A Blinding Light and Then, All Darkness

Jonay Quintero Hernández

“You bloody bastard, take thaaat,” he screamed, stretching out his front right squamous hand in such a clumsy and brusque way that it almost fell in the puddle.

“How dare you! Son of a…!” replied his greenish and equally scaled counterpart, while attempting to return the blow in retaliation. But also to no avail.

Both batrachia were engaged in a bizarre boxing match. Both were as clumsy and helpless as two male frogs in a puddle.

Males can get very territorial depending on the season of the year and also on the availability of water. The long drought over the last two years had given the island an ochre look, and both fighters were attracted by the freshness of the pool. The bottom of the Taguacinte barranco, a breach in the ground, nearly as deep as a canyon, was one of the few places to provide a certain degree of humidity, and that puddle was the only source of water that either humans or animals could have access to in the small village of Hoyo del Barrio.

The combatants didn’t realize it, but a dark shadow flew above them. And that shadow suddenly became larger. Ramón, the raven, caught one of the frogs with his beak and flew away as fast as he had arrived. He landed on his favorite branch of his favorite tree to devour his prey. With the help of one of his legs, he grabbed the helpless frog while stabbing him with his beak, sharp as a knife. At the beginning he still could see a spark of life and despair in the eyes of the frog, but then it was all darkness.

It was so hard to see anything at first: My eyes were so blinded by the pristine whiteness that engulfed everything around me, that it was even difficult to figure out whether I was standing, lying or flying under the effects of gravity zero. Little by little, I started to pull myself together and recover consciousness. I did not know where I was, but the last thing I remembered back then was being with Amalia in El Hierro, after the fight against those hit men who were chasing her nephew Edelmiro.

All of a sudden, we saw a blinding light. Then, it all became darkness.

Checking blood tests. Blood tests normal. Slightly high degrees of triglycerides, speed normal, slightly high… behavioral tests… conducting, checking frontal brain cortex…ok… I heard those metallic voices but couldn’t focus my eyes. Everything was blurred and I was uncomfortably numb. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. I wanted to ask where Amalia was but couldn’t articulate a single word. If I had been conscious, I’d have liked to know more about where I was and who our captors were. But I couldn’t concentrate on anything, and reality was no different than a crazy dream.

“Oh geez! Now he is recovering consciousness as well!” regretted the first undefined figure. “What a surprise Manolo, you’ve got the levels of element B wrong again!” – “You’re such an ass…” They seemed to be quarreling about something beyond my grasp. Little by little both figures passed from blurred to humanoid, and eventually both looked like regular humans.

I asked them where I was, who they were, where Amalia was and whatever came to mind… All I could get from the two was a laconic, “You are in our spacecraft,” uttered by the regular human apparently called Manolo. Now that I could focus my eyes and could see them perfectly well, I realized that one of them was tall and bald, and the other was short and wore very thick glasses. Both were dressed in rare white vestments that irradiated a certain white halo.

“¿Then am I not dead?” I dared to ask, and they replied negatively. “You don’t look quite like the Lord’s angels either,” and they gave me a slightly annoyed look. I was starting to feel a bit disappointed, and the more they spoke, the more I lost respect for them. “I’m gonna ask for the last time and I hope you answer the truth… ¿What have you done to Amalia?”

“Well, Restituto, I’m sorry to inform you that Amalia woke up a few hours ago, earlier than expected, same as you, and unfortunately she just couldn’t make it…” – “¿She couldn’t make it?… ¿What the f–k does that mean?” I could feel the anger gripping my spine, its cold grasp unrelenting.

The tall one said: “I’m sorry it’s just another one of Manolo’s negligent acts…”

“¿Whaaat?” the short one did manage to utter, looking at his partner in awe. “People in cryogenic sleep take a couple of hours to wake up, but she did it too fast and that affected her nervous system.”

I had to inhale, not only to contain my anger, but to stand – as best I could – the pain of losing a close friend and relative. I didn’t care much about being alone in space, inside a spacecraft piloted by two lunatics. I just couldn’t stop thinking that I hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye. “You don’t look like much of an alien to me, in fact you look pretty much like a Spaniard to say the least.” – “Hey you don’t look that good either, see?” replied the bald one.

“¿Are you really an alien?” – “Well, technically, yes, we are. We were both born on a different planet from Earth.”

III

Up in the air, the red tiled roofs of the village houses looked just like a game of construction blocks. I like to feel the freedom of floating over a convection stream which gives my body enough lift for me not to move my wings whatsoever. I simply relax and watch how the neighbors do their daily activities: working their small plots of land near their houses, watering their crops, feeding the cattle, and a thousand other menial tasks that keep their tiny world alive and functional.

From the sky, the lush farmed soil with its greenery stands in contrast to the whiteness of the houses or the reddish hue of the tiled roofs. The houses are dispersed in the small village of El Mocanal, basically like the rest of the villages on the island of El Hierro, at the southernmost tip of Spain: in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of your mapa mundi, constantly touched by trade winds.

It was about time to go back home. I began to maneuver to get down to earth. Lately, I had begun to consider Amelia and Armiche’s place like my own. I had plenty of room in the shade, water and lots of cuddles from the couple. Generally, it is hard to know what any human thinks of me. Most of them fear me or feel disgusted, but I kind of sense that Amelia and Armiche love me. At first, it was hard for Amelia to accept me. She’s not a local, after all, and she doesn’t know that we ravens are like parrots for people in El Hierro. I’ve even learned to speak a few words in the human language, because that usually secures me a few extra pieces of meat.

I landed on my place in the patio and approached the bath where the guys put my water. I savored a long sip as that old frog had made my throat sore. I looked around, and the place seemed deserted. The house was small and very old, slightly run-down.

At the beginning there had been Moneiba, Armiche and Amelia in the house. They were young and idealistic, but their community generated remarks and gossip among all of the village population. It is not that the trio cared much, but after a few months, Moneiba left the house. She said that she preferred “being shared” than “sharing.” I guess she had envisioned the polyamory like a situation in which two handsome men would do all the house chores while she looked at them from the sofa. I cannot blame her for that.

Moreover, the guys didn’t have many resources and “love doesn’t pay the bills” they say. Edelmiro’s family had allowed them to live in the house for free on the condition that they would carry-out all the necessary remodeling.

I walked along the railing of the old gallery looking inside each of the windows. They were together – Armiche holding Amelia from behind, caressing her belly, a bit swollen lately, by the way. He was kissing her neck, barely touching her skin with his lips. I was about to take my leave, but Amelia noticed my presence. “¡Hola Ramón! ¿Where have you been?”

“Listen to me, boys. When I’m done with you, you won’t be needing a spacecraft to fly across the universe, you hear me?” I said in anger. “What have you done to Amalia? Where is she?”

The tall one adopted a sympathetic attitude, “Keep calm, Restituto; if you want to see the corpse, we will show it to you later,” – he breathed in deeply and walked around as if he were carefully thinking about what his next sentence should be. “As for the concept of death, it is not exactly what you might think…” – “What do you mean?” I interrupted. “Something like 260 different dimensions have been discovered. Amalia’s death is in this dimension, but we do not know about the others…”

“We found out about them and how to travel from one to the other. That is how we manage to get from our planet to planet Earth. Thanks to the greatest physicist to ever exist, Mr. Álvaro García Pérez.” That sounded like a whole load of bullshit to me. And the two guys looked like a couple of freaks who either belonged to a sect or wanted my organs, or both alike. “Stop with the crap and let Amalia and me go, and I won’t hurt you too much. You guys don’t know who you’re talking to.”

“Yes, we do. You are Restituto Quintero Padrón, member of the Order, Caballero Legionario, you served at the tercio in the 2^nd flag of Don Juan de Austria, spent many years in the province of Spanish Western Sahara and participated in the war of Sidi-Ifni. We know everything about you because our job is to get you to join our cause. But you still don’t believe us, do you?” – “I think you two are a couple of freaks.”

“That’s what I thought… Manolo! Panoramic view!” – he didn’t stop talking as the whiteness turned into darkness and large windows opened, immersing them in the black outside. Like the Milky Way with a billion stars, it just resembled outer space. “Manolo! Zero gravity!” – and a huge force lifted us. We began floating inside the chamber. The tall man spoke again, “Manolo, back to gravity +1!” and we fell to the floor like heavy sacks of potatoes. “Beautiful landing Manolo.” – “Thank you, Luis.”

“Well, Restituto, do you believe us now? If we had all the time in the world, I would let you process all this new information, but actually we have no time to lose.” I was so astonished that I couldn’t say anything. “First things first, I need to give you a little context before I trust you with a mission.” The words “trust” and “mission,” especially “mission,” kind of made something click inside my brain. “In the dimension we both live in,” said Luis, pointing at Manolo and himself, “humans have discovered interdimensional traveling.

As I told you, we owe it all to the best physicist ever, Don Alberto, who donated his discoveries to the kingdom of Spain. That gave us an edge over our enemies and the rest of the countries on planet Earth, for a time. What I haven’t told you is that dimensional traveling may imply changes in not only space but also time. As soon as other powers begin to copy our technology, they will not only colonize other inhabitable planets, just as we have already done, but also meddle and try to manipulate certain events from the past so they can prevail over us and control all of the known universe. Of course, we will try to do the same and defend ourselves, but changing past events can bring terrible consequences. Reality has become very unstable actually. Fortunately, it is not that easy to really change events. It takes a lot of modeling and calculus just to figure out what the right moves are, and it is also necessary to do it personally. That is, changes cannot be done remotely. An actual human being must be there, risking their own life to do this or that.”

“So you have thought of me to ‘make changes’ in history basically. And how am I supposed to do that?” I asked in awe.

“Well, the steps you have to take are very precisely defined, and you must follow them carefully. They have been designed by a powerful AI system we use. But not even the most powerful quantum computer can figure out all the possibilities that may arise with every change. However, we trust our artificial intelligence.” – “You make it sound easy…” – “But it isn’t. I still haven’t mentioned one of the caveats of this sort of mission. We cannot intervene in places where Spanish wasn’t the official language at any period of time in the past or that didn’t belong to the Hispanic Monarchy. It is not as easy as traveling to the past and killing Hitler, Napoleon or Churchill. Our AI has deducted that there are ‘big trends’ in history that are very difficult to change. History is not only about the big figures. We’ve discovered that, very often, apparently minor changes, especially related to technology, can be more far-reaching and longer-lasting than killing an important figure.”

“Do the enemies of Spain know all this?” – “It is very difficult to know how much they know. We suspect they have found out how to make certain changes in the past. That’s why our civilization is in danger. We have left behind the era of nation states, now there are only big cultural blocks that fight for control of the known universe. We, the Hispanic Union, have managed to survive only thanks to the discoveries of Don Alberto and can only trust the Black African Union. In fact, they control planet Earth thanks to an agreement we signed with them at the first stages of interdimensional travels. Our rivals are the Anglosaxon Union and the Mandarin Union. There are other minor entities, but most of the old 200+ countries joined one or the other union trying to survive. We live in a ‘world’ of rivalry and competition and we must do what we can to defend our way of living and our existence as a people.”

I guess I still looked a little skeptical… “So are you with us?” – “I suppose I joined the Order to protect the Hispanidad and as a retiree have nothing better to do…” – “Thanks, Resti, I knew you wouldn’t let us down with this!” said the tall guy in an outburst of joy. “If you ever call me that again, I will rearrange your face. And I don’t think you’ll like the outcome!” I replied.

Manolo brought a weird device, flat like a notebook, with some lights on its surface. “Listen, Restituto, it is very important that you fulfill each and every step of every mission, even though they may seem contradictory to previous missions or irrelevant.” “We have some agents in some of the specific dimensions, so you’ll have extra support. This tablet will be both our connection link to transport you from one mission to the next once one is completed and your guide towards the completion of each mission. Follow the instructions carefully.”

“The missions and processes will be carried out sequentially according to the instructions of the application.” I wasn’t sure whether I understood what I was getting into, but replied, “Yes, sure, whatever…”

“So then, press ‘start’, and I wish you all the best”

“Do you mean the letters in red, S-T-A-R-T?”…

Mission #1

Location: Tordesillas, Spain, 1494

Context: Two delegations, one Portuguese and the other Spanish, are discussing a future treaty which will divide the planet among the two powers. The Portuguese want to preserve their trade routes from the coast of Africa to Asia, and the Spanish want to protect their newly discovered lands in America. The final outcome of this Treaty would be the drawing of an imaginary line from pole to pole, crossing the equator at 370 leagues from the Green Cape archipelago. This would allow the Portuguese to colonize Brazil.

Procedure: Deliver the document provided in the pocket of your clothes to the chief of the Spanish delegation, Enrique Enríquez de Quiñones. The document warns him to concede nothing to the Portuguese beyond 100 leagues from the Green Cape islands.

Desired outcome: The dividing line keeps the Portuguese away from South America. The whole of the American continent will be for Spain to explore because the Hispanic Union will need the crucial population and natural resources that Brazil can provide in the future. The number of Hispanics will also increase greatly.

Just after pushing the tablet, I saw myself in a dark place, wearing what seemed to be a religious habit. The smell was unmistakable, and a little mooing around me confirmed what I had speculated: I was in a stable. I went out to a narrow cobbled street. The air was fresh, and the very first rays of light were announcing the morning. At this moment, the unexpected sound of a voice startled me, “Buon dia, pater, benedicte mei,” and I crossed myself very clumsily with my right hand. “Ore pro nobis pater,” said another voice. “Pax vobiscum… whatever,” I mumbled. My knowledge of Latin has always been very poor.

I walked into the still dark main square trying to find the Royal Palace. The place where, according to the application in the tablet, I should find the person I must give the letter to. Needless to say, public illumination in the fifteenth century was very inefficient, if not nonexistent.

In spite of that, I saw a huge stone building with the Catholic king’s coat of arms in the facade. I knocked at the door. A very unfriendly individual with a massive wart on his equally large nose asked me what I wanted and, without giving me the chance to reply, said: “We have already given donations to the church, and we don’t buy anything…” – “I know, son, that’s not the purpose of my visit. I wish to meet with Don Enrique” – “Don Enrique is very busy today and cannot receive any visits.” He slammed the heavy door.

That’s how an apparently easy task may get unexpectedly complicated. I walked slowly around the building not really knowing what to do. Climbing the walls was not an option since I wasn’t a youngster anymore. “Hey Restituto! Look up here, mate!” Hearing my name in the fifteenth century was surprising. The metallic tone of the voice calling me was scary, but the sight of a crow alighting on the railing of a balcony in a neighboring building excited me.

Yes, in El Hierro we teach ravens to repeat a few words, usually swear words, but we do not maintain normal rational conversations with them as a common practice. “Are you from El Hierro..?” I initiated the conversation stupidly, without thinking much… “Stop the chit-chat. Don Enrique is in his room right now, I can see him from here!” – “Then give this to him, I cannot enter the palace!” I said while stretching out my right arm, holding a paper roll. Quick, like lightening, the crow flew down, grabbed the roll with his beak. I saw him enter the palace through a window. I could only pray for Don Enrique to believe what he would see on the crow-delivered document.

Anything could happen since people are very superstitious at this time. It wouldn’t be too difficult to attribute to the devil the delivery of a document by a black bird who told him, “Read this letter your excellency Don Enrique!” But then I smiled at the expression I imagined on Don Enrique’s face when he opened the paper roll to see a map of the modern-day Americas, the Atlantic Ocean and Africa at a time when only a few islands had been discovered in the Caribbean. Reading the short but emphatic warning beneath it: “By the will of God, Don Enrique, do not allow the Portuguese to achieve anything or make any advances beyond the line of 100 leagues from Green Cape!! Your queen and generations of Spaniards to come will thank you if you do so!!”

I pressed Mission Completed on the tablet, even though I didn’t know if I had been successful or not.

Mission #2

Location: San Lorenzo de El Escorial near Madrid, Spain, 1784

Context: The consort queen, Maria Luisa de Parma, has just given birth to a child who is going to be the future Fernando VII, infamous as the “felon king” or the worst king in Spanish history. When he reaches the age of majority, he will depose of his own father, Carlos IV, and give Spain and all of its viceroyalties and provinces to Napoleon. He will spend most of the War of Independence as a voluntary hostage in France, even begging Napoleon to adopt him. When the French are expelled from Spain, he will return to the throne, ratifying the Constitution of Cadiz (1812), one of the first liberal constitutions in Europe, which recognizes the freedoms and rights of citizens in the Spanish territories of Europe, America, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Procedure: It is necessary to replace baby Fernando with another baby genetically modified in an appropriate way. It will be conveniently educated by our agents in court. The replacement is being produced as assessed by our experts, since the original Fernando is completely immune to any sort of education.

Expected outcome: We hope that the new Fernando, more aware of the interests of his own people, will not allow Napoleon to enter the Iberian peninsula or, possibly, invade. Hopefully, he will promote the active resistance of the army and eventually flee to any capital in the Americas, probably Mexico’s. This very action will extend the life of the Hispanic Monarchy a few more years, and, when the overseas provinces achieve their independence, they will do it as one united country and not by forming 20 separate republics as happened in reality. Many civil wars will be avoided, and this United Hispanic America will be a world power, while the recognition of the Constitution of Cadiz by Fernando VII will make the Hispanic lands the most socially advanced and democratic territories on the planet during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

I’m in a forest now but, fortunately, it is daytime. This place is somehow familiar to me. I can’t say why exactly… I keep walking down an earthy road, and it is not that I know where I’m going, but I continue walking anyway. Suddenly a horse coach passes me, spewing dust in the air, another one does the same a few minutes later. After a few bends in the dusty road, I see a small unfamiliar village in front of me, but next to it rises something completely familiar: the San Lorenzo de El Escorial Monastery. Well, it is actually partly a monastery, partly a palace, partly a museum, library and center of knowledge.

King Felipe II built this massive structure meant to be the center from which he would rule the whole world. He personally supervised the construction work from the top of a nearby hill, which was bestowed the name “Felipe II’s Chair.” I’m not a youngster anymore and was starting to feel tired of walking when I arrived in the town of El Escorial. Most people were busy with their daily activities, and I tried to pass unnoticed. According to the instructions for the mission, I should collect a packet in the convent of the Carmelitas Descalzas and then proceed to the Monastery, the place where the new Infante Fernando had been born two days before.

I knocked on the door, and a nun made me go in. “I guess you are Don Restituto. You have come for the packet, haven’t you?” – “Yes, you are right, mother.” The old woman handed me a small package, wrapped up in what looked like a piece of sackcloth. Without saying much else, that old nun pushed me out, back to the street and shut the door on my back.

Interestingly enough, the package was somewhat heavy for its small size. I felt something breaking inside of me when I realized that its contents were moving! I immediately veered into a narrow dark lane to crack it open.

I couldn’t but feel real anger when I unwrapped the package and saw… a baby. It was very small, eyes still closed, and smelled like a newborn. I felt my legs shake. Definitively, I was too old for certain kinds of missions, and I had obviously misunderstood the procedures in this one. That pack of freaks had kidnapped a real child!! I looked at the little sweet face of the baby. It was like coming face to face with the personal failure that my whole life had been. A man my age should be playing with his grandsons and granddaughters, but I was alone. It is not that women scared me when I was young, but maybe rejection frightened me, as did compromise, and the fear of not being a good husband or a good father…

Too much sentimentality when the future of our kingdom was at stake. Who cares about a lonely old man, unless that old man can save the Hispanic civilization from centuries of humiliation and oppression by the enemies of Spain? I pulled myself together and kept on walking towards the next stage of the mission. A few meters ahead was the royal guard’s first check-point. There were a few who asked questions, and a few who wanted identification papers at that post and then the next three. Still, in less time than I had expected, I was knocking at the consort queen’s door.

“Come in!” I heard a weak voice saying from within. “Good morning, your majesty, I’m the new doctor” – “Where is Don Miguel?” – “He is sick your majesty, and I’m his substitute” – “Well, actually I wanted to see a doctor cause I’m feeling a bit unwell today…” – I quickly surveyed the room and realized the baby Fernando, the future king, wasn’t there. “Your majesty, how is your son doing? I’d like to make sure he is healthy,” I explained, while clumsily checking for a stethoscope in my bag. I must have agitated the baby inside because he made a little noise, giving me the impression that my heart was at the tip of my mouth.

I feigned a little cough and approached the queen who was lying in her bed. “He’s with the wet nurse in the chamber next to this one, but…oh! I feel like I can hear him even though he is not here…” – “That is your natural motherly instinct, your majesty. You will be an excellent mother.”

Yes, I know I talked to her as if Fernando was her first pregnancy, but… how could I possibly know that she had had 12 before him? That included 4 natural abortions, 6 elder brothers and sisters who died at a young age, and 3 older sisters. It wasn’t in the instructions. I’m a soldier and professional hitman, not a historian.

I made up a new cough and tried to auscultate her right breast, successfully enough for the monarch not to realize that her heart was in the left one. I prescribed her a jar that I had previously filled with tap water and ceremoniously gave it to her chamber maid, so she could administer the prescription once a day on a daily basis.

Then it was on to the objective. I finagled my way into the next room under the excuse of checking the newborn child’s pulse. The wet nurse was immediately sent for a glass of iced water with a leaf of salvia on top of it. When she left, I proceeded to pull my baby out of the bag, hoping he hadn’t died of suffocation. He seemed alright, but seeing his tiny face made me feel a little bit weird inside. “Good luck, buddy, I hope you are happy in life.”

With that, I lifted the real Fernando out of his golden cradle, putting him inside my bag and replacing him with my baby. Fortunately, the original Fernando did not make any noise on our way out of the Monastery, probably an early indication of his intellectual inferiority. When I gave him back to the nuns and thanked them for the loan, I couldn’t avoid saying: “Please give him a good life. All children are innocent and beautiful, even though they are going to be bad as men.” – “Don’t worry we will provide him with a good family, and he will have a good future.”

I pressed Mission Completed.

Mission #3

Location: 23 September 1890, Madrid

Context: The Armada officer and naval engineer Isaac Peral has built the first electrically powered military submarine in the world. It is able to launch torpedoes from beneath the water. This new military device will be of extreme importance in defending the overseas provinces from an increasingly aggressive USA, which wants to become a new imperial power at the expense of a decadent and weak Spain. Even though the project is initially welcomed and supported by the Spanish government, the intervention of foreign powers developing their own submarines, especially a dark figure called Basil Zaharoff, causes the project to be abandoned and forgotten. Zaharoff used the dirtiest tactics ever to make the project fail, including bribery, stealing and murder.

Procedure: We won’t annoy you with our instructions. You are a professional in this field. This is your thing. Just kill the bastard. Do it however you think is best.

Expected outcome: A flotilla with a minimum of 10 submarines is made, and 8 years later, during the Spanish-American war, the Spanish Armada manages to destroy the American fleet. Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, Marianas, Carolinas and Palaos will remain Spanish for a few more years, then they will become independent satellite states of Spain, and one day they will join the future Hispanic Union. The submarines will give Spain a technological edge over rival nations: the USA, the British and French Empires and the Second Reich. This could eventually be used to avoid World War I.

I was so happy to be in Madrid again… even though it was at the end of the nineteenth century. I couldn’t keep myself from whistling while cleaning the client’s shoes. That was my cover. I simulated being a shoe shiner outside el café Asturias, the favorite place for intellectuals, politicians and artists to discuss their ideas, and for arms traffickers and criminals like Zaharoff to make deals.

I waited patiently for him to get out, asking whether he would need my services. He said yes. Without much planning, I stabbed him in the femoral artery and then stuck the knife in his neck while the pavement turned red with blood.

Mission accomplished!!

I pressed the button and immediately appeared before my weird couple from the future. But there was an odd look on their faces… Actually, I was feeling kind of unwell now… Then I looked at my belly, and it was all red with blood. Now I remembered: That bastard Zaharoff had a tiny gun in his hand. He must have fired before I even noticed…I fell to the ground and both freaks tried to help me. “It looks as if this is the end, isn’t it?” – “Yes, I’m afraid it is, Restituto. Our computer cannot find you in any of the other 259 dimensions” – “You completed the three missions and have done such a great service to the whole Hispanidad, but we won’t be able to pay.” – “I knew you weren’t going to pay me, you freaks,” – I forced a smile and then all went dark.

“But there’s one thing we can do that you don’t know anything about, Resti. We will collect your consciousness and transmit it to another body. In fact, we already have a good candidate.”

I felt comfortable, warm, like I was floating, loved and happy… still in the dark. Then I felt immense pressure on my body, above all, in my head. An invisible hand was pushing me out of my place of happiness. I was in the dark, but then it all became an intense light. I couldn’t see anything, even open my eyes. The light was blinding. Many hands touched me. Outer space was extremely noisy. Then someone placed me on a warm and soft surface, cut my umbilical cord, and the noise went down enough to hear a familiar voice. “Isn’t this the most beautiful boy you’ve ever seen?” said Amelia. “Yes, but have you decided what we are going to call him?” She gave it a little thought and then said, “We will call him Alberto, like my grandpa. His name will be Alberto García Pérez.”