Read Online Turing's Delirium by Edmundo Paz Soldán - Free Book Online

the problem but had quickly made itself extremely unpopular: blackouts with no prior warning, continual surges, and, in spite of all that, a shocking rate hike. It is the first time that both the working class and those who are better off have come together in protest. Would the electricity shortage trigger Montenegro's demise? How ironic, after having weathered much more ferocious storms and so close to the end of his mandate.
    You pop a piece of gum into your mouth. Spearmint Chiclets. Luckily, there are only four more blocks until you can finally relax. Naked and protected by the night, a glass of whiskey in a dusky room, the television on, wishing that time would slow down, that the clock would stand still. Carla, Carla, Carla. There will be shadows on the walls, shadows that mingle yet fail to find one another.
    It's not the first time and it won't he the last,
you murmur, stepping on the accelerator. You wish you could stop thinking from time to time, let your mind go blank, avoid the overlapping thoughts that are always with you. To thrill with pure sensation, to let yourself be lulled by the nothingness of the day, to leave the exhausting analogies, the frantic associations of ideas, the obsessive readings of a reality reverberating with the echoes of another reality.
Everything in moderation
was what you wanted your motto to be; you have now resigned yourself to the fact that your thoughts are not in moderation.
    Carla, Carla, Carla. Who would have imagined?
    You park in the lot next to the building. Four cars: a quiet night. You spit your gum out. A billboard has been hung on a molding wall at the back of the lot:
Built Ford Tough.
An anagram in the last word:
Ought.
An ominous sign: imprisoned within those five letters is the word
go.
Ever since you were a child, you have felt that the world speaks to you, always, everywhere. That sensation has intensified in the past few months, to the point that you cannot read a sign or a word without thinking of it as a code, as a secret writing that needs to be deciphered. The front page of a newspaper can make you dizzy with the sheer volume of messages shrieking your name, asking you to free them from their precarious packaging. Most people think literally and assume that
Built Ford Tough
means
Built Ford Tough.
You suffer from the opposite and spend entire nights awake, mourning the loss of the literal.
    Under a red neon light, the receptionist is playing blackjack on the computer, the screen showing a closeup of his hand. The blackjack table is in a casino in the virtual city of Playground. All of Rio Fugitivo is addicted to Playground, where thousands waste countless hours making millionaires of the three young men who bought the rights to it for Bolivia. You are one of the few who are immune to the virus. Nonetheless, and despite Ruth's protests, you still finance the unhealthy number of hours that Flavia spends glued to the screen. She said she was going to stop, that she was tired of all the advertising, and yet she can't help logging on one more time, just once more...
    The receptionist greets you with a mere nod of his head, as if it is an effort to lift his eyelids and move the muscles in his neck. With a click of the mouse, the cards on the screen—stolen hearts, kings in decline—give way to a calendar. He hands you a gold metal key numbered 492. Four. Nine. Two.
D-I-B. BID.
You mumble thanks knowing he won't reply. You have known him for a while now and have never heard the sound of his voice. What for, really? The transaction already took place earlier, using your credit card online. There's no need to speak; he knows it and so do you. And yet you feel nostalgic for the sound of a voice. You're not interested in the message itself but in the means of communication, which is increasingly rare. You most certainly are from another century.
    The red carpet is stained—every kind of fluid spilled in sticky intimacy. The elevator is ancient, the metal