ZOL by REYoung

Author:REYoung [REYoung]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-28T17:00:00+00:00

14

Tenochtitlán

Factories roar, trucks, taxis, buses and cars honk and beep, police whistles shriek, jackhammers bang, helicopters drone overhead, jet planes thunder into the sky, people laugh and shout, cry, sing, moan and scream, and the din of civilization rises from the ghost foundation of a great city of fantastical buildings, pyramids, temples, palaces and observatories, painted brilliant crimson, yellow and blue hues. The largest city in the Americas, possibly the world. A center of trade, commerce, capital of the Aztec empire. And then they came, the Spaniards, conquistadores, led by the courageous and enterprising (or ruthless and conniving, depending on which side of the fence you’re on) Hernán Cortés, and equipped with guns and cannons, horses, steel armor and an invisible ally, the devastating virus, smallpox, they conquered this great metropolis and destroyed it, and from its ruins they raised up a city modeled after those in Spain, loyal to the Catholic church and the Spanish crown.

Seen from space at night, Mexico City looks like a vast nebular sprawl of dirty white light. From Amanita’s Embraer Phenom 300, descending through a brown blanket of smog and towering spumes of smoke and ash, the distrito federal looks, to the Snowman anyway, like a giant industrial motherboard, and descending farther, a pizza box diorama of high rises, sports arenas, cathedrals, factories, incongruous green polyp-like hillocks, public markets, malls, stores, restaurants, apartment buildings, tenement houses and huge sprawling megaslums (about which he knows nothing, yet) congregated around a sky-scraping crystal garden-like eruption of glass and steel architecture in the downtown commercial district. The plane lands and the Snowman, who had assumed they were returning to Chopahuac and in fact has no idea this is Mexico City (Chicago?), can see out the window that the crowded working class neighborhood jammed up against the airport chain-link fence probably isn’t an optimal tourist site. Loud explosions seem to confirm this impression as he and Amanita exit the terminal. But it isn’t gunshots or bombs going off. It’s cohetes, fireworks. Bluish-white puffs of smoke erupt in the sky, followed a second later by loud booms. (In celebration of a saint’s day, he’ll discover, which means you can pretty much expect to hear these explosions every day, it’s kind of an inside joke—Eduardo.) Again, a pretty stalwart-looking black Mercedes is waiting for them in the taxi stand, driven by an equally stalwart-looking chauffeur with granite jaw and pole vaulter’s shoulders in a gray SS officer’s uniform. He holds the door for them, positions himself behind the wheel and without a word transports them in climate-controlled comfort, untouched by the clamor, clang and noxious effusions of the twenty-five million or so souls who exist in the celluloid blur passing outside their windows, across town to their hotel, which, on the plus side, is rated six stars out of five, on the negative, it’s surrounded by ten-foot tall concrete blast barriers (painted with scenes of children playing in fields of flowers). Also of note, scores of heavily armed guards are positioned everywhere.

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