Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction by Mariano Villarreal

Author:Mariano Villarreal
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: science fiction, short stories, spain
Publisher: Sportula

In the dining room, abuela continued to watch her new television, recently taken out of the box. Mama was cooking something. I decided to amuse myself reading the paper. The Granma is the only one we get. Those red letters make up, in this strange font, the word for “abuelita” in English. Below, in white letters on a black background, it reads: Official Publication of the Communist Party of Cuba. The Granma is a newspaper that continues the now-extinct tradition of the official publications of the communist parties, like Pravda in its time. Generally, they are daily papers that don’t permit competition and only express one opinion: that of the government.

I’ve been reading this same newspaper for years and I don’t get tired of checking that motto. As if it were something marvelous and exciting, as if it were going to change overnight, as if one day below those red letters it might read: The Official Publication of the Cuban Republican Party. Or perhaps The Official Publication of the Christian Democratic Party.

I read the headline: ZOMBIES, A WEAPON OF THE REVOLUTION.

I don’t even bother to read the article. It’s no doubt some piece of crap, like everything in the Granma. I throw the paper aside. I don’t know what to do, not having anything specific to do.

There’s a knock at the door and Mama shouts a long “commmmmmming!” Panchito runs into his room to play his role as a zombie. It was one of the mosquito inspectors, the same one as ever. But this time he was odder than usual, too quiet. But his skin was in good condition and though he walked carefully, it wasn’t with the clumsiness of a zombie. He was human, he was alive at any rate. I’ve spent enough time with zombies to be able to tell.

“Do you have water tanks?” he asked in a flat voice, like a telephone operator.

“Two, one on the roof and the other below.”

Mama was right in front of him with the visto in her hand. A paper that I’ve never understood its reason for existing, despite my Master’s degree in biochemistry.

“Do you have spirit glasses?”

“No.”

Something strange was happening with this man. Every time he asked a question it seemed he was going to write down the answer, but he never did so. He asked the same questions as ever, the same ones ever since the “war” on mosquitos was first declared instead of recognizing the imminent danger of an epidemic of dengue fever (we’ve always been good at inventing enemies). Nonetheless, something was different in this man. He asked the right questions, in a flat and atonal language. That could be normal; in general, they aren’t the brightest bulbs. When he was answered, he acted as if he were going to note something down but he never did so. He didn’t pretend to write, he just didn’t do it. As if writing was an ancient and abstract memory buried in his subconscious.

Strange, very strange. Especially because I’d already seen this sort of uncompleted cycle of motor functions.

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