I love to watch things burn, I often dream of cities in flames and voluptuous arsonists fighting over my body. I came to this world to watch things burn. Just like Neron, perhaps the most famous pyromaniacal, I'm convinced that the end of the world will start with a small fire and will rapidly expand from house to house, from town to town, from country to country, from heart to heart. And I believe that the desired apocalypse party is around the corner. Just some days ago, while returning home in the dark, I found a human body lying on the ground. I won't lie when I say that a chilling fear crawled down my spine as I saw the inert mass blocking my way; nevertheless, it wasn't dead, it started to speak and it said to me: -
Do you have a spare match?
The thing rose from the floor. I clenched my fists in order to defend myself. But it wasn't necessary. Before me stood a strange beggar, not the threatening type, this one was different, although his appearance was as bad, something in his eyes revealed a hint of dignity a condescension that made me uncomfortable. Do you have a spare match? – repeated without blinking. Because of his voice and actions I sensed a 30 year old man under those rags, with little time on the streets and needed a match in order to light a meth pipe. - ¿Who are you? – I asked without fear in my voice. - I'm a person who needs a match. – Answered with a silly smile. I knew then that I wasn't speaking to a regular junky, not even one of those people who like to exhibit their misfortunes as trophies. Because I never have matches on me, and I thought the guy was harmless, I invited him to look for a matchbox on the streets. He told me his name was Ivan and that he was running and waiting for the end of the world. - Humanity is a big lie – constantly muttered the man. Men are evil and will ruin everything, God will send a big ball of fire over us, everyone will die and no man will be born again. I understood that his family abandoned him when his illness got worse, bandits and people trying to “clean” the streets tried to murder him on several occasions. Pouring gasoline over his body, (couldn't lit him because didn't have fire on them), and fracturing three of his ribs for entering a fancy
restaurant to use a bathroom. - I wander the world, waiting for God's revenge - ¿What vengeance? - The world ended when electricity begun. Darkness runs everything; everything moves, shines or functions out of the fear of being in the dark. Darkness as silence confronts men with their inner selves. And that stoped ages ago. God lives in the darkness and nobody seems to care. Men are evil; they will kill each other in the middle of fireworks. God will allow them to die, that they eat each other and nobody dwells his kingdom no more. Everything will burn, the written books, the painted canvas and the history will matter as much as chicken bone on the pavement. Men will pay what they've done to me, and I will enjoy it from a privileged position. The world will be mine. God will kill them and I will keep everything. The world will burn and their burned bodies will feed me, and their roasted mothers will become my mistress and the soot from their walls will become the ink from which I'll write a new history. Everyone will burn and the end of the world will be God's and Ivan's revenge. The guy amused me; I didn't believe I could understand any other Word coming out of his mouth. I bought a matchbox from a liquor store in the neighborhood, and I lit one of the cigarettes that I carried with me. When I turned to him I saw Ivan's figure sinking in the darkness of a distant street, maybe he was looking for God's sign, a kiss, a kick or a match that will begin everything. When I decided to write about the end of the world I thought of the courage of men such as Steve Rogers or Bruce Willis, men that gave their lives for ours, that prevented the end of the world with courage.
But lately, every time I try to meditate about theology or blow-up dolls or some free market algorithm, or a coconut recipe, I see Ivan, he's my age, he smells like me, has my face and skin color. I see on his dirty hair the possibility of finally being able to talk to God, or an intermediary; I also see a ball of fire that consumes everything and the first thing that comes into my mind about being the last man on earth is going to my neighborhood's liquor store, grab a few beers and then star walking around with some music on and a couple of sandwiches taken from my sinner neighbors fridges. That's when I stop and think that I could never be the last of my species and get depressed of such a huge discovery, because just like Empedocles – yes, the same guy with a sword and the same guy that discovered sexuality on plants – I'm convinced the gods banish me for putting my trust on discord and for that my last day won't come.´ It's been a while since I have dreams with arsonists and such things, now I dream of the sea and possible endings to romantic comedies that I watch on Sundays. The other night I dreamt of a hot girl selling me a ticket on weird movie theater, when I read her label name on her shirt it said: Maria Apocalypse Saavedra. I thought her name was beautiful and that I would throw myself towards her arms in the end. Hell is loneliness, I believe, and then I turn out the lights and try to see God on top of the dirty laundry which lies beneath my feet beside my bed. I see nothing.
counterpart a complete political gear destined to allow these “exchanges”, and an avalanche of scholarships and state funding became strongly present in our tortured countries. That's how we slowly got out of our birth places. When I write about how it affects us the costs of our first unconscious operation, I particularly mean the elite conditions the Latin American education had to provide. For every one of us who achieved the possibility of having an overseas education there were hundreds of thousands who couldn't even have a chance to learn to read. It's not a matter of chance to expose the problems that this huge part of our population had to face, but it seems to me – given the actual context – you should already been guessing. Every one of us who is involved in this juncture that I propose in this pages, share that burden. The apparent and rapid progression of events forces me to try to arrange logically the background and conditions that allows the reader to understand the characteristics of this situation. To begin I have to acknowledge the decisive factor that turns an idea that came out of a reunion between friends in this enterprise that we're involved, it was relatively against our will. And I say relatively because it cost a lot to pay in order to specify the possibility that the invaded one, carelessly and naively, left dormant. I. The unconscious operation Since our countries return towards democracy, the first world was developing an even greater interest on receiving South American students in their universities. This “Opening Will” brought us as a
As you may imagine, the people that got this opportunity didn't understand the urgency of this plan. On the contrary, many saw in these process exactly what the brochures of the invaded ones said: the opportunity of acquiring new experiences in order to be replicated in a South American reality. This, despite being outrageous to us, it was absolutely predictable, especially in the country I'm from. A projection of this magnitude developed by the Chilean people over the last 40 years was one of the main reasons the “long and narrow portion of land” had the destiny we all know. Leaving behind all these considerations, the fact remains that many of us were scattered all over the world. “Divide and conquer”, would have thought the invaded one. Forgetful and inconsistent with his own tools, didn't want to see the great achievement in communication that we were having trough the internet.
Once the basic conditions of the plan were settled, we decided to break into two teams: the first one is called New World Commando, (NWC), its objective was to get our allies on our side. It wasn't easy to get many studious and smart Latin-American people to use war terminology. Most of them, accustomed to political developments, were distrustful to these denominations. When we were able to explain them the impossibility – through time and space – of creating a new terminology, and once agreed on revising it in the near future, the task became easier. Therefore, the NWC was conformed of Latin-American students studying in Latin America. I coordinated it this mission from Argentina, where I was doing a master's degree at the philosophy faculty in the Buenos Aires University. We were on the right track: none of us wanted to live in the first world. The second commando had a more complicated task. We called it Old World Commando, (OWC), and had the dual mission of an advance group and to infiltrate in the invaded one's culture. Paz, a lawyer, was in charge of this mission, who was studying economics at London School. The cards were on the table. Our states were ready and also the invaded ones, almost everyone was ready.
We all know the series of fatidic episodes that were predicted for this December 2012. We understood this situation as a huge opportunity to avoid attention on our activities. Although we never shared the power, we perfectly understood how they divert the attention. A propaganda group was created destined to manage communicational nexus, but we shortly realize this strategy wouldn't be necessary. Not just because the invaded one was in charge of displaying the necessary resources, (the movie 2012 is a clear and clumsy example of it), but because our anxieties made us forget something we always knew: our activities never were a turning point to the invaded one. With the comfort provided by the anonymity, we developed all kinds of activities without raising suspicion: digital magazines, informal organizations, war slogans on facebook, and many other things. Our meetings were public, detectable by any neighbor's hacker son. But nothing happened. This apparent impunity became impatience. If everything remained the same, then a final strike would be unlikely. Then something we didn't expect happened, although we should've done it: the invaded one made the strike. On May 1, 2011, U.S.A announced proudly that his number one enemy was killed.
II. The contingency III. The day after tomorrow The exact repercussion of rumors fomented by the industry on the historic and social process hasn't been measured yet. We can mention particular cases: the chaos that the radio transmission about the War of The Worlds created, The New Millennium arrival, the idea behind Islamic assault against the twin towers, among others. Despite many examples, there was never a hint of a new rumor opening an unexpected range of possibilities.
United States wasn't the target of our operation. It never was. The clever reader should have noticed that there was never a commando unit to that nation, that it wasn't the new world, and certainly not the old one. After all, the enemy is always the enemy. We were certain that Europe was going to be the place of impact. We learned about them in our journeys, we knew some big part of the population wouldn't avoid our
incursion; the other part was first busy with the celebrations that the death, (we mentioned earlier), generated an then frightened, hidden in houses and bunkers. And things kept happening as if history had a hidden whim, and was having fun with this festival of circumstances. The meteorite, the red planet approaching, the nuclear attack‌ when we arrive in Madrid, right after our great experience in Portugal, people stared to trust us. After all we were the only ones on the streets, the only ones without the imminent fear to a disaster. The only resistance we had came from the French army, because they were receiving orders from president S., whose whereabouts were unknown. Nobody knew where his voice came from, giving orders and threatening to judge us for treason and also keeping us from entering The Elysian Fields but we were millions marching forward, there was no way to stopping us. Since then word spread across the planet, and many of the invade one people were stopped by their own citizens of the First World, opening a path towards our arrival. Like in England, where we are since last night, waiting for the sunrise for our arrival. I've heard nothing of Paz. I'm certain she was detained by sympathizers of our crusade that have confused her for being an elite British academic. I also know she must've not offered any resistance towards the neutralization, there was no greater success to our organization than conquering the spirit of those fallen invades. Even more, I imagine that she's joyful and among the crowd in the morning of this 21'st of December, smiling, when millions of us cross Tottenham Court Road. Just like it was planed a long time before. I will search for her between many other faces and I'll ask her to join me. She, like everyone else, is one of us.