Shadows of Aztlan

False awakening

2012-01-13T13:11:00.000-06:00

Since not long ago, he had been having difficulties with his daily job. Keeping his eyes open was a challenge in itself. Keeping his mind clear was equivalent to winning the Olympic triathlon every morning, until the third coffee cup had left his stomach and had reached his brain. Actually being productive was a near-impossible task (as if he could have won the Olympics game in the first place).

At night, even as he was utterly exhausted, he was unlikely to fall asleep until 3 or 4 in the morning, and every night he had a renewed discussion with his wife, who wanted to talk with him, who wanted him to be asleep when he was supposed to.

He did not dare to explain what was really happening to him. He did not dare to say that he was afraid of falling asleep while he was awake, and that since not long ago, he was also afraid of his waking hours. And when he thought about the reasons for his fears, it was even worse: He was afraid that his waking hours were a lie, and that the nightmare he had to be in when asleep were the reality. He had concluded that his mind was broken and that the “normal” life he had was just a construct of his imagination, or the imagination of someone else.

Dealing with boring letters, sales reports, human resources interviews, statistical analysis, board meetings, holiday meetings… It had to be a lie. It was so obvious once he began to think about it. The first evidence was that he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone on vacations, or weekends. Or sick days. For as long as he remembered, he had been working on the very same office, every day for his whole life. The second evidence he had was the fact that when he started noticing weird things happening around him, he discovered he had been having the same dream for a very long time. For 16 years, it seemed.

And the dream had always been a nightmare. Repeating itself once every night, and every time just a couple of seconds advanced in the “story” of the dream. But he had learned a lot about that other “life”, as he liked to think about the dreams.

He was dressed all in black leather and some sort of body armor. And he held a gun on either hand, and they were some really big guns at that. Some sort of infernal beasts, vaguely similar in form to a monstrous and gigantic rat, some 5 feet tall and 6 feet long, was biting at him, and he had fallen to a wet floor, full of feces and things that smell worse than anything else he had smelled in his life, and he was getting dizzy either from pain, from the sick smell of it all, or from some other element he hadn’t quite pierced.

He was not alone in that place with the beasts. There was one more person, and some sort of horned goat devil also being attacked by the rodent-like demons. Both of them were trying to reach out for him, and spoke in such strange voices that it was hard to make out the words. The human looking man also held a gun at his hand, more akin to a miniature, shotgun than a handgun, but it seemed useless on the beasts. The horned devil was murmuring some kind of twisted incantation that made his eyes glow with the unholy power of hellfire, and blue flames ignited on his clawed hands. The devil was surely preparing to turn to ashes everyone there, and it was in that moment that the dream usually ended, returning the dreamer into his calmed office life.

That was usually the routine, switching between the scene when he was going to turn into ashes and a boring little office job. That was until he started noticing oddities in his wake life, and interesting details on his horrible, nightly dreams.

First was the name of a rival company: Smaug Enterprises. Smaug. He remembered some old fantasy book with a dragon using that name. He kind of remembered having read the book, but it was impossible to find it, to remember the title, the author, or even the story. And when he had asked about it, people reacted too aggressive, as if they were offended. He couldn’t talk to anyone about the book without causing a fuss. And when he searched online, he found not a single useful result.

He had given up on ever finding anything about that dragon, and was relatively at peace, when the second strange thing on his life hit him. While going out to watch a movie with his family, he discovered that he could predict every twist and turn of the plot, and even the ending, with such precision that it seemed like he was remembering something he had seen before. For him, this was no movie premiere.

Those things had made him uneasy, and had taken away his happiness. Even so, he had done exactly what anyone would have done up to that point: ignore it, and kept going forward with a “business as usual” attitude. He had always liked that phrase, and now it fitted perfectly to him.

The daylight horror story began six months later, when he was loading the car for a camping with the family. He tried to call his younger son, so that the little one could bring a toy or a book. That’s when little Jake became little Sam, because instead of a young boy, a young girl went out of the house. It was surreal. It was sick, and crazy, and he almost lost the use of reason. He fell to the ground beside the car, felling the pain of the false memories invading his brain, rewriting his history, adding experiences where there was none, and stealing others, changing the way he felt the school festivals had been, changing baseball practice for tea parties, and blue for pink. It hurt, and it hurt deep. Somebody had deleted Jake, leaving only one void name, and a little girl named Samantha was now in his place. He hugged the little girl that was so scared his dad was acting so strange, and he then had to cry for the loss of someone that never existed.

It was impossible to forget the loss of his son, real or not. That was something he could not simply shrug away, something he would never let go. That was when he noticed the final oddity of his beautifully, boring life. Sometimes, one of his friends, or one of the members of his family, would have his eyes changed. It began by accident, and as he got startled, when he looked back into his wife’s eyes they were normal again. Afterwards, he began to check everyone for that, hoping it was just part of his extremely active imagination. But he found those same old and cold blue eyes studying him sometimes. They were always near, always staring at him when it was improbable for him to look back at those eyes.

He began to stay awake as long as he could watching the TV, careful of choosing only nature documental shows, with the lowest number of people he could find. He was afraid of finding those terrible eyes looking back at him. And once alone, he fell asleep, as calmed and rested as he could, ready to take in any detail he could get from his past dreams. That was when he noticed the fourth actor in the nightmare. A thing, a small figure with slurping sounds for voice was hanging from his back with both hangs wrapped about his head, and both legs on his neck. He only noticed it after he fell to the ground, something the creature had not expected.

He had to take a decision. He tried and failed miserably of solving the problem in the nightmare side: Just removing the beastie or killing him. But back there, all his movements were decided by the creature itself, and he was pointing his guns at the goat demon and the other human, not at the rat monsters. His problem was not with killing the fire demon. It was with killing the human, and being eaten by gigantic rats.

So there was only one chance of escape. He had to kill himself in this dream world. And hope that would break whatever control the little bugger had on him. And he had to do it soon, as the vigilant eyes of the creature could notice anything odd, and would try to stop him at once.

He then went to the garage one night, took a shovel and a hammer, tools he had used to repair the backyard with the help of his sons and daughters, 4 in total. He also got the ant poison. Then he went to the kitchen, and got the best Japanese knife he had: a beauty his wife had given him because he loved sushi. He also took with him the oven cleaner, opened the gas valve in the oven, and left for the stairs. He went to the bathroom, and stared at his face for several minutes. It looked odd. Fake. He would have to do something about it, but only if he got time. He left the poison and the knife, and the cleaner there, hidden. He also put the shovel behind the door: It had the perfect size for what he needed.

He then went to visit the room of his two daughters, and while he watch them sleeping, he felt something watery fall from his eyes across his face, to the floor. He felt sick, and fearful, and nostalgic. Sick because he could be wrong, he could be crazy, and then he was really going to die. He felt fearful, because he was going to leave the only family he had for as long as he remembered, and he had loved them. He felt nostalgic, because he was leaving with no possibility of coming back ever again to the peaceful life for another one that seems so crazy, so full of dangers, and so terrible.

“Daddy?” Sam asked, for a second looking at him with those horrible blue eyes.

“Yes, darling?” He said.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I just wanted to kiss you good night” He said as he came closer, and kissed her forehead. She smiled, still sleepy, and closed her eyes. The pain in his chest grew, and the tears began to flow freely as he closed the door behind, leaving the girls for a calming sleep like the one he had never had. Memories of birthdays he was sure he had never organized nor been there flew into his mind, along with the grief of a loss he would have if he continued.

As firmly as he could, he walked to the room of the boys, and mentally, from afar, to keep him away from the terribly strong doubts invading him. He considered those feeling not his own, but an invasion from the illusory world of the gray creature that was tainting his mind.

His wife was wide awake, and also for a second, her eyes were those of the twisted creature. She was also the woman he had loved all of his life, for as long as he remembered. She had the most beautiful eyes, deep and caring, full of love, and innocence, and intelligence, all of them traits that he loved in her, even now. They had had fights, they had had romantic moments, and they had formed together a beautiful family. They seemed the one for the other since they were young, and when they had been sick, the other had been there. All of these memories he remembered of a sudden, and strong feelings of love engulfed him, making him doubt right when he was at the door of the room.

He watched her there, still for a moment and then slowly moving towards him with sensuous movements. She was tall, and beautiful. Her nimble body was only covered by a single red satin piece of fabric that left just the perfect places of her perfectly white skin to his imagination. They had many nights of passion with her using only that. And the memory of what lay underneath, was enough to make him stop in his tracks. She was a smart, beautiful and caring woman. A wonderful wife, and good listener, she had been with him for most of his life, and she was the loving mother of their four children. Or was she? Weren’t those the thoughts and memories of someone else?

He was sure that if something bad happened, the creature would use his wife as a vehicle to make sure he stayed here, in this false life. He was crying, and his hands were trembling with fear. What if she was truly his wife and he should be on a mental institution? What then? What if she tried to save him?

She came closer to him, and kissed him deeply, and for a while, all was perfect in the world. Then, when the kiss broke and she opened the mouth to talk, he hit her with the hammer in the head, right beside her left eye. The sound was similar to smashing a coconut, or so he thought, even if he did not remember ever smashing a coconut; and the body fell to the floor a fraction of a second later.

He tried to scream, but bite his own tongue. She was not human, and she was only an illusion. He couldn’t love an illusion. He had to shut his eyes close and dry them a bit with his T-shirt before he could continue. Crying in silence beside the dead body of his wife, invaded by sadness, and fear, and thought about the future of his children, and at the same time trying to convince himself that there were none, that all was a lie, that he hadn’t just killed a woman that loved him, that trusted him…

And then she rose from the floor, the head crooked in a weird angle and the eyes fully cold blue. He jumped away, thankfully towards the door. She had a saddened face, and her voice, raw and harsh spoke to him: “Dear husband, why did you do this to me? I lo-o-o-ve you, darling… I lo-o-ove you so much!”

All the doubts in his head disappeared. He was nauseated. He could see the blood flow from the broken skull and skin in her forehead, flowing with speed and covering her formerly beautiful body with dark red blood, darker with every second. As the body of what was his wife came towards him, recriminating about the harm received, the doors of the children’s rooms opened wide, and the four of them stared at him, with surprise first, and then with fear. But all of them started to walk for him, reaching with their hands for their father.

His conviction did not falter more. He ran as fast as he could for the bathroom, just in time. For in that moment the five figures of those he had lived with as a family ran after him, not with love, but with anger.

He managed to close the door behind him, and locked it. Then he used the shovel to make sure the door wouldn’t budge even if pushed really hard. He saw his face again in the mirror, now more calmly, with horrible screams outside as proof that he was right, and this was the real dream.

And for the first time, he saw at the mirror that his own eyes were cold blue. That was what was wrong with him, of course! He had to fix it now. The noises outside went silent; they were planning on breaking the door by force.

He opened both the bottle of poison, and the bottle of oven cleaner. With a simple movement free of any doubts he drank the full contents of the two. His mouth burned, sending shocks of pain through his brain as the liquid horror ate the tissues it came in contact with. He heard his own screams of terror in the background, and he could feel the heat and the burning, the fear trying to stop him from the most primitive part of his being as the muscles in his throat, neck and his torso suffered severe spasms as the pain only grew and expanded for his whole body. His eyes were shot with blood in the mirror, full of pain and suffering, filled with deadly fear. Then he was unable to see anymore for a while, as the tears filled his face and eyes, clouding his sight. The first heavy hit towards the door hit then. Not many people know it is easier to break a door with a kick. He did. They didn’t, apparently.

It was wonderful for him. Gratifying, even. It was the most real feeling he had ever had while he was awake. He knew he was going to die very, very soon. But something he had to do first. He took the kitchen knife and began to draw a circle around his face with it. Blood flew then, huge amounts of it. Then he clawed under the skin with his fingers, and took his face- no, not his… the face, the false face, away from him. He looked into the mirror, but he already knew what it would be there: not bare muscles, nor a horrible skull. There, from the mirror, stared at him another face, with its own skin, light-olive in color. It was an Asian face. His face, his real face, all covered in the blood of a false one, at last looking at him in the mirror. It was a face with dark eyes, not blue, much younger than the one above it. The rest of the skin fell away, in arms and legs, and torso at last. And he understood whose eyes and whose face was there in the first place. Then, just as the door broke open, he cut his own throat with the knife, and fell happily dead.

Death is full of darkness and silence, and darkness and silence is all that is left when one dies. So it would have been odd for anyone else except for him, that so much light came to him through his eyes, so many distorted sounds at the same time.

All of his five senses were scrambled, as if he hadn’t used them in a long time. But there were two things, two sensations that were very sharp in his senses: the metal grips in his hands, and the small body behind him. Something was growling not far away, someone was screaming at him, but he simply used his left gun as a club against the creature behind him, and pointed forward with the right hand, and then shot until the magazine of both weapons were empty. Pain invaded his head, his eardrums hurt like hell even with the silencers, and the blood escaped from his hurt leg. He was resting on a pool of stinking, waste water and feces. His whole body ached, and a creature that did not look wholly human seemed like wishing to give him some sort of first aid.

He couldn’t remember his own name, who he was, where he was, or who these two men were. But this hell was his reality, and he could not change that for any dream, much less for the dreams of the wretched thing that lay headless behind him. It was something that once, long ago, had been human, and somehow had lost his family and his life, and had become the horrible Gollum-like creature. But unlike Gollum, this one could twist thoughts and fuse his memories with his victims.

Now he was free from those false memories.

But he was full of grief and sadness. He had lost a family.

SR IV: The Hitokiri's Tale

2007-10-23T14:01:00.000-05:00

Just before leaving the house, a message from sister arrives:

Forgive, oh! wise Older Brother! I just noticed that you are asleep, and that you were supposed to be arriving to the House first. Quizá me equivoque... Pero creo que no llegarás a tiempo con Madre. Salio de la casa 2 minutos antes de que te hablara. Gome-nasai. Quizá debí hablarte en cuanto supe. Pero ella no me dijo nada. Nana told me. So... If you take the chance to come and visit, I will be delighted to see you... Después de mi clase de Tai-chi, la clase de trad-chelo, y mis dos horas con Miss Pedrero if i survive the drowning of her History Tutoring. Pero a las 7:00 estaré de regreso. Back from the Titanic sailors. I'm sending you Father's papers about the stocks by the comm. Usual encrypting. Password: Flor. Forgive to interrupt you. See you at eleven.

The small falcon-like icon does a old style geisha dance. Even with the traditional fan thing.

"Allright... Maybe she's really growing up, after all" he tought, closing the door. He wasn't in a hurry anymore. Slowly, he took off the white trenchcoat, hanging it beside the door, and wishing he could sleep a bit more, he let his feet take him to the sofa, and then he let himself fall there like a trunk. "I'd loved an extra hour of sleep... but the little rabbit is now proving herself as a falcon," he thought. The idea of his little sister doing Intel for him was both scary and weird, for the risk to her own life and for the strong reminder that she wasn't that small and innocent girl he remembered anymore.

So long as she did't took too much intrest into the working field of his brother, he couldn't do much. Or so long as she didn't delve into the same subjects that Father had before he had been...

"Murdered!" he mumbled. "Murdered, not just deceased, dead, or gone." Closing his eyes he invoked the painful image for a second, before it was to painful to bear. his muscles tensed, ached, screamed. And with that he woke up. He reached for the small table in front of him, where the two things he needed were lying: the wine, and a cup. It was time for him to work peacefully.

He commanded: "Tatsu, turn table screen on." a dimm light apeared in front of him in the table, beside the wine cup. The light turned into a clear image of a Japan temple made of blue lines. The commlink avatar apeared in the form of a small blue-colored dragon, awaiting for commands. "Tatsu, now show me the files received during the night." He paused a bit. If Taka-chan* had sent him something, and he hadn't seen it... maybe there were other's, so he continued: "And readme the received messages that I haven't seen. Filter any spam there."

"De inmediato, Mi Señor." Frag! He hated having the translated version of the OS. It understood him, and was quite efficient, but when it talked, all style was lost. Damned regional versions. Couldn't they include all languages, and leave the users to pick the one they wanted?

Visually scanning the files, he found the papers sent by the new, shiny Taka-chan. Good encryption program, it seemed. Good fortune she still was on the good side of the family, unlike him. " Now tell the kitchen I'll be having breakfast in half an hour from now. Continental." Not that there were many choices, anyway. He would need to eat fast, that was all. Maybe it was better to arrive home while Sister was occupied, so she didn't made too many questions. She could be changing into a falcon, but she had the curiosity of a hundred cats. The letters aprared in the screen: PASSWORD?

"She said 'flor', huh? The fourth sign is..."

His smile was as wide as his face. Then came in a slow vibrating motion from inside his groins growing up, up to his throat, where it became the seed for the best minute-long laughter he have had in ages. It felt good, even when it hurt to laugh with the bandages and the wound. It was good, and it would help ease the pain, the one he didn't wore on his body.

"Rini-chan has good Zen, too, doesn't she, Tatsu?" Before the avatar program tried to give some coherent answer to such a question he inputed the password.

"CONEJO"

Shadowrun III: Hitokiri's Tale

2007-10-22T13:33:00.001-05:00

"Domo arigato... gozaimasu... imooto-san..."

And then a small silence, with the trid images fading, leaving the siluette of Kiharo in a darkness only broken by the dimm blue coming from the commlink. His voice hadn't sounded either warm, loving, or with happy-to-see- you humor. Awakening like that was too much. It took Aiko nearly half a minute, on the other side of the comm, to receive another word from his brother.

Years ago, she would do the same thing, and he would wake up as angry as the troll singer in the trid. Then he would chase Rini-chan* all around the warm house, passing by the huge windows that allowed to see the gray sky and the inmense castle they were living in. And then, running to the back door into the garden, with all of those small plastic-like brushes and flowers that were so in in those years because they could be genengeneered with specifications for the colors and light sources of a particular garden. And so, Kiharo would chase an imooto-san that ran like there was no tomorrow...

And now there he was. In a small condo at the 7th floor of a 20-something floor high building, a sedan parked safely inside at his name, with a wall half hand-painted in all hues of green as the thing best resembling a garden in several kilometers around. Only a single window in the front, with a view to a nondescriptive street. The only other window showing the back of the condo, beside the back door, leading to a 1x3 space that served as "backyard", and home to the waste processor every home needed not to drown in trash the city. It wasn't bad, really. That house was better than the one 85% of the people out there had. It was his alone. It had good food. Oh, yes! Real and artificial food, mostly the second, but no soy-bean or soy-derived product would enter his home. There were no human tutors with close schedules or huge amounts of home studying of politics, finance, economics...

Instead he now had a gun in his hand, another under the pillow, and serveral other small and medium sized weapons hidden everywhere. And an ammunition belt in the other hand. And then, there were the bendages and the pain, and the blood. And the terrible need to be ready always, for the next person to take you by surprise might just be a gigantic troll with an axe trying to kill you bacause you did something to one of his buddies. Or it might just be your sister. As in the old days. Old, as in long time ago, like a lifetime.

No, his voice wasn't warm or conforting. But it wasn't angry either, for the surprise better comes from your little sister than from a gigantic troll. And it was good to be reminded of the good days, for that kept him in focus with his work. Also, it reminded him of reaching his Zen in every minute.

"Rini-chan! I am most grateful for hearing such a thing from you... Si... aprovecharé para darte una visita. Y tomar un poco de comida del refrigerador..."

She started answering but was unable to finish her sentence: "Rini-chan?! ya no soy ninguna Rini, he crecid..."
"Aún usas las pantuflas de conejito, ¿no?" His remark was received with an angry look more false than real, and a series of comments about his own personal habits as a child that she belived he hadn't left behind, incluiding finishing sentences for her. Or answering questions with zen-like riddles.

While they spoke, he searched in the dark for a change of clean clothes and his basic equipment, just in case. Today he was just a citizen, a civilian with no issues whatsoever with any megacorp, or totalitarian goverment.

"¿Eh? ¡oye! ¿Cómo sabes de mis pantuflas?"
"La lechuza no tiene que mirar para saber dónde está el ratón. Llego en media hora, Rini-chan."
Click.

He had hung up before she even reacted to that last one."Calling me again Rini-chan! and... how does he do that, always?" Aiko tought for herself while she let go of her commlink.

Dressed in white, for a change, Kiharo smiled for himslef and said aloud: "She still had those, then. That must be a signal, that my Zen is not that bad, after all".

Taking a last painkiller before leaving, and putting the sunglasses on, he was off. To check some papers in Father office. To bring more clothes. And to eat something nice...

Shadowrun II: Hitokiri's Tale

2007-10-22T13:06:00.001-05:00

Not quite sure yet what is happening around him, he lets his hopefully well-trained reflexes get him out of trouble. Even though his mind seemed like a sea of chaos -nothing new, really- the priorities for his survival instinct were clear: "first get away from the troll, then get a grip over what's going on here", he tought. Creating a strategy in his mind, while trying to look around for tactical position, while keeping distance from an angry troll... that definitely was not what he had planned to do to rest after the last job...

Rolling over himself, Shiroi moves away from the troll and and gets to standing position almost instantly, the gun pointing toward the screaming troll. When he is about to fire, he notices some rather odd things. First, the troll is singing. Second, he's still at his place, safe. Then, after blinking a couple of times in a low, educated voice, he speaks as if saying an order even if nobody is there: "Trideo off"

Slowly, with a more quiet pace he moves back toward the bed. The blue hawk from the commlink turns around, and makes a little genuflection. "Espero no haber interrumpido tus sueños, Hermano Mayor"

The hawk dissolves, leaving a image of a young elven girl, hair the color of cherry tree's flowers. She is smiling. And then she appears to compone herself.

"Madre ha salido ya para la reunion con su corredor de bolsa. Tu me ordenaste avisarte cuando fuera. Algo mencionaste acerca de "una sanguijuela chupasangre" cuando me dijiste eso. Disculpa por favor mi intrusion a tu hogar." The respectful tone of voice is betrayed by the mischievous look in her eyes.

"Pero no te preocupes, no he encendido el video de tu commlink todavia. No quiero ver que clase de compañía traes ahora de tus fiesta de anoche. No quisiera que ella notara mi cara de vergüenza cuando yo vea que es mas bella que tu fea hermana."

Shadowrun I: Codebreaker's Tale

2007-10-22T13:02:00.000-05:00

In the late night, the rain keeps falling. Here and there, all over the streets. The oilish water shatters, and the droplets slizze over the concrete, not quite disappearing, taking with themselves a bit of the floor and dissolving it. Rain is not what it used to be.

A tenous green mist raises from the floor, giving the impression that the buildings are giants in a toxic swamp. The light of the mercurial lights shows a cloaked figure. The steps sound muted, but quick, nearly desesperate.

The breathing deep, altered by the filter mask, sharp by contrast to the steps. At the end of the block, without losing the step, turns to the left, and stops in front of a door. Instead of a lock, there is little numeric keyboard, and the engloved hands typing a code. A couple of seconds afterward, the lock's mechanism lets go a series of sounds, and the figure pushes the heavy door.

The rain stops in the inner corridor, and the sound disappears as the heavy door closes behind the figure. A woman dressed in green overall opens the nearest door. Tall, a bleached blonde with piercing blue eyes, moves with a lean grace. Her Russian accent is very heavy, almost to the point of sounding forced.

"Did you get the antibiotics?"
Nod from the cloaked figure.
"And the nanovaccine?"
Nod.
"Good. Give them to me"

From inside of the cloak, the gloved hands show a pair of plastic boxes, and they are snatched by the blonde woman, who begins to walk trough a little living room, and arrives in a less small bedroom, where between a par of monitors and some serum dispensers are poised over a hospital bed, where a small girl rests. She is breating shallowly, and pespirating. The nurse comes near to the serum dispensers, takes one of the two plastic boxes, and with a needled syringe, puts something trough one of the intravenose tube. Then, with a short and quick motion, opens the other box, and takes away a little box with blue lights. She puts it inside of a blank monitor, and switches it on. As the little screen comes to life with words and graphs in some foreign language, a blue luminescence surrounds the girl. She breaths out, and at her right, a loud breath out sounds. She turns around. And with a furious look in her eyes, points towad the door´s room.

Shadowrun I: Hitokiri's Tale

2007-10-22T12:08:00.000-05:00

In the dark, the voice of a woman begins to unchain japanese verses...

"Tatsutagawa "A confused array
momji minarete of red leaves
nagarumeri of Tatsuta River
wataraba nishiki Were I to cross
naka ya taenamu" I Would break a fabric of rich brocade"

The finish of the poetry is the signal for the light to come. A blue light begins to glow delineating a bed, of clear white sheets and the brownish reflection of the simwood. The glow eventually coaleces in a trideo image of a slim hawk, perched on the air. The beak of the hawk opens. and the voice of the woman is heard.

"Kita-chan."
The body on the bed makes no move.
"Kita-chan"
The voice slurs, and changes. Younger and more light, more active and lifelike.
"One-chan… One-chaaaaaaaan… Querido y apreciado hermano mayor... Please answer… Que pena, de veras…"
The body makes no sound.

"I'm so sorry.
54,64,54,bdf
Sister override"

The smoky-gray color of the glassed windows becomes a more tranparente gray, the a barely visible tinted gray, then a clear cristal window. The sun shows between a not-so-clouded sky, shining trough the light dreeze. The blue hawk nods its head twice, and in the center of the
room a tridimensional image the size of a car-wheel appears, becoming a stadium stage where a band of chain-and leather trolls are crushing some musical instruments. And the rhythm of a heart, together with the sound of a bloodcurling synthguitar and three pairs of organic drum
batteries fill the bedroom.

"Youz canz the troll out of the crimez!
Youz canz take the troll out of the ztreetz!
Youz canz take the troll out of the childz!
But youz cannotz take the troll outzide of me!
But youz cannotz take the troll outzide of me!
But youz cannotz take the troll outzide of me!
But youz cannotz take the troll outzide of me!"

From the bed, barenaked, a young man springs, clutching black steel of sleek design. His left hand swerves, pointing the muzzle of the gun toward the different points of the the corners of the bedroom, snake-like. The right hand, with something like life of its own, begins to snap around his naked waist the ammunition belt. Bandages cover the lower part of his chest and the left shoulder. His eyes, big, of a very light brown shade, scan the room for moving figures,
anything that appears to be dangerous. Eventually his gaze focuses on the commlink bracelet, from where the blue hawkl is placidy seated.

In that moment, from the trideo, the lead band troll raises from the trid image and walks toward the gunman slowly, brandishing a huge axe. His voice thunders.

THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT FOR THE CRYSTALLINE VACUUM COSMIC SPACE MODEL

2006-10-20T16:53:00.001-05:00

J. A. Montemayor-Aldrete1, J. R. Morones-Ibarra2, A. Morales-Mori3, A. Mendoza-Allende1, A. Montemayor-Varela4, M. del Castillo-Mussot1 and G.J. Vázquez1

I. INTRODUCTION
A review of recent cosmological observations suggests a universe that is lightweight (matter density about one third of the critical value), is spatially flat at big scale and in an unexpected way the radial distance between galaxies is increasing at an accelerating rate [1, 2].
The acceleration of the expansion of the radial distance between galaxies which forms the universe requires the existence of energy to overcome the gravitational self-attraction of matter. The cosmological constant also called lambda (written asΛorλ) is a long time candidate for serving as this energy reservoir. In 1967, Zel’dovich [3] showed that the energy density of the vacuum should act precisely as the energy associated with the cosmological constant. Lately, theorists have been dusting its off again and speculating about sources for the energy based on the fleeting particles that wink in and out of existence in vacuum space, according to quantum relativistic mechanics. But calculations based on that idea lead to lambda’s that are 120 orders of magnitude larger than the energy contained in all the matter in the universe [4-8]. And, this last result is based on speculation, of many theorists, that there is a cutoff in the maximum frequency of the oscillation vacuum modes which corresponds to the Planck’s distance of about 10-33 cm [9]. So theorists are exploring different alternatives. For instance, some researchers consider that the cosmological constant arises from different possibilities such as: Local voids or nonhomogeneities in the universe expansion [10, 11], a true Casmir effect on a scalar field filling the universe [12], or give alternative scenarios to a pure cosmological constant provided by a classical scalar field known as quintessence [2, 13-17]; also the self-tuning brane scenario like an attempt to solve the cosmological constant problem have been used [18], and some people use the anthropic principle trying to explain the small value of the cosmological constant [19, 29]. As far as we know there are no experimental data which give support in a conclusive way, to any of the previous models for the cosmological constant problem. In other words, this problem and also its associated one of the acceleration of the universe expansion remain still unsolved.
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The quantum theory of the vacuum considers it as a three dimensional harmonic oscillator. Quantum field theory is notorious for its divergences. The most fundamental one concerns the energy density of the vacuum [9]. In a companion paper, the problem of gravitational stability of an infinite, three-dimensional, vacuum cosmic space with crystalline structure has been studied [21]. Such model assigns physical reality to the three dimensional harmonic oscillator scheme used in quantum theory to describe the vacuum. In this scheme the lattice parameter of the vacuum cosmic crystalline space is of the order of the neutron radius.
The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the cosmological constant arising from such crystalline vacuum cosmic space, and make a comparison with the available experimental data.