Friday, December 09, 2005
Más allá del Samurai
Sabía que no vería el sol alzarse de nuevo. Pero de alguna forma ése era el menos melancólico de sus pensamientos. La muerte pondría fin a todo. Esta idea se le antojaba tranquilizadora. Confiaba en que la nada borraría el conocimiento de su fracaso. Ese era el terrible hecho que olvidaría felizmente incluso si tenía que ser a cambio de su vida. Había fallado. Todo el entrenamiento y dedicación de su vida habían quedado en nada. Y por tanto su vida tenía que terminar.
Allí arrodillado en el centro del claro del bosque, escuchó el silencio que le rodeaba, susurrándole la verdad al oído. La nieve había cubierto la hierba con una gruesa capa amortiguadora, como intentando ocultar la miseria que él había causado. Pero él sabía que seguía ahí de todas formas, justo debajo de la superficie. La sangre de la hija del Emperador estaba congelada, y su brillante color se había vuelto negro rojizo, ya antes de ser cubierta piadosamente por la fría sábana de la naturaleza. Los cadáveres de los guardaespaldas y los de los mercenarios traidores que les habían atacado ya no eran más que bultos en la blanca planicie. La nieve había empezado a caer mientras mataba a los últimos asesinos, y no había cesado durante las pocas horas que él permaneció allí, congelado, no por el frío, sino por la comprensión de su derrota; no había llegado a tiempo ni siquiera para escuchar las últimas palabras de su protegida. Pero ahora podía escuchar incluso los copos deslizándose por la seda de su kimono, sólo estorbados por alguna escasa mancha de sangre. La luz lechosa de la luna ascendente le permitía ver los alrededores como en un cuento de fantasmas. El mundo parecía expectante, esperándole con ansiedad.
Desde un principio sabía lo que tenía que hacer, y no lo estaba retrasando, sino que había caído en una especie de estupor mientras la magnitud de su fracaso le sobrepasaba. Pero ahora finalmente volvió a su ser; comenzó a mover lentamente su brazo derecho. Se le había dormido, y casi congelado, y apenas sintió su mano al agarrar el mango de su katana. La desenvainó lentamente de su saya y efectuó los movimientos rituales que había aprendido de sus maestros esperando que coronaran una vida de honor. Finalmente dirigió la punta afilada hacia su estómago, sosteniendo la hoja con sus manos desnudas, ya que sus brazos eran demasiado cortos para alcanzar el mango. Se cortaría gravemente las manos en el último envite, pero estaba seguro de que ni siquiera lo notaría. Alzó su cara al cielo, y pidió clemencia en la próxima vida. Luego reclinó la cabeza y se preparó para el último esfuerzo.
En la hoja, entre los copos de nieve que se fundían en su brillante superficie, vislumbró una imagen que le dejó sin respiración. La belleza de aquella cara era sobrecogedora. Una faz pálida enmarcada por mechones de pelo negro desplegaba unos ojos más negros y una boca resuelta, todo combinándose en una expresión de sabiduría y confianza. Sintió que podría besar esa cara, sabía que la podía reverenciar. Pensó que era la aparición de uno de sus ancestros esperando a encontrarse con él y dándole la bienvenida a su reino. Realmente parecía venir de otro mundo. Pero según fué concentrando su atención en la visión, y sus ojos encontraron tiempo para localizarla como un reflejo en la hoja metálica, se dio cuenta de que era su propia cara la que estaba mirando. Era suyo el rostro que le había cautivado tanto durante unos momentos. Era él el ser que merecía tal devoción.
Miró dentro de su alma, y se dio cuenta de que no podía poner fin a tal ser. Era mucho más sabio ahora, y por tanto, más valioso, y a la vez incapaz de destruir belleza. Tenía que liberarse de las reglas del Samurai, el código de Bushido que forzaba en él actos que ahora sabía que estaban en contra de su naturaleza. El código sagrado era el camino a la perfección, pero al final tenías que abandonarlo para alcanzar ese mismo objetivo. Percibió que había llegado su tiempo para hacer precisamente eso. Sintió un gran alivio y a la vez la gran carga de la libertad de voluntad cayendo sobre sus hombros. Ahora era un ser completo, que podía y debía tomar sus decisiones por sí mismo, sabiendo que no tenía mejor guía que su conciencia y sabiduría, cultivadas a través de los años, de los maestros, y de la disciplina.
Una vez libre del código de conducta auto-impuesto, pudo ver que no había fallado. Había puesto toda su voluntad en la tarea, sin vacilación, y sin consideración por la propia vida. Lo había intentando tanto como era capaz, así que no se podía culpar a sí mismo. Su antigua mente seguía diciéndole que sólo con que se hubiera movido con más presteza, o sólo con que hubiera previsto el ataque unos segundos antes, la Princesa estaría todavía viva. Pero su nuevo yo le decía que aquellas eran fantasías de su imaginación; si no había hecho las cosas de forma distinta era porque eso era todo lo que estaba a su alcance como ser limitado. Lo que no ocurrió no pudo haber ocurrido. Él había dado todo lo que tenía para ofrecer, y el resultado no cambiaba aquello. Le entristecía cómo había terminado, pero no podía arrepentirse de cómo había actuado.
Se levantó, y al hacerlo sintió que él mismo se elevaba a un nuevo nivel, donde sus obligaciones estaban claras, pero no escritas en ningún libro. Ahora él era su propio maestro.
Alzó su brazo por encima de su cabeza, y con un hábil movimiento de su katana, liberó el moño de pelo que representaba su compromiso con el Samurai. Su largo y negro cabello cayó fluyendo y descansó sobre sus hombros. Junto con su resuelta mirada y su nueva expresión, le daban un aspecto salvaje que era difícil de asociar con el viejo guerrero domesticado que había estado a punto de cometer Hara-kiri allí mismo hacía sólo unos minutos.
Comenzó a caminar directamente adelante, sin siquiera una mirada a lo que dejaba atrás. Parecía que iba a ver al sol alzarse de nuevo después de todo, aunque ya lo había sentido alzarse dentro de su alma.
Caminó tan deprisa como pudo, a pesar de la nieve apilada, y en unas pocas horas podía ya ver el pueblecito en el que habían pensado pasar la noche. No era más que un pequeño grupo de chozas rodeadas por una empalizada de madera, con dos portones que permitían al camino principal entrar y salir del pueblo, y dividirlo en dos mitades. Las puertas estaban cerradas, pero no había vigilantes.
Al aproximarse al portón, y abrirlo sin dificultad, le vino a la mente que necesitaría un nuevo nombre que acompañara a su nueva resolución. Un nombre con el que presentarse al mundo, igual que tendría que presentarse ahora a los habitantes durmientes. Kirumo fué el nombre que le estaba esperando cuando buscó uno, y lo adoptó inmediatamente. Se identificó con él como si se hubiera visto a sí mismo como un Kirumo toda su vida.
Bajó por el camino y se acercó a la cabaña más grande que pudo ver. Golpeó la puerta y pidió en voz alta a los dueños que salieran. Tras un momento de incertidumbre, y algunos ruidos apagados, la puerta se abrió con un rechinar desagradable y un viejo bajito en ropa interior y con el pelo blanco y suelto miró hacia fuera con una expresión nerviosa y sorprendida. Algunas otras cabezas se asomaron también a través de diversas aberturas en las viviendas de alrededor, preguntándose qué podía ser lo que perturbaba sus tranquilas vidas en mitad de la noche. Kirumo no perdió tiempo con presentaciones ceremoniosas y exclamó:
- Soy portardor de muy tristes noticias para todos los habitantes del Imperio. Es mi deber anunciar que la hija menor de nuestro Emperador ¡ha sido asesinada por una banda de traidores criminales!
- ¿Qué? ¿Cómo puede ser eso? ¡No es posible! - Exclamaron varias voces a su alrededor.
- ¿Y qué? - Murmuró alguien en la oscuridad, obviamente sintiéndose más desligado de los asuntos reales.
- Su cuerpo yace cerca de vuestro poblado, apenas unas horas al este, en el centro del principal claro del bosque. - Continuó Kirumo - Es ahora vuestro deber y obligación proceder urgentemente a recoger sus restos mortales y darles el tratamiento que merecen. También enviareis un heraldo a informar al Emperador de esta desgracia tan pronto como sea posible.
La noticia causó gran alboroto y confusión, y también cierta porción de desconfianza. No fué hasta que el desconocido les mostró su anillo de jade, con el emblema que todos podían reconocer, que los aldeanos comenzaron a mostrar el respeto adecuado e iniciaron los preliminares para la expedición de rescate.
Durante la frenética actividad que siguió, el emisario que acababa de causar toda aquella alteración se deslizó aparte y desapareció en la oscuridad cuando nadie le observaba. Se acababa de encargar de su último deber y estaba preparado ya para iniciar su nueva vida. Abandonó la aldea rápida y silenciosamente, y decidió viajar hacia el norte, hacia las tierras baldías, para permanecer tan alejado como pudiera de las metrópolis y de las vías de comercio.
Durante días caminó en dirección norte, cruzando con arrojo los bosques y yermos, de día y de noche, o siguiendo a veces las sendas que le ayudaban en su viaje hacia su desierto destino.
Seguía una de estas sendas un día, cuando vió a una joven muchacha acercándose a él sóla, y notó cómo se ponía nerviosa ante la idea de cruzarse con un extraño tan lejos de su aldea. Cuando estuvo lo bastante cerca, Kirumo quedó perplejo ante la vista de su cara. Aunque la mantenía agachada, pudo ver claramente que aquella niña ¡no era otra que la Princesa misma! Él sabía que era claramente imposible; no sólo estaba la Princesa muerta, sino que nunca llevaría aquellas ropas de villana, ni se inclinaría ante un plebeyo. Pero tampoco podía negar lo que veian sus ojos.
En un impulso, se dejó caer sobre sus rodillas y codos, y proclamó:
- ¡Su Majestad! Aqui estoy para serviros. Por favor ordéneme lo que desee.
Una parte de él esperaba que ella le despreciaría y le pediría que se quitara la vida allí mismo. Otra parte suya ansiaba que ella le perdonara y le tomara de nuevo a su servicio. Aún otra parte de él sabía que todo esto eran tonterías. La Princesa estaba muerta, y no caminando toda sola por senderos comarcales.
Allí arrodillado en el centro del claro del bosque, escuchó el silencio que le rodeaba, susurrándole la verdad al oído. La nieve había cubierto la hierba con una gruesa capa amortiguadora, como intentando ocultar la miseria que él había causado. Pero él sabía que seguía ahí de todas formas, justo debajo de la superficie. La sangre de la hija del Emperador estaba congelada, y su brillante color se había vuelto negro rojizo, ya antes de ser cubierta piadosamente por la fría sábana de la naturaleza. Los cadáveres de los guardaespaldas y los de los mercenarios traidores que les habían atacado ya no eran más que bultos en la blanca planicie. La nieve había empezado a caer mientras mataba a los últimos asesinos, y no había cesado durante las pocas horas que él permaneció allí, congelado, no por el frío, sino por la comprensión de su derrota; no había llegado a tiempo ni siquiera para escuchar las últimas palabras de su protegida. Pero ahora podía escuchar incluso los copos deslizándose por la seda de su kimono, sólo estorbados por alguna escasa mancha de sangre. La luz lechosa de la luna ascendente le permitía ver los alrededores como en un cuento de fantasmas. El mundo parecía expectante, esperándole con ansiedad.
Desde un principio sabía lo que tenía que hacer, y no lo estaba retrasando, sino que había caído en una especie de estupor mientras la magnitud de su fracaso le sobrepasaba. Pero ahora finalmente volvió a su ser; comenzó a mover lentamente su brazo derecho. Se le había dormido, y casi congelado, y apenas sintió su mano al agarrar el mango de su katana. La desenvainó lentamente de su saya y efectuó los movimientos rituales que había aprendido de sus maestros esperando que coronaran una vida de honor. Finalmente dirigió la punta afilada hacia su estómago, sosteniendo la hoja con sus manos desnudas, ya que sus brazos eran demasiado cortos para alcanzar el mango. Se cortaría gravemente las manos en el último envite, pero estaba seguro de que ni siquiera lo notaría. Alzó su cara al cielo, y pidió clemencia en la próxima vida. Luego reclinó la cabeza y se preparó para el último esfuerzo.
En la hoja, entre los copos de nieve que se fundían en su brillante superficie, vislumbró una imagen que le dejó sin respiración. La belleza de aquella cara era sobrecogedora. Una faz pálida enmarcada por mechones de pelo negro desplegaba unos ojos más negros y una boca resuelta, todo combinándose en una expresión de sabiduría y confianza. Sintió que podría besar esa cara, sabía que la podía reverenciar. Pensó que era la aparición de uno de sus ancestros esperando a encontrarse con él y dándole la bienvenida a su reino. Realmente parecía venir de otro mundo. Pero según fué concentrando su atención en la visión, y sus ojos encontraron tiempo para localizarla como un reflejo en la hoja metálica, se dio cuenta de que era su propia cara la que estaba mirando. Era suyo el rostro que le había cautivado tanto durante unos momentos. Era él el ser que merecía tal devoción.
Miró dentro de su alma, y se dio cuenta de que no podía poner fin a tal ser. Era mucho más sabio ahora, y por tanto, más valioso, y a la vez incapaz de destruir belleza. Tenía que liberarse de las reglas del Samurai, el código de Bushido que forzaba en él actos que ahora sabía que estaban en contra de su naturaleza. El código sagrado era el camino a la perfección, pero al final tenías que abandonarlo para alcanzar ese mismo objetivo. Percibió que había llegado su tiempo para hacer precisamente eso. Sintió un gran alivio y a la vez la gran carga de la libertad de voluntad cayendo sobre sus hombros. Ahora era un ser completo, que podía y debía tomar sus decisiones por sí mismo, sabiendo que no tenía mejor guía que su conciencia y sabiduría, cultivadas a través de los años, de los maestros, y de la disciplina.
Una vez libre del código de conducta auto-impuesto, pudo ver que no había fallado. Había puesto toda su voluntad en la tarea, sin vacilación, y sin consideración por la propia vida. Lo había intentando tanto como era capaz, así que no se podía culpar a sí mismo. Su antigua mente seguía diciéndole que sólo con que se hubiera movido con más presteza, o sólo con que hubiera previsto el ataque unos segundos antes, la Princesa estaría todavía viva. Pero su nuevo yo le decía que aquellas eran fantasías de su imaginación; si no había hecho las cosas de forma distinta era porque eso era todo lo que estaba a su alcance como ser limitado. Lo que no ocurrió no pudo haber ocurrido. Él había dado todo lo que tenía para ofrecer, y el resultado no cambiaba aquello. Le entristecía cómo había terminado, pero no podía arrepentirse de cómo había actuado.
Se levantó, y al hacerlo sintió que él mismo se elevaba a un nuevo nivel, donde sus obligaciones estaban claras, pero no escritas en ningún libro. Ahora él era su propio maestro.
Alzó su brazo por encima de su cabeza, y con un hábil movimiento de su katana, liberó el moño de pelo que representaba su compromiso con el Samurai. Su largo y negro cabello cayó fluyendo y descansó sobre sus hombros. Junto con su resuelta mirada y su nueva expresión, le daban un aspecto salvaje que era difícil de asociar con el viejo guerrero domesticado que había estado a punto de cometer Hara-kiri allí mismo hacía sólo unos minutos.
Comenzó a caminar directamente adelante, sin siquiera una mirada a lo que dejaba atrás. Parecía que iba a ver al sol alzarse de nuevo después de todo, aunque ya lo había sentido alzarse dentro de su alma.
Caminó tan deprisa como pudo, a pesar de la nieve apilada, y en unas pocas horas podía ya ver el pueblecito en el que habían pensado pasar la noche. No era más que un pequeño grupo de chozas rodeadas por una empalizada de madera, con dos portones que permitían al camino principal entrar y salir del pueblo, y dividirlo en dos mitades. Las puertas estaban cerradas, pero no había vigilantes.
Al aproximarse al portón, y abrirlo sin dificultad, le vino a la mente que necesitaría un nuevo nombre que acompañara a su nueva resolución. Un nombre con el que presentarse al mundo, igual que tendría que presentarse ahora a los habitantes durmientes. Kirumo fué el nombre que le estaba esperando cuando buscó uno, y lo adoptó inmediatamente. Se identificó con él como si se hubiera visto a sí mismo como un Kirumo toda su vida.
Bajó por el camino y se acercó a la cabaña más grande que pudo ver. Golpeó la puerta y pidió en voz alta a los dueños que salieran. Tras un momento de incertidumbre, y algunos ruidos apagados, la puerta se abrió con un rechinar desagradable y un viejo bajito en ropa interior y con el pelo blanco y suelto miró hacia fuera con una expresión nerviosa y sorprendida. Algunas otras cabezas se asomaron también a través de diversas aberturas en las viviendas de alrededor, preguntándose qué podía ser lo que perturbaba sus tranquilas vidas en mitad de la noche. Kirumo no perdió tiempo con presentaciones ceremoniosas y exclamó:
- Soy portardor de muy tristes noticias para todos los habitantes del Imperio. Es mi deber anunciar que la hija menor de nuestro Emperador ¡ha sido asesinada por una banda de traidores criminales!
- ¿Qué? ¿Cómo puede ser eso? ¡No es posible! - Exclamaron varias voces a su alrededor.
- ¿Y qué? - Murmuró alguien en la oscuridad, obviamente sintiéndose más desligado de los asuntos reales.
- Su cuerpo yace cerca de vuestro poblado, apenas unas horas al este, en el centro del principal claro del bosque. - Continuó Kirumo - Es ahora vuestro deber y obligación proceder urgentemente a recoger sus restos mortales y darles el tratamiento que merecen. También enviareis un heraldo a informar al Emperador de esta desgracia tan pronto como sea posible.
La noticia causó gran alboroto y confusión, y también cierta porción de desconfianza. No fué hasta que el desconocido les mostró su anillo de jade, con el emblema que todos podían reconocer, que los aldeanos comenzaron a mostrar el respeto adecuado e iniciaron los preliminares para la expedición de rescate.
Durante la frenética actividad que siguió, el emisario que acababa de causar toda aquella alteración se deslizó aparte y desapareció en la oscuridad cuando nadie le observaba. Se acababa de encargar de su último deber y estaba preparado ya para iniciar su nueva vida. Abandonó la aldea rápida y silenciosamente, y decidió viajar hacia el norte, hacia las tierras baldías, para permanecer tan alejado como pudiera de las metrópolis y de las vías de comercio.
Durante días caminó en dirección norte, cruzando con arrojo los bosques y yermos, de día y de noche, o siguiendo a veces las sendas que le ayudaban en su viaje hacia su desierto destino.
Seguía una de estas sendas un día, cuando vió a una joven muchacha acercándose a él sóla, y notó cómo se ponía nerviosa ante la idea de cruzarse con un extraño tan lejos de su aldea. Cuando estuvo lo bastante cerca, Kirumo quedó perplejo ante la vista de su cara. Aunque la mantenía agachada, pudo ver claramente que aquella niña ¡no era otra que la Princesa misma! Él sabía que era claramente imposible; no sólo estaba la Princesa muerta, sino que nunca llevaría aquellas ropas de villana, ni se inclinaría ante un plebeyo. Pero tampoco podía negar lo que veian sus ojos.
En un impulso, se dejó caer sobre sus rodillas y codos, y proclamó:
- ¡Su Majestad! Aqui estoy para serviros. Por favor ordéneme lo que desee.
Una parte de él esperaba que ella le despreciaría y le pediría que se quitara la vida allí mismo. Otra parte suya ansiaba que ella le perdonara y le tomara de nuevo a su servicio. Aún otra parte de él sabía que todo esto eran tonterías. La Princesa estaba muerta, y no caminando toda sola por senderos comarcales.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
The New Samurai
He knew he would not see the sun rise again. But somehow that was the least melancholic of his thoughts. Death would put an end to everything. This idea felt soothing to him. He hoped oblivion would erase the knowledge of his failure. That was the terrible fact he would gladly forget even if it meant losing his life. He had failed. All his life's training and devotion had come to nothing. And so his life had to end.
Kneeling there at the center of the woods clearing he heard the silence surrounding him, whispering the truth to his ears. The snow had covered the grass with a thick, dampening layer, like trying to hide the misery he had caused. But he knew it was there all the same, just behind the surface. The blood of the Emperor's daughter was already frozen solid, and its bright color had turned to reddish black, just before being mercifully covered by nature's cold sheet. The corpses of her bodyguards and those of the traitorous mercenaries that had attacked them were now no more than bumps on the white plain. The snow had started falling just as he had slain the last assassins, and had not stopped for the few hours he remained there, frozen not by the cold but by the realization of his defeat; he had not even been in time to hear her last words. But now he could even hear the flakes sliding down the silk of his kimono, only hindered by the rare stain of blood. The milky light from the rising moon let him see his surrounding as in a ghost tale. The world seemed expectant, waiting for him in anticipation.
He knew from the beginning what he had to do, and he was not delaying it, but he had just fallen into a kind of torpor while the magnitude of his failure overcame him. But now he finally came to his senses; he started slowly to move his right arm. It was numb and almost frozen, and he hardly felt his hand as it gripped the handle of his katana. Slowly he unsheathed it and performed the ritual movements that he had learnt from his masters hoping they would crown a life of honor. He finally directed the pointed end towards his stomach, holding the blade with his bare hands, as his arms were too short to reach the handle. He would badly slash his hands in the final thrust, but he was sure he would not even notice that. He raised his face to the sky, and asked for mercifulness on the next life. Then he bowed his head and prepared for the final effort.
On the blade, among the snowflakes that melted on its shiny surface, he glinted at a vision that halted his breathing. The beauty of that face was overwhelming. A pallid countenance framed by black hair locks showcasing the deepest dark eyes and a resolute mouth, all combining in a placid expression of wisdom and confidence. He felt he could kiss that face, he knew he could worship it. He thought it was the apparition of one of his ancestors waiting to meet him and welcoming him to their realm. It certainly seemed to come from another world. But as he focused his attention on the vision, and his eyes had time to locate it as a reflection on the blade, he realized it was his face he was looking at. His was that wise visage that had so captivated him for a few moments. He was that being that deserved worshipping.
He looked inside his soul, and realized he could not put an end to such a being. He was now so much wiser and was therefore both more worthy and unable to destroy beauty. He had to break free from the rules of the Samurai, the code of Bushido which was forcing acts on him that he knew now were against his nature. The sacred code was the way to perfection, but somehow you had to drop it to reach that very goal. He sensed his time has come to do this. He felt a great relief and at the same time the big burden of freedom of will falling on his shoulders. He was now a complete being who could and should take his decisions on his own, knowing there was no better guide than his consciousness and wisdom, as he had grown them through the years, through the masters, and through the discipline.
Once free of the self-imposed code of conduct, he could see he had not failed. He had put all his will to the task, without hesitation, without consideration for his own life. He had tried as hard as he was able of, so he could not blame himself. His old mind kept telling him that if only he had moved more swiftly, or if he had just foreseen the attack a few seconds sooner, the Princess would still be alive. But his new self told him those were constructs of his imagination; if he had not done things differently it was because that was all that was at his reach as a limited being. What did not happen could not have happened. He had given all he had to offer, and the result didn't change that. He was sad of the outcome, but could not regret it.
He stood up, and as he did he felt himself raising to a new level, where his obligations were clear, but not written in any book. Now he was his own master.
He raised his arm above his head, and with a skillful sweep of his katana, he let loose the knot of hair that represented his commitment to the Samurai. His long, black hair went flowing down and rested on his shoulders. Together with his resolute gaze and new facial expression they gave him a new look that was difficult to associate with the old tamed warrior that was about to commit Hara-kiri just there a few minutes ago.
He walked as fast as he could, in spite of the piled snow, and in a few hours he could already see the small village in which they had thought to spend the night. It was just a small group of huts surrounded by a wood fence, with two gates that allowed the main path to enter and leave the village and split it in halves. The gates were closed, but there was no lookout.
As he approached the gate, and opened it without difficulty, it came to his mind that he would need a new name to match his new resolution. A name with which to present himself to the world, the way he would need to do now to the dormant inhabitants. Kirumo was the name waiting for him as he searched for one, and he adopted it immediately. He identified with it as if he had seen himself as a Kirumo for his whole life.
He went down the path and approached the biggest hut he could see. He knocked on the door and called loudly to the owners to come out. After a moment of hesitation, and some hushed noises, the door opened with an unpleasant squeak and a short, old man in underwears and loose, white hair looked outside with a nervous and surprised expression. Several other heads also popped out from diverse openings in the surrounding dwellings, wondering what could be disturbing their quiet lives in the middle of the night. Kirumo didn't waste time on any ceremonial presentations and exclaimed:
- I am bearer of very sad news for all inhabitants of the Empire. It is my duty to announce that the younger daughter of our Emperor has been slain by a murderous band of traitors!
- What? How can that be? That's not possible! - Exclaimed several voices around him.
- So what! - Murmured someone in the darkness, obviously feeling more detached from the royal affairs.
- Her body lies near your village, hardly a few hours to the east, in the center of the main clearing of the woods. - Continued Kirumo - It is your duty and obligation now to proceed urgently to collect her remains and give them the treatment they deserve. You will also send a herald to inform the Emperor of this disgrace as soon as possible.
These news caused a lot of noise and confusion, and also some amount of disbelief. It was not after the stranger showed them his jade ring, with the emblem all of them could recognize, that the village people started showing the due respect and initiated the preliminaries for the retrieval expedition.
During the frantic activity that ensued, the emisary that had just caused all this perturbation slid aside and disappeared into the darkness while nobody noticed. He had just taken care of his last duty and was ready to start his new life. He left the hamlet quickly and silently, and decided to travel north, towards the wastelands, so as to remain as far as he could from the metropolises and the merchant paths.
For days he walked north, crossing boldly the woods and barren plains, by day or by night, or following sometimes the small roads that helped him on this travel to his deserted destination.
He was following one of these roads one day, when he saw a young girl approaching him all alone, and noticed how she became nervous at the prospect of meeting a foreigner far from his village. When she was close enough, Kirumo was dumbstruck at the sight of her face. Even though she kept it bowed down, he could clearly see this young girl was no other than the Princess herself! He knew it was clearly impossible; not only was the Princess dead, but she would never wear those peasant robes, nor bow in front of a baseborn. But he could not deny his eyes either.
On an impulse, he went down on his knees and elbows, and proclaimed:
- Your Majesty! Here I am to serve you. Please command me what you please.
One part of him expected she would scorn at him and request of him he should take his own life right there. Another part of him hoped she would forgive him and take him back into her service. Yet another part of him knew this was all nonsense. The Princess was dead, and not walking the countryside paths all by herself.
Kneeling there at the center of the woods clearing he heard the silence surrounding him, whispering the truth to his ears. The snow had covered the grass with a thick, dampening layer, like trying to hide the misery he had caused. But he knew it was there all the same, just behind the surface. The blood of the Emperor's daughter was already frozen solid, and its bright color had turned to reddish black, just before being mercifully covered by nature's cold sheet. The corpses of her bodyguards and those of the traitorous mercenaries that had attacked them were now no more than bumps on the white plain. The snow had started falling just as he had slain the last assassins, and had not stopped for the few hours he remained there, frozen not by the cold but by the realization of his defeat; he had not even been in time to hear her last words. But now he could even hear the flakes sliding down the silk of his kimono, only hindered by the rare stain of blood. The milky light from the rising moon let him see his surrounding as in a ghost tale. The world seemed expectant, waiting for him in anticipation.
He knew from the beginning what he had to do, and he was not delaying it, but he had just fallen into a kind of torpor while the magnitude of his failure overcame him. But now he finally came to his senses; he started slowly to move his right arm. It was numb and almost frozen, and he hardly felt his hand as it gripped the handle of his katana. Slowly he unsheathed it and performed the ritual movements that he had learnt from his masters hoping they would crown a life of honor. He finally directed the pointed end towards his stomach, holding the blade with his bare hands, as his arms were too short to reach the handle. He would badly slash his hands in the final thrust, but he was sure he would not even notice that. He raised his face to the sky, and asked for mercifulness on the next life. Then he bowed his head and prepared for the final effort.
On the blade, among the snowflakes that melted on its shiny surface, he glinted at a vision that halted his breathing. The beauty of that face was overwhelming. A pallid countenance framed by black hair locks showcasing the deepest dark eyes and a resolute mouth, all combining in a placid expression of wisdom and confidence. He felt he could kiss that face, he knew he could worship it. He thought it was the apparition of one of his ancestors waiting to meet him and welcoming him to their realm. It certainly seemed to come from another world. But as he focused his attention on the vision, and his eyes had time to locate it as a reflection on the blade, he realized it was his face he was looking at. His was that wise visage that had so captivated him for a few moments. He was that being that deserved worshipping.
He looked inside his soul, and realized he could not put an end to such a being. He was now so much wiser and was therefore both more worthy and unable to destroy beauty. He had to break free from the rules of the Samurai, the code of Bushido which was forcing acts on him that he knew now were against his nature. The sacred code was the way to perfection, but somehow you had to drop it to reach that very goal. He sensed his time has come to do this. He felt a great relief and at the same time the big burden of freedom of will falling on his shoulders. He was now a complete being who could and should take his decisions on his own, knowing there was no better guide than his consciousness and wisdom, as he had grown them through the years, through the masters, and through the discipline.
Once free of the self-imposed code of conduct, he could see he had not failed. He had put all his will to the task, without hesitation, without consideration for his own life. He had tried as hard as he was able of, so he could not blame himself. His old mind kept telling him that if only he had moved more swiftly, or if he had just foreseen the attack a few seconds sooner, the Princess would still be alive. But his new self told him those were constructs of his imagination; if he had not done things differently it was because that was all that was at his reach as a limited being. What did not happen could not have happened. He had given all he had to offer, and the result didn't change that. He was sad of the outcome, but could not regret it.
He stood up, and as he did he felt himself raising to a new level, where his obligations were clear, but not written in any book. Now he was his own master.
He raised his arm above his head, and with a skillful sweep of his katana, he let loose the knot of hair that represented his commitment to the Samurai. His long, black hair went flowing down and rested on his shoulders. Together with his resolute gaze and new facial expression they gave him a new look that was difficult to associate with the old tamed warrior that was about to commit Hara-kiri just there a few minutes ago.
He walked as fast as he could, in spite of the piled snow, and in a few hours he could already see the small village in which they had thought to spend the night. It was just a small group of huts surrounded by a wood fence, with two gates that allowed the main path to enter and leave the village and split it in halves. The gates were closed, but there was no lookout.
As he approached the gate, and opened it without difficulty, it came to his mind that he would need a new name to match his new resolution. A name with which to present himself to the world, the way he would need to do now to the dormant inhabitants. Kirumo was the name waiting for him as he searched for one, and he adopted it immediately. He identified with it as if he had seen himself as a Kirumo for his whole life.
He went down the path and approached the biggest hut he could see. He knocked on the door and called loudly to the owners to come out. After a moment of hesitation, and some hushed noises, the door opened with an unpleasant squeak and a short, old man in underwears and loose, white hair looked outside with a nervous and surprised expression. Several other heads also popped out from diverse openings in the surrounding dwellings, wondering what could be disturbing their quiet lives in the middle of the night. Kirumo didn't waste time on any ceremonial presentations and exclaimed:
- I am bearer of very sad news for all inhabitants of the Empire. It is my duty to announce that the younger daughter of our Emperor has been slain by a murderous band of traitors!
- What? How can that be? That's not possible! - Exclaimed several voices around him.
- So what! - Murmured someone in the darkness, obviously feeling more detached from the royal affairs.
- Her body lies near your village, hardly a few hours to the east, in the center of the main clearing of the woods. - Continued Kirumo - It is your duty and obligation now to proceed urgently to collect her remains and give them the treatment they deserve. You will also send a herald to inform the Emperor of this disgrace as soon as possible.
These news caused a lot of noise and confusion, and also some amount of disbelief. It was not after the stranger showed them his jade ring, with the emblem all of them could recognize, that the village people started showing the due respect and initiated the preliminaries for the retrieval expedition.
During the frantic activity that ensued, the emisary that had just caused all this perturbation slid aside and disappeared into the darkness while nobody noticed. He had just taken care of his last duty and was ready to start his new life. He left the hamlet quickly and silently, and decided to travel north, towards the wastelands, so as to remain as far as he could from the metropolises and the merchant paths.
For days he walked north, crossing boldly the woods and barren plains, by day or by night, or following sometimes the small roads that helped him on this travel to his deserted destination.
He was following one of these roads one day, when he saw a young girl approaching him all alone, and noticed how she became nervous at the prospect of meeting a foreigner far from his village. When she was close enough, Kirumo was dumbstruck at the sight of her face. Even though she kept it bowed down, he could clearly see this young girl was no other than the Princess herself! He knew it was clearly impossible; not only was the Princess dead, but she would never wear those peasant robes, nor bow in front of a baseborn. But he could not deny his eyes either.
On an impulse, he went down on his knees and elbows, and proclaimed:
- Your Majesty! Here I am to serve you. Please command me what you please.
One part of him expected she would scorn at him and request of him he should take his own life right there. Another part of him hoped she would forgive him and take him back into her service. Yet another part of him knew this was all nonsense. The Princess was dead, and not walking the countryside paths all by herself.
Friday, March 11, 2005
Intercambio de cartas: riesgos y precauciones.
El cambio de cartas se puede realizar de dos maneras distintas: cara a cara, o por correo postal. El primer tipo de intercambio se realiza en torneos, en el patio del colegio, o en la tienda de comics de la esquina, y acuerdas tus cambios comprobando las cartas de la otra persona directamente, sosteniéndolas en tus manos. De otra forma, las cartas se cambian por correo cuando las dos partes no pueden encontrarse porque viven alejadas la una de la otra.
Ambas formas de intercambio tienen sus propios riesgos y te pueden timar en las dos situaciones si no tomas las precauciones necesarias. Cambiar cara a cara es normalmente menos peligroso, porque estás viendo el material que obtienes, y lo recibes al mismo tiempo que das el tuyo. De todas formas, todavía te pueden estafar de dos maneras. Te pueden pasar cartas falsas, o puedes conseguir cartas cuyo valor es muy inferior al de las que te dan.
Para una persona con experiencia con cartas auténticas es normalmente bastante fácil identificar las cartas falsas, pero muchos jugadores jóvenes no saben lo suficiente sobre las cartas que están cambiando, de forma que pueden ser engañados y convencidos de que son algún tipo especial de cartas legítimas. Y también existen muy buenas falsificaciones circulando que son realmente difíciles de distinguir de las verdaderas incluso para un coleccionista experimentado.
En cada juego de cartas coleccionables, las cartas tienen diferentes detalles que debes comprobar para validar su autenticidad. Para las cartas de Yu-Gi-Oh!, por ejemplo, que es uno de los juegos que está sufriendo más este tipo de prácticas engañosas, una de las principales señales delatoras es el pequeño holograma de la esquina inferior derecha, que debe mostrar el ojo de Anubis, o la palabra YuGiOh, dependiendo de cómo la luz brilla en el mismo. Pero también el esquema de colores de ambos lados de la carta e incluso el diseño general pueden ser diferentes en las cartas falsas. Debes siempre comparar las cartas que te van a dar con las que tienes y asegurarte de que la consistencia del cartón y la cualidad de la impresión son similares, ya que las cartas falsificadas están fabricadas normalmente con materiales más baratos, incluyendo el papel, las tintas, el pegamento, etc.
De todas formas, la mayoría de los intercambios incluyen sólo cartas auténticas. Pero hay algo más que tienes que tener en cuenta al cambiar tus cartas. En todo trueque, el valor de las cartas intercambiadas debe ser equivalente. Pero determinar ésto no es una ciencia exacta. El valor de una carta depende de parámetros como su rareza, y su estado. La rareza viene determinada por la frecuencia con que se imprime, y el estado de conservación es importante principalmente para los coleccionistas. Pero el valor es también algo relativo y a veces subjetivo. La misma carta puede tener un valor distinto para gente distinta. Por ejemplo, un coleccionista puede valorar una carta mucho más que un jugador cuando es difícil de encontrar pero no es demasiado útil en el juego. Además, el valor de una carta varía con el tiempo, según se exploran nuevas estrategias o se editan nuevas cartas.
Sin embargo, siempre puedes calcular un valor general para una carta basado en cuán deseable es para el aficionado medio. Esa es la razón por la que la mayoría de la gente coincide en decidir si un intercambio es equilibrado o no. Por tanto, si no estás seguro del valor de tus cartas o del de las que vas a recibir, debes pedirle a otras personas que evaluen el intercambio.
Resumiendo, si tienes un mínimo de experiencia y puedes valorar las cartas y distinguir las falsas, no deberías tener verdaderos problemas al cambiar cartas en persona con cualquier otro jugador o coleccionista.
Pero hoy en día se está haciendo mucho más frecuente acordar intercambios en Internet y efectuar el cambio por correo postal. La gente se encuentra en la red, comprueba sus listas de cartas que tienen y que buscan, y conciertan cambios, todo a distancia y sin conocerse. Entonces intercambian direcciones y envían sus cartas por correo postal.
En esto casos, no sabes nada con seguridad acerca de la otra persona, sólo aquello que te quieran contar sobre sí mismos. No sabes si realmente tienen las cartas que ofrecen, o si las cartas son auténticas y en el estado acordado. Aquí no puedes ver ni tocar las cartas antes de aceptar el trato, y sólo puedes verificar que las cartas son auténticas, y en el estado correcto, una vez que las recibes en tu buzón. Si ya has enviado las tuyas, puede ser demasiado tarde para entonces.
En los cambios por correo, por tanto, corres un mayor riesgo, si tú envías tus cartas antes de recibir las de la otra parte. Esa es la razón por la que hay mucha discusión, al acordar un cambio a través de la web, sobre quién enviará sus cartas primero. La manera más habitual para decidirlo es acudir a las referencias. Las referencias son votos de confianza dados por alguien que ha cambiado previamente con esa persona y quedó satisfecho con su comportamiento. Se asume que cuanto mayor es el número de referencias que tiene una persona, más fiable es. En consecuencia, la norma es que la persona con menor número de referencias debería estar dispuesta a enviar sus cartas primero si se lo piden. De todas formas, el simple número de referencias no es garantía de un cambio perfecto. Debes siempre comprobar una o más de las referencias para verificar que son auténticas y recientes. Una referencia incluye un método de contacto del remitente de forma que pueda explicar cuándo y cómo se realizó el intercambio. Debes preguntar educadamente y agradecer cualquier respuesta que recibas.
Incluso tras verificar las referencias, puedes acabar no consiguiendo las cartas que querías. Puedes haber sido víctima de un estafador, o la otra persona puede simplemente haberse olvidado del intercambio. O the pueden haber enviado cartas falsas creyendo que eran auténticas, o cartas dañadas que habían catalogado como en buen estado. Si todavía puedes contactar con la otra parte, puedes aún alcanzar un segundo acuerdo para corregir cualquier deficiencia en el cambio, aunque ésto implicará más gastos y tiempo, y puede requerir una larga negociación. Debes procurar ser siempre tan educado como sea posible, incluso si se está discutiendo lo que tú consideras fue un comportamiento deshonesto. Enfadar a tu interlocutor no mejorará tus oportunidades de conseguir una buena resolución del problema.
La mayoría de la gente usa los foros para ponerse en contacto con otros aficionados. Publican sus listas, intercambian mensajes, cotejans sus colecciones, y acuerdan intercambios, todo en el mismo formato, como mensajes de foro. Todo es manual y los usuarios tienen que seguir visitando los foros para comprobar si hay nuevos usuarios, y para identificar visualmente las cartas que están buscando. Para facilitar este proceso, han surgido algunas webs especializadas que permiten a sus usuarios introducir sus listas de cartas que tienen y que buscan por un método estándard de forma que el propio sistema pueda cotejar las colecciones e informarles sobre posibles intercambios y cartas de las que buscan que estén disponibles. De esta manera la búsqueda de cambios se automatiza y se ahorra mucho esfuerzo. Sin embargo, los usuarios tienen aún que visitar la página periódicamente para comprobar si hay nuevos cambios. cambiacartas.com ( http://www.cambiacartas.com ) es el único sitio que ofrece su exclusivo Informe Automático de Posibles Intercambios, avisando a sus usuarios en cuanto cualquiera de las cartas que están buscando se encuentra disponible para cambio. Los usuarios reciben un mensaje por e-mail sin tener que visitar la web continuamente con este objetivo.
Encontrar los mejores cambios se está haciendo así mucho más fácil gracias a la Internet y a su acceso global. La web está también haciendo mucho más frecuentes los cambios por correo postal. Desgraciadamente, no está reduciendo los riesgos asociados. Los foros se llenan de mensajes quejándose de éste o aquel usuario que ha engañado a alguien. Se crean foros especiales para publicar los nombres de aquellos a los que se considera estafadores. De hecho, existe un sitio web dedicado a luchar contra los timadores de cartas coleccionables: : G.A.B. (Good Against Bad traders: http://www.gabtraders.com ) es una comunidad de voluntarios que investigan los informes de comportamiento deshonesto en intercambios de cartas, y mantienen una lista de estafadores confirmados. La precaución mínima que debes tomar antes de iniciar un cambio con alguien es comprobar que no está ya listado en esta web como canjeador deshonesto.
Pero si de verdad te preocupa la seguridad, entonces cambiacartas.com es tu web. cambiacartas.com es una web llena de utilidades dedicada a facilitar el cambio de cartas coleccionables y que ha hecho todo el esfuerzo posible para aumentar tu seguridad durante tus intercambios. Son varias las características que lo convierten en el lugar más seguro para cambiar en Internet:
El cambio de cartas por Internet está lleno de ventajas que hacen los intercambios mucho más fáciles y convenientes, pero tienes que ser cauto y usar todos los servicios disponibles para reducir el riesgo de ser estafado de tus valiosas cartas.
Ambas formas de intercambio tienen sus propios riesgos y te pueden timar en las dos situaciones si no tomas las precauciones necesarias. Cambiar cara a cara es normalmente menos peligroso, porque estás viendo el material que obtienes, y lo recibes al mismo tiempo que das el tuyo. De todas formas, todavía te pueden estafar de dos maneras. Te pueden pasar cartas falsas, o puedes conseguir cartas cuyo valor es muy inferior al de las que te dan.
Para una persona con experiencia con cartas auténticas es normalmente bastante fácil identificar las cartas falsas, pero muchos jugadores jóvenes no saben lo suficiente sobre las cartas que están cambiando, de forma que pueden ser engañados y convencidos de que son algún tipo especial de cartas legítimas. Y también existen muy buenas falsificaciones circulando que son realmente difíciles de distinguir de las verdaderas incluso para un coleccionista experimentado.
En cada juego de cartas coleccionables, las cartas tienen diferentes detalles que debes comprobar para validar su autenticidad. Para las cartas de Yu-Gi-Oh!, por ejemplo, que es uno de los juegos que está sufriendo más este tipo de prácticas engañosas, una de las principales señales delatoras es el pequeño holograma de la esquina inferior derecha, que debe mostrar el ojo de Anubis, o la palabra YuGiOh, dependiendo de cómo la luz brilla en el mismo. Pero también el esquema de colores de ambos lados de la carta e incluso el diseño general pueden ser diferentes en las cartas falsas. Debes siempre comparar las cartas que te van a dar con las que tienes y asegurarte de que la consistencia del cartón y la cualidad de la impresión son similares, ya que las cartas falsificadas están fabricadas normalmente con materiales más baratos, incluyendo el papel, las tintas, el pegamento, etc.
De todas formas, la mayoría de los intercambios incluyen sólo cartas auténticas. Pero hay algo más que tienes que tener en cuenta al cambiar tus cartas. En todo trueque, el valor de las cartas intercambiadas debe ser equivalente. Pero determinar ésto no es una ciencia exacta. El valor de una carta depende de parámetros como su rareza, y su estado. La rareza viene determinada por la frecuencia con que se imprime, y el estado de conservación es importante principalmente para los coleccionistas. Pero el valor es también algo relativo y a veces subjetivo. La misma carta puede tener un valor distinto para gente distinta. Por ejemplo, un coleccionista puede valorar una carta mucho más que un jugador cuando es difícil de encontrar pero no es demasiado útil en el juego. Además, el valor de una carta varía con el tiempo, según se exploran nuevas estrategias o se editan nuevas cartas.
Sin embargo, siempre puedes calcular un valor general para una carta basado en cuán deseable es para el aficionado medio. Esa es la razón por la que la mayoría de la gente coincide en decidir si un intercambio es equilibrado o no. Por tanto, si no estás seguro del valor de tus cartas o del de las que vas a recibir, debes pedirle a otras personas que evaluen el intercambio.
Resumiendo, si tienes un mínimo de experiencia y puedes valorar las cartas y distinguir las falsas, no deberías tener verdaderos problemas al cambiar cartas en persona con cualquier otro jugador o coleccionista.
Pero hoy en día se está haciendo mucho más frecuente acordar intercambios en Internet y efectuar el cambio por correo postal. La gente se encuentra en la red, comprueba sus listas de cartas que tienen y que buscan, y conciertan cambios, todo a distancia y sin conocerse. Entonces intercambian direcciones y envían sus cartas por correo postal.
En esto casos, no sabes nada con seguridad acerca de la otra persona, sólo aquello que te quieran contar sobre sí mismos. No sabes si realmente tienen las cartas que ofrecen, o si las cartas son auténticas y en el estado acordado. Aquí no puedes ver ni tocar las cartas antes de aceptar el trato, y sólo puedes verificar que las cartas son auténticas, y en el estado correcto, una vez que las recibes en tu buzón. Si ya has enviado las tuyas, puede ser demasiado tarde para entonces.
En los cambios por correo, por tanto, corres un mayor riesgo, si tú envías tus cartas antes de recibir las de la otra parte. Esa es la razón por la que hay mucha discusión, al acordar un cambio a través de la web, sobre quién enviará sus cartas primero. La manera más habitual para decidirlo es acudir a las referencias. Las referencias son votos de confianza dados por alguien que ha cambiado previamente con esa persona y quedó satisfecho con su comportamiento. Se asume que cuanto mayor es el número de referencias que tiene una persona, más fiable es. En consecuencia, la norma es que la persona con menor número de referencias debería estar dispuesta a enviar sus cartas primero si se lo piden. De todas formas, el simple número de referencias no es garantía de un cambio perfecto. Debes siempre comprobar una o más de las referencias para verificar que son auténticas y recientes. Una referencia incluye un método de contacto del remitente de forma que pueda explicar cuándo y cómo se realizó el intercambio. Debes preguntar educadamente y agradecer cualquier respuesta que recibas.
Incluso tras verificar las referencias, puedes acabar no consiguiendo las cartas que querías. Puedes haber sido víctima de un estafador, o la otra persona puede simplemente haberse olvidado del intercambio. O the pueden haber enviado cartas falsas creyendo que eran auténticas, o cartas dañadas que habían catalogado como en buen estado. Si todavía puedes contactar con la otra parte, puedes aún alcanzar un segundo acuerdo para corregir cualquier deficiencia en el cambio, aunque ésto implicará más gastos y tiempo, y puede requerir una larga negociación. Debes procurar ser siempre tan educado como sea posible, incluso si se está discutiendo lo que tú consideras fue un comportamiento deshonesto. Enfadar a tu interlocutor no mejorará tus oportunidades de conseguir una buena resolución del problema.
La mayoría de la gente usa los foros para ponerse en contacto con otros aficionados. Publican sus listas, intercambian mensajes, cotejans sus colecciones, y acuerdan intercambios, todo en el mismo formato, como mensajes de foro. Todo es manual y los usuarios tienen que seguir visitando los foros para comprobar si hay nuevos usuarios, y para identificar visualmente las cartas que están buscando. Para facilitar este proceso, han surgido algunas webs especializadas que permiten a sus usuarios introducir sus listas de cartas que tienen y que buscan por un método estándard de forma que el propio sistema pueda cotejar las colecciones e informarles sobre posibles intercambios y cartas de las que buscan que estén disponibles. De esta manera la búsqueda de cambios se automatiza y se ahorra mucho esfuerzo. Sin embargo, los usuarios tienen aún que visitar la página periódicamente para comprobar si hay nuevos cambios. cambiacartas.com ( http://www.cambiacartas.com ) es el único sitio que ofrece su exclusivo Informe Automático de Posibles Intercambios, avisando a sus usuarios en cuanto cualquiera de las cartas que están buscando se encuentra disponible para cambio. Los usuarios reciben un mensaje por e-mail sin tener que visitar la web continuamente con este objetivo.
Encontrar los mejores cambios se está haciendo así mucho más fácil gracias a la Internet y a su acceso global. La web está también haciendo mucho más frecuentes los cambios por correo postal. Desgraciadamente, no está reduciendo los riesgos asociados. Los foros se llenan de mensajes quejándose de éste o aquel usuario que ha engañado a alguien. Se crean foros especiales para publicar los nombres de aquellos a los que se considera estafadores. De hecho, existe un sitio web dedicado a luchar contra los timadores de cartas coleccionables: : G.A.B. (Good Against Bad traders: http://www.gabtraders.com ) es una comunidad de voluntarios que investigan los informes de comportamiento deshonesto en intercambios de cartas, y mantienen una lista de estafadores confirmados. La precaución mínima que debes tomar antes de iniciar un cambio con alguien es comprobar que no está ya listado en esta web como canjeador deshonesto.
Pero si de verdad te preocupa la seguridad, entonces cambiacartas.com es tu web. cambiacartas.com es una web llena de utilidades dedicada a facilitar el cambio de cartas coleccionables y que ha hecho todo el esfuerzo posible para aumentar tu seguridad durante tus intercambios. Son varias las características que lo convierten en el lugar más seguro para cambiar en Internet:
- Libre de spam: tu dirección de e-mail no es compartida nunca con otras personas, ya que todos los mensajes se intercambian a través de un sistema de mensajería interno que los envía a tu buzón de correo electrónico sin revelar tu dirección al otro usuario. Además puedes decidir si quieres recibir mensajes sólo de usuarios registrados, o también de visitantes externos.
- Fiable: el sitio incorpora un sistema de referencias de fácil uso que permite a los usuarios darse referencias unos a otros y que las registra junto con la fecha en que se emiten. Comprobar el número de referencias de un usuario y contactar con algunas de ellas se hace todo fácilmente desde la propia web.
- Protegido: la web ofrece el exclusivo servicio de Intercambios Protegidos que garantiza que no te estafarán ni robarán. El sitio actúa como intermediario y verifica que las cartas se envían realmente y que son las correctas, antes de re-enviarlas a sus dueños finales. De esta manera se te devuelven tus cartas si la otra parte del intercambio no cumple con su obligación. Nunca volverás a perder tus cartas en manos de un jugador deshonesto.
- Libre de estafadores: no mantiene una lista de usuarios deshonestos, y es porque los estafadores son simplemente elminiados por completo de la web, de forma que permanece siempre libre de timadores. Cuando un usuario considera que ha sido engañado en un intercambio por otro usuario, crea un Informe Negativo de Intercambio que se investiga en base al registro interno de los mensajes intercambiados. Si no se alcanza una resolución satisfactoria, se expulsa automáticamente de la web a los usuarios culpables y se les prohibe el acceso de por vida. Los usuarios que son incluidos en G.A.B son también eliminados de este sitio web.
El cambio de cartas por Internet está lleno de ventajas que hacen los intercambios mucho más fáciles y convenientes, pero tienes que ser cauto y usar todos los servicios disponibles para reducir el riesgo de ser estafado de tus valiosas cartas.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Card trading: risks and precautions.
Ways of trading cards and their associated risks. Factors to take into account when arranging trades, both in person and online, and how to avoid the risk of being ripped of your collectible cards.
You can trade your cards in two different ways: face to face, or by postal mail. The first type of trading is performed at tournaments, at schools, or at the local comic shop, and you arrange the trades by checking the other person's cards directly, holding them in your hands. Otherwise, cards are traded by mail when the parties can not meet because they live far apart from each other.
Both ways of trading have their own risks and you can be ripped in both situations if you don't take the necessary precautions. Trading face to face is normally less dangerous, because you are seeing the material you are getting, and you receive it at the same time you give yours. Nevertheless, you can still be cheated in two ways. You may get counterfeit cards, or you may get cards whose value is far lower than the value of those you give.
Counterfeit cards are normally easy to tell apart for a person with experience with the real ones, but many young traders do not know enough about the cards they are trading, so they can be fooled into believing they're some special kind of legitimate cards. And there are also very good counterfeits out there that are really difficult to distinguish from real ones even for an experienced player.
Cards from each collectible card game have different details you should check to validate their authenticity. For Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, for example, which is one of the games that is suffering most from these deceiving practices, one of the main tell-tales is a small hologram at the bottom right corner, which should show the Anubis eye, or the word YuGiOh depending on how the light shines on it. But also the coloring scheme of both sides of the card and even the general layout may be different in fake cards. You should always compare the cards you are getting with the ones you have and make sure the consistency of the cardboard and the quality of the printing are similar, as counterfeit cards are normally made with cheaper materials, including paper, ink, glue, etc.
Nevertheless, most trades involve only authentic cards. But there is another thing you have to be aware of when trading your cards. In every trade, the value of the exchanged cards should be equivalent. But determining this is not an exact science. The worth of a card depends on parameters like its rarity, and its condition. Rarity is determined by the frequency of printing, and the condition of conservation is important mainly for collectors. But the value is also relative and sometimes subjective. The same card may have different value for different people. For example, a collector may value a card much more than a player when it is difficult to find but it is not all that useful in the game. Also, the value of a card changes with time, as new game strategies are explored or new cards are published.
However, you can always determine a general value for a card based on how desirable it is for the average trader. That's why most people will generally agree on a trade being balanced or not. So, if you are unsure about the value of your cards or the ones you are going to receive, you should ask someone else to evaluate the trade.
Summing up, if you have a minimum of experience and can value the cards and distinguish fake ones, you should have no real problem when trading cards in person with any other trader.
But nowadays it's getting much more frequent to arrange trades on the Internet and performing the exchange by postal mail. People are meeting on the net, checking their haves and wants and arranging trades, all remotely and without meeting. Then they swap addresses and send their cards by postal mail.
In these cases you don't know anything for sure about the other person, just whatever they want to tell you about them. You don't know if they really have the cards they are offering, or if the cards are authentic and in the agreed condition. Here you can not see nor touch the cards before agreeing to the trade, and you can only verify if the cards are authentic, and in the right condition, once you receive them in your mailbox. If you have already sent yours, it could be too late by then.
In trades by mail you run a greater risk, therefore, if you send your cards before receiving those from the other trader. That's why there is a lot of discussion, when arranging a trade through the web, about who will send his cards first. The most usual way to determine this is by resorting to references. References are votes of confidence given by someone who has traded before with this person and was satisfied by his performance. It is assumed that the greater number of references a trader has, the more reliable he is. Consequently, the rule is that the person with fewer references should be willing to send his cards first if required to do so. Nevertheless the sheer number of references is not guarantee of a perfect trader. You should always check one or more of the references to verify they are authentic and recent. A reference includes a way of contacting the referrer so he can explain when and how the trade took place. You should ask politely and thank any replies you get.
Even after verifying references, you may end up not getting the cards you wanted. You may have fallen pray of a ripper, or the other person may have simply forgotten about the trade. Or they may have sent you fake cards believing they were real, or damaged cards they had rated as fair. If you can still contact your trader you may reach a second agreement to fix any deficiencies in the trade, though this will imply more expenses and time, and may need of a lot of negotiation. You should always try to be as polite as possible even if you are discussing what you think is a misbehavior. Upsetting your speaker won't improve your chances of getting a good resolution to the problem.
Most people use Internet forums to get in contact with other traders. They post their lists, exchange messages, match their collections, and arrange trades all in the same format, as board messages. Everything is manual and users need to keep visiting the forums to check for new users and visually identify the cards they are looking for. To ease this process, a few specialized web sites have emerged that allow users to input their haves and wants in a standard way so that the system itself can match their collections and tell them about possible traders and wanted cards that are available. This way the search for trades gets automated and a lot of effort is saved. Nevertheless, users must still visit the sites periodically to check for new matches. Trade Cards Online is the only site which offers their exclusive Automated Report on Possible Trades, alerting their users whenever any of the cards they are looking for becomes available for trading. Users receive an e-mail message without having to visit the site continuously for this purpose.
So finding the best trades is getting much easier thanks to the Internet and its global access. The web is also making the trades by postal mail much more frequent. Unfortunately, it is not reducing the associated risks. Forums are getting full of messages complaining about this or that user who has cheated someone. Special forums are created to post the names of those people deemed to be bad traders. There is in fact a web site dedicated to fighting bad traders of collectible cards: G.A.B. (Good Against Bad traders) is a community of volunteers who investigate reports of misbehavior in card trades, and maintain a list of confirmed cheaters. The minimum precaution you must take before initiating a trade with someone is checking that they are not already listed in that website as bad traders.
But if you are really concerned about safety, then Trade Cards Online is the site for you. Trade Cards Online is a feature-rich site dedicated to facilitating your trading of collectible cards and which has made every effort to increase your security when trading. There are several features that make it the safest place to trade on the Internet:
- Spam-free: your e-mail address is never shared with anyone else, as all messages are exchanged through an internal messaging system which directs them to your mailbox without disclosing your address to the other user. You can also decide whether you want to receive messages only from registered users, or also from external traders.
- Trustworthy: the site features an easy-to-use reference system that lets users give references to each other and keeps track of them and the time they were submitted. Checking the number of references a trader has and contacting a few of them is all easily done from within the website.
- Protected: the site offers the exclusive Protected Trade service which guarantees you won't get cheated or ripped. The site acts as intermediary and checks that the cards are in fact sent and are the correct ones before resending them to their final owners. This way you get your own cards back if the other party on the trade does not meet its commitment. You will never lose your cards again to a dishonest trader.
- Free of rippers: there is no bad trader list, and that is because bad traders are simply removed altogether from the site, so it stays free of cheaters. Whenever a user thinks he has been ripped in a trade with another user, they create a Bad Trader Report which is investigated based on the internal records of messages exchanged. If no resolution is reached, offending users are automatically expelled from the site and banned for life. Users who get listed at G.A.B also get immediately removed from this site.
Trading online is full of advantages that make trading cards much easier and more convenient, but you need to be cautious and use all the available services that reduce your risks of being ripped of your precious cards.
Friday, August 27, 2004
The Book of Bloods
This is an idea for a story that would be part of a collection of stories revolving around a magical, dark book. I wrote it as a response to the challenge in East of the Web Short Stories Uncut.
When I saw the ancient scripting filling the piece of paper, I recognized it immediately. I had had a very comprehensive education, that had included the black arts of the old times. The lore I learnt in my young days had helped me in unthinkable ways, and had made me the man I was. Good part of my wealth and power had been brought to me by the combination of my magical knowledge and my disregard for morality. Those two things had just helped me to murder the old, wandering wizard before he could become troublesome. He should not have tried to stay in my dominions and steal my authority over my people. Taking him unawares had been surprisingly easy, and he was furthermore yielding this little treasure that I had taken from his purse and was now studying eagerly.
It took me some time to put into practice my rusty knowledge of that oldest of languages, but little by little I translated the first sentences, and then the real value and potential of that small, battered piece of paper came to me. It was undoubtedly an excerpt from the Book of Bloods! The page did not actually come from it, it was just a transcribed copy of one of its paragraphs, but I knew it still preserved a great power that I intended to put into good use. For my benefit, that is. I carefully hid the manuscript under my robes and quickly left the place.
I returned to my mansion and occupied myself in the translation of the script. It proved to be a complete spell and I was soon able to pronounce it complete by heart, intoning the magical words with the old pronunciation that gave them their full might. In the following years my wealth and authority increased rapidly and I became a great dark lord ruling over all the civilized towns of the county. I used my privileged status and imposed my authority with my usual ruthlessness, governing over my petty peasants with fear and terror. I was really enjoying it all.
But after three years of unsurpassed supremacy over all other mortals, I started to feel a presence over me. It did not have any kind of embodiment, but I could sense it watching me from afar. I became afraid of leaving my premises unaccompanied and was suspicious of open spaces. Invisible eyes stared at me from the distance, and only beneath the walls of my castle did I feel safe. But those eyes kept getting closer and more insidious, and soon I could not even peer through the windows without feeling menaced. I tried to use the spell from the Book of Bloods against that presence but to no avail. Finally, I ordered all the windows blocked and retired to my private chambers. I hardly saw anyone and lived oppressed by the stone walls and the stale air surrounding me. I felt miserable and tried to find strength to revel against that situation, but I was confronting a force much more superior than all the supernatural means I knew of.
That final day I woke up and found myself in total darkness. I tried to stand up and search for a lamp, but couldn't. I tried to call for help, but no sound came out of my mouth. I was paralyzed and totally helpless, and somehow I knew I had fallen into a state that was to last forever. I could see or hear nothing, and was shocked into terror when the door slammed closed definitely. I've been crying since then and cannot stop. Somehow all my energies are being withdrawn by means of that scream, and if my madness would allow for it, I would realize that my blood is being insufflated into the Book.
*****
The Grand Master saw once more how the selected page glowed in liquid red, and closed the Book over it with a slam. Small drops of thick blood spilled slowly from among the pages. Nurturing the Book was his main mission and he intended to continue with it. So he once again opened the volume at random and cast his breath upon the revealed spell.
When I saw the ancient scripting filling the piece of paper, I recognized it immediately. I had had a very comprehensive education, that had included the black arts of the old times. The lore I learnt in my young days had helped me in unthinkable ways, and had made me the man I was. Good part of my wealth and power had been brought to me by the combination of my magical knowledge and my disregard for morality. Those two things had just helped me to murder the old, wandering wizard before he could become troublesome. He should not have tried to stay in my dominions and steal my authority over my people. Taking him unawares had been surprisingly easy, and he was furthermore yielding this little treasure that I had taken from his purse and was now studying eagerly.
It took me some time to put into practice my rusty knowledge of that oldest of languages, but little by little I translated the first sentences, and then the real value and potential of that small, battered piece of paper came to me. It was undoubtedly an excerpt from the Book of Bloods! The page did not actually come from it, it was just a transcribed copy of one of its paragraphs, but I knew it still preserved a great power that I intended to put into good use. For my benefit, that is. I carefully hid the manuscript under my robes and quickly left the place.
I returned to my mansion and occupied myself in the translation of the script. It proved to be a complete spell and I was soon able to pronounce it complete by heart, intoning the magical words with the old pronunciation that gave them their full might. In the following years my wealth and authority increased rapidly and I became a great dark lord ruling over all the civilized towns of the county. I used my privileged status and imposed my authority with my usual ruthlessness, governing over my petty peasants with fear and terror. I was really enjoying it all.
But after three years of unsurpassed supremacy over all other mortals, I started to feel a presence over me. It did not have any kind of embodiment, but I could sense it watching me from afar. I became afraid of leaving my premises unaccompanied and was suspicious of open spaces. Invisible eyes stared at me from the distance, and only beneath the walls of my castle did I feel safe. But those eyes kept getting closer and more insidious, and soon I could not even peer through the windows without feeling menaced. I tried to use the spell from the Book of Bloods against that presence but to no avail. Finally, I ordered all the windows blocked and retired to my private chambers. I hardly saw anyone and lived oppressed by the stone walls and the stale air surrounding me. I felt miserable and tried to find strength to revel against that situation, but I was confronting a force much more superior than all the supernatural means I knew of.
That final day I woke up and found myself in total darkness. I tried to stand up and search for a lamp, but couldn't. I tried to call for help, but no sound came out of my mouth. I was paralyzed and totally helpless, and somehow I knew I had fallen into a state that was to last forever. I could see or hear nothing, and was shocked into terror when the door slammed closed definitely. I've been crying since then and cannot stop. Somehow all my energies are being withdrawn by means of that scream, and if my madness would allow for it, I would realize that my blood is being insufflated into the Book.
*****
The Grand Master saw once more how the selected page glowed in liquid red, and closed the Book over it with a slam. Small drops of thick blood spilled slowly from among the pages. Nurturing the Book was his main mission and he intended to continue with it. So he once again opened the volume at random and cast his breath upon the revealed spell.
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Spirits from the past
This is a story I wrote six or seven years ago and which was to be part of my first Hypernovel. I have adapted it to the linear fashion of a normal story. Hope you all enjoy it!
It was the strangest sensation I had ever felt. For a while I was completely confused and could not make sense of the flood of impressions, perceptions, and even emotions that was threatening to drown me. I even thought for a moment that I was dead or that I was going through a near-death experience.
The first shock was the sudden change in environment. It had been completely instantaneous. One instant I was in the familiar surroundings of the lab, next thing I could make sense of I was upside down hanging from the ceiling of what looked like an old-fashioned living room, with wooden furnitrue and boring rugs on the floor.
The second challenge I had to meet was managing to turn around my body so that the ceiling was over my head instead of beneath it. And it was during this task that I came to realize an even stranger fact on my current situation. I was floating in this so mundane environment like in one of those free-fall jets you find in most entertainment centers. Somehow I managed to turn using my arms and legs, but I found it impossible to transport my body in any straight direction. I knew I should be able to use the air friction against my arms to get some propulsion, but I could not feel any drag no matter how fast I moved my arms.
Finally, I realized I was near enough to one of the walls so that I could touch it and use it to control my movements. The greatest shock came when I tried. My hand went straight through it and I felt as if I were sliding it along a plaster surface.
It took me a long time to accommodate to the fact that I was trapped in some kind of reality that was far beyond my control and that I didn't have a clue how to get out of. I first panicked, but then I discovered that without noticing I had moved and now I was close to the door for which I had been aiming subconsciously! So somehow I had the possibility to move in my new environment and have some control, if not of the objects around me, at least of my point of view from among them.
For hours I kept practicing until I mastered the art of moving around the room, and finally tried the most dreadful experience: I tried to go through a wall.
At first it was frightening, to feel completely surrounded by the solid material in the wall, but soon I got used to it and started feeling kind of dizzy with the joy of moving unbound all around the house.
This is when she came rushing through the door into the living-room. She was hardly 8 years old, with black long hair flying beneath her smiling, big-eyed face. She stopped suddenly in her tracks, stood there, in the middle of the room for a moment, looking around her as if she had noticed something strange, and then she looked at me! She stared directly to my eyes with the expression of a child looking at a strange animal for the first time. I tried to talk to her, but again no sound came out. I pulled myself closer to her, and that broke the spell. She kept looking at a distant point on the wall, and I realized she could not see me. I moved around her and she didn't seem to notice, until finally she shrugged slightly and run to the stairs probably aiming for her bedroom.
I was heartbroken, had almost fallen in love with her in just a second, and now I knew she couldn't even see me or hear me. Heavy footsteps made me turn around to see a man and a small boy getting into the room.
So this was the family living in this house. They would be my companions for a long time, and I would have to watch at them while they remained ignorant of my existence.
For days I followed them around the house, and learnt to know them. The father was a silent, reserved business man that stayed at home as little as he could. The small boy, called James, two years older than his little sister, was a mischievous little bastard that dominated his father and gave his sister a hard time. Jane was a lovely, happy and active girl which would stand her brother's pranks and the unfair reprimands from her father.
***
She was looking up to his face and trying to pay close attention. She had always loved her father with passion, and she would never love another man like that. He was now reprehending her with his most severe expression for something she had not done, but even then she just adored his face, and looked at it with devotion. He was her hero, the only one, superman in normal clothes, the center of her world after her mother died.
Her elder brother had complete control over their father, and made him believe whatever he pleased. So, everytime something went wrong he would put the blame on his small sister, and his father would not question, would not inquire; everything was clear, and the girl had to be disciplined.
She could see through her brother's lies and schemes, and she had tried at the beginning to argue and convince her father that he was being fooled. But she did not try anymore. She just took all responsibility and accepted the punishment. Knowing it was wrong. Yet loving his foolish father.
That day his brother had managed to break every rule and had entered their father's study room, played with every item on the desk, and finally let the glass paperweight fall and crash on the floor. Sometimes she thought he did these things intentionally, and chose whatever made their father angrier or his sister more unhappy. She loved that paperweight and its embedded seashells, and used to spend a long time just watching it. That's partly why it was so easy to convince their progenitor that she had entered the room to look at it, had wanted to hold it and had ended up letting it slip from the desk to its fatal landing.
While she listened and tried to look repented and regretful, she felt around her the comforting presence of the new spirit of the house. She had noticed it for the first time when they returned from the exciting weekend they had spent visiting relatives. She rushed into the living room as she used to do after being away from home for a long time, and immediately knew there was something different. She looked around and around and could not find anything out of place or unusual, but she sensed that the house had come alive with a presence that was observing her. It wasn't a scary feeling, however. She felt herself loved and warmed by the new personality of the house. It wasn't a set of walls and furniture any more. Now it was someone who cared and embraced them all, one more member in the family.
She never talked about it to anyone, knowing that they would mock her for speaking about things that could not be seen. Somehow neither her brother nor her father seemed to notice anything, so she kept her little secret for herself, enjoying every moment when she felt this spirit around her. She even tried to communicate with it, but did not have any idea of how. Sometimes she would talk to it, in a whisper, so nobody else could hear her, and though she did not receive any reply she kept fantasizing about the replies she would be getting from her secret friend.
His father sent her to her room for the rest of the day, and she took her punishment with resignation, as she had learnt to do, but also with some relief knowing that she would not be alone in her room, and that there was someone who knew, apart from her, that she was innocent.
***
With the passing weeks I managed to get used to my new life, being a disembodied observer that could not interact with anybody or anything. But this inactivity was also getting into my nerves. For some unknown reason I wasn't able to leave the house, its outer walls being like iron curtains for a normal person, simply unsurpassable in spite of my desperate attempts. So my universe was quite constrained and the range of my activities was reduced to watching, listening, moving my point of view, and thinking. When there was nobody at home I would spend the hours remembering my past life and hating myself for not been able to remember how I came to be in this situation.
Furthermore, when the family was in, I would be witness to the evil behaviour of the old brother towards my darling Jane, and my inability to do anything to prevent it, even when I was there seeing it coming, was driving me mad.
I couldn't understand what I had done to deserve this nightmarish existence. I would get into an outburst of fury, and move crazily around the house at all the speed I could get, screaming inside my head and laying my arms against everything even though they would go through them without harming anything nor myself. It was infuriating not being able to see an external expression of my wrath.
***
Unfortunately, hardly a year after she discoverd her invisible friend in their house, they moved to another town and to a smallish flat in the city center. She would always remember how sorry she felt about leaving that house, but the main reason faded in her memory with the passing time. She made new friends at school, kept on with her life, and ended up forgetting about the spirit she had thought to perceive in that old house.
Had she remembered, anyhow, she would have probably assumed it had been the typical phase in the development of lonesome children when they invent invisible friends to play with.
She grew up under the dominion and control of her selfish brother and the weak spirit and harsh hand of his father. She studied law and was successful in her career, and finally met the man that could replace her father in her heart. Nobody suspected then the twist in her personality that would decide her fate.
***
I was left alone, for days on end, missing them. They had been my only companion and entertainment. I hadn't thought my situation could get any worse, but there I was, deeper in hell, with my only source of distraction taken away from me.
I was getting crazy in this deprivation of stimuli. In my anguish I think I managed sometimes to lose consciousness, or maybe I got in such a state that later I could not remember what I had done for a while.
My bursts of rage were getting more violent and I just felt like destroying everything inside that damn house. And then I saw a movement, a slight shiver of the furniture. At first I thought someone had gotten into the house, but then I realized I had been fantasizing about throwing that small table through the room to smash it into the big mirror at the other side. Suddenly I came to the crazy hope that there could be a way for me to move things around, to have some influence on my surroundings.
I spent the next days concentrating and trying to push things around. I never managed by sheer force of will, but when I got all enraged with my lack of success, then and only then would I be able to move small item left behind on the floor. So that was how I found out that only rage was strong enough in me to give me the power to affect my environment, and then only in a not so well-directed manner. I practiced for weeks but never managed to cause precise movements, I had to be satisfied with rough pushes.
When the next family moved into the house I was enthusiastic with the prospect of showing them I was there, that I existed and had a way to prove it. In spite of the joy of seeing someone again after all that time, it was easy for me to become angry enough to get into one of my fits of rage. Just being comfronted again with my invisibility to these people was enough to despair me. I focused on one of the little clay figures they had just laid on top of the table after unpacking it from a box, and soon I managed to topple it and make it roll. The woman saw it clearly, but was so busy that probably thought she had not placed it properly. She came to the table, took the figure and made it stood on the mantelpiece, checking it was firm in its place. I got even madder when I saw she had not seen anything strange in the results of my efforts. I used this to concentrate again on the little statuette, and made it slide along the whole mantelpiece and let it fall out of one end. The figure crashed on the floor. The woman had seen it move smoothly and fall and so this time she was scared. She stood there for a while staring at the broken pieces on the floor, and then she run out of the room calling her husband to come.
I wasn't sure things were going well for me, but I did my best to show my presence to every new inhabitant of the house. Unfortunately, all I did was to scare them all. They eventually would leave and contribute to the reputation of the haunted house. Nobody was able ever to stablish a relationship between my actions and the meaning I tried to give them. I made every effort to move, or tilt, those objects more related to whatever was happening at the moment in the house, but nobody seemed to notice there was some logic on the phenomena.
That's how I spent years in the house, sometimes without inhabitants for many months in a row. My psychological state resented from these lonely periods, and also from the frustration involved in having companions who did not know I was around, or who were plainly scared of me.
***
The first time he met Jane he knew she was perfect for him. She was so beautiful and charming, so naive and incredibly innocent. He realized immediately that he could enjoy her in all three ways. He would enjoy her company and be happy doing things together. He would make love to her like a passionate lover. And he would make her suffer.
He would be able to have her in his fist and cause her pain as he wished. He would first conquer her heart using all his charm and good manners, with no hurry and total dedication. Once she were hooked on him he could start alternating good words with kicks and punches. It would be fun.
So from the first day all his actions were directed to this goal, from the first encounter in which he almost ignored her, to the first dates, in which he was so gallant and devoted. It took months, but soon they were engaged and he started to be more authoritative and use verbal violence to get what he wanted. She was his perfect match and she knew it. She loved him and would let him do whatever he wanted with her.
The plans were laid down in front of her and she just let him drive their lives. They would marry, and buy a house on the outskirts of town. She would leave her job, and take care of the house and the children that would come. He would be free to handle his businesses in the city, and then get some relax at home from her wife; by either making love to her, or punishing her, as his whim would have it.
Choosing the house was not a problem, the perfect one was on sale, and quite cheap. It had been her home during her young years, and she had always loved it, even in spite of the things that happened there. It was far from the city center and a bit isolated, and it had been for sale as a bargain for some time now on account of some rumours of it being haunted. He didn't believe in such things. And she didn't care, it was her house and she knew it.
***
The very moment she came into the house I knew who she was. That slender, good-natured lady still had the bright eyes, the black mane, and the hopeful expression of the little girl who had stolen my heart so many years ago.
I got into an ecstatic state of pure joy when I thought I would spend my time contemplating the life of my lost love, being with her every minute she would spend at the house. I cherished all her movements, tried to guess her thoughts and feelings, moved around the house observing her, and trying to become one with her inner being. I learnt everything I could about her past life from any comment, or small action.
I came to know her better than any real person could have, no matter how close friends they would be. And she did not have that many friends. She was a bit reserved, and shared her life only with a ruthless man who fortunately spent very little time in the house. This relationship I never could fathom entirely. There was this obscure spot in her personality that stayed hidden even from me.
Even though I thought that she would be the one able to understand who, or what I was, I did not dare to show me to her for some time. I first wanted to make sure my movements would be correctly understood. I could not risk another rejection, not from her.
***
The day they moved in she could feel the house had grown up and had got a strong personality. She also felt herself welcome in it, and settled very comfortably from the first moment. They never witnessed any strange phenomenon, but somehow she could sense a mysterious presence that warmed her and comforted her. Robert, now his husband, became a bit suspicious when she would tell him she was so happy while he was in town. Because that was even before he started applying the discipline she so obviously needed.
In spite of the size of the house, she found he could keep it clean and tidy all by herself and still have a lot of free time. And spite her loneliness he enjoyed all her time in the house. She fantasized she could feel the company of the house and even started to talk to it without shame. She would speak out her mind, and confess even her most intimate feelings and thoughts to each room and piece of furniture. Soon she started to notice some form of reply from the house; small movements and noises, some slight vibrations from the wooden floor, soft drafts where there should be none. She wasn't surprised, nor the least frightened. She had been expectant, and she didn't care whether she had finally gone mad, or something really special was happening in her life.
It all started shortly after Robert began hitting her. She didn't care that much about it, but she found some comfort in the house reaction. It seemed angry. It cracked and whined every time he crossed the front door. He began to talk about the problems of an old house, about humidity, and rats. And he started to complain about how she didn't take good care of the house and wasted all her time watching TV and reading stupid books.
She tried to calm the house, talking aloud while alone and explaining why things were OK that way, how he could not change his personality, that she loved him and was married to him. She thought the house could hear her and understand her, and in fact the house stirring never went to bigger effects.
***
Finally, seeing her suffer her loneliness and the evil treatment from her husband forced me into trying to use my rage to show her she was not alone any more. When she was inmersed in one of her pensive states, I concentrated all my energy in causing a controlled movement of the pen she had laid on the book she was reading, and though the whole book ended up moving in a rather brusque way, she did not seem to be at all shocked. She stared at the book and for a moment I thought I could see a faint smile on her placid face. That's how I knew she had somehow grasped my presence even before I manifested to her physically.
I can't describe the chills that this discovery caused in my morbid and tired mind. After all these years I saw some hope that I could be in rapport with another human being, that some communication was possible.
She never let me see directly that she knew I was there, but her acts told me she was always thinking of me. She started to speak out her thoughts while she was alone in the house, as if to share them with me. She also understood what things made me mad and caused the involuntary trembling I provoked in the whole house. Her husband had also noticed them, but had not acknowledged them because he was frightened and did not want that to show.
So she tried to avoid the quarrels she had with her husband, or make sure they happened outside the house, in the backyard, for example, where even though I could hear them I could not try anything.
That dreadful day had been a very happy one. She felt gay, and was enjoying the good weather, and a few ornaments she had just bought for her favorite room. She was in communion with the house, sharing her fondest memories with it, but on the back of her head she knew it couldn't last. Robert seemed to sense when she was having a good time, and would do a special effort to spoil her day. She knew he would return in a very bad temper from work and her day would be over the moment he stepped into the house.
And so it was. He was shouting even before he opened the front door, angry about this and that. He didn't share her joy for the items she had bought, and only complained about their price, as if they could not afford much better things. She tried to keep her happy mood alive, and that seemed to make him mad. What was the point of having a rage if she didn't get scared? He wanted to see her suffer. He slapped her and threatened her with more, but she was so calm! He wanted her to beg for him to stop. He needed to see terror in her eyes when she looked at him, and not this calm resignation that seemed to be just waiting for it to end so that she could go on being happy as if nothing had happened. That spoiled it all, and he became furious. None of them could have said what was the cause of the quarrel, but he started to hit her really hard, and drove her with punches to the stairs.
He was so furious he did not see the danger. His blows made her lose her balance, and she fell down the stairs, bouncing a couple of times in her fast trajectory to the landing. The odd angle her head took gave him a surreal impression and it took him a while to realize what had happened. He got paralyzed by fear, then by sorrow and regret. The first rule of a sadist is not to spoil your victims. After all they give you pleasure and fun. He loved her his own way and knew he would miss her terribly.
But he did not have much time to think about that. After a few seconds the house began trembling and shaking, its wooden innards moaning and cracking. He thought it was an earthquake, a big one, and planned to take refuge, when a deafening shriek made his ears bleed. At the same time a burning heat attacked his face and hands, so that he did not know how to protect himself from so much pain. Fortunately it did not last long. His body was flung through the air along the corridor, and stamped against the wall with a strength that put him on the verge of collapse. However he stayed conscious to feel his own death, when his heart burst in pieces filling his chest with unbearable pain that stabbed at his left arm and took his breath away.
On his last seconds he thought he saw a bright flame floating in front of him and a couple of eyes watching him from inside it.
For the detective in charge of the case it was very difficult to explain the cause of the man's death, the burns on his face, the bleeding ears, the ripped heart. For the neighbours it all added to the legend of the haunted house. It would take a lot of years and very good marketing to sell that house again.
Incommunicado
It was the strangest sensation I had ever felt. For a while I was completely confused and could not make sense of the flood of impressions, perceptions, and even emotions that was threatening to drown me. I even thought for a moment that I was dead or that I was going through a near-death experience.
The first shock was the sudden change in environment. It had been completely instantaneous. One instant I was in the familiar surroundings of the lab, next thing I could make sense of I was upside down hanging from the ceiling of what looked like an old-fashioned living room, with wooden furnitrue and boring rugs on the floor.
The second challenge I had to meet was managing to turn around my body so that the ceiling was over my head instead of beneath it. And it was during this task that I came to realize an even stranger fact on my current situation. I was floating in this so mundane environment like in one of those free-fall jets you find in most entertainment centers. Somehow I managed to turn using my arms and legs, but I found it impossible to transport my body in any straight direction. I knew I should be able to use the air friction against my arms to get some propulsion, but I could not feel any drag no matter how fast I moved my arms.
Finally, I realized I was near enough to one of the walls so that I could touch it and use it to control my movements. The greatest shock came when I tried. My hand went straight through it and I felt as if I were sliding it along a plaster surface.
It took me a long time to accommodate to the fact that I was trapped in some kind of reality that was far beyond my control and that I didn't have a clue how to get out of. I first panicked, but then I discovered that without noticing I had moved and now I was close to the door for which I had been aiming subconsciously! So somehow I had the possibility to move in my new environment and have some control, if not of the objects around me, at least of my point of view from among them.
For hours I kept practicing until I mastered the art of moving around the room, and finally tried the most dreadful experience: I tried to go through a wall.
At first it was frightening, to feel completely surrounded by the solid material in the wall, but soon I got used to it and started feeling kind of dizzy with the joy of moving unbound all around the house.
This is when she came rushing through the door into the living-room. She was hardly 8 years old, with black long hair flying beneath her smiling, big-eyed face. She stopped suddenly in her tracks, stood there, in the middle of the room for a moment, looking around her as if she had noticed something strange, and then she looked at me! She stared directly to my eyes with the expression of a child looking at a strange animal for the first time. I tried to talk to her, but again no sound came out. I pulled myself closer to her, and that broke the spell. She kept looking at a distant point on the wall, and I realized she could not see me. I moved around her and she didn't seem to notice, until finally she shrugged slightly and run to the stairs probably aiming for her bedroom.
I was heartbroken, had almost fallen in love with her in just a second, and now I knew she couldn't even see me or hear me. Heavy footsteps made me turn around to see a man and a small boy getting into the room.
So this was the family living in this house. They would be my companions for a long time, and I would have to watch at them while they remained ignorant of my existence.
For days I followed them around the house, and learnt to know them. The father was a silent, reserved business man that stayed at home as little as he could. The small boy, called James, two years older than his little sister, was a mischievous little bastard that dominated his father and gave his sister a hard time. Jane was a lovely, happy and active girl which would stand her brother's pranks and the unfair reprimands from her father.
***
First love
She was looking up to his face and trying to pay close attention. She had always loved her father with passion, and she would never love another man like that. He was now reprehending her with his most severe expression for something she had not done, but even then she just adored his face, and looked at it with devotion. He was her hero, the only one, superman in normal clothes, the center of her world after her mother died.
Her elder brother had complete control over their father, and made him believe whatever he pleased. So, everytime something went wrong he would put the blame on his small sister, and his father would not question, would not inquire; everything was clear, and the girl had to be disciplined.
She could see through her brother's lies and schemes, and she had tried at the beginning to argue and convince her father that he was being fooled. But she did not try anymore. She just took all responsibility and accepted the punishment. Knowing it was wrong. Yet loving his foolish father.
That day his brother had managed to break every rule and had entered their father's study room, played with every item on the desk, and finally let the glass paperweight fall and crash on the floor. Sometimes she thought he did these things intentionally, and chose whatever made their father angrier or his sister more unhappy. She loved that paperweight and its embedded seashells, and used to spend a long time just watching it. That's partly why it was so easy to convince their progenitor that she had entered the room to look at it, had wanted to hold it and had ended up letting it slip from the desk to its fatal landing.
While she listened and tried to look repented and regretful, she felt around her the comforting presence of the new spirit of the house. She had noticed it for the first time when they returned from the exciting weekend they had spent visiting relatives. She rushed into the living room as she used to do after being away from home for a long time, and immediately knew there was something different. She looked around and around and could not find anything out of place or unusual, but she sensed that the house had come alive with a presence that was observing her. It wasn't a scary feeling, however. She felt herself loved and warmed by the new personality of the house. It wasn't a set of walls and furniture any more. Now it was someone who cared and embraced them all, one more member in the family.
She never talked about it to anyone, knowing that they would mock her for speaking about things that could not be seen. Somehow neither her brother nor her father seemed to notice anything, so she kept her little secret for herself, enjoying every moment when she felt this spirit around her. She even tried to communicate with it, but did not have any idea of how. Sometimes she would talk to it, in a whisper, so nobody else could hear her, and though she did not receive any reply she kept fantasizing about the replies she would be getting from her secret friend.
His father sent her to her room for the rest of the day, and she took her punishment with resignation, as she had learnt to do, but also with some relief knowing that she would not be alone in her room, and that there was someone who knew, apart from her, that she was innocent.
***
With the passing weeks I managed to get used to my new life, being a disembodied observer that could not interact with anybody or anything. But this inactivity was also getting into my nerves. For some unknown reason I wasn't able to leave the house, its outer walls being like iron curtains for a normal person, simply unsurpassable in spite of my desperate attempts. So my universe was quite constrained and the range of my activities was reduced to watching, listening, moving my point of view, and thinking. When there was nobody at home I would spend the hours remembering my past life and hating myself for not been able to remember how I came to be in this situation.
Furthermore, when the family was in, I would be witness to the evil behaviour of the old brother towards my darling Jane, and my inability to do anything to prevent it, even when I was there seeing it coming, was driving me mad.
I couldn't understand what I had done to deserve this nightmarish existence. I would get into an outburst of fury, and move crazily around the house at all the speed I could get, screaming inside my head and laying my arms against everything even though they would go through them without harming anything nor myself. It was infuriating not being able to see an external expression of my wrath.
***
Unfortunately, hardly a year after she discoverd her invisible friend in their house, they moved to another town and to a smallish flat in the city center. She would always remember how sorry she felt about leaving that house, but the main reason faded in her memory with the passing time. She made new friends at school, kept on with her life, and ended up forgetting about the spirit she had thought to perceive in that old house.
Had she remembered, anyhow, she would have probably assumed it had been the typical phase in the development of lonesome children when they invent invisible friends to play with.
She grew up under the dominion and control of her selfish brother and the weak spirit and harsh hand of his father. She studied law and was successful in her career, and finally met the man that could replace her father in her heart. Nobody suspected then the twist in her personality that would decide her fate.
***
I was left alone, for days on end, missing them. They had been my only companion and entertainment. I hadn't thought my situation could get any worse, but there I was, deeper in hell, with my only source of distraction taken away from me.
I was getting crazy in this deprivation of stimuli. In my anguish I think I managed sometimes to lose consciousness, or maybe I got in such a state that later I could not remember what I had done for a while.
My bursts of rage were getting more violent and I just felt like destroying everything inside that damn house. And then I saw a movement, a slight shiver of the furniture. At first I thought someone had gotten into the house, but then I realized I had been fantasizing about throwing that small table through the room to smash it into the big mirror at the other side. Suddenly I came to the crazy hope that there could be a way for me to move things around, to have some influence on my surroundings.
I spent the next days concentrating and trying to push things around. I never managed by sheer force of will, but when I got all enraged with my lack of success, then and only then would I be able to move small item left behind on the floor. So that was how I found out that only rage was strong enough in me to give me the power to affect my environment, and then only in a not so well-directed manner. I practiced for weeks but never managed to cause precise movements, I had to be satisfied with rough pushes.
When the next family moved into the house I was enthusiastic with the prospect of showing them I was there, that I existed and had a way to prove it. In spite of the joy of seeing someone again after all that time, it was easy for me to become angry enough to get into one of my fits of rage. Just being comfronted again with my invisibility to these people was enough to despair me. I focused on one of the little clay figures they had just laid on top of the table after unpacking it from a box, and soon I managed to topple it and make it roll. The woman saw it clearly, but was so busy that probably thought she had not placed it properly. She came to the table, took the figure and made it stood on the mantelpiece, checking it was firm in its place. I got even madder when I saw she had not seen anything strange in the results of my efforts. I used this to concentrate again on the little statuette, and made it slide along the whole mantelpiece and let it fall out of one end. The figure crashed on the floor. The woman had seen it move smoothly and fall and so this time she was scared. She stood there for a while staring at the broken pieces on the floor, and then she run out of the room calling her husband to come.
I wasn't sure things were going well for me, but I did my best to show my presence to every new inhabitant of the house. Unfortunately, all I did was to scare them all. They eventually would leave and contribute to the reputation of the haunted house. Nobody was able ever to stablish a relationship between my actions and the meaning I tried to give them. I made every effort to move, or tilt, those objects more related to whatever was happening at the moment in the house, but nobody seemed to notice there was some logic on the phenomena.
That's how I spent years in the house, sometimes without inhabitants for many months in a row. My psychological state resented from these lonely periods, and also from the frustration involved in having companions who did not know I was around, or who were plainly scared of me.
***
Pain and Pleasure
The first time he met Jane he knew she was perfect for him. She was so beautiful and charming, so naive and incredibly innocent. He realized immediately that he could enjoy her in all three ways. He would enjoy her company and be happy doing things together. He would make love to her like a passionate lover. And he would make her suffer.
He would be able to have her in his fist and cause her pain as he wished. He would first conquer her heart using all his charm and good manners, with no hurry and total dedication. Once she were hooked on him he could start alternating good words with kicks and punches. It would be fun.
So from the first day all his actions were directed to this goal, from the first encounter in which he almost ignored her, to the first dates, in which he was so gallant and devoted. It took months, but soon they were engaged and he started to be more authoritative and use verbal violence to get what he wanted. She was his perfect match and she knew it. She loved him and would let him do whatever he wanted with her.
The plans were laid down in front of her and she just let him drive their lives. They would marry, and buy a house on the outskirts of town. She would leave her job, and take care of the house and the children that would come. He would be free to handle his businesses in the city, and then get some relax at home from her wife; by either making love to her, or punishing her, as his whim would have it.
Choosing the house was not a problem, the perfect one was on sale, and quite cheap. It had been her home during her young years, and she had always loved it, even in spite of the things that happened there. It was far from the city center and a bit isolated, and it had been for sale as a bargain for some time now on account of some rumours of it being haunted. He didn't believe in such things. And she didn't care, it was her house and she knew it.
***
The very moment she came into the house I knew who she was. That slender, good-natured lady still had the bright eyes, the black mane, and the hopeful expression of the little girl who had stolen my heart so many years ago.
I got into an ecstatic state of pure joy when I thought I would spend my time contemplating the life of my lost love, being with her every minute she would spend at the house. I cherished all her movements, tried to guess her thoughts and feelings, moved around the house observing her, and trying to become one with her inner being. I learnt everything I could about her past life from any comment, or small action.
I came to know her better than any real person could have, no matter how close friends they would be. And she did not have that many friends. She was a bit reserved, and shared her life only with a ruthless man who fortunately spent very little time in the house. This relationship I never could fathom entirely. There was this obscure spot in her personality that stayed hidden even from me.
Even though I thought that she would be the one able to understand who, or what I was, I did not dare to show me to her for some time. I first wanted to make sure my movements would be correctly understood. I could not risk another rejection, not from her.
***
The day they moved in she could feel the house had grown up and had got a strong personality. She also felt herself welcome in it, and settled very comfortably from the first moment. They never witnessed any strange phenomenon, but somehow she could sense a mysterious presence that warmed her and comforted her. Robert, now his husband, became a bit suspicious when she would tell him she was so happy while he was in town. Because that was even before he started applying the discipline she so obviously needed.
In spite of the size of the house, she found he could keep it clean and tidy all by herself and still have a lot of free time. And spite her loneliness he enjoyed all her time in the house. She fantasized she could feel the company of the house and even started to talk to it without shame. She would speak out her mind, and confess even her most intimate feelings and thoughts to each room and piece of furniture. Soon she started to notice some form of reply from the house; small movements and noises, some slight vibrations from the wooden floor, soft drafts where there should be none. She wasn't surprised, nor the least frightened. She had been expectant, and she didn't care whether she had finally gone mad, or something really special was happening in her life.
It all started shortly after Robert began hitting her. She didn't care that much about it, but she found some comfort in the house reaction. It seemed angry. It cracked and whined every time he crossed the front door. He began to talk about the problems of an old house, about humidity, and rats. And he started to complain about how she didn't take good care of the house and wasted all her time watching TV and reading stupid books.
She tried to calm the house, talking aloud while alone and explaining why things were OK that way, how he could not change his personality, that she loved him and was married to him. She thought the house could hear her and understand her, and in fact the house stirring never went to bigger effects.
***
Tragic trio
Finally, seeing her suffer her loneliness and the evil treatment from her husband forced me into trying to use my rage to show her she was not alone any more. When she was inmersed in one of her pensive states, I concentrated all my energy in causing a controlled movement of the pen she had laid on the book she was reading, and though the whole book ended up moving in a rather brusque way, she did not seem to be at all shocked. She stared at the book and for a moment I thought I could see a faint smile on her placid face. That's how I knew she had somehow grasped my presence even before I manifested to her physically.
I can't describe the chills that this discovery caused in my morbid and tired mind. After all these years I saw some hope that I could be in rapport with another human being, that some communication was possible.
She never let me see directly that she knew I was there, but her acts told me she was always thinking of me. She started to speak out her thoughts while she was alone in the house, as if to share them with me. She also understood what things made me mad and caused the involuntary trembling I provoked in the whole house. Her husband had also noticed them, but had not acknowledged them because he was frightened and did not want that to show.
So she tried to avoid the quarrels she had with her husband, or make sure they happened outside the house, in the backyard, for example, where even though I could hear them I could not try anything.
That dreadful day had been a very happy one. She felt gay, and was enjoying the good weather, and a few ornaments she had just bought for her favorite room. She was in communion with the house, sharing her fondest memories with it, but on the back of her head she knew it couldn't last. Robert seemed to sense when she was having a good time, and would do a special effort to spoil her day. She knew he would return in a very bad temper from work and her day would be over the moment he stepped into the house.
And so it was. He was shouting even before he opened the front door, angry about this and that. He didn't share her joy for the items she had bought, and only complained about their price, as if they could not afford much better things. She tried to keep her happy mood alive, and that seemed to make him mad. What was the point of having a rage if she didn't get scared? He wanted to see her suffer. He slapped her and threatened her with more, but she was so calm! He wanted her to beg for him to stop. He needed to see terror in her eyes when she looked at him, and not this calm resignation that seemed to be just waiting for it to end so that she could go on being happy as if nothing had happened. That spoiled it all, and he became furious. None of them could have said what was the cause of the quarrel, but he started to hit her really hard, and drove her with punches to the stairs.
He was so furious he did not see the danger. His blows made her lose her balance, and she fell down the stairs, bouncing a couple of times in her fast trajectory to the landing. The odd angle her head took gave him a surreal impression and it took him a while to realize what had happened. He got paralyzed by fear, then by sorrow and regret. The first rule of a sadist is not to spoil your victims. After all they give you pleasure and fun. He loved her his own way and knew he would miss her terribly.
But he did not have much time to think about that. After a few seconds the house began trembling and shaking, its wooden innards moaning and cracking. He thought it was an earthquake, a big one, and planned to take refuge, when a deafening shriek made his ears bleed. At the same time a burning heat attacked his face and hands, so that he did not know how to protect himself from so much pain. Fortunately it did not last long. His body was flung through the air along the corridor, and stamped against the wall with a strength that put him on the verge of collapse. However he stayed conscious to feel his own death, when his heart burst in pieces filling his chest with unbearable pain that stabbed at his left arm and took his breath away.
On his last seconds he thought he saw a bright flame floating in front of him and a couple of eyes watching him from inside it.
For the detective in charge of the case it was very difficult to explain the cause of the man's death, the burns on his face, the bleeding ears, the ripped heart. For the neighbours it all added to the legend of the haunted house. It would take a lot of years and very good marketing to sell that house again.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Chance meetings.
Another short-story. This time set on the Star Wars Tattoine deserts.
It smelled. The whole place was stinky! Foul odours filled his nostrils as he wandered cautiously around his new environment. It was quite dark in there and his eyes had a lot of trouble adapting after a life in the desert under the burning suns, so he wanted to be careful while exploring his surroundings. He was mainly using his sense of smell in his first survey, and he certainly did not like what he was finding. He could detect lots of smells, all of them disgusting of their own, waved into a repulsive mixture. Not that he wasn't used to putrid scents, what with his being a scavenger and having poked his snout inside rotten carcasses more than often. But the volatile substances to which he was being exposed here were beyond the normal range in the chemistry of corruption. Somehow the hot humidity, protected in here from the dry air that desiccates everything on the surface of Tatooine, was allowing something to ferment beyond the thinkable.
However, the objects around him, as he started to distinguish them, were mainly made of metal, ceramic, and plastic, interspersed with loads of computer circuits. He was no thinker, at least not the analytical mind that would realize that the non-organic objects around him could not be the source of those smells, but somehow his instincts told him he had not yet detected the main cause of the odour. They also told him he should not look forward to meet it.
He moved slowly, avoiding the sharp edges that could cut his little feet, and also distrusting the slippery surfaces that could make him lose his grip and fall noisily among all the debris. His long ears turned back and forth, ready to alert him of any suspicious sounds. He was surrounded by a desert-like landscape, with dunes of varied sizes extending in all directions. But it was not sand that these little hills were made of. They were piles of rubbish. He had seen rubbish like that on the real desert sometimes, but never in such quantities.
His eyes were slowly giving him more information and he could distinguish shapes that were somehow familiar, though here they were presented at an angle that somehow did not seem natural. He was even scared more than once when the face of an android would look directly at him from behind a heap of metal cables. Even though androids had never cared about his race, it was in his nature to avoid any moving object greater in size than himself. So it was intimidating to find one staring at him from so close a distance. Fortunately, everything in here was dead and inert, and soon he was stepping on heads without a second thought. He was beginning to get used to the new landscape and was soon daring to jump from pile to pile of clinking rubbish.
Now that he had regained his confidence, he just wanted to find a way out of there. It was obvious there was nothing edible around, so there was no reason to stay either. He kept moving in a straight line looking for the end of that place when he saw a light source on the distance. It looked like an open door to the bright, sunny wastelands outside. He observed it and noticed dark shapes going through it in both directions. It was going to be difficult to cross the opening while avoiding those creatures, whatever they were, but it seemed his only plausible course. He kept scurrying among the junk, but soon he had to slowdown his pace, as he felt a presence nearby. Finally, he was to find out the source of the hideous smell he was hardly getting used to. A meter-tall, dark shape was moving towards him, and from inside the hood that covered his upper part, a couple of bright yellow lights were looking directly at him. He froze, half hypnotized by the glare, trying to overcome the disgust produced by the odour, and the fear caused by the moving creature. Fortunately, the Jawa was not really paying attention and was just walking along a treaded path that others were also using in their busy activity. It just turned to his right and kept moving with the monotonous little steps that made its figure bounce briskly.
The scurrier felt relieved and was letting out a small sigh when he noticed the bodiless head of a robot that was poking from a heap of circuits, laying at a slight angle that made it look like it was just sleeping on a pillow of cables and memory chips. It was made of a golden metal that had not yet lost all its shine, and it was all rounded without any appendices poking out from it. Except from the bottom of its neck, that is, where a few broken connectors were showing. He would have not paid it any attention if not for the slight buzzing sound it seemed to produce. He just looked at it for a second, and was about to continue his stroll, when the metal eyelids opened and revealed two shining blue sparks that pointed at him attentively.
All his muscles tensed, as if by an electric shock. Then he was hypnotized by the robotic stare, and his body relaxed, while keeping his eyes fixed on the mesmerizing lights. Things started happening while nothing moved. Billions of flashes and shadows crossed his mind and somehow made sense, though he could not understand them. Sparks raced through his brain, searched for his frontal lobe and made indelible changes beyond the threshold of his consciousness. When it was all over, he suddenly had a purpose in life. He had never even known what a purpose was, never had a goal beyond finding food or satisfying his immediate needs. He had never thought that life could have a reach beyond that. Now, somehow, he longed to fulfill a task that he wasn't sure what it was exactly, but that somehow would make him feel great once performed.
The problem was he did not know how to get closer to his new purpose, and he would have to wait until the opportunity happened on him. He would live from now on in a perpetual yearning for a situation that he could not bring about by his own means. It would be a little bit frustrating, but somehow it gave him a new enjoyment of life.
All his hopes laid now on a sequence of sounds that were completely foreign to him, but that he kept listening inside his head: 'Obiwankenobi'. He just had a great desire to hear them coming from the outside world. Then he would be able to perform that other sequence that had been engraved in his brain. This one, a sequence of movements, also strange and senseless, but that he intended to perform without hesitation as soon as he was prompted to.
Now he felt a sudden urge to leave that place and start his search in the vast deserts of Tatooine. A new nomadic impulse was going to drive him from now on on his quest for a destiny that could mean a difference in the future of the Galaxy.
It smelled. The whole place was stinky! Foul odours filled his nostrils as he wandered cautiously around his new environment. It was quite dark in there and his eyes had a lot of trouble adapting after a life in the desert under the burning suns, so he wanted to be careful while exploring his surroundings. He was mainly using his sense of smell in his first survey, and he certainly did not like what he was finding. He could detect lots of smells, all of them disgusting of their own, waved into a repulsive mixture. Not that he wasn't used to putrid scents, what with his being a scavenger and having poked his snout inside rotten carcasses more than often. But the volatile substances to which he was being exposed here were beyond the normal range in the chemistry of corruption. Somehow the hot humidity, protected in here from the dry air that desiccates everything on the surface of Tatooine, was allowing something to ferment beyond the thinkable.
However, the objects around him, as he started to distinguish them, were mainly made of metal, ceramic, and plastic, interspersed with loads of computer circuits. He was no thinker, at least not the analytical mind that would realize that the non-organic objects around him could not be the source of those smells, but somehow his instincts told him he had not yet detected the main cause of the odour. They also told him he should not look forward to meet it.
He moved slowly, avoiding the sharp edges that could cut his little feet, and also distrusting the slippery surfaces that could make him lose his grip and fall noisily among all the debris. His long ears turned back and forth, ready to alert him of any suspicious sounds. He was surrounded by a desert-like landscape, with dunes of varied sizes extending in all directions. But it was not sand that these little hills were made of. They were piles of rubbish. He had seen rubbish like that on the real desert sometimes, but never in such quantities.
His eyes were slowly giving him more information and he could distinguish shapes that were somehow familiar, though here they were presented at an angle that somehow did not seem natural. He was even scared more than once when the face of an android would look directly at him from behind a heap of metal cables. Even though androids had never cared about his race, it was in his nature to avoid any moving object greater in size than himself. So it was intimidating to find one staring at him from so close a distance. Fortunately, everything in here was dead and inert, and soon he was stepping on heads without a second thought. He was beginning to get used to the new landscape and was soon daring to jump from pile to pile of clinking rubbish.
Now that he had regained his confidence, he just wanted to find a way out of there. It was obvious there was nothing edible around, so there was no reason to stay either. He kept moving in a straight line looking for the end of that place when he saw a light source on the distance. It looked like an open door to the bright, sunny wastelands outside. He observed it and noticed dark shapes going through it in both directions. It was going to be difficult to cross the opening while avoiding those creatures, whatever they were, but it seemed his only plausible course. He kept scurrying among the junk, but soon he had to slowdown his pace, as he felt a presence nearby. Finally, he was to find out the source of the hideous smell he was hardly getting used to. A meter-tall, dark shape was moving towards him, and from inside the hood that covered his upper part, a couple of bright yellow lights were looking directly at him. He froze, half hypnotized by the glare, trying to overcome the disgust produced by the odour, and the fear caused by the moving creature. Fortunately, the Jawa was not really paying attention and was just walking along a treaded path that others were also using in their busy activity. It just turned to his right and kept moving with the monotonous little steps that made its figure bounce briskly.
The scurrier felt relieved and was letting out a small sigh when he noticed the bodiless head of a robot that was poking from a heap of circuits, laying at a slight angle that made it look like it was just sleeping on a pillow of cables and memory chips. It was made of a golden metal that had not yet lost all its shine, and it was all rounded without any appendices poking out from it. Except from the bottom of its neck, that is, where a few broken connectors were showing. He would have not paid it any attention if not for the slight buzzing sound it seemed to produce. He just looked at it for a second, and was about to continue his stroll, when the metal eyelids opened and revealed two shining blue sparks that pointed at him attentively.
All his muscles tensed, as if by an electric shock. Then he was hypnotized by the robotic stare, and his body relaxed, while keeping his eyes fixed on the mesmerizing lights. Things started happening while nothing moved. Billions of flashes and shadows crossed his mind and somehow made sense, though he could not understand them. Sparks raced through his brain, searched for his frontal lobe and made indelible changes beyond the threshold of his consciousness. When it was all over, he suddenly had a purpose in life. He had never even known what a purpose was, never had a goal beyond finding food or satisfying his immediate needs. He had never thought that life could have a reach beyond that. Now, somehow, he longed to fulfill a task that he wasn't sure what it was exactly, but that somehow would make him feel great once performed.
The problem was he did not know how to get closer to his new purpose, and he would have to wait until the opportunity happened on him. He would live from now on in a perpetual yearning for a situation that he could not bring about by his own means. It would be a little bit frustrating, but somehow it gave him a new enjoyment of life.
All his hopes laid now on a sequence of sounds that were completely foreign to him, but that he kept listening inside his head: 'Obiwankenobi'. He just had a great desire to hear them coming from the outside world. Then he would be able to perform that other sequence that had been engraved in his brain. This one, a sequence of movements, also strange and senseless, but that he intended to perform without hesitation as soon as he was prompted to.
Now he felt a sudden urge to leave that place and start his search in the vast deserts of Tatooine. A new nomadic impulse was going to drive him from now on on his quest for a destiny that could mean a difference in the future of the Galaxy.
