CHRONOTOURISM

By Luis Arbaiza. Lima, Perú, 2017, Hard science Fiction.

Distressed Lima

Violent Lima

Unfair Lima

Morbid Lima

Lima with nothing

Lima, sordid.

Astalculo. Leusemia

 ILUSTRATION JORGE MIÑO

I wasted a lot of money on that trip. I regret. I was encouraged because I had never done tourism: I had never left my town, let's say. I hesitated, but a friend convinced me. I did not know that I would have two of the saddest weeks of my life.

The place I visited was beautiful in its own way. People were close, like cousins ​​or neighbors. A "place" that I always wanted to know. I was amazed by the strange rather than beautiful buildings: colonial architecture stacked against another ultramodern, and both blurred by neglect. But nothing calmed the melancholy that little by little turned into despair.

She came home. I had promised him something in exchange for spending the last night together and leaving me at the port. I imagined that the happiness of having her close would give way to another form of pleasure (which I would later compare with some romance on the trip). But it was a dawn of anguish and frustrated eroticism. Disappointed, I considered it unnecessary to comply with the agreement.

I explained it to her in the taxi to the time port. But I think she was counting on my promise in exchange for her company, even if it would have been painful. I felt frivolous and was perhaps prey to an interested game that used my desire and then made me ashamed of it. Both frustrated, I got out of the taxi. I tried to give her a hug when going down as a farewell, since I deduced that he would no longer accompany me. The taxi took her away without my hug. I walked through the lonely morning to the offices. 15 days of boredom and morbid jealousy began. I arrived at the agency, everything was paid for. I walked over to the clerk and handed over her luggage. I could only wear neutral clothing to avoid contamination.

They retained much of what i was wearing: i was unaware how modern almost everything i had packed was.

—"It's the first time I've traveled," —I told the manager. — Orient me please, what should I do?

—"Don't worry, it will be easy." I will help you.

The procedures were indeed simple, but i feared that if i made a mistake or neglected a detail, i would not be able to travel. I wish it had been so. She went through my paperwork. The boredom of these procedures would foreshadow the endless bureaucracy of the next two weeks. Every effort to entertain me led to thinking of her sadly and in dull, endless pain.

—"We will make a stopover in about ten years ago, but do not go out, almost immediately we will turn towards the final destination." Here you have your papers. Do you have a place to stay?

—"Yes, I hired a lodging."

—Congratulations there is a list of beautiful places to visit.

She said it with guilty cynicism: it was a cheap destination given the ugliness of that time.

The time-port facilities were like a very clean factory. Too young and introverted physiques rubbed shoulders with elegant administrators. The unification of physics (the long-awaited theory of everything) had brought physics to its final goal and there was no more to know. Unfortunately human life had not changed. However, the industry quickly managed to exploit and turn this theoretical feat into a few vulgar commercial applications. I queued up with other stylish travelers. The sadness of that impossible hug was decomposing me and my face dislodged. Everyone around me seemed so happy. I have spent my life looking at the happiness of others from the outside.

We entered the facilities. The place was cramped. The ship had to be as small as possible to be profitable. Suddenly we feel as if we are crashing. A rough break, but not of matter, but of time, scared us. Paradoxically time travel did not take long ... time. Instantly we were already in another era. We still did not leave transportation, but we knew that everything we loved or knew no longer existed, the world we would visit was another and the same, our contemporaries were not yet born and it was possible that they were not even born. But traveling to the past is not spoiling the present. He had already read it several times in a cheap company brochure that explained it succinctly:… trips to the past are part of the past, the future is not altered. If these trips were not made, if it could be altered ... blah, blah, blah ...

Silence and nervousness persisted in the capsule. This time, we were all uncomfortable. The air was very hot. It was normal: entropy flooded the contraption that played with the direction of time. They began about two hours of routine to leave the chrono-port.

The facilities, despite being already in another era, were familiarly modern. However, through the windows you can see that old and frightening Lima. I looked at the passersby. It was incredible to think that all these people were already dead or very old. A small, rickety car, of that model they called a "beetle," took me to my apartment. The taxi driver spoke to me, ignoring that I was a visitor from the future. I recognized the peculiarities of language, low-class Lima residents still did not copy the upper-class touch and their conversation revealed a somewhat small-town worldview. We went through streets that I knew, but they were different. The civic center was gray and looked like an abandoned alien city, beautiful, sophisticated and sad, like a symphony played by a beggar. In my time it would be a squeaky shopping center like an immense Norkis, the scene for a richer but more ignorant society, perhaps happier too. No buildings on Wilson Avenue were painted: they were gray with lime soot and their walls were littered with torn faded advertisements. The old-fashioned fashion made people look even more humble and Peruvians, who are already ugly enough, were even more so. I rehearsed my impromptu erudition by speaking to the driver as if I were a man from that time. It seems it worked. Only at the end of the trip, on a street on Av. Washington, did I reveal to the driver that I was a tourist. He was not surprised. Those days came many. He even said that a sister of his was married to one of us. That seemed illegal, it was also a paradoxical form of necrophilia.

My landlords welcomed me in those ugly clothes from 1980. He was thick and hairy, raised in the 50's to be a men. She, precociously old, but secure in the monotony of her marriage. The couple had survived the dangers of youth and would grow old together. There were still the "poor but decent" and certain chivalrous details in the man and the lady enchanted me. The woman was silent and seemed, despite the difficult neighborhood, to have grown up in a bubble of innocence. In my time there were no longer innocent people, no gentlemen in any social class. We communicated well and my modern money paid off. Due to anachronism, they considered it necessary to talk with me for about 15 minutes. I wanted them to leave immediately to do what I was urging.

He had paid in contemporary currency. Then I knew that the change did not suit me. There was a black market where he could change to current currency more advantageously.

But the most urgent thing I wanted was to talk on the phone and hope that she would "forgive me." I left. The streets were scary. The vices that happily dominate the modern downtown of Lima at night now, in 1980, were not happy, but lived with guilt and with its respective punishment, generally self-inflicted. Those two things, guilt and punishment, had already disappeared in my time, but not the evil that caused them. I hurriedly changed my money and then it seemed to me that the money changer was a modern man, I distrusted. Ocoña was also a dangerous street.

He had studied what to call the future. He had to go to the chrono-port, the only authorized place, and dial in certain complicated codes.

I asked the money changer how to go.

—"It's not necessary, there are some booths in Plaza San Martín," —he said.

I went, on foot, the park gardens were dry. The floor was dirty with dirt, but in general those who walked it were decent people.

For a small fee I called my time from those chrono-telephone booths. There was not much to look for, there were several. But I could not communicate, the calls did not work, I thought I had made a mistake in the complex procedure and asked for help. In the end and after so many explanations I discovered that the cabins were fine. She didn't want to answer or maybe she couldn't.

I looked for food. I would not go to restaurants or famous places. I had embarked on a reality tourism (beginner's mistake) so I looked for street food and began to leave the normal journey. I should not make my own circuit, since I had signed an agreement to only visit certain scheduled places, but I did not want to obey. Tourism is 90% simulacrum and I wanted the real thing, even if it wasn't pretty. Actually, nothing seemed pretty to me anymore, I wanted to go back. The food was good, but I ate without taste. Lima was sad, and I was even sadder. I had methodically written down activities for each day so as not to get bored. I started with the plan, but the weather was either hard or too soft to enjoy. The impatience of these activities bored me. Everything was lackluster. He called about ten more times that day, rather, that night, but she never answered, it rang 2 or 3 times and then the answering machine, others sent me directly to the voicemail, her cell phone was off or she had blocked me, never I understood the logic of those devices and preferred not to know it to allow myself a modicum of hope. The weather in Lima was getting uglier and uglier. I found tourism frustrating. Cities and men are alike everywhere. The fundamental thing is there: men and women falling in love, people in a relationship, families, jobs, cares, some with a plan and most with a routine. Everything that the history books highlighted as singular from the 80's was actually secondary: terrorism, crisis, punk movement, death of the industry… Everything seemed distant, abstract. I made an effort to look for the different. Exist I was, yes, but it didn't seem to satisfy me. I looked closely for differences, but found few. I visited beautiful things, but I refused to take photos, the photos might look nice but the moment I was living in them was not.

That's why the tourism industry existed, because life was really the same and boring everywhere. I walked savoring the boredom, I tried to talk to people: they are supposed to be the most interesting. Suddenly a young man approached me:

- If you have brought things we can buy them.

—"I didn't bring anything," — I told him.

-There's always something.

—I looked, in his pocketi had a cheap device.

—"I'll buy it to you."

—I assumed it was valuable there. It was forbidden to exchange things with the "locals". But the offer, although not very advantageous, was something, it reduced the waste of money that was this silly trip.

I was looking a little astonished at the young salesman. This one told me:

—"I see you're looking at everything scared." —Do I look like a ghost or what?

—"Yes," —I said brutally. It amazes me to see you as alive as the people of my time, although all of you are already dead.

—But I'm alive, brother. I feel.

That's where my doubts began. I thought that in chrono-tourism only the past was visited, that is, dead time, not another present: this world no longer truly existed. Only the present where I came from was real, these people I saw on the streets were actually appearances or some sterile form of time. They were automatons because they were not free, their future was already determined, their decisions, their destiny was fixed. On the other hand, in my present nothing was determined, we were free, we could decide. Our future was not determined, so there were trips to the past, but not to the future. Well, the past is immobile, we have already done it, the future is yet to be done and it could have any shape. While these people were physically real, they didn't feel anything inside, they would be empty of consciousness. I just looked at his empty demeanor like a moving museum diorama… But I wasn't sure and I didn't comment on that to the buyer. However, I think he had already intuited it.

—"For me, you were not born." You do not exist. But your money does.

Was he right? So now there was no one in my world except me, and the present was 1980. But I thought that if it were, I wouldn't feel that sadness thinking about her. I imagined her walking with someone else, or perhaps in some sordid scene. Why wasn't she answering? We all love someone and it was obvious that she must also love someone ... that someone was not me, so she could infer that ...

There was no time to think about time. I went to another chrono-phone booth. It was too late, there was only one left open, and therefore at an abusive price. It was run by an Andean man, rough and cold, at this time the city was not his yet, he was still a stranger and Lima hated him. Like to me. I dialed the number over and over again. Hectic. Desperate. The concierge, a mature black woman, told me with that affection given to any of the old Creoles:

- All good nephew?

I didn't answer him, in the style of my time.

And miraculously, the phone on the other side of 50 years went off the hook.

- How are you? -said.

—"Good," —her dry voice answered me.

-I'm here.

—"Well, I hope you never come back," —she exploded, with a hatred that I didn't expect.

—"Don't say that," —I begged beaten. —"Where are you?"

—In San Isidro.

- What are you doing?

—"I'm in a car."

- Are you on a bus?

-Do not. In a car, —she said raising her voice and exaggerating her irritation.

She didn't drive or live around. We were both from poor neighborhoods. Perhaps it was a collective.

- Are you in a bus? - I asked for

—"No," —she said.

I did not want to know more. I didn't dare ask what she was doing. I would not bear the truth. But reasonable suspicion of what was happening in the future made me sick.

- Can I call you back?

—"If you want ... I don't care," —she said, and she hung up mercilessly.

The sleepy black mama seemed to understand everything just by looking at my face and she looked at me with pity. The owner, with cold violence. They both knew that she was with someone else. I tried to convince myself that it was not so.

I walked down the street. A very cold wind blew between the buildings blackened with soot as if stained at night. What anguish I lived in that place, I will not relate that, it would be obscene. I will only note that it was like the desperation of a man who grabs onto a railing so as not to fall into an abyss and suddenly sees it loosen.

—No ... —I said aloud while I walked alone —No!

It would be useless to call again. Perhaps she would hear worse. I knew what I would think of her all night. I tried to entertain myself in abstract things so as not to brood endlessly: The past where I am is only a memory. But what if it was a present as valid as the one I left? I had always thought of the universe as a path from the past to the future on which the present traveled alone. And that present was only one, the one that I had left. But now there were at least two. And there were others. All those present where the chrono-tourism led exist. But why do I only live one present and not simultaneously the other? Do we travel in time, but we are not made of time, but of matter. And isn't time something that happens to things and not a thing in itself? Perhaps consciousness gave reality to the time that it inhabited and not the other way around. That is to say, all universal history, each epoch, is real. Not just a memory or an expectation. By traveling to the past I gave reality to that past and killed the time from which it came. But at that time there were also conscious people who gave reality to their time ... that's why when one dies, time does not disappear from the world ...

I mean, now she doesn't exist.

No. She existed in all ages.

There was no use in trying, I always ended up thinking about her and her words. Dawn came and I was already in front of my accommodation. My landlords dreamed without guessing the hell their host lived. At least now he could sleep a few hours and it would be a day closer to the return. I decided not to go out again. But after a few days it was impossible. Had to go out.

There was a curfew, yet there were lonely walkers in the streets. Violent youths dominated the squares. The field of Mars park was abandoned with overgrown grass and was used by couples for immodest acts. Sex was not as playful as in my time, here it implied some evil.

I saw groups drinking, some marginal, others wealthy. Although they were dedicated to the same, they did not mix, the differences of that time were really hard, Lima apartheid, how would I be judged? At least in my time my skin color was not so important. I went to the Colón cinema. It smelled strongly of urine. An effeminate man in his forties entered adult cinema ashamed, inside ruffians and family members rubbed shoulders, believing themselves safe from "that world" despite what they did. At this time, homosexuals lived their homosexuality as an incurable disease. A gay was a broken man.

He haunted me like a drug addict. Love is addiction, that is why it is determined by the same neurotransmitters. I saw closed canteens, but inside there was frightening laughter. I had to get tired to sleep and let another day go by. But time ... did not pass like that flooded night.

A man sold cigars. I asked him for one. When he was going to light my cigarette — a lost habit — something amazing happened:

A cell phone rang in his pocket and he answered.

As he spoke his face seemed familiar to me. His manners ...

—"You're from the present, that is to say from mine," —I said, interrupting him.

—"Yes paisa," —he said. He spoke with an overstated edge of my time. He was a tourist who had stayed here, rather a migrant. There were people so desperate in the future that they decided to travel to live in the past illegally.

—"I thought it was forbidden, where did you get the cell phone?"

—"You can get anything," —he told me. The government turns a blind eye.

I also assumed that the telephone companies had installed some plants at this time or it would be impossible for the equipment to work.

I then left the historic center. Far from the old Lima I found somewhat old computers, but with internet. Tía stores sold knick-knacks of the time, but also priceless digital equipment. And on the street pirate sales of cds records by artists who were not yet born, on the sidewalks of cinemas that premiered films that nobody would remember as genius, on the floor, between outdated encyclopedias and erotic books, I saw titles by authors who still couldn't write: Requiem for Lima, Thecnetos, A Peruvian in Space, Chronicle of the Black Temple, Plot for the unwary, it was impossible!

Had I never left the present? Perhaps this city was a hoax. They have assembled an eighties center of Lima, a small medieval, an incan, but all the time I had been in my present. I had never left my time, the only time. To verify my hypothesis, I decided to take a bus on the Enatru line and travel far and wide, wherever I went. No assembly in Lima could be as big as Lima itself, there I spent a few hours sitting on the bus that was fuming thick smoke and corroborating that no one could assemble the entire city, the river, the hills now without houses, the sea. The city seemed to have no end. This was not a simulated city. It was really the past.

I took a taxi back to my lodging. It was an old, heavy and wide car: a speedboat, but there were at least two modern gadgets in it. I could not understand.

Perhaps i was lost in a hybrid of 1980 and 2030, an ambiguous time from which he could not return. Was that why they prohibited us from leaving the tourist circuit? Perhaps my sadness had lost me in this indefinite time, where was it?

Upon entering my accommodation, I found my landlord in bivirí. Her neck and his big hands were red. He smelled like liquor and had those ugly desires to talk to strangers about drunks. He looked at my face in dismay. I think I had seen it in many travelers.

—"Make no mistake, it's not the future, it's just future things in the past," —he rasped.

I was overwhelmed. I was afraid he would force me to drink with him. He looked like a heavy and perhaps violent drunk.

- Can I call from your phone?

He nodded his head.

—"You don't need to give a code, direct dial," —he said something bossy.

Amazed, I called her to the future. She answered immediately with an innocent and somewhat sad voice, the voice of a lonely woman.

- Hello? ...

But I didn't answer her. I just listened. A clean silence surrounded her. She was alone. She knew that I was there thinking about her. That i was her. And for a few seconds she was mine, i had kidnapped her from her world to be alone with me through that call. I didn't need more. I was grateful that she didn't hang up on me. I did it gently.

The strong landlord looked at me like a compadre, he had waited impatiently and would start talking to me about things and people that I did not know or care about, so I avoided him.

- How can i communicate with the future just like that?

"There is no such future." Everything is present. I mean, we are all together, ” —he was speaking against his commitments as a tourist official for alcohol.

—"But isn't there a distance from one present to another?"

-Yes. Look boy, it's true, but they are all real. Besides, you will discover that they are not only real, they are the same —and he calmly explained everything to me until suddenly he fell asleep and his wife came for him.

Years of chronotourism had contaminated the times, the citizens of the past were not resigned to living out of date, and smuggling had transformed the past, to the point of blurring it. Lima in 1980 was a city injected with the present. Only the tourist part remained almost the same, Lima was a mixed city between the old and the modern, but that mixture was also cheap as any imitation, that is to say, alienated. Chrono-tourism culturally contaminated the past that soon became indistinguishable from the present. Not only these two epochs, all the epochs were homogenizing in an equal and common meta-present. Time travel destroyed the timeline, which had previously been a border, now everything became a solid network that connected the different epochs that became simultaneous and equal: corrupted time.

I went into my room and waited the last few days. I did not dare to go out to that terrible city that was neither 1980 nor 2030. It was any date. I did not see the landlord again. When the 2 weeks were up, the company that organized these accommodations contacted me directly to return the security deposit. Happily it was the last day. In the Volkswagen that drove me to the chrono-port, I looked at that strange city, so real, that is, against all logic, real. The road was very well set up to look like the past, but I already knew it was a tourist hoax. Yes it was the past, but….

The taxi driver arrived and said goodbye:

-Good trip. I hope you enjoyed it.

Those words hurt me, I know he did not say it with irony. But with them he caught up with me and overcame everything he suffered those two weeks. Full of anger and stammering with the desire to cry, I responded violently:

"Yes, I go back to a real time." There we are free because we have no future, only the past. That is why there are no trips to the future ...

- And where are you traveling? To the future, that there are no trips to the future… ha, —he said mechanically to depreciate me. Then he left me at the chrono-port. I didn't care for his rudeness, I wanted to get rid of that dire time.

In the chrono port I still had to wait a few hours at dawn, in the lonely waiting rooms I made an uncomfortable bed with some chairs. Despite the cruel white light, I was able to sleep. It didn't take me a couple of seconds to fall asleep deeply. I entered a hollow dream, without images and without time even passing within it, which is the movement of things or appearances. There I was still far from mine that fifty years in the future did not yet exist.

Lima would seem very beautiful to me when I return. At the end of my return trip I would go to see her. Her face would show some boredom, though a slight smile would betray her indifferent facade of hers. A few hours of chatting would make a gesture of understanding appear on her face, of pleasure to be by my side. Miraculously i had made her need me. It would still take her a long time to find out. Perhaps that moment i would spend with her gazing at her was the future of one era or the lost past of another, or a fleeting fraction of eternity, solid and unchanged. I would only know that by looking into her eyes i was happily trapped in an eternal present with her. And nothing could take me away from that place.

 

But while i slept on the makeshift bed of chrono-port chairs, that still hadn't happened.

Luis Arbaiza. Lima. Perú. 2017. Hard science Fiction