bio

Andrés E. Caicedo was born in Colombia, studied Mathematics at Berkeley, got married, moved to Austria for two years and now lives in Pasadena. He works full time, writes sometimes, tries not to drink coffee after 6 P.M., reads a lot, watches too many movies and too much TV, is thinking about increasing the family, and seems to be under the illusion that his schedule is still half empty..

primary external link:
andrescaicedo @ blogspot

Renovation

Almost with resignation, the unicorn gazed at the group trying to surround it. They were moving to a clearing in the forest, leaving the shadow of the big trees. Effortlessly, the unicorn distinguished the king; bent its head in recognition, aimed its horn at him. Its hooves raked the ground once again. The wolves howled maddeningly, trying to run away, hurting their necks in their restraining chains. One attacked an orderly. Most of the knights almost fell from their mounts, their horses neighing and kicking in distress. Only the king remained impassive.

Leonard, on the other hand, was in fact smiling. Furtively, but with determination.

Then the unicorn charged.



Nearly everyone in the kingdom, Leonard included, ignored how they came to be. He remembered himself as being there forever. Not "since the beginning", for more than six thousand years ago he had decided that there was no beginning. In the kingdom everything just was, everlasting.

Leonard was the king's clerk. He knew that the palace had two never-ending rooms, though rumor said there were many more. One of them contained the king's memoirs. Every year, after the renovation ceremony, the king called him to his dispatch to dictate a new chapter. For too long a time, Leonard was amazed at the monarch's imagination. The stories spoke of heroic battles, historic episodes and incomparable disasters, even if the year had been quiet, the crops had been scarce and the sea had been so deadly calm that it was impossible to navigate. As far as he could remember, he had always thought they were inventions. Later he thought the king was senile, which was not a ridiculous idea in spite of the king's apparent youth.

Eventually he thought the king was speaking in riddles, using a code. Patiently, over the course of a dozen centuries, Leonard tried to decipher the royal memoirs. More than once he discovered analogies, he guessed patterns, before running across a story destroying his hypotheses. He had already given up on finding an explanation to the stories other than their being make-believe, when one day he found a book in the memoirs room. There were infinitely many of them, one only had to step inside and there they were, grouped in shelves in strict chronological order, covering even more than what sight could harbor. The one he found had Leonard's own handwriting, but he did not remember it. In this book he read the events of that very year, with details to names and dates, described in terms of phases of the moon, seasons, and dates of harvest. The similarity was eerie, and he looked for the previous chapter. It narrated the story of the previous year, and two books before there was the story of two years ago. That was the first sign.

The other never-ending room was also filled with books, also with his own handwriting. They were his own memoirs. He had never studied them with any particular attention, and he did not remember writing them. Picking one randomly, he started to read in a loud voice.

Today, after another hundred thousand years, I have decided to forget.
Today, after another hundred thousand years, I have decided to forget.
Today, after another hundred thousand years, I have decided to forget.

It continued alike. Written end to end, with minute writing, the pages kept incessantly the repetition of the chore. He wandered through the room, going from one shelf to another, choosing any book and opening it to any page. He always found the same sentence, always with different ink. In the big tower of the castle there was a dimly lit laboratory Leonard tried to keep secret. After some experiments, he found that the most recent inscription dated from ninety thousand years ago.

Despair invaded Leonard. He could not understand what was happening; his books repeated, and repeated the chant, and did not help him to see. Finally one day he found a different strophe, and read it in a loud voice.

Today, after another hundred thousand years, I have decided to forget.
Today, after another hundred thousand years, I have decided to forget.

Today, after another hundred thousand years, and ready to forget, I have decided to leave testimony of my desperation, as I know I have done infinitely many times already, at intervals of 12 million years. The king is the support of the universe. Nothing happens that is not decided by the king. I am not his clerk -- I am his prophet.

Today, after another hundred thousand years, I have decided to forget.
Today, after another hundred thousand years, I have decided to forget.

Even though Leonard was not very bright, that was the second sign and it sufficed.



The unicorn produced a sound like that of a bull bellowing. The squires ran away, leaving the king to its mercy. Very few knights had not dismounted, and they were too busy calming their beasts to be of any help. The king's smile was concealed by his thick, dark beard. With his right arm tense, he waited for the unicorn to come closer. His spear was aimed at a point right in the middle of its eyes, just below the horn. Leda was scared, trembling. There was still enough room between the unicorn and them.

"There is something I have to tell you," she started, shyly.



Leonard was not very intelligent, but with the future in front of (and behind) him, every now and then he had ideas. He painted. Sculpted. Designed arms. Studied anatomy. And thought about the king. Leonard deduced that the king was the support of the universe. He deduced that the king decided the future, and dictated it as his memoirs. The king was a god. He had existed forever, he would always exist, and the stories would not cease unless he so decided. The idea was pleasant to Leonard. And every year, after the renovation ceremony, he continued playing clerk.



Cue Ginevra.

Ginevra had golden hair and eyes as deep as the very ocean. Leonard fell in love as soon as he saw her. That used to happen every two or three thousand years, he vaguely remembered, but more than ten thousand had passed since the last time. Once, or so he believed, Leonard had children. If this recurred periodically, as he suspected, Leonard was father to an infinity of children. They could all have died a long while ago, for all he knew. He decided it was time to marry again, and so he visited the king and asked for Ginevra's hand. The king stared at him amazed, and without a second's hesitation waved his hand and replied:

"No."

Leonard noticed a tone of fear in the king's voice. The following day, Ginevra was exiled from the kingdom. As far as Leonard knew, the king was king of everything, the kingdom extended beyond the horizon, beyond the abysmal falls, beyond the void. Ginevra would have to leave the universe to obey the order. She got her hair cut, and sold it to buy a horse and follow the king's mandate as quickly as possible. Leonard lost track of her for several years.

Disheartened, filled with grief and pain, he went to the memoirs room, looked for the book corresponding to that year, and read. It took him two days to find any mention of Ginevra.

The witch was bald, but her eyes were beautiful. She hated the king because -- she claimed -- he had wrenched from her the loyal clerk, her one true love. Thus she decided to kill the king, and plotted a very careful plan that the clerk uncovered. And the clerk killed her. It was a fast, unworthy death. True knights would have enjoyed it, but it was as if he suffered it. It did not matter. The witch was dead.

Leonard did not understand those words until, years later, his heart began to ease the pain and his memory to remember her hazily. A horrible witch, bald but with beautiful eyes, who had cursed the kingdom and gone so far as to stab the king. But she had not known that only a unicorn, the most hideous beast in the universe, could kill him. The king was left certainly wounded, and the kingdom was covered with pain. Leonard, who was by then also unaware of the power of the unicorn, came to his aid. He took the dagger from the king's chest, chased and killed the witch. Then, while she expired, he looked into her eyes, and found them as deep as the very sea.



Leda was the king's youngest daughter. That year she would turn fifteen. As in all the renovation ceremonies, the king went to hunt the unicorn accompanied with a virgin. It is well known that only the purity of a virgin is soothing to unicorns, distracts them and, even though it may be seen as an unfair advantage, is really the only way that kings manage to kill them. That year the king went with Leda. It was a good idea to go with her; he was proud of himself. He always enjoyed those small improvisations.

"Not now." He silenced his daughter. He did not want to be distracted.



Ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and fifty years had passed since the last voluntary oblivion, and Leonard had no idea of how to forget. Maybe last time he had forgotten too much. At a particularly animated party, the king talked distractedly, and Leonard learned about the power of the unicorn. He smiled the first time since Ginevra's death, as he finally had a plan to rid himself of the ruler.

His idea was a bit more ambitious than a mere assassination: it was intended to solve an ontological problem. Knowledge was impossible, since there was nothing beyond the king. The maidens of the castle, the castle, dragons, knights and hydras, forests, roses, mountains, the air, Leonard himself, they all were but mere fictions. The king had created and destroyed them hundreds of thousands of years ago. For some, two of Leonard's oblivions had passed by; for others, even more than that.

Now Leonard was going to end the fictions, was going to destroy the king. Fantasy would come to an end, and only reason would remain. And them, just humans, would be unable to create fantasies which were not but mere illusion. It would be an illustrated world, like being reborn after a deep, dark dream. He smiled a subtle and delicate smile.

Although, to tell the truth, Leonard did not believe such to be the outcome of his plan. He was tired of life, something of which only the old king could dispose and, by getting rid of the king, he wanted to put an end to it. Not just for the king and for himself: for the whole world, for everything.

His plan was simple: Leonard chose a wealthy family living in the highlands. He convinced a notary that they had evaded some taxes. The man was imprisoned and disappeared, and after two years the woman had to sell the house. By then, a farmer living near the castle was threatened. He had to sell his lands as well, and run away. The woman bought them. The king met her soon after she moved in, and fell before her beauty. But she became pregnant, and that saddened the king considerably, since a monarch must not raise somebody else's children. Such is the tradition.

The woman gave birth to a girl. Leonard had spent a lot of time in the laboratory -- and in seducing her -- to make sure of that. When the daughter (who grew up beautiful, but not very intelligent) turned sixteen, she also became pregnant. Again the king was sad, for the daughter's beauty was superior to her mother's. After another sixteen years, the daughter's daughter, even more beautiful than her mother and grandmother, with golden hair and eyes gleaming as the biggest of the three moons, married the king, and became queen. This was not a given, you understand, for the kingdom had a very strict protocol a woman had to follow in order to, being the king's wife, also obtain power over her subjects' fate. Yet the king loved her so much, it did not matter that she could not meet the requisites, and he ignored them. She was his first wife, after more than twenty, to be proclaimed queen. A year later, Leda was born. Her mother, named Ginevra, died soon after her birth. This saddened the king. The physician determined death by love, which gave the king comfort. Sovereigns sometimes have mixed feelings.

Leda grew up healthy and beautiful, and with great intellectual curiosity.

Leonard, in spite of his own limitations, taught her as much as he could. He loved her as a daughter. He taught her of perspective and of horses, he explained to her proportions. Leda developed an interest for the sciences and arts, and studied astronomy and geometry. And she loved swans. Leonard, who had waited thousands of years for an opportunity to get rid of the king, and had been working on this plan for fifty, decided that the fondness Leda inspired in him did not matter. This was something curious because this fondness, and the swans, helped him love her.



The unicorn was some 60 feet away from the king, and approaching. It was not going to stop. Behind it, a cloud of dust, torn earth and some trampled bushes were the only testimony of its advance. For the next two hundred years nothing would grow through its path. Leonard knew it, because he had spent centuries tracing the herds, scarcer every year, and two millenia or so studying their patterns. If things continued the way they looked, after twenty two hundred years, more or less, there would be no more unicorns, and the renovation ceremony could not be realized, and the king would have to conclude his term. That would mean the closure of the memoirs room and, maybe, after many -far too many- years, of the universe. Nothing improper being necessary. But, without fading his smile away, Leonard told himself that it was too late for those considerations.

The king hurled the spear with all his strength, and with some fear. The stinking breath of the animal, which was almost touching him, was unbearable. And there was something evil, some would say almost human, in its eyes. The king's spear hit right in the middle of them. Just below its horn.

And it broke.

The king did not have time to open his eyes in astonishment, to curse his luck, or even to pray. Either way, he would not have done it, Leonard thought: atheism is an indispensable condition of the gods.

The unicorn's long and sharp-pointed horn went through the king's heart, and he was impaled on it without even screaming. He died immediately, and had he been someone else surely enough his body would have remained hanging there, rotting, and maybe the unicorn would have died of infection.

Leonard remembered slyly the last verse he wrote that morning:

Today, after another hundred thousand years, I will finally forget.

Once, and for ever.



With the king's death, the sky became opaque. The first thing that went was sound. Leonard saw animals howling, noted the earth split open, the mountains crack, the rain come down. He saw how the knights' skin vanished in strips, and how the maidens of the palace grew old, became bones, then dust, and then dissolved. But he did not hear anything. The world was disappearing. The meadows, the castle, the light. In the most perfect darkness, Leonard observed how the destruction kept advancing, till void embraced him and nothing else was left. No trace remained of Leda, or Ginevra, or his memories of Ginevra.

Then he understood.

He understood that the god was him, the clerk, and not the king. He understood that the privilege and the punishment of gods is immortality. Leonard was condemned to the complete void, where not even love, weariness, or reflection are possible.

He understood, trembling, when he realized he had not vanished.