with evolutionary requirements in order to present them as Truth. But what really, then, is softness, blueness, sweetness? What is the real appearance of the world? What does “real” mean? Is it correct to speak of an “appearance”?
And yet, all of these fictions come to me. I receive them and they constitute my world. They define me. I exist insofar as it is I who experiences these lies. In the world everything happens to me. I am the collection of reactions and emotions aroused by the farce put on by my brain—like one who plays chess with himself. Wouldn’t it be fair to say of love, hate, hope, pleasure, and, in short, of all emotions unleashed in answer to the existence of that supposed “exterior world” of which our senses speak to us—wouldn’t it be fair to say of them the same thing we’ve said of colors? Is it possible that existence is not a feat of balance? Created from nothing, sustained by nothing, and sought by nothing, aren’t we, every single one of us, but a single step away from dissolution? What separates us from the void?
Nothing separates us from the void. We carry it within.
We are the void.
2. A DILIGENT EXECUTIVE / LABORATORY No. 3
I’m executive vice president of the Research and Development Division of the local branch of Eli Lilly. I’m in charge of twenty-eight plant chemists divided among five laboratories. I enjoy the confidence of my superiors and have a flexible schedule, and recently my name has been included on the list of executives with clearance to access confidential documents and the restricted substances stored in the vault on the ninth floor. I’m not a bureaucrat imprisoned in an inaccessible office; I labor away at the same lab bench as the rest of the employees, singeing my eyebrows over the Bunsen burner and graduating solutions into beakers like an apprentice. No one who has ever seen me at my place of work has ever seen me without my lab coat, cranking away.
I’m the only child of an affluent couple who, upon their deaths, left me all of their assets; in order to enjoy them the only thing I need to do is, well, simulate life. The fact that I’m independently wealthy doesn’t make me soft; I’m no spoiled brat. I arrive early, before my coworkers. For a time I used the main entrance. The shift guard would open the door for me and bid me a good morning in a rugged voice. He was friendly and respectful. A few weeks later I became certain that he was a zombie. It wasn’t the steel in his voice that gave him away, or the strong aroma of muskroot on his breath; I knew from the increasing tone of familiarity with which he began to treat me. It’s relatively easy to fool a living person, but not another zombie. The guard had discovered my secret, and now he behaved as though some sort of brotherhood united us. I considered rebuffing him and, in so doing, regaining the lost distance between us, but I decided that it would be best not to arouse suspicions or to enmesh myself in gratuitous enmity. And so I began to use a side entrance near the dumpsters.
As they arrive to work, the members of my team proceed to their workstations in their assigned laboratories and take up whatever tasks were left over from the previous day. Each laboratory is dedicated to a specific project (the confidentiality clause in my contract prevents me from offering further details) divided into aspects or phases of analysis. These phases are executed at the different workstations by groups of up to three scientists coordinated by a lab manager who reports to me every two weeks. It is my habit, nonetheless, to supervise each station personally at least twice a week.
At first I tried to carry out my supervisory role from my office on the executive floor, but since in practice I was spending more time among pipettes than paperwork, I opted for a vacant table in Laboratory 3 and turned it into my base of operations. I know the names of all my chemists; I treat them all with equal courtesy and expect the same effort out of all of them. But I must admit that, while I maintain personal contact with every member of my team, it was inevitable that my prolonged presence in Laboratory 3 would lead me to fraternize more with the personnel assigned to that space—so much so that they were present on the night of my fleeting resurrection.
I don’t know why I chose to invade Laboratory 3 specifically; perhaps because it seemed the least crowded. Perhaps it was because it’s the only lab that’s surrounded by glass partitions, like a showcase, presenting to anyone passing through the hallway a clear view of the experiments being carried out inside. Certainly, working without the visual impediment of four plaster walls does wonders to alleviate my claustrophobia, an unfailing acquisition for all of us who return to the world by means of slipping through the cracks in our own tombs.
On an ordinary morning, the details of which I no longer remember, I walked past Laboratory 3 on the way to my office. Although they were working busily, the lab’s occupants paused, exchanged quick glances, and smiled at me cheerfully. I remember waving at them without stopping. That lab had the only team comprised solely of women: Doctor Isadore Bellamy, lab manager, Patricia Julia Cáceres, and Mathilde Álvarez. They had studied at the same North American university, taking the same classes and participating in the same symposiums, eventually graduating the same semester, although only Isadore had done so with high honors, in addition to completing a doctorate in molecular biology. They were inseparable.
The first thing I did when I arrived at my office that day was to take care of the bureaucratic aspects of my position, reviewing and processing pending documents, making and receiving calls, meeting with superiors and subordinates. Two or three hours later I stripped off my suit jacket, put on my lab coat, and began my rounds through the different work stations, listening to each lab manager’s progress report. The last I visited was Laboratory 3, which had only one workstation, although there was room enough for two additional groups. From there I returned to my office and began to review my personal notes. My own research appeared to be completely stymied. It was at that moment that it first occurred to me that I could set myself up in one of the laboratories, given that my clerical duties required me to be in the office only three or so hours in the morning and that I dedicated the rest of my time to the labs. But, which to choose?
The question gestated alongside a detailed image of Laboratory 3 as I had seen it that morning when I’d responded to the three friends’ greeting. In the spacious, glassed-in enclosure Mathilde was squinting into a microscope, examining a culture of liverwort cells dyed with lactophenol blue in order to reveal fungal elements, but her long blonde hair kept slipping down over the lens, and she’d had to tie it back in a hasty bun. When she’d lifted her hands to her head, her lab coat had opened and the hem of her shirt underneath had ridden up to reveal firm, steely abdominals and a pristine, flat belly button in which a gothic piercing glimmered. At another table, seated upon a tall stool, Patricia Julia was carefully pouring gel into a double electrophoresis chamber, her brilliant green eyes focused on her task, her bronzed, almost metallic complexion in marked contrast with her eyes. It was strange to see her so quiet, as she was, of the three, the loudest and most garrulous. That day she was wearing a short skirt; she had propped one leg up on the cross-bars at the base of the stool, but the other leg was stretched out toward the floor, seeking stability, a perfectly smooth, sculpted column. Meanwhile, Isadore, standing next to Patricia Julia, with one hand on her hip and the other leaning on the marmolite table, was rereading a procedure. The hand at her hip caused her lab coat to open slightly, exposing a thin, floral-print dress that just barely managed to contain the flawless bulk of her jet-black breasts. Her almond-shaped eyes accentuated the roundness of her face, lending it an Asian air; her small ears sparkled with discrete earrings, and the muscles of her slender thighs stood out against her black skin each time she shifted her weight from one heel to the other.
No question, Laboratory 3 was the best choice, since, as one could appreciate from my extremely conscientious mental exploration, the team assigned to it used scarcely one-third of the total available space to carry out their work. In all likelihood, my decision was based on a simple impulse to take better advantage of underutilized laboratory space.
