Authors: Matilde Asensi
The discovery chilled me. With each new step I ascended, my perspective of the situation kept evolving. We had entered there with an erroneous idea, an idea that had blinded us to the truth. None of us had planned that by accessing the secret knowledge of the Yatiri, we were going to come into possession of a unique power, capable of things as extraordinary as what had happened to my brother. But there was someone who perhaps had thought of it, and for that reason was so aggressively facing off against her possible competitors. Did Dr. Torrent act like that because she hoped to find out just how far our ambitions reached regarding that strange and dangerous privilege? Was it she who coveted it? Yes, it was, but for what? To publish her discovery in anthropology journals and receive academic accolades? From this new facet, those purposes seemed ridiculous. What government in the world would leave such a capability in the hands of a university professor? So that’s why she had told me, when she had called me at home, that she couldn’t leave Daniel’s material in my hands, and that it was a very delicate situation! What had her exact words been? “If just one of the papers you have in your possession gets lost or falls into the wrong hands, it would be a catastrophe for the academic world.” For the academic world or for the world in general? “You cannot imagine how important that material is.” No, perhaps at the time I hadn’t been able to imagine it, but now I could, and it was vital that the professor not have access to the Yatiri’s knowledge.
When the staircase ended, I found myself facing an impressive wall of stone blocks in the middle of a dark passage that trailed off into the darkness in both directions. If our calculations were correct, that was the exterior wall of the chamber of the Traveler, the chamber of the horned serpent, so the passages would form a square walkway around it, and we would get to the entrance by going either way.
“At last!” Proxi sighed when she arrived next to me.
I leaned toward her quickly and spoke in her ear.
“Lola, listen to me carefully: The professor can’t go inside the chamber with us.”
“Are you crazy?” she exclaimed, drawing back to look at me. Her headlamp blinded me for a few seconds. I blinked, seeing a thousand little lights imprinted on my retina.
“We can’t allow her inside, Lola. She wants the power of words.”
“So do we.”
“What are you two whispering about?” Jabba asked in a powerful voice, with his foot on the last step. The professor appeared just behind.
Lola looked at me as if I’d gone crazy and turned toward him.
“Nothing. Just some of Root’s nonsense.”
“Well, don’t give me any more of your nonsense, Root.”
“Root?” Marta Torrent asked, surprised. “Why do they call you ‘Root’?”
“It’s my…,” How annoying, to have to explain internet handles to a neophyte! “My nickname, my tag. On the internet, we call each other by pseudonyms. Everyone does it. ‘Root’ comes from the name of the main directory of any computer, the root directory. On computers with a Unix operating system, it refers to the main user.”
“And what are yours?” she asked Marc and Lola, very interested.
“Mine is Proxi and Marc’s is Jabba. Proxi comes from Proxy, the name of a machine that acts as a server for accessing the internet but stores the content of pages in its memory so the next visits are faster. It’s like a filter that speeds up the process, and that, at the same time, defends the user from viruses, worms, and all the other junk floating around the internet. I work in the security department of Ker-Central,” she justified herself, “Arnau’s company. Root’s. That’s where ‘Proxi’ comes from.”
“And Jabba?” the professor insisted, looking at the redheaded worm who had a menacing look on his face.
“Jabba doesn’t mean anything,” he seethed, turning his back on her and going into the passage on the right.
“Really?” she asked, surprised. “Nothing?”
Lola and I looked at each other, anxious, and lowering my voice, I asked the professor not to press the issue.
“Well, it sounds familiar,” she remarked in a whisper. “I think I’ve heard it before.”
“
Star Wars
,” Proxi muttered, giving her the necessary clue.
“
Star Wa…
?” then she seemed to suddenly remember what character we were talking about, because she opened her eyes wide and smiled. “Ah, of course, of course. Now I get it.”
“Well, don’t tell him,” I said, going after Jabba, who was walking away, annoyed. When I got to him, I put an arm around his shoulders, buddy style, and told him softly: “We can’t let the professor go inside the chamber.”
“Don’t be paranoid, my friend. We still don’t know if we will be able to get inside ourselves.”
“Do you really think she only wants the power of words to publish her discovery in a journal?”
Jabba seemed to get it right away, and, giving me a look of complicity, slowly moved his head, nodding.
The passage was immense. Despite being on a higher level, and therefore a smaller one in the pyramid, the central chamber was enormous, of huge dimensions, based on the time we spent walking half of one of its four sides. There, the ground was firm and the air shadowy and hard to breathe, full of invisible particles that lent it weight and consistency. But as we advanced slowly
through that spacious high-ceilinged tunnel, we were accompanied by the positive sensation that we were reaching the end, that on the other side of the wall on our left was the secret for which we had crossed the Atlantic. My only cause for worry was Marta Torrent. I couldn’t think of how we could stop her, how to block her way into the chamber.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said at that moment, breaking the silence to address the three of us.
“Go ahead,” Jabba grumbled.
“How have you been able to learn the Aymara language in so little time?”
“We haven’t learned Aymara,” I replied, still panting from the walk. “We used an automatic translator we found on my brother’s computer.”
“Don’t tell me,” the professor joked, with a cold expression that belied any supposed humor. “‘JoviLoom.’”
“You know it?” Proxi was surprised.
Marta Torrent laughed.
“How could I not know it? It’s mine.” She declared, very satisfied.
“Of course it is,” I spit, sarcastic. “Everything is yours, isn’t that right, professor? ‘JoviLoom,’ ‘JoviKey,’ the Autonomous University of Barcelona…. And why not the world, right professor? The world is also yours, or if it’s not yet, it will be, isn’t that right?”
She chose to ignore my diatribe.
“You have ‘JoviKey,’ too? Well, well….”
A nuclear war was about to break out in the passage. For having dared to say that my brother Daniel had also stolen those programs, I was going to leave her tied up in that pyramid so she could die of fear.
“Do you know what the names of those programs mean?” she asked us, defiant.
“‘Jovi’s Loom’?” Proxi responded gruffly. “‘Jovi’s Key’?”
“Yes, actually,” she said, “Jo-vi’s. My husband, Joffre Viladomat’s.”
A strong peal of understanding rang in my mind and stopped me cold, shaking me as if my head had been used as the clapper of a bell.
“Joffre Viladomat?” I stuttered. That was the name the house system had shown me on the screen when Dr. Torrent had called.
Everyone stopped to look at me, and the one who did it with the greatest satisfaction was the professor, who couldn’t hide her cruel little smile of triumph.
“Joffre Viladomat. ‘Jovi’ to friends, since his university years.”
“Your husband is a programmer?” Jabba asked suspiciously.
“No, my husband is an economist and lawyer. He has a company in the Philippines that acts as an intermediary between the production areas of Southeast Asian exports and Spanish companies.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Marc muttered.
“Joffre buys products made in Southeast Asia and sells them to interested companies. You could say he’s a kind of intermediary who facilitates the acquisition of merchandise by Spanish companies at a low cost of production. His office is in Manila, and from there, he buys and sells everything from jeans to electronics to soccer balls to software. I asked him two years ago for a couple of applications to translate Aymara and to password protect my laptop. Joffre ordered the programs from a Filipino software company, and, after a few months, sent me ‘JoviKey’ and ‘JoviLoom,’ which had been designed according to my specifications and my databases.”
“In other words, what you’re saying is that your husband,” Proxi, who had gone red from
rage, slowly pronounced, “buys products manufactured in subhuman conditions by third world slave-workers and sells them to well-known Spanish brands that, in this way, save the costs and taxes associated with a factory in our country and keep from paying social security for Spanish workers?”
Marta smiled with a mix of irony and regret.
“I see you are familiar with the global economic panorama. Yes, in fact, Joffre does precisely that for a living. And he’s not the only one, of course.”
I would have been able to see on her face and in her voice the subtle indication of some kind of complicated personal history behind her words, but I wasn’t disposed to subtleties at that moment. In fact, I felt so demoralized and destroyed that nothing that wasn’t the horrible nightmare of having discovered that my brother had stolen those programs (and who knows, maybe the documents we had found in his office as well, just as the professor had always maintained), nothing, I repeat, could have gotten through my mental barriers. It was incredible, unthinkable that Daniel had done such a thing. My brother was not like that, he was not a thief, he was not a guy who took things that belonged to someone else, he didn’t know how to steal, he’d never done it, and besides, he didn’t need to. Why would he want to sneak off with someone else’s, his boss’s, research material, if he had a fantastic career ahead of him and could achieve much more in just a few years by his own efforts? Why’s and more why’s…. Why did he have to take those two programs and make me doubt him and his honor now while he remained ill in a hospital bed, incapable of defending himself? Damn it, Daniel! I would have been able to give you much better applications than those two good-for-nothing ‘Jovi’ pieces of junk! Did you need an automatic Aymara translator? Well, if you’d just asked, if you’d just asked! I would have moved heaven and earth to get it for you!
“Arnau.”
I’ve told you so many times, Daniel! Ask me for whatever you need. But you, 'no, no, I don’t need anything'. Okay, but if you need something, ask me. 'Yes, of course, I’ll ask you'. You never did accept my help willingly, you always made that expression of yours of wrinkling your brow without saying anything. But why did you have to take those two programs? Your brother was a programmer and had a software company, for Christ’s sake, and dozens of programmers working for him! Did you have to get your hands dirty stealing the software from your boss, from that Marta Torrent you criticized so much? And why did you criticize her, huh?
You
were the one stealing from
her
! Why, why did you criticize her? Why did you accuse her of taking advantage of your work if you were the one taking advantage of hers?
“Arnau!”
“What!” I yelled. “What, what, what!”
My voice hit the stone walls and I woke up. In front of me I had Marc, Lola, and the professor, looking at me with worried expressions.
“Are you alright?” Lola asked me.
From habit, I suppose, I automatically did a quick check. No, I was not alright, I felt bad, very bad.
“Well, of course I’m alright!” I assured her, turning toward her.
Marc broke in.
“Hey, you! Stop, okay? You don’t have to talk to her like that!”
“Both of you, calm down!” Lola yelled, pulling Marc back with one hand. “It’s okay, Arnau, don’t worry. We’re going to calm down, okay?”
“I want to get out of here,” I said bitterly.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Queralt,” the professor murmured, blocking my movement back toward the staircase. A silly gesture on my part, because really, there was no return path. There was no exit. But at that moment, I didn’t care. I wasn’t aware of what I was doing or saying.
“What is it you’re sorry for?” I replied, disgusted.
“I’m sorry for having hurt you.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“In part, it is, because I wanted you to discover the truth and I haven’t passed up a single opportunity to make it happen, without stopping to think that it could hurt you.”
“What the hell do you know?” I aggressively rebuked her. “Leave me alone!”
“Pull it together,” Jabba said from behind me.
“I’ll do as I please. All of you, leave me alone,” and, dropping my bag, I crumpled like a rag doll, sliding slowly to the floor with my back resting against the wall of the chamber. “I just need a few minutes. Go on without me. I’ll catch up.”
“How can we leave you here, Root?” Proxi fretted, kneeling in front of me and looking around, toward some rough and disquieting shadows. “Have you forgotten that we’re many feet below ground, shut inside a pre-Columbian pyramid hundreds or thousands of years old?
“Leave me, Proxi. Give me a minute.”
“Don’t be a child, Root,” she admonished affectionately. “We know that was a low blow, that you’re exhausted, but you have to understand we can’t leave you here.”
“Give me a minute,” I repeated.
She sighed and got to her feet. After a few seconds, I heard them move away, and their lights were lost to sight. I stayed there alone, with my headlight as my only illumination, sitting on the ground with my arms on my bent knees, thinking. Thinking of my (literally) brain-dead brother, of that idiot who had been capable of doing something so stupid. Suddenly I felt I didn’t really know him. I had always thought that he had his eccentricities and his depths, like everyone, but now I suspected that they were larger and darker than what I had believed. Tons of images of him passed through my head, fragments of conversations maintained over the years, and, mysteriously, the incomplete and partial impressions began forging concrete ideas that better fit the details I had never taken the time to analyze. Daniel laughing at me because I had gotten everything I had without setting foot in a university; Daniel proclaiming in front of the family that I was living proof that not studying was much more profitable than ruining one’s eyesight on books as he did; Daniel always without a euro in his pocket despite his magnificent career, and with a wife and son to take care of; Daniel accepting money from our mother through gritted teeth and systematically rejecting any offer of help from me…. Daniel Cornwall, my brother, the guy the whole world appreciated for his cordiality and his indelible smile. Yes, okay, so it was clear that guy had always wanted to have something similar to what I had, and wanted to have it without working as hard as he did for much less, for almost nothing, in the university. What other explanation could there be? Now that I thought about it, unfortunately, I remembered that Daniel had always been the first to support that stupid idea my family had about me, according to which fortune had always smiled on me and luck had followed me my whole life.