1. Human

From Latin, ‘humus’, meaning ‘earth’, and the suffix ‘anus’, which indicates a relationship of origin to something, a belonging.
Those who belong to earth.

He brought his thumb to his lips and bit his nail tentatively, without tearing it, like a rodent checking the hardness of an unripe nut before discarding it. Reaching up, he gave his light, straight hair a tug and then pulled his earlobe. A conjunction of nervous impulses that he repeated over and over again, as he worked on his two fifteen-inch computer screens, or whenever it was time to revise final details. Three nervous reflexes that made his body move quickly, repeatedly and uncontrollably. He bit his nails, tugged at his hair and pulled his ear; considerably normal actions when done separately, but together they had become an indivisible part of his nature. It had been two years since Julián started developing the nervous disorder, but the impulses had become even more pronounced in the past few months. He hardly noticed it himself, and whenever Anthony mentioned it, he blamed it on stress. Anthony, his business partner, calculated that his spasmodic loops had increased to a rate of one hundred repetitions per day.

There was less than an hour left until the testing and Julián Konks was still going through the lines of source code that they would use. The young man worked in front of his computer screens in a dark and dingy office, alone for the time being. Every time he typed a modification in the shape of a letter, number or symbol on his left screen, the other screen, which had an image of his face, an infographic, altered its expression in response. The emotional states that passed through that face changed, influenced by a few lines of text. The graphic representation of Julián reacted to every alteration of the programmed code; shifting from desperation to laughter, sadness, fear and joy. He licked his lips and glanced at the door where they had hung a poster of Rosalía. He was waiting for Anthony, his business partner and friend.

Anthony Somoza left Starbucks carrying two cups with white plastic lids that he placed inside the front basket of a bicycle plastered with stickers. He cycled through the city’s busy streets right at the time when everyone left work, avoiding the avenues that got busiest during rush hours. The glimmer of a yellowish sun dropped long shadows on the deteriorated pavement. He turned into an alleyway, a shortcut he took to reduce the two miles that separated him from his office.

In a corner, hidden behind a rusty fence, two men with drawn faces shared a syringe with heroin. They did not bother lifting their heads even as the cyclist passed just a few feet away from where they stood. Neither did they try to hide when one injected the liquid into his pale, callused skin.

The cyclist left the alleyway and continued through one of the main streets. On the sidewalk, a woman in a black cardigan leaned out the window of a white car while a man gave her a sachet of cocaine in exchange for worn out pesos.

Anthony continued his route and finally arrived at the doors of a neglected-looking office building. He was pushing his bicycle to the entrance when a couple in bright clothes left the building. The girl smiled and showed her boyfriend a small plastic envelope with what he recognized as crystal meth (methamphetamine). Anthony placed his bicycle against a column and secured it with a large chain and lock.

Julián repeated his little impulsive ritual, stood up and checked the clock that hung on the wall; an old advertisement clock with the Bananas Tech logo. He had needed to go to the bathroom for a while, but reluctant to waste any of his invaluable time, had resisted the urge. He could not put it off any longer now, and the bathroom was only next door to their office. It had dirty-white walls, was illuminated by long fluorescent tubes, and stank of urine.

The bathroom looked empty. Julián chose the third urinal, undid his zip and finally relieved himself. Behind him, from one of the cubicles, came noises and a woman’s laughter. Julián lifted his eyebrows and turned his head to stare at the closed door. Clearly, he had caught a couple mid-business.

He heard a female moan and Julián, keen to leave the place, hurried to wash his hands at the sink.

Clang!

Something metallic hit the floor and the whole room went still. Water kept running at the sink. Julián turned his eyes to the tiled floor.

A gun had slid under the door where, a few seconds ago, he had heard laughter and muffled whispers. Julián closed the tap, his eyes fixed on the gun. At the same time, a man’s blue sneaker appeared under the door, dragging the object back into the cubicle. Julián shook his head as he left the bathroom and returned to his den, wiping his hands on his jeans.

The corridors of the lower floor were crammed with piles of paper and old folders. Anthony stepped around the mess, still carrying the two cups of coffee. On his way up, he bumped into two young men who were leaning on the wall and chatting, holding two cans of Pepsi.

“I’ll be seeing you both in a bit”, Anthony reminded them.

“You bet, we are so up for the challenge”, said one of them, giving Anthony a thumbs-up.

Anthony hurried into the office, the coffee’s white plastic lids were tightly closed.

“Your caramel macchiato latte”.

He left it on the small side table next to Julián, almost spilling the contents over the open notebook as he jumped into the red chair with the missing armrest. Anthony had removed it so that his right arm could hang off the side and reach the wheels at the base with his fingertips. Sixteen hours a day typing codes has its consequences in the realm of strange fixations acquisition, especially with programmers.

“You should be happy. Your fucking caramel machiatto latte has made me waste 20 minutes of my precious time… the place was packed; seven o’clock and you can’t imagine the number of addicts to this shit there are. And we were all there, standing in a line like fucking zombies”.

“That’s the way with vices, güey”, said Julián, as he went through his little routine again; first the nail, then his fingers tugging at his hair and the final pull of his earlobe. He looked at Anthony, who was scanning his fingerprint to get his computer started, and smiled. “When you are addicted to something, it’s always like that… pure drug this caramel stuff… Speaking of which, just a moment ago, there was a couple going at it in the bathroom”.

“No fucking way…”

“If you go now, you might still catch a bit of the show. I know you’re into that dirty shit”, said Julian, as he lifted his cup with one hand and removed the lid with the other. He took a sip and licked his mouth, savoring it; then, he put it back on the table and soon forgot that it had ever been there.

Anthony looked at Julián with a smile.

“The guys will be here in fifty-five minutes. I saw them waiting and Carlo is about to come through that door”, Anthony checked the time on his screen and enabled the connection. “Are you sure about this? Is he the right person?”

“Right? Nobody is right for this. Not even us, but when the time arrives… well, we’ll just have to be”. He bit, tugged and pulled again, eyes glued to the screens. “In five minutes, we will close the program and print out the chips”, he said, his face immutable as he continued staring at the lines of code on the screen. “Chap-in is a very promising language, but it lacks good syntax to connect external sensors”.

Anthony nodded, “We will have to remake the links… Not now, don’t even dream of it, but when we upload it to the cloud, I’m sure we’ll have to.

Julián set up the chip printer in which he had invested all the money that his father, Sebastian Konks had loaned him. The Konks descended from a family of bankers of Jewish origin that fled Germany before the war started. They found a new life in Mexico, a country that always welcomes those seeking refuge. It had been a year since they had got the loan, a sum close to two million pesos, which he had promised, without much conviction, to return one day. Thank God, thought Julián; the money had all gone to a life without commodities, an office and a magnificent biotechnological printer HP-Bio 11.

Anthony Somoza was born in Sonora. His parents were agricultural workers who harvested lettuce and grapes. Out of five brothers, Anthony had been the only one to spend any time on his studies; the others continued working the land, doing different jobs along the line of production: they harvested, packaged, stored and distributed.

When Anthony arrived with Julián in Mexico City, at the end of their four years of university, Julian’s parents let them stay at a space they had above their garage, and loaned them enough money to develop their ideas. The only condition was that they would stay away from the Konks house and the Konks. They held no love for their geeky son and his ‘dark’ friend, as they referred to Anthony when he was not present. They despised those who were different, and the color of his hair and skin were enough reason for the racist and superfluous looks they often gave him.

They had both accepted the conditions of the deal and had only seen Julian´s parents twice in that time.

Both associates had focused all their efforts on the execution of the idea they were about to present.

Anthony stood up and waited for the 3D printer to do its work, holding his hands behind his neck.

“If the program doesn’t work, tell DARPA. They have already spent over fifty million dollars on this damn language”.

Anthony was aware that Chap-in was the evolved version of Chap-el, which the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched at least twenty years ago for the acquisition of a high-performance language and the execution of algorithms for supercomputers, although they were using the cloud version from Unix with a BSD license. Its syntax was based on the classic languages C, C++ and Java, but also adopted concepts of scientific programming from Fortran and Matlab. However, its best attribute was related to its parallel processing, which came from programs such as ZPL.

Julián and Anthony met four years ago at Professor Hass’ advanced computing class in Berkeley. After sharing many hours of loneliness in front of their computer screens, they became close friends. Silences only interrupted by the sound of typing and occasional bursts of frustration or anger when things did not turn out as expected. They had spent all their time in a tiny room where they hardly engaged in any dialogue, exchanged comments or said inappropriate words. They had not even told the kind of jokes that people outside their programmer’s world would struggle to understand. Like the one Anthony sometimes told about the elevator that opens with a programmer inside and someone outside asks ‘up or down?’, to which he replies, ‘yes’. It was a good joke that made them laugh every time.

They were twenty-four, born in April fourteenth and April twentieth, both Aries. They had named their company Synchro and used the symbol of the ram as their logo.

Julián waited for the data to load, selected the printer and without hesitation, pressed the ‘run’ button to print the programmed, tiny, black balls. It took a few seconds for the files to transfer and the machine to get started. Anthony continued standing guard by the 3D bio-printer which was now blinking with a green light.

“How many?” asked Anthony.

“Five –I think five should be enough”, replied Julián, pulling his earlobe. He stretched his legs and stood up. “That’s ready now”.

“What about Carlo?”

“He should be here any moment now; I told him half past seven. I’d rather we do this once the center has emptied a bit. The commotion would not favor us”.

“People talk”.

Julián walked to the window that faced the courtyard. Their office was, without doubt, the worst in the Mex-Tec; it had also been the cheapest they found. Those two hundred and fifteen square feet cost something like thirteen thousand pesos each month, and only because the guy in charge had liked him and because no one else wanted the shit hole that looked more like a storage room than the home for a technological company.

“Anthony, I have to make a prophecy”.

“Tell me, Nostradamus. Until now, all your weird prophecies have come true”.

Julián kept looking at the courtyard below.

“One day, we are going to become very rich because of Synchro and there will be many people trying to divide us. Remember: divide and conquer”.

“Technically speaking, those are two prophecies, one about us becoming rich and the other about people trying to divide us”, said Anthony, his eyes fixed on the printer.

***

A completely bold man and a young, attractive, blonde girl were straightening themselves up before the mirror at the men’s bathroom, after a brief encounter in one of the cubicles.

“When are you going to tell me something about the investor?”

“Soon, give me a few more weeks”, he said, taking the gun from its case and turning it in his palm, checking for damage.

“One day, that thing is going to bring you trouble”.

“This thing isn’t loaded, but it’s very persuasive”.

A young man in a white t-shirt walked in. He stopped at the door, surprised at the sight of the couple. Then, his attention was drawn to the gun in the bald man’s hands. He turned around and left.

“See? Extremely persuasive”, said the bald man in blue sneakers as he checked his reflection.

She took out a small bag of cocaine, emptied some of its contents on a metal plate and with help from a little tube of the same material, formed two white lines.

The man returned his gun to the holster on his hip.

“I’ve got the Synchro geeks’ presentation now”, the man lifted his chin and posed before the mirror with an ironic smile.

“The people in the building say that what they are doing is pretty awesome”.

“Everyone believes that what they do is the best thing in the world”.

“Maybe, but people are talking, right?” she said, and held her blonde hair back. Leaning forward she snorted her white line.

“My dear Ana, in the world of money, only money matters; good ideas don’t mean shit”, the man took the metallic tube from the sink, brought it to his nose and snorted loudly, following the line of powder.

Once in the corridor, each went their different, no words, no kisses, no “see-you-laters”. The man turned to stare at the girl’s butt as she walked away; she didn’t look back.

***

Gingerly, Anthony took the tray with the five microchips covered in black jelly. Each ball hardly reached the size of a chickpea.

There was a loud knock and Carlo poked his shiny, shaved head round the side of the door.

“Hey, guys… Can I come in?”

Carlo Stamas was a forty-year-old lawyer who was often seen in the building hunting for new clients to assist with patent services, counsellings and finding investors. The guy was known at the center as the ‘ten percenter’. His strong build and shaved head gave him the airs of a personal trainer.

“Thank you for coming, güey”, said Anthony, showing him the tray with the five tiny balls.

“This piece of shit is your stuff?”

Julián laughed from the window.

“This piece of shit is going to make us rich and end your days as a third-rate lawyer. Thanks to this piece of shit, you are going to spend your time in gyms burning toxins and fucking desperate ladies”.

Carlo was known as a womanizer by the people in the building, besides, he enjoyed showing off his skills with the ladies. Julián glanced at his feet; he recognized the blue sneakers that he had spotted pushing a gun in the bathroom a few moments ago.

“Son, I hear that every day from young guys like you, who dream of finding the golden fleece”.

Anthony looked at the logo printed on the wall, the symbol of the ram, Aries, the golden fleece that Jason and the Argonaut’s searched for.

Carlo sat on Anthony’s empty chair and stretched his arms. On his side, through the open jacket, the gun attached to his hip became visible. He smiled openly at them.

“Don’t worry, I have a license”, he said, and added, “I’ve had a tough day and look at the time. So, go on, fill me in, because I have a date at ten at the Old Boat of Santa Fe and the girl is a beauty”. He looked down at the gap that was missing an armrest but did not make any comments.

Slowly, Julián walked to where Anthony stood, still with the tray in his hands, a few steps away from Carlo. Julián took one of the balls and held it in between his fingers.

“In a few minutes, four people are going to walk through that door. They are friends, volunteers, some are known to you from the center. They are going to be our guinea pigs…”

Carlo Stamas scratched his head and lifted a condescending eyebrow.

“I hope they signed a contract for this, in case you end up poisoning them with that stuff”, he said, pointing at the tray. “I don’t want any trouble”.

“They are completely harmless, there is nothing dangerous in their composition. It’s biotechnology. Their effect lasts for about two hours, after that, the microchip detaches itself and the body eliminates it through excretion. These are organic and biodegradable compounds, easily disposed of by the body. It’s jelly”. Julián looked at Carlo as he spoke, daring him to contradict him. “We have asked you to come because we need help with finance; we are going to need four hundred million dollars to make the next move”.

“Four hundred million dollars? That’s more than seven and a half billion fucking pesos. Are you mad?” Carlo stood up, with full intentions of leaving through the door. He tried to lean on the missing armrest. “Fuck… Look, kids, never in the whole history of start-ups has anyone given four hundred million fucking dollars to two little assholes like you, however fucking high-end their technology is. I don’t want to waste my time or yours. I shouldn’t have come here in the first place”.

Anthony blocked his way to the door.

“Please, first listen to what we’ve got to say. Then, you can leave”.

Carlo loosened his tie; he paused. He was already there and had nothing to lose.

“Do you know what ‘elevator pitch’ means? Well, you have one minute to fill me in and then I’m going to go meet a girl that is dying to show me all of life’s pleasure. I’m tired. Let’s see, what the hell do you want four hundred million dollars for?” He covered his mouth. “Excuse me for laughing”.

Julián, who had not moved from where he stood, continued his speech.

“As I was saying, in a few minutes time, four people are going to arrive here. They will swallow these Synchro microchips and a minute later, I’m going to send a two-gigahertz radio frequency from my computer, sort of like Bluetooth, so that we can provoke emotions in them at our will”.

“So, you are telling me that you have developed a technology in which a single fucking ball of these can change people’s emotions?”

“I guess you could put it that way, yes. Look, to simplify things: during a period of time, this chip, the black ball, is going to attach itself, like a tic, to a neuron. That way the neuron becomes a center of amplified transmission linked to the person’s neuronal system, it makes contact with the brain, sends small electric codes and modifies the person’s emotions, but in a way that has been programmed. We like to say that we have come up with a new type of drug; no chemicals, no side effects, and you can control it from your phone with an app. Simple. A drug capable of modifying and controlling human emotion”.

Carlo stared at Julián, completely astonished.

“But, that’s crazy! Does it work?”

“Absolutely”.

Julián knew that the word ‘absolutely’, got rid of all doubts: people needed absolute truths and absolute words in this relative world that we live in. Carlo would stay to see the results of the test and would completely forgot about his date.

There was a polite knock on the door and four people walked in. Among them were the two young men in white t-shirts that Anthony had spoken to earlier, still holding their Pepsis.

***

The coffin was white and small, smaller than she had imagined for her ten-year-old son Lucas, who had died of leukemia and was about to be buried. Cristina stood petrified watching the narrow box, obsessed by the size of it; she wanted to throw herself at it, open the coffin and see once again, with her own eyes, that it was her Lucas who fitted in that tiny space.

The death of a child renders speechless those who insist on seeking meaning in life. In the last two days, Cristina had become lost in a dense fog, her blue eyes had darkened, her blonde hair had grown white reflections and was now held back in a tight, greasy and decentered ponytail. At thirty, she had aged one hundred years all at once. Fog. She could still feel the weak arm of the child with the worst diagnosis for AML, resting in her palm.

Lucas had started feeling exhausted, he had lost weight, suffered frequent infections, bleeding, bruises that appeared out of nowhere. To save his life, he had gone through chemotherapy, followed by radiotherapy and stem cells transplant. All without result. He had been in that one percent that statistics said would not survive. That horrible one percent that any successful statistic has, right next to the other ninety-nine.

Around her, dressed in black, with dark sunglasses and downcast faces, were friends, a few family members and her workmates, members of the narcotics brigade at the New Mexico Police Department.

The small tow truck started its engine and the lacquered coffin slowly descended the three and a half feet of dug earth. That was the space that separated the box from the surface, from the air, to become that something that accompanies the soft and velvety inside of the dead’s rest per secula seculorum. The remains of someone that had once been alive, that had breathed, smiled… fallen ill and… Cristina lifted her eyes and saw her partner, Álvaro Guzmán, in a black blazer and tie; he was clenching his fists and diverting his eyes from the hole that was being occupied. He lifted his eyes to the sky’s blue. She followed his gaze in its upwards escape and felt comforted by the feeling of a sun ray in her face. She was wearing polarized sunglasses, but still, it dazzled her. The fog would return soon.

She lowered her gaze and there was Guzmán again, trying to invent a smile that would tell Cristina that she would recover from this; that would tell a mother that has lost her child after two years of battling death, that there is hope… Impossible. The smile did not appear and they both turned their eyes to the white coffin as it touched the bottom.

The flowers would come later, tossed into the ditch, the shovel and the earth spilling over it; and then, the unbearable hugs, one after the other. A time for crying that would condense tears into a dense and salty fog. She had already experienced it two years before, a time when tears had surged from her eyes during her last goodbye to her friend and partner, Laura, ‘almost at the same time as they discovered that Lucas had cancer’, thought the lieutenant.

Cristina was immersed once again in the fog that the loss of a son generates, as she remembered her friend and workmate, Laura, who was buried close to here. ‘For the love of God, Laura, look after Lucas; now that you are both together, take care of him’. She held onto that thought while she went through the formalities of lost hugs and the ‘I’m sorry for your loss’s. She had met Laura Almillar in the Desierto de los Leones Police School, where they trained and studied every morning of the required twenty-one weeks that the course lasted. She had been forced to leave her child with the neighbors while they both worked as waitresses at Tapitas. Laura had been her only friend, Lucas had been everything else. After many hours directing traffic, their chance finally arrived and they took it at once. Cristina at Narcotics and Laura at the Criminal Brigade.

It had happened on the last day of September; Cristina remembered it well because it had been the day after Lucas’ birthday. Laura had been there with Albi, a German shepherd that was always stuck to her side; she called him her ‘novio’. The day after, during a simple routine assault, Laura, protected by her bulletproof vest, entered the house of a murder suspect through the garden door, an architect who’d presumably murdered his secretary. Inside, by the entrance, they were welcomed by a deflagration that shattered the entire glass door right before their eyes. A bomb programmed to end the life of the police who came to the house. The architect had committed suicide a few hours earlier, leaving that surprise behind to increase the hatred his memory might raise.

Laura died instantly. Afterwards, Lucas remembered her dog, Albi. But, when Cristina went to her house to fetch him, the animal was gone. She was convinced that a neighbor must have taken him.

Laura was buried close to Lucas, thought Cristina, next to the three fir trees at the back. ‘Laura, Lucas knows you; he’s alone now, but if he sees you, he’ll grow calm. Laura, be his temporary mother, please. He’s a good boy, you know him, a bit cheeky and absentminded but a good boy after all. He’s all yours.’

“Hello, Cristina; I’m sorry about your son”.

Cristina woke up from her trance. The guy in front of her was that two-faced worm, Alex.

“What are you doing here?” Cristina said, raising her voice, “what, you’ve come to your son’s funeral? Ten years ignoring him and now… you come here to meet him. Well, you’re late”. She lifted her hand, ready to unload her anger on his face with all her remaining strength. “Son of a bitch!”

Alex swallowed, ready for the slap.

“I only wanted to offer you my condolences. I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry”.

Guzmán reached Cristina’s side and held her by the shoulders, trying to calm her down. He looked at Alex. The three of them were alone.

“You should leave. This isn’t a good time for surprises”.

Alex turned and walked away, slowly and downcast. Cristina was left alone with Guzmán; the spirit of the past was leaving.

She started to cry in anger.

“It’s OK. Calm down”.

“I’m calm. It’s just that son-of-a-bitch… He disappeared entirely from my life ten years ago when he found out that I was pregnant, and he turns up now. Today, the very day we bury Lucas, when he never even bothered to meet his son and in all these years we hadn’t heard anything from him, he appears out of nowhere to say that he’s sorry. This whole time I’ve been a single mother, making up stories about my life for a child who is no longer here and who asked about his dad… And now, the goddamn son-of-a-bitch turns up, here of all places…”

Álvaro Guzmán had no words for such pain, and offered a calm hug instead.

“A professional son-of-a-bitch… Let’s go”.

With the help of a dump truck, the men were pouring earth on the barely visible white coffin.

“Álvaro, I’m alone now”.

Cristina tried to recompose herself by wiping her face. She hadn’t applied mascara because she knew her whole face would end up covered in black stains. Her eyes were red and moist. Guzmán gave her some space.

“My car’s over there. I’ll drive you”.

“I’d rather stay a bit longer”, she said, and pointed at some trees. “I’m going to visit Laura; I need to ask her a favor”.

“You’re right. Lieutenant Almillar is in this cemetery. I’m sorry”.

She started walking away; Guzmán watched her go; she turned around and said:

“Thank you, Álvaro. I’ll go to the station later. I’d rather get over all this as soon as possible. What’s left for me, which isn’t much, is there”.

“You don’t need to do it. Take a few days off”.

“I’d rather go… and not spend my whole day thinking. It’s been a long year and…”

“It’s been a bad one”, offered the white-haired policeman. “It’s already November”.

“They’ve stolen October from me”.

“When you come to the station, I’ll go with you to report the stolen month. When it comes to months, October is pretty important”.

She smiled. Álvaro got into his car and drove off; meanwhile Cristina sunk back into the fog.

The place grew silent as the two men that buried the boy left in a tiny electric cart, the sort you’d find in a golf course.

In the distance, hidden, camouflaged behind a marbled pantheon, someone was drying her tears. She had watched Cristina from a distance during the funeral. She couldn’t have gone any closer; many would have recognized her and she was dead.

***

In his car, Guzmán wondered whether he should go straight home and into the shower, or stop at Fumadera to buy marijuana. Would it be open by now? It was eleven in the morning and he was due in the police station at three for the evening shift; he had four hours ahead of him and did not feel hungry at all. He turned up the radio.

…I want you to know, your blows

are not going to separate us

my heart is stronger than all that,

death was never in the cards.

I want you to know, your words

are killing me at last…

The ’19 Prius hybrid took the ring road and exited by the Río Becerra.

He stopped at one of the spaces reserved for clients of Fumadera, literally, ‘the smoking area’, a green shop; its logo, two green circles with a dot in their center. It had opened its doors to pot smokers ten years ago and, even with that name, business was thriving. The light on the sign was on and Alvaro’s cannabis supplies were running low. He knew today he would need double the usual to fall asleep. The law allowed one ounce of cannabis per day, but Gaby, the owner of Fumadera –and perhaps the very last of the city’s hippies and an old follower of the ‘flower power’–, sold it to Álvaro in 100-gram bags, and this had been a particularly rough week; he needed it.

“How, Álvaro”, said Gaby as he lifted his hand in what he considered to be the Native American style; his signature greeting. He wore a shabby bandana with camouflage print and had long hair that clashed with his growing baldness.

The smell of marijuana filled the air inside. The shelves were crammed with creams, liquids, cookies, popcorn, sweets and energy bars with a flashy poster announcing the main flavors of their three varieties: sativa, indica and ruderalis.

“How, Gaby”. Álvaro returned the man’s greeting.

“You’ve come early, I was just opening. The usual?” Gaby narrowed his eyes. “You have the look of someone who’s just been to a funeral”.

“Yes, a ten-year-old’s, son of a workmate; leukemia, shit luck”.

“Terrible..”.

“Yes…” Guzmán kept his eyes on the floor, as if a deep hole had suddenly appeared and he could see the coffin rising to the surface. “Give me something strong”.

“I don’t have anything strong enough for what you need, but take ten ounces of indico; I just received it from a farm close to Guadalajara. They say this pot is extremely relaxing; its flowering period lasts seven weeks and this batch is freshly cut”.

“Sedative?”

“Yes, narcotic, and it is very fruity with a touch of wood. If it were wine, it would be a sort of syrah”.

Guzmán smiled.

“Gaby, you’re the best at selling this shit in the entire world. Every time I come here, I feel like I’m at a wine tasting in the Guadalupe valley. To me, this smoke all tastes the same. I’m sorry”. Guzmán took out his credit card and then realized he couldn’t pay with it.

“You know that you have to pay with cash because of some obsolete federal law… You are a policeman, change the laws”.

“I make sure the law is obeyed, but just enough, and I don’t write the laws; if it was up to me, there would only be one law: don’t fuck other people over and children are forbidden to die. Well, those are two laws…”. Álvaro took out a police card with his name and number and put it down on the table. “Add it to my tab, I’ll come by tomorrow. I’ll pay you and let you know whether the shit was fruity. If I don’t turn up, make a call and get me arrested for robbery. How!”

He picked up his bag and left. Gaby took his card and left it next to the cash register, as a lucky charm.

As he reached his car, Guzmán felt tempted to roll a joint and smoke it on his way home; he was really craving one. A police car drove past and for a few seconds, the agent held his gaze, studying him, car to car; Guzmán was outside Fumadera and that alone made him suspicious. Guzmán had always been on the brink of becoming a problem; he was an outsider in the brigade and at fifty, he was not willing to change his habits. Nevertheless, today, he would avoid trouble; he would not challenge his fellow policeman. The car drove on, slowly, watchful. He turned the key and started the hybrid engine. He would smoke it at home and relax a little before going to work. Ever since him and his wife got separated, the house had become a calm place, he thought.

A moving van from Álamo was blocking his parking spot; someone was moving into the apartment next door to his. His neighboring spot was occupied by an elegant, faded red BMW X-15 with auto pilot. Guzmán pictured a forty-year-old man from the movie industry, probably going through a divorce. Apartment 17 had been empty for three months, ever since old Robert decided to throw away all his stuff and move back to Mérida. ‘Álvaro, DF is no place for old men like me’ was what he told him.

Guzmán turned back in the alleyway and found an empty spot two streets down; he walked distractedly as he opened his bag of cannabis. He rolled a joint with an expert hand, lit it and inhaled the incandescent weed.

He crossed the street without looking; a car braked and stopped just a few inches away from him.

“Fuck!” Scared, Álvaro had dropped his small bag and the lit joint on the ground.

Inside the vehicle, the driver, a man with a strong build, and a very attractive blonde girl, stared in shock at the man who had so suddenly crossed the road. Carlo Stamas had been driving distractedly, one hand on the wheel, one on Ana Riccoli’s thigh.

Guzmán bent down and picked up his small bag and the joint, which he immediately took to his mouth for a long drag. The couple looked at him, amazed.

“Fucking drug addict!” he heard the man with the shiny shaved head shout from the car.

Guzmán answered by opening his jacket and showing the gun that was tucked at his side. The driver reacted by waving his own gun behind the windscreen. Guzmán answered the provocation violently by drawing his own weapon; he burst the side window with the iron butt, and taking advantage of Stamas’ surprise, grabbed his gun and threw it by the back wheel.

The woman started to shout and the two men began a peculiar struggle as one tried to open and the other to close the driver’s door. Finally, Guzmán pulled it open and dragged the man out of the car. Carlo fell on the ground. Despite his size; Guzmán handcuffed him and began to search him. The young woman looked at him, terrified. The policeman had not pronounced a single word yet and the Carlo was breathing quickly, looking at the sides without understanding what was going on. An elderly couple watched the arrest scene from a window.

“I’m a lawyer; let me tell you, you’re going to pay for this”, said Carlo Stamas, his face on the ground, as Guzmán went through his pockets.

Álvaro got hold of two bags of cocaine which he tore open and emptied steadily on the street.

“Come on, güey. You son of a bitch!” Carlo shouted angrily.

Guzmán’s gaze shifted to the vehicle where he spotted the box the young woman was holding. It was black and had a logo that looked like the wifi drawing with two ram horns: Synchro.

The lieutenant walked up to the woman, he took the box from her and opened it. Inside, he found a dozen tiny black balls the size of a pill.

“What the fuck is this?” he demanded, pointing at the box with the tiny balls.

“That’s none of your business, asshole”, she said.

Guzmán looked around; there were groups of people watching from the corners and two cars waited impatiently. He helped the handcuffed man up.

“Amigo, I’m going for lunch with my girl and you just fucked me over”, Carlo said looking down at the dirt on his shirt. “You know you can’t arrest me like this… This is, without doubt, police brutality… You let me go and I’ll let you go, deal?”

The policeman looked at his joint and then at the bag of cannabis that was still lying on the asphalt; he considered the situation. What the man said was true; this would mean heaps of problematic paperwork and explanations that evening. He released him from the handcuffs; Carlo picked up his weapon and got back in his car.

“Son of a bitch”, the girl murmured.

Guzmán dropped the black balls together with his joint and stepped on them, leaving an odd-looking black mess. Then, he left to his apartment, walking up the newly-painted main staircase.

On the landing, a sweaty young man in shorts waited for instructions holding two wooden chairs with a Cisco Home label. From inside, came a woman’s voice:

“Leave those next to that table”.

As Guzmán put his key in the keyhole, the voice that was giving the instructions, addressed him from behind:

“Hello, I’m Gloria Altolaza, the new neighbor. You must be Álvaro, the policeman; Margarita, the manager, told me about you”. She held out her hand.

Guzmán shook hands with Gloria Altolaza. Around forty, he thought. She was wearing a grey t-shirt exposing a bare shoulder and black leggings with a skull printed on one side.

“I’m Álvaro Guzmán… welcome. And Margarita is definitely the mother of this neighborhood. Careful with her, she said that stuff about me being a policeman to give you a sense of security and get a better rent”.

“It’s certainly worked with me; they should discount it from your rent, a bonus. There should even be a sign: ‘policeman living in this building’”, Gloria said and noticed the bag of cannabis that was still in his hand. “I’m going to be very safe here”.

“I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Now, if you’ll allow me”. Álvaro opened his door. “I’ll be here if you ever need anything”.

“In that case, I’m sure I’ll end up needing something”, replied Gloria with a cheeky smile.

Guzmán closed the door and threw the small bag on the table by the entrance. He took off his black blazer and loosened his tie. That woman’s face seemed familiar. He took a paper and opened the bag of marijuana; he had to turn his head away from the intense smell to stop himself from feeling dizzy. Expertly, he rolled another joint; he’d hardly enjoyed the previous one. He lit it with a Zippo; first, a tall green flame appeared and then the incandescent crackle of dry weed, wrapped in thin paper, and the white smoke. He was like an alcoholic who swallows but doesn’t savor. He took a first drag and then sat on the blue sofa. The leftover smoke drifted from his nostrils.

He could hear Gloria Altolaza giving instructions behind the door:

“That one goes to the right, over there… a bit further… careful, careful… Tiny bit more to the right. Slowly… slowly”.