Twilight's Flash Fiction / Relatos cortos crepusculares

Other F utures During a trip to Gujarat, India , where I sponsor a young boy, I was invited to attend his coming-of-age ceremony. I travelled alone. Although my wife had offered to accompany me, I persuaded her not to. I thought the journey would be long, exhausting, and far too uncomfortable for her. It was a decision I would soon come to regret. When I arrived at Indira Gandhi International Airport, a man was waiting for me holding a sign bearing my name. His taxi wound its way through the bustling streets of New Delhi before leaving the city behind and entering a dimly lit neighbourhood on its outskirts. I found it surprising that anyone would hire a taxi to take me to my sponsored child's home, especially considering the poverty in which his family lived. Everything around me carried an unsettling air. His father came out to greet me and welcomed me warmly into a house that contained little more than a few pieces of worn furniture. Waiting inside, however, was a Sikh dressed in...

Alison 2 Alison surrendered to the evidence. The proof was irrefutable. Napoleon had hidden interests that she did not know how to decipher. She recalled that when he taught classes, it was said that he belonged to an esoteric sect segregated from the Rosicrucians, which had ties to extreme right-wing groups. At last the meeting began. Napoleon began the interventions by assuring that the cybersecurity team was preparing to unmask the author of the information leak, since he had recordings as incriminating evidence. There was an expectant silence in the room and the projection of the recording began. It showed Alison feverishly pounding on the keyboard at four in the morning at her workplace. By keeping track of what Alison was typing at the time, she made clear her authorship. Then Alison discovered that she had a double personality and that in one of them she was a delinquent. Alison 2 Alison se rindió a la evidencia. La prueba era irrefutable. Napoleón tenía intereses ocultos que no...

 Fireflies and Light Worms The sunset on Mars was spectacular. We had booked a room at the Experience Hotel, a building strategically located at the foot of the western slope of one of the Olympus Mons mountains. As night approached, millions of multicolored lights stretched along the hill. Fireflies and light worms competed in their slow ascent to crown the top. It was a spectacular image. A unique moment was transformed into a tragedy when suddenly, the sky was flooded by carnivorous little stars that pounced on those miraculous little lights. In a few moments, the darkness perched on that multicolored carpet. Two tears escaped from the eyes of my dear woman cyborg companion. Then was when I learned that machines also feel. Luciérnagas y coquitos de luz La puesta de sol en Marte fue espectacular. Habíamos reservado una habitación en el hotel Experience, un edificio estratégicamente ubicado al pie de la ladera occidental de una de las montañas Olympus Mons. A medida que se acercab...

  My Machine and I From a few days ago my machine carelessly wander through the spaces of my mind and through the rooms of my house. There is no loophole left to hide myself. Until recently, my machine did all the work, only turning to me when it ran into some insurmountable concept or problem, which happened a couple of times a year at most. It was in charge of giving the appropriate orders to all the electrical appliances, so that she kept the house clean, and the menus it cooked were exceptional. She took care of my rest, answered the calls from the office, filled out the income statement and kept track of expenses in general. Needless to say, it also did my office job, through teleworking. A few days ago, as I said, my machine started behaving strangely. And I think it was as a result of a visit from a girl friend whom I invited to eat and with whom it behaved exquisitely. However, immediately after my guest left, the machine started doing strange things. I called the sel...

  The place that I live The place I call home is filled with blue pastries and the scent of quince. It opens every morning to the song of gentle caresses. It is tender and elusive at the same time. The place I know longs for the place I dream of, for the thought that lingers on the edge of the impossible. Strawberry cake, the fragrance of roses, and rosy skin. Twilight and rooms filled with the scent of cinnamon. The place I call home is you.   El lugar que habito El lugar que habito tiene las pastas azules y desprende un olor a membrillo. Se abre cada mañana al canto de las caricias. Es suave y escurridizo al mismo tiempo. El lugar que conozco anhela el lugar soñado, ese pensamiento que se asoma al filo de lo imposible. Pastel de fresas, olor a rosas y piel rosada. Penumbra y estancias llenas de aroma a canela. El lugar que habito eres tú.

  Intermediary and Original There are intermediary words. That is, they represent something that serves only to lead us, through reasoning, from one truth to another, but which is fictitious in the sense that it does not belong to the essence of the thing itself and, ultimately, exists only to assist us. In fact, such words can obscure the truth so deeply that they may hinder our understanding of the thing or prevent it from coming to light for a long time. How can intermediary words be identified? Consider those timeless words that give names to our perceptions: space, time. They are, let us say, original words. Do they correspond to direct perceptions, or do they not? Space is determined by light; time, by memory. Without light there is no space, and without memory there is no time. But then, are the original words light and memory rather than space and time? Intermediarias y originales Hay palabras intermediarias. Es decir, representan algo que solo sirve para llegar, median...

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...