***
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