tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38392715644556253602024-03-13T21:34:33.843-07:00Man Of My Word(s) Relatos ficticios de Francisco Bembibre en Ingles y en Español / Works of fiction by Francisco Bembibre in English and in SpanishFrancisco E. Bembibrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15890242753805290436noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839271564455625360.post-37127262368835912462018-02-15T12:30:00.002-08:002018-02-15T12:30:15.329-08:00meltdown<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">They were launched into space, the words - hurled into the atmosphere like a meteor propelled by some almighty invisible slingshot. And up and up they went. They cut through the cumulonimbus that floated undisturbed below the deep cerulean. They sneaked at bullet speed past the birds that chased the south and the metal whales that had swallowed their krill and the myriad of suits, shoes and suitcases that came as a side dish. How fast the words flew! Almost fast enough that time passed by them in the opposite direction! They parachuted upwards towards empty space and surfed the satined surface of the satellite dish, ready to shoot themselves back into the world, raining hell on the millions of tiny targets that circled around the glove like tapeworms stuck to their hosts. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“VELVET GROUP SPA. CONSPIRACY EXPOSED! SLAVE LABOR ALL OVER ASIA!!1111!!” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Ten rounds, loaded precisely, the same that will fit on a semi-automatic gun. Ten rounds fired into a screen. And into another screen. And into a billion screens that lit up the same way fireflies light up the marshes during estival twilights. They sailed across the Atlantic and they climbed up the Himalayas, strolled around Times Square and raced against the Big Ben in its own turf. They swam against the flow of time zones and hit with a buzz on the pockets of every man and woman who gazed beyond the glass that one, hasty day.</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Have you seen that?” Screamed someone - or thousands of someones, into a phone. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">And somewhere, in a dusty old room, the computers heard. They heard the name and counted the reactions. By midday there had been four hundred thousand reposts. The words appeared again and again. Reshuffled, explained, analyzed, dissected, chopped and sewn onto other words. They had been repeated by experts and mad men and mothers that shot them onto dinner tables to make some conversation. By four o’ clock the pool of blood spilled by the bullets had grown so expansive and the sounds of gunshots so deafening that the computers forced themselves to repeat the maniacal cacophony. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">When the bell rang on the stock market, the following morning, the algorithms inside those computers had burst into flames and an invisible fire burnt through the Velvet Group. It melted the steal beams and ignited the papers. It ravaged the offices and destroyed production lines without setting off one single alarm. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“We have tumbled thirty four percent. Investors are in panic mode.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“It will go away. We just have to be careful.” Said someone sitting on one side of a large oak desk. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“I don’t even understand what’s happening. Everyone could clearly see this is nonsense.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Well, that’s the thing.” and a cigarette was choked atop an ash tray. “Out there, it’s not even people doing the trading anymore. Most business is conducted by automated programs. They scan cyberspace looking for news, articles, trends, the like, then they plug that info into an algorithm that tells them whether to buy or to sell. It minimizes risks for everyone and keeps the broker’s hands free to do more lines or whatever.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“And how do we make it stop?” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“It’s just an anomaly… like a glitch. It will correct itself, I’m sure.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Three days later, Velvet Group had lost 50% of its value. Millions of dollars were sucked out of this dimension and into a black hole, vacuumed by the computers to the surprise of hundreds of reporters who could do nothing but print their stupor into sentences for the world to see. <i>“The Velvet Group Phenomenon shocks the world.” </i>These sentences were in turn fed into the hidden circuits that again spat Velvet stocks in a never-ending cycle of crimson chaos. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">And the fire burnt, eating through desks and phone chords and Xerox machines. Fire of the reddest and most suffocating kind, it stuck to Velvet’s gums and melted its teeth and charred every cell in its body. One by one, then in tiny groups, men and women began marching towards the door, the first in a long line of victims of the cybernetic murderers that could not take their hands of the trigger. That hasty fire from hell! Fire that fries nations until those who inhabit it starve! Fire that ruins families and fire that throws people off bridges and windows! That one fire that smells just a bit different from all other fires, the scent of broken hopes and dreams more insistent on the nostrils. The fire that so many tyrants and sociopaths and those who work for them will dance to. The money burnt. And the money burnt. And the money burnt. And then it stopped, because there was nothing left to burn anymore. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Please. I have a family.” A woman begged, ginger hair frolicking on her head. Her eyes wet with desperation. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“All of us do.” Said someone on the other side of the oak desk. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“I just don’t understand. Everything was going just fine.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“We will never know. The stock market found an anomaly and got stupid. We tried everything we could do to avert the crisis but our shares just kept free falling. You know how much we are worth, as a company, right now? I tell you how much: not enough to buy this freaking desk. I will never know if someone did this on purpose, but I suppose we were just victims of it, of the market. God knows how many lives it ruins every day.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The woman began sobbing uncontrollably. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Relax. You have a great resumé. Strong recommendations. You will land another job and survive another day in this jungle.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It took a minute for the tears to dry and the woman raised her head, towards the other side of the desk, to find a grumpy old man, scarred by time and bludgeoned by the inevitability of chaos, trying to make sense of the randomness. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“And what will you do?” She murmured. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“I don't know. For now, just watch the dream my father and his father worked to keep for 50 years get trashed because of a post on some social network. After the doors close, I don’t know.” He took a few steps away from his desk and gazed at the city below, floating in the 39th floor. The city seemed so organized from up there, the life running through it so insignificant. The ground so welcoming one could be tempted to throw themselves at it, to just let go. “I don’t know. I really can't tell how much strength I have. I guess I’ll see as time goes.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Another word she dared not pronounce. Her eyes said goodbye on her behalf, humid and mourning, and she crossed the threshold out of the office. As the door closed behind her she could hear the screams, just like the ones she had heard all week, like a ghost that just wouldn't leave. He must have been speaking on the phone, for all she could tell. Or perhaps he couldn't get over his own shock. “<i>Fucking slave labor fucking Asia! We don't even operate in Asia! Goddammit we are a software company!” </i></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Out of the empty hallways and into the streets she ventured. The city screamed, a mismatched choral arrangements of horns and sirens and the drumming of thousands of steps on the tarmac. She peeked downward, into the dark glass that came alive right before her, and stared into the fishbowl, the microcosm enclosed in that tiny window, the world she held on her hand. A handful of articles popped right before her, each claiming the inside scoop on that one company that had just been bankrupted by one social network post. Each one discrediting the other one. Each one trying to bask in the glory of claiming to be the only one who understood a truth that wasn't there.</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“What really happened in the Velvet Group case. The inside scoop.” </span></i></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Exclusive expert analysis on the Velvet debacle.”</span></i></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>“Did CEO set this event on purpose?”</i> </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">As she came to the realization that all those commenters would relish in the misery of thousands if it gave them a chance to seem more relevant, she realized the fishbowl seemed terrifyingly like a shark tank. The proving grounds of an eternal war of pixels fought by every man and woman against all others, all for that one fleeting moment of ethereal ecstasy where one feels superior to the rest. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">And forward she marched, crossing the street, sinking herself into the ocean made up by all of us, all soldered to our glass slabs like safety blankets, gawking into them in search for some lost purpose that will never reveal itself to us while chaos marches on, while the world keeps spinning aimlessly, while the fires still scorch the land. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
Francisco E. Bembibrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15890242753805290436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839271564455625360.post-39825054568209261792018-02-15T12:29:00.004-08:002018-02-15T12:29:31.963-08:00update<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“This is it. We need to get the update into the system.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The gatekeeper roamed the hallways of his adopted home, an endless, dark grey metallic pod riveted together around him, hundreds of shelves framing the streets of an infinite city inhabited only by the whirring and humming and whining of machines working overtime to keep the information flowing. Flowing back. Flowing forth. It can never stop moving! It must always go somewhere, for ending its flow would be akin to ending time itself. Does time even exist if we can’t see it’s refractions scarring everything around us? </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Five years of work and about half a billion dollars it took.” the gatekeeper said, fidgeting with the data stick. “And the results are just a bunch of lines of code on a stick. Imagine if our ancestors who killed each other for meat saw what we assign value to these days.”</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Man will always be man. It used to be that a thousand slaves were swallowed by the earth and came out months later, starved, thirsty, wounded, with a cart of shiny stones.” the man besides him, the lead programmer, added sarcastically. “At least there is functionality to these codes. This new software completely streamlines the storage process, takes less processing power to transfer data a hundred times faster, and opens up the APIs so that staff members have more control over the way the archives are organized. It is the single most important evolution of the New National Library since their conception.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“That’s my decision to make.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Framing the two men were not walls of paper but metal cases that housed the circuits and transistors where the National Library now lived, safe from fire and dust and all the perils of the world, enclosed in an impenetrable cyber-bubble where danger dared not lurk. Inside it, the entirety of the archives and records and works of this nation and countless others fused together in the great quilt of history. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Having reached a data terminal at the end of one of the streets that lined up in between these silver containers of the past, the gatekeeper plugged the data stick while the lead programmer fiddled with installation settings on his tablet. His fingers danced across the screen with the technical precision of a well-choreographed performance. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Ok, the system needs a reboot now, and it will be all set.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The gatekeeper pressed his fingerprints against the pad and typed the four passwords, one after the other. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The whirring stopped. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">For a few seconds the city of knowledge became quiet enough that the two lone heartbeats that echoed through it were not mechanical, but human. When it started again, it wasn’t the same constant hum that made all time look equal, but an arrhythmic, sick series of thumps and roars and buzzsaw noises that repeated themselves across all aisles. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Is that… normal?!” the gatekeeper exclaimed startled. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“The computer is working. It’s a lot to process. Give it time.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The circuits cracked the wires snapped and the transistors exploded with dry thuds. A metal-founding heat emerged from the air ducts as the organs inside the giant silver silos melted in a flurry of electrons. For approximately forty minutes, the system clung on to existence and fought. It fought a newer, strange alien invader, an unexpected storm that ravaged all remnants of the ancient order. It resisted like the folk of the jungle defending their sun god and their stone pyramids against the silver knights that had landed on their shores mounted in galleons. It resisted like the regents of fallen empires at the sight of angry mobs storming their gilded gates. It resisted like the stubborn concrete wall that endured years of being splattered with paint and blood before brother and brother decided they had not seen each other for far too long. It resisted. Until its last boiling breath, it resisted. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Finally the chaos quieted down, leaving only the hum that blew like a soft spring wind over the burnt fields. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“UPDATE SUCESSFUL” sang a robotic voice that seemed dangerously oblivious to the war that had just concluded. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“It’s done.” smiled the lead programmer. “Go ahead.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“What shall we bring up first?” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“How about the original transcript of the president’s inauguration speech?” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The gatekeeper latched onto his tablet and with his fingers traversed a series of new, unfamiliar highways. He typed words onto strange boxes and selected from a series of alien lists, using the endless codes he had learnt by heart. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“ERROR/PARAMETER INVALID”</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Curious…” the gatekeeper gawked at the screen. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Again he crossed the paths and imputed the parameters required to dig out the file out of the gigantic mechanical vault. It had worked, this same process, a thousand times before. Hadn’t it?</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“ERROR/PARAMETER INVALID” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">A shiver ran down the gatekeeper’s spine. His heavy breathing permeating the pod, now as inert and silent as ever. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Something’s wrong.” he gasped. “You… you… something is broken.”</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“It can’t be. We have been running test versions for months.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">One file after the other, the gatekeeper tried to unbury them, only to run into the same message. The National Library’s copy of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the transcripts of the conversation between Houston and some corner of the Moon. Beneath a graveyard, all of them and a trillion other archives remained buried, and with each one the gatekeeper’s face became more and more scarred by shock. A few lines of code, the flicker of a couple switches, and the gatekeeper looked into the abyss of a generation of lost history! Thousands of years erased, and now both men stood on second one of everything that will ever happen!</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“It won’t read them. Any of them.” he shivered. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“You must be doing something wrong.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The programmer grabbed the tablet and traversed the digital chasm, imputing data, selecting lists and setting categories. He pressed the buttons serenely as if he was stroking the keys of a piano. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“FILE LOCATED” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The President’s inauguration speech materialized on the tablet, with the exact coordinates of its whereabouts on the great digital bookcase. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“What did you do?” the gatekeeper insisted, tightening his fists anxiously. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“You see, in an effort to streamline operations, the update has added some necessary algorithms and simplified the ones that seemed to slow it down. It now works with a completely different set of codes. I’m surprised the IT department did not run this through you.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“What are you talking about?” the gatekeeper shrieked, drowned suddenly by the immensity of the metallic cocoon he had walked a million times before. “I’ve ran this library since its inception, I am the only one that understands its complexities. I have memorized the location of every archive, for god’s sake.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The programmer stepped backwards, looking at the shivering, angry old man of inflamed face whose hair was as silver as the glistening silos that populated the space. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“That’s the thing, all of that is now obsolete. Aren’t you familiar with the new protocol?” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The frozen face of the silver-haired man was the only response. The circuits blew their breeze amongst the silence. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“What a monstrous oversight, if you must forgive me. I can’t imagine how this could happen. Training sessions were implemented during the testing phase.”</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Training sessions!? Not one of the librarians under my watch got one of those” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“I guess bureaucracy can be an unpredictable beast.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The face of the gatekeeper broke down into a wrinkled mess as the air became heavy around him. Voice broken down, eyes inflamed, he ran his fingers across the metal, which now felt colder than ever. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“I… I stood next to the chief administrator during the announcement. I pledged my life to this. I… I… This couldn’t have been a mistake.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“I am as appalled as you are. I guess I’ll have to let management know.” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Wai… Wait!” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The gatekeeper snatched the tablet off the programmer’s hand. ‘I can do this.’ ‘I can do this.’ He repeated maniacally. ‘I just need to learn a few adjustments.’ ‘I can do this!’ His fingers cavorted all over the glass, thumping and sliding and rolling over its surface, covering the screen in sweat. Why are these strange foreign symbols? Where did the time period parameters go?! What kind of madness has taken these tranquil lands?! He fidgeted, and sweated and grunted, but with each passing second the contents of screen became more and more bizarre. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Footsteps echoed on the walls of the pod. It was the programmer, walking away, almost at the sliding door that opened itself for him. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Come back! You can teach me how! Right?! You can…” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“I really can’t teach you a whole new language in a few hours. The only thing I can offer you is to try to get an explanation from management for why you were left out of this. I’m sure this situation will be sorted out.”</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Don’t you see?!” the gatekeeper yelled, knees pinned to the ground. “They want to retire me and all the others! They want the IT department to take over, this has always been their plan! Stop, just listen!” </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But all the programmer could hear were the incoherent ramblings of an old man, a man who had been outgrown by the world around him. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The door slid shut behind him, and the gatekeeper remained kneeled, crushed by the weight of the metal and the contents it hosted, all he had ever known for years, now hidden behind a hermetic, invisible wall that rendered everything behind it even more so. All archives, every word written and picture taken and video recorded since the first of their kinds, now inaccesible to an entire generation of men that had lived amongst them, studying every second that came before. Has time reset itself? Does the past even exist if the means to remember it become extinguished?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In his mind he tried to retain every bit of information that dashed past. All words read and images looked at, he attempted to burn into his brain. As many as would fit, till the day his neurons would loose their sparkle and finally dissolve into the ground or vaporize in a fire pit. Till the day the world would render him obsolete and dispose of his bodily vessel, in the eternal pursuit of updating itself with each passing second, no matter what or who it left behind. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
Francisco E. Bembibrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15890242753805290436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839271564455625360.post-58976129073227636762018-02-15T12:25:00.004-08:002018-02-15T12:25:42.381-08:00the story we told<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every day we co-wrote the story, paragraph by paragraph. Some days glowing inspiration, the one that all artists get high on, crystallized right before our nostrils. Entire fragments, hundreds of words long materialized in tiny font and we glued our eyes to the bright page, just to reread the words. Again. And again. Because every time we reread the words, our brain overflowed with dopamine and suddenly every problem didn't seem that bad anymore. Death, lovelessness, famine and gunfights vanished like white noise into the background. Every day, when the clouds locked the sun and traffic jams lasted generations, we could find comfort in the story. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Voices far behind sometimes emerged, telling me I had been reading for far too long, that the words had changed me. The world that framed them had become blurry, and that was precisely how I wanted it. The shapes and the colors and the frantic movements of the outside only distracted me from reading and from writing. They don't know what it’s like to devote your whole life into a piece of work and watch it come to life before you, with the right pronouns framed with beautiful adjectives and flowing at a perfect pace into verbs that I carried out in my mind with a childish expectation. I drew my face on them and imagined how my favorite writer had pictured them. We travelled up to high mountains and beaches and that double king-sized bed with the green plaid print that had illustrated one of the pages. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“<i>I wish you were here.” </i>The narrator proclaimed. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our styles of writing agreed with each other. I could understand your metaphors and punctuation signs and how each word connected to every emotion in the spectrum. I wondered what you were doing when you were not advancing the story, sometimes in an overtly paranoid way. Maybe you had another project to work on? No! How could it be? What could be better than to be a part of the most wonderful story ever written?!</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But one day the inspiration waned. Words eroded from the brain leaving only awkward pauses behind. The dialogue became choppy, the descriptions less vivid, the characters less eager to live out the adventures that had been outlined for them. The punctuation became too adamant, sinking the words like an iron anchor into the bottom of the sea. The world vanished even more in my peripheral vision, not because I was reading words, but rather waiting for them. Waiting for that high. Waiting to be hugged in the cold of the dead night by fingers stroking a keyboard thousands of miles away. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“<i>I really wish you the best.” </i>Was the final sentence. The last swath of jet black ink that turned the greatest story ever written into a tragedy. It was not its fault. Tragedies make for some great reads. We can only hate them for it as we devour the pages. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And yes, that was precisely what I did, laying in my bed, staring at the moon from a very different angle than you must have. Thousands of pages long, the story we wrote. Words piling upon words, with illustrations and sounds in between. Just words. Letters glued to each other clumsily since the very beginning to the end. Fucking words! I tried to decipher what was in those words that made me float not so long ago. Probably the same thing that’s making me cry right now. I don't know what it is. All I see now is text, printed on a screen, pedestrian text whose meaning keeps evading me. I look at my phone, at the pictures and that harrowing text, all contained in that tiny glistening rectangle. I wonder how something so little that it slips between my fingers could destroy me so harshly. I wonder why I fell so hard for adjectives and verbs. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't lived in the wrong city, if we could cross paths every day instead of holding onto that hazy memory over the holidays. I wonder what would have been different had met you, not as my favorite writer, but as my favorite person.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With a tear in my eye, I delete that haunting first draft. I delete you, what we where. But the words go on. The story we told is read to me by my memories, again and again and again… </span></span></div>
Francisco E. Bembibrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15890242753805290436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839271564455625360.post-12444627626943771392018-02-15T12:23:00.001-08:002018-02-15T12:23:25.443-08:00portrait<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The streetlight hits from above, a warm orb high up like a summer sun. It scintillates on your brand new hair, surfing its deeply contoured waves until it lands on your shoulders. Your side window is a museum exhibit and everyone that shares this road with you is welcome to watch.</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Today really is your evening. What are you doing it wasting it at the wheel of a metal buffalo that’s stuck in a steamy stampede out of downtown? You should be painting the streets, strutting flamboyantly past the entrance of the neon-framed establishments. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">You know that walk, the one where you confidently swing your hips around like you own the world but you make sure to look down at the floor, as if you were a bit humbled by the heavy burden of your power, and you always leave the faintest hint of a smile on your lips because you refuse to not care, like everyone else pretends to. No, you are different and special and you cherish life and all its blessings that others around you take for granted and everyone should know this about you. Especially on days like these, with your hair so swanky. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Your phone hangs over your nose like a carrot, imprisoned in a claw above the dashboard. It admires you, patiently asks you for your time. It's not like this cluster of gasoline-chugging beasts is moving any time soon. You grab the jet black slab and make it look at you. There you are, you gorgeous thing. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The phone circles the space-time continuum around you, trying to capture your best angle. All of them seem to work. Maybe this is not your day, maybe all days are yours. Who in their right mind could ever unlove you, looking like that? </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">One eye on the windshield, you press the button, and the phone explodes in a ball of white. There you are, preserved in pixels. You bring the device closer to you and stare with disgust at the deformity that looks back at you. When did your left cheekbone become so swollen?! Is there anything that beast’s opaque, black eyeballs that stare at two different corners of the horizon have in common with your own eyes? The wavy hair that perfectly refracted the light hangs like a red mop over that monster’s skull. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">A horn startles you. Come on, move! Look forward, take your eyes off that thing for a second!</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">You try the opposite side of your face. The phone glows white again. You had never noticed how protruding your nose looks from this angle. It could almost receive satellite signals, dammit. You pan the phone a little to the left only to be surprised by your asymmetrical chin. Now from the front, and you try to hide those disgustingly thin lips with your best impression of a duck’s beak. You can strain those muscles till they tear, it still won’t make you what you want to be.</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">You turn around, to one side, then the other, cavorting on the front seat with your arm stretched like it was a flashlight panning the sky, searching for lost stars until your muscles cramp. The upper right angle makes you confront the wrinkles on your forehead and you escape it only to be surprised by the double chin creeping from below your face and you wonder who in their right mind could ever love you, looking like that? </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Where is that girl, that beautiful creature who lives somewhere else inside your phone? The one that lights up the world with her smile and always has the arms of loved ones wrapped around her neck? That girl who loves the beach and binges on perfectly arranged food framed by sparkly silverware. That one girl, who teleports across the world and could melt your heart with a joke, where is she? </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Is she being held hostage by that other, awful girl that stands before you, the one who calls people ugly names from time to time and has cut a poor John Doe in traffic in more than one occasion and isn’t afraid to lie to get out of a situation that doesn’t suit her? The one who almost stole her best-friend’s boyfriend at that one house party? There she is, that girl on the phone, smelling of lies and deceit and evilness, a garish creature inside and out who could never hope to find comfort in the arms of someone else. Inside that tiny screen she has been living all along, leaving behind her messages and those pictures and videos you should have deleted and a trail of words you don’t recognize as your own anymore. She is friends with your friends and happens to follow the same topics you do. You and her could like each other quite much, if she didn’t make your life so miserable every time you cross sights. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Another horn groans behind you. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">You close the photo app and push the gas pedal, trying to leave the anguish behind. The streetlights flash past your face, and from every angle you are surrounded by vehicles. You raise your sight, almost ashamed, and find all the faces in the adjacent lane passing by. Faces on your left, faces on your right, faces in front of you, faces stalking your rearview mirror. You wonder what girl they are seeing, which portrait was right all along. You hope</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">it was the one on your head and all those lovely visual confections you pin to your digital wall, but with every streetlight that creeps past your face you become painfully identified</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">with the drunken, abstract mess of brushstrokes that hangs on the back of the exhibit. It’s tiring, not knowing which actress is playing you right now. If only everyone could just look the other way.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
Francisco E. Bembibrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15890242753805290436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839271564455625360.post-63915876095934446782018-02-15T12:13:00.000-08:002018-02-15T12:22:26.470-08:00the big bang<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">At first there was a God.</span></span></div>
<div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">He stared at the great void, a vast white canvas of infinite density, and squeezed it with its hands like a ball of clay. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Then came the worlds. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Slowly the universe became painted with them, the color of fluorescent forests and warm sepias and every hue in between. They spread at the speed of light, propelled by the same blazing burst of energy that had once fused molten space rocks into the colossal planets that orbit their proud suns like handcrafted jewels. On a constant stream of matter the worlds fed, swelling into gargantuan proportions until the void had been entirely populated with them and the views they framed. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Then came the stars.</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">They multiplied exponentially, heart-shaped beacons of life that made the universe vibrate and expand further and further into the emptiness, on a never ending path towards the horizon. To the rhythm of an addictive cosmic song the stars beat and flickered, hundreds breeding thousands, thousands breeding millions, forward and backward all across perpetuity, as if time itself was just another malleable variable! </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Then came the black holes. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Everything disappeared into the blue portals. For a moment it seemed as if they fed on worlds, but it was through them that those worlds travelled billions of miles all across time and space and landed on other universes, the work of other Gods, all connected to each other by the great, electrifying fabric of reality, showing off their creations with a smug self-worth that only seemed to fire up the beautiful chaos. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Worlds brimmed with life and the stars in between them populated entire galaxies! Look at all of existence, blinking stroboscopically, so small one could run his fingers through it yet so large that it would break a Titan’s spine! </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Then at one point in time, the universe began to slow down. Hearts stopped spawning across the skyline and the worlds became static, some of them disappearing not with a spectacular implosion but with a non-existent blink. Time became mellow and viscous, then grand to a halt as the molecules that made up all matter ceased their endless buzzing and lay still. It felt pray to the fate all universes will one day fall pray of, the exhaustion of its primordial fuel. Stars became red dwarfs, then burnt off. The planets and black holes and life orbiting around them went quiet, and the universe had its day, succumbing to the great tragedy of entropy, the inevitable ending of all beginnings. </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the universe’s floating remains vanished back into the great white void.</span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“<i>I was just sick of it… all the silly pics and the hashtags and the mindless likes and pretending I care about all these people.”</i></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“So, you deleted your profile then?”</span></i></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Yup” </span></i></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
Francisco E. Bembibrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15890242753805290436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839271564455625360.post-77924841545193919032018-02-15T12:12:00.000-08:002018-02-15T18:59:30.942-08:00fishbowl: a vignette collection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span class="lr_dct_ph" style="text-align: center;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgocNZAzanT33WHtKNAjKaWX-IoZMBzu8xS1anaJwC6rCLUt9SXyZchyphenhyphengtG7OYbMfo-rM6W3tvbjRJsR8uBzqaGzmFyiT7PxijG63MzAPDw-7RwxBX-Do_LHnnuUQq2i5Xo08v1dQYOAk2O/s1600/fishbowl.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1240" data-original-width="874" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgocNZAzanT33WHtKNAjKaWX-IoZMBzu8xS1anaJwC6rCLUt9SXyZchyphenhyphengtG7OYbMfo-rM6W3tvbjRJsR8uBzqaGzmFyiT7PxijG63MzAPDw-7RwxBX-Do_LHnnuUQq2i5Xo08v1dQYOAk2O/s640/fishbowl.png" width="450" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<i><span data-dobid="hdw" style="text-align: center;">vignette (</span><span class="lr_dct_ph" style="text-align: center;">viːˈnjɛt,vɪˈnjɛt/) - noun : a brief, evocative description, account or episode. </span></i></h4>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Like every creation spawned by planet earth, our screens have evolved. The great race for survival taught them to communicate, to store and process information, to keep us ever more hooked to their effervescent glow. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Every skill they ever honed, it was with the express purpose of being ever more loved by us, craved by our restless fingers and our twitchy eyes. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now we walk around, too often forgetting that we carry on our hands the burden of an entire world, a world with its own rules, where time runs in every direction, where matter appears and disappears, merges, splits, burns and explodes in a chaos we are contempt to spur but don't really understand. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What goes on behind the glass? </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
INDEX</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://tellingweirdstories.blogspot.com.ar/2018/02/the-big-bang.html">1. the big bang </a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://tellingweirdstories.blogspot.com.ar/2018/02/portrait.html">2. portrait</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://tellingweirdstories.blogspot.com.ar/2018/02/the-story-we-told.html">3. the story we told</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://tellingweirdstories.blogspot.com.ar/2018/02/golden-castle.html">4. golden castle</a> </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://tellingweirdstories.blogspot.com.ar/2018/02/update.html">5. update </a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://tellingweirdstories.blogspot.com.ar/2018/02/meltdown.html">6. meltdown</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span class="lr_dct_ph" style="text-align: center;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span class="lr_dct_ph" style="text-align: center;"><br /></span></div>
Francisco E. Bembibrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15890242753805290436noreply@blogger.com0