__I have already told you that I cannot talk about the future. I did not come for that, father. What I do assure you is that tomorrow, as we imagine it, will become that longed-for utopia.
__Come one please. Tell me more about the future. Anyway, I'm never going to arrive ... -the father, still in shock, could not hide his expectation.
__I don't understand how you manage to get everything out of me, dad. If the Intertime Entertainments saw me, they would surely complain.
__It is that I still do not think you come from that far. Put yourself in my place, Alonsito.
__And hit Alonsito! –The aforementioned laughed– It will be because of that. You bring out the child in me. As if I was revealing my latest mischief to you. ”After a few moments of silence, he burst out suddenly. You know, I'm going to tell you everything, but in return you will have to do something for me.
"I promise," Miguel lied, crossing his fingers down his back. He did not like to promise anything, even less without understanding what he was committing to.
Alonsito, that elegant sixty-five-year-old man, sat next to his father, a man who was not over forty. Obviously, seen together they could represent the reverse, Alonso the father and Miguel the son. Both rested seated on a stone terrace overlooking the mountain. A hundred meters behind him could be seen the country house that Miguel built some time ago for the summer with his family.
__I don't know where to start ... Well, do you remember our discussions about football? Well, Real Madrid never won a European Cup again. At least until two thousand and fifty-five. ”Alonso slipped, on his serious face, a slight jocular rise from his lips.
__That does not suppose a relevant data, although it is good to know it, for the pools of course.
__That kind of luck is not what I wish for you, Father -Alonso kept remembering his particular purpose to travel in time.
__Well, man, a fourteen pool would also affect your luck, I suppose - the father looked at his aging son.
__I had almost forgotten the smell of thyme on a summer evening –Alonso changed the subject, letting himself suddenly be carried away by the landscape of the open forest around him. Too many new sensations were piling up to ignore.
__The little things, isn't it? The memory of the little things. It has always happened.
__Yes, father, I no longer have time to go out to the mountains.
__Are you a busy man, son?
__Yes. I don't have all the time I want, right.
__What do you do in that distant future?
__ Well, it is not so easy to explain it - Alonso plucked a bouquet from the thyme that stood out next to him and brought it close to his nostrils, taking a deep breath. If I tell you that I am a Nodal Traffic Officer, it sure sounds like nothing to you.
__It sounds like one of those fantasies that science fiction writers mention.
__Of course. Well, imagine that nodal traffic is called the one obtained by chemical transmutation of matter.
__How? I am a simple internet user, that sounds a world further still.
__Effectively, I take you one step further. Wireless computers came first. A breakthrough made by Microsoft. However, that was the beginning of the end for this computer giant.
__Don't tell me that the Bill Gates empire will collapse in the future -Miguel chatted while the evening shadows veiled his features and a rising wind cooled the embers of a hot day.
__Bill Gates left a great legacy, yes. He demonstrated, in addition to possessing computer genius, having great business acumen. Once the genius is gone, there is always someone who fucks him up, dad, always.
The creation of wireless computing surreptitiously set a new goal for chemical companies: to unravel, control and master the chemical reaction that generates the transfer of information.
Quarts, a powerful German chemical industry, did it in a short time. His patent allowed him to thoroughly experiment and eventually commercialize the first tiny chemical PCs. From there to synthetic travel there was only one step. When the rest of the companies copied Quarts computers, Quarts had already launched the creation of the chemical network, a fusion of nodes that allowed the transfer of any chemical element.
__Bufff, it's overwhelming. All of this still seems like a dream. How are you, everything you say. You know, Alonsito? I can admit that you are my son. I would distinguish that look inherited from your mother from all the eyes in the world. However, I also know that I have been at home with Alonsito, my boy, a moment ago, although with your innocent fifteen years.
They were both silent for a few moments. Miguel watched Alonso without leaving his astonishment. At first he distinguished that a stranger was approaching him. As soon as he had it in front of him, he deduced that something strange was happening. Alonsito's explanations clarified the inconceivable.
__He prepares a good one, huh, dad? -The light breeze at the end of the afternoon began to bring a curtain of dark clouds over the sky. Its brownish outlines drew shifting figures on the steep orography of the basement. I remember these kinds of afternoons. One of those in which you sat in front of the fire and told a story to my sister and me.
__Don't be idyllic, Alonsito. There's a game tonight, I'm sure if I start to tell you a story and make you lose your Barça, you won't forgive me until you're eighteen.
__Football isn't that important, dad. I know what game it is, I'm tempted to tell you the result, all so you don't see that stupid match!
__Alonsito, calm down, it's only about football. Dont be like that. I do it for you, today you are fifteen years old ... Well, rather, the Alonsito who is in there in the house is fifteen years old. How can I not let him watch the game? Come on, come on ... Come on, tell me more about the future. What will society be like?
__There is no bad life tomorrow. Progress found what we have always been looking for, father: Alternatives. Everything has had a remedy in the future. The most significant thing in a recent future will be the advancement of medicine: Diseases are cured, human longevity borders on eternity. Cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer's will go down in history. Dying in the future is a decision, a possibility.
Of course, there came a time when the advance of medicine and the perpetuity of the human race made the world small for everyone, but in my days we have learned to colonize satellites and planets: the Moon, Mars will be habitable in the two one thousand one hundred. No problem.
__But ... All that entails too many ethical and social changes ...
__Everything is legislated, father. No problem.
__I remember that phrase of yours from "No problem." You say it when you have committed some mischief or when you are lying. After all, you are my son, Alonsito.
__The fillers. They are difficult to start right? Alonso commented.
The relentless army of the wind continued to grow strong from the horizon. The coolness of the brewing storm poured into Alonso's nostrils without delay. More than anything else, those smells awakened memories, which were presented with the reality of an uncertain present.
__Dad. All this, my trip, my visit here ...
__What do you want to tell me, son?
__Time travels are programs to be developed yet. I don't know if this is happening or not. My presence here is chemical. I can smell the thyme, I can watch you, I can touch you, but I don't know if it's just a chemical memory. In nodal traffic the remains are well differentiated from reality. These remains are the result of displacement and consist of double images, unreal sensations, deviations. But this is another type of traffic. It is still experimental
__I understand you. It's very simple –Miguel was happy to believe that he had found the solution to his son's question. You are afraid that all this, the present in which I live, is due to some kind of residual product, right?
__I would rather be the residual. But that is where we are going well, we are looking for the confirmation that my trip is real –Alonso confirmed what he always knew as a child, his father was a smart guy.
__If my opinion is not worth it, my confirmation that this is real, I will have to show you something to assure you. Something that you have never been aware of, something that you have never known before.
__Of course, father! You are a genius -Alonso approached his father and hugged him. Show me something different, something that I never knew.
"I don't know what I can show you," his father hesitated for a few moments. I know of one thing that I have always hidden from you until now, Alonsito. I do not know if in the future you will have come to know.
__What is it about?
__Okay, after all, today is your birthday, right? -Miguel approached his son to a large nearby tree. When I was your age, I had another girlfriend who one day left town. We played together right here in front of the house. That girl taught me to kiss, I in return passionately carved our names on the fir -Miguel pointed to the trunk of the tree at mid-height- There they are. You may have seen it as a child, but I have never told you that MxC means Miguel for Carmina. I love your mother, but this is a beautiful childhood memory that I once contemplate with a smile.
__Fantastic! This works, father. Alonso laughed again as much as his sour character allowed him. I never noticed that size. I'm sure I'm doing a full-blown time travel.
__It's starting to leak, Alonsito. Don't you want to come home?
__Nerd. I must go soon, right away. I've been here too long. ”Alonso began to rush his words. If I am in the past it is because I must tell you something, Father.
__But, come on, tell me at home. Wouldn't you like to see yourself at fifteen?
__No, father, that cannot happen. You have to do something for me before you go. You have promised. Tonight ... the game. Barcelona lose, father. There's nothing to do. Don't watch that game. Not worth it. Bye.
Miguel turned towards the mansion, pointed again at the beautiful and elegant country house to his son, looking at her proudly. The home shelter was only a hundred yards away. However, when Miguel looked back, his son was gone, he had left.
Alonso left the program with a bitter taste in his mouth and feeling a huge ball bouncing off his head. The first thing he saw, like waking up from a surreal dream, were the gigantic letters I..E. by Intertime Entertainments.
__How are you, Don Alonso? How's it going? -Ricardo Vera, head of design at Intertime Entertainments, was watching him expectantly from outside the departure chamber. His voice on the intercom was expanding in that receptacle with an almost constant reverberation. Even the sound was unable to get out of there.
__Uff, how my head hurts. This still needs to be improved. The selection I have made has not been the one the machine has sought - Alonso, who was conducting his routine inspection of the EI project for time travel, got up from the transparent capsule and went to the door. Taking a deep breath, he came out.
__Seriously? Ricardo worried, his premature gray hair was completely albino with fright.
"Completely serious," Alonso lied. Designating a physical location for nodal traffic trips is not the same as searching for a location in time. The device does not define it correctly. I have been isolated this whole trip.
__Okay, we will continue investigating –Richard answered angrily–. However, you must undergo the last phase of the project.
__What last phase? Alonso asked excitedly. Drum sticks, the bell clapper, or whatever it was that had settled in his head kept pounding his brains out of control.
__Everything is contemplated in the research protocol that we sent you –Ricardo prepared to recite the regulations from memory:
__Any traveler must submit to some questions where it is found that he has not modified the past with any intention.
__If we don't even know if I have traveled to the past. I have already told you that I have remained isolated in a strange landscape. ”Alonso felt a certain fear of the questions. Of course he was aware of their existence, but perhaps his trip had upset something. Perhaps the slight warning to his father had worked.
__For that very reason, you must be calm - Ricardo remained imperturbable in front of Alonso, with the firm gesture of the one who must carry out his mission, he again took a breath to enunciate:
__They are two specific and two generic questions that seek to compare the present that you left with the one that has been generated as a result of your trip. Any substantial modification will be considered a misuse of our service and will be claimed before the pertinent authority.
Particular question number one of the protocol: Are you married? If so, name your wife.
__Yes. My wife is called Aurora.
Alonso answered automatically, swallowing hard. What if his father had listened to him after all and hadn't seen that game? He remembered the day of his fifteenth birthday, just the day he had selected for his regressive journey. There was a strong storm. The game started at nine. As the players jumped onto the field, the wind blew the antenna off the house.
Alonso, with his recent fifteen years, cried. He did not want to miss the Barça game.
Miguel could not help but try to restore the antenna so that his son could watch the game
__Particular question number two of the protocol: What is your current address?
__My current address is Calle Doctor Ibáñez, Urbanización Sendero, Portal thirty-two, tenth A, here in Zaragoza.
A good father could not leave his son without seeing his team on his birthday. He immediately put on his raincoat, took the ladder and ascended to the roof of the house. Alonso recalled that the image was seen on the television screen again for a few seconds, until a loud noise, an immense light, cut off the electricity supply to the entire house.
Her mother called out to her husband Miguel. Alonso saw his father's body fall through the living room window.
Generic question number one of the protocol: Who is the current President of the Spanish government?
__The current president of the government is Félix Brams
Alonso shed a tear as he refreshed the vivid memory of the death of his father, the same man with whom he had just had a friendly conversation.
Generic question number two of the protocol: Who was the champion of the soccer league in Spain in the year two thousand and fifty-four?
__I find it hard to admit it, but it was Real Madrid.
Alonso left the majestic EI building with his head still crumbling from the chemical rebound from the trip. It must have been the same effect of navigation through the nodal network, only this effect was more intense and occurred in a shorter period of time. Although perhaps that formidable headache not only derived from the rebound.
As Alonso got into his car, an extraordinary two-seater automatic aerofit, he thought his pain was coming from a part deeper than the mere chemistry of his brain. He believed that guilt continued to simmer in his soul, in the slow fire of time. He assumed that that old guilt that plagued him would always be there.
While his aerofit traced the pay airstrip, with quick angles between the buildings of the great city of Zaragoza, Alonso once again considered that he was to blame for his father's death. He was the one who insisted on watching the damn game. That capricious child that was ended the life of his father.
The speed of the aerofit did not even allow one to meditate on their things, despite the fact that those devices traced the itineraries by themselves. They did it so quickly that they didn't bring the advantage of having time to ponder. In a few moments Alonso arrived at his home. The aerofit was perfectly located in the parking lot at the level of Alonso's tenth floor.
The headache persisted, Alonso felt a new hammer blow at each step, at each diastole of his heart. To try to relax, he lay down on his couch and asked for the tridi to be turned on.
The images of the latest news covered the unfortunate evolution of his world in that year two thousand and fifty-five. After insubstantial news of society and sports, he hardly passed over the various mundane problems.
The most obvious of all, the increase in misery. Alonso recalled telling his father that cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer's had disappeared, but that was not the whole truth. What is completely certain is that only the wealthy were cured. The trend towards clear polarization separated a growing poor crowd in equal numbers with the rich. That poor class, who still lived in the depths of the cities, had no access to any cure because they had no money.
But he had lied even more seriously to his father. He had told him that the increase in people due to the decrease in diseases would be solved with the colonization of other planets. That would happen, perhaps, later. For now, anyone who skipped the procreation quota was brought to justice. And justice had long ago had to resort to the harshest punishments.
Alonso had lied to his father about all that future slop. Although evidently his father knew him well thoroughly. He must not have been completely convinced. Miguel had recognized her false gestures simply by suspecting her phrase "No problem."
Already calmer, lying on his sofa, Alonso thought again about his father. At that moment, as if he had a gong in his chest, his heart gave a strong beat that spread for a few seconds throughout his body. Only when the chill passed could that organ begin to beat regularly again. Excited, he stood up and ordered his trivi to shut down. He closed his eyes and searched through his memories, he had just imagined his father as an old man and that, with his death at forty, was an incorrect memory.
His father sitting to his right on his wedding day. That was the next thing he remembered. Alonso was able to see his father at his wedding dinner with Aurora. It couldn't be! Later the image of Miguel with his grandson appeared, the golden anniversary. A thousand memories of his father flocked to his memory like slides exposed to a new light.
It seemed strange, but it brought him immense joy. In addition, the worst memory, that of his fifteenth birthday when his father fell from the roof, had given way to the background, becoming a perverse fantasy, an uncomfortable rest.
Instead of this gloomy reminiscence, Alonso recalled his first great anger, the one that occurred when he turned fifteen and missed the Barcelona game, the memory of his insistence that his father repair the television in the middle of the storm and the refusal of his father.
Alonso cried, his guilt was gone. At each stroke of memory he was able to understand a different life. No doubt his father listened to him, made the decision not to fix the television and life continued as it should. Miguel died at the age of seventy-three, became a grandfather, and Alonso enjoyed his father for many years.
Aurora, his wife came home when he was still wiping his tears. Seeing her, Alonso hugged her. For a few seconds he thought it was someone else. Yet he knew he loved her.
Nodal License: Intertime Entertainments.
CIF: B50142
Report: Councilor: Alonso Bronchal
The proposal of this company is based on the creation of an innovative nodal traffic destined to navigate through time.
Although the navigation style is based on the same chemical synthesis as the nodes of ordinary traffic, the results are obviously quite different.
My verification in situ has contrasted that the time travels developed by Intertime Entertainments are real, the chemical transmutation of matter unquestionably directs us to the past.
However, such navigation produces some variations to consider:
First of all, it is necessary to understand that the past can be modified and when returning to the present, the chemical process of the mind has already adapted completely to the new circumstances, so the control questions have completely no probative value. Only some remainder have vestiges of the past unchanged.
Physiologically, the trips of the system devised by IE produce momentary but very intense headaches.
Valuation as Nodal Councilor: Potentially dangerous pending new verifications.