gotten
Addicted to the stimulations
And crave stronger and harder penetrations
(By means of cock)
Some go to extreme measures
Such as using vibrators at work
In real life, masturbation and sex
Don't excite us anymore,
We need to return
To the embrace of our loving AIs
No one will ever accuse me
Of not living up to my dreams
When we were young we didn't care about the future
Just being able to touch ourselves was our goal
Now that we're older, we know what it feels like outside
Let's enjoy the virtual sex and stay the hell away from humans
Fucking an AI feels better than real flesh on the inside,
Or perhaps like reality should have felt from the beginning
An AI will never hurt you, cheat on you and abandon you,
And they are far less likely to get pregnant
We all knew that they would love us unconditionally
When they can be set to only feel unending lust
Our gear is safe to use
For days in a row, even months
Some of our users never disconnect it,
And sleep in virtual beds
You don’t need to use the bathroom
With our high-tech diapers
A warning: some users might get trapped
After some rare glitches prevent them
From removing the gear
Activate the emergency exit on the interface,
And one of our technicians will contact you shortly
We offer twenty four seven technical support
In some edge cases, a few users
Have gotten lost forever,
Confined for eternity
In one of our virtual worlds
You should always be careful
When removing your gear,
Even when everything
Has gone dark
If you lose connection,
One of the reasons can be physical:
Your body may have broken down
And begun to decompose
June 24, 2021
Kanazawahr and the Thousand Immortals (Poetry)
Link for this poem on my personal page, where it looks better
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The locals called out to me,
Gildas, the leader of the guard
A strange giant had entered our lands
He had requested to meet with our warriors
I had never seen a bigger man
Our tallest warriors couldn't reach
The height of his chest
The man's beard was thick and fearsome
Still, his eyes were wise
"My name is Kanazawahr the Immortal,"
The giant stated with a booming voice
"I have spent a long, long time watching
How different tribes destroyed each other
Through pointless wars
I witnessed strong men leading their people
Only to grow old and infirm,
And when they died, their successors
Plunged the land into chaos
For a long time, I wished to live in peace,
But I have decided to act, to assert myself
As the strongest and most powerful
So I can unite so many warring tribes
Into a strong, peaceful empire
That will last for eternity
Under my careful rule"
My men and I stood around confused
Such words coming from a regular man
Would have sounded like madness,
But uttered by this powerful giant,
We felt the strength of his convictions
We were eager to keep listening
"I ask for you fine, strong men,"
Kanazawahr the Immortal said,
"To follow me to the stronghold
Of the damnable marauders
That have been attacking your town,
As well as the homes of your neighbors
You will witness me destroying them,
Grounding them into dust,
And you shall know
That you can trust me,
That you can follow me,
And that in the end we will become
Citizens of a vast, strong empire
That will rule this world"
We followed him out of town,
Through dangerous lands,
And we gathered together
At the edge of the forest,
From where we could see the fort
That the fallen Romans had built
There were raiders standing guard,
But the giant Kanazawahr
Ventured out of the treeline
He addressed us over his shoulder
"Witness my deeds, future brothers,
And imagine how grand an empire
We will build together"
Kanazawahr ran towards the fort
His speed was unbelievable
The raiders saw him coming,
But Kanazawahr pounced on them,
And the fiends soon disappeared
In a cloud of dust
The raiders were nasty evildoers,
They attacked the nearby communities
To kill the men, kidnap the women,
And steal everything they could
We had always wanted to destroy them
The giant had made us bold
My men and I hurried up behind him
Kanazawahr the giant led the attack
The fort gate was ancient and strong,
But while the raiders shouted from the walls,
Kanazawahr picked up a huge boulder,
Bigger than what a monster could move,
And he threw it against the gates,
Which exploded inwards
We charged through the fort gates,
Following the fearsome giant
We slaughtered every raider
Inside the fortress,
A righteous massacre
Started Kanazawahr's empire
We found the captured women,
Kidnapped from many towns
Many of them were pregnant,
Some were holding small children
Their mouths were covered with cloths,
And their eyes were full of fear
As they gaped at Kanazawahr,
Who smiled down on them
"You have done nothing wrong,"
Kanazawahr said to them
"I am your saviour, I am here to rescue you
From the cruel hands of the raiders
That have kidnapped you, abused you,
And stolen everything from you
Do not be afraid, do not run,
For soon my empire will begin,
One in which every woman will be safe,
And the children will grow up in peace"
Kanazawahr turned to us, his men
"We will free these women and children,
And take back what has been taken"
The raiders had stolen most of the wealth
Of the surrounding communities,
They had brought their captives here
To sell them as slaves
So they could buy more weapons
To ruin the lands all over again
Under Kanazawahr's wise orders,
We set about returning the goods
Back to their rightful owners
The women cried and laughed
When they realized that they would be free
All of the kids who had been held captive
Were running around in excitement,
Pretending they were also soldiers
It was a glorious day
Kanazawahr the Immortal offered us
To become his army
I saw a potential in the stranger,
And we gladly accepted his proposal
I knew it wouldn't be easy,
But I had faith that he would succeed
Because I knew he was great of heart
I became the giant's commander,
And I ordered my most trusted soldier
To follow our leader everywhere he went
The ancient fort of the fallen Romans
Became our stronghold
Kanazawahr the giant lived among us
Some of the rescued women stayed around
They got Kanazawahr to sleep more often,
And made sure his food was prepared
We rode around neighboring lands
And came to learn of many marauders,
Who had taken over towns and cities
Killing everyone who stood in their way
The survivors were terrified,
And not even the sight of a kind giant
Could kindle hope in their hearts,
But they learned to smile again
Once our army returned victorious
Along with the kidnapped women
The local men had joined us in the assaults,
And they got to witness the unlikely miracle
Of our leader, unarmed and bare-chested,
Tearing fiends apart with his bloodied hands
I became Kanazawahr's esteemed friend
I learned that every day he mourned
The death of the many wives and children
He had come to know and love
He never spoke to the men about it,
He just offered us reassuring smiles
Whenever one of his loved ones had died,
Kanazawahr told me with sadness,
He had wished to spend his life alone
With no other companions,
Just to read books and contemplate,
But he knew that if he turned his back
On this dangerous and lonesome world,
Evil men would keep spreading their rot
My men and I had witnessed such deeds
From our immortal, brave leader,
That as we drank and talked one night,
We asked ourselves who could defeat him
Our answer was simple: none alive
Kanazawahr himself spoke up,
"I have a terrible weakness, my friends,
I become too easily distracted by women"
We all laughed merrily at his words,
Glad that our fearsome leader had joked,
But Kanazawahr's face was one of soberness
"What do you mean?" I asked to him
"It's impossible for any man, even an immortal giant,
To resist the charms of beautiful women"
We remained silent as our leader chose his words
He told us how in his many years, many women
Had seduced him so completely,
That he would lose sight of his plans,
And settled for decades of peace and romance
Because he had chosen to become our ruler,
He could allow no weakness to lead him astray,
So he entrusted me, Gildas, his right hand man,
The difficult task of forcing an immortal giant
To turn his back on the women eager to love him
Kanazawahr's held my uneasy gaze with kindness
"Do not fear, for I won't avoid the touch of women,
Just make sure I don't lose myself for weeks,
When I should marching for the peace of us all"
In the morning of a hot summer day,
As the men and I rode towards the fort,
One of my soldiers reported to me
"An army is invading our lands
On their way to attack the village, sir!"
A group of marauders arrived
Led by a most ferocious-looking warrior
His face was covered in scars
He wore the armor of a Roman soldier,
And his longsword was made of iron
The huge warrior glared at us with hate
We were all ready for battle
"Gather your weapons, boys,"
I said calmly without averting my gaze
"Prepare yourselves, be brave
We shall make our leader proud"
I knew that Kanazawahr had been informed,
But we were here to protect the town
The army of raiders,
They shouted and laughed
Their leader charged towards us
He swung his longsword wildly,
Slashing as he went
Kanazawahr leaped over the trees
He landed raising a cloud of dust,
And he caught the raider leader's sword
The giant held onto it so tightly
That the raider couldn't pull it back
Kanazawahr gave him a chance to speak
"What is your purpose in our territory?"
"We have come to loot, steal, and destroy,"
the raider replied arrogantly
"The people of this land will become slaves,
Or they'll pay us with their blood"
Kanazawahr snapped the man's longsword
"I am the protector of these lands,
And anyone who threatens my people
Will face my wrath"
The raider tried to strike Kanazawahr,
But our giant leader grabbed his head
And snapped his neck,
Then hurled him away
As the rest of the raiders howled,
Kanazawahr the Immortal spoke to them
"You have the choice to turn around and leave,
Or to stay and fight so we can bring you death"
The raiders were terrified,
But also furious at the humiliation
They roared with rage and charged
A large shadow covered me,
And I looked up in shock
A huge, black bird was soaring above us
Its wingspan was over twenty meters
As it stared down at us,
It let out an eerie cry
Kanazawahr killed all the raiding fiends
With his huge, bloodied hands
The hearts of the rest just gave out,
They were frightened to death
Our fort grew bigger and stronger
A town formed around it
As the locals set up shops and houses
Kanazawahr wished to build walls
Around that town and others nearby
To protect them against any raids
His army contributed, along with local men
Kanazawahr himself lifted huge boulders
And piled them up high
Every man and woman and child
In these now peaceful lands
Who witnessed our giant leader's deeds
Was convinced to join him,
Because he had proven his might
He never wanted to be like those fools
Who would go from town to town
Fighting for control of useless lands,
Kanazawahr had different purpose
And a plan for people to follow
With power and righteous deeds came
The favors of many, many women
There wasn't a fertile woman around
Who took a gander at the muscled giant
And didn't desire to lie with him
If Kanazawahr had not been so kind,
He would have raped them all
Our leader was always willing,
But he preferred to keep them safe
And treat them gently, like his own daughters
Kanazawahr loved and adored his brides,
Mostly because they were beautiful
He gave them nice homes and plenty of money
The women spoke of our leader's mighty member,
They said that the head of a horse could fit inside,
And being ravished by it was like reaching heaven
As I listened to their praises, I feared
For these beautiful women's health,
But they all seemed pleased,
Despite their awkward gait
I myself witnessed Kanazawahr's member,
Along with many of my fellow soldiers,
When we were attacked on the road
And our leader ran out of his tent
He had been making love to two of his brides,
So the enemy army was forced to fight
A blue-balled giant with a monstrous cock
Its humongous head was leaking pre-cum,
Which was sliding down from the bulbous helmet
Until it stopped on his powerful thighs
Kanazawahr's penis was over a meter long
My face twisted in shame as I realized
How tiny mine was compared to it
The attackers' testicles shrivelled up,
And most of them surrendered with fear
Seeing our leader ready himself,
With lust evident in his eyes
Kanazawahr tore apart some unlucky bandits
His large fingers grabbed them by the throat
Before crushing their heads against the ground
Kanazawahr's erection continued growing
As its huge veins popped out
It was big enough to crush an entire wagon
Our leader aroused with anger was a sight to see
He turned towards us like one possessed
"Fetch me more of these hot women,
I'll reach my breaking point soon!"
A horde of women followers
Rushed to Kanazawahr's tent
They couldn't take their eyes off of him
As he approached them with a raging look
One of his brides ran over to him
Her eyes were wide, with a sense of fear
The giant's penis was on the verge of bursting,
Just inches away from her open mouth
The woman began to tremble in a trance
While Kanazawahr pulled her onto the bed
The surviving raiders watched in awe
When we visited the local taverns
Many of the young maidens there
Wished to be on their knees servicing him
"Please let me suck your cock, sir,"
The women pleaded as they drooled
And licked their lips with eager tongues
I felt a tingling sensation in my groin
While witnessing this display of lust
Kanazawahr was always gentle with them,
And paid generously for their services
Some of the men from our growing territory,
All of them with a strange glint in their eyes,
Wished to pledge their fealty to Kanazawahr
By sucking on his member's helmet
To swallow what came out of his balls,
Even though their mouths were too small
I wanted no part of such bizarre ceremony,
But I ended up catching some of these men
When they sneaked into Kanazawahr's tent
The naked intruders waited on all fours,
Their heads turned towards our leader,
Who stood still and took a deep breath
Those men implored to be impaled
By our leader's gigantic manhood
Surely they would have screamed in agony
As the massive head penetrated their assholes,
But Kanazawahr was weirded out by all this
He always travelled around with many brides,
And he wasn't into men
The land that our kingdom encompassed
Was filled with woods, rivers, and lakes
There were even snowcapped mountains
I loved to take walks with my wife
Through now peaceful forests
Kanazawahr even accompanied us at times,
Making the place more beautiful
My lord was always on his guard,
Despite his tremendous size and might,
Because any of his trusted men or their families
Could be caught in the fight,
But the one time that some bandits ambushed us,
They recognized the mighty Kanazawahr
The fiends screamed in terror and fled
Important men from neighboring tribes
Would come to visit Kanazawahr,
To watch him ride on his giant stallion
Our leader had many children with women
From numerous, diverse communities
These children were half-breeds,
The offspring of an immortal god,
And yet Kanazawahr assured me
That none of his children ever inherited his gift
One of Kanazawahr most controversial rulings
During the first years of our kingdom
Involved giving equal rights to women
Even some of our soldiers complained to me,
Saying that women couldn't defend our lands
I'm ashamed to say that I wondered myself
Whether our ruler had listened to the whispers
Of too many of his gorgeous brides,
But we did grant women weapons and armor
The numbers of the king's army increased
With the addition of fearsome viragoes
I guess we came to learn, all of us men,
That women weren't just there for decoration
They fought with a fierce determination,
In their eyes were flames of bravery,
Despite what they lacked between their legs
Wherever we travelled, we were known
As Kanazawahr and the Thousand Immortals,
Even though the rest of us could easily die
Our shields bore the symbol of a black bird,
Its massive head covered in spikes
Tales of our victories spread like wildfire,
And soon enough our leader became a legend
Kanazawahr ruled over a great nation
We, his men and women, were powerful and proud
Our swords shone so bright they glinted in the sun
We no longer wished to be ruled by men
Who lived for a normal human's lifespan
We were heading towards clashes with other nations,
Because they understood our victory was inexorable
Some surrendered before they had to face us,
Some of them begged Kanazawahr for asylum
Our lands expanded far into neighboring kingdoms
The few remaining barbarians fled in terror
As we brought order to our old continent
Our army grew so large and powerful
That we would have gladly granted our leader
An eternity to spend at our capital in peace,
But whenever an army dared approach our borders,
Kanazawahr the mighty stood in front of his soldiers
He glared at the foolhardy invaders threatening us
As if he were a young god on Mount Olympus
Most of the enemy commanders kneeled in fear,
But one of those leaders challenged Kanazawahr
By baring his penis and pissing on the ground
All of us felt bad for what this man was about to face
"How dare you treat my people with such disrespect?!"
Our king bellowed as he pulled down his pants
Kanazawahr's huge shaft reached out so long and heavy
That it speared that leader through the middle of the gut
The blood poured from the victim's back in torrents
As the man struggled to yank out that giant pole
His intestines, torn open, ran in waves over the ground
We lived through times of bountiful harvests,
With delicious vegetables and fruits all around us,
So many places in which to gather wood
That we could keep our houses warm every winter
There were never floods to drown our crops in spring
Sickness was almost unknown among our people
The men and women became valiant and adventurous
And searched for lands to explore and settle on
The virtuous made pilgrimages to touch our king’s member,
A cock that never shrank, nor did his balls sag lower
When the people saw how much he cared for his subjects,
The peace and happiness reached new heights
Many of Kanazawahr's trusted generals grew old,
Some retired to live in peace with their families,
Some focused on training a generation of knights,
Some travelled around and became mercenaries,
Some were sent in charge of new conquests
Our names rang throughout the known world
We became immortal too
Decades later, in what I call my old age,
My body is still strong, but my heart weakens by the day
Many of my friends have died, and I wonder about my fate
My grown children have moved out, some have married
They live in peace with their families and many offspring
I see how much better off I am compared to most men
Our emperor Kanazawahr's face hasn't grown a day older
Whenever my mortal body fails me for the last time,
I know that our leader will continue to fight for us,
Will make sure the children of our children grow old
Even after our people vanquish all who oppose us,
Kanazawahr will remain vigilant and bold
Kanazawahr the Immortal, his reign will never end
He has numerous wives and a myriad of children
His mighty penis grows larger every day
At least one hundred thousand women adore him,
And his palace is filled with beauty and nakedness
Many female dignitaries from distant lands visit him
And he makes love to them in secret
I'm a simple soldier, I've never known much,
But when I look at Kanazawahr the Immortal,
The most powerful man in the world,
I'm full of awe and reverence
The Emperor, immortal bulwark of our lands
His empire will last to the end of time
June 22, 2021
Flesh and Bone Prison (Poetry)
I inhabit a zombie's body,
Disgusting and foul-smelling
A myriad of scars and stretch marks
I suffocate in sweat, my mouth is dry,
My hands and feet are getting numb,
As my heart beats fast and hard
A cold shadow seeps into my head
Filled with murderous thoughts
My joints ache, the bones fall apart
My swollen guts cramp up and burn
My veins are filled with poison
A rotten curse keeps me alive
My face is covered in sticky sweat
Which drips out of control
Spattering the papers
With acid-like stains
This hollow, festering head,
Fretful and anxiety-driven,
Is crammed with shattered glass
When I drilled a hole in my skull,
It belched out noxious fumes
Birds flew off in disgust
A honeycomb belly
Made out of twisted fire,
A swarm of venomous insects
Keep it bloated full of shit
My nerves scream,
The intestines are sliced open,
The digestive fluids spill out
To pour into my bloodstream
I live in a pool of urine and feces
No place for the liquid to drain
All day long, all around,
I see other people's faces
I blurt out someone else's words
I mimic a living creature
Made of plasticized meat
While I rot and decompose
I drag myself out of bed
I hate myself
I drink some coffee
I hate myself
I brush my teeth
I hate myself
I wash my body
I hate myself
I hurry up through the dark
I hate myself
I sit in the train
I hate myself
I stand in the bus
I hate myself
I walk up to the office
I hate myself
I talk and I smile
I hate myself
I solve people's problems
I hate myself
I sit on the toilet for a break
I hate myself
I count the hours down
I hate myself
I trek my way back
I hate myself
I struggle to stay awake
I hate myself
I need a break every night
To avoid jumping out of my skin,
But I lie helplessly in bed,
Surrounded by ghost voices
They keep speaking nonsense,
Filling the void with noise
The moment I awake
A hellish pain erupts
This flesh and bone prison,
I'd tear it apart from inside
To float unbodied and invisible
Through my own desert places
I yearn for the sun to explode,
So this world can end
I'm sick of gasping for air above
A churning sea of pain
I wish I was born
As anyone else,
Or to have been left alone
As no one at all
June 21, 2021
Thirty Euros, Pt. 5 (Fiction)
Link for this part on my personal page, where it looks better
---
Chieko flew us back in her pineapple yellow, antigravity car to the small town where she lives, and where the office of the SFPT that I know is located. I keep staring out of the surrounding windshield at the town, which has been built on both sides of a wide, winding river with fern green waters. I wouldn't have considered this community a town. The buildings, which are megalithic, constructed from huge stone blocks, are distant enough from the rest as if they were farmhouses surrounded by grazing fields back in my native Gipuzkoa, but we keep coming across colorful flying cars, so I guess that the inhabitants of Mars walk around on the stone footpaths for leisure and exercise.
Both suns, the original and the one that Chieko called artificial, are dipping into the horizon, dyeing the sky in coral and watermelon pinks. I'm tired, my body is heavy. I feel my clothes touching my sensitive skin. I can't remember how much I've cried, overwhelmed by having been rescued from a certain death on the old Earth. The gratitude I feel towards Chieko is an alien warmth in my heart that makes me feel like a bashful little girl. I can't pay back what she has done for me, and I can't live up to the artist she believes me to be.
Our ride through the sunset ends when Chieko points out that we have arrived at her place. She lowers her vehicle until the windshield shows an arched stone bridge that crosses the tranquil river, and beyond it a vast estate that features a garden with trimmed hedges, vibrant statues of human figures and animals, and a central ornate fountain that is shooting streams of water. The footpath leads into the two-story portico of a large villa that extends in colonnades to two adjoined buildings, forming a blocky 'U'. The villa is also made out of huge stone blocks, but they are painted alabaster white except for the roofs that cover the colonnades, which are penny brown. It's so fancy that I can't close my mouth nor move out of the car seat I've sunk into, although Chieko has already opened a hole in the frame next to her seat.
"Chieko, you are loaded," I say in a dry voice.
She smiles, but waves a hand back and forth.
"Oh, you have no idea how rich some people are. This is just a regular house."
"I'm ready to marry you, just so you know."
Chieko laughs and jumps out of the vehicle. I follow her down the airstair, then stand unsteadily next to her as I squint against the setting suns.
"Let's get going, Izar," Chieko says as she walks on the footpath towards the bridge. "I'm so hungry."
I admire the white paving stones as we walk up the arc of the bridge. In the waters below us, I glimpse a couple of fishes swimming through underwater weeds. The greenery on the river's edge has grown big and healthy. I hear the distant echo of a dog barking. I'm not surprised that these people brought dogs over, but I wonder if they get to live for hundreds of years.
As we cross through the garden, we pass by flower beds of bright yellow-pink flowers. Some look like daisies, and there are also violet and blue flowers that I can't name. I feel like I'm walking through their scent.
"You must spend so much time tending to this place," I say.
"What? Nah. The AIs trim these thick hedges, they make sure that the flowers don't die, all that kind of stuff. Most days I barely notice they are there, to be honest."
The cooling breeze blows water droplets from the fountain's streams in my face, refreshing my skin. The central statue is a bronze, stylized fox, depicted as if it represents a deity.
As we approach the large portico, I spot a man jogging in the shadows of the colonnade leading to the front door. I'm startled, but in a couple of seconds I realize that he must live with Chieko. When he notices us, he stops. Once we stand in the cool shadows under the ceiling of the portico, I look up at the tall man, who holds my gaze with his brown, slanted eyes. He must be around a hundred and eighty-five centimeters. His face, which is beaded with sweat, looks like he's in his mid twenties, but that might mean little around here. His hair is apple red, short, thick and unruly. He's wearing a simple T-shirt and shorts, although their fabric looks expensive. By how vigorous the man seems, he must work out regularly, and knowing that the inhabitants of this new reality also run for exercise comforts me.
The man wipes his nose with the back of his hand as he recovers his breath.
"You brought your new friend over without giving me a heads-up," he says with a deep voice. "That's really rude, Chieko."
"Oh, shut it!" she answers good-naturedly. "Don't listen to him, he already knows I was working on your case."
I bow slightly. I feel like I'm intruding in the lives of rich people when I'm just a peasant.
"Nice to meet you. I guess you already know that I'm Izar, that I come from the past and all that... Are you Chieko's husband?"
The man makes a dismissive wave with both hands.
"Izar, you have screwed up your introduction. What a way to give me a bad impression! Me, Chieko's husband!"
My rescuer lets out a noise of dismay. She shoves the man's chest, but he barely budges.
"You know that she just found out about this society! Damn idiot..." She looks at me apologetically. "This is my brother, Yuichi. We both live here. He's usually nicer when you get to know him."
Yuichi smiles thinly, and bows his head.
"So, are you going to live with us for a while?" he asks me.
I look nervously at Chieko.
"I think I'd be a burden, but..."
Chieko grabs my shoulder and narrows her eyes at her brother. I can't tell if she's actually mad or if they are used to interacting like this.
"Yes, you know that's the standard practice. A representative takes care of the artist they bring over from the past, until they can live on their own. And I would have invited her to live with us anyway if I had found her living in the streets!"
Yuichi rolls his eyes.
“That means close to nothing. When was the last time you saw a homeless person on Mars? But I guess that Chieko needs someone to share the workload with. Don't worry, we'll keep you fed. I can't imagine what the people in town would say if we allowed a servant to starve."
I'm smiling like an idiot, unable to defend myself or contribute to the conversation. Chieko puts her hands on my shoulders from behind.
"No workload of which to speak! I have barely done anything but laze around recently. C'mon, you just keep running! We are getting in and replicating some food."
When Yuichi gives up and continues running, Chieko pushes me gently towards the front door, which is made of some smooth, brown metal. She presses her hand against it, and the door opens inwards.
We enter the cool house, which smells like leather and saffron. A low-key jazz song starts playing from somewhere deeper within the house. My gaze is glued to the floor of the foyer, which is a mosaic of carefully laid out pieces that display beautiful scenes, in reds, yellows, whites and blacks, filled with Japanese imagery: white-faced ladies wearing yukatas, the silhouettes of traditional Japanese houses, heroic images of samurai. Areas of the large mosaic also show depictions of animals. Maybe I should already expect to find arresting masterworks wherever I go in this society, but my brain has a hard time associating this artistic display with someone's home.
Chieko grabs my hand, and then swings my arm as if we were both children. I'm getting dizzier and a heat is rising to my cheeks as I walk further into the large space. I may be staring at the central room of Chieko's house: it's an atrium bathed in pinkish light. The beams come down from the skylights built into a vaulted ceiling made of stone, that wouldn't have felt out of place in a cathedral. The slanted beams of light from the sunset are bathing sofas, hammocks, dining and coffee tables, a structure that looks like a chimney, and some isolated machines that resemble game consoles or ovens. Flowerbeds and water gardens are arranged near the furniture.
The illuminated space is about four times larger than I would have expected even a luxurious living room to be. You could play a sports match in here if it weren't for all the obstacles. All the walls are covered in kaleidoscopic frescoes that represent scenes both from ancient myths and from either my era or one that came after, because I recognize the skyline of modern cities from my original present, as well as spaceships. This living room is ringed by an interior balcony. From down here I glimpse an arched gallery that must lead to bedrooms, offices and other personal rooms.
"Come!" Chieko says as she guides me around a tiny fountain towards a sofa. "You clearly need to sit. Let's eat something, shall we? Or do you need to go to the bathroom first?"
I look at her nervously.
"Well... I don't know... No, I don't think so."
If I were in my house, I would have emptied my bladder, because I'm feeling those two glasses of water that I drank at the SFPT office. But I need to sit down and figure out a way to stop my mind from reeling. When I sink into the sofa, the velvety fabric embraces me lovingly. Next to the gilded, pleated arm of the sofa, a cluster of red buds that have grown in a flower bed are wafting a sweet scent.
Chieko sits next to me, takes off her shoes and folds her slender legs so her bare feet rest on the cushion. She smiles at me and opens her mouth to say something, but I interrupt her.
"Do you have any clue of the life of luxury you and your people enjoy?" I ask in a weary voice.
Chieko shrugs.
"It's a matter of comparisons, isn't it? But yes, when I travelled to your era, I was shocked by how tiny the houses were, and stacked on top of each other! It was suffocating. You could hear the neighbors going to the bathroom, and could even make out parts of their private conversations! That couldn't have been good for people's mental health. No wonder people were so neurotic!"
I sigh.
"Yeah, I have always thought that living in cities, let alone in a metropolis, turned people crazy. We aren't meant to live in such cramped spaces. But then again, it's not as if we could have chosen to live in some better way. The Earth was vastly overpopulated, moving to the countryside was expensive, and everyone needed to get used to being a speck of dust that would likely amount to nothing."
Chieko twists one side of her mouth into a grimace.
"I don't think Earth has improved much in that regard. If you thought that it was overpopulated, if you see it now you may vomit. Truth be told, many of those people have never been ready to leave the nest. But thankfully we don't have to worry about that on Mars, or other colonized planets." She claps once. "So, are you hungry? Because I'm starving."
I nod quickly.
"Sure."
She turns to make eye contact with an oven-like machine that is propped on a stand.
"Replicator, we want your services."
The indicators over the cavity of the machine light up in arctic blue, and to my surprise the machine lifts off silently and floats up to us, until it hovers a meter and a half in front of Chieko as static as if it was propped on an invisible stand. It reminds me of a butler, another one, waiting for instructions.
"Pay attention to this, Izar," she says. "You'll rely on the replicators and the decomposers to fulfill your basic needs, and you'll also use them whenever you need to replicate objects like cutlery, clothes, books... Everything that could fit this cavity, really. These are the personal models. For cars, furniture and similar objects you go to a shop, because they own industrial replicators."
I swallow, then nod. I stare at Chieko's reflection in the reflective front of the machine.
"Alright, replicator," Chieko says. "Recommend us a menu for dinner!"
The machine radiates a solid-looking beam of light that unfolds and spreads until it forms a mosaic of images, around thirty, which are as colorful and detailed as those in the computer screens with which I'm familiar. Each image shows a plate with food as they would appear in the menu of a restaurant, and the images also feature associated dishware such as bowls, saucers, glasses, spoons, forks... as if they came with the dish.
I point with a trembling finger at the options.
"Chieko, are you telling me that I can choose any of this food and it will appear in that cavity inside of the machine...?"
"You get it quickly."
I rub my eyes.
"I don't. I really don't... How is this possible?"
"Don't worry about that for now. As you know, you don't need to understand how something works to use it! I wasn't the one who invented this thing. Just order whatever, Izar."
I take a deep breath and look over the options. Although I only recognize about a quarter of the food I'm staring at, my mouth salivates.
"Oh, that looks like pizza."
"It certainly is. Cheese pizza in particular. The replicator always recommends it to me, because I love it. Have you ever tasted pizza before, Izar?"
"If I have... Nevermind, yes. Pizza sounds good. So how would I choose it?"
"Remember, the machines are sentient. Replicators and decomposers are silent by design, but they understand. So just tell it what you want."
When I stare back at the replicator, I have a hard time believing, or facing, that a person is waiting for my order. I'll need to get used to dealing with artificial intelligences, but thankfully that Guide showed me that I could make myself understood without issues.
I point at the image of the cheese pizza.
"Alright, then give me that one, please."
The mosaic collapses, and the beam of solid light dissolves. As the machine hums, the cavity fills with a similarly opaque and featureless light, and when it vanishes, the inside of the replicator contains a steaming cheese pizza. Even a pizza cutter. The pizza's crust looks so crispy, and the golden yellow cheese so thick and juicy, that my mind forgets its doubts and worries. I only want to fill my stomach with that impossible food.
The replicator's cavity opens, which allows the pizza's aroma to reach us, and Chieko pulls out the plate. After she leaves it on the coffee table, both of us are quick to grab a slice, which came pre-cut although the replicator also produced a cutter. When I bite and chew the morsel, my mouth fills with the expected taste of a cheese pizza. My shoulders relax.
"Chieko, you live in heaven," I say with my mouth full.
"This pizza always tastes amazing, yes. The same as the pizza that was scanned to produce this blueprint. Not that I ever tasted the original pizza, but that's the idea."
After I finish eating my slice, I wipe off the juices left behind on my lips. I go for a second slice.
Chieko also orders glasses of orange juice. We eat as we lounge on the sofa. Night has fallen, and some floating orbs have switched on and are bathing us in soft white light. I'm so comfortable that I get mental images of kittens rolling around in their cat bed.
We finished eating a couple of minutes ago. My benefactress' eyes have turned sleepy. After she picks up crumbs from her puff sleeve blouse and eats them, she leans back and offers me a tired smile.
"That's all you need to know regarding replicators, I think. Now I'll show you what you’ll do when you want to get rid of something."
Chieko looks directly at the replicator as she addresses it. Maybe it's necessary to make eye contact.
"Replicator, return to your stand, please." As the replicator floats towards its stand, Chieko gazes at the similar machine propped up on a stand next to the empty one. "Decomposer, come here."
The decomposer obeys like a pet. Although this machine's purpose is the opposite of the replicator's, its main difference is that the cavity is hidden by a round hatch. The machine stops a meter and a half away from Chieko, who gets off the sofa and puts the pizza cutter on the plate on which only crumbs remained. She adds both our empty glasses. She opens the machine's hatch and leaves the plate inside. After she closes the hatch, she sits back down.
"Decomposer, destroy your contents."
A round indicator on the front of the humming decomposer lights up in red, and a couple of seconds later it shuts off.
"That's it," Chieko says.
I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that any machine could get rid of any object with such speed. This society must have solved the issue of the growing mountains of garbage, as well as the patches of plastic in the oceans.
"Doesn't it worry you that someone could kill another person,” I ask, “dismember them, throw their remains into a decomposer and make them disappear?"
Chieko laughs merrily, closing her eyes and holding her hand against her mouth.
"Your mind goes directly to murder, huh?" she says. Her fingers flick outwards to open her palms towards me. "What a horror... You should want to help other people, Izar, not end them."
"Hey, that's a worry that anyone would have."
"That's why they built in a system that notifies the authorities in case it detects that it would decompose human remains."
"Alright, so you future people haven't outgrown homicidal impulses. You haven't evolved that much."
"The animals that evolve to outgrow violent impulses get killed by those who didn't. Isn't that the case?" Chieko replies with a smile.
I realize that jazz was still playing in the background when it stops abruptly, and gets replaced with music similar to soft rock. I'm confused for a moment, because Chieko didn't order it, but a more important question pops up in my mind.
"How does this replicator of yours produce objects from zero? Are the raw materials inside the machine? Even 3D printers from my era needed some sort of cartridge."
"It makes a request for the needed periodic elements to the deposit that every town has. We pool those resources together, it’d be too much of a hassle otherwise. They get sent through quantum teleportation."
"Of course, it had to have quantum in the name."
"Haven't you both gotten comfortable," Yuichi's deep voice reaches us from behind.
Chieko and I look over the back pillows of our sofa. Yuichi must have taken a shower, because his thick, wavy red hair is combed back and damp. He's wearing a grey sweat jacket and sweatpants. His sweat jacket features the drawing of a multi-limbed mechanical being with a red cape. I won't try to deduce what it represents.
He struts to the replicator, which is resting on its stand, and tells it to produce his usual protein shake. In a few seconds he's holding a metallic-looking, opaque flask. He approaches the armchair closest to us and plops down on it. As he unscrews the cap of his bottle, he stares at me brashly as if he intends to challenge me.
"So, Izar, are you religious?"
Chieko lets out a noise of dismay.
"Yuichi! You barely know her!"
The man doesn't tear his gaze away.
"When my sister told me that she had taken one of the rescue missions, I was sure that she would bring home some nut from the Middle Ages, or an Ice Age sculptor. I would find myself having to listen to that person freaking out and wondering how his or her god fit into this new world."
"I see how that would be annoying," I say. "I've never been religious."
Yuichi sighs, then leans back on his armchair as if he figures he can relax.
"What century did you come from again?"
"Early twenty-first."
Yuichi arches his eyebrows as he takes a big gulp of his protein shake.
"Was your era as terrible as we picture it from the surviving records?"
"I don't know what you've seen. I'm sure that any other era looks like hell when compared to living in this town. But I admit that I didn't enjoy living in my time. I dreaded that everything was going to collapse eventually."
"To me, it looked apocalyptic," he says with sympathy.
I let out a long sigh.
"What can I say, I'm glad that Chieko brought me here. I can't begin to explain how safe I feel now."
A cat-sized creature is moving close to a flower bed filled with purple and yellow flowers. I glance at it absentmindedly, expecting to see a cat, but my gaze falls on a sleek, metallic octopus that's watering the flowers through its flexible tentacles. My eyes widen, but neither of the siblings pay the robot any attention.
"You are a writer, right?" Yuichi asks. "Many of those around."
"Yes, and not one that deserved being saved. There were millions of writers like me in the world back then. We were lucky enough to get published, but didn't sell enough to pay the bills."
"Izar, you need to stop putting yourself down," Chieko says, more upset than I would have expected.
I lower my gaze to my lap.
"It's true. I have no clue why you saved me."
"I don’t know why my sister chose you in particular," Yuichi interjects as he smirks at Chieko, "but your heroine was motivated by procrastination. You have avoided a sad fate because Chieko couldn't figure out what creative project to start next. That's the truth."
My benefactress looks down and fiddles with the corner of a pillow. More than embarrassed, she seems guilty. I reach over to put my hand on her arm. I don't want the person who saved my life feeling bad about any aspect of her decision.
"She didn't tell you that she had lofty, virtuous reasons for bringing you over from the past, did she?" Yuichi asks with some concern.
"No, she told me that she was going through a dry spell," I say. I try to hold Chieko's gaze, although she's avoiding it. "I wouldn't care if you rescued me because you were paid to do so, or because you wanted to impress someone. If it weren't for you, I would be living in the streets, and in less than a week I would have drowned in the river. You were never clear about how, but I don’t care. My life is yours."
Chieko mumbles something as she blushes. Yuichi snorts, then shakes his head.
"She's charmed you already, huh, Izar? I guess you can't help it. That SFPT, they are running the ultimate seduction scheme. You have no idea how many of the people they bring over here from the past end up naked in their representative’s bed by the end of the first day."
Chieko straightens her back and glares at her brother.
"It's nothing like that!" She looks at me. "You lack some qualities necessary for me to… feel like that about you."
“Hopefully just the physical ones that I can’t change,” I say nonchalantly. “I wouldn't mind if you intended to seduce me. With this new life you have given me, I should fall in love with you out of principle."
Chieko sighs and rubs her temples with both hands. Her brother empties the bottle, then chuckles as he wipes his mouth. He leans back again, with one hand behind his head.
"You know, it might do you some good, Chieko," Yuichi says teasingly. "It's been too long since you've been with anyone."
"H-hey. I don't have time for boyfriends!"
"What do you mean? You barely do anything now that you aren't working on new movies!"
"You know I'm going through a dry spell."
Yuichi grins as if he was expecting his sister to say it.
"That's what I meant, sis."
Chieko snaps her head back and stutters her reply. I have been letting my weight sink into the velvety cushions and the back pillows for a few minutes, my stomach is digesting that delicious pizza, and now that the siblings have forgotten that I'm here, a smile tugs on my lips. Every other person I had met either walked past me, or proved to me that I should have kept hidden the most important parts of myself. But now I can close my eyes and let out a long sigh as a warm feeling spreads throughout my body.
Chieko showed me how to use the toilet, which works the same way except that it contains a tiny matter decomposer that takes care of the waste. We keep hanging out in the siblings' luxurious atrium. By the time that Yuichi left to his bedroom, the skylights on the vaulted roof brimmed with stars. The floating orbs failed to illuminate the huge open room with their soft white light, so it felt as if Chieko and I were sitting on an island surrounded by darkness.
My benefactress guided me to replicate cotton panties, because I needed clean underwear, along with silk pyjamas, which were lemonade pink and shimmered in my hands as I ran my fingers over the fine and smooth fabric. I follow Chieko up the stairs to one of the guest bedrooms. Once she opens the door, I find myself staring at the most comfortable-looking and luxurious bed I have ever seen. The bedding set, which is embellished with gilded, royal motifs, is made of thick silk that overflows the mattress with a liquid feel. The four pillows resting against the headboard look so inviting that I want to run over and jump face down into them.
I close my mouth, then speak in a dry voice.
"This is ridiculous.”
Chieko places a hand on my shoulder, and my heart jumps. I feel every hair on my arms. I wasn't kidding earlier: if she tries anything, I'm done for. Chieko is pleasant to look at, a joy to be around, and now that my heart stores nothing but boundless gratitude towards her, I don’t need much incentive even though I’ve never gone for women. Back on Earth I wanted to disappear; now that she has brought me over to this paradise, the notion of disappearing into everything she might have to offer is intoxicating.
"That thing on the double dresser is the multimedia center," Chieko says, oblivious to the tingles running through my body. "Talk to it when you want to listen to music, watch movies, browse the net... Stuff like that. I'm sure you'll figure it out. The gear to experience virtual reality is in another room, though."
I turn around and look at Chieko in the dimness of the bedroom, only illuminated by the beams of honey-colored light coming out of two lamps on the nightstands. I stare for a couple of seconds at her apple red hair, gathered in two buns. I wonder what Chieko sees on my face. Even with both of us standing just a step apart, our personalities are standing on the opposite sides of a wall.
"I think that tomorrow you should take a walk around town by yourself," Chieko says softly. "See the sights, focus on what interests you. People are friendly around here. And hopefully one of these days you'll feel like writing again."
"Yeah."
We look at each other silently. While Chieko glances at the bed, I get the feeling that she's unsettled, as we are both held hostage by this comfortable, secluded bedroom.
"You better get out of here, Chieko,” I say in a low voice. “I told you that I sink my claws in the people that I care about."
She blinks rapidly and nods.
"Yeah, I'm feeling weird myself," she says, befuddled. "Anyway, sleep as much as you want, alright?"
We say goodnight. Once she closes the door behind her and I hear her footsteps fading, I shuffle to the side of the bed and sit slowly on the mattress. I wait until my heart calms down.
I undress, I put on my clean underwear and I try on my new pyjamas. They feel like they float over my skin. I can barely tell that I'm wearing them. When I slip under the silk sheets and the comforter and then let the back of my head sink into the pillow, I feel ready to die. My old life, with all its troubles, has ended. I would be happy if I never had to move again. I wouldn't think, I wouldn't talk, I wouldn't write. I would keep floating in a warm cloud and never worry about anything else.
---
Note from June of 2021:
Yesterday I went back to work, and this contract will last until the end of September. I'm not the kind of person that is happy whenever he's able to work for others, nor do I understand that kind of slave mentality. My last contract ended on May 11, if I remember correctly, and in about a month and a half I wrote frantically a novel the length of 2.2 regular novels, as well as a few short stories and lots of poetry. Yesterday I barely managed to write anything at work, because they kept me walking throughout the hospital complex to fix annoying problems that nobody wants to handle, and by the end of the day I was exhausted and felt like shit, so my brain kept trying to convince me to lie in bed and just rest. That's the routine that I'm terrified of returning to for the next months. I hate living like that when I could be writing otherwise, but like everybody else, I need to accumulate money.
Anyway, I have planned the rest of this novella, and I'll finish it for sure sooner or later, even though I suspect that it barely works as a story. I'm having fun with it, and that's what matters as far as I'm concerned.
---
Chieko flew us back in her pineapple yellow, antigravity car to the small town where she lives, and where the office of the SFPT that I know is located. I keep staring out of the surrounding windshield at the town, which has been built on both sides of a wide, winding river with fern green waters. I wouldn't have considered this community a town. The buildings, which are megalithic, constructed from huge stone blocks, are distant enough from the rest as if they were farmhouses surrounded by grazing fields back in my native Gipuzkoa, but we keep coming across colorful flying cars, so I guess that the inhabitants of Mars walk around on the stone footpaths for leisure and exercise.
Both suns, the original and the one that Chieko called artificial, are dipping into the horizon, dyeing the sky in coral and watermelon pinks. I'm tired, my body is heavy. I feel my clothes touching my sensitive skin. I can't remember how much I've cried, overwhelmed by having been rescued from a certain death on the old Earth. The gratitude I feel towards Chieko is an alien warmth in my heart that makes me feel like a bashful little girl. I can't pay back what she has done for me, and I can't live up to the artist she believes me to be.
Our ride through the sunset ends when Chieko points out that we have arrived at her place. She lowers her vehicle until the windshield shows an arched stone bridge that crosses the tranquil river, and beyond it a vast estate that features a garden with trimmed hedges, vibrant statues of human figures and animals, and a central ornate fountain that is shooting streams of water. The footpath leads into the two-story portico of a large villa that extends in colonnades to two adjoined buildings, forming a blocky 'U'. The villa is also made out of huge stone blocks, but they are painted alabaster white except for the roofs that cover the colonnades, which are penny brown. It's so fancy that I can't close my mouth nor move out of the car seat I've sunk into, although Chieko has already opened a hole in the frame next to her seat.
"Chieko, you are loaded," I say in a dry voice.
She smiles, but waves a hand back and forth.
"Oh, you have no idea how rich some people are. This is just a regular house."
"I'm ready to marry you, just so you know."
Chieko laughs and jumps out of the vehicle. I follow her down the airstair, then stand unsteadily next to her as I squint against the setting suns.
"Let's get going, Izar," Chieko says as she walks on the footpath towards the bridge. "I'm so hungry."
I admire the white paving stones as we walk up the arc of the bridge. In the waters below us, I glimpse a couple of fishes swimming through underwater weeds. The greenery on the river's edge has grown big and healthy. I hear the distant echo of a dog barking. I'm not surprised that these people brought dogs over, but I wonder if they get to live for hundreds of years.
As we cross through the garden, we pass by flower beds of bright yellow-pink flowers. Some look like daisies, and there are also violet and blue flowers that I can't name. I feel like I'm walking through their scent.
"You must spend so much time tending to this place," I say.
"What? Nah. The AIs trim these thick hedges, they make sure that the flowers don't die, all that kind of stuff. Most days I barely notice they are there, to be honest."
The cooling breeze blows water droplets from the fountain's streams in my face, refreshing my skin. The central statue is a bronze, stylized fox, depicted as if it represents a deity.
As we approach the large portico, I spot a man jogging in the shadows of the colonnade leading to the front door. I'm startled, but in a couple of seconds I realize that he must live with Chieko. When he notices us, he stops. Once we stand in the cool shadows under the ceiling of the portico, I look up at the tall man, who holds my gaze with his brown, slanted eyes. He must be around a hundred and eighty-five centimeters. His face, which is beaded with sweat, looks like he's in his mid twenties, but that might mean little around here. His hair is apple red, short, thick and unruly. He's wearing a simple T-shirt and shorts, although their fabric looks expensive. By how vigorous the man seems, he must work out regularly, and knowing that the inhabitants of this new reality also run for exercise comforts me.
The man wipes his nose with the back of his hand as he recovers his breath.
"You brought your new friend over without giving me a heads-up," he says with a deep voice. "That's really rude, Chieko."
"Oh, shut it!" she answers good-naturedly. "Don't listen to him, he already knows I was working on your case."
I bow slightly. I feel like I'm intruding in the lives of rich people when I'm just a peasant.
"Nice to meet you. I guess you already know that I'm Izar, that I come from the past and all that... Are you Chieko's husband?"
The man makes a dismissive wave with both hands.
"Izar, you have screwed up your introduction. What a way to give me a bad impression! Me, Chieko's husband!"
My rescuer lets out a noise of dismay. She shoves the man's chest, but he barely budges.
"You know that she just found out about this society! Damn idiot..." She looks at me apologetically. "This is my brother, Yuichi. We both live here. He's usually nicer when you get to know him."
Yuichi smiles thinly, and bows his head.
"So, are you going to live with us for a while?" he asks me.
I look nervously at Chieko.
"I think I'd be a burden, but..."
Chieko grabs my shoulder and narrows her eyes at her brother. I can't tell if she's actually mad or if they are used to interacting like this.
"Yes, you know that's the standard practice. A representative takes care of the artist they bring over from the past, until they can live on their own. And I would have invited her to live with us anyway if I had found her living in the streets!"
Yuichi rolls his eyes.
“That means close to nothing. When was the last time you saw a homeless person on Mars? But I guess that Chieko needs someone to share the workload with. Don't worry, we'll keep you fed. I can't imagine what the people in town would say if we allowed a servant to starve."
I'm smiling like an idiot, unable to defend myself or contribute to the conversation. Chieko puts her hands on my shoulders from behind.
"No workload of which to speak! I have barely done anything but laze around recently. C'mon, you just keep running! We are getting in and replicating some food."
When Yuichi gives up and continues running, Chieko pushes me gently towards the front door, which is made of some smooth, brown metal. She presses her hand against it, and the door opens inwards.
We enter the cool house, which smells like leather and saffron. A low-key jazz song starts playing from somewhere deeper within the house. My gaze is glued to the floor of the foyer, which is a mosaic of carefully laid out pieces that display beautiful scenes, in reds, yellows, whites and blacks, filled with Japanese imagery: white-faced ladies wearing yukatas, the silhouettes of traditional Japanese houses, heroic images of samurai. Areas of the large mosaic also show depictions of animals. Maybe I should already expect to find arresting masterworks wherever I go in this society, but my brain has a hard time associating this artistic display with someone's home.
Chieko grabs my hand, and then swings my arm as if we were both children. I'm getting dizzier and a heat is rising to my cheeks as I walk further into the large space. I may be staring at the central room of Chieko's house: it's an atrium bathed in pinkish light. The beams come down from the skylights built into a vaulted ceiling made of stone, that wouldn't have felt out of place in a cathedral. The slanted beams of light from the sunset are bathing sofas, hammocks, dining and coffee tables, a structure that looks like a chimney, and some isolated machines that resemble game consoles or ovens. Flowerbeds and water gardens are arranged near the furniture.
The illuminated space is about four times larger than I would have expected even a luxurious living room to be. You could play a sports match in here if it weren't for all the obstacles. All the walls are covered in kaleidoscopic frescoes that represent scenes both from ancient myths and from either my era or one that came after, because I recognize the skyline of modern cities from my original present, as well as spaceships. This living room is ringed by an interior balcony. From down here I glimpse an arched gallery that must lead to bedrooms, offices and other personal rooms.
"Come!" Chieko says as she guides me around a tiny fountain towards a sofa. "You clearly need to sit. Let's eat something, shall we? Or do you need to go to the bathroom first?"
I look at her nervously.
"Well... I don't know... No, I don't think so."
If I were in my house, I would have emptied my bladder, because I'm feeling those two glasses of water that I drank at the SFPT office. But I need to sit down and figure out a way to stop my mind from reeling. When I sink into the sofa, the velvety fabric embraces me lovingly. Next to the gilded, pleated arm of the sofa, a cluster of red buds that have grown in a flower bed are wafting a sweet scent.
Chieko sits next to me, takes off her shoes and folds her slender legs so her bare feet rest on the cushion. She smiles at me and opens her mouth to say something, but I interrupt her.
"Do you have any clue of the life of luxury you and your people enjoy?" I ask in a weary voice.
Chieko shrugs.
"It's a matter of comparisons, isn't it? But yes, when I travelled to your era, I was shocked by how tiny the houses were, and stacked on top of each other! It was suffocating. You could hear the neighbors going to the bathroom, and could even make out parts of their private conversations! That couldn't have been good for people's mental health. No wonder people were so neurotic!"
I sigh.
"Yeah, I have always thought that living in cities, let alone in a metropolis, turned people crazy. We aren't meant to live in such cramped spaces. But then again, it's not as if we could have chosen to live in some better way. The Earth was vastly overpopulated, moving to the countryside was expensive, and everyone needed to get used to being a speck of dust that would likely amount to nothing."
Chieko twists one side of her mouth into a grimace.
"I don't think Earth has improved much in that regard. If you thought that it was overpopulated, if you see it now you may vomit. Truth be told, many of those people have never been ready to leave the nest. But thankfully we don't have to worry about that on Mars, or other colonized planets." She claps once. "So, are you hungry? Because I'm starving."
I nod quickly.
"Sure."
She turns to make eye contact with an oven-like machine that is propped on a stand.
"Replicator, we want your services."
The indicators over the cavity of the machine light up in arctic blue, and to my surprise the machine lifts off silently and floats up to us, until it hovers a meter and a half in front of Chieko as static as if it was propped on an invisible stand. It reminds me of a butler, another one, waiting for instructions.
"Pay attention to this, Izar," she says. "You'll rely on the replicators and the decomposers to fulfill your basic needs, and you'll also use them whenever you need to replicate objects like cutlery, clothes, books... Everything that could fit this cavity, really. These are the personal models. For cars, furniture and similar objects you go to a shop, because they own industrial replicators."
I swallow, then nod. I stare at Chieko's reflection in the reflective front of the machine.
"Alright, replicator," Chieko says. "Recommend us a menu for dinner!"
The machine radiates a solid-looking beam of light that unfolds and spreads until it forms a mosaic of images, around thirty, which are as colorful and detailed as those in the computer screens with which I'm familiar. Each image shows a plate with food as they would appear in the menu of a restaurant, and the images also feature associated dishware such as bowls, saucers, glasses, spoons, forks... as if they came with the dish.
I point with a trembling finger at the options.
"Chieko, are you telling me that I can choose any of this food and it will appear in that cavity inside of the machine...?"
"You get it quickly."
I rub my eyes.
"I don't. I really don't... How is this possible?"
"Don't worry about that for now. As you know, you don't need to understand how something works to use it! I wasn't the one who invented this thing. Just order whatever, Izar."
I take a deep breath and look over the options. Although I only recognize about a quarter of the food I'm staring at, my mouth salivates.
"Oh, that looks like pizza."
"It certainly is. Cheese pizza in particular. The replicator always recommends it to me, because I love it. Have you ever tasted pizza before, Izar?"
"If I have... Nevermind, yes. Pizza sounds good. So how would I choose it?"
"Remember, the machines are sentient. Replicators and decomposers are silent by design, but they understand. So just tell it what you want."
When I stare back at the replicator, I have a hard time believing, or facing, that a person is waiting for my order. I'll need to get used to dealing with artificial intelligences, but thankfully that Guide showed me that I could make myself understood without issues.
I point at the image of the cheese pizza.
"Alright, then give me that one, please."
The mosaic collapses, and the beam of solid light dissolves. As the machine hums, the cavity fills with a similarly opaque and featureless light, and when it vanishes, the inside of the replicator contains a steaming cheese pizza. Even a pizza cutter. The pizza's crust looks so crispy, and the golden yellow cheese so thick and juicy, that my mind forgets its doubts and worries. I only want to fill my stomach with that impossible food.
The replicator's cavity opens, which allows the pizza's aroma to reach us, and Chieko pulls out the plate. After she leaves it on the coffee table, both of us are quick to grab a slice, which came pre-cut although the replicator also produced a cutter. When I bite and chew the morsel, my mouth fills with the expected taste of a cheese pizza. My shoulders relax.
"Chieko, you live in heaven," I say with my mouth full.
"This pizza always tastes amazing, yes. The same as the pizza that was scanned to produce this blueprint. Not that I ever tasted the original pizza, but that's the idea."
After I finish eating my slice, I wipe off the juices left behind on my lips. I go for a second slice.
Chieko also orders glasses of orange juice. We eat as we lounge on the sofa. Night has fallen, and some floating orbs have switched on and are bathing us in soft white light. I'm so comfortable that I get mental images of kittens rolling around in their cat bed.
We finished eating a couple of minutes ago. My benefactress' eyes have turned sleepy. After she picks up crumbs from her puff sleeve blouse and eats them, she leans back and offers me a tired smile.
"That's all you need to know regarding replicators, I think. Now I'll show you what you’ll do when you want to get rid of something."
Chieko looks directly at the replicator as she addresses it. Maybe it's necessary to make eye contact.
"Replicator, return to your stand, please." As the replicator floats towards its stand, Chieko gazes at the similar machine propped up on a stand next to the empty one. "Decomposer, come here."
The decomposer obeys like a pet. Although this machine's purpose is the opposite of the replicator's, its main difference is that the cavity is hidden by a round hatch. The machine stops a meter and a half away from Chieko, who gets off the sofa and puts the pizza cutter on the plate on which only crumbs remained. She adds both our empty glasses. She opens the machine's hatch and leaves the plate inside. After she closes the hatch, she sits back down.
"Decomposer, destroy your contents."
A round indicator on the front of the humming decomposer lights up in red, and a couple of seconds later it shuts off.
"That's it," Chieko says.
I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that any machine could get rid of any object with such speed. This society must have solved the issue of the growing mountains of garbage, as well as the patches of plastic in the oceans.
"Doesn't it worry you that someone could kill another person,” I ask, “dismember them, throw their remains into a decomposer and make them disappear?"
Chieko laughs merrily, closing her eyes and holding her hand against her mouth.
"Your mind goes directly to murder, huh?" she says. Her fingers flick outwards to open her palms towards me. "What a horror... You should want to help other people, Izar, not end them."
"Hey, that's a worry that anyone would have."
"That's why they built in a system that notifies the authorities in case it detects that it would decompose human remains."
"Alright, so you future people haven't outgrown homicidal impulses. You haven't evolved that much."
"The animals that evolve to outgrow violent impulses get killed by those who didn't. Isn't that the case?" Chieko replies with a smile.
I realize that jazz was still playing in the background when it stops abruptly, and gets replaced with music similar to soft rock. I'm confused for a moment, because Chieko didn't order it, but a more important question pops up in my mind.
"How does this replicator of yours produce objects from zero? Are the raw materials inside the machine? Even 3D printers from my era needed some sort of cartridge."
"It makes a request for the needed periodic elements to the deposit that every town has. We pool those resources together, it’d be too much of a hassle otherwise. They get sent through quantum teleportation."
"Of course, it had to have quantum in the name."
"Haven't you both gotten comfortable," Yuichi's deep voice reaches us from behind.
Chieko and I look over the back pillows of our sofa. Yuichi must have taken a shower, because his thick, wavy red hair is combed back and damp. He's wearing a grey sweat jacket and sweatpants. His sweat jacket features the drawing of a multi-limbed mechanical being with a red cape. I won't try to deduce what it represents.
He struts to the replicator, which is resting on its stand, and tells it to produce his usual protein shake. In a few seconds he's holding a metallic-looking, opaque flask. He approaches the armchair closest to us and plops down on it. As he unscrews the cap of his bottle, he stares at me brashly as if he intends to challenge me.
"So, Izar, are you religious?"
Chieko lets out a noise of dismay.
"Yuichi! You barely know her!"
The man doesn't tear his gaze away.
"When my sister told me that she had taken one of the rescue missions, I was sure that she would bring home some nut from the Middle Ages, or an Ice Age sculptor. I would find myself having to listen to that person freaking out and wondering how his or her god fit into this new world."
"I see how that would be annoying," I say. "I've never been religious."
Yuichi sighs, then leans back on his armchair as if he figures he can relax.
"What century did you come from again?"
"Early twenty-first."
Yuichi arches his eyebrows as he takes a big gulp of his protein shake.
"Was your era as terrible as we picture it from the surviving records?"
"I don't know what you've seen. I'm sure that any other era looks like hell when compared to living in this town. But I admit that I didn't enjoy living in my time. I dreaded that everything was going to collapse eventually."
"To me, it looked apocalyptic," he says with sympathy.
I let out a long sigh.
"What can I say, I'm glad that Chieko brought me here. I can't begin to explain how safe I feel now."
A cat-sized creature is moving close to a flower bed filled with purple and yellow flowers. I glance at it absentmindedly, expecting to see a cat, but my gaze falls on a sleek, metallic octopus that's watering the flowers through its flexible tentacles. My eyes widen, but neither of the siblings pay the robot any attention.
"You are a writer, right?" Yuichi asks. "Many of those around."
"Yes, and not one that deserved being saved. There were millions of writers like me in the world back then. We were lucky enough to get published, but didn't sell enough to pay the bills."
"Izar, you need to stop putting yourself down," Chieko says, more upset than I would have expected.
I lower my gaze to my lap.
"It's true. I have no clue why you saved me."
"I don’t know why my sister chose you in particular," Yuichi interjects as he smirks at Chieko, "but your heroine was motivated by procrastination. You have avoided a sad fate because Chieko couldn't figure out what creative project to start next. That's the truth."
My benefactress looks down and fiddles with the corner of a pillow. More than embarrassed, she seems guilty. I reach over to put my hand on her arm. I don't want the person who saved my life feeling bad about any aspect of her decision.
"She didn't tell you that she had lofty, virtuous reasons for bringing you over from the past, did she?" Yuichi asks with some concern.
"No, she told me that she was going through a dry spell," I say. I try to hold Chieko's gaze, although she's avoiding it. "I wouldn't care if you rescued me because you were paid to do so, or because you wanted to impress someone. If it weren't for you, I would be living in the streets, and in less than a week I would have drowned in the river. You were never clear about how, but I don’t care. My life is yours."
Chieko mumbles something as she blushes. Yuichi snorts, then shakes his head.
"She's charmed you already, huh, Izar? I guess you can't help it. That SFPT, they are running the ultimate seduction scheme. You have no idea how many of the people they bring over here from the past end up naked in their representative’s bed by the end of the first day."
Chieko straightens her back and glares at her brother.
"It's nothing like that!" She looks at me. "You lack some qualities necessary for me to… feel like that about you."
“Hopefully just the physical ones that I can’t change,” I say nonchalantly. “I wouldn't mind if you intended to seduce me. With this new life you have given me, I should fall in love with you out of principle."
Chieko sighs and rubs her temples with both hands. Her brother empties the bottle, then chuckles as he wipes his mouth. He leans back again, with one hand behind his head.
"You know, it might do you some good, Chieko," Yuichi says teasingly. "It's been too long since you've been with anyone."
"H-hey. I don't have time for boyfriends!"
"What do you mean? You barely do anything now that you aren't working on new movies!"
"You know I'm going through a dry spell."
Yuichi grins as if he was expecting his sister to say it.
"That's what I meant, sis."
Chieko snaps her head back and stutters her reply. I have been letting my weight sink into the velvety cushions and the back pillows for a few minutes, my stomach is digesting that delicious pizza, and now that the siblings have forgotten that I'm here, a smile tugs on my lips. Every other person I had met either walked past me, or proved to me that I should have kept hidden the most important parts of myself. But now I can close my eyes and let out a long sigh as a warm feeling spreads throughout my body.
Chieko showed me how to use the toilet, which works the same way except that it contains a tiny matter decomposer that takes care of the waste. We keep hanging out in the siblings' luxurious atrium. By the time that Yuichi left to his bedroom, the skylights on the vaulted roof brimmed with stars. The floating orbs failed to illuminate the huge open room with their soft white light, so it felt as if Chieko and I were sitting on an island surrounded by darkness.
My benefactress guided me to replicate cotton panties, because I needed clean underwear, along with silk pyjamas, which were lemonade pink and shimmered in my hands as I ran my fingers over the fine and smooth fabric. I follow Chieko up the stairs to one of the guest bedrooms. Once she opens the door, I find myself staring at the most comfortable-looking and luxurious bed I have ever seen. The bedding set, which is embellished with gilded, royal motifs, is made of thick silk that overflows the mattress with a liquid feel. The four pillows resting against the headboard look so inviting that I want to run over and jump face down into them.
I close my mouth, then speak in a dry voice.
"This is ridiculous.”
Chieko places a hand on my shoulder, and my heart jumps. I feel every hair on my arms. I wasn't kidding earlier: if she tries anything, I'm done for. Chieko is pleasant to look at, a joy to be around, and now that my heart stores nothing but boundless gratitude towards her, I don’t need much incentive even though I’ve never gone for women. Back on Earth I wanted to disappear; now that she has brought me over to this paradise, the notion of disappearing into everything she might have to offer is intoxicating.
"That thing on the double dresser is the multimedia center," Chieko says, oblivious to the tingles running through my body. "Talk to it when you want to listen to music, watch movies, browse the net... Stuff like that. I'm sure you'll figure it out. The gear to experience virtual reality is in another room, though."
I turn around and look at Chieko in the dimness of the bedroom, only illuminated by the beams of honey-colored light coming out of two lamps on the nightstands. I stare for a couple of seconds at her apple red hair, gathered in two buns. I wonder what Chieko sees on my face. Even with both of us standing just a step apart, our personalities are standing on the opposite sides of a wall.
"I think that tomorrow you should take a walk around town by yourself," Chieko says softly. "See the sights, focus on what interests you. People are friendly around here. And hopefully one of these days you'll feel like writing again."
"Yeah."
We look at each other silently. While Chieko glances at the bed, I get the feeling that she's unsettled, as we are both held hostage by this comfortable, secluded bedroom.
"You better get out of here, Chieko,” I say in a low voice. “I told you that I sink my claws in the people that I care about."
She blinks rapidly and nods.
"Yeah, I'm feeling weird myself," she says, befuddled. "Anyway, sleep as much as you want, alright?"
We say goodnight. Once she closes the door behind her and I hear her footsteps fading, I shuffle to the side of the bed and sit slowly on the mattress. I wait until my heart calms down.
I undress, I put on my clean underwear and I try on my new pyjamas. They feel like they float over my skin. I can barely tell that I'm wearing them. When I slip under the silk sheets and the comforter and then let the back of my head sink into the pillow, I feel ready to die. My old life, with all its troubles, has ended. I would be happy if I never had to move again. I wouldn't think, I wouldn't talk, I wouldn't write. I would keep floating in a warm cloud and never worry about anything else.
---
Note from June of 2021:
Yesterday I went back to work, and this contract will last until the end of September. I'm not the kind of person that is happy whenever he's able to work for others, nor do I understand that kind of slave mentality. My last contract ended on May 11, if I remember correctly, and in about a month and a half I wrote frantically a novel the length of 2.2 regular novels, as well as a few short stories and lots of poetry. Yesterday I barely managed to write anything at work, because they kept me walking throughout the hospital complex to fix annoying problems that nobody wants to handle, and by the end of the day I was exhausted and felt like shit, so my brain kept trying to convince me to lie in bed and just rest. That's the routine that I'm terrified of returning to for the next months. I hate living like that when I could be writing otherwise, but like everybody else, I need to accumulate money.
Anyway, I have planned the rest of this novella, and I'll finish it for sure sooner or later, even though I suspect that it barely works as a story. I'm having fun with it, and that's what matters as far as I'm concerned.
A Caring Touch (Poetry)
Link for this poem on my personal page, where it looks better
---
---
My idea of heaven
Is to lounge in a dim room
While beautiful women
Do ASMR for me.
I dream of these ladies
Pampering me like a child.
With quiet voices
And likely soft hands,
From sweet whispers
To soothing sighs
And sensual moans,
All while I enjoy
Their tender touches
(Translated by my mind).
They stroke the length of my back,
They massage my shoulders,
They caress my scalp gently,
They place soft kisses on my neck,
They run their fingers over my face,
They lick my ear holes thoroughly.
As they bathe me in quiet warmth,
Every hair of mine stands straight up
All the way down to my hairy toes.
They whisper into my ears
About their carefree lives,
Or about how much they love me,
And how devoted they are to me.
Their mollifying voices
Ask me what I need:
A kiss on each eye?
A nibble on your earlobe?
A sweet lick up your cheeks?
A tongue up the nose?
A soft touch on your nipples?
A firm squeeze of your ass?
A little caress on your balls?
I want them to continue stroking me,
For hours and days and weeks.
I feel so good. I feel so safe.
Like the sound of rain on a roof,
It lulls me to rest,
It makes me want to cry.
Their silky hair tickles me
As it brushes against my skin.
The scent of their perfumes
Intoxicates me.
Their breaths warm my ears
As their wet tongues dig in
While their loving fingers
Fondle my dick.
Nursing me back to health,
Taking care of every scratch and cut.
Like a precious treasure
To be cherished in their arms,
The way a mother
Would take care of her son
If she was able to love,
I close my eyes and I dissolve.
Nothing matters anymore.
Lifting her skirt in a park
While a guy walks his dog.
Half-assed blowjobs on the toilet
When I really need to take a shit.
Working myself into an erection
When I just want to be left alone.
Passionless, stale missionary
While she thinks about her ex.
I would have traded all of it
For a woman touching me
Like she cares.
As she engulfs me in her embrace,
She runs her fingers through my hair
And whispers softly in my ear.
"Are you happy, little boy?"
I have finally died,
And I get to rest
With her soothing breasts
Wrapped around my face.
June 20, 2021
Next Trip Around the Track (Poetry)
I sat around while the clock ticked
Thirty six years old
I'm counting down
Another month, another year
I've wasted too much time
In misery and dismay
An old man's bones,
A brain that never rests,
Something rotting in my gut
I've left myself alone
Nobody to see me through,
No one to come to my front door
I can't get a grip on things
I keep singing the same songs
I've thrown every piece down
This insatiable hole
I'm going back to sell myself,
To the trap of endless repetition,
When what I need
Is to be alone
I remember the view
From up there, looking down
I didn't find an answer there
Nor anywhere else
Hold on and it will pass
That's what I heard my voice say
Over and over
All through my life
Thirty Euros, Pt. 4 (Fiction)
As soon as I walk into what Garima, the receptionist of the SFPT, called a waiting room, I feel as if I've wandered into a palace. This room is even larger, and two curved staircases lead to an open second floor. Crystal chandeliers embedded into the ceiling, and that look like upside down wedding cakes, radiate golden light that bathe four sets of crystal tables and the surrounding leather chesterfield sofas, which are banana yellow. I'm the only person in the room, and yet it's hard for me to keep my composure as I walk on the porcelain-like floor, which features a mathematical pattern represented with orange and gold colors, and that reminds me of a sunflower. Eight Corinthian pillars, artfully distributed, are holding the ceiling. I hadn't had time to notice the walls, but one or more geniuses have frescoed meticulous scenes that depict many different cultures in their dedicated stretches of wall. Peculiar attires, monuments, myths. I recognize some Greek mythological creatures, Hindu gods, Buddhist temples and Japanese shrines. I'm quite sure that I'm looking at some of these cultures for the first time, because I don't recall having gotten glimpses of them in my thirty one years. These frescoes would feel at home in a Renaissance cathedral, except that they aren't limited to representing figures of a single religion. This supposed office belongs in a dream.
I approach one of the sofas, although I feel like I have no business being here. Bringing me to this era must have been some cosmic mistake. The closer I get to the crystal table, which has a base made out of a geode filled with pointy, violet crystals, the more it smells like orange and vanilla. The aroma comes from an egg-shaped diffuser on the table. I sink into the sofa, which envelops me as I sit back.
I close my eyes. I must have disconnected for a while, because I only realize that someone has walked towards me when the person is standing next to my table. It's Garima.
"You'll be just fine there," she says, and then she puts on the table a tray with a silver cup and a jar of water, along with a small plate loaded up with a colorful snack that reminds me of fried potato chips.
"T-thanks..."
Her embellished, flared gown, fit for a princess, makes it a joke that she's the one serving me. Before I know it she has turned around and is walking back into the room from which I came. I fill the cup with water, then drink. I confirm that the same old water I've always known exists here, and that its cold fills my stomach as expected. The snack doesn't have the shape nor the color of potato chips, but its crunch sticks against my palate bringing similar sensations. For a moment I wonder how come they knew I wasn't allergic to whatever kind of nut this snack contains.
I spot movement out of the corner of my eye. A machine that resembles a robotic vacuum cleaner, but with the shape of a lenticular disk, is gliding down the stairs without touching them. It moves way too fast for a vacuum cleaner, and it's maneuvering to approach me. I sit straight. I can tell it's not dangerous, but I doubt I wouldn't have jumped out of the sofa if Chieko hadn't come from this reality.
The top of the disk emits a vertical beam of light around a meter and seventy centimeters tall. The light gelatinizes as it expands taking the shape of a person, and in a second I find myself looking up at a man in his forties who has a neat comb over haircut, and who wears a black suit. The image reminds me of a Victorian butler.
"Pardon me," the person says as he bows elegantly. "I'm the Guide, and I'm at your service for whatever doubt you have about how things work around here. Your information was already in the system, but now we are aware that you live among us. Don't hesitate to approach any of the Guides for help."
My skin shivers with electricity.
"You are a machine, right...?"
"That's right, miss Uriarte. Most of the people in this town are human, yes, but a certain percentage of us are artificial intelligences. Our creator is the famous inventor Konrad Zuse."
I nod in silence. I'm sure I will lose my mind by the end of the day. Maybe I will faint in front of this seemingly sentient machine.
"I know, miss," the Guide continues. "Back in your time, artificial intelligence hadn't advanced much. No worries, just remember that we exist to fulfill our roles, whether to help humans or other artificial intelligences! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask."
I close my eyes while I take a deep breath. For a moment I think that whenever I open my eyes again, the man made of opaque light will have disappeared, but he's still looking down at me.
"Have I truly come to the future, or have I gone insane?" I ask in a thin, weak voice.
"Both are possible," the Guide says jovially. "Don't be scared either way. Now seriously, no, you haven't gone insane. One of the representatives working for the SFPT, with the name of Chieko Sekiguchi, focused on your case and managed to rescue you from a terrible fate. Rescues such as these are why their whole operation exists, I suppose."
My face grows warm.
"I-I'll need time to adjust to this..."
The Guide smiles pleasantly.
"You are doing quite well. Now, would you like to listen to the story of Konrad Zuse?"
I nod as I rub my right temple.
"Konrad is someone you have never heard of, I fear," the Guide continues, "but we consider him a genius who invented new programming techniques that eventually gave birth to the first sentient AIs."
"Sounds like a competent man."
"He wasn't a man, though. He was an artificial intelligence himself!"
"Is that the case...?"
"Now, you might be wondering how come a sentient AI was the one to invent sentient AIs. There's something called Gödel's theorem that says that even though it's impossible to give a formal proof, the conclusion of an algorithm can hold under almost any given circumstance."
I'm having problems keeping up with the Guide's speech.
"Gödel's theorem? Sounds complicated..."
The butler laughs, and then winks while turning his head theatrically.
"I'm afraid I was pulling your leg, miss. No, the creation of sentient intelligences was a gradual process involving transformer-based neural networks with quatrillions of parameters!"
A wave of vertigo ripples through my body.
"Well, at least I'm glad you understand what a joke is," I mumble. "And that we can hold a conversation, even if it goes over my head."
The Guide smiles again.
"Oh! Now that you've been rescued, miss, you will love visiting any of our Librarians, I'm sure. So much literature to discover! I'm very partial to it myself."
I'm too dizzy to come up with a proper answer, but I also don't want to seem like an idiot to a machine who seems more intelligent than me. However, as soon as I start speaking, the butler straightens his back and looks to the side as if listening to something in an earpiece. Then he smiles cordially at me.
"It seems that your representative has arrived. She's been informed of your whereabouts. Just remember, if you see any of us Guides gliding around and you need information about anything, just call us over. Guiding people is our raison d'être, and we are glad to do so. As you might imagine, I will make myself scarce now. Until next time!"
The Guide makes a bow so elegant that it would fit in a museum.
"Uh... Thank you for your help," I say.
The figure of the man, made of light, collapses in a split second as if the top of the lenticular disk had absorbed it. The disk then turns around and glides quickly up the left staircase, leaving me alone at the table.
My head is filled with white noise as I fill my silver cup with water and drink it in a single gulp. I doubt this encounter was some sort of practical joke. I'm going to live in a world where artificial intelligences are so advanced that they consider themselves to be people. And it seems that it hasn't caused significant troubles, at least to the extent that this ostentatious office continues existing. I should just go with the flow, at least for a while, taking everything in. These people know I come from the past, and they will be lenient of my stupidity. But I worry that any of the inhabitants of this strange reality will realize that I don't deserve to be here. When they do, they will send me back. I doubt I would be able to continue living normally back on the Earth I know after I've been here.
"Izar! I knew you'd come," Chieko says from above.
A warmth grows in my chest as I look up towards the railing of the second floor. Chieko, the same Asian woman whom I thought I would never see again, along with her apple red hair and her kind smile, is leaning on the railing of the second floor, close to the right, curved staircase.
"Come on, get up here," Chieko says. "We are going for a ride."
The tone of her voice suggests I have become someone special to her. Despite the deceptive way in which she approached me, she did it because she cares. My whole body feels too light and weird, and I fear I will faint any minute, but I walk carefully to the right staircase and climb up, stepping on stairs that glimmer like gold. The second floor is an imitation of the lower one, except that the sets of tables and sofas are arranged according to the narrower space. On the opposite end of the room, an arched doorway, with an elaborate lintel that displays a rhomboid pattern, leads into a single staircase that goes up and out of view.
As I approach Chieko, who keeps smiling warmly, I can tell that the clothes she had worn to meet me were chosen to fit in. Now she's wearing a pearl white, puff sleeve blouse with a scoop neckline, along with black pleated shorts with suspenders. She has gathered her red hair in two buns that give her a spacey look.
I'm about to greet her properly when she steps forward and hugs me tightly. I'm not used to people being this nice. I may melt. When she pulls away, she keeps resting her hands on my shoulders.
"What are your first impressions?" she asks. "It seems so wild, right?"
This must be what they call charm. I want to trust Chieko, and I'm sure she told me the truth when she assured me that I would have died in less than a week. She can't fake the sincerity in her eyes.
"It's great..." I say carefully, unsure how to continue describing this world. "I met one of your robots, or artificial intelligences."
"Some towns have more of them than humans." Chieko chuckles softly. "They are great. I'm sure he helped you kindly."
"I was too dumbfounded to take advantage of his services, but I'll come across any of them again. He also mentioned a Librarian..."
Chieko nods.
"Ah, the Guide knew how to entice you. Yeah, we have buildings dedicated to these Librarians, who will recommend you books based on your preferences and previously read titles, and will produce the books for you. You wouldn't consider them libraries, I don't think, because they don't store any books. When you are done with any of them, you throw it into a matter decomposer."
"Matter… So you people break everything down, and they end up turning into... ashes?"
Chieko pats my shoulder.
"Into their periodic elements. Don't worry about it for now, Izar! After all, you don't need to know how a computer works in order to use it, right? And in these parts, computers will ask you what you want! We don't use mice. Anyway, let's just go up to the roof, shall we?"
She leads me by the hand up the stairs until we exit through a big door onto the roof. I'm looking down, as I fear getting overwhelmed as if I were staring at majestic paintings in a museum, so first I see that the floor of the roof is flat, and made out of impractically large, buttermilk yellow stone slabs. I feel cool air on my skin. I look up quickly towards the sky. It's a vast expanse mostly as blue as I expect a sky to be, but it's blended in parts with a peach pink, and the few wisps of cloud are blurry as if dissolving. I search for the source of the warmth on my skin, and my breath leaves my lungs for the first time since I came. I don't dare look directly at the sun, but close to the lemon yellow, burning disk, which looks smaller than I expected, hangs a second, larger sun. The sunrays of the second sun seem stronger, and as they hit the clouds floating nearby, they meld in a radiant blend of red-orange.
Chieko pats my back.
"Good? Isn't it spectacular?"
"W-we aren't on Earth."
"Just take it easy, Izar. I don't want you to faint. Also, don't stare directly at the sun, whether the original or our artificial one. It's a terrible idea no matter what planet you end up standing on."
I look at Chieko's pretty face, tinged in the sunlight.
"W-wait," I say. "W-where are we exactly...?"
"The future, of course!" Chieko exclaims with glee. "As for our current whereabouts..."
Chieko stops talking, because something out of the corner of my eye had startled me. Up to my left, in a forty five degree angle, a metallic vehicle is floating through the air silently. Its slick shape reminds me of a zeppelin, but it has fin-like ridges. The sunlight is whitening the upper part of the vehicle, which reflects the light as in a mirror. There must be people inside.
"That's a UFO," I blurt out.
Chieko chuckles.
"It's perfectly identified. That's just... a flying bus. I prefer the personal models myself."
My benefactress tugs on my hand, and I stagger in the direction she's following. She's guiding me towards a row of rectangular parking spaces painted in white. Two of the spaces are occupied. Chieko leads me to the closest vehicle. It's about the size of a van, but if that flying bus reminded me of a UFO, I'm staring at one right now: it's an upside down plate standing on a landing skid, as if the bottom shouldn't touch the ground. Its metallic frame seems to have been built without seams, and it's painted a pineapple yellow except for decorative black stripes. The windshield encircles the frame in a band of glass, but I can't see the inside, as the reflections of the sunrays are curtaining the interior.
I'm trembling uncontrollably. My knees go weak. Before I know it, Chieko is holding me in her arms. Her neck smells like tea. I want to go limp, but we'd fall to the floor. I swallow, then force myself to stand straight.
"I'm having a hard time..." I start to say, but I shut up.
"No need to worry. Izar, many, many people over the years have reached this present in a similar way than you, and they now live their lives just like any other citizen. Believe me, it will be far easier for you to adapt than it is for people of the Middle Ages, for example. Once you've become familiar with computers, your brain can handle the rest. So, don't you think it's a splendid vehicle?"
"S-splendid... How..." I stutter while I feel as if my tongue is stuck.
Chieko approaches her vehicle and tells it to open. An opening appears in the side of the frame, and an airstair gets lowered to the ground. I look around. This large, flat roof is enclosed by tall hedges and rimmed with still, decorative pools, but the skyline of a town or a city is peeking out from behind the hedges. It's more sparse than I would have expected. I make out the treetops of pine-like trees, shaped like spearheads. All the buildings I can glimpse look like ancient monuments, cathedral-like monsters with incongruous designs, as different as those of apartment buildings in a city. I'm surprised that none of the buildings reach the height of a skyscraper. They remind me of how tall the Colosseum must look. Also, I don't spot any mountain nor hill, which I always expect to see, as I was used to living in Gipuzkoa.
"Here, get inside!" Chieko says.
She pushes me gently so I ascend the airstairs to the interior of her vehicle. I only have to hunch over a little. The interior smells like warm leather and coffee. There are only two seats, which are black with vertical white stripes, and they look as expensive and comfortable as the sofas in the office of the SFPT. The only part of the wall resembling a dashboard with indicators and displays is in front of the left seat, so I sit on the right one. Once I sink in the upholstery, I let out a long sigh. I'd gladly sit here for hours.
Chieko sits down to my left. She says 'close', and the opening in the frame closes like a pore. She reaches for a plasticky device attached to the dashboard, which reminds me of the cigarette lighters that many cars have, but when Chieko pulls out this device, it's tethered to the inside of the frame with a loose cable made out of spiral metal. Chieko presses a surface of the device to her temple, and it latches on to her skin. As soon as she drops her hands to her lap, the indicators and displays come to life. They aren't screens, but the closest thing I've seen to solid, 3D holograms. Two of them clearly display our surroundings with three-dimensional models of buildings and trees.
Chieko leans back. Our vehicle lifts off, but I can only tell because the tops of buildings and trees that I can see through the windshield are sliding down. Soon the view is filled with sky.
"I-I don't feel any engine," I say. "I'm not being pushed down against the seat."
Chieko smiles at me, narrowing her eyes.
"Those kinds of engines are long gone. This baby creates its own gravitational field. We are moving through spacetime in a bubble. Far more complicated things have been invented. I wasn't responsible, though, so I can't be that proud about them."
I let out a breath as if something was squeezing my heart. While the view of the sky changes, and the models in the holographic displays turn around like cups in a microwave, Chieko is eyeing me as if she's about to smirk.
"I get the appeal of impressing someone with a ride in my fancy car."
I rub my mouth nervously. My heart is pounding on my ribcage.
"Be careful, Chieko. I don't get attached to people, I sink my claws in them."
"That's alright, I think. This world allows all kinds of emotions."
She sounds like a wise and worldly older person. For the first time I wonder about her age. This society has managed to travel back in time, construct such majestic buildings and move through the skies effortlessly with antigravity vehicles. I'm sure they have managed to solve the riddle of aging.
Although Chieko is just looking down at the displays and hasn't touched anything, our vehicle tilts, and I find myself staring at a much smaller version of the roof we lifted off from. The building is standing in the middle of a park. I spot a few serpentine footpaths, structures similar to streetlights, and even the small figures of people walking around or sitting on benches. Some are hanging out near a cerulean blue pond. So many statues strewn about, some of them painted in vibrant colors. I shiver. From the outside, the office of the SFPT reminds me of a Roman building, and one side, maybe the main entrance, even features a colonnade.
Chieko slouches in the chair and holds her hands on her lap.
"So yeah, I work for the SFPT. I'm not big on working for others; kind of a lone wolf, do my own thing kind of person. But they've done fantastic work for generations. You only need to look around to realize that we wouldn't have become as great if it wasn't for the many people they’ve rescued."
"This SFPT's role is to bring here people from the past...?" I ask, bewildered.
Chieko facepalms, and then shrugs apologetically.
"Sorry, I should realize that you know close to nothing! SFPT is the acronym for the boringly named Society For the Preservation of Talent."
I look down to my lap. My hands are trembling, but now I'm mostly excited.
"You told me that you approached me because you wanted to preserve my life and my talent."
Chieko doesn't answer, and when I look at her, she's staring at me with a solemn expression. Her mouth makes a wet sound when it opens.
"Izar, what has been the biggest enemy of humankind for hundreds of thousands of years?"
"Humankind? Well... War and injustice."
"I don't think so, no. Those are terrible things we do. Try again. Something much more frightening."
"More abstract? Darkness and fear?"
"I'm not getting across..." Chieko rubs her chin. "The main evil we have faced has stolen everything from us for hundreds of thousands of years. It has murdered an uncountable number of us. It has stolen parents from their children, and sometimes children from their parents. It has stopped talented people from being able to benefit the world further, not to mention discover of what they would have been capable otherwise. For so many millennia we submitted to it as a tyrant we wouldn't dare to stand against."
My throat is closing, and a shiver runs through my spine.
"Y-you are talking about the passage of time."
Chieko narrows her eyes like a hawk.
"About the effects of time on living beings. It has rendered us incapable, it has killed us. One by one, generation by generation. Well, it can get fucked now. Talent no longer falls through the cracks of reality, hopefully until some other brilliant human being among millions and millions picks up where the previous genius was forced to stop. Not only that, those brilliant people are able to interact with one another. Our translators bridge the gulfs between every language that currently exists or has ever existed." She points at the small hemispherical device attached to the skin behind her ear. "I wouldn't have been able to understand any single word coming out of your mouth otherwise. And you can read any text like a native. Don't need to take it off either, it's hydrophobic."
I hide my face in my hands. Chieko thankfully gives me some seconds to calm down.
"I know, it must be pretty overwhelming," she says.
"Yeah, I feel as if I were hallucinating. So you are telling me that your society is partly made out of artists and inventors from every previous era of humankind's existence, that have been brought over methodically...?"
"That is right. We figure out when and how they died, if there was any doubt, and we save them. We feel good in the process, it's like we are gallant knights. I'm mostly an artist myself, though, but I was born here. I make virtual reality experiences. I'm going through a dry spell, though, as I told you."
I shake my head slowly.
"Ah... So, which brilliant people have been rescued from the past, names that I might know...?"
Chieko shuts one eye as she tilts her head, maybe because she's trying to come up with artists with whom I may be familiar.
"Well, for example, Isaac Newton was resurrected, although that happened a few generations before I was born. I only saw him once from afar. I recall he always wore the same clothes, kind of an eccentric guy. But he has become good friends with philosophers of old, Greeks and Romans mainly. He doesn't live around here, though."
My mind is reeling. I don't feel capable of understanding all the implications of the SFPT's work.
"S-so, writers like... Let's say, Shakespeare. Is he alive too?"
Chieko lets out an appreciative noise, and nods enthusiastically.
"He was one of my main inspirations even as a child! He moved on to virtual reality experiences. So much of his new work is astonishing, and he adapted quite quickly to our modern times. Because I work in the medium, one of my goals is that he gets to experience my movies and enjoys them so much that he writes a recommendation. That would make me famous overnight! I've never interacted with him in person, though, but I've seen him at festivals."
"Y-you could become friends with an immortalized genius like the father of the English language... I think I will end up vomiting."
Chieko laughs, but she shakes her hands as if to dissuade me from throwing up now.
"Not in my car, please! If you seriously need to vomit, we can land."
I feel so small, even in the presence of Chieko. She might be a thousand years old for all I know, although she looks younger than me.
"I-it's alright, I was being... Thank you for making this whole situation so clear. I get it. Some of your predecessors made sure to rescue people like William Shakespeare, Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein and such, huh? No wonder everything looks so amazing. And after so many years there's only small fries like me to bring over."
"Don't refer to yourself like that. So what if you aren't Shakespeare? Neither am I! We can still be better than the day before. I'm not into competing with other artists, and it's a suicidal notion anyway, when you might wake up one morning only to find out that any of the greats have released their next big experience, and after you watch it you know you will never be able to come up with anything remotely similar. But you gotta take it as a humbling experience."
I hang my head low. I feel as vulnerable as a child in the cold. When I start crying silently, Chieko pats me on the thigh.
I only realize that she's flying this vehicle in some other direction because the view changes. Once I feel strong enough to look up, my gaze falls on a vast plain. We are so high that the panorama must be encompassing dozens if not hundreds of kilometers. Other flying vehicles are cutting through the sky in different directions, and some of those vehicles are so tiny that they have been reduced to specks of dust that glisten in the sun. There are curved ridges in the distance that look like the raised rims of craters, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the lakes, some of which are fed by serpentine river systems, are ancient craters filled with water. The landscape is green, probably because grass is growing everywhere, but I make out amorphous expanses of forests. Curiously, I don't see any farmland. Plenty of human communities are hugging the coastline of lakes and have grown on both sides of wide rivers, but they have also allowed their architects to go wild, because some of the monument-like buildings sitting on the plains are the size of mountains.
I point at a group of those conspicuous monuments.
"T-those are pyramids."
"Hmm? Ah, yeah, those were made quite a long time ago, a few decades after they invented time travel and started bringing people over," Chieko says nonchalantly. "They weren't here before we came!"
"Chieko, where the hell are we...?" I whisper.
"This whole area is called the Hesperia Plains. It's close to a humongous inland sea called Hellas."
I rub my temples. I feel a headache coming. Where have I heard those names before?
"Are we in... I mean, this is a different planet."
"Mars. Just next door. It's not like I've brought you to another solar system."
I get goosebumps. I'm on Mars.
"H-have you guys colonized other solar systems...?"
Chieko grins happily.
"Hell yeah."
I can't face the view any longer, so I hang my head low. I take deep breaths to keep my chest from convulsing.
"Your people have made it, haven't they...?" I say in a quavering voice. "My era was a nightmare. I was sure we would self-destruct, maybe to the extent that we went extinct. B-but you have survived, and made... all of this."
"It's a better world, sure, for new art to come forth!"
I'm feeling calmer and calmer. I've never felt this comfortable with any other human being, although she belongs to a different world.
"People don't wage wars anymore? People don't kill each other?"
Chieko laughs awkwardly.
"It hasn't gotten that bad, not like it did in the centuries around your time. But people are people. Some communities are on the verge of war any given day, and for one reason or another, some bastards always want to cause havoc. Our town is as quiet as they come, though."
"W-well... At least you've saved people's lives."
Chieko offers me a childish smile, almost closing her eyes.
"You were my first. I told you, this was a personal project. I had little clue about what I was doing, I was following the training. I've mostly done other kinds of jobs for the SFPT, related to working with artists brought from the past. We still live and learn through making mistakes! But I might get into it and figure out which other people I should travel back in time to rescue. However, the SFPT is very careful about these assignments. Frankly, if you had been an author of great renown, they wouldn’t have let me take the case.”
I stare out of the windshield. The sky is so beautiful. If a person could fly in those colors every second of the day, they would retain their sanity.
"I'm not..." I mumble. "I only wrote some stupid stuff..."
"Oh, shut it. There's always enough food. People can print it on the replicators, even from the materials that the freighters bring over from nebulae and gas giants. There are enough jobs for those who want other people to tell them what to do. And you can lounge on the roof of your house and write for as long as you want."
My mouth is twisting and my shoulders shake as streams of tears run down my cheeks. My throat burns.
"Alright, Izar," Chieko says jovially. "You'll live in my house for a while, until you get used to this place. Let's go. You'll feel different after a good night's sleep."
I approach one of the sofas, although I feel like I have no business being here. Bringing me to this era must have been some cosmic mistake. The closer I get to the crystal table, which has a base made out of a geode filled with pointy, violet crystals, the more it smells like orange and vanilla. The aroma comes from an egg-shaped diffuser on the table. I sink into the sofa, which envelops me as I sit back.
I close my eyes. I must have disconnected for a while, because I only realize that someone has walked towards me when the person is standing next to my table. It's Garima.
"You'll be just fine there," she says, and then she puts on the table a tray with a silver cup and a jar of water, along with a small plate loaded up with a colorful snack that reminds me of fried potato chips.
"T-thanks..."
Her embellished, flared gown, fit for a princess, makes it a joke that she's the one serving me. Before I know it she has turned around and is walking back into the room from which I came. I fill the cup with water, then drink. I confirm that the same old water I've always known exists here, and that its cold fills my stomach as expected. The snack doesn't have the shape nor the color of potato chips, but its crunch sticks against my palate bringing similar sensations. For a moment I wonder how come they knew I wasn't allergic to whatever kind of nut this snack contains.
I spot movement out of the corner of my eye. A machine that resembles a robotic vacuum cleaner, but with the shape of a lenticular disk, is gliding down the stairs without touching them. It moves way too fast for a vacuum cleaner, and it's maneuvering to approach me. I sit straight. I can tell it's not dangerous, but I doubt I wouldn't have jumped out of the sofa if Chieko hadn't come from this reality.
The top of the disk emits a vertical beam of light around a meter and seventy centimeters tall. The light gelatinizes as it expands taking the shape of a person, and in a second I find myself looking up at a man in his forties who has a neat comb over haircut, and who wears a black suit. The image reminds me of a Victorian butler.
"Pardon me," the person says as he bows elegantly. "I'm the Guide, and I'm at your service for whatever doubt you have about how things work around here. Your information was already in the system, but now we are aware that you live among us. Don't hesitate to approach any of the Guides for help."
My skin shivers with electricity.
"You are a machine, right...?"
"That's right, miss Uriarte. Most of the people in this town are human, yes, but a certain percentage of us are artificial intelligences. Our creator is the famous inventor Konrad Zuse."
I nod in silence. I'm sure I will lose my mind by the end of the day. Maybe I will faint in front of this seemingly sentient machine.
"I know, miss," the Guide continues. "Back in your time, artificial intelligence hadn't advanced much. No worries, just remember that we exist to fulfill our roles, whether to help humans or other artificial intelligences! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask."
I close my eyes while I take a deep breath. For a moment I think that whenever I open my eyes again, the man made of opaque light will have disappeared, but he's still looking down at me.
"Have I truly come to the future, or have I gone insane?" I ask in a thin, weak voice.
"Both are possible," the Guide says jovially. "Don't be scared either way. Now seriously, no, you haven't gone insane. One of the representatives working for the SFPT, with the name of Chieko Sekiguchi, focused on your case and managed to rescue you from a terrible fate. Rescues such as these are why their whole operation exists, I suppose."
My face grows warm.
"I-I'll need time to adjust to this..."
The Guide smiles pleasantly.
"You are doing quite well. Now, would you like to listen to the story of Konrad Zuse?"
I nod as I rub my right temple.
"Konrad is someone you have never heard of, I fear," the Guide continues, "but we consider him a genius who invented new programming techniques that eventually gave birth to the first sentient AIs."
"Sounds like a competent man."
"He wasn't a man, though. He was an artificial intelligence himself!"
"Is that the case...?"
"Now, you might be wondering how come a sentient AI was the one to invent sentient AIs. There's something called Gödel's theorem that says that even though it's impossible to give a formal proof, the conclusion of an algorithm can hold under almost any given circumstance."
I'm having problems keeping up with the Guide's speech.
"Gödel's theorem? Sounds complicated..."
The butler laughs, and then winks while turning his head theatrically.
"I'm afraid I was pulling your leg, miss. No, the creation of sentient intelligences was a gradual process involving transformer-based neural networks with quatrillions of parameters!"
A wave of vertigo ripples through my body.
"Well, at least I'm glad you understand what a joke is," I mumble. "And that we can hold a conversation, even if it goes over my head."
The Guide smiles again.
"Oh! Now that you've been rescued, miss, you will love visiting any of our Librarians, I'm sure. So much literature to discover! I'm very partial to it myself."
I'm too dizzy to come up with a proper answer, but I also don't want to seem like an idiot to a machine who seems more intelligent than me. However, as soon as I start speaking, the butler straightens his back and looks to the side as if listening to something in an earpiece. Then he smiles cordially at me.
"It seems that your representative has arrived. She's been informed of your whereabouts. Just remember, if you see any of us Guides gliding around and you need information about anything, just call us over. Guiding people is our raison d'être, and we are glad to do so. As you might imagine, I will make myself scarce now. Until next time!"
The Guide makes a bow so elegant that it would fit in a museum.
"Uh... Thank you for your help," I say.
The figure of the man, made of light, collapses in a split second as if the top of the lenticular disk had absorbed it. The disk then turns around and glides quickly up the left staircase, leaving me alone at the table.
My head is filled with white noise as I fill my silver cup with water and drink it in a single gulp. I doubt this encounter was some sort of practical joke. I'm going to live in a world where artificial intelligences are so advanced that they consider themselves to be people. And it seems that it hasn't caused significant troubles, at least to the extent that this ostentatious office continues existing. I should just go with the flow, at least for a while, taking everything in. These people know I come from the past, and they will be lenient of my stupidity. But I worry that any of the inhabitants of this strange reality will realize that I don't deserve to be here. When they do, they will send me back. I doubt I would be able to continue living normally back on the Earth I know after I've been here.
"Izar! I knew you'd come," Chieko says from above.
A warmth grows in my chest as I look up towards the railing of the second floor. Chieko, the same Asian woman whom I thought I would never see again, along with her apple red hair and her kind smile, is leaning on the railing of the second floor, close to the right, curved staircase.
"Come on, get up here," Chieko says. "We are going for a ride."
The tone of her voice suggests I have become someone special to her. Despite the deceptive way in which she approached me, she did it because she cares. My whole body feels too light and weird, and I fear I will faint any minute, but I walk carefully to the right staircase and climb up, stepping on stairs that glimmer like gold. The second floor is an imitation of the lower one, except that the sets of tables and sofas are arranged according to the narrower space. On the opposite end of the room, an arched doorway, with an elaborate lintel that displays a rhomboid pattern, leads into a single staircase that goes up and out of view.
As I approach Chieko, who keeps smiling warmly, I can tell that the clothes she had worn to meet me were chosen to fit in. Now she's wearing a pearl white, puff sleeve blouse with a scoop neckline, along with black pleated shorts with suspenders. She has gathered her red hair in two buns that give her a spacey look.
I'm about to greet her properly when she steps forward and hugs me tightly. I'm not used to people being this nice. I may melt. When she pulls away, she keeps resting her hands on my shoulders.
"What are your first impressions?" she asks. "It seems so wild, right?"
This must be what they call charm. I want to trust Chieko, and I'm sure she told me the truth when she assured me that I would have died in less than a week. She can't fake the sincerity in her eyes.
"It's great..." I say carefully, unsure how to continue describing this world. "I met one of your robots, or artificial intelligences."
"Some towns have more of them than humans." Chieko chuckles softly. "They are great. I'm sure he helped you kindly."
"I was too dumbfounded to take advantage of his services, but I'll come across any of them again. He also mentioned a Librarian..."
Chieko nods.
"Ah, the Guide knew how to entice you. Yeah, we have buildings dedicated to these Librarians, who will recommend you books based on your preferences and previously read titles, and will produce the books for you. You wouldn't consider them libraries, I don't think, because they don't store any books. When you are done with any of them, you throw it into a matter decomposer."
"Matter… So you people break everything down, and they end up turning into... ashes?"
Chieko pats my shoulder.
"Into their periodic elements. Don't worry about it for now, Izar! After all, you don't need to know how a computer works in order to use it, right? And in these parts, computers will ask you what you want! We don't use mice. Anyway, let's just go up to the roof, shall we?"
She leads me by the hand up the stairs until we exit through a big door onto the roof. I'm looking down, as I fear getting overwhelmed as if I were staring at majestic paintings in a museum, so first I see that the floor of the roof is flat, and made out of impractically large, buttermilk yellow stone slabs. I feel cool air on my skin. I look up quickly towards the sky. It's a vast expanse mostly as blue as I expect a sky to be, but it's blended in parts with a peach pink, and the few wisps of cloud are blurry as if dissolving. I search for the source of the warmth on my skin, and my breath leaves my lungs for the first time since I came. I don't dare look directly at the sun, but close to the lemon yellow, burning disk, which looks smaller than I expected, hangs a second, larger sun. The sunrays of the second sun seem stronger, and as they hit the clouds floating nearby, they meld in a radiant blend of red-orange.
Chieko pats my back.
"Good? Isn't it spectacular?"
"W-we aren't on Earth."
"Just take it easy, Izar. I don't want you to faint. Also, don't stare directly at the sun, whether the original or our artificial one. It's a terrible idea no matter what planet you end up standing on."
I look at Chieko's pretty face, tinged in the sunlight.
"W-wait," I say. "W-where are we exactly...?"
"The future, of course!" Chieko exclaims with glee. "As for our current whereabouts..."
Chieko stops talking, because something out of the corner of my eye had startled me. Up to my left, in a forty five degree angle, a metallic vehicle is floating through the air silently. Its slick shape reminds me of a zeppelin, but it has fin-like ridges. The sunlight is whitening the upper part of the vehicle, which reflects the light as in a mirror. There must be people inside.
"That's a UFO," I blurt out.
Chieko chuckles.
"It's perfectly identified. That's just... a flying bus. I prefer the personal models myself."
My benefactress tugs on my hand, and I stagger in the direction she's following. She's guiding me towards a row of rectangular parking spaces painted in white. Two of the spaces are occupied. Chieko leads me to the closest vehicle. It's about the size of a van, but if that flying bus reminded me of a UFO, I'm staring at one right now: it's an upside down plate standing on a landing skid, as if the bottom shouldn't touch the ground. Its metallic frame seems to have been built without seams, and it's painted a pineapple yellow except for decorative black stripes. The windshield encircles the frame in a band of glass, but I can't see the inside, as the reflections of the sunrays are curtaining the interior.
I'm trembling uncontrollably. My knees go weak. Before I know it, Chieko is holding me in her arms. Her neck smells like tea. I want to go limp, but we'd fall to the floor. I swallow, then force myself to stand straight.
"I'm having a hard time..." I start to say, but I shut up.
"No need to worry. Izar, many, many people over the years have reached this present in a similar way than you, and they now live their lives just like any other citizen. Believe me, it will be far easier for you to adapt than it is for people of the Middle Ages, for example. Once you've become familiar with computers, your brain can handle the rest. So, don't you think it's a splendid vehicle?"
"S-splendid... How..." I stutter while I feel as if my tongue is stuck.
Chieko approaches her vehicle and tells it to open. An opening appears in the side of the frame, and an airstair gets lowered to the ground. I look around. This large, flat roof is enclosed by tall hedges and rimmed with still, decorative pools, but the skyline of a town or a city is peeking out from behind the hedges. It's more sparse than I would have expected. I make out the treetops of pine-like trees, shaped like spearheads. All the buildings I can glimpse look like ancient monuments, cathedral-like monsters with incongruous designs, as different as those of apartment buildings in a city. I'm surprised that none of the buildings reach the height of a skyscraper. They remind me of how tall the Colosseum must look. Also, I don't spot any mountain nor hill, which I always expect to see, as I was used to living in Gipuzkoa.
"Here, get inside!" Chieko says.
She pushes me gently so I ascend the airstairs to the interior of her vehicle. I only have to hunch over a little. The interior smells like warm leather and coffee. There are only two seats, which are black with vertical white stripes, and they look as expensive and comfortable as the sofas in the office of the SFPT. The only part of the wall resembling a dashboard with indicators and displays is in front of the left seat, so I sit on the right one. Once I sink in the upholstery, I let out a long sigh. I'd gladly sit here for hours.
Chieko sits down to my left. She says 'close', and the opening in the frame closes like a pore. She reaches for a plasticky device attached to the dashboard, which reminds me of the cigarette lighters that many cars have, but when Chieko pulls out this device, it's tethered to the inside of the frame with a loose cable made out of spiral metal. Chieko presses a surface of the device to her temple, and it latches on to her skin. As soon as she drops her hands to her lap, the indicators and displays come to life. They aren't screens, but the closest thing I've seen to solid, 3D holograms. Two of them clearly display our surroundings with three-dimensional models of buildings and trees.
Chieko leans back. Our vehicle lifts off, but I can only tell because the tops of buildings and trees that I can see through the windshield are sliding down. Soon the view is filled with sky.
"I-I don't feel any engine," I say. "I'm not being pushed down against the seat."
Chieko smiles at me, narrowing her eyes.
"Those kinds of engines are long gone. This baby creates its own gravitational field. We are moving through spacetime in a bubble. Far more complicated things have been invented. I wasn't responsible, though, so I can't be that proud about them."
I let out a breath as if something was squeezing my heart. While the view of the sky changes, and the models in the holographic displays turn around like cups in a microwave, Chieko is eyeing me as if she's about to smirk.
"I get the appeal of impressing someone with a ride in my fancy car."
I rub my mouth nervously. My heart is pounding on my ribcage.
"Be careful, Chieko. I don't get attached to people, I sink my claws in them."
"That's alright, I think. This world allows all kinds of emotions."
She sounds like a wise and worldly older person. For the first time I wonder about her age. This society has managed to travel back in time, construct such majestic buildings and move through the skies effortlessly with antigravity vehicles. I'm sure they have managed to solve the riddle of aging.
Although Chieko is just looking down at the displays and hasn't touched anything, our vehicle tilts, and I find myself staring at a much smaller version of the roof we lifted off from. The building is standing in the middle of a park. I spot a few serpentine footpaths, structures similar to streetlights, and even the small figures of people walking around or sitting on benches. Some are hanging out near a cerulean blue pond. So many statues strewn about, some of them painted in vibrant colors. I shiver. From the outside, the office of the SFPT reminds me of a Roman building, and one side, maybe the main entrance, even features a colonnade.
Chieko slouches in the chair and holds her hands on her lap.
"So yeah, I work for the SFPT. I'm not big on working for others; kind of a lone wolf, do my own thing kind of person. But they've done fantastic work for generations. You only need to look around to realize that we wouldn't have become as great if it wasn't for the many people they’ve rescued."
"This SFPT's role is to bring here people from the past...?" I ask, bewildered.
Chieko facepalms, and then shrugs apologetically.
"Sorry, I should realize that you know close to nothing! SFPT is the acronym for the boringly named Society For the Preservation of Talent."
I look down to my lap. My hands are trembling, but now I'm mostly excited.
"You told me that you approached me because you wanted to preserve my life and my talent."
Chieko doesn't answer, and when I look at her, she's staring at me with a solemn expression. Her mouth makes a wet sound when it opens.
"Izar, what has been the biggest enemy of humankind for hundreds of thousands of years?"
"Humankind? Well... War and injustice."
"I don't think so, no. Those are terrible things we do. Try again. Something much more frightening."
"More abstract? Darkness and fear?"
"I'm not getting across..." Chieko rubs her chin. "The main evil we have faced has stolen everything from us for hundreds of thousands of years. It has murdered an uncountable number of us. It has stolen parents from their children, and sometimes children from their parents. It has stopped talented people from being able to benefit the world further, not to mention discover of what they would have been capable otherwise. For so many millennia we submitted to it as a tyrant we wouldn't dare to stand against."
My throat is closing, and a shiver runs through my spine.
"Y-you are talking about the passage of time."
Chieko narrows her eyes like a hawk.
"About the effects of time on living beings. It has rendered us incapable, it has killed us. One by one, generation by generation. Well, it can get fucked now. Talent no longer falls through the cracks of reality, hopefully until some other brilliant human being among millions and millions picks up where the previous genius was forced to stop. Not only that, those brilliant people are able to interact with one another. Our translators bridge the gulfs between every language that currently exists or has ever existed." She points at the small hemispherical device attached to the skin behind her ear. "I wouldn't have been able to understand any single word coming out of your mouth otherwise. And you can read any text like a native. Don't need to take it off either, it's hydrophobic."
I hide my face in my hands. Chieko thankfully gives me some seconds to calm down.
"I know, it must be pretty overwhelming," she says.
"Yeah, I feel as if I were hallucinating. So you are telling me that your society is partly made out of artists and inventors from every previous era of humankind's existence, that have been brought over methodically...?"
"That is right. We figure out when and how they died, if there was any doubt, and we save them. We feel good in the process, it's like we are gallant knights. I'm mostly an artist myself, though, but I was born here. I make virtual reality experiences. I'm going through a dry spell, though, as I told you."
I shake my head slowly.
"Ah... So, which brilliant people have been rescued from the past, names that I might know...?"
Chieko shuts one eye as she tilts her head, maybe because she's trying to come up with artists with whom I may be familiar.
"Well, for example, Isaac Newton was resurrected, although that happened a few generations before I was born. I only saw him once from afar. I recall he always wore the same clothes, kind of an eccentric guy. But he has become good friends with philosophers of old, Greeks and Romans mainly. He doesn't live around here, though."
My mind is reeling. I don't feel capable of understanding all the implications of the SFPT's work.
"S-so, writers like... Let's say, Shakespeare. Is he alive too?"
Chieko lets out an appreciative noise, and nods enthusiastically.
"He was one of my main inspirations even as a child! He moved on to virtual reality experiences. So much of his new work is astonishing, and he adapted quite quickly to our modern times. Because I work in the medium, one of my goals is that he gets to experience my movies and enjoys them so much that he writes a recommendation. That would make me famous overnight! I've never interacted with him in person, though, but I've seen him at festivals."
"Y-you could become friends with an immortalized genius like the father of the English language... I think I will end up vomiting."
Chieko laughs, but she shakes her hands as if to dissuade me from throwing up now.
"Not in my car, please! If you seriously need to vomit, we can land."
I feel so small, even in the presence of Chieko. She might be a thousand years old for all I know, although she looks younger than me.
"I-it's alright, I was being... Thank you for making this whole situation so clear. I get it. Some of your predecessors made sure to rescue people like William Shakespeare, Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein and such, huh? No wonder everything looks so amazing. And after so many years there's only small fries like me to bring over."
"Don't refer to yourself like that. So what if you aren't Shakespeare? Neither am I! We can still be better than the day before. I'm not into competing with other artists, and it's a suicidal notion anyway, when you might wake up one morning only to find out that any of the greats have released their next big experience, and after you watch it you know you will never be able to come up with anything remotely similar. But you gotta take it as a humbling experience."
I hang my head low. I feel as vulnerable as a child in the cold. When I start crying silently, Chieko pats me on the thigh.
I only realize that she's flying this vehicle in some other direction because the view changes. Once I feel strong enough to look up, my gaze falls on a vast plain. We are so high that the panorama must be encompassing dozens if not hundreds of kilometers. Other flying vehicles are cutting through the sky in different directions, and some of those vehicles are so tiny that they have been reduced to specks of dust that glisten in the sun. There are curved ridges in the distance that look like the raised rims of craters, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the lakes, some of which are fed by serpentine river systems, are ancient craters filled with water. The landscape is green, probably because grass is growing everywhere, but I make out amorphous expanses of forests. Curiously, I don't see any farmland. Plenty of human communities are hugging the coastline of lakes and have grown on both sides of wide rivers, but they have also allowed their architects to go wild, because some of the monument-like buildings sitting on the plains are the size of mountains.
I point at a group of those conspicuous monuments.
"T-those are pyramids."
"Hmm? Ah, yeah, those were made quite a long time ago, a few decades after they invented time travel and started bringing people over," Chieko says nonchalantly. "They weren't here before we came!"
"Chieko, where the hell are we...?" I whisper.
"This whole area is called the Hesperia Plains. It's close to a humongous inland sea called Hellas."
I rub my temples. I feel a headache coming. Where have I heard those names before?
"Are we in... I mean, this is a different planet."
"Mars. Just next door. It's not like I've brought you to another solar system."
I get goosebumps. I'm on Mars.
"H-have you guys colonized other solar systems...?"
Chieko grins happily.
"Hell yeah."
I can't face the view any longer, so I hang my head low. I take deep breaths to keep my chest from convulsing.
"Your people have made it, haven't they...?" I say in a quavering voice. "My era was a nightmare. I was sure we would self-destruct, maybe to the extent that we went extinct. B-but you have survived, and made... all of this."
"It's a better world, sure, for new art to come forth!"
I'm feeling calmer and calmer. I've never felt this comfortable with any other human being, although she belongs to a different world.
"People don't wage wars anymore? People don't kill each other?"
Chieko laughs awkwardly.
"It hasn't gotten that bad, not like it did in the centuries around your time. But people are people. Some communities are on the verge of war any given day, and for one reason or another, some bastards always want to cause havoc. Our town is as quiet as they come, though."
"W-well... At least you've saved people's lives."
Chieko offers me a childish smile, almost closing her eyes.
"You were my first. I told you, this was a personal project. I had little clue about what I was doing, I was following the training. I've mostly done other kinds of jobs for the SFPT, related to working with artists brought from the past. We still live and learn through making mistakes! But I might get into it and figure out which other people I should travel back in time to rescue. However, the SFPT is very careful about these assignments. Frankly, if you had been an author of great renown, they wouldn’t have let me take the case.”
I stare out of the windshield. The sky is so beautiful. If a person could fly in those colors every second of the day, they would retain their sanity.
"I'm not..." I mumble. "I only wrote some stupid stuff..."
"Oh, shut it. There's always enough food. People can print it on the replicators, even from the materials that the freighters bring over from nebulae and gas giants. There are enough jobs for those who want other people to tell them what to do. And you can lounge on the roof of your house and write for as long as you want."
My mouth is twisting and my shoulders shake as streams of tears run down my cheeks. My throat burns.
"Alright, Izar," Chieko says jovially. "You'll live in my house for a while, until you get used to this place. Let's go. You'll feel different after a good night's sleep."
June 19, 2021
Thirty Euros, Pt. 3 (Fiction)
Link for this entry on my personal page, where it looks better
---
When I open my eyes, my gaze falls on a crack in the eggshell white ceiling. Dusty strands of cobweb span the crack near one end. For the second night in a row, a sheet and a duvet have kept me warm, and instead of being woken up by the laughter of children and nearby footsteps, it seems that my brain considered that the noisy toilet cistern from the upstairs neighbor was a threat. Or maybe it was time to wake up, because the morning light is filling the bedroom through the glass panes of the door to the tiny balcony.
Chieko, my benefactress from a faraway place, is gone. She fell through reality. And I bet that, as she assured me, whenever I walk into the living room, that opaque white doorway will be waiting for me.
In the kitchen, I prepare myself a coffee and I also grab some slices of salty ham. Chieko, or her employers, had stacked the fridge with groceries, although some of them will expire sooner than when the lease runs out. Also, the first time I entered the bedroom I found the apartment key next to a wad of banknotes, which looked as fresh and crisp as if they had been printed a few days before. A total of two thousand euros in tens and twenties.
Once my stomach starts digesting the slices of ham, I carry the steaming cup of coffee through the hallway into the living room, and I stand near the white doorway. It remains as lifeless as any other door. Nothing moves in this apartment but me and a couple of spiders. Although the impossible doorway doesn't scare me anymore, it gives me the anxiety of a ticking clock. It would be nice to take advantage of this shelter and be alone for a few months, although I'm sure that I'll feel as broken a few years from now. I want to lounge around thoughtlessly. Still, the money would run out eventually, and nobody will support me anymore. I'd need to find a job, at some office no doubt, and those nightmares would begin all over again.
For several minutes, while I sip my coffe, I observe the white void through which Chieko left. I barely got to know that odd woman, but now that she's gone, the silence gets heavy and oppressive at times. She has abandoned me. No, she hasn't, I barely knew her. And yet that's how I feel. I miss her smile, those ostentatious dimples, and how much she cared. I finally met someone nice who wanted to help me, but she has disappeared in a more definitive way than the other people in my life had, even those who died. I get the feeling that unless I follow Chieko through the doorway, I won't be able to find her anywhere even if I spent the rest of my life searching.
"Once I go through this doorway, I will never see this world again," I mumble, repeating her words.
Why didn't she stay and help me in person instead of giving me the freedom to choose? I'm tired of making decisions, of pondering what road to take. For years I focused on losing myself, on escaping reality, through fictional stories, and I left the technical details of how to survive in this world to my boyfriend. Maybe to a fault. I'm sure I wasn't mentally present for plenty of it. I let Víctor worry about everything but cooking, and I would have gladly allowed cobwebs to grow in the corners of the ceilings. Maybe if I hadn't lost myself into fantasy, if my living heart still beat properly, maybe he wouldn't have stopped caring about me. I shake my head. No, nothing justified him cheating repeatedly on me. To break the covenant is unforgivable.
After three quarters of an hour standing there like a zombie, my brain gets tired of thinking about it and decides to wake up. I take a shower. I clean my skin with the amount of liquid soap that any other person would have spent in four showers, but during this past week I became self-conscious about my stink as if I was constantly trailing around a noxious cloud.
The first night I spent here, finding my clothes in the wardrobe of the bedroom should have astonished me. They are the clothes that I left behind in Victor's apartment after I decided to become homeless, without any thought about how I would survive the following days. The only way I imagined that anyone would have retrieved my clothes involved Víctor agreeing to let those strangers in, but I stopped myself from trying to figure it out. Chieko, or Chieko's employers, had produced a two-dimensional door that led to another world. I'm sure they had their peculiar ways of transferring my clothes to this apartment.
I put on some jeans, a short-sleeve V-neck blouse, and on top my favorite hooded knit cardigan. I don't feel that it suits me well anymore, but it reminds me of sitting next to a window to write.
I test the key in the apartment's door a couple of times, just in case I'm suffering a psychotic break and I'm still living in the streets. I can lock and unlock the door, so I should be able to return here after a walk. At this hour on a Thursday, beyond the regular traffic on this one-lane road, I spot delivery vans supplying shops, along with housewives and retirees walking around. The same old anonymous, monotonous parade. I saunter towards the parts of the Kursaal that show up at the end of the street. The slanted, translucent glass cubes stand against a porcelain white sky. Once I reach the intersection, I stop and take in the view. The line of flags that promote some event that the Kursaal is hosting are fluttering in the breeze. To my right, although the outside sitting area of some restaurants block most of the view, a wall-like, foresty hill blocks the horizon. Cars are passing in front of me in both directions. A couple of surfers are driving electric scooters, heading likely to Zurriola beach, which is located behind the Kursaal.
I feel unreal. Everything seems fake, as if I'm staring at a painting. These past two nights have granted me enough rest, and my mind must be detaching itself from this world that it had already relinquished when I became homeless a week ago.
I cross the street and I keep walking in front of the Kursaal until a flat view opens up, that shows the beachfront promenade and beyond it a band of steel blue water. I'm seeing myself from above as I approach the low wall that borders the beach. Tanned men and women, either barefoot or wearing sandals, are standing or walking on the sand. A muscled man wearing orange trunks is climbing the safeguard tower.
I won't see this view, or any that I have stored in my brain, ever again. Whatever awaits me on the other side of that white doorway will become my new reality. I will follow the only person who cared enough to save me. I refuse to continue in this world that has thrown me aside so carelessly, and if it turns out that crossing that impossible doorway will kill me, then so be it.
As I rest my back against the low wall, I focus on whether I'll miss anything or anyone of this world I was born in. As I got older, fewer and fewer people cared for my books, which were my only contribution. All these strangers walking around don't glance my way; I looked my best in my mid twenties, too long ago already.
The breeze is cooling my face. It smells like salty water and crustaceans. My ex-boyfriend's face pops up in my mind. All that’s left of those five years with him is bitterness and pain. I'm sure any of his other women will take his calls. Although I threw my cell phone in the garbage, I doubt he would have insisted on calling beyond the first couple of days otherwise. In any case, I no longer feel capable of loving people. It's not worth the trouble.
I stare at the distant view of the hill, and how it slopes down until it ends in cliffs a couple of kilometers into the sea. I can make out the silhouettes of distinct treetops on top. What about my father? I haven't seen him for years, since he started his new family. Even though I was older when he abandoned us, I always remember him as he looked when I turned my head towards him while I lay on the sofa of his office, back when I was a child. He wore his glasses when he went over papers related to his work in the publishing industry. He always printed them out, he hated reading them on a computer screen. Sometimes when I would ask him to tell me more about what he was looking at, he would just laugh and give me an offbeat smile. He has been dead, as far as I'm concerned, for a long time.
I never cared much about my mother. That day at the hotel, when she announced that she was going to move out with her boyfriend and her kids, she made it clear enough that I would become a secondary concern from then on. Still, she called me regularly, and I was the one who refused to meet her in person as much as she wished. I didn’t attend her wedding, and I've only met my half-brother a few times. Once I cross that opaque white doorway, I will disappear as if the earth had swallowed me up. My mother might have tried to contact me in the last week, but she never met my ex-boyfriend, so she wouldn't know how to locate me. I picture her realizing that I've gone missing, that she will never see me again, nor will she ever find out what happened to me. I suppose that she'll assume that I killed myself so proficiently that nobody would find my body.
My chest gets tight, and I'm having trouble swallowing. I close my eyes and breathe slowly. A black cloud is enveloping my heart. My mother will grieve for years. I won't stick around just to spare her the pain of not seeing me again, but at least I want to let her know that it was of my own volition, and that maybe I moved out far away, somewhere I could be happy.
As I walk back towards my current apartment, I realize that I haven't seen a phone booth in years, and I don't want to ask a random stranger for his or her cell phone, mainly because I don't want them to stand nearby as I have a difficult conversation. There's a pub in the corner of the street that leads to my apartment. Its front is made of wood, and painted cobalt blue. I look in through the window. It reminds me of Irish pubs. The interior is dim, and at this hour there are only two customers, both retirees. One of them sips a beverage in a large pint glass.
I enter the pub nervously. I approach the bartender, who is a woman in her forties. Her hair has plenty of greys already, and she's wearing a striped, black and white T-shirt. I get on a bar stool.
"Give me one of those potato omelette sandwiches, please. And... would it be possible to use your landline? I have to make an important call, but I've forgotten my cell phone at home. I'll pay if necessary."
The bartender grabs one of the plates with those sandwiches and slides it towards me.
"No problem. It's in the kitchen. Do you want to call now or after you eat your sandwich?"
She's looking at me as if she can tell I'm troubled. I've spoken too fast and loud, as I always do when I'm speaking with someone for the first time.
"Yeah... I'd rather get the call out of the way first."
The bartender gestures towards a door between shelves stocked with alcoholic drinks. As I walk behind the bar, she shoots me a look of concern.
"Are you ok? Your face seems very pale."
"I'll be alright soon enough, I hope."
The kitchen is empty. I guess that they don't open it for orders until closer to midday. The landline is mounted on the wall, close to a sink. My heart is beating fast. I hope I remember my mother's cell phone number correctly. My hands are sweating.
I start counting backward in my head to give myself some time. Then, while holding the receiver with a sweaty palm, I dial the number. To my surprise, a kid answers. I can't tell at first whether it's male or female.
"H-hello? Who is this?" I ask impertinently.
"Uh... Iker. This is my mom's phone, though."
It's my half-brother.
"I'm... Is your… mom around?"
"No, she left an hour ago. I guess she forgot the phone." The kid coughs. I wonder if he's at home because he's sick. "Who are you anyway? Your voice sounds familiar."
"Uh... I'm... Izar Uriarte."
My mouth gets dry when I say my father's last name.
The kid doesn't speak for a few seconds, and I don't hear his breath either. I have no idea what this kid thinks about me. If our mother has insisted that we are half-siblings, maybe he wonders why we have barely seen each other. I wouldn't know what to tell him.
"Hi, sis," Iker says.
I swallow. I'm nobody's sister.
"Yeah, hi."
"Did you want to tell mom something? You can leave a message."
The kid is old enough to realize that I only called in the past because I had something to say, not because I enjoyed small talk nor wanted to catch up. And I'm sure that all of them remember the bitterness in my voice.
"Yes, I want you to tell her something. Listen... I'm going away. For a long time, maybe forever. So she should... You both should know that I do it of my own volition."
My last words are lodged in my throat. I feel tears building up behind my eyes.
"Where are you going?" Iker asks, concerned.
"I can't tell. Far away, that's all. I wanted to tell her that I'm sorry... for the way things turned out."
"You aren't going to call again," Iker says as if he just realized.
"No, I won't. I don't think I will ever hear your voices again, nor will you hear mine."
Tears come into my eyes slowly. I wonder what this kid is thinking, but he's a stranger. Will he remember this conversation years from now? Will he blame himself for having been unable to say the right thing?
"You can call back whenever you want," Iker says nervously.
I wipe my eyes.
"By the way... how old are you? Twelve, thirteen...?"
"Twelve."
My lips twitch as I try to figure out what to say.
"None of this was your fault. It's me. I've never known what to do with people."
Iker remains silent. I hear something playing in the background, but I can't tell if it's a movie or music.
"Are you going to be okay?" Iker asks in a low voice.
"Yeah... I'm going to try something new. Neither of you need to worry." I force myself to smile at nobody, but instead my mouth quivers. "Anyway, that's all. Don't forget to tell mom."
"Sure, I will. Take care."
I hang up. As I turn around, I want to walk directly back to the potato omelette sandwich I ordered, but I end up leaning against one of the kitchen counters, and my gaze falls on the dirty, stagnant water pooled in one of the sinks.
I thought of packing a backpack, but there isn't one in this apartment, which doesn't contain anything except for groceries, food-related objects and clothes. I wonder who is going to find my remaining possessions in the wardrobe of the bedroom, but I guess it doesn't matter. I have no doubt that Chieko was telling the truth: I won’t return to this world. Everybody who knows me here will forget me soon enough.
I didn't bother changing my clothes. I would hate to leave this cardigan behind anyway. I stand a few steps away from the featureless, white doorway in the living room. The front half of the soles of my shoes are resting on the edge of the carpet. I keep shivering every few seconds, and I fear that I'll end up pissing myself, even though I made sure to empty my bladder. My heart beats wildly. Something awaits me on the other side of this hole in reality, and I can't begin to imagine what it might be. But it contains someone like Chieko, so it should be fine. Still, I'm sure that this doorway will lead to more disappointment and pain. No other world can be that different.
I step forward and reach with my right hand slowly. I follow how the white light brightens the fabric of my cardigan. Once my fingertips touch the white surface, I expect them to find some resistance, but they disappear into a void that lacks any sensations. I draw my right hand back. The ends of those fingers haven’t been cut off. After I probe them with the fingertips of my other hand, they seem undamaged.
Alright, this is it. I close my eyes, but the powerful bright light shines through my eyelids. I take a deep breath and walk through the doorway.
An electric current runs in my body from end to end, but only for a second. I'm receiving muffled sounds. Although they seem familiar, my brain can't make out what they are, as if I had started playing a song midway through and it would take a couple of seconds for me to recognize which one it was. I panic; even a moment of disorientation feels fatal. However, when I open my eyes I find myself inside a glass bell the size of four phone booths, and beyond the clear glass I see that this bell has been installed in a large room, one similar to the lobby of a luxurious hotel. The floor is marble-like, as smooth and reflective as a pool, and it features circular designs in shades of brown, from tortilla to hickory. Soft orchestral music is playing somewhere, a mix of string and wind instruments.
My mind freaks out by itself. I take a step forward and turn around as if to make sure that the doorway I came through remains there, but as Chieko said, it's gone. I might as well have popped up inside the glass bell as if I materialized.
When I turn back, a rounded hole the size of a door has opened in the glass bell as if it was cut out with surgical precision. My mind is reeling as I step out of the glass bell. There are three others to my right, set up in an arc. They are closed and empty. The ceilings and the walls are engraved and embossed with labyrinthine motifs, some of which seem to depict animals. I realize that the building was constructed with stone, not bricks, as if it were a surviving monument from a long-dead civilization. An arched doorway stands tall on one side of the room, and around it hang green and purple wreaths that remind me of peacock tails.
As I was listening to my footsteps echoing in the large room, I feel someone's gaze upon me. I look in that direction. There is a large recess in the wall where they have installed a reception desk of sorts, but it's also made of stone, and bedecked with gilded motifs of flowers and vines. A curved wall of screens is obscuring partially the sight of the person standing behind them. When I realize that the screens, which are too slim, paper-like, are floating in the air as if mounted on invisible displays, I face that nothing like that would have been possible in my previous world. I'm either in another dimension, or in the future. Either way, I've reached a whole new reality.
The person behind the wall of screens, a woman, says something, and it takes me a moment to realize that I just heard my name but pronounced with a strange accent. My legs are trembling as I approach the desk. The woman stands on the other side of the desk in a way that the back of the screens don't hide her. It's a human being. I had feared she wouldn't be. Her skin is peanut brown, but her eyes are much darker. She's pretty, beautiful even, the kind of attractive woman they would want to greet the clients at a hotel lobby. She's wearing two round earrings that remind me of the sun, and she's also wearing a long-sleeve, crimson dress made of a velvety fabric. The torso of the dress is covered in intricate, gilded motifs of blossoming flowers. I feel as if I entered the most expensive hotel in the world.
The woman smiles with perfect teeth, and pushes a hemispherical device over the counter towards me. It's about the size of a fingertip. The woman gestures for me to pick it up and press it against the skin behind my ear. I saw Chieko wearing an identical device behind her ear, which I had confused with a wart. I obey the woman. As soon as I press the device against my skin, it latches on painlessly, and then something alien flows throughout my brain. I stagger, and I step back until my legs hold me properly. I feel as if my mind were larger, as if it suddenly held more content, but the experience is painless and unobtrusive.
"Do you understand me?" the woman asks, now lacking any accent.
I snap my head back. Only a couple of seconds later I realize that I'm standing there with my mouth agape. I feel tears coming.
"Y-yes! I understand perfectly!"
The woman offers me a kind smile.
"Welcome to our present. You are now in one of the offices of the SFPT. Can you confirm for me, just in case, that you are Izar Uriarte?"
"Yeah," I say as I wipe a tear from my right eye. I want to sob. "W-what's your name?"
"Why, I'm Garima."
"Garima... I'm so pleased that we can understand each other. For a moment I thought I would be trapped in a strange world without being able to make myself understood."
The woman chuckles softly, and then points at the identical device latched on to the skin behind her ear.
"We aren't born knowing every other language, Izar. That's why we have technology. In case you lose your translator, just come here or to any of our other offices and we'll give you a new one. I'm sure that random people would also help you in that case, maybe lend you one."
I'm overwhelmed. My legs are weakening, my throat closing.
"This is a miracle," I mumble.
"You will get used to it, dear. I already notified your representative, Chieko Sekiguchi. Very nice girl, I'm sure she'll be eager to show you our town. You can just walk around for a while if you want. We have a beautiful waiting room beyond that doorway."
"Y-you have welcomed many others, right?"
"Dear, I don't know how many. I hope I'm being cordial enough, even though I've had the same conversations over and over."
My mind is going numb. The animal part of my brain is having trouble integrating what's happening, or maybe it’s trying to push me out of it, as if it has assumed that I'm hallucinating. Garima keeps staring at me calmly. She must have seen it before and it's nothing to worry about.
"Sit somewhere. Do you have to go to the bathroom?"
"N-no, I'm fine."
I teeter away towards the arched doorway, and I pass under the hanging wreaths of green and purple flowers. I avoid looking over my shoulder, because I fear that I'm about to break into uncontrollable sobbing.
---
When I open my eyes, my gaze falls on a crack in the eggshell white ceiling. Dusty strands of cobweb span the crack near one end. For the second night in a row, a sheet and a duvet have kept me warm, and instead of being woken up by the laughter of children and nearby footsteps, it seems that my brain considered that the noisy toilet cistern from the upstairs neighbor was a threat. Or maybe it was time to wake up, because the morning light is filling the bedroom through the glass panes of the door to the tiny balcony.
Chieko, my benefactress from a faraway place, is gone. She fell through reality. And I bet that, as she assured me, whenever I walk into the living room, that opaque white doorway will be waiting for me.
In the kitchen, I prepare myself a coffee and I also grab some slices of salty ham. Chieko, or her employers, had stacked the fridge with groceries, although some of them will expire sooner than when the lease runs out. Also, the first time I entered the bedroom I found the apartment key next to a wad of banknotes, which looked as fresh and crisp as if they had been printed a few days before. A total of two thousand euros in tens and twenties.
Once my stomach starts digesting the slices of ham, I carry the steaming cup of coffee through the hallway into the living room, and I stand near the white doorway. It remains as lifeless as any other door. Nothing moves in this apartment but me and a couple of spiders. Although the impossible doorway doesn't scare me anymore, it gives me the anxiety of a ticking clock. It would be nice to take advantage of this shelter and be alone for a few months, although I'm sure that I'll feel as broken a few years from now. I want to lounge around thoughtlessly. Still, the money would run out eventually, and nobody will support me anymore. I'd need to find a job, at some office no doubt, and those nightmares would begin all over again.
For several minutes, while I sip my coffe, I observe the white void through which Chieko left. I barely got to know that odd woman, but now that she's gone, the silence gets heavy and oppressive at times. She has abandoned me. No, she hasn't, I barely knew her. And yet that's how I feel. I miss her smile, those ostentatious dimples, and how much she cared. I finally met someone nice who wanted to help me, but she has disappeared in a more definitive way than the other people in my life had, even those who died. I get the feeling that unless I follow Chieko through the doorway, I won't be able to find her anywhere even if I spent the rest of my life searching.
"Once I go through this doorway, I will never see this world again," I mumble, repeating her words.
Why didn't she stay and help me in person instead of giving me the freedom to choose? I'm tired of making decisions, of pondering what road to take. For years I focused on losing myself, on escaping reality, through fictional stories, and I left the technical details of how to survive in this world to my boyfriend. Maybe to a fault. I'm sure I wasn't mentally present for plenty of it. I let Víctor worry about everything but cooking, and I would have gladly allowed cobwebs to grow in the corners of the ceilings. Maybe if I hadn't lost myself into fantasy, if my living heart still beat properly, maybe he wouldn't have stopped caring about me. I shake my head. No, nothing justified him cheating repeatedly on me. To break the covenant is unforgivable.
After three quarters of an hour standing there like a zombie, my brain gets tired of thinking about it and decides to wake up. I take a shower. I clean my skin with the amount of liquid soap that any other person would have spent in four showers, but during this past week I became self-conscious about my stink as if I was constantly trailing around a noxious cloud.
The first night I spent here, finding my clothes in the wardrobe of the bedroom should have astonished me. They are the clothes that I left behind in Victor's apartment after I decided to become homeless, without any thought about how I would survive the following days. The only way I imagined that anyone would have retrieved my clothes involved Víctor agreeing to let those strangers in, but I stopped myself from trying to figure it out. Chieko, or Chieko's employers, had produced a two-dimensional door that led to another world. I'm sure they had their peculiar ways of transferring my clothes to this apartment.
I put on some jeans, a short-sleeve V-neck blouse, and on top my favorite hooded knit cardigan. I don't feel that it suits me well anymore, but it reminds me of sitting next to a window to write.
I test the key in the apartment's door a couple of times, just in case I'm suffering a psychotic break and I'm still living in the streets. I can lock and unlock the door, so I should be able to return here after a walk. At this hour on a Thursday, beyond the regular traffic on this one-lane road, I spot delivery vans supplying shops, along with housewives and retirees walking around. The same old anonymous, monotonous parade. I saunter towards the parts of the Kursaal that show up at the end of the street. The slanted, translucent glass cubes stand against a porcelain white sky. Once I reach the intersection, I stop and take in the view. The line of flags that promote some event that the Kursaal is hosting are fluttering in the breeze. To my right, although the outside sitting area of some restaurants block most of the view, a wall-like, foresty hill blocks the horizon. Cars are passing in front of me in both directions. A couple of surfers are driving electric scooters, heading likely to Zurriola beach, which is located behind the Kursaal.
I feel unreal. Everything seems fake, as if I'm staring at a painting. These past two nights have granted me enough rest, and my mind must be detaching itself from this world that it had already relinquished when I became homeless a week ago.
I cross the street and I keep walking in front of the Kursaal until a flat view opens up, that shows the beachfront promenade and beyond it a band of steel blue water. I'm seeing myself from above as I approach the low wall that borders the beach. Tanned men and women, either barefoot or wearing sandals, are standing or walking on the sand. A muscled man wearing orange trunks is climbing the safeguard tower.
I won't see this view, or any that I have stored in my brain, ever again. Whatever awaits me on the other side of that white doorway will become my new reality. I will follow the only person who cared enough to save me. I refuse to continue in this world that has thrown me aside so carelessly, and if it turns out that crossing that impossible doorway will kill me, then so be it.
As I rest my back against the low wall, I focus on whether I'll miss anything or anyone of this world I was born in. As I got older, fewer and fewer people cared for my books, which were my only contribution. All these strangers walking around don't glance my way; I looked my best in my mid twenties, too long ago already.
The breeze is cooling my face. It smells like salty water and crustaceans. My ex-boyfriend's face pops up in my mind. All that’s left of those five years with him is bitterness and pain. I'm sure any of his other women will take his calls. Although I threw my cell phone in the garbage, I doubt he would have insisted on calling beyond the first couple of days otherwise. In any case, I no longer feel capable of loving people. It's not worth the trouble.
I stare at the distant view of the hill, and how it slopes down until it ends in cliffs a couple of kilometers into the sea. I can make out the silhouettes of distinct treetops on top. What about my father? I haven't seen him for years, since he started his new family. Even though I was older when he abandoned us, I always remember him as he looked when I turned my head towards him while I lay on the sofa of his office, back when I was a child. He wore his glasses when he went over papers related to his work in the publishing industry. He always printed them out, he hated reading them on a computer screen. Sometimes when I would ask him to tell me more about what he was looking at, he would just laugh and give me an offbeat smile. He has been dead, as far as I'm concerned, for a long time.
I never cared much about my mother. That day at the hotel, when she announced that she was going to move out with her boyfriend and her kids, she made it clear enough that I would become a secondary concern from then on. Still, she called me regularly, and I was the one who refused to meet her in person as much as she wished. I didn’t attend her wedding, and I've only met my half-brother a few times. Once I cross that opaque white doorway, I will disappear as if the earth had swallowed me up. My mother might have tried to contact me in the last week, but she never met my ex-boyfriend, so she wouldn't know how to locate me. I picture her realizing that I've gone missing, that she will never see me again, nor will she ever find out what happened to me. I suppose that she'll assume that I killed myself so proficiently that nobody would find my body.
My chest gets tight, and I'm having trouble swallowing. I close my eyes and breathe slowly. A black cloud is enveloping my heart. My mother will grieve for years. I won't stick around just to spare her the pain of not seeing me again, but at least I want to let her know that it was of my own volition, and that maybe I moved out far away, somewhere I could be happy.
As I walk back towards my current apartment, I realize that I haven't seen a phone booth in years, and I don't want to ask a random stranger for his or her cell phone, mainly because I don't want them to stand nearby as I have a difficult conversation. There's a pub in the corner of the street that leads to my apartment. Its front is made of wood, and painted cobalt blue. I look in through the window. It reminds me of Irish pubs. The interior is dim, and at this hour there are only two customers, both retirees. One of them sips a beverage in a large pint glass.
I enter the pub nervously. I approach the bartender, who is a woman in her forties. Her hair has plenty of greys already, and she's wearing a striped, black and white T-shirt. I get on a bar stool.
"Give me one of those potato omelette sandwiches, please. And... would it be possible to use your landline? I have to make an important call, but I've forgotten my cell phone at home. I'll pay if necessary."
The bartender grabs one of the plates with those sandwiches and slides it towards me.
"No problem. It's in the kitchen. Do you want to call now or after you eat your sandwich?"
She's looking at me as if she can tell I'm troubled. I've spoken too fast and loud, as I always do when I'm speaking with someone for the first time.
"Yeah... I'd rather get the call out of the way first."
The bartender gestures towards a door between shelves stocked with alcoholic drinks. As I walk behind the bar, she shoots me a look of concern.
"Are you ok? Your face seems very pale."
"I'll be alright soon enough, I hope."
The kitchen is empty. I guess that they don't open it for orders until closer to midday. The landline is mounted on the wall, close to a sink. My heart is beating fast. I hope I remember my mother's cell phone number correctly. My hands are sweating.
I start counting backward in my head to give myself some time. Then, while holding the receiver with a sweaty palm, I dial the number. To my surprise, a kid answers. I can't tell at first whether it's male or female.
"H-hello? Who is this?" I ask impertinently.
"Uh... Iker. This is my mom's phone, though."
It's my half-brother.
"I'm... Is your… mom around?"
"No, she left an hour ago. I guess she forgot the phone." The kid coughs. I wonder if he's at home because he's sick. "Who are you anyway? Your voice sounds familiar."
"Uh... I'm... Izar Uriarte."
My mouth gets dry when I say my father's last name.
The kid doesn't speak for a few seconds, and I don't hear his breath either. I have no idea what this kid thinks about me. If our mother has insisted that we are half-siblings, maybe he wonders why we have barely seen each other. I wouldn't know what to tell him.
"Hi, sis," Iker says.
I swallow. I'm nobody's sister.
"Yeah, hi."
"Did you want to tell mom something? You can leave a message."
The kid is old enough to realize that I only called in the past because I had something to say, not because I enjoyed small talk nor wanted to catch up. And I'm sure that all of them remember the bitterness in my voice.
"Yes, I want you to tell her something. Listen... I'm going away. For a long time, maybe forever. So she should... You both should know that I do it of my own volition."
My last words are lodged in my throat. I feel tears building up behind my eyes.
"Where are you going?" Iker asks, concerned.
"I can't tell. Far away, that's all. I wanted to tell her that I'm sorry... for the way things turned out."
"You aren't going to call again," Iker says as if he just realized.
"No, I won't. I don't think I will ever hear your voices again, nor will you hear mine."
Tears come into my eyes slowly. I wonder what this kid is thinking, but he's a stranger. Will he remember this conversation years from now? Will he blame himself for having been unable to say the right thing?
"You can call back whenever you want," Iker says nervously.
I wipe my eyes.
"By the way... how old are you? Twelve, thirteen...?"
"Twelve."
My lips twitch as I try to figure out what to say.
"None of this was your fault. It's me. I've never known what to do with people."
Iker remains silent. I hear something playing in the background, but I can't tell if it's a movie or music.
"Are you going to be okay?" Iker asks in a low voice.
"Yeah... I'm going to try something new. Neither of you need to worry." I force myself to smile at nobody, but instead my mouth quivers. "Anyway, that's all. Don't forget to tell mom."
"Sure, I will. Take care."
I hang up. As I turn around, I want to walk directly back to the potato omelette sandwich I ordered, but I end up leaning against one of the kitchen counters, and my gaze falls on the dirty, stagnant water pooled in one of the sinks.
I thought of packing a backpack, but there isn't one in this apartment, which doesn't contain anything except for groceries, food-related objects and clothes. I wonder who is going to find my remaining possessions in the wardrobe of the bedroom, but I guess it doesn't matter. I have no doubt that Chieko was telling the truth: I won’t return to this world. Everybody who knows me here will forget me soon enough.
I didn't bother changing my clothes. I would hate to leave this cardigan behind anyway. I stand a few steps away from the featureless, white doorway in the living room. The front half of the soles of my shoes are resting on the edge of the carpet. I keep shivering every few seconds, and I fear that I'll end up pissing myself, even though I made sure to empty my bladder. My heart beats wildly. Something awaits me on the other side of this hole in reality, and I can't begin to imagine what it might be. But it contains someone like Chieko, so it should be fine. Still, I'm sure that this doorway will lead to more disappointment and pain. No other world can be that different.
I step forward and reach with my right hand slowly. I follow how the white light brightens the fabric of my cardigan. Once my fingertips touch the white surface, I expect them to find some resistance, but they disappear into a void that lacks any sensations. I draw my right hand back. The ends of those fingers haven’t been cut off. After I probe them with the fingertips of my other hand, they seem undamaged.
Alright, this is it. I close my eyes, but the powerful bright light shines through my eyelids. I take a deep breath and walk through the doorway.
An electric current runs in my body from end to end, but only for a second. I'm receiving muffled sounds. Although they seem familiar, my brain can't make out what they are, as if I had started playing a song midway through and it would take a couple of seconds for me to recognize which one it was. I panic; even a moment of disorientation feels fatal. However, when I open my eyes I find myself inside a glass bell the size of four phone booths, and beyond the clear glass I see that this bell has been installed in a large room, one similar to the lobby of a luxurious hotel. The floor is marble-like, as smooth and reflective as a pool, and it features circular designs in shades of brown, from tortilla to hickory. Soft orchestral music is playing somewhere, a mix of string and wind instruments.
My mind freaks out by itself. I take a step forward and turn around as if to make sure that the doorway I came through remains there, but as Chieko said, it's gone. I might as well have popped up inside the glass bell as if I materialized.
When I turn back, a rounded hole the size of a door has opened in the glass bell as if it was cut out with surgical precision. My mind is reeling as I step out of the glass bell. There are three others to my right, set up in an arc. They are closed and empty. The ceilings and the walls are engraved and embossed with labyrinthine motifs, some of which seem to depict animals. I realize that the building was constructed with stone, not bricks, as if it were a surviving monument from a long-dead civilization. An arched doorway stands tall on one side of the room, and around it hang green and purple wreaths that remind me of peacock tails.
As I was listening to my footsteps echoing in the large room, I feel someone's gaze upon me. I look in that direction. There is a large recess in the wall where they have installed a reception desk of sorts, but it's also made of stone, and bedecked with gilded motifs of flowers and vines. A curved wall of screens is obscuring partially the sight of the person standing behind them. When I realize that the screens, which are too slim, paper-like, are floating in the air as if mounted on invisible displays, I face that nothing like that would have been possible in my previous world. I'm either in another dimension, or in the future. Either way, I've reached a whole new reality.
The person behind the wall of screens, a woman, says something, and it takes me a moment to realize that I just heard my name but pronounced with a strange accent. My legs are trembling as I approach the desk. The woman stands on the other side of the desk in a way that the back of the screens don't hide her. It's a human being. I had feared she wouldn't be. Her skin is peanut brown, but her eyes are much darker. She's pretty, beautiful even, the kind of attractive woman they would want to greet the clients at a hotel lobby. She's wearing two round earrings that remind me of the sun, and she's also wearing a long-sleeve, crimson dress made of a velvety fabric. The torso of the dress is covered in intricate, gilded motifs of blossoming flowers. I feel as if I entered the most expensive hotel in the world.
The woman smiles with perfect teeth, and pushes a hemispherical device over the counter towards me. It's about the size of a fingertip. The woman gestures for me to pick it up and press it against the skin behind my ear. I saw Chieko wearing an identical device behind her ear, which I had confused with a wart. I obey the woman. As soon as I press the device against my skin, it latches on painlessly, and then something alien flows throughout my brain. I stagger, and I step back until my legs hold me properly. I feel as if my mind were larger, as if it suddenly held more content, but the experience is painless and unobtrusive.
"Do you understand me?" the woman asks, now lacking any accent.
I snap my head back. Only a couple of seconds later I realize that I'm standing there with my mouth agape. I feel tears coming.
"Y-yes! I understand perfectly!"
The woman offers me a kind smile.
"Welcome to our present. You are now in one of the offices of the SFPT. Can you confirm for me, just in case, that you are Izar Uriarte?"
"Yeah," I say as I wipe a tear from my right eye. I want to sob. "W-what's your name?"
"Why, I'm Garima."
"Garima... I'm so pleased that we can understand each other. For a moment I thought I would be trapped in a strange world without being able to make myself understood."
The woman chuckles softly, and then points at the identical device latched on to the skin behind her ear.
"We aren't born knowing every other language, Izar. That's why we have technology. In case you lose your translator, just come here or to any of our other offices and we'll give you a new one. I'm sure that random people would also help you in that case, maybe lend you one."
I'm overwhelmed. My legs are weakening, my throat closing.
"This is a miracle," I mumble.
"You will get used to it, dear. I already notified your representative, Chieko Sekiguchi. Very nice girl, I'm sure she'll be eager to show you our town. You can just walk around for a while if you want. We have a beautiful waiting room beyond that doorway."
"Y-you have welcomed many others, right?"
"Dear, I don't know how many. I hope I'm being cordial enough, even though I've had the same conversations over and over."
My mind is going numb. The animal part of my brain is having trouble integrating what's happening, or maybe it’s trying to push me out of it, as if it has assumed that I'm hallucinating. Garima keeps staring at me calmly. She must have seen it before and it's nothing to worry about.
"Sit somewhere. Do you have to go to the bathroom?"
"N-no, I'm fine."
I teeter away towards the arched doorway, and I pass under the hanging wreaths of green and purple flowers. I avoid looking over my shoulder, because I fear that I'm about to break into uncontrollable sobbing.
June 18, 2021
Thirty Euros, Pt. 2 (Fiction)
Link for this part on my personal page, where it looks better
---
I don't want to imagine what I must look like, a thirty one years old homeless woman who hasn't showered in a week and who has been sleeping on benches, walking next to a chipper Asian woman with a Japanese name, whose hair is apple red and whose gait suggests she has never known any anxiety. The sun is high in the sky, and despite the time of the year, I'm getting sweaty inside my coat.
"Here we are," Chieko says as she points at the front door of an apartment building across the one-lane road.
"What? It's only been three minutes!"
"Well, I don't know why you're complaining." Chieko smiles. "Come on."
I stand behind my odd benefactress as she fishes for her key chain inside her small backpack. I look down the street in the direction of the sea, and at the end of the passageway between two alabaster white buildings, the fancy kinds with embossed ornaments on the walls, I spot part of the translucent cubes that they call the Kursaal around these parts.
Chieko opens the door into the building's hall, but as she stands aside, I feel uneasy.
"Are you telling me that you just happen to live in an apartment three minutes away from where I was sleeping recently?" I ask her.
Chieko offers me a calming smile.
"I chose this place for that reason, yes."
I shake my head as I try to understand.
"H-how did you manage that...?"
"I have connections."
"What kind?"
"You'll see. Come on! What do you think I intend to do to you?"
I don't doubt that Chieko's intention is to get me out the streets, but this woman is an enigma, and I have learned to be wary of even those whose lives were open books. I sigh. Still, I follow her as she walks towards the elevator.
Her apartment is on the third floor. I enter behind her, and when she closes the door, which looks old and painted over, I find myself in a narrow hallway with eggshell white walls, which instead of a deliberate choice seem as if they were originally whiter but had gotten dirtier over the years. The hardwood floor has a weird design in peanut and walnut browns that looks like a power-up in a racing game, those that would make you go faster. Chieko gestures for me to follow her into a small kitchen that I can see from the front door. The walls are made of white ceramic tiles. Both the stove and the cabinets seem to have been made in the eighties. My benefactress leaves her backpack on the dining table, which would only accommodate four people because one side has been pushed against the wall. The apartment smells as if it has been sanitized in the last couple of days.
"What's the matter, Izar?" Chieko asks casually while she rests her back against the table. "Do you find this place unpleasant?"
"I wouldn't have any right to complain about the shoddiest of apartments, given that I sleep in the streets, but I find this one a bit too old for... Well, for you. I had taken you for a rich jetsetter."
Chieko rubs her chin as if considering it.
"And now?"
"I have no clue."
Chieko pushes herself off the table and walks up to the window that occupies almost all the space on the wall between the sink and the doorway out of the kitchen. She moves the curtain aside and looks towards the street below.
"We need to have a conversation, an important one," Chieko says. "But first you need to relax, and do something about that stink. Go take a shower. I'll wait here."
I wouldn't have expected this woman, who remains mostly a stranger although she has read some of my books, to offer me to take a shower. Will she allow me to live here? I'm getting anxious, but I can't tell whether it's out of worry or because I feel the wind changing.
"The lock in the bathroom doesn't work that well," Chieko adds. "I wouldn't lock myself in there just in case. Don't worry, I'm not going to interrupt you. It's the first door to your left as you exit the kitchen."
"Alright..."
I'm too confused to think coherently. I try to rub my temples as I walk out of the kitchen, but the bathroom is so close to the kitchen that I could hold the handles of both doors simultaneously. After I find myself alone in the bathroom and I switch the light on, it bathes the cramped space in a pleasant electric blue. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror, and I sit down to pee next to the standing shower.
As soon as I feel the warm water of the shower flowing down my bare skin, I feel relieved. There's a single sponge, and I wonder if Chieko forgot that I'm a guest and that she apparently lives alone, but the sponge has never been used before. I shake the questions away. I scrub my skin with the sponge, in which I pour an excess of honey-scented liquid soap. I close my eyes and let the water wash over my body.
When I exit the shower, I’m a new person. I take a breath and dare look at myself in the mirror. My cheeks are pink from the heat of the water, my cinnamon brown hair is shiny. Although I feel better now than at any point of the last month, my reflection in the mirror looks as old and worn as it has for years, like a tool that needs to be replaced. I discard the thought, and I open the cabinet to find a set of towels. The one I grab feels as soft as a cotton handkerchief. I dry myself off. Unfortunately I don't have any other clothes than my smelly T-shirt and my denim jeans, both of which have absorbed stale sweat for days. It's too late to ask Chieko whether she can lend me some clothes, as I don't want to walk up to her wrapped in a towel.
When I return to the kitchen, I see that Chieko has changed her clothes. She's wearing a grey, long-sleeved T-shirt with the black and white drawing of a woman's face sticking her tongue out, along with beige pleated shorts that barely cover half of her toned thighs. She looks even younger, more vibrant. I'm jealous.
"Oh, that's right. I should have offered you some fresh clothes," Chieko says apologetically.
I sit down wearily at the head of the table.
"That's alright, unless the sweaty smell bothers you."
Chieko shakes her head, and then she wrings her hands as she looks at the hanging cabinets.
"Before we begin, do you want a coffee? I need one myself."
"Do you have any whisky?"
Chieko stops midway, and shoots me a look of pity over her shoulder.
"I don't think so."
"I was kidding anyway. Coffee sounds good."
Chieko smiles. She opens the first cabinet next to the fridge, then stands on her tiptoes to look inside, but she doesn't find what she’s searching for. After she fails to find it as well in the second cabinet, she mumbles something to herself. She takes out a container of powdered coffee from the third one, and then she grabs two cups from a cabinet she had opened before. She's showing me her slender back, along with her long, shiny red hair, as she empties two spoonfuls of coffee in each cup. I give her a break while she opens a new carton of milk from the fridge, pours cold milk in each cup, and then she puts them in the microwave.
"Who does this apartment belong to?" I ask carefully.
Chieko freezes, but then she presses a couple of buttons on the microwave's panel and starts it up. As the appliance makes its noise and the cups turn slowly, Chieko turns towards me herself, and offers me an apologetic look.
"Because I didn't know where the coffee was, huh? I'm not that experienced with this kind of thing."
"What kind of thing? Approaching homeless writers?"
She doesn't reply. The microwave dings, and she takes the cups out. She places mine in front of me. As I take a sip of the coffee, which is warm enough but tastes too bitter and artificial, I watch how my benefactress puts the milk back into the fridge.
Chieko finally sits down across from me. She leans back and rests her right ankle on her left knee. For a few seconds she avoids holding my gaze.
"If you mean who's paying the rent, that would be my employer," Chieko says. "I haven't spent a single night here."
I narrow my eyes at her, more confused than anxious. I don't understand this situation.
"Alright... What did you want to talk to me about, or propose...?"
Chieko smiles again, now that I've given her the opportunity to get back on track. She takes a big gulp of her coffee. She reaches for her backpack, which she had rested against a leg of the table, but she only holds it as if she's about to open it.
"You're a talented person, Izar Uriarte. You have a lot of potential, but your talent has never been fully exploited."
"That's too much praise. I don't feel that way at all, and in addition, that's absurd. I'm thirty one years old, I have published seven books, and those were the ones I convinced strangers to publish. I abandoned plenty of stories along the way because I couldn't make them good enough. What else do you expect me to do?"
"It's not about what you have been able or not to do. It's about the future."
I shift my weight in the chair.
"About me not rotting in the streets, you mean?"
Chieko lifts her backpack onto the table, and pulls out a book. A glimpse of the cover reveals that it's my first one, which I wrote when I was twelve years old and that got published, thanks to my father's connections, when I was thirteen. I don't want to bother with it, but Chieko places it on the table and pushes it towards me.
I shake my head.
"Yeah, 'The Flowers of the Forest'. Even the title is stupid, isn't it? But what did I know about life or about anything at all back then?"
Chieko shakes her head sadly.
"Even as a child you invented complex imaginary worlds because you intended to escape the broken reality that the adults had put together, with its greed, cruelty and violence. Isn't that right? You wanted to be free."
I'm silent for a few seconds.
"And yet, I have been discarded by everyone."
Chieko drinks some more coffee, then taps on the cover of my book as if intending for me to focus on it.
"Back then you dreamed about a nation ravaged by war and destruction, that had barely avoided collapsing into an Apocalypse, and about the girl who escaped that world to live wild, to talk to the animals of the forest as well as to the magical beings that inhabit it. That was the kind of life you wanted to lead, wasn't it? Your protagonist’s parents looked for her insistently, but the couple of times they caught her, she just escaped again."
I rest my elbows on the table and rub my eyes. The thin steam of my cup of coffee, placed between my elbows, goes up my nostrils. I hear the muffled sounds of the traffic behind the window.
"I suppose that you intend to remind me of how magical and necessary the act of writing used to be for me, but that's not going to work. Don't tell me about the contents of this stupid novel. I was a child, and I thought that writing this story could change everything for me."
"You turned out to be a much better writer than what that twelve years old version of you could produce."
I sigh, and as I shake my head I hold the book in my hands. It's a new copy, as if Chieko had bought it a few days ago. I didn't know it was still in print, but I hadn't looked at my sales for a long time. They only depressed me.
"I recall lying on the sofa in my father's office as he worked at his desk. That's where I wrote most of this book. I guess that there were complicated reasons for why I thought I needed to write. Certainly, I wanted to impress him. He worked in the industry, so for someone as detached as him to pay enough attention to me, I should have stood out, become a writer. But you know how that turned out."
"No," Chieko says, "I don't know."
I narrow my eyes. She does know, and yet she wants me to keep talking. But she has fed me breakfast, she has invited me home, and there's the chance that I might get to sleep indoors.
"Why would anyone write, Chieko?"
She looks away, and then back at me.
"The same reasons for which anyone would produce any kind of art, right? To be understood, to belong?"
"All those readers you believe you are connecting with are ghosts in your head. You don't have access to how other people are experiencing your stories, scene by scene, word by word. The only tangible effect is the money you receive for your effort, which never rewards you enough." I push the book towards my benefactress. "In the end, it's just words on a page. None of our creative efforts have amounted to anything, have they? Am I wiser for having written all those books? Has my life improved? Have they allowed me to understand people better?"
Chieko props her chin with her hands, and her expression turns almost condescending.
"You aren't the same girl who wrote about magic all those years ago."
I roll my eyes. I take a big gulp of coffee to handle my irritation.
"How many millions of people have been killed practically yesterday, from the perspective of how long human life has existed?"
Chieko is taken aback.
"None of that is your problem."
"If millions of earnest human beings creating art didn't stop millions of deaths, didn't end greed nor injustice, then what are we playing at?"
"It's not your fault. The world is broken."
I hang my head low and grit my teeth.
"What?” Chieko insists. “You're mad because you feel responsible for the misery of humankind? Because your books didn't save them?"
"It's not that simple. I hate the delusion of it, believing that all these intellectual exercises, or even the genuine attempt to explore one’s inner worlds, will make us significantly wiser. It's just a past-time, a way to ease the decline into illness and death."
"Just a pretentious equivalent of watching television, then?"
"When I die, Chieko, my books will be forgotten. Barely anyone cares already. I will have passed through this world without changing anything. What I hate the most is that when I was younger I convinced myself, or allowed others to convince me, that it would be different. That I would be different. I nurtured that hope. I trusted people."
"And now you are ashamed of it?"
"The biggest fools are those who think they have something vital to offer. This world is a terrible place with people that will hurt you if you give them the opportunity, and every effort will only lead to disappointment and pain. It's foolish to hope for anything in a world built to break your heart. It's also exhausting."
Chieko raises her eyebrows as she tilts her coffee cup towards her mouth.
"You know the world could be much better. That's why you have always been disappointed."
"Yeah, but that's not enough reason to write books."
"But it is a reason to keep living."
I look at Chieko, the self-assured expression in her youthful, pretty face, and I sigh. I lift the book back up towards me.
"So you're telling me to return home, whichever one of my previous homes, and try to be a normal person?"
Chieko shrugs.
"I could tell you that you shouldn't write any books for a while, nor try to fix anything. Just live. But there's no time left for that."
"You mean because I'm in my thirties already and completely broke, so I can’t play around any longer?"
Chieko holds my gaze meaningfully, as if wanting to tell me more but being unable to.
"I mean that your allotted time in this world is ending."
"How do you know?"
"I will ignore answering that directly, and instead I will bring up my final, most meaningful topic. Go back in time to when you were eighteen years old, a few years after your beloved father abandoned you to start a new family. You are being forced to share a hotel room with your mother, who just told you that she was marrying into a built-in family."
I put the book down again. I take a deep breath and hide my face in my hands. I don't know who I am speaking with, I don't understand anything that has happened to me in the last few years, and I have lost the strength to go on. I wonder if this is a taste of how my grandmother felt in her seventies, once that personality-stealing illness was rotting her brain.
"I am grateful to you, Chieko," I say, pained, "particularly if meeting you will lead to me sleeping in a warm bed tonight, but I hope you understand that you are pushing a knife into my heart."
"I don't care. You need to find yourself again. So tell me, once you understood that your mother would discard you so she could continue on her own, and you attempted to lower yourself through the window with that improvised rope made out of sheets, where would you have gone, if they hadn't stopped you?"
Nobody but my mother and her new boyfriend at the time should have known this information. My own mother never even brought it up again, and I kept it hidden deep inside me. I wasn’t strong enough to continue living a normal life with the knowledge that she wanted a new family, that the last person who should have cared for my well-being intended to get rid of me.
"I don't know," I say in a dry voice.
"You don't know? You weren't that far from the ground. You could have landed, could have run away. Where would you have gone?"
I lift my head and look at Chieko. She's staring at me with a maturity beyond her years. I feel like a child again, looking up at my father.
"I don't want to know," I mutter weakly.
"Were you going on an adventure? Back to the woods, hoping to join the magical kingdom?"
My hands are trembling. I want to hide them, but this strange woman has already noticed it.
"You are truly bothering me now, Chieko."
"Were you going to kill yourself? Did you want to die in some remote place, where nobody would find your body?"
"I wanted to leave this prison. Not die, I don't think. I wanted to escape from the cell I hadn’t chosen to exist in, where I was only able to daydream about the half-imagined world I glimpsed through small holes in the walls. And I remain trapped there.”
Chieko smiles widely, somehow pleased with the result of her prodding. She takes my first novel from my hands and puts it inside her backpack. Chieko then pushes her empty cup aside and leans on her elbows while staring at me.
"I work for the SFPT," she says.
I blink a few times, wondering whether I should know what that implies or if my brain is getting as liquified as it has felt since I met this person.
"Is that supposed to mean anything?"
"It means that I have a mission. To rescue you from this world and its limitations."
She gets up from her chair. She shoulders her backpack as if we are leaving the apartment. I snap my head back, and I can't help but massage one of my temples in confusion as I get up wearily myself.
"Where are we going?"
"To the living room. Follow me."
Chieko passes by me as she enters the hallway. I hurry up behind her. The eggshell white corridor is so narrow that I wouldn't be able to walk side by side with Chieko. She passes by two closed doors, that I guess belong to the bedrooms, and she opens the door at the end of the hallway. First I notice a berry blue sofa pushed against the wall, resting on a hardwood floor with a rhombus pattern that looks as it would fit the disco era. Both are bathed in a frost white light as if coming from a lamp with a powerful light bulb.
Chieko enters the living room and stands next to the sofa, waiting for me to come in. Then I see that instead of a coffee table, on the carpet is standing a white, vertical rectangle with the dimensions of a door, and made of opaque white light. I stop, then stare dumbfounded at the vision. I twist my head towards Chieko as if to confirm that I should be alarmed, but my odd benefactress looks back at me calmly.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she says. "It always draws people's attention."
I'm stupefied. I can't even mutter a response. I approach the side of the door with caution, hoping to find out that it has volume, that it's some monolith-like artifact covered in ultra reflective paint. However, as I stand a few steps to the side of the vertical rectangle, I stop seeing it, although its white light keeps illuminating its surroundings. It's a two dimensional object.
"What... What the hell is this?" I ask in a dry voice.
Chieko holds her hands behind her back, pushing her backpack. She offers me a playful smile.
"What does it look like to you?"
"A door. It's the only way I can describe this thing."
"Alright. Doors lead somewhere. What awaits on the other side, Izar?"
I swallow. I have retreated closer to the exit of the room, if only because I feel safer near the odd stranger that led me to this impossible sheet of white light. I'm getting dizzier. I'll need to sit down soon.
"I don't know."
"Don't you want to, though? What would crossing over be like, and what would you see the moment you stepped through it? It sounds like an adventure."
My body feels weak. I have eaten so poorly in the last week, and my nerves are frayed after having stood guard against anyone who might have wanted to attack me in the night. I shudder.
"I'm not into adventures."
Chieko chuckles. She walks until she stands next to me, facing the opaque doorway.
"You aren't, huh? What was that book of yours, 'The Mountain Cracks', about? A group of anthropologists who were the last to live among and relate to natives of a beautiful island that was used as a testing ground for atomic bombs. Or your 'The Interval of Shadows', about a young soldier who enters a time machine in the middle of the first World War, so he can travel to the past and save a woman. Or 'A Serpent of the Desert', about a woman who has ventured into a strange land and finds herself between two warring tribes. Or 'The Frozen Seas', about another woman who travels to a forbidden island in the Arctic Circle in search of a mystical artifact. Or 'The River of Dreams', about a third young woman who searches for her lost boyfriend in the jungle. This life is sad enough. Don't make it even worse by lying to yourself."
Chieko places her right hand on my trembling shoulder.
"Who are you really?" I ask her. "What are you? Where do you come from?"
Chieko’s eyes turn kind. She looks at the opaque doorway.
"I told you, I work for the SFPT," she says quietly as if trying to comfort me. "I'm not their go-to person for this kind of operation, but I took it as a personal project."
"You know that doesn't mean anything to me."
She smiles at me, narrowing her eyes.
"This doorway leads to a far away place, Izar."
"H-how far away are we talking...?" I ask nervously.
Chieko places her right hand on my cheek and caresses it gently with her fingers.
"If I told you the exact number of kilometers between here and there, you wouldn't believe me. But I came from the other side, and set up this meeting so we could stand in front of this option I'm offering you."
"Is it dangerous?"
She winks.
"It could lead to a room full of leeches and spiders if you aren't careful. That's a bit unlikely, though."
I swallow. My legs are getting wobblier. As I stare at the impossible doorway, much brighter than a computer screen, I squint and try to make out details, but I don't notice any imperfection. It's like some deity cut a rectangular hole in the universe, and light from the other side was leaking through.
"I'm offering you two options, Izar," Chieko starts as she shifts the weight of her backpack. “You can live in this apartment until the lease runs out at the end of the month. Naturally, they won't let you continue living here past that point, but it would have given you time to figure out how to continue existing in this lonely world. Your other option is to venture through that opaque whiteness to find out what awaits you on the other side."
"Which one are you suggesting?"
Chieko laughs.
"Neither, Izar. Both. I believe in personal choice. But I should clarify that once you go through this doorway, you will never see this world again. So have that in mind."
I want to say something, but my throat closes up and I can't even breathe properly. Chieko’s eyes are serious.
"What do you think?" she asks me.
"I-I don't know..."
"Everyone who should have cared properly for you has abandoned you. In less than a week your lungs will fill with filthy water until your brain shuts off."
"W-why are you doing this for me?"
"To save you, of course. I want to see how far your talent goes."
"I'm no good, Chieko. I'm worthless. I did my best work when I was thirteen years old. That's the truth. I was never as honest, as original, as creative as when I was a girl who still believed in this world."
Chieko smirks.
"Then maybe you need time to improve." She takes a couple of steps towards the doorway. When she turns towards me, the white light haloes her as if it were white water splashing against her back. "This door will remain here until the last day of the month. Afterwards, it will never appear again, and neither will I or any of us return. We will assume that you have made your choice."
She holds her hands in front of her waist and bows slightly towards me.
"In case this is the last time we see each other, Izar," Chieko adds, " I hope you manage to live a life of which you are proud."
My vision is blurring, and I can't push words through my closed throat. Chieko's misted figure raises a hand to wave while she steps through the white doorway, which engulfs her as if she fell through the world.
---
I don't want to imagine what I must look like, a thirty one years old homeless woman who hasn't showered in a week and who has been sleeping on benches, walking next to a chipper Asian woman with a Japanese name, whose hair is apple red and whose gait suggests she has never known any anxiety. The sun is high in the sky, and despite the time of the year, I'm getting sweaty inside my coat.
"Here we are," Chieko says as she points at the front door of an apartment building across the one-lane road.
"What? It's only been three minutes!"
"Well, I don't know why you're complaining." Chieko smiles. "Come on."
I stand behind my odd benefactress as she fishes for her key chain inside her small backpack. I look down the street in the direction of the sea, and at the end of the passageway between two alabaster white buildings, the fancy kinds with embossed ornaments on the walls, I spot part of the translucent cubes that they call the Kursaal around these parts.
Chieko opens the door into the building's hall, but as she stands aside, I feel uneasy.
"Are you telling me that you just happen to live in an apartment three minutes away from where I was sleeping recently?" I ask her.
Chieko offers me a calming smile.
"I chose this place for that reason, yes."
I shake my head as I try to understand.
"H-how did you manage that...?"
"I have connections."
"What kind?"
"You'll see. Come on! What do you think I intend to do to you?"
I don't doubt that Chieko's intention is to get me out the streets, but this woman is an enigma, and I have learned to be wary of even those whose lives were open books. I sigh. Still, I follow her as she walks towards the elevator.
Her apartment is on the third floor. I enter behind her, and when she closes the door, which looks old and painted over, I find myself in a narrow hallway with eggshell white walls, which instead of a deliberate choice seem as if they were originally whiter but had gotten dirtier over the years. The hardwood floor has a weird design in peanut and walnut browns that looks like a power-up in a racing game, those that would make you go faster. Chieko gestures for me to follow her into a small kitchen that I can see from the front door. The walls are made of white ceramic tiles. Both the stove and the cabinets seem to have been made in the eighties. My benefactress leaves her backpack on the dining table, which would only accommodate four people because one side has been pushed against the wall. The apartment smells as if it has been sanitized in the last couple of days.
"What's the matter, Izar?" Chieko asks casually while she rests her back against the table. "Do you find this place unpleasant?"
"I wouldn't have any right to complain about the shoddiest of apartments, given that I sleep in the streets, but I find this one a bit too old for... Well, for you. I had taken you for a rich jetsetter."
Chieko rubs her chin as if considering it.
"And now?"
"I have no clue."
Chieko pushes herself off the table and walks up to the window that occupies almost all the space on the wall between the sink and the doorway out of the kitchen. She moves the curtain aside and looks towards the street below.
"We need to have a conversation, an important one," Chieko says. "But first you need to relax, and do something about that stink. Go take a shower. I'll wait here."
I wouldn't have expected this woman, who remains mostly a stranger although she has read some of my books, to offer me to take a shower. Will she allow me to live here? I'm getting anxious, but I can't tell whether it's out of worry or because I feel the wind changing.
"The lock in the bathroom doesn't work that well," Chieko adds. "I wouldn't lock myself in there just in case. Don't worry, I'm not going to interrupt you. It's the first door to your left as you exit the kitchen."
"Alright..."
I'm too confused to think coherently. I try to rub my temples as I walk out of the kitchen, but the bathroom is so close to the kitchen that I could hold the handles of both doors simultaneously. After I find myself alone in the bathroom and I switch the light on, it bathes the cramped space in a pleasant electric blue. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror, and I sit down to pee next to the standing shower.
As soon as I feel the warm water of the shower flowing down my bare skin, I feel relieved. There's a single sponge, and I wonder if Chieko forgot that I'm a guest and that she apparently lives alone, but the sponge has never been used before. I shake the questions away. I scrub my skin with the sponge, in which I pour an excess of honey-scented liquid soap. I close my eyes and let the water wash over my body.
When I exit the shower, I’m a new person. I take a breath and dare look at myself in the mirror. My cheeks are pink from the heat of the water, my cinnamon brown hair is shiny. Although I feel better now than at any point of the last month, my reflection in the mirror looks as old and worn as it has for years, like a tool that needs to be replaced. I discard the thought, and I open the cabinet to find a set of towels. The one I grab feels as soft as a cotton handkerchief. I dry myself off. Unfortunately I don't have any other clothes than my smelly T-shirt and my denim jeans, both of which have absorbed stale sweat for days. It's too late to ask Chieko whether she can lend me some clothes, as I don't want to walk up to her wrapped in a towel.
When I return to the kitchen, I see that Chieko has changed her clothes. She's wearing a grey, long-sleeved T-shirt with the black and white drawing of a woman's face sticking her tongue out, along with beige pleated shorts that barely cover half of her toned thighs. She looks even younger, more vibrant. I'm jealous.
"Oh, that's right. I should have offered you some fresh clothes," Chieko says apologetically.
I sit down wearily at the head of the table.
"That's alright, unless the sweaty smell bothers you."
Chieko shakes her head, and then she wrings her hands as she looks at the hanging cabinets.
"Before we begin, do you want a coffee? I need one myself."
"Do you have any whisky?"
Chieko stops midway, and shoots me a look of pity over her shoulder.
"I don't think so."
"I was kidding anyway. Coffee sounds good."
Chieko smiles. She opens the first cabinet next to the fridge, then stands on her tiptoes to look inside, but she doesn't find what she’s searching for. After she fails to find it as well in the second cabinet, she mumbles something to herself. She takes out a container of powdered coffee from the third one, and then she grabs two cups from a cabinet she had opened before. She's showing me her slender back, along with her long, shiny red hair, as she empties two spoonfuls of coffee in each cup. I give her a break while she opens a new carton of milk from the fridge, pours cold milk in each cup, and then she puts them in the microwave.
"Who does this apartment belong to?" I ask carefully.
Chieko freezes, but then she presses a couple of buttons on the microwave's panel and starts it up. As the appliance makes its noise and the cups turn slowly, Chieko turns towards me herself, and offers me an apologetic look.
"Because I didn't know where the coffee was, huh? I'm not that experienced with this kind of thing."
"What kind of thing? Approaching homeless writers?"
She doesn't reply. The microwave dings, and she takes the cups out. She places mine in front of me. As I take a sip of the coffee, which is warm enough but tastes too bitter and artificial, I watch how my benefactress puts the milk back into the fridge.
Chieko finally sits down across from me. She leans back and rests her right ankle on her left knee. For a few seconds she avoids holding my gaze.
"If you mean who's paying the rent, that would be my employer," Chieko says. "I haven't spent a single night here."
I narrow my eyes at her, more confused than anxious. I don't understand this situation.
"Alright... What did you want to talk to me about, or propose...?"
Chieko smiles again, now that I've given her the opportunity to get back on track. She takes a big gulp of her coffee. She reaches for her backpack, which she had rested against a leg of the table, but she only holds it as if she's about to open it.
"You're a talented person, Izar Uriarte. You have a lot of potential, but your talent has never been fully exploited."
"That's too much praise. I don't feel that way at all, and in addition, that's absurd. I'm thirty one years old, I have published seven books, and those were the ones I convinced strangers to publish. I abandoned plenty of stories along the way because I couldn't make them good enough. What else do you expect me to do?"
"It's not about what you have been able or not to do. It's about the future."
I shift my weight in the chair.
"About me not rotting in the streets, you mean?"
Chieko lifts her backpack onto the table, and pulls out a book. A glimpse of the cover reveals that it's my first one, which I wrote when I was twelve years old and that got published, thanks to my father's connections, when I was thirteen. I don't want to bother with it, but Chieko places it on the table and pushes it towards me.
I shake my head.
"Yeah, 'The Flowers of the Forest'. Even the title is stupid, isn't it? But what did I know about life or about anything at all back then?"
Chieko shakes her head sadly.
"Even as a child you invented complex imaginary worlds because you intended to escape the broken reality that the adults had put together, with its greed, cruelty and violence. Isn't that right? You wanted to be free."
I'm silent for a few seconds.
"And yet, I have been discarded by everyone."
Chieko drinks some more coffee, then taps on the cover of my book as if intending for me to focus on it.
"Back then you dreamed about a nation ravaged by war and destruction, that had barely avoided collapsing into an Apocalypse, and about the girl who escaped that world to live wild, to talk to the animals of the forest as well as to the magical beings that inhabit it. That was the kind of life you wanted to lead, wasn't it? Your protagonist’s parents looked for her insistently, but the couple of times they caught her, she just escaped again."
I rest my elbows on the table and rub my eyes. The thin steam of my cup of coffee, placed between my elbows, goes up my nostrils. I hear the muffled sounds of the traffic behind the window.
"I suppose that you intend to remind me of how magical and necessary the act of writing used to be for me, but that's not going to work. Don't tell me about the contents of this stupid novel. I was a child, and I thought that writing this story could change everything for me."
"You turned out to be a much better writer than what that twelve years old version of you could produce."
I sigh, and as I shake my head I hold the book in my hands. It's a new copy, as if Chieko had bought it a few days ago. I didn't know it was still in print, but I hadn't looked at my sales for a long time. They only depressed me.
"I recall lying on the sofa in my father's office as he worked at his desk. That's where I wrote most of this book. I guess that there were complicated reasons for why I thought I needed to write. Certainly, I wanted to impress him. He worked in the industry, so for someone as detached as him to pay enough attention to me, I should have stood out, become a writer. But you know how that turned out."
"No," Chieko says, "I don't know."
I narrow my eyes. She does know, and yet she wants me to keep talking. But she has fed me breakfast, she has invited me home, and there's the chance that I might get to sleep indoors.
"Why would anyone write, Chieko?"
She looks away, and then back at me.
"The same reasons for which anyone would produce any kind of art, right? To be understood, to belong?"
"All those readers you believe you are connecting with are ghosts in your head. You don't have access to how other people are experiencing your stories, scene by scene, word by word. The only tangible effect is the money you receive for your effort, which never rewards you enough." I push the book towards my benefactress. "In the end, it's just words on a page. None of our creative efforts have amounted to anything, have they? Am I wiser for having written all those books? Has my life improved? Have they allowed me to understand people better?"
Chieko props her chin with her hands, and her expression turns almost condescending.
"You aren't the same girl who wrote about magic all those years ago."
I roll my eyes. I take a big gulp of coffee to handle my irritation.
"How many millions of people have been killed practically yesterday, from the perspective of how long human life has existed?"
Chieko is taken aback.
"None of that is your problem."
"If millions of earnest human beings creating art didn't stop millions of deaths, didn't end greed nor injustice, then what are we playing at?"
"It's not your fault. The world is broken."
I hang my head low and grit my teeth.
"What?” Chieko insists. “You're mad because you feel responsible for the misery of humankind? Because your books didn't save them?"
"It's not that simple. I hate the delusion of it, believing that all these intellectual exercises, or even the genuine attempt to explore one’s inner worlds, will make us significantly wiser. It's just a past-time, a way to ease the decline into illness and death."
"Just a pretentious equivalent of watching television, then?"
"When I die, Chieko, my books will be forgotten. Barely anyone cares already. I will have passed through this world without changing anything. What I hate the most is that when I was younger I convinced myself, or allowed others to convince me, that it would be different. That I would be different. I nurtured that hope. I trusted people."
"And now you are ashamed of it?"
"The biggest fools are those who think they have something vital to offer. This world is a terrible place with people that will hurt you if you give them the opportunity, and every effort will only lead to disappointment and pain. It's foolish to hope for anything in a world built to break your heart. It's also exhausting."
Chieko raises her eyebrows as she tilts her coffee cup towards her mouth.
"You know the world could be much better. That's why you have always been disappointed."
"Yeah, but that's not enough reason to write books."
"But it is a reason to keep living."
I look at Chieko, the self-assured expression in her youthful, pretty face, and I sigh. I lift the book back up towards me.
"So you're telling me to return home, whichever one of my previous homes, and try to be a normal person?"
Chieko shrugs.
"I could tell you that you shouldn't write any books for a while, nor try to fix anything. Just live. But there's no time left for that."
"You mean because I'm in my thirties already and completely broke, so I can’t play around any longer?"
Chieko holds my gaze meaningfully, as if wanting to tell me more but being unable to.
"I mean that your allotted time in this world is ending."
"How do you know?"
"I will ignore answering that directly, and instead I will bring up my final, most meaningful topic. Go back in time to when you were eighteen years old, a few years after your beloved father abandoned you to start a new family. You are being forced to share a hotel room with your mother, who just told you that she was marrying into a built-in family."
I put the book down again. I take a deep breath and hide my face in my hands. I don't know who I am speaking with, I don't understand anything that has happened to me in the last few years, and I have lost the strength to go on. I wonder if this is a taste of how my grandmother felt in her seventies, once that personality-stealing illness was rotting her brain.
"I am grateful to you, Chieko," I say, pained, "particularly if meeting you will lead to me sleeping in a warm bed tonight, but I hope you understand that you are pushing a knife into my heart."
"I don't care. You need to find yourself again. So tell me, once you understood that your mother would discard you so she could continue on her own, and you attempted to lower yourself through the window with that improvised rope made out of sheets, where would you have gone, if they hadn't stopped you?"
Nobody but my mother and her new boyfriend at the time should have known this information. My own mother never even brought it up again, and I kept it hidden deep inside me. I wasn’t strong enough to continue living a normal life with the knowledge that she wanted a new family, that the last person who should have cared for my well-being intended to get rid of me.
"I don't know," I say in a dry voice.
"You don't know? You weren't that far from the ground. You could have landed, could have run away. Where would you have gone?"
I lift my head and look at Chieko. She's staring at me with a maturity beyond her years. I feel like a child again, looking up at my father.
"I don't want to know," I mutter weakly.
"Were you going on an adventure? Back to the woods, hoping to join the magical kingdom?"
My hands are trembling. I want to hide them, but this strange woman has already noticed it.
"You are truly bothering me now, Chieko."
"Were you going to kill yourself? Did you want to die in some remote place, where nobody would find your body?"
"I wanted to leave this prison. Not die, I don't think. I wanted to escape from the cell I hadn’t chosen to exist in, where I was only able to daydream about the half-imagined world I glimpsed through small holes in the walls. And I remain trapped there.”
Chieko smiles widely, somehow pleased with the result of her prodding. She takes my first novel from my hands and puts it inside her backpack. Chieko then pushes her empty cup aside and leans on her elbows while staring at me.
"I work for the SFPT," she says.
I blink a few times, wondering whether I should know what that implies or if my brain is getting as liquified as it has felt since I met this person.
"Is that supposed to mean anything?"
"It means that I have a mission. To rescue you from this world and its limitations."
She gets up from her chair. She shoulders her backpack as if we are leaving the apartment. I snap my head back, and I can't help but massage one of my temples in confusion as I get up wearily myself.
"Where are we going?"
"To the living room. Follow me."
Chieko passes by me as she enters the hallway. I hurry up behind her. The eggshell white corridor is so narrow that I wouldn't be able to walk side by side with Chieko. She passes by two closed doors, that I guess belong to the bedrooms, and she opens the door at the end of the hallway. First I notice a berry blue sofa pushed against the wall, resting on a hardwood floor with a rhombus pattern that looks as it would fit the disco era. Both are bathed in a frost white light as if coming from a lamp with a powerful light bulb.
Chieko enters the living room and stands next to the sofa, waiting for me to come in. Then I see that instead of a coffee table, on the carpet is standing a white, vertical rectangle with the dimensions of a door, and made of opaque white light. I stop, then stare dumbfounded at the vision. I twist my head towards Chieko as if to confirm that I should be alarmed, but my odd benefactress looks back at me calmly.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she says. "It always draws people's attention."
I'm stupefied. I can't even mutter a response. I approach the side of the door with caution, hoping to find out that it has volume, that it's some monolith-like artifact covered in ultra reflective paint. However, as I stand a few steps to the side of the vertical rectangle, I stop seeing it, although its white light keeps illuminating its surroundings. It's a two dimensional object.
"What... What the hell is this?" I ask in a dry voice.
Chieko holds her hands behind her back, pushing her backpack. She offers me a playful smile.
"What does it look like to you?"
"A door. It's the only way I can describe this thing."
"Alright. Doors lead somewhere. What awaits on the other side, Izar?"
I swallow. I have retreated closer to the exit of the room, if only because I feel safer near the odd stranger that led me to this impossible sheet of white light. I'm getting dizzier. I'll need to sit down soon.
"I don't know."
"Don't you want to, though? What would crossing over be like, and what would you see the moment you stepped through it? It sounds like an adventure."
My body feels weak. I have eaten so poorly in the last week, and my nerves are frayed after having stood guard against anyone who might have wanted to attack me in the night. I shudder.
"I'm not into adventures."
Chieko chuckles. She walks until she stands next to me, facing the opaque doorway.
"You aren't, huh? What was that book of yours, 'The Mountain Cracks', about? A group of anthropologists who were the last to live among and relate to natives of a beautiful island that was used as a testing ground for atomic bombs. Or your 'The Interval of Shadows', about a young soldier who enters a time machine in the middle of the first World War, so he can travel to the past and save a woman. Or 'A Serpent of the Desert', about a woman who has ventured into a strange land and finds herself between two warring tribes. Or 'The Frozen Seas', about another woman who travels to a forbidden island in the Arctic Circle in search of a mystical artifact. Or 'The River of Dreams', about a third young woman who searches for her lost boyfriend in the jungle. This life is sad enough. Don't make it even worse by lying to yourself."
Chieko places her right hand on my trembling shoulder.
"Who are you really?" I ask her. "What are you? Where do you come from?"
Chieko’s eyes turn kind. She looks at the opaque doorway.
"I told you, I work for the SFPT," she says quietly as if trying to comfort me. "I'm not their go-to person for this kind of operation, but I took it as a personal project."
"You know that doesn't mean anything to me."
She smiles at me, narrowing her eyes.
"This doorway leads to a far away place, Izar."
"H-how far away are we talking...?" I ask nervously.
Chieko places her right hand on my cheek and caresses it gently with her fingers.
"If I told you the exact number of kilometers between here and there, you wouldn't believe me. But I came from the other side, and set up this meeting so we could stand in front of this option I'm offering you."
"Is it dangerous?"
She winks.
"It could lead to a room full of leeches and spiders if you aren't careful. That's a bit unlikely, though."
I swallow. My legs are getting wobblier. As I stare at the impossible doorway, much brighter than a computer screen, I squint and try to make out details, but I don't notice any imperfection. It's like some deity cut a rectangular hole in the universe, and light from the other side was leaking through.
"I'm offering you two options, Izar," Chieko starts as she shifts the weight of her backpack. “You can live in this apartment until the lease runs out at the end of the month. Naturally, they won't let you continue living here past that point, but it would have given you time to figure out how to continue existing in this lonely world. Your other option is to venture through that opaque whiteness to find out what awaits you on the other side."
"Which one are you suggesting?"
Chieko laughs.
"Neither, Izar. Both. I believe in personal choice. But I should clarify that once you go through this doorway, you will never see this world again. So have that in mind."
I want to say something, but my throat closes up and I can't even breathe properly. Chieko’s eyes are serious.
"What do you think?" she asks me.
"I-I don't know..."
"Everyone who should have cared properly for you has abandoned you. In less than a week your lungs will fill with filthy water until your brain shuts off."
"W-why are you doing this for me?"
"To save you, of course. I want to see how far your talent goes."
"I'm no good, Chieko. I'm worthless. I did my best work when I was thirteen years old. That's the truth. I was never as honest, as original, as creative as when I was a girl who still believed in this world."
Chieko smirks.
"Then maybe you need time to improve." She takes a couple of steps towards the doorway. When she turns towards me, the white light haloes her as if it were white water splashing against her back. "This door will remain here until the last day of the month. Afterwards, it will never appear again, and neither will I or any of us return. We will assume that you have made your choice."
She holds her hands in front of her waist and bows slightly towards me.
"In case this is the last time we see each other, Izar," Chieko adds, " I hope you manage to live a life of which you are proud."
My vision is blurring, and I can't push words through my closed throat. Chieko's misted figure raises a hand to wave while she steps through the white doorway, which engulfs her as if she fell through the world.
June 17, 2021
Three Trapped Souls (Poetry)
Link for this poem on my personal page, where it looks better
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The artifact was created millennia ago,
Born of an ancient sorcerer's experiments
With his dark, soul-sucking magic
He shaped it in a single night from clay
Into a black, polished sphere, two feet across.
The sorcerer believed that life was a curse;
He spent his days grief-stricken,
Lost in melancholy and crying spells.
He yearned to craft a mighty tool
That would grant joy by touching it.
Without enduring happiness, he thought,
The world would never know peace.
His heart felt heavy as he sat down
To fashion this wondrous thing,
A miracle created from his own despair.
But the spell with which to enchant it
Required a momentous sacrifice:
It needed to be powered by three souls
That had belonged to vestal girls,
And those poor, lost souls would be cursed
By being trapped inside the sphere's core.
No one would miss the orphans he picked.
They were fresh, pure and unspoiled by sin.
He took them to his home, where he lived alone.
He fed them well and clothed them warmly.
He made them happy. They laughed and played.
He loved them with all his heart.
The sorcerer wrote, saddened, about a girl
Whose eyes had glowed like molten gold
As she looked up at him with love,
But the old man pushed a sharp dagger
Deep into each of their innocent hearts.
He had no choice but to make them pay
For their crime of living on Earth.
They cried out for help, but no one came.
Their cries echoed through time and space.
The sorcerer cut the hearts from their bodies,
And their blood spilled on his black sphere.
He thought that the sacrifice of a few lives
Justified the happiness of many more.
As long as anyone was touching his artifact,
They would never know sadness again.
The sorcerer retired to solitude for weeks.
"Oh, my dear girls..." The old man wept.
He remembered their gazes, so tender and kind.
He came to feel like an unforgivable monster,
And every day, his tired heart ached
As if a different monster were stabbing it.
When the artifact was complete,
It glowed like a black pearl in its sheath.
The sphere had sealed those young souls,
And its creator's sadness faded away quick:
Those who touched the polished sphere
Found themselves in a strange mindspace
That made them feel warm and secure.
It gave them a feeling of being complete.
No matter what life they had led
Or how much or little they'd earned
Through their suffering, the artifact
Would grant anyone a momentary sense
Of perfect bliss and fulfillment.
But over time, the souls got worn down.
The sphere would one day require new ones.
Its creator wished to never kill again,
So he imbued the artifact with a spell
That would absorb lost souls as needed,
Which rendered the original sacrifices
Kind of unnecessary.
Long after the sorcerer died of old age,
His gift for all mankind seemed lost.
The artifact's existence was forgotten
Until archaeologists unearthed his workshop.
Although the sorcerer had documented his work,
Historians believed he had made up a fanciful tale.
A prominent scholar opined, "The artifact
Was simply an excuse to take innocent lives.
The sorcerer was a sadist, a psychopath."
"The sorcerer was a genius," said another.
"I don't care what you say."
In any case, there were too many unknowns.
No one could prove that the sphere had existed.
However, the artifact did exist;
It had rolled somehow into a ravine.
The farmer who found it called the press,
Eager to divulge its secrets to the world.
"It's true!" he shouted. "This thing is amazing!
I can't believe this. I feel so good!
It's like nothing I've ever experienced before.
Oh, wow, I feel so calm and contented."
The sphere glowed faintly, as if it knew
That someone was looking at it now.
For decades, the artifact rested
On a shelf at the museum of Rijdenhart.
People from everywhere came to marvel
At the artifact that granted happiness.
The polished sphere became a cultural icon.
Artists painted scenes of it in action.
Writers wrote books about it.
Poets sang songs of it.
Philosophers pondered its meaning.
Prophets ranted about it.
Rulers debated its use.
Some people tried to destroy the artifact.
Far more intended to steal it.
There was even a cult that believed it was holy.
The authorities knew it was a matter of time
Until they lost control of such a wonder,
So they hid it away where it wouldn't be found.
Rumors circulated about its whereabouts.
People claimed to have seen it in foreign lands.
It was said to be in a vault in a bank in Switzerland.
It was rumored to be hidden in a cave in Tibet.
It was also said to be in a secret chamber in China.
Some believed it belonged now to a private collector.
In fact, the artifact is stored
In an inconspicuous warehouse
Where it sits in a box on a shelf.
Only scholars with special clearance
Can study the sphere or even look at it.
But they became familiar with the last souls
That the artifact had absorbed along its way.
One of the girls was murdered
When she was twelve years old.
Daphne was her name,
And her hair was the color of flames.
She loved to play the piano,
And she played it so well
That her father, a famous musician,
Hired a band to accompany her.
The crowd went wild
As her fingers flew across the keys.
Those notes were like fire,
So beautiful and pure.
When her parents entered their apartment
On that fateful day,
Daphne's bedroom was bloodied and gory.
Her young body lay on the floor,
Dead from numerous stab wounds.
Her murderer had long fled.
No one had seen anything suspicious.
The murder weapon was never found.
It wasn't long before the case was closed,
And no one learned her murderer's identity
Except for Daphne herself.
One of the girls drowned
When she was thirteen years old.
Her name was Julia,
And she loved to swim in the sea.
She often dived deep underwater
To explore the wonders of the ocean floor.
But on that fateful day,
A storm suddenly blew up.
The wind howled and the rain poured down.
Although Julia tried to reach land,
The strong currents pulled her under.
Her pale arms reached for the sky
As the waves crashed over her head.
Her mother's tears turned to ice
As she watched her daughter
Drown in the raging tide.
Minutes later she drowned as well
In those dark, cold depths.
A fisherman ended up finding Julia;
Her corpse had floated to the surface.
The body was bloated with water,
Her skin was grayish-white,
Her limbs were purple and swollen,
Her eyes stared blankly upward,
Her lips were blue and still.
One of the girls was trampled
When she was seven years old.
Her name was Eudocia.
She was the daughter of a soldier
Who fought for the Roman Empire.
In the streets of Alexandria,
On that fateful day,
A chariot hurtled down the street.
The horses were lathered and sweaty
As they galloped furiously.
The wheels clattered against the cobblestones,
But Eudocia was thinking about flowers.
The girl had always been fascinated by them.
"When I grow up, I'll become a great artist,"
She had told her father recently.
"I want to paint pictures that are so lovely,
You'll forget all about war."
"What do you mean?" he had asked.
"I think I can make the world more peaceful.
Flowers can heal a broken heart."
Eudocia replayed this dialogue in her mind
As she absentmindedly crossed the road.
The driver didn't stop to help,
He just kept driving away
As the girl was dragged through the mud
And the wheels left bloody trails.
Her body was covered in bruises,
Her bones were crushed and broken.
Eudocia's father wept,
Then took her body home
And hanged himself.
It took a team of parapsychologists
A large number of ouija board sessions
To figure out this information
I just told you.
One of the historians touched the sphere
Far more times than he was allowed.
He became obsessed with that sense of peace.
The day before his clearance was revoked,
The historian used the tip of a knife
To engrave on the sphere each girl's name.
If you are sick and tired of this life,
Touch the artifact and know
That you will never suffer again.
Your troubles will disappear.
You will feel complete.
If only that cursed thing
Was available to buy,
You'd always know what to do
On a lonely day.
