Nowhere. May 2025. Saigon.<\/b><\/h4>\n
Carl Murder is sweating like a pig. The Venetian blinds are pulled, and yet the sunbeams are easily filtering through them and bursting on the screen of his translucent glasses like tiny dead stars. He hates Saigon more than AC\u2019s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He has been deployed in the seventh ring of Hell after Khaled got the wrong lead to Wilson\u2019s whereabouts \u2014 \u201cfucking Rugby Face is not here\u201d has been his war cry for the last week.<\/span><\/p>\n He has two massive fans propped against his desktop, and the scar running from his earlobe to his cheekbone has never looked darker: it is oozing a ghastly ointment. His receding scalp is dyed with a cheap lotion, and the black, fat tears of sweat are dripping over the scab and the files, most of them buried under heavy paperweights that he hates to lift as much as he hates humanity and heat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He could have digitised everything, leaf through the pages of his endless archives (already uploaded in his front cortex), by just blinking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But he refuses to give up his sense of touch. He believes that is the main tragedy of being human in a contactless, android ridden world. Once you lose your touch, you lose recollection, no matter how much endless information you can swallow artificially. He is holding the file named <\/span>Funes the Memorious<\/span><\/i>. He knows the answer lives here but he can\u2019t get his head around it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIs it really possible that a man fell off his horse, lost consciousness and upon waking up remembered every single leaf, angle, colour, hug, tear, second and every other insignificant memory of his entire life in utter detail? There\u2019s a syndrome named after that, ain\u2019t it?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHundred per cent. You mean Borges syndrome? Because it is a Borges story. But that is the whole point of the new software. You can zoom in your memories, and then freeze and deconstruct every single image that you have seen since you were born,\u201d<\/em> says Khaled.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There is something maddening in his tone. Like soft, sweetened condescendence. Murder is growing impatient.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Another drop of sweat falls inside the scar like a drunk, suicidal spider, and Murder clicks his tongue, burps grandly, sighs and considers what is more disgusting: HEAT or HUMANITY?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The answer comes to mind swiftly and loudly: there\u2019s nothing more useless than HH\u2019s, or Half Humans, as they are known \u2014which coincidentally could stand as an acronym for HEATED HUMANITY.<\/span><\/p>\n Murder is sick of seeing Khaled\u2019s face on his device. He is definitely a FOUR H; that is a fuckwit HALF HUMAN HEATING HUMANITY.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t forget I can read your thoughts, Carl. I\u2019m not a HH, just the author of the most extensive essay on retrieving memory loss ever written,\u201d<\/em> says humble Khaled.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe both know you didn\u2019t write a single line, fucking Rugby Face did!\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Murder taps his left temple and Khaled\u2019s face fades to black, thanks God. Unfortunately, he can still hear his mannered castrato\u2019s voice.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYo Carl. Why are you turning the screen off?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYou know why: it is very frustrating to stare at faces you can not punch.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWell, technically, with the new software you could thrust your fist and break my nose from any given remote distance.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDo you want to turn it on? Cause I have it installed and nothing would make me happier\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cJesus Murder, just breathe. You are so predictable in an old fashioned way. Whatever happened to the mission in Japan has nothing to do with me.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSeriously? Cause you were the only leading officer and YOU LOST contact with our person of interest. So tell me, who the fuck am I supposed to blame?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe have already discussed this. I asked you for ten men back up and you never provided it. We are talking about a man who escaped our elite death squad unscathed in Marrakesh. So you tell me: how I was the only agent in Japan surveying him?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Murder sighs. He is sick of going through the same conversation over and over again. What\u2019s the point of zooming in, scanning memories, freezing and replaying them if you can\u2019t understand how to modify them?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Khaled reads the thought and replies with a quote:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He was, let us not forget, almost incapable of ideas of a general, Platonic sort. Not only was it difficult for him to comprehend that the generic symbol dog embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form; it bothered him that the dog at three fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three fifteen (seen from the front). His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him every time he saw them. <\/span><\/i>(<\/span>Funes The Memorious<\/span><\/i>, JL Borges)<\/span><\/p>\n It would have sounded better had he not recited it with such affection. He was showing off and he was on a roll. Before Murder could say \u201cgreat quote,\u201d Khaled was already <\/span>mansplaining<\/span><\/i> it to him:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSee? That is exactly what Borges writes about: when you can remember everything, your thought process collapses, hence you can\u2019t think. Your full power is engaged in remembering in such a rendering way, that you can\u2019t even articulate your thoughts. That is the chore of our software: to erase thinking by giving the illusion of remembering everything, remember?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cRugby Face is proving the software bollocks, for fuck sake, Khaled.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHe is the only AI who has come back to life, just the one. We had predicted that outcome and we should be ready to intervene.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t even know his whereabouts!\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAs it turns out, I do.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDo you? I bet you he is not in Saigon, is he?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHe is in Nepal.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOh my days, Khaled. How long were you planning to keep me in the dark?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cJust found out: he is in a little guesthouse close to KTM airport. You should know that he has just started a new connection with one of your previous selves, an old Roman with the exact same scar as yours. Rugby Face calls him The Oracle.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe Oracle? For real?\u201d Murder cracks every joint of his stiff rock anatomy.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThere might have been some emotional development. He calls him Peanuts now.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIs that right?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYes. Does it ring a bell? Anyone called you Peanuts before?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMy ex used to! Fuck! We need to rewire him ASAP! I\u2019ll jump on the first plane to Kathmandu. And you do the same. I\u2019ll bring Alex.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Many years ago I had a friend called Jim and I have not come across a saddest North American ever since. I have seen many hopeless. But as sad as Jim, not a single one<\/span><\/i>.\u201d (<\/span>Jim<\/span><\/i>, \u201cThe Insufferable Gaucho\u201d, Roberto Bola\u00f1o.)<\/span><\/p>\n The Oracle, aka Peanuts, gives me a farewell book, Wade Davis\u2019 <\/span>Into the Silence<\/span><\/i>, for my upcoming trip to Nepal, where he lived on and off between 1973 and 1978. It is the account of the late attempt to surmount Everest led by George Mallory, in 1924. I give Peanuts a copy of Bola\u00f1o\u2019s <\/span>The Insufferable Gaucho<\/span><\/i>, in return. In its second short story, <\/span>Jim<\/span><\/i>, the saddest North American walks the streets of Mexico City mesmerized by a flame eater and oblivious to everything except his obsessive hunt for the most frugal, virtuous rhyme. Jim walks and occasionally stops, and the beggar kids ask him what is the meaning of poetry. Jim looks at the clouds, then vomits, and then says. \u201cLexical, eloquence, the search for truth. Epiphany.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHarper, in Kathmandu, go to Durbar Square and visit the temple of the Lost. I used to live just above it. There were no tourists back then, just the odd mountaineer,\u201d Peanuts says. He was one of the fewest expats in the 70s, and found his way to sell magic carpets filled with hash. \u201cBack then, you could get an unbelievable range of the brown stuff in every street market. It was lined up in heaps and you could buy as much as you wanted. Eventually, at the airport, you had to pay a five per cent tax for each gram you took away, can you believe it?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n When auld timers tell you about the good old days, they have a massive offline point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Landing in KTM is the quietest affair ever: no one seems agitated or in a rush, all tourists are already moving like ballerinas underwater. The custom agents are also mindful and apparently floating in Kumari\u2019s (the Goddess of the land) smile, and I found my obnoxious backpack gently resting on a corner, already removed from the panic-attack-inducing conveyor-belt where most of my belongings have historically vanished in an timeless spiral of lost-and not found, lost-and-not found, lost-and-not found.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Outside international arrivals, smiley Roman finds me and I\u2019m not lost anymore. \u201cWhere are you going? I give you a lift,\u201d<\/em> he says. He is sporting an embroidered waistcoat and a Dhaka topi, the Nepalese traditional hat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Next thing, I\u2019m his co-pilot. He considers me and says: \u201cEverything is easy here: no stress, relax.\u201d It could sound like a condescending Aikido black belt, but unlike them, his voice feels like a gust of wind tickling your temples.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He could be my grandson, and I could be his lost and found child. Then he says that in Nepal \u201call guests are Gods,\u201d and asks what\u2019s my name.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHarper God,\u201d<\/em> I inevitably answer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n His smile broadens like a horizontal Annapurna.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In <\/span>Into the Silence<\/span><\/i>, Wade Davis recalls that during his late expedition to Mount Everest, Mallory and part of his strictly British team ascended mostly through the Tibetan side of the highest peak in the world. Above 16.500 feet, amongst blue icecaps, phosphorescent flowers, and Buddhist-tamed fauna, they encountered a small community of followers of Machig Labdr\u00f6n (1055-1149)<\/span>, <\/b>the Tibetan tantric master of Ch\u00f6d, the most radical Buddhist approach to absolute detachment. Her accomplished disciples took the foundational teachings to the T, and were living in caves, deprived of everything except the sparse grains of barley that villagers fed them with \u2014typically to nourish the worms living in their guts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The English were astonished with their unconceivable long nails, hair and stench, but overall they admired their endurance through the harshest of weathers devoid of blankets, winter clothes or food, which according to Labdr\u00f6n, aka the \u201cSingular Mother Torch from Lab,\u201d was the key to attain Nirvana. Their devotion was rewarded with otherworldly rainbows in the skies whenever each of them departed this life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I wake up to my Nepalese existence. I can make out the rainbow glimpse of the top of the world breathing through the dusty air, and set off for the Temple of the Lost. Upon leaving, I meet Alfred, a late thirties Western-Eastern looking guy juggling a small ball with his feet at the courtyard of our lodgement. He claims to be Mexican, although he can barely speak Spanish. \u201cI\u2019m from California,\u201d<\/em> he meaningfully adds. \u201cI was born in Barcelona, the Sweden of Spain.\u201d<\/em> He looks at me mystified, and off I go.<\/span><\/p>\n Peanuts had mentioned that while he was living there, the Temple was at the end of a quiet junction, across the derelict backyard where he sold his carpets. \u201cThere were a few of us, we found a chemical component to dye the rugs, and the locals wanted to buy our recipe, but we never accepted any of their offers, just to piss them off,\u201d<\/em> he recalls laughing his ass off.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t make out the temple anywhere, let alone the junction. As it turns out, it is a tourist-infested nest of endless intersections, where pilots, pedestrians, street sellers, travel adventure agencies, ATM\u2019s and exchange posts thrive like flying ants. After scrutinising every corner of the alleged crossroad the only remnant of the temple of the Lost is a ramshackle tiled wall where I see the faded image of a Goddess. A passer by sees me staring at it as if lightning struck, and says what I want to hear: \u201cThis is Machig Labdr\u00f6n. The Temple was brought down to ashes during the 2015 Earthquake.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n His name is Suman and he looks very much like someone I can\u2019t remember. He is wearing shiny sandals, a waistcoat and a hat, and his blue eyes and features seem to match the glimmer of the spears of all the temples around us. He asks if I want to know more. I say, \u201calways.\u201d<\/em> He smiles, holds my hand, and walks me through a hole-in-the wall that defies physics and perception. All of a sudden we are inside a carpet shop that could have been designed by Charlie Kaufmann and Ali Baba.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I feel like I\u2019m in Marrakech in 1998, except for the lack of snakes and mint tea. He says that there were a bunch of Mediterranean\u2019s lads living here back then. They were young, wild and very smart, and they came up with a system for dying carpets in a shiny purple hue that nobody around had ever seen before. I freeze. He screeches to a halt, grabs my hand, and asks my name. \u201cHarper God,\u201d<\/em> I say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Wade Davis chronicles how before attempting to surmount Everest, most of the mountaineers found themselves drafted as soldiers during the First World War. The unspeakable horror of the butchery was so disturbing that some of the greatest writers of the time decided not to mention it ever again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n T.E. Lawrence and Robert Graves famously agreed not to discuss the experiences of the former in Arabia, which would become the foundation of the latter\u2019s mind-blowing biography \u201cLawrence and The Arabs.\u201d Graves himself could not handle being back in Great Britain after serving at The Great War, and he left home to never come back. Before doing so, he became the best man at George Mallory\u2019s wedding, a man he was infatuated with, like most of the members of the Bloomsbury group and any other passer by lucky to see his handsome face.<\/span><\/p>\n Mallory married Ruth instead, and the letters that they both exchanged during the Everest expedition is one of the most moving compasses of the many breathtaking layers and scopes of the book.<\/span><\/p>\n Mallory was a member of the British Alpine Club, and probably the most fearless and fit of them all. After the war, he just wanted to crown the ultimate heaven; the white, dark and blue summit he had restlessly longed for all his life. Most members of the expedition had dodged the shelling and the flamethrowers of the most horrifying armed conflict to date while witnessing the evisceration of some of the brightest minds of their generation \u2014for only to find eternity under a massive blizzard on the peak of the Earth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\tTouch Down<\/b><\/h4>\n
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<\/b><\/h4>\nHHHH<\/b><\/h4>\n
Erasing Thinking<\/b><\/h4>\n
Mansplain<\/b><\/h4>\n
II. Now Here, Kathmandu, April 2025.<\/b><\/h4>\n
Durbbie<\/b><\/h4>\n
KTM<\/b><\/h4>\n
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<\/b><\/h4>\nHarper God<\/b><\/h4>\n
From Silence to Eternity<\/b><\/h4>\n
The Temple of the Lost<\/b><\/h4>\n
Faded Tiles<\/b><\/h4>\n
Suman New Man<\/b><\/h4>\n
Trenches and Heavens<\/b><\/h4>\n
Flames and Blizzard<\/b><\/h4>\n