Read an excerpt from Michel Nievas Science Fiction -Roman Dengue Boy

Death, you mean?

Scattered-eu on the strange white surface, which was below the inciment Antarctic Sun, Dengue destroyed so that everything is flowered for a maximum of a second. What about life is there to look back on in a few moments when a boy, a girl, a broken void, thinks it’s dying? Can it think of his dear mother, regret the father it never knew or may remember some humorous or traumatic anecdote involving his classmates? The truth had not happened much else during her short time on earth. However (for the mind works in mysterious and unpredictable ways, especially the mind of a mutant mosquito), Dengue did not think of any of these people, but rather about a story that her mother uses to read her at bedtime, the story of Snow white and the seven dwarfs. Shen remembered the opening of the heart:

“Once in time we have frozen, windy winter night who lived a queen. This queen looked at the snow fall as she knit by the window. Through the window, the snowflakes fell sweet and rhythmically in unpredictable patterns, such as feathers from an endless pillow. As she looked in the wonders of the falling snow, she accidentally stuck one of her fingers with the needle. Three drops of blood fell on the snow. And the Queen thought of herself: If I could just have a daughter who was as snow, as red as blood, and as beautiful as winter! “

This opening is always unclear dengue boy (as he was then). Among other things, he did not understand half of the words: what the heck was winterWhat was ColdWhat was snowAnd why did they cause such fascination?

Dult like blurred as snowAs beautiful as winter . . .

The mystery of these words, whose meanings had always escaped him, aroused an even greater suspicion: Does it mean that I, the deviant DGGUe boy, with my green and yellow spots, must be as white as snow and as beautiful as the winter of my mother to truve and jerk?

It was impossible to know, and in this future how cold, winter and snow had disappeared from the ground, there was no empirical way of experiencing their effect (at least not for a miserable boy from Victorica). Of course, his mother, who had also spent all his miserable life in Victorica, was not much help. All she knew (or intuited so strongly that she thought she knew) was that snow was soft and beautiful, and the skin of beautiful children had the same color and comfortable structure, unlike her dengue child, whose epidermis was vertical, hard, a green-yellow color. Becuse of this, dengue boy, like a kind of kabbalistic rabbi, convinced himself that if he could access the mystifying meaning of Cold,,,,,,,, winter and snowWould he open the holy breast of his mysteries and the secret of how he could get his mother’s love.

Becuse There was not the insect that was wanted more than to be the one as snow, beautiful as winter and appreciated by his mother!

The desire to gain access to the enigmatic material hidden by these words also holds the bad instect, and he pore over any dictionary and encyclopedia he could find in search of the answers. He read the definitions again and again:

Winter. Noun. NOTE. Surprising season in the territial year that used to occur between autumn and spring also extinct.

For example: “Winter was the cold time of the year.”

Cold. Noun. NOTE. Body sensation produced by low temperatures characteristic of the old winter.

For example: “It was cold in winter, especially if there was snow.”

Snow. Noun. Defeating in the form of small white ice crystals is formed directly from the water vapor in the air by a template of less than 32 ° F, which is used to occur to watch the country’s winter, which still occur on other planets or on the ground via artificial ways.

For example: “There was so much snow in the winter!”

The poor boy read these definitions and read them again and then read again, but to his great disappointment understood nothing. Was it because his classmates always claimed), was he a half -wit? Winter,,,,,,,, Cold,,,,,,,, snow. Mother words. Word! And worse still, words that had to be explained by other words whose definitions were even more vague and imprecise.

WINT-ER, COLD, SN-OT.

Hermetic hieroglyfer, which boy enjoyed phonem at phonem, under the illusion that the flesh that had once been under their lively skin would not evaporate before his eyes. But removed from the meaning that had once inhaled life in them was all that left was a hollow carcass of meaningless sound.

WINT-ER, COLD, SN-OT.

Atmospheric phenumens that so many people and other species suffered and endured over millennia, and which was now a mere planetary mystery, speculative prose wart of fossils, the empty writings in the water and the earth, the geological transcript of night essence!

The only season that Pampas and Antarctic Caribbean knew was summer, burning, tireless, homogog. So when Dengue Viud, her body was still numb from the poison, thought she would die and saw a drop of her own blood (to be precise, the blood she had indincitaly had sucked from the children and office workers in Victorica), yes, when she saw the blood trembling across White Surface she had fallen on, the shen remembered, used to tell him (back what he was a boy), the confusing fable of Snow white and the seven dwarfs.

And in fact, the memory she thought her last was appropriate, for her peisoned body had actually landed on the skating on the big winter cruise season, now disappeared from the ground and its elementary materials: snow, glaciers and icebergs. On special luxury cruise ships, running with the help of AIS’s advanced technology, tourists could experience winter’s unique delights for themselves, including one of its biggest attractions, the biggest ice rink on the planet!

And that’s exactly where Dengue Diing had landed and ruined the fun of the tourists. Imagine the scene: On this impressive plate of IC, one-human-twenty-five-meter-long and thirty-five banks, crowning the terrace of the twenty taste cruise with a direct view of the pristine, burning sea, huge crowds of visitors were the flock to try a unique experience possible for the first time-a journey over time to another geological era, as these spectacular landscapes did not exist. It was not only an opportunity to skate with the unmistakable and elegant steps of skates on a frozen sheet, but to do so at temperatures below zero, since the atmosphere where Rink had been installed the sensation of the harsh winters in old New York, long flooded and immersed under the waves. On top of that, it was Christmas, International Tourist’s Business and ending eagerly awaited season. And then when the Christmas singers rank, timed tourists moved in heavy coats like swans sliding over a terra incognita, this white rectangle was suspicious of the hekculean effort from extremely powerful refrigeration machines, surface of artificial ice decorated with flags of all countries from before the great thaw, opposite a monumental, pure gold statue with stealing fire from the gods, for a rink, for rink, for rink, for rink, Long -term at the Rockefeller Center, in Old New York, also many league under the sea now.

Of course, the sculptor, hired by the cruise ship, had been astonishing enough to replace the flame in the right hand of Prometheus with a huge block of pure ice, which the titan robbed from the abyss of planetary time, as wealthy tourists could recover (as long as the cruise lasted) Geological era is now permanently on Earth: Holocene. In fact, this cruise company was slogan: “12,000 years of history one place, the big winter cruise“As it promised to recreate the lost planetary terrain, the winter that humans had known it was born and was dead. Thus, “Devils” (which the company called the cruise experience in its advertisements) went up from Bundg floors and told twelve thousand years of winter history in increasing order. It began on the lower deck, where they had recreated the end of Pleistocene in a huge refrigerator with robot mammams and mastodones, including a family -friendly game where you had to start a fire with sticks and stones before prehistoric mammal attacks. The higher levels offered a number of experiences from the old winter: the historically included invading Scandinavian cities with a Viking ship, with the ability to kill, sack and rape or cross the Andes on General San Martín’s white horse, while dedicated entertainment there were ski slopes, cold chambers, where Aurora’s boralis and Australis we pulled back using lasers, You could experience all different kinds of wintry rainfall, including snow, hail and sleet. There was a huge IGLOO with an outdoor cinema, casino, spa, carousel, cocktail bar and a sushi and BBQ restaurant, including “hibernation” attractions that the cruise ship’s advertisements secure visitors, recreated winter in perfect details. The old, frozen delights of ice, snow and cold were an authentic treasure of the gods, stolen by Prometheus even for the exclusive joy of the cruise visitors: a real paradise where you could access a secret mystery that was now irrevocably lost. The skaters slid over Rink in an atmosphere of pure cheer, helped with the Christmas singers, and people laughed as they crashed fun into another and danced, brilliantly against each other in shared happiness. A true, unforgettable celebration that would be recorded on the tourists’ retina, an authentic dream, had it not been for Mosquito landing violently and suddenly on the ice rink and destroyed everything.

This extract is reproduced With the permission of the novel Dengue boy By Michel Nieva (translated by Rahul Berry), out now with Serpent’s tail. North American edition available from Astra House. This novel is the latest choice for the new Scientist Book Club. Sign up and read with us here