Global Dystopias by Junot Diaz

Author:Junot Diaz [Díaz, Junot]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2017-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

What Used to Be Caracas

Mike McClelland

Basseterre, St. Kitts and Nevis

17.3026° N, 62.7177° W

humboldt notes:

Time is the most important thing in human life, for what is pleasure after the departure of time? And the most consolatory, since pain, when pain has passed, is nothing. Time is the wheel-rut in which we roll on toward eternity, conducting us to the incomprehensible. In its progress there is a ripening power, and it ripens us the more, and the more powerfully, when we duly estimate it. Listen to its voice, do not waste it, but regard it as the highest finite good, in which all finite things are resolved.

—A. Humboldt

expedition notes:

The field technician must note that the goal of this expedition is to expand upon the work of his great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle, Alexander von Humboldt (a surname the family later changed at Ellis Island to Humbletrot). Humboldt used ecology, geography, and anthropology to survey this portion of Venezuela in 1799. The field team—which consists of the field technician, a volcanologist, a teuthologist, a hydrologist, an ethnoarcheologist, and an aviator—has hypothesized that Humboldt discovered information that predicted the Erasure, which would occur nearly a quarter millennium later, but destroyed most of his personal journals to spare his descendants the psychological trauma that such knowledge would impart.

In expanding upon the work of Humboldt, this expedition aims to give back to humanity what Humboldt regarded as its most precious resource: time. One of catastrophe’s more insidious consequences is that it denies human beings the freedom to think, to explore, to enjoy, and to expand. Survival is an activity that demands constant engagement. The Erasure robbed humankind of time and, as a result, of any power it possessed.

The field technician must also note that this report is presented according to the rules set forth in the Post-Erasure Manual of Style (PEMS), and as such, out of respect for the billions of lives lost during the Erasure, the field technician will not refer to himself in the first person outside of the PEMS-prescribed attribution of authorship and will address his colleagues by the common terms of their genders and/or occupations.

—E. Humbletrot

Simón Bolívar International Airport, Venezuela

10.6021° N, 66.9955° W

humboldt notes:

This view of a living nature where man is nothing is both odd and sad. Here, in a fertile land, in an eternal greenness, you search in vain for traces of man; you feel you are carried into a different world from the one you were born into.

—A. Humboldt

field notes:

The airport ruins sit between the former coastline and the northern edge of what used to be Caracas. The once-verdant landscape is cracked and white, though the field technician must note he may be using the word “cracked” because it is phonetically similar to “Caracas.” Indeed, there are few actual cracks in the terrain. Rather it is ridged and occasionally pocked. Not cracked.

The only remaining flora is based around the harenam at Catia La Mar, due east of the airport. Though Venezuela’s attempt to import fresh water proved disastrous, resulting in dry, bright

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