She puts on her earphones and looks for the news on the screen of her cell phone. Lana Nova, her favorite broadcaster, comes on. The virtual woman has her black hair in a ponytail, which accentuates her Asian features. Through the earphones Flavia can hear Lanas synthesized, enveloping voice, one that can move you simply by reporting on the weather. No wonder teenagers have taken to watching the news and papering their rooms in posters of Lana.
For the second consecutive day there have been enormous protests against the hike in electricity rates. GlobaLux, the Italian-American consortium that won the bid to take over the power company in RÃo Fugitivo just a year ago, defends its actions by saying that the crisis has left it no alternative. It says the rate hike will allow it to finance construction of a new power plant. The Coalition is calling for a general blockade of streets and highways on Thursday. The protests in RÃo Fugitivo have spread to other cities. There have been violent confrontations between industrial workers, students, and police in La Paz and Cochabamba. A pylon was blown up in Sucre. Business owners in Santa Cruz are calling for community protests. Opposition politicians and indigenous leaders are demanding Montenegro's resignation, saying the months remaining of his term in office will be enough to destroy the country. It is early November. There will be an election in June of next year and a new president in August.
She hears nothing about the Resistance that she hasn't already reported, and not a word about Vivas and Padilla. Luckily, her competition is in rough shape.
She turns off her Nokia. Now that the bus has emptied she spots him. Sitting at the back, leaning against a knife-slashed seat, she sees the same guy she saw yesterday. About her age, maybe? Eighteen. Tall, curly hair, bushy eyebrows, earphones, and a yellow MP3 player in his hands. What music is he listening to to escape from the bus driver's tropical beat? The news? A soccer match in Italy or Argentina?
Suddenly a pair of eyes pin her to her seat, just as had happened yesterday. She tends to ignore men, but there is something in the way he looks at her that is unsettling. She passes a hand over her hair, making sure it is stylishly unkempt. Her dreadlocks are tousled as if she has just woken up. She moistens her lips with her tongue. Oh, how ridiculous she must look in the school uniform that the nuns continue to insist on: the blue, knee-length skirt, white shirt, blue vest, and, horror of horrors, the tricolor tie that is a designer's nightmare. Is she really any less interested in boys than her friends?
As she gets off the bus it starts to drizzle, the rain lightly tickling her face. She forces herself to keep her back to the bus, a small victory over the young man she pictures with his face pressed against the glass, ready to savor the moment when Flavia will turn around to look at him one last time.
A garbage can swarming with blue-green, flies is in the bus shelter. An emaciated dog growls listlessly at anyone who passes by. Flavia thinks about Clancy, her blind Doberman, wandering through the house, running into walls as he anxiously awaits her arrival. The neighbors complain about his howling early in the morning; her mom has suggested that it might be time to put the old dog down.
She has five blocks to go before reaching her neighborhood. The streets are quiet and Flavia likes to feel as if she owns them, walking down the middle of the potholed asphalt, equidistant from the sidewalks flanked by dusty loquat trees. She walks, then jumps along an imaginary hopscotch, wonders what her dad must be doing right now at work, and discoversâannoyed, embarrassedâthat she is not alone.
"From alpha to omega, from zero to infinity," comes a husky voice that is too old for the body of a young man. "A game with multiple theological and metaphysical connotations."
When had he gotten off the bus? She hasn't heard him walking behind her. For a moment she feels afraid. She is four blocks from her protective refuge, the gated community where two measly policemen guard the entrance.
"No connotations are necessary to have fun playing hopscotch," she says, affecting the most disinterested expression she can muster.
"You might like to remain on the surface of things, take them as they come," the young man says, "but it's not possible. Everything means something else, and that something might be what transcendsâthe mandala we're all searching for."
The drizzle is no longer gentle; the rain is now soaking and bothersome. Flavia continues on her way. She wants to run home but has to pretend to be calm. You never know. And, she has to admit, it's a strange fear, one that urges her to run from and yet stay near this stranger.
"I'm Rafael. You're Flavia, aren't you? Don't ask me how I know. Other names? Other identities? It's impossible not to have them. I have at least eight on the Net."
"Let's just leave it at that right now."
"No big deal. I'll find them out soon enough."
She walks without looking at him, feeling as if his presence is a threat. Now it is Rafael who keeps quiet, and she feels obliged to talk.
"You know which school I go to, but I don't know where you go."
"I left school a long time ago, 'just Flavia.' If you're interested, one day I'll show you what I do for a living. It has to do with information."
"You're a reporter?"
"No. There are those who'll pay a lot to obtain privileged information, and there are those who have to go to great lengths to get that information. At some point all of this might be useful to you. But first, just Flavia, you have to be very careful. Sometimes you're not. Sometimes you report news without being sure about it. And that makes some people angry. It's not a good idea to make light of dangerous subjects."
Flavia stops and looks at him. Is he a hacker? Which one? From the Resistance? A Rat? Or both? Is he threatening her? He is as nervous as she is; his lower lip is trembling, and his gaze does not seem as firm as it did on the bus. The rain on his curly hair, on his face, has made him lose his composure. He looks like a man with an important secret, weighed down by it. She is not afraid of hackers or of the Resistance either, even though he is dangerous if he's a Rat. It is a Rat's job to inform, and they have grown in number over the past few years; the continuous scandals that surround them, their threat to a citizen's privacy, have displaced them, made them illegal. Some are hackers in order to get information, while others prefer more traditional waysârummaging through the trash, paying servants, or bribing colleagues.
"I should go," Flavia says. "But there's always tomorrow. I hope at some point you can be a little clearer."
"There isn't always tomorrow."
"You're being fatalistic."
"I am a fatalist."
Rafael shakes her hand and says goodbye. Flavia watches him walk away until he is out of sight in the pouring rain. Then she turns and runs home.
M
Y NAME IS ALBERT
. My name is not Albert.
I was born ... Not. Very. Long. Ago.
I was never born ... I have no memory of a beginning. I am something that happens. That is always happening ... That will always happen.
I. Am. An. Emaciated. Grimy. Man ... Gray. Eyes ... Gray. Beard ... Singularly. Vague. Features ... I. Express. Myself. With. Untutored. And. Uncorrected. Fluency. In. Several. Languages ... French. English. German. Spanish. Portuguese from Macao.
I am connected to several wires that allow me to live. Through the window I watch the day pass by on the avenue. Jacarandas in the window box as well as on the sidewalks ... No wonder ... The avenue is named ... de las Acacias.
Where are the acacias? Good question.
In the distance. The mountains. Of RÃo Fugitivo. Ocher-colored. Not like other mountains. That I remember. From a village. In a valley. Bluish mountains. Markets. Medieval towers. The ruins of fortifications. A river. I don't remember which village it is ... But the image is there ... There's a boy. Who runs and runs.
It's not me. I can't be me ... I have no childhood. I never have.
I can speak and sometimes do. I prefer not to. Pronouncing just a few words takes all my energy. Which can lead to thoughts about my fragility. About my possible demise. But that's not how it is. It never is. There's no death for me.
I am an electric ant. Connected to the earth. And yet more Spirit than anyone ... I am the Spirit of Cryptanalysis. Of Cryptography. Or are they the same?
My ears are ringing. And there are voices in the room ... Saying ... That ... I ... Need ... This. Isolation ... This. Peace ... It's very good. For. Collecting. Your. Thoughts. Peace. There must be a path. That they follow. Somehow. Thought. Must become. Thought ... Somehow. The mixed-up. Associations between ideas. Must have some hidden logic. So that the image of a nun. Is followed by that of a piano. And all of that leads us. To decide whether or not to spare the lives ... Of our fellow men.
Delirious logic.
Responsible for my actions. For everything that led me to this bed.
There were feelings. There was intuition. But reason. Made the final decisions.
I'd like to know how it happened. To help this silence.
But the footsteps never stop echoing. I hear them. They resound in here. In this amplifier that is my head ... They wait for my words. They wait. And wait.
My name is Albert. My name is not Albert.
I. Am. A. Mechanical. Ant.
As. I. Recall ... My. Work. Began ... In the year 1900
B.C
. I was the one who wrote strange hieroglyphics. Instead of the usual ones. On the tomb of Khnumhotep II. I wrote them on the last twenty columns ... Of the two hundred twenty that were inscribed. It wasn't a secret code. That was fully developed ... But it was. The first intentional. Transformation ... Of writing ... At least ... Of the texts that are known.
Ah. Exhaustion. I was so many others. Impossible to list them all.
Markets. Medieval towers. The ruins of fortifications.
The year 480
B.C
.... At that time I was called Demaratus. I was Greek and lived in the Persian city of Susa. And I was witness to the plans that Xerxes had for invading Sparta. Five years to prepare a military force capable of destroying the insolence of Athens and Sparta. I decided to scrape the wax off some wooden tablets. To write of Xerxes' plan on the tablets ... And then cover them in wax again. The tablets were sent to Sparta. And Xerxes' guards did not intercept them ... There, a woman named Gorgo. Daughter of Cleomenes. Wife of Leonidas. Guessed that the tablets contained a message. And she had the wax scraped off. Thus Xerxes lost the element of surprise ... The Greeks began to arm themselves. When the Greeks and Persians confronted one another. On September 27. Near the Bay of Salamis ... Xerxes thought he had won. He thought he had surrounded the Greeks. When in reality he had fallen into the trap they had set for him.
As Demaratus, I invented stenography, which is nothing other than the art of hiding a message ... My. Name. Is. Also. Histiaeus ... Ruler of Miletus. To encourage Aristagoras to reveal himself to the Persian king Darius ... I had the head of a messenger shaved. I wrote a message on his head. I waited until his hair had grown. And I sent him to find Aristagoras ... The messenger entered Persian territory easily ... He arrived where Aristagoras was ... Had them shave his head. And Aristagoras was able to read my message.
Stenography. I. Am. A. Mechanical. Ant. I hear voices...
I am also the inventor of cryptology. The art of hiding the meaning of a message. I am the one who sent a message to the Spartan general Lisandro ... Lisandro was far from Sparta. Supported by his new allies. The Persians ... When a messenger arrived looking for him. The messenger had no message. He had only been ordered to find Lisandro. Who saw him ... And knew what. It was about. He ordered the messenger to hand over his wide leather belt. And found ... Printed all along the circumference of the belt. A sequence of random letters ... He carefully wrapped the belt in a descending spiral around a long wooden pole ... As he wrapped it. The letters formed phrases that told him that his Persian ally. Planned to betray him and take over Sparta in his absence ... Thanks to the message. Lisandro returned in time and destroyed his former ally.
My right leg hurts. Such ... A ... Long ... Time ... In. Bed. My back. I won't ever get up again. Yes, I might ... My lungs are destroyed. So many cigarettes ... Sometimes I urinate without realizing it. The nurse comes to change me. It's humiliating to defecate ...When the nurse isn't here. She's almost never here. I have to call the guard using a bell. The smell of my skin is the smell of age. Scabs fall like flakes to the floor. At times my headache is unbearable...
So many days and nights wasted battling with messages. It was obvious I wouldn't escape unscathed. Everything has a price.
Something happened inside my head. I search for that lost world.
I want to know how it is I thought what I thought.
I need a Universal Turing Machine.
A Universal Albert Machine.
Albert. Demaratus. Histiaeus. I shed names like a snake sheds its skin. Stories. Identities. Nothing human is alien to me. Nothing inhuman is alien to me...
I traverse centuries and influence history. Without me. Wars. History would have been different ... I'm a parasite on the body of men. I'm a parasite on the body of history.
I'm thirsty. My throat is dry and cracking. My eyes are closed. I can't open them. They're open, but I don't see anything ... I see without seeing ... And smell. I smell everything. This stuffy room. Smelling of urine. Of vomit. Of medicine. People who come and go. Old women. Men. Uniforms. Faces I don't recognize. Turing's face...
I'm the one who gave him that name. Of course the real Turing. Was me at one time. But that's another story. What's important now is that I was a CIA agent. I had been given that body after World War II ... I was sent by my government to advise the Bolivian intelligence service. I arrived one rainy, foggy day in 1974. I fainted at the airport in La Paz. The altitude ... I had had just enough time to admire the snowy mountains. That were visible. Outside the dirty, broken windows. Of the terminal...