025 HÉCTOR CASTELLS “THE NEPALESE DIARIES” nowhere / now here Nowhere. May 2025. Saigon. Carl Murder is sweating like a pig. The Venetian blinds are pulled, and yet the sunbeams are easily filtering through them and bursting on the screen of his translucent glasses like tiny dead stars. He hates Saigon more than AC’s. He has been deployed in the seventh ring of Hell after Khaled got the wrong lead toWilson’s whereabouts — “fucking Rugby Face is not here” has been his war cry for the last week. He has two massive fans propped against his desktop, and the scar running from his earlobe to his cheekbone has never looked darker: it is oozing a ghastly ointment. His receding scalp is dyed with a cheap lotion, and the black, fat tears of sweat are dripping over the scab and the files, most of them buried under heavy paperweights that he hates to lift as much as he hates humanity and heat. He could have digitised everything, leaf through the pages of his endless archives (already uploaded in his front cortex), by just blinking. CHAPTER 1: HARPER GOD IN FACT, FUNES REMEMBERED NOT ONLY EVERY LEAF OF EVERY TREE OF EVERY WOOD, BUT ALSO EVERYONE OF THE TIMES HE HAD PERCEIVED OR IMAGINED IT (…) HE THOUGHT THAT BY THE HOUR OF HIS DEATH HE WOULD NOT EVEN HAVE FINISHED CLASSIFYING ALL THE MEMORIES OF HIS CHILDHOOD (FUNES THE MEMORIOUS, JORGE LUIS BORGES). Touch Down But he refuses to give up his sense of touch. He believes that is the main tragedy of being human in a contactless, android ridden world. Once you lose your touch, you lose recollection, no matter how much endless information you can swallow artificially. He is holding the file named Funes the Memorious. He knows the answer lives here but he can’t get his head around it. “Is it really possible that a man fell off his horse, lost consciousness and upon waking up remembered every single leaf, angle, colour, hug, tear, second and every other insignificant memory of his entire life in utter detail? There’s a syndrome named after that, ain’t it?” “Hundred per cent. You mean Borges syndrome? Because it is a Borges story. But that is the whole point of the new software. You can zoom in your memories, and then freeze and deconstruct every single image that you have seen since you were born,” says Khaled. HHHH There is something maddening in his tone. Like soft, sweetened condescendence. Murder is growing impatient. Another drop of sweat falls inside the scar like a drunk, suicidal spider, and Murder clicks his tongue, burps grandly, sighs and considers what is more disgusting: HEAT or HUMANITY? The answer comes to mind swiftly and loudly: there’s nothing more useless than HH’s, or Half Humans, as they are known —which coincidentally could stand as an acronym for HEATED HUMANITY. Murder is sick of seeing Khaled’s face on his device. He is definitely a FOUR H; that is a fuckwit HALF HUMAN HEATING HUMANITY. “Don’t forget I can read your thoughts, Carl. I’m not a HH, just the author of the most extensive essay on retrieving memory loss ever written,” says humble Khaled. “We both know you didn’t write a single line, fucking Rugby Face did!” Murder taps his left temple and Khaled’s face fades to black, thanks God. Unfortunately, he can still hear his mannered castrato’s voice. “Yo Carl. Why are you turning the screen off?” “You knowwhy: it is very frustrating to stare at faces you can not punch.” “Well, technically, with the new software you could thrust your fist and break my nose from any given remote distance.” “Do you want to turn it on? Cause I have it installed and nothing would make me happier…” “Jesus Murder, just breathe. You are so predictable in an old fashioned way. Whatever happened to the mission in Japan has nothing to do with me.” “Seriously? Cause you were the only leading officer and YOU LOST contact with our person of interest. So tell me, who the fuck am I supposed to blame?” “We have already discussed this. I asked you for ten men back up and you never provided it. We are talking about a man who escaped our elite death squad unscathed in Marrakesh. So you tell me: how I was the only agent in Japan surveying him?”
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