The future borders the present at all times. Thus, although silver linings could be part of possible futures, they aren’t enough to protect future generations.
It was cold in the children’s detention center. A little boy named Plinio, his bangs draped over his dark eyes, huddled up with the other children, smelling of sour fear. He couldn’t sleep, he had a stomachache, but the guards would only give him toilet paper if he asked for it. Plinio bit his lip hard in silence.
Coming from the waist of the Americas, the Panamanian boy had crossed many worlds alongside his young mother, Rosa. On the way, they had met Cameroonians, Colombians, and Haitians who had paid forty dollars to face the hell of the Selva del Darién. Hearing their stories, the boy imagined the jungle engulfed in flames and the poisonous golden frogs from his grandmother’s stories jumping from the fire like sparks.
After many tales and travels, Rosa and her son finally managed to cross the Rio Grande, El Río Bravo del Norte. There, his sneakers, his last gift from his grandmother, were stained by the quick current of the waters at the border. There, the path of the two drenched figures came to an abrupt end: they were caught by armed men shouting in Spanish. Not all the border crossers were detained by the guards. But Rosa was. She resisted. She got injured in the struggle, her face wet with water and blood. The boy ended up alone in a cell overflowing with children.
The sad story of the nine-year-old did not end there. It was also the time of the pandemic, and Rosa, just as brave as her son, had her life cut short by complications from the virus. Plinio soon found out because one of the men in uniform, a gray-haired firefighter, told him about his mother’s death. A quiet voice in Spanish. As his rage settled in, the little one did not even move. There was a hot rumbling in his chest, but he kept his face still. His tragedy went unnoticed, as many of the world’s sad stories are going unnoticed at this very moment.
The days began to blend together. The lonely Plinio, not belonging to a specific group—the Mexican boys jostled in their own corner of the cell—and with no desire to take care of disheveled children, kept his sneakers clean with leftover toilet paper. His eyes protected under a long, straight fringe of hair, he daydreamed behind bars, longing for the calm wind caressing banana trees, the volcano sleeping in the distance, his grandma telling him about poisonous frogs (he imagined this so often that sometimes he turned into a golden frog himself). Everything he loved ended at the edge of the rough bars.
One day, the boy woke up abruptly from his fantasies to a guard shouting, “Plinio José Flores!”
“It’s him!” murmured an unknown voice.
Plinio was released. The boy refused three attempts to hug him. But he accepted a loose-fitting T-shirt and agreed to get into an old car with a huge rainbow sticker. Other children were also being adopted—everyone received a Bible, a golden crucifix, and a set of clean clothes.
After four days on the road, several stops at restaurants, more unsuccessful hug attempts, snacks, unsettling dreams, the boy began to loosen up and the fringe no longer covered his eyes. In the front seat, two women chatted with tireless animation.
“Mira, Plinio, the Golden Gate! Puerta dorada!”
The little boy just saw a red bridge, but since the woman spoke Spanish with a strong accent, Plinio figured she must have mixed her colors up. But it was so good to feel the wind, to see sailboats and the sea again (was that the sea?). The two women had easy smiles that gradually spread to the corners of the boy’s mouth.
Emma and Juliana were his guardians now. The first woman was a Californian with pale hair and a contagious laugh. The second woman, with short curly brown hair, introduced herself as a Brazilian, claiming to have arrived in the US in February 2014. “I didn’t have any papers, either,” she said, winking at Emma.
Plinio noticed that Juliana had a golden frog tattooed on her shoulder.
Over the years, Plinio learned to speak English. He also learned to hate the teachers who pitied him. He learned to be angry and to gnaw on the silence that imposed itself when someone discovered his story. He learned to deal with the stupidest questions about having two mothers (on these occasions, Plinio always mentioned that he had three). He learned to love dinosaurs and trilobites through motherly encouragement. He learned that the Panamanian golden frog was practically extinct due to an evil fungus. He could feel the San Andreas Fault through earthquakes under his feet. He visited Brazil on more than one occasion (he never went back to Panama). He learned to live without eating meat in that vegan home. He finally managed to pronounce vulcão in Portuguese. Speaking of volcanoes, he memorized their names, imagining a golden subterranean snake slithering under them, from Tacaná to Atitlán, Volcán de Fuego, Volcán de Agua, Conchagua, Miravalles, all the way to his hometown, near Barú, four thousand miles away. Juliana sometimes had a nervous look on her face when she asked what would happen if some of the huge volcanoes erupted. The boy didn’t have many answers.
At the age of fourteen, Plinio preferred watching videos of academic lectures over studying for school, where he kicked the kids who bullied him. He knew precious words: petrogenesis, orogenesis, magmatism. He could climb and run like no one else. He couldn’t handle girls or the fire that sometimes flooded his face. He learned to love books, and when his mothers, regulars at City Lights, went to the bookstore, the boy took over the “poet’s chair” while the two were chatting and laughing.
Juliana encouraged his independent geological studies. They watched videos together. When Plinio examined Brazilian maps, she pointed out, “Here’s the Cubatão Fault. In Brazil. You remember, right? We’ve been to Santos. Lembra? When we went down the railway in the mountains and you got sick.”
The teenager made a bored face to confirm that he had overcome the regrettable incident of vomiting on his own sneakers by the side of the road.
Juliana had no more friends or family in Brazil, although the country was still a usual destination on family vacations. She continued, “Did you know that right here, in this basin, Paraná-Etendeka, there should have been an episode of mass extinction but there wasn’t? It was different from what happened in Siberia—the impressive volcanic activity in Siberia extinguished most trilobites. But not in this Brazilian basin here. Pay close attention. There was no extinction in this basin.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, it’s a true story. Despite the terrifying similarity in the gases emitted, there was some subtle difference. Scientists are still researching what happened. Rocks are books with the history of the planet written under an open sky. Don’t you want to learn what the difference was?”
Plinio scratched his head and answered, “I want to learn it all.”
He had to dodge a hug from his proud mother.
Juliana then said quite seriously, “My mother, your grandmother, came from far away and only left me a sense of urgency about volcanoes and this tattoo. When you turn eighteen, we’ll have a party and you’ll get a tattoo like that. Would you like that?”
Plinio had often heard this story about the tattoo and didn’t really care. Eighteen seemed so far away.
Emma sponsored Plinio’s scientific efforts by buying fossils of trilobites as birthday gifts. The mothers did everything they could to make a love bubble to protect him from terrible news about the latest offenses against immigrants, who were now being targeted in broad daylight. After all, it was easier to deal with mass extinctions from two hundred and fifty million years ago. As long as they could, they’d spare the boy.
At the age of seventeen, Plinio made the decision that many boys make at the age of nine: to become a fireman. Emma and Juliana celebrated the decision even though it was a bit heterodox in the eyes of the school teachers. Exhibiting the strength of a young mind, Plinio didn’t want to get a tattoo, much to Juliana’s dismay. The quarrel over the matter was so big that Emma had to intervene. In the end, the boy went on with his muscular shoulders free of ink.
Plinio not only became a firefighter and first responder, he earned many accolades. He faced the Great California Fire with his department at the age of twenty-eight. For more than twenty months, he saved lives at the borders of burning forests. But nothing, neither the gratitude of the families reunited by rescues nor the medals, could shield him from hateful comments telling him to go back to where he came from.
He decided to apply for a solitary post. His motive was not clear; it could have been those hateful comments, it could have been Olivia (his latest ex-girlfriend), it could have been the frequent nightmares about rivers on fire in forests swarmed with golden frogs, or maybe it was something else entirely, buried in the depths of his heart.
He got accepted to serve at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. His task was basically to be alert: monitoring. He had to keep an eye on instruments and his ears open for evacuation orders. Once each spring, he visited nearby cities to train civilians in first aid. Plinio especially loved giving demonstrations to schoolchildren. That spark of joy was good for his heart, although it was very tiring. Some days, his mouth would betray him and Juliana’s urgent voice would come out—a sense of danger that the fireman tried to minimize (they were only children after all). On the other days of the year, he followed a monotonous routine. Every month, a small paycheck dripped in.
But the time of men is not the time of rocks.
The truth was, sometime in the next forty thousand years, Yellowstone would erupt. Seismic activity in the region had changed, as had the pattern of gas emissions, but no one knew when the catastrophe would happen. Finally, in response to the many protests by scientists, the government decided to close the national park. It was provisional at first, but conditions grew worse; after constant tremors, more than fifty thousand people were evacuated from the area, now known as the “ring of fire.” Clusters of ghost towns howled in the wind. Many people, claiming individual freedom, returned to live in the forbidden area. After all, this was America.
Plinio settled on the border of the ring of fire, where only mountains divided what was land from what was sky. The dormant caldera became a friend, with its tremors, gases, and elderly aches. From time to time, Plinio received a visit from Jim, an old curmudgeon who wasn’t fazed by the threat.
“It’s more dignified to die as in Pompeii than to live under a bridge,” he said philosophically. “I’d prefer that the big buffaloes and my ranch be immortalized in lava for any future visitors.” He spoke with bravado, brandishing his arm, hinting at the longtime violence against his people. Plinio didn’t know Jim’s real name, but his prose was always amusing.
Over the years, Plinio gained weight and savings. Winters accumulated gray strands in his hair. He learned how to use a hair clipper and, in a rare gesture of vanity, allowed himself to grow a fringe again (staying within the grooming standards of his profession).
The hermit’s life was a good one. Surrounded by books, melancholy, and wooden walls, he cooked, kept the seismic activity company, and avoided the news. On some days, Plinio wondered whether his ex-girlfriend Olivia missed him. On others, he was pretty sure she didn’t. What about his plans to have children? On Sundays, he would call Emma and Juliana. During the starry nights, he would call Rosa. When he cleaned his shoes, he would call his grandmother.
Yellowstone was only in the news when the seismograph dictated.
At the park’s one hundred and eightieth anniversary celebration, a heat wave brought a desolate feeling. State laws required citizens to keep gas masks at home—“You must wear them within three hours,” the PSAs warned. If the caldera really blew up, people all across the nation would need masks to survive. Street corner preachers did their job, setting the mood by carrying the classic sign: THE END IS NEAR.
However, no one has the patience for an eternal threat. There were hurricanes in Florida and devastating floods in New York right now, and who knows what was happening on the rest of the planet? You can’t deal with all the misery of the world at the same time.
In the ring of fire, the nights remained magnificent.
Near the sea, Emma began to forget things. It started with disorientation. Then people’s faces. Events. She never forgot Juliana, but she remembered her in a strange way, with an absent smile. Plinio’s vacations and breaks consisted of spending time with the two elderly women and jogging. Within a few years, his mother’s cognition worsened noticeably. One afternoon, Plinio received a phone call that opened up a geological fault under his feet: there were two losses—Emma’s expected passing and Juliana’s heart attack.
“May they rest in peace,” said the caller.
Plinio went to San Francisco for a few days to deal with the bureaucracy. The couple’s friends had settled almost everything, so Plinio was left with his heartfelt cry and the meager bank account he had inherited. He found many illustrations of the frog among Juliana’s papers. They were all identical. He decided to get a tattoo just like it, asking the tattoo artist to copy every little detail.
A new autumn arrived with the golden winds and high temperatures that used to come at the end of spring. The fireman learned how to sand and stain wood floors. It was hard to live without a mother in this world. He developed the habit of opening a can of beer in the evening and watching the sunset.
One late afternoon, Plinio, wearing a racerback tank top, was sanding the floor as hard as he could to keep his heart from racing. That morning he had traveled many miles to give a training session at a school. During Plinio’s presentation, a little boy was huddled in a chair in a corner of the auditorium, his hair in his face, his gaze fixed on the floor. The other children didn’t get very close to him. At the end, the boy was the last to leave the room. Plinio even tried to say a couple of words to him in Spanish, which made the kid’s expression change for a second, but then he chose a concrete bench and sat there like a stone. And now that little boy kept popping into Plinio’s head. As he sanded the floor, the fireman bit his tongue but let his old anger flare up.
When he finished his vigorous physical activity, the afternoon sun was still high and his face was bathed in sweat and melancholy, his silver fringe sticking to his forehead. Breaking the silence, he spoke to himself, “I need to fix my hair.”
Suddenly, Plinio was hit with nausea and the sight of the porch columns dancing. He threw up on his sneakers. As his home’s earthquake dampers were automatically activated, a screen near him flashed a warning: SEISMIC SHOCK, 7.8 ON THE MOMENT MAGNITUDE SCALE. And nothing else happened. Sick, the fireman looked at the gas mask hanging on the wall like a stuffed buffalo head.
Before he could start cleaning up his vomit, he saw a cloud of dust a few kilometers away and a large metal cylinder rising from it. It landed—a forced landing?—not far from where he stood.
Plinio’s first responder training took over. He set off an alarm linked to the central observatory, grabbed the mask, and ran to the landing site. When he arrived, it didn’t seem his help was required. The aircraft was the size of a school bus. Its surface was dusty but undamaged. There were no windows or doors. He had never seen an aircraft like this. “Military technology?” he wondered.
His legs shaking with adrenaline, he spent fifteen minutes walking around, checking out the situation, until he spotted a group of people nearby. Where could they have come from? He waved to them with his bare arms. As he approached, he got a better look at their gloomy yellow capes and dark eyewear, lenses like round plates set on their faces. They didn’t seem to be in danger.
One of the silhouettes glided forward and announced, “We mean you no harm.”
This triggered something in Plinio. He went still and murmured to himself, “Smells fishy.” First, he regretted leaving his gun at home, but he straightened his back, pretending not to be intimidated. Then, the memory of that lonely little boy at school spoke up; though he was disoriented, he tried to be kind. “Do you need help?”
The group of six people looked at each other. Plinio could not distinguish whether they were men or women. They had their faces covered with some kind of transparent slime and their hair was slicked back.
The first figure took the floor. “We are here to help you.”
Plinio noticed that the figure’s voice was doubled, another sound buzzing underneath the English. He was sweaty and his sneakers were soiled, but he tried to maintain protocol. “That’s all right. Look, over there you can see one of the units of the Volcano Observatory.” He pointed out his lone house. “From there, we can call for rescue. I’m Plinio José Flores, fireman and first responder.”
“Ah, very good!”
He had never received visitors at his house. Not Olivia or Emma or Juliana. No one, in fact, except Jim (and Jim never went beyond the porch). But obeying protocol, he made a “come on, come on” gesture to show a sense of urgency. Gradually, as he found himself practically running to keep up with the group, he realized that they weren’t walking on human legs but on some sort of soft, tentacular prostheses. “Their technology has no limits,” he thought.
The sun spread a late, unrushed afternoon over the valley. Why was Plinio hurrying? He wasn’t sure, but he probably needed to check for alerts and send a message about the visitors. He observed that if it weren’t for the strange getup, the group’s leader would resemble Rosa, his biological mother. He felt a pain in his chest, but the nausea and adrenaline urged him on.
“Rosa” stopped him briefly to show him the tattooed frog on her shoulder. Pretty much the same design as the one on Plinio’s shoulder.
The fireman’s stomach churned, but he just nodded his head. How could “Rosa” have a tattoo almost identical to Juliana’s? That seemed terribly important, but the heat of this unusual fall season didn’t let him conclude anything.
When they reached his house, the host, ashamed of the smell of vomit inside, asked the group to remain on the porch. He handed out chairs and mats, pointed to the bathroom, and brought glasses of water, his actions provoking a few giggles. The visitors smelled the glasses and a couple of them went to the bathroom. It was all pretty awkward.
To Plinio’s surprise, the central observatory hadn’t sent any instructions. Because of the earthquake, there were small outbreaks of fire in various locations. But it was Plinio, in his sweaty tank top, who needed help; he was feeling out of place with so many people around. He brushed his fringe aside with both hands, and unexpectedly, his eyes met the eyes of “Rosa.” They stood staring at each other. She didn’t look so much like his deceased mother now, although there was something deep there. Plinio let his hair fall as he lowered his head, not wanting to show his watery eyes. He tried to be welcoming: “The autumn sunset here is one of the most beautiful in the world.”
This caused an uproar among the yellow capes. “Awesome! It will be our first time watching the sun go down!”
“Oh, really? Is there no sunset in your country?” Plinio felt like an idiot for asking such a question.
“We come from the future, Mr. Flores. We’re from 2920.”
The fireman choked and coughed. When he recovered, he looked closely at the group. Was that a joke? He observed again the slime on their faces, the black discs resembling frog eyes, the lower limbs like tentacles; there were impenetrable layers of mystery there. Today’s technology was not that advanced. He had noticed that “Rosa” spoke through her fingers, leaving a buzz of language in the air. Was she using a translation device?
Plinio faked normalcy to avoid playing the fool. “Well, then, come and enjoy the sunset,” he said. He excused himself for a minute as he was shaking badly.
Upon returning, he found the group quiet, flooded with the light of the immense. Across the lowlands, the fireball in the sky fell behind the mountains. Heavenly veils, in roses and lilacs, stretched over the valley. The first stars flickered. At the end, the group sighed; some hugged. The fireman came to the conclusion that without their eyewear they could easily pass as Central Americans. But he still couldn’t understand the tentacles.
Stars burst in the sky. Without instructions from the observatory, Plinio did what he would do on any new moon night: he made a campfire. He gathered more wood, and soon a beautiful flower of fire sprouted before their eyes.
The strangers were as happy as preteens, shouting in that strange bee language. “We’ve never seen the sky before,” someone translated.
The fireman nodded. He was no longer in a hurry to understand everything. He distributed cans of pumpkin beer. The first sip tamed his heart. He just waited. The flames flickered and the world was at peace.
The figure with the familiar face then told a story: “In the future, everyone lives under the earth, Mr. Flores. Miles deep. We use geothermal energy, we learn to live with underground fire, both the heat of magma and the cold fire of radiation. We came here today by taking advantage of the Yellowstone Caldera duct. Our ship is made of a metal alloy, strengthened by oxide dispersion, that you have yet to discover.”
“So why did you come?”
“I would like to say for adventure or curiosity. However, officially, we’re on a humanitarian mission, Mr. Flores, to save you. Or whatever we can do. Maybe that will change our future.”
“Save us?”
“Yes, next year the great eruption will take place. You know that. I have a feeling you met one of our agents, didn’t you?” She pointed to the frog tattooed on his shoulder.
“This tattoo? It came from my mother’s mother.”
“We don’t know what names our agents go by, Mr. Flores. We don’t receive any information from them after they leave. But your symbol is a code. It reproduces the access code to the golden gate of our realm. We wouldn’t have spoken to you if I hadn’t noticed it. The frog, a symbol of change. Life in transformation.”
Plinio ran his hand over the rough lines of his tattoo. The golden gate, la puerta dorada. Juliana’s lessons were finally beginning to seep in. What had she known about this? Quietly, he listened.
“The great eruption. The beginning of the Long Night. Everything up to those mountains will die instantly from heat. You know, the ring of fire. Then will come the ash and the pyroclastic clouds. The sky will fill with harmful particles and much of what is green will perish. It won’t be just one eruption; it’s going to be almost eighty years of eruptions. The air will have to be treated, filtered. Montreal will survive, one of the first places with filtered air for a large contingent of people. The Southern Hemisphere will have more months of sunshine, then the whole world will be covered. Cold and dark for decades.”
Plinio’s heart trembled beneath the silent stars. He repeated his question: “And why have you come?”
“Tech transfer, Mr. Flores. To facilitate the discovery of a metal alloy of pyrolytic graphite. To revolutionize graphene. After that, organize underground cities while there are still good seeds. Build up networks of solidarity. Those who have no community will die. Learn the we. Learn to leave things behind and take only dreams with you. Later this year, optimized processing of vitamin D without sunlight will be invented. And most importantly, we will try to install a filter around the caldera.”
Plinio raised his eyebrows. “To change the composition of the gases?”
The visitor wiggled her fingers. “That’s right! A filter to crystallize sulfur. Another filter to treat the carbonic gas. A final layer to minimize the effects of particulate matter. How do I explain it? The filter looks like a translucent jelly … fabric. Of course, it’s an experiment. The prototype worked, in theory. Now let’s see if it works in practice.”
Plinio sensed that a piece of truth was missing. He tried to pick the right words. “And why do you care so much about us?”
The stars flashed. Another visitor interjected in a hoarse voice, “We’re dying, Mr. Flores. Far from here, in the depths of the earth.”
The crackling of the fire was, for a few minutes, the only thing that could be heard.
Then the hoarse voice said, “It’s a slow death. Our depths are beautiful, Mr. Flores. Full of light, color, and music. But we’re not able to clear the air anymore. The rate of pollution is low, but it’ll be enough to kill the children of our children. We’ve mastered the hot energy of the earth and the cold energy of radiation. We found peace after losing the world you live in now. It took time to learn how to overcome madness. We live with plants, fungi, and many other beings, some of which you would never even dream existed. We can have hybrid bodies, if we so wish. We’ve abandoned certain kinds of disgust and aversion. You see, these are tentacles. My brain, for example, is no longer just up here; we have other nerve centers. We’re no longer alone and only human. I imagine that the agent who gave you the code gave up that part of her body. What a sacrifice! But metamorphosis is a principle of life. Our transparent mystery. We need new pasts to have a future.”
The voice paused.
Plinio felt distant as he watched the fire. He wanted to look more closely at the visitors, but he looked away instead.
The voice changed inflection. “This group, we’ve sacrificed ourselves for people we will never meet, for people who were not yet born in our time. No one here is going to be able to go back home. We’re going to die with you, here and now.”
The gloomy yellow capes, the tentacles, the faces lit by the gold of the fire. What would it be like to live in a place where there was no sun? Plinio seemed to recall that the circadian cycle could function as if there were a sun. What was it like to have tentacles? He wanted to ask, but he was embarrassed. He thought about his mothers. Surely Emma had known about Juliana’s origins—they loved each other so much. Wow, Juliana’s mother, his grandmother! From so far away. That sense of urgency. The insistence on the tattoo. How had they kept their secrets? Then Plinio remembered: when he used to tell people at school about his hometown when he was little, no one listened. And, he thought, how many times did his mothers not have to try to hide their love? In reality, it might have been quite easy to keep an essential secret.
A little dizzy, Plinio took off his sneakers and began to clean them, a question still in mind. “And have you tried to come to the past before?”
The hoarse voice answered, “This is our first time. But there have been many other people. Understanding the present is a power. From the present, you can define the past. From the present, you lay foundations for the future. Having both feet planted in the present during times of crisis is a power. It’s power and possibility.”
“Rosa” spoke again, pointing to the tattoo on the fireman’s shoulder. “That mark you carry could be a sign of success. The anuran Atelopus zeteki is the symbol of our deployment; it’s one of the first species we brought back from extinction.” She clapped her hands and all six visitors showed the same tattoo on their shoulders. “So, who gave you the mark? Was it our agent?”
Plinio just crossed his arms. He didn’t like her tone. He wanted badly to ask about the revived species, whether they had saber-toothed tigers, pterodactyls, and trilobites, but he chewed on silence. Exactly as he used to do, grumpily, in front of Juliana, until Emma would come and tickle him.
The hoarse voice added, “More than two thousand people have traveled to the past from our time, Mr. Flores. Technically, our jump is limited to the year 2000—traveling further is dangerous. But we don’t know if the expeditions were successful. When the past changes, the whole timeline changes. We’re not yet sure of many things. But your frog might give us some clues.”
Plinio prodded the coals in the fire. He scratched his head. This was familiar—the search for a better life, heroic deeds disappeared in ashes, newcomers without papers. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad you stopped here. I will help as much as I can.”
Suddenly, a shooting star crossed the sky and the whole group exclaimed, “Ooh!”
Plinio laughed at the scene; they looked like children. He took a long sip of beer and tried to be a decent host, remembering his first mother, who, even without a home, was always hospitable. “Well, tell me some beautiful story about the future. Have you destroyed capitalism yet?”