Káñina, Rev. Artes y Letras, Univ. de Costa Rica XLVIII (2) (Mayo-Agosto) 2024: 1-2/ISSNe: 2215-2636
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RADIO SILENCE
Silencio de radio
Anthony López-Get*
Soledad holds on to the handle by the window, preventing her body to float away. She holds tight, more than
she needs in zero gravity, but the sight of planet Earth in flames justifies the grip, the need for an anchor. The
International Space Station, placed in advance at a safe distance from possible debris, still grants her a
privileged view of the event. This particular tiny glass in the Tranquility Node provides the best angle. All
cameras and sensors record every second, for scientific purposes, of course. After several hours of mass
destruction have passed in complete silence, Soledad utters her first post-Earth words.
“So that’s the end of it all. A big ball of fire.” She pauses to drink from a bottle of vodka and dries a few
tears with her sleeve. “Who would’ve thought I would be the one and only surviving member of an entire
species.? Not only that. . . the one and only specimen of an entire planet! The one and only earthling! That’s
an improvement, better than all my awards and PhD’s! Wait a minute! I can’t be an earthling if there is no
Earth, right?”
Soledad reflects on the issue for a moment, then she lets go off the handle to float free and allows some more
booze to help with the thinking process.
“Anyway Sole, this is your moment of glory! Isn’t it? You are the greatest physicist alive, the most
intelligent human being, the fastest, the strongest, the most beautiful, the sexiest, the funniest, the bravest…”
A thought chokes her. “Well, that one is true. I am the bravest indeed. I was brave at least. I was brave even
when there were other humans around. I was the only one who preferred endless solitude and confinement
over extinction. I decided to remain here and record everything, for scientific and historical purposes of
course. I was left behind by the entire human race to keep humanity’s knowledge. Someone had to be here to
prepare the RAID from single hard-drives, to receive and store the information, to backup, broadcast,
control, program, solder, solve…” she sobs, but manages to go on, “I single-handedly prepared the entire
database, linked the remaining satellites, programmed the broadcasting loop, I…” this time she cannot help
herself from crying, and her tears filled the room like floating crystal shards, each one shining with a reddish
glow.
* Universidad de Costa Rica. San José, Costa Rica. Doctor en Estudios de la Sociedad y la Cultura (UCR). Profesor
asociado de Lengua y Literatura Inglesa y actual coordinador de la Maestría en Literatura Inglesa (UCR).
Correo: anthony.lopez@ucr.ac.cr. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9452-861X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15517/rk.v48i2.61465
Recepción: 17/2/2023 Aceptación: 22/2/2024
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“All the others ran to their deaths. That’s not brave, that’s stupid! From a scientific point of view, being able
to witness the death of a planet from a close distance and being also the sole guardian and curator of human
knowledge is an opportunity you get once in a lifetime,” she chuckled in a sad way. “But no! All of them just
took their rubbish and flew away to their families and children, to die. They wasted their lives and brains for
some antiquated, overrated, emotional load of shit…” She takes another sip from the bottle. “Well, fuck
them! They were weak. I respected them as professionals. Miranda could have saved me two weeks of work
on the satellite communication links, she was a genius with that crap, and Alex, a surgeon with the bloody
robotic arm. I struggled with that piece of junk just to readjust a few modules to the Unity Node. And
Nikolaev, my dear Nikolaev, he would’ve made me more of this vodka from those potatoes the Japanese
were growing back there. But all of them are gone,” she lets out a long and painful sigh, “literally, forever,
gone, turned to ashes. And I was left alone to witness how all they died, how everything just burnt down. It
took just a few rocks to transform Earth into fire, and in a few decades from now into dirt.”
She pauses, deep in thought, until something lights her face up.
“Well, that sounds good actually, ‘Planet Dirt,’ that’s what it is, isn’t it? That’s what it actually was all the
time. That’s what we all were. Dirt. I am a ‘dirtling,’ carrying dirt wherever I go. I am transmitting dirt to the
deepest corners of the universe. . . What am I doing here? Is this even worth the sacrifice? I don’t know how
to feel. This is completely new for anybody to know. Six psychologists, six! And not even one of them could
have told me anything of use to prepare for this. They didn’t have a clue. We all have lost close ones, family,
dogs, friends, and lovers, they’ve left you, they’ve betrayed you, or they’ve just died, but you always had
someone to go to, or something, a job to do, a research to carry out, a physical to pass, a paper to write, a
colleague to beat, professionally speaking of course,” she produces another sad giggle, “but how do you cope
with mass extinction? "How do you cope with having nothing else to do besides ensuring that this tin can
continues broadcasting 'humanity' to anyone out there who cares to listen, as long as your resources last, your
muscles continue to shrink, and the tin can holds?"
She yells to the ball of fire through the window “What for? What do they care for humanity? What do they
care for Van Goh or Atwood or Hawking or Cortazar or Buttler or Freud or the other guy? hmm, what’s his
name? Lacan, yes, Lacan! Who gives a fuck about Lacan? Who gives a fuck about me?”
After a long and deep sigh, and many more reddish droplets, she mutters, “It just so happens, I’m also the
stupidest, loneliest, and saddest of all human beings. . . Who’s up for a game of Solitaire? I guess that must
be me. Soledad.”
Esta obra está disponible bajo una licencia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
