The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria Read Online Free
Author: Carlos Hernández
Full explanation!”
The tub was full. Next to it was the freezer’s icemaker bucket, emptied, and a box of Instant Ocean, which is what I used to salinate the jellytank water. It was empty too.
In the tub, its blue-white glow refracting through the ice, filling and emptying like a lung, was a fully mature aphotic ghost.
Mountain
I climbed Everest. More honest: Roger and the Sherpas climbed Everest and hoisted me behind them. They might as well have carriedme up on a palanquin for all the effort I expended.
The search began the day after we arrived at the South Col. The weather was cooperating for now, and forecasts were good. If we were lucky we might get two days.
The cold had sunk an inch down into my body, anesthetizing me, preventing both hope and despair. It was the only reason I could function, this close to knowing. If I failed to find Lazaro, I could try again someday. But if I succeeded, he would be alive or dead. The wave would collapse. I would eject him from his superposition and either bring him back to life, or reify his death.
We searched half a day. I saw many bodies, none of them Lazaro. I wondered briefly if I shouldn’t make it the work of the rest of my life to bring the dead down and present them back to their families. But let’s see if I could succeed on my own mission first.
Roger, with a Rumpelstilskin-like prescience, knew not to pry, but the Sherpas couldn’t comprehend that I couldn’t care less about the stark and ominous wonders Everest offered. So, thinking I was like every other tourist, they kept trying to show me the sights. Two of them were dying to show me the most curious ice formation they’d ever seen.
I perked up. Ice formation? I followed.
It had appeared out of the ground last season, they said. They exhumed it out of the recent snow for me to see. It was the size of a sleeping dog and looked something like hand-blown Italian glass, impossibly whorling and curling into itself, a hyaline nautilusrelentlessly tearing sunlight into rainbows. Deep in its center there seemed to be a dark nucleus, and strange, ciliated veins circuited throughout its interior. Climbing gear radiated from it like an explosion.
“Roger!” I yelled.
Roger came. “We need the cooler,” I said.
He spoke to the Sherpas and they brought the coffin-sized cooler I had had specially made. It borrowed from ice-cream maker technology, had liquid nitrogen lining the metal interior. After I delicately placed the ice formation inside of it, I found I could just close the lid. “Tell them to help me pack it with snow,” I said. Soon every Sherpa who could fit around the cooler was dumping snow and ice into it. When it was full I padlocked the lid.
I was weeping, but no one could tell because everyone’s eyes cry this high up, and anyway tears freeze before they fall. I took several hits from my oxygen tank, then said, “Roger, this is futile. I’ll have to reconcile myself to the fact that Everest will be my son’s final resting place. We’ll have to abandon the search. Gather the men.”
I could see he knew there was more to the story. But all he said to me was, “Right.” Then he told the Sherpas what I said. A few of them looked at me incredulously—the search had hardly begun, and now I was content to leave with just an ice-souvenir?—but the more experienced among them simply started packing up. Americans were generally regarded as the best tippers in the world, even when an Everest ascent failed. Tolerating their strange ways was a small price to pay.
Sea-Level
It was my fourth date with Imelda. She was a year older than me. She didn’t dye her hair and was a retired librarian and said if I ever caught her playing Bingo I had her permission to kill her on the spot.
We had met through Back from Heaven, the nonprofit I founded to recover the bodies of those who died on Everest. She had joined me on our latest mission, our most successful to date: three deceased climbers retrieved,
The tub was full. Next to it was the freezer’s icemaker bucket, emptied, and a box of Instant Ocean, which is what I used to salinate the jellytank water. It was empty too.
In the tub, its blue-white glow refracting through the ice, filling and emptying like a lung, was a fully mature aphotic ghost.
Mountain
I climbed Everest. More honest: Roger and the Sherpas climbed Everest and hoisted me behind them. They might as well have carriedme up on a palanquin for all the effort I expended.
The search began the day after we arrived at the South Col. The weather was cooperating for now, and forecasts were good. If we were lucky we might get two days.
The cold had sunk an inch down into my body, anesthetizing me, preventing both hope and despair. It was the only reason I could function, this close to knowing. If I failed to find Lazaro, I could try again someday. But if I succeeded, he would be alive or dead. The wave would collapse. I would eject him from his superposition and either bring him back to life, or reify his death.
We searched half a day. I saw many bodies, none of them Lazaro. I wondered briefly if I shouldn’t make it the work of the rest of my life to bring the dead down and present them back to their families. But let’s see if I could succeed on my own mission first.
Roger, with a Rumpelstilskin-like prescience, knew not to pry, but the Sherpas couldn’t comprehend that I couldn’t care less about the stark and ominous wonders Everest offered. So, thinking I was like every other tourist, they kept trying to show me the sights. Two of them were dying to show me the most curious ice formation they’d ever seen.
I perked up. Ice formation? I followed.
It had appeared out of the ground last season, they said. They exhumed it out of the recent snow for me to see. It was the size of a sleeping dog and looked something like hand-blown Italian glass, impossibly whorling and curling into itself, a hyaline nautilusrelentlessly tearing sunlight into rainbows. Deep in its center there seemed to be a dark nucleus, and strange, ciliated veins circuited throughout its interior. Climbing gear radiated from it like an explosion.
“Roger!” I yelled.
Roger came. “We need the cooler,” I said.
He spoke to the Sherpas and they brought the coffin-sized cooler I had had specially made. It borrowed from ice-cream maker technology, had liquid nitrogen lining the metal interior. After I delicately placed the ice formation inside of it, I found I could just close the lid. “Tell them to help me pack it with snow,” I said. Soon every Sherpa who could fit around the cooler was dumping snow and ice into it. When it was full I padlocked the lid.
I was weeping, but no one could tell because everyone’s eyes cry this high up, and anyway tears freeze before they fall. I took several hits from my oxygen tank, then said, “Roger, this is futile. I’ll have to reconcile myself to the fact that Everest will be my son’s final resting place. We’ll have to abandon the search. Gather the men.”
I could see he knew there was more to the story. But all he said to me was, “Right.” Then he told the Sherpas what I said. A few of them looked at me incredulously—the search had hardly begun, and now I was content to leave with just an ice-souvenir?—but the more experienced among them simply started packing up. Americans were generally regarded as the best tippers in the world, even when an Everest ascent failed. Tolerating their strange ways was a small price to pay.
Sea-Level
It was my fourth date with Imelda. She was a year older than me. She didn’t dye her hair and was a retired librarian and said if I ever caught her playing Bingo I had her permission to kill her on the spot.
We had met through Back from Heaven, the nonprofit I founded to recover the bodies of those who died on Everest. She had joined me on our latest mission, our most successful to date: three deceased climbers retrieved,
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