World Literature Today – July 01, 2019

CHIMAL PHOTO: FABIEN CASTRO HENSON PHOTO: RANDY TUNNELL

81. Others, later on, would go back to
    the equatorial regions when there were no
    longer disturbances and the areas could
    be reused, for example, for mining or the
    exploitation of solar energy.


82. (Solar energy was banned for religious
    reasons in some countries, so little was said
    about it.)


83. The first advance parties of settlers, the
    next level in the social scale, arrived later in
    the polar areas, in slow and crowded boats,
    but full of pride.


84. Later the masters would arrive, with
    their women, their human pets and animals.
    Their machines, and their conviction that
    everything was the fruit of their effort, their
    exceptional and victorious character.


85. In the abandoned areas, the new deserts
    in the central part of the world, many things
    happened that were not documented in
    History, which from then on belonged to
    the beneficiaries of the Grand Experiment.


86. For example, in many of the regions that
    had previously been nation-states, depopu-
    lation happened so slowly that it allowed the
    formation of new nations.


87. They all had their origin in the frag-
    mentation of those states, owing to the
    chaos, poverty, and hatred between tribes
    that disputed each region, and that in some
    cases dated to the time of the actual World
    Wide Web.


88. In these places, behind the Advance Par-
    ty’s back, rejected by the Grand Experiment,
    something else took place: the appearance
    of many small nations, tiny fiefdoms, each
    different from the other, all unusual. Green-
    house flowers of strange colors.


89. A nation based on the hatred of medi-
    cine. A nation of speakers of a language
    suppressed for centuries. A nation in which
    a onetime criminal gang, accustomed to

preying on others, had to learn to survive

without anyone else around.

90. A nation committed to allowing all pos-
    sible forms of identity.


91. A nation presided over by women.


92. A nation composed exclusively of men,
    based on a contempt of women and con-
    vinced that the divine would allow them to
    reproduce supernaturally.


93. (It didn’t happen, and upon realizing
    that it wouldn’t happen, all of its inhabitants
    chose mass suicide.)


94. The majority of these nations were
    totally isolated from the others, confronted
    by enemies whose origin was already being
    forgotten, isolated, and in decline.


95. They were running out of resources,
    energy, knowledge to control the century’s
    technology or spare parts to keep it working.


96. Their inhabitants told legends: how the
    world had been in other times, its magical
    origins.
    97. Even today, some of those stories speak
    of the rain that fell in other times, of green
    plants, of large populations in illuminated
    cities, like fields of stars on the ground.
    98. These are the ones that are believed least,
    those that seem like the most irresponsible
    and absurd fantasies, in the darkness of the
    ruins that could be the final result of the
    Grand Experiment: the accumulation of
    everything for no one.
    99. Because, also, in the cities of the extreme
    south and far north, which are so bright
    they’ve done away with the auroras, there
    are defects in the machinery, and the air
    continues to heat up, and the wind has
    become a bit radioactive, and the waters are
    polluted by the passage of ships.
    100. And on the screens the leaders say that
    it’s not true, that life has always been the
    same—just as good—there, in the best of all
    possible worlds.

Translation from the Spanish

By George Henson

Mexican writer Alberto

Chimal (b. 1970) is the

author of the short-story

collections Los atacantes,

Grey, and Manda fuego

(Colima Prize, 2014) and the novel La torre

y el jardín (Rómulo Gallegos Prize shortlist,

2013). His most recent book is the children’s

story La Distante (Cuatrogatos Foundation

Award, 2019). He has a YouTube channel

about books and creative writing.

George Henson’s

translations include

Elena Poniatowska’s The

Heart of the Artichoke

and Sergio Pitol’s Trilogy

of Memory. He is currently completing a

translation of Alberto Chimal’s novella The

Slaves. He teaches Spanish translation at the

Middlebury Institute of International Studies

at Monterey.

Even today, some of

those stories speak

of the rain that fell

in other times, of

green plants, of

large populations in

illuminated cities, like

fields of stars on the

ground.

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