Chapter 22
The Revelry
They went fishing for all kinds of marine animals. Monitor, who for safety reasons could not move freely except through an illusion machine, had built a gigantic aquarium, one and a half kilometers long, one and a half kilometers wide, and three hundred meters high. When full, it weighed 675,000,000 tons. This cyclopean construction, made of thick glass and erected in the middle of the desert. The upper part was accessed by hydraulic elevators. There, from a small boat, Monitor and his associates fished for sharks and other fish.
There were even several specimens there, artificially obtained in technocratic laboratories through genetic mechanics. For example: a mix of pleciosaurus and cetacean, with guillotine-like teeth.
When a victim fell within reach of its mouth, the upper blade—made of razor-sharp bone—slashed down with force, slicing in a single blow. The adult fish could weigh three or four tons.
Despite the aquarium being constantly guarded by troops, two attempts were made on the Monitor's life. The first was a time bomb, buried in the sand near a corner of the glass structure. The terrorists didn't count on immediately destroying the thick wall—it was almost five meters thick—they were content with cracking it. The pressure of 300 tons per square centimeter would do the rest. Then the water, suddenly pouring down on the desert, would sweep away the Monitor's ship at high speed, shattering it along with its owner.
To this end, they were forced to dig a kilometer-long tunnel—a veritable mining gallery—before planting the bomb. The excavation required them to remove 3,000 cubic meters of material, which they had to scatter over a large area to avoid attracting attention.
It was discovered by chance when one of the guards found one end of the tunnel. The technocratic soldiers left a platoon at the entrance, armed with electric rifles to avoid surprises, and the rest entered. They were surprised just as they were planting the explosive. After the underground battle, 20 bodies remained below. They spared the life of only one enemy with the intention of interrogating him. Then the I double E killed fifty more people: the entire cell.
Another attack was with a gigantic bazooka mounted on a hill. To break through the lines, they proceeded to carry it disassembled, advancing only at night and hiding under the sand when daylight came. At dusk, they emerged from their hiding places and advanced a little further. The various detachments that had departed from different locations converged in an orderly fashion on the chosen hill. In no time, they armed and loaded the weapon. Since it had an infrared sight, they expected to fire it that same night.
Monitor had been fishing for two days and sleeping on the same boat. The enemies were unaware that the head of state, to prevent further attacks, had ordered the entire structure to be armored with a transparent derivative of the materials used to build aircraft.
The bazooka fired a projectile that, upon exploding against one of the walls, caused a tremor on the surface of the water. The boat gently undulated. For a moment, the liquid cube was illuminated, revealing the fish, plants, and stones it contained. Immediately, the security services, supported by combat spacecraft, launched a formidable military operation, cordoning off a two-kilometer radius circle, centering on the aquarium. Simultaneously, the troops began combing meter by meter, examining every weed in the hope of finding the terrorists. After realizing they had failed, they prepared to flee, abandoning the superbazooka, camouflaging themselves for the time being in the sand, very close to the scene, in order to retreat during the night.
But the technocrats had biodetectors on their combat ships, and captured them once they located the heat sources in their bodies.
Monitor personally participated in the prolonged executions, as he was furious that they hadn't left him alone. To top it all off, on the southern front, one of his best field marshals had been vaporized when a surface-to-surface rocket fired by the enemy fell 1.2 meters away. And although the Sorias who tried to kill him had nothing to do with the marshal's death, Monitor still blamed them. He said, "It may not have been them, but they were certainly happy. I can't lock up the little pigs who fired the rocket, but I'll get my fill of these."
In torture chamber 408 of the computer center, Monitor looked at one of the captured women—there were three women among the prisoners waiting their turn to taste the euphoria of their children—then he turned to the master:
----What do you think of this specimen, in general terms?
The master, bowing slightly:
----I think Your Excellency will be satisfied. In the previous biological study of human material that I am going to carry out, I have come to the conclusion that this female specimen has the best breasts; As I assumed he wanted to add to his fine and cultured collection, I took this detail into account so as not to carry out any work in that sector.
The Chinese man had said the above in front of the other woman, naked and tied to a table. It had channels through which blood could flow, which would then be sucked into a general drain along with streams from other tables.
Monitor, eager for mammalian glands, looked at them greedily, wanting to cut them off right away without fail and expand his collection with them. But he overcame them and said:
----Okay. I'll take them when you're finished.
----Oh, how clever he was, he had to resort to it at the last minute. It certainly hasn't escaped your keen perception as an artist and your scientific knowledge that torture produces tiny blood displacements and tumors, which diminish the quality of the anatomical specimen. If you want them, you must collect them now, alive and even before she's been tortured, he simply speaks of cauterizing her with frost and continuing with the torture, "Believe it or not."
----You tried to kill me. But I forgive you. I'm not vindictive. As for you, to give a brief and simple example, I'll simply have you thrown to the crocodiles. ----And when the henchmen who untied her proceeded to take her away, he added: ----: Throw her out like this: naked. And film everything. Bright lights so there's no underexposure. We'll slowly build our masterpiece.
In reality, they weren't planning on "throwing" Soria but rather exposing her to crocodile lust. We'll see how. The place where the Soria was taken was the product of the Monitor's ingenuity. He had invented a special device for feeding these little animals. The pond for his pets had a steel plate that served as a roof; it had several round holes arranged in pairs. On top, lying face down on the plate, the punished women were placed, making sure that their breasts passed through the holes and hung below. If the female sex had three breasts instead of two, the holes -----instead of two---- would have been three. We have no doubt about it.
The tortured women were kept tied to four handles, forming an "X" with their limbs.
The aforementioned plate was located above a riverbank, surrounded by a strong and resistant wire mesh. This cubic enclosure was connected, by a lifting door, to another much larger but identical enclosure, where ten enormous crocodiles were kept. The largest of the enclosed spaces had walls to allow sunlight to pass through. The floor was made of earth, filled with grass and reeds; there was also a medium-sized lake. At dinner time, the crocodiles would gather around the porthole that separated the two rooms. Then the gate was lifted with ropes from the outside, and the beautiful little creatures would pass through. Since their food always hung from the holes, stuck to the metal plate, they were accustomed to raising their heads and biting. If there were, for example, five victims, they would bring in a single hungry crocodile. The rascal would devour each of their breasts in turn. Soon jets of blood of varying calibers fell from time to time, the size of the flow depending solely on the moment of cutting.
The men, on the other hand, were forced to sit by means of strong bonds; each with a phallus and testicles hanging in a single bundle. Hanging by a thread, so to speak.
The woman Monitor had just condemned was tied to the griddle, and while a black crocodile approached, licking the pair of breasts that hung like a tempting and delicious delicacy—even more attracted by the woman's screams of terror—one henchman said to another while smoking a cigarette: "Ah, what a beautiful day for mischief! Let's see, what mischief are we going to do today?" And the other replied, staring at the swamp, "No. I only do good mischief."
The crocodile raised its head and seemed to sniff at the left teat. It took its time, firmly certain that the delicacy before it had no chance of resisting its delight. Other times, like now, the animal had felt the telepathic rejection of the creature whose flesh was dangling there. At first, a year and a half ago, it would rush to devour as soon as it perceived the violent and terrified "No" in its brain. In time, however, it came to understand that the breed of animal that refused to be eaten and was offered to it could not—for who knows why—move or offer any physical resistance. From the moment it understood this, it no longer felt any embarrassment; it even liked hearing the "No" and, playing dumb, walking without touching one after another of those delicious spheres, while continuing with an open mind: "NO NO NO NO NO"; He felt his eagerness to bite and taste grow, while a familiar tingling in his sexual system made him think of crocodiles and the need to eat this and go find them. But—and the animal didn't fully understand this—his idea of biting as soon as possible in order to go in search of females was, in part, nothing more than a fiction his mind was concocting, in order to increase the voluptuousness of the princely morsel. Finally, he made up his mind: he raised his black head and circled the Soria's left breast, without biting for a second yet. Then he sank his teeth in repeatedly, not completely, but slowly, pushing them deeper and deeper into the breast, while the blood filled his mouth. Finally, he kissed her tenderly, ending by squeezing and pulling back, cutting and tearing at the same time. His entire head was immediately covered in blood. My appetite was whetted with this first bite that I swallowed in an instant, I was no longer in the mood for contemplation "NO NO NO NO no no no . . ." so he goes to the other breast, pivoting on her belly with precision. As if in fury, he bites and tears off the twin balloon, which in an instant is also in her stomach.
Seeing that the food was gone and that they wouldn't give him any more, he broke down again and dove into the rippling waters. The last thing the soldiers saw, quite bored, was the tail of the black crocodile—whom they called Miguelito—which, because it remained outside—only for a moment—gave the illusion of belonging to a species of swamp dragon, with membranous wings and capable of breathing fire.
Monitor hadn't had time to observe the execution of the secret agent Soria. He'd have a chance later to see it all filmed in color on his monitor camera's video recorder. For the moment, feigning ignorance, he asked about another of the detainees.
----What did this filthy rat do?
The henchman, playing along.
----Attack on your vacationn days, Your Excellency.
----Burn him alive. Wait, no. It would be inhumane. Wall him up with a jug of water and a crust of bread that will have to last him a lifetime.----Luminous and electric----: Wait not yet. These vulgarities are unworthy of me. Something is needed to open new paths in the aphrodisiac history of torture. Descend to where the time capsules slumber, charged with carrying the red flags with white shields in the center into the future. Look, a black scorpion swims in that amniotic fluid. My galleons sunk in the Sargasso Sea, my sealed chests filled with war trophies. Cut one vein after another, then, slowly, like someone opening a pharaonic tomb thousands of feet deep in the Valley of the Kings. The Solar Barque; the treasures; the Lord on his combat vehicle, shooting arrows at lions in the reed beds; the hippopotamus beside the papyrus flowers. A powerful monarch in his chariot like a tarot figure, crushing hieratic enemies. The high and low reliefs. The throne room and the hypostyle hall. The empty pyramids and their stone sacks with sand mummies. ----Torvo----: Yes. I'm afraid walling up a man who ruined my vacation and killed my field marshal is too little. Very little. So, he whispered new instructions to the executioner, so that the victim wouldn't hear them, who might suffer for it, thus appearing as an inhuman being before the executioners. The Chinese man, hearing this, smiled slightly and bent down. After tying him up tightly, naked, they poured molten lead on his testicles. This is how he would learn the next time. Monitor started the recorder a moment earlier. After the lead in his genitals, and since he hadn't died yet, they poured molten gold on his nipple (which others call the navel): the splendid seal of death. Strangely, when they did this to him, he didn't scream. He went into convulsions and, after several kicking spasms—first his right leg, then his left, then his right again, etc., a few times—he died forever.
It all continued in this way for some time. When only three secret agents remained, the Monitor suddenly had a painful impression: "Have I not been cruel and unjust to a people whose only crime, perhaps, was to think differently than me? Of course, because the attempted murder and ruining my vacation is a mere coincidence, a mere trifle." Thus, saddened and harassed by remorse—although a few minutes earlier he had thought of something more monstrous as his imagination wandered around some fields he had in Megateknes, Southern Technocracy: "What a beautiful place to erect my automatic embalming factories there."—turning on itself, he changed direction and, in atonement for his numerous sins, the Terrible One gave the order to build a cathedral in a Gothic, drastically medieval style. With the skulls of his enemies, naturally. He began with the three belonging to the remaining secret agents, whom he had their thinking limbs extracted on-site. Before that, he told them, totally possessed by mercy and almost sobbing with repentance: "I am not having them executed because they have attempted against my life, nor because they have ruined my fishing or killed my field marshal, since all these are minor contingencies, correctable by indulgence and penance. Let the record show: No. I am having them executed for engaging in the smuggling of battery-powered matches and the plagiarism of patents: the only crime, absolutely, that deserves some punishment. For engaging in match smuggling, above all, since this is the state of perpetual crime. Take away their bodies."
TTTTTTTTTT
The cathedral of skulls—which Monitor, once completed, believed would constitute one of the seven wonders of the technocratic world, and so, in order not to leave it orphaned, he planned to create the other six wonders later—gave rise to a new Monitorian delirium. Just as he had previously been obsessed with breasts, he later became equally so with skulls. I won't say that breasts ceased to interest him completely, but his passion diminished until they were only a shadow of their former selves; on rare occasions, he would enrich his collection with a new pair. His concerns began when the technocratic architects convinced him that the pure engineering problem to be solved was tremendous, given the limiting condition of using skulls as the exclusive material. They requested the possibility of using other human bones in certain sectors, and of supporting the enormous structure with iron beams—the cathedral was to be eighty meters high, twenty-five meters wide, and fifty meters long. Monitor flatly rejected such a blasphemous insinuation and said it was either all skulls or nothing. And when the architects noticed that he was leering at their bulges in his pants, they shit themselves. By way of their fear, they promised to solve the technical problems in four months. Most of these men—registered with the Monitoria of Gymnastics and Work—had obtained public positions not so much because of their recognized efficiency as because of their notorious ease. What a disappointment; instead of a bucolic canonry full of perks, they had found themselves faced with a horrible Monitor with a constant stream of anger and fantastical flashes. It was too late for regrets. "In four... months, eh," said the Brown-Haired Beast or Big Beast, who knew them perfectly well and, secretly, had decided to cleanse the Monitoria of clumsy, slow-witted, and inefficient people, using a scraper and buckets of blood. "All right, I accept." And then he added these strange words. "But remember: my benevolence leans toward Achilles, the swift-footed, and not toward sophist tortoises." So, every so often, he'd have one castrated to stimulate the rest. Within the agreed-upon timeframe, the surviving architects presented their impeccable drawings and the highest cost: sourcing 693,750 skulls so the walls would be triple-reinforced and the building wouldn't collapse. When they showed him, trembling, the slip of paper with the terrifying figure, the Monitor was three steps away from ordering a mass egg ablation. Then he checked the calculations and realized the others were right. He wouldn't have enough of all the Technocracy's prisoners to raise that amount! But then he remembered the existence of Chanchin del Norte, and his eyes lit up. Good news. He immediately relayed the order to all the fighting fronts: from that moment on, dead enemy soldiers were to be decapitated, and their heads sent to assembly points, from where they would be transferred to Monitoria. Technocracy Central. The technocratic officers, eaten away by mosquitoes, with immense workloads and pigs that killed them like flies, suddenly found themselves faced with a new task. They swore at the Monitor, at the pigs, at the fucking heads, and at themselves. But, since orders are orders, after all, they were prepared to obey.
Result: in one year, the Technocracy decapitated thirty-five thousand various enemies; the rest, until the total was completed, was covered by the shipments that continually came from the front lines.
The pyramid of skulls, once they were all assembled so the construction work could begin, occupied a volume of 5,550 m².
It took a year and a half to erect the cathedral, which, contrary to all predictions, did not collapse. Of course, the architects used a revolutionary new plastic cement to weld the skulls together.
The building—the doorway—was also made entirely of skulls, and had an enormous pointed entrance that led to a magnificent nave. There were extremely strange staircases, whose steps, handrails, everything, absolutely everything, was made of these bones. The altar, too. In front of it stood a technocrat made of nineteen skulls. The floor was somewhat uneven because it had been made of identical materials. There wasn't just one ceiling, but several at different heights, progressively larger, until reaching the maximum vault, which was located just above the altar, at a height of eighty meters. Over the place of sacrifice, where the priest on duty officiated, a single ray of light fell from one of the different vaults—depending on the passage of the sun at each time of the year—and rested on the skull of Polykriptos (of the many mysteries), placed there every day for the ceremony, removed afterward, and wrapped in royal linen perfumed with precious essences. As the sacred service progressed, the light successively illuminated a portion of the occipital bone, from there slowly crossing to the parietal bone and then to the orbit of the left eye, filling it; its socket slowly crossing to the parietal bone and then to the orbit of the left eye, filling it; its socket was perfectly polished, so that it could gleam like a mirror. That eye was very powerful. And so, while he was empowered and the teeth formed a double row of sarcophagi with ivory lids, the ceremony reached its climax: "And it is for this reason, Reaper, that we have come to you today to greet you. So that you may work through us on behalf of the homeland. Kill our enemies. Erase them from the Book of Life. May it be as if they had never existed. Just as this ray of sunlight will be extinguished, so may the lives of Sorias, anti-Mozarts, communists, and chicis be extinguished. Death: upon you, our victory." Thus, abruptly, the service ended.
Alberto Laiseca as a younger man.
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