Siete minutos, Ismael Camacho Arango [read with me TXT] 📗

“Can we give him a job at our offices?”
“I’m a doctor,” our man said.
“You must have a real job.”
The doctor shrugged. “I know a bit of medicine.”
“Do you own a bicycle?” the first speaker asked.
“I can’t ride it”
The fat man grinned. “You are useless.”
“Sell me the ticket to the town then.”
“We’re giving you a free train ticket to the town plus a hand grenade,” the first man said. “You must explode it on getting near the town.”
They gave him the ticket and the grenade, before he waited in the platform for the train to arrive, where the children ran around the pillars full of posters while their mothers talked to each other. The doctor clutched his packet with trembling hands, expecting it to explode at any time. He had to think of his future in that remote town lost in the mountains, where no one ever went.
“It’s the train,” one of the children said.
The doctor saw the smoke rising to the sky, before the noise of the engine disturbed the peaceful afternoon. He boarded one of the middle carriages, hoping his bomb would behave well.
“It’s a hard life,” he muttered to himself.
A woman breastfeeding a baby looked at him with apprehension, as if guessing his real intentions. The doctor waited for some time, wondering if any of the towns in the distance would be his destination, when the voice in the microphone disturbed his thoughts. He had to do his job now. Taking the bomb with trembling hands, the doctor threw it out of the window, where it exploded with a loud bang amidst the chaos in the carriage.
The e4xplosion had derailed the train, killing three chickens and a few neurosurgeons, who worked in the rail company. As our doctor arrived at the town, he met the priest, the owner of the pharmacy, and Miss Lola, who knew all about injections.
Mr. Procolo, the richest man in town took him to his own home. It was an urgent business and the other people had other things to do, so he asked the new arrival for his help. A pregnant sow would have died if the doctor had not been at the delivery, and he became the best doctor of pigs in the region. Mr. Procolo consented for his daughter to live with him and all kinds of animals. His wife was one of them as she wasn’t very intelligent.
The doctor inherited the pigs, the house and his wife when the old man died a few years later. He made his anti Edison investigations at this time of his life, enough for our hero to get condemned to the electric chair, the chamber of gases or to go around Marquetalia forever.
Our towns don’t have schools, hospitals, health centres, toilets or clean water. The only water running through them is smelly and dirty but they have millions of transistors infecting the streets with rancheras twenty five hours a day. The priest puts four giant speakers on the church tower. If the ones in the café in the corner, or in the café with no corner are not working, his highness switches his music on. The smallest and sickest town in Colombia makes more noise than a dormitory of Maristas brothers after their Christmas supper.
Our country has thousands of radio stations for square mile and each one of them has two programs: popular music and commercials. We have to hear five hundred radio stations of popular music and five hundred of commercials, even though some of us do not have a radio. This had been the greatness of his discovery. Then the doctor brought me a small machine made by him.
“Switch it on,” he said.
I wanted to crash it against his glasses, but the tiger licking my feet stopped me. As I switched it on, I experienced a wonderful sensation. The voice of the priest offering the next tango to the president of the daughters of Maria was erased, leaving no sounds in the air. The anti Edison man had invented the anti transistor.
I can’t describe the sensation of hearing absolutely nothing. I asked his permission to lick his other shoe, instead of the tiger. It didn’t stop there. Just as he had found a way to prevent radio waves, he had managed to tame all kinds of animals. Our scientist decided we were animals as he didn’t believe in Gods, souls or angels. Men were made of matter. He did experiments with animals teaching them conditional reflexes. They had to open traps after acoustic or luminous signals, where they found, food, water or electric shocks. The animals learned to find their food avoiding the electric shocks after a few sessions.
He sacrificed one of the animals and extracted an acid with a complicated name, but known by its initials: DNA. He introduced it in the nervous system of other mice, which did not know anything about the lights and electric shocks and had good results. The mice behaved as if they had been trained before. They had the memory of the other animals or in mystic terms they had metempsychosis. I can’t explain the proceeding properly and I think you and your wise men will have a worse problem. My friend contacted the Academy of medicine but they smiled on discovering he treated pigs. They didn’t like human knowledge transmitted into animals and drove away in their Mercedes Benz. They wanted to take him to the saint inquisition and it’s a fire waiting for us in hell in our country.
According to this noble mad man, the process of knowledge is linked to a big, curved molecule. It is called DNA and RNA. You’ve found the code of life, when you can decipher its language. I don’t know how he does it. He bought Chucho –the chimpanzee- from an Antioqueño businessman, who had won him during a game of cards with the guards of the Bucharest zoo. You have had him for some time, without understanding how important he is.
Chucho’s not just the best monkey in the world, but he’s also the best man. He’s intelligent, disinterested, noble and a very good worker. He’s not dangerous to anyone and I’m sure he represents a step in our mental evolution. Our doctor did that with Chucho because he has a good capacity in his brain. He’s also done marvellous things with the other animals. The tiger -more intelligent and noble than any dog - understands many verbal orders. The parrot sings the opera Traviata by memory and has a better voice than any soprano from the Scala, while the snake drinks milk and eats mice. The monkeys sweep the house, wash the clothes and do some other chores as the turtles reproduce only when they’re asked to do it. The iguanas are fed by hand.
He has a troop of multicoloured mice, dancing Stravinsky’s ballet with Russian perfection. Margarita the snake is harmless, but I can’t say the same thing of the debt collectors. They had left him alone because of the difficulty of getting to the town, but things have changed now. I gave him a few pesos and promised to sell Chucho to stop the danger.
You can understand the failure awaiting the investigator. To finish with the transistors is an attack against humanity, but to end with knowledge by injecting yourself or by manipulating radiant energy is the final collapse of humanity. My wise friend sends you his regards but he doesn’t understand much about business. He knows what a businessman like you would do with his discoveries, and that’s why I can’t tell you anymore. Look after Chucho.
Sincerely yours.
Miguel


Twentieth century symphony
EXT. LUXURIOUS SHIP- MORNING
A middle aged man with Prussian hair style pedals an exercise bike. He sweats as he checks the speed and the distance he has achieved and pedals again with more enthusiasm.
Then he goes down on the floor and stands on his head for a few moments but after standing up, he lifts weights over his head while breathing deeply, a Chinese bell hanging nearby adding music to the scene.
He rests standing on his head before doing exercises on the portable bars and a trapeze as Chucho appears.
CHUCHO
You must have an appetite, Mr. Astronaut. Do you want any breakfast?
ASTRONAUT
What time is it?
Chucho looks at the clock.
CHUCHO
It is twenty minutes past ten.
ASTRONAUT
Not that one. Look at the chronometer and tell me the whole thing.
Chucho looks at a small electronic chronometer on a table.