Twilight's Flash Fiction / Relatos cortos crepusculares

  Intermediary and Original There are intermediary words. They do not name the essence of a thing directly. Instead, they help us move, through reasoning, from one truth to another. They are useful constructions, but constructions nonetheless. And sometimes they can obscure the truth so completely that, instead of helping us understand a thing, they prevent us from seeing it clearly. How can we recognize an intermediary word? Consider two of the oldest words we use to name our perceptions: space time We might call them original words. But do they really correspond to direct perceptions? Space is determined by light. Time is determined by memory. Without light, there is no space. Without memory, there is no time. So perhaps space and time are not the original words after all. Perhaps the original words are: light and memory . Intermediarias y originales Hay palabras intermediarias. No nombran directamente la esencia de una cosa. Nos ayudan, mediante el razonamiento, a pasar de ...

Saturday It was Saturday. The school was closed, but someone lived in nursery classroom 7. He was always there, even if it was Saturday. From her desk at the end of the classroom, the little blonde-haired girl looked at the blackboard and remembered the laughs and jokes of her classmates. Thirty years have passed, and the girl is still there every Saturday, looking at the blackboard and remembering with nostalgia her feelings from her childhood. She does not remember very well how it happened when time stopped for her. Every year, for thirty years, the students of classroom 7 of kindergartens know that someone accompanies them when they are there and surely, that someone lives there forever.   Sábado Era sábado. La escuela estaba cerrada, pero alguien vivía en el aula 7 de la guardería. Siempre estaba allí, incluso si era sábado. Desde su pupitre al final del salón de clases, la pequeña rubia miraba la pizarra y recordaba las risas y bromas de sus compañeros. Han pasado tre...

Alison 1 Alison kindly greeted her teacher and they talked for a few moments, recalling anecdotes from the time they met at the university. Alison couldn't hide her nervousness and Napoleon, her teacher, seemed to want to tell her something with her look. When she secretly managed to take her away from outside ears, he confessed that he had hacked sensitive information because he wanted to demonstrate, according to the deputy director of the department, that the data engineer hired by the company was not doing her job properly. It was clear that Napoleon did not know that she was the one hired. Alison couldn't believe what she was hearing. So, what they wanted at the meeting was to fire her from her. Or so she thought. Alison 1 Alison saludó amablemente a su profesor y conversaron durante unos instantes, rememorando anécdotas del tiempo en el que coincidieron en la universidad. Alison no podía ocultar su nerviosismo y Napoleón, su profesor, parecía querer decirle algo con su m...

 Z Radiation (1) I assumed they were Somali pirates. The one who seemed to be the ringleader addressed me in rough English. He wanted me to give him the distribution of Z radiation measurements on the lunar map. I was surprised that pirates who were dedicated to boarding ships and stealing their belongings from crew members and travelers, were interested in the levels of Z radiation. A few months later I would understand it, when someone explained to me what this type of radiation can produce. The pirate pointed his gun at me and demanded that I provide him with the information. So, someone came looking for him. For a moment, I breathed easy. I was trying to figure out some way to destroy the information that was stored in a device he wore on the wrist of my right arm. Radiación Z (1) Supuse que eran piratas somalíes. El que parecía ser el cabecilla se dirigió a mi en un inglés tosco. Quería que le facilitara la distribución de las mediciones de la radiación Z en el mapa lunar. M...

Z Radiation Once the ARP mission at the Lunar Orbit station had concluded, I was returning to Earth after six long months of experiments and collection of measurements of Z radiation from the Moon. The spaceship that was taking me home suffered a multiple breakdown, going out of control. After having passed through the Earth's atmosphere, a collision at some point in the Indian Ocean was inevitable. I decided to activate the small survivability module, but it was too late to do so. The module detached from its base a few meters from the surface of the water and hit something solid with force, diverting its trajectory. The collision made me lose consciousness. When I woke up I was on the surface of a speedboat and I was surprised by the fact that I was surrounded by decrepit individuals, poorly dressed and armed to the teeth. Radiación Z Una vez concluida la misión ARP en la estación Lunar Orbit, volvía a la Tierra después de seis largos meses de experimentos y recopilación de med...

  Alison The day was being difficult. Alison's boss had asked her to prepare a status report related to the sales department to discuss the new guidelines that the parent company had decided to implement throughout the company. Alison had recently been hired as a data engineering expert. She had always had the illusion of dedicating herself to the world of machine learning, but her future took a turn when she received a million-dollar offer to assume responsibility as a data engineer in an international company. She was now regretting her decision. For a few weeks, the jobs of obtaining data from the source systems had turned into a nightmare when discovering that sensitive information had somehow been hacked from within the company. In reality, the meeting was aimed at unmasking the sales manager, who was suspected of having supplied the information to the competition. But her participation in that mousetrap could have serious consequences for the author or authors of the hack. ...

  The One Who Remains Hidden For a brief moment, an image appeared in my mind. Someone with long white hair, a distant gaze, and a face of perfect serenity. Then I understood. I was not that being. I was merely the part of him destined to walk through the world. While I grew old, doubted, suffered, and became stained by every passing moment, he remained hidden—untouched, unchanged, immortal. Perhaps that is why I can never find him. I am always aware of the one who struggles. Never of the one who remains.   Aquel que permanece oculto Durante un instante apareció en mi mente la imagen de alguien de larguísimo cabello blanco, mirada perdida y un rostro de absoluta serenidad. Entonces lo comprendí. Yo no era ese ser. Era únicamente la parte de él destinada a atravesar el mundo. Mientras yo envejecía, dudaba, sufría y me contaminaba con cada instante vivido, él permanecía oculto, intacto e inmortal. Quizá por eso nunca logro encontrarlo. Porque siempre soy conscien...

  The Secret Passage 2 Someone ventured the hypothesis that he was a space traveler. A similar phenomenon had already occurred in remote times. A boy appeared out of nowhere at the constable's house. Space travelers are those who in an instant of time move through space even from one galaxies to another in a universe in which time is the same for all beings, and therefore their clocks all show the same time. However, the desperation of the prisoner was rule out that idea since space travelers do not experience any emotion.   El pasadizo secreto 2 Alguien aventuró la hipótesis de que fuera un viajero del espacio. Ya se había producido un fenómeno parecido en épocas remotas. Un niño apareció de la nada en la casa del condestable. Los viajeros del espacio son aquellos que en un instante de tiempo se desplazan en el espacio incluso de unas galaxias a otras en un universo en el que el tiempo es el mismo para todos los seres, y por tanto sus relojes marcan todos el mismo tie...

  The Secret Passage 1 Then the King decided that the prisoner with the highest sentence in the kingdom be brought before him. Strapped with several ropes around his waist and shoulders and equipped with a torch, he would be lowered into the void. This is how the King would know the mysteries of the cave by the explanations that the prisoner would give him when he was rescued. The prisoner was brought before the Monarch. The prisoner, frightened, expressed himself in an unknown language and did not understand what was happening. No one knew where he came from or what crime he had committed to deserve such a harsh sentence. El pasadizo secreto 1 Entonces el Rey decidió que llevaran ante su presencia al prisionero con la condena más alta del reino. Sujeto con varias cuerdas alrededor de su cintura y hombros y equipado con una antorcha, se le haría descender al vacío. Así conocería el Rey los misterios de la cueva por las explicaciones que le daría el prisionero cuando fuera res...

  The Secret Passage The King ordered to call the architect who was directing the works of the new palace that was being building on the slopes of the Blue Lake mountain. He wanted to know how and where the secret access would be projected from the royal apartments of the palace located on the mountain of the Green Hills, to the secret room that would be located at the eastern end of the future palace. No one should know of the existence of that passage. The architect explained to the King in great detail the underground layout that this important work would follow. Shortly after that day, the architect requested an urgent audience with the King. In the course of the excavation work, a strange and huge cave had been discovered that seemed to have no bottom. When the workers threw a stone to try to guess its depth, the stone did not return the sound that would be heard when hitting the floor or walls. There was simply no obstacle in ita fall. That unfortunate discovery did not allow...