[THE HYACINTH] Chap­ter XI: USAID! USAID! USAID! / Scene XXXI: The King Pulanka-47

IT WAS RAIN­ING HEAV­I­LY dur­ing the day, and a boat had reached under the post-hur­ri­cane mon­soon with two men who came from Blue­fields. They were two of the younger Solomons—Bernardo and Luis. Because of how rough the sea was they decid­ed to buck­le down and go all the way to Bangkukuk and not stop in Mon­key Point to drop car­go off—little things for the shoppes in between the vil­lages. Or maybe it was just a dream in a com­put­er or in a body that still exist­ed some­where, maybe he was dead and what was left was a zom­bie with dreams from anoth­er life that had been record­ed in an arti­fi­cial mind. 

At the clin­ic the Sukia say that a liv­ing per­son can be pre­served and rean­i­mat­ed in the dis­tant future but that if you raise a man from the dead you will only get a demon. As time pass­es there are more and more med­ical advances that make the unthink­able a real­i­ty. But we believe that a zom­bie is some­thing dif­fer­ent because the zom­bie isn’t you any­more. A zom­bie is like when your hunt­ing dog has rabies passed to him from anoth­er ani­mal, and he turns on you and the peo­ple who made him grow from when he was first born.

Does the ani­mal actu­al­ly die? Or is it just the com­mu­ni­ty that says that because he changes and becomes a danger?

On that day the trop­i­cal storm began in the sea after Long Beach—one of the extend­ed stretch­es of beach called Long Beach that spans from Blue­fields to Bangkukuk and Pun­ta de Aguila as well. Bernar­do the cow­boy, the thrill-chas­ing speed­boat dri­ver had the fiber glass ves­sel fly­ing off the waves and con­stant­ly crash­ing into the sea. The entire ride can take between 4–8 hours, or not at all, depend­ing on the weath­er. On that day, the weath­er was real­ly bad and Bernar­do was eager to make there in one piece, but that does­n’t mean he should­n’t get his kicks and scare Luis Salomon who was stand­ing and grip­ping a rope that was tied to the prow.

He’s been knocked down sev­er­al times when the boat would lose con­trol and crash into the trop­i­cal storm sea’s vio­lent relief. Is it It’s a Beau­ti­ful Life or anoth­er film, one about a zombie—he felt in between states of being and as if his will to live was dis­solv­ing into nothingness.

Wal­ter was still a young boy at the time. A gigan­tic square ton of pure phys­i­cal pres­sure came crash­ing into them when a wave hit them on the side of the fiber­glass motor­boat and threw them a long ways away, launch­ing the ves­sel to fall bel­ly-first into a val­ley of ocean waves that could only exist for lit­tle over a minute after. It would nev­er end—the whole eight hours that this par­tic­u­lar speed­boat trip had tak­en to com­plete were a ter­ri­fy­ing night­mare. The car­go was skill­ful­ly strapped in and cov­ered by a large piece of thick black con­struc­tion plas­tic. The sky was gray and the mist from the storm and the agi­tat­ed sea made it near impos­si­ble to delin­eate the change from water to air and air to cloud in the hori­zon that was only a mov­ing pro­jec­tion behind the rainfall.

It was just a mem­o­ry, but was it actu­al­ly some­thing he remem­bered by him­self and did it in real­i­ty echo any­thing from his own expe­ri­ence? His was a sim­ple Nokia tele­phone of inde­struc­tible poly­mer from the Chi­na­man’s shop in Blue­fields’ Cen­tral Neigh­bor­hood, it was his look­ing glass and it con­fused him plen­ty now. It was like the oth­ers in all the stores, but it had a dif­fer­ent dis­play with things that no one from this world could read. How­ev­er he knew—at least—that it was telling him about his deal back when he was still liv­ing in his world, or what he knew as the world to him. From what he could rec­og­nize, it was pos­si­ble that he was­n’t even on a plan­et any­more but rather fly­ing through the void in a ves­sel. That might be what hap­pened after the green Mar­tians first reached by their Indi­an land. 

The sea was like a mea­ger hunt­ing dog that you knew with sor­row that you could put down soon because he’s rabid. You can’t kill the water, only the water can you. It seems like the water could nev­er feel sor­ry for you, but she is very for­giv­ing much of the time, and she ignore that you are nev­er there to do her bid­ding, to the con­trary you are a thief in her boun­ty. The white man can poi­son the sea and make her foul and even more cru­el than she is when the winds agi­tate her bosom, like a drunk­ard who has for­got­ten that he too was born from his own moth­er when she was still very young.

Wal­ter Young was sud­den­ly tak­en back to a repli­ca­tion of that time in the bush when the magi­cian talked to him and he for­got­ten what the magi­cian need­ed for him to let go. They called the crea­ture duhin­du, suhin­du or duende, in Span­ish. It had been like that for ever since before he was born. The mas­ter of the deer, he lives deep in the for­est and looks after the armadil­los, wild boar, spot­ted paca and West Indi­an hog, and they like to make love to the men, women, chil­dren and ani­mals that they fre­quent­ly abduct. That’s what the vil­lagers say for the most part, the peo­ple who are tak­en away by the duhin­du and then res­cued by the Sukia, rarely have any­thing to say about the experience.

He’d even for­got­ten what the Sukia had told him the first time he’d dis­ap­peared, all he remem­bers is that a few days after he came home after walk­ing in the jun­gle all after­noon lis­ten­ing to the wind blow­ing through the branch­es of the trees. He sat in his nylon mesh ham­mock in the liv­ing area inside his wood­en plank house with a blue plas­tic bowl of Dora­do filets cooked in coconut broth with rice and sea­soned with humid salt from a weath­ered poly­eth­yl­ene bag and chopped habanero pep­pers. He accom­pa­nied his com­mon­place din­ner with a cou­ple of Caribbean coast flour tor­tillas, made from deep-fried jour­ney cake dough and onion carpaccio.

They ripped every­thing he’d ever learned about Roger Vil­la from his mind. Most of it were things he’d learned from the eaves­drop­ping radio trans­mis­sions that Primero Bil­wi would broad­cast on vacant AM fre­quen­cies anony­mous­ly. They would play the con­tent off Hen­ry Dicu­lo’s pirate Face­book pages that would appear after the pre­vi­ous one was flagged down. In all hon­esty, he nev­er ques­tioned why any­one would ever care about the young Nicaraguan poet­’s life and what he had to say. Niether did he ever stop to think how blown-out and ridicu­lous­ly over­rat­ed every sin­gle metic­u­lous­ly scru­ti­nized gaffe was, and he’d even grown to accept that Bet­sy’s body image issues were as impor­tant if not more than his peo­ples’ ances­tral land rights.

OpIt was the sum­mer, a month before the ten-month rain­fall that came every year and that he pre­ferred expo­nen­tial­ly to the heat. There were four ham­mocks strung in the liv­ing space one had the baby in it, anoth­er held two quar­relling chil­dren and the third was emp­ty. His wife had just fin­ished clean­ing up after din­ner and was prob­a­bly out­side with one of her sis­ters or under a tree by herself.

Then one day on an evening in Octo­ber 2013, Roger Vil­la and two white men from the US appeared in Alamb­ingkam­ban, they were sup­pos­ed­ly talk­ing to vil­lagers and shoot­ing a doc­u­men­tary about Indige­nous peo­ples’ his­to­ry and cul­ture. What they were real­ly doing was find­ing out about the armed groups and try­ing to get an accu­rate list of their iden­ti­ties and sto­ries. He did­n’t trust the out­siders and nei­ther did any­one else in the com­mu­ni­ty. When they tried hit­ting the saloon, the most locua­cious of drunks would tell them decoy tales that ranged from straight-faced sar­casm to the bit­ter­est forms of deceit when it came to any­thing relat­ed to the out­lawed fighters.

The duhin­du had fed his mind with the mem­o­ries of oth­er peo­ple from the South­ern Caribbean Region, Gar­i­fu­nas from Orinoco who knew Vil­la from his child­hood. When the images and the sto­ries set­tled, he could extract new mean­ing from his own con­tact with the poet in the fif­teen days he was in Alamb­ingkam­ban and in the jungle. 

Hen­ry Dicu­lo hat­ed Roger Vil­la more than any­thing in the world, or was at least will­ing to pre­tend to for extra income. The well-respect­ed jour­nal­ist despotri­cat­ed against the young poet with any­thing he could throw at him to see if it stuck. One day, the  Man­agua chick­en bus-rid­ing versifier/student/marijuana smok­er with no polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions was char­ac­ter­ized as a Machi­avel­lian aris­to­crat who was try­ing to destroy Nicaragua. 

The next day he was a bad father, the day after that his son was in real­i­ty his step­son. He was a cow­ard and he could­n’t stand up to his wife—bam! he was an abu­sive spouse. These Face­book watch par­ties includ­ed forged and manip­u­lat­ed track­ing infor­ma­tion that Dicu­lo or some­one equal­ly upset would com­ment in the most acer­bic tone. And these ven­omous turn-tak­ers also liked to get nice and drunk for their lit­tle shows. They would reg­u­lar­ly smoke rocks as well, but they at least had enough sense to not brag on-air about the crack. Instead they’d go all out on pil­ing on to each oth­er’s snuff fan­tasies in repeat­ed attempts of set­ting off some psy­cho that could be in their audience.

Like prac­ti­cal­ly every­one in the Mos­qui­to Coast, Wal­ter Young had been a reg­u­lar radio lis­ten­er his entire life. Noth­ing he’d ever heard had any pos­si­ble com­par­i­son to the steady ear­ful he was then get­ting con­sue­tu­di­nar­i­ly from the omnipresent Roger Vil­la audio stream. Because when nobody was there to trash him he would remain on air and any­thing his phone could pick up would be heard live by lis­ten­ers. Hen­ry Dicu­lo rode that hack for years and his edi­tors had all kinds of fun with the sound. There was one day for exam­ple that they record­ed a nice loud fart from a car­go shorts pock­et and would then play it over and over over the sound feed or loop it by itself for hours. They’d do the same with recov­ered sex moans and when­ev­er Roger Vil­la would say an insult around his track­ing devices.

Years after when Wal­ter was in his late for­ties, he was elect­ed Pres­i­dent of Kruki­ra up on the Hon­duran side of the Mosquitia, he did­n’t have time to stick his ear on the radio speak­er and see what bull­shit he could sort out from all the noise that could come from a hacked phone, that at one moment could be locked in a car’s glove com­part­ment and the next it could be on the table in a side­walk cafe get­ting a clean shot of what­ev­er the big evening scoop was going to be on the lat­est major minu­tia that they caught in Dol­by Surround. 

Wal­ter had grown up and had impor­tant respon­si­bil­i­ties and a life of his own, he would only tune in every now and then—ocassionally—on Hen­ry Dicu­lo’s reg­u­lar­ly pro­duced dia­tribe. All of his col­lab­o­ra­tors were sick and tired of the trans­mis­sions that also includ­ed any pos­si­ble com­put­er screen­shot or rob­bery by any oth­er form of Roger Vil­la’s work read aloud. But like their leader, when there was noth­ing else to lis­ten to, they could be count­ed on to lis­ten in on the lat­est gra­tu­itous Nicaraguan dirt‑y celebri­ty gossip. 

If any­one in a Miski­tu com­mu­ni­ty need­ed to talk about some innocu­ous top­ic like  base­ball or the weath­er, the lat­est or a choice Roger Vil­la con tale could also make the per­fect non-con­ver­sa­tion sub­ject. The same was true for the wider audi­ence that includes every big mouth bum that’s hus­tling their own blend­ed bull­shit among the most eas­i­ly exploitable of mind­less sheeple.

From very ear­ly on Roger Vil­la liked to pon­tif­i­cate on all kinds of dif­fer­ent mat­ters that con­cerned very dif­fer­ent peo­ple much more than oth­ers like him­self, the unau­tho­rized and poor­ly com­ment­ed trans­mis­sions would always empha­size the most divi­sive aspects of his open mouth work­shop­ping of philo­soph­i­cal ideas that were often very crass and sold just like that to bil­lions of peo­ple around the world. It was regret­table to the poet who could only imag­ine what was going on. Roger Vil­la had trou­ble sep­a­rat­ing his authen­tic pro­duc­tion from these by all accounts incom­plete and very pri­vate thoughts that were thrust irre­spon­si­bly into the pub­lic forum.

Despite the Nicaraguan pro­to-nov­el­ist’s shame and embar­rass­ment, some of these ear­ly-stage thoughts-in-progress in the form of gaffes were well-accept­ed among many of the impli­cat­ed par­ties, espe­cial­ly those who hat­ed or have nev­er heard of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. Before the mar­gin­a­lia was coached into exploit­ing fake indig­na­tion, they were already mas­ters of the “poor me” craft when­ev­er Roger Vil­la was around—they did not need nor receive any of those fun­nelled funds for those pur­pos­es. The poet­’s rhetoric was also use­ful with­out it being flipped against him, and vil­lagers in the Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties would use it right­ful­ly to deal with cen­tral gov­ern­ment author­i­ties and oth­er outsiders.

Pas­cal Bidet and his broth­er would often find the most out­landish and dis­turb­ing Roger Vil­la max­ims slow­ing down their blood thirst. Earl from Rama Cay knew the poet when they were chil­dren and were briefly acquain­tances at the Mora­vian school. And when he reached by the com­mu­ni­ty, Bernar­do was the one who took him and the Amer­i­can film­mak­ers around to the oth­er vil­lages on his boat to meet with the oth­er Indians. 

Dur­ing the trip through the Caribbean Coast one of Hen­ry Dicu­lo’s uniden­ti­fied gang­ster jour­nal­ists accused the for­eign film­mak­ers of being Inter­net trolls on the poet­’s media chan­nels and exhort­ed Indi­ans and Afro-descen­dants to cap­ture them and process them in accor­dance to their tra­di­tion­al cus­toms. On this occa­sion, Roger Vil­la was the vic­tim, and they were to be aware of inject­ing his sys­tems with mal­ware in order to steal his poems and any oth­er sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion they could find. After shoot­ing and when the poet began his post-pro­duc­tion role they wiped his hard dri­ve remote­ly and then blamed the film­mak­ers again.

They were sup­pos­ed­ly fake jour­nal­ists plant­ed by a con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tion of the CIA and they were paid with drug mon­ey that was laun­dered through evan­gel­i­cal church­es and Bet­sy’s casi­nos all over Nicaragua. And their hid­den agen­da was to force  Roger Vil­la to sup­port La Con­tra in their busi­ness­es and war­fare politics.

All this ruckus, had the Amer­i­can expats who lived in Nicaragua more on the uneasy side than any­thing else. Baby Cher­ry and Ambas­sador Tribb were at each oth­er’s throats. The 24/7 Hal­loween par­ty was always out of hand, and could eas­i­ly go from lewd and las­civ­i­ous to mur­der­ous gore faster than a slash­er film. Peo­ple were fre­quent­ly rotat­ed from com­ment­ing on the radio, to oper­at­ing cloned iden­ti­ties on social media, and then into silence again. There were black sites pop­ping up all over the coun­try and for the most part, they host­ed aggres­sive chil­dren while they were groomed for mod­ern-day slav­ery. Unleash­ing their rage on Roger Vil­la’s fam­i­ly would lat­er serve as the polit­i­cal machine’s per­fect excuse to jus­ti­fy the abused asset’s sor­row and serf­dom to them.

Wal­ter Young became aware of this scheme and saw it for him­self on a trip to Bil­wi in 2021 when he learned that the new one-lap­top-per-child was­n’t just hoard­ing 80% of the sim­pler and more inex­pen­sive WiFi com­put­ers that they were sup­posed to be donat­ing to local pub­lic schools but that they were also host­ing hackathons in the evenings and on week­ends where poor­ly super­vised teens had unpro­tect­ed sex and con­sumed drugs and alco­hol while they teased and tor­ment­ed Roger Vil­la for an army of hack­ers that were always stand­ing by.

For years and years and years, polit­i­cal fig­ures and for­eign mis­sion rep­re­sen­ta­tives in dif­fer­ent coun­tries would often mis­lead every­one on their involve­ment in the brew­ing polit­i­cal scan­dal that seemed would nev­er boil over. They would wel­come the street cred or con­demn the shenani­gans accord­ing to their most imme­di­ate con­ve­nience and always leav­ing enough ambi­gu­i­ty to try to please every­one. Wal­ter was far from being the excep­tion, he had no idea how any of that worked and what all of that meant and implied. As far as he was con­cerned, it was­n’t his prob­lem and it kept peo­ple away from his business.

In all that time the peo­ple that came and went on the air start­ed sane and by the time they lost their minds, they would be prompt­ly replaced with a fresh batch of anony­mous per­son­al­i­ties. It was only with the appari­tion of Roger Vil­la on-air review­ers from com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tions in Bir­ma­nia Tara, Wis­con­sin, Cracra, Torre Dos and Ribra pro­voked a wave of Gri­sis Sik­nis out­breaks and a new war with the Pacif­ic coast, that the Miski­tu peo­ple became aware of the destruc­tive pow­er of the poet­’s curse.

“The MRS is so fuck­ing full of shit!” Roger Vil­la says to his wife. They’re on one of their famous road trips where any­thing can hap­pen to fly out of his mouth and get him into trouble.

“They killed Miski­tus like flies and that all went away like mag­ic the day they became CIA assets. 

Those sons of bitch­es are mon­sters and they even spun the shit out of the geno­cide and now they want to pre­tend that they’re the good guys, they think nobody remem­bers who authored Mate­mos la Kar­la Fon­se­ca and Kaisa Tuaya, because now it turns out that those and all their oth­er sico­phan­tic shame­less pro­pa­gan­da hatch­et jobs wrote themselves. 

They even accused the entire eth­nic­i­ty of being Satanists!”

That’s when the sound­byte was cut in Radio Sir­pi, Rosi­ta and local news­cast­er Demetrio Jones says: 

“…and at least Car­los Fon­se­ca the dic­ta­tor apol­o­gized even if it was just to get elect­ed again. He was­n’t the one here cel­e­brat­ing their vic­to­ry in Jan­u­ary, 1984.

I saw Pán­fi­lo Patiño—the beloved Mata­gal­pan writer also known affec­tion­ate­ly as Lin­gerie Gorilla—wearing a neck­lace made of human ears, penis­es and noses when they came to dol­phin their bloodbath.

Donatel­la Mas­tro­mat­teo was there too, she was wear­ing wom­en’s nip­ples, yanked out cli­toris­es and vagi­nal labia on a string around her neck because she’s a such a big feminist.

And they were both flown in on a mil­i­tary heli­copter because their lit­tle pink ass­es can’t get stuck in the mud on the bed of an IFA truck for eight hours like the rest of us mere mortals.

They got piss drunk and blast­ed on pure cocaine, and took turns spew­ing caus­tic vitriol—calling peo­ple minoplease—on a mahogany podi­um in the park in Bil­wi in front of a mass of bystanders who were there because they were all starv­ing to death and had no oth­er choice. 

The worst part is that most of those mis­er­able souls were relat­ed by blood to the slaugh­tered Indians.

I’ll tell you, there’s no way in hell this kid can know how right he is. I bet he was­n’t even alive for the Red Christmas. 

It was prob­a­bly that some old timer told him the sto­ry when he was grow­ing up.

But even peo­ple in Blue­fields don’t real­ly know what happened. 

Maybe the boy’s a Sukia… and that would explain why every­one around him gets so mag­i­cal­ly rich on his back, and he can’t seem to make his pow­ers work for him.”

Peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ties had start­ed to com­ment on the stolen sound­bytes that were being post­ed on the Face­book pages behind his back on an irreg­u­lar basis because it became more inter­est­ing than includ­ing the sense­less hate and bile that Bet­sy’s trolls over-exploit­ed to pack­age them­selves into all things Roger Villa.

The Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties were lucky enough that the crew­cuck klep­to­crats in Man­agua did­n’t give a shit about them and that they could still sound like ratio­nal human beings when they talked. And their whole episode with Gri­sis Sik­nis served as a con­fir­ma­tion that you can’t just let mind poi­son­ing go unchecked. 

The dif­fer­ence between them and oth­er pop­u­la­tions was that they knew nobody was going to mur­der them and their entire fam­i­lies if they talked all the shit they want­ed about Roger Vil­la amongst themselves.

That was­n’t the truth in Paris.

Before and after the geno­cides, the Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties had a steady stream of repro­bate white pimps that came from the most abject forms of pros­ti­tu­tion them­selves. Nobody in the US and Europe was fight­ing over deal­ing with the likes of them, or allow­ing them to pop up in the shit holes they live in. And at the same time, to every­one, the Miski­tu Indi­ans were low-hang­ing fruit and had hun­dreds of mil­lions —that they nev­er saw— assigned to their peo­ple every year. 

A lot of Nicaraguan poet/radio real­i­ty show hostage Roger Vil­la’s stolen intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty came in very handy over the name­less wood plank bar’s diesel gen­er­a­tor-cooled beers. 

A host of dif­fer­ent log­ging and min­ing investors, NGO social work­ers, and cen­tral gov­ern­ment vis­i­tors would meet con­stant­ly with com­mu­nal author­i­ties or oth­er Indi­ans that man­aged to pass them­selves off as local polit­i­cal lead­ers successfully—or whomev­er was most agree­able to the out­sider agen­da. When the car­pet­bag­ger’s promis­es mate­ri­al­ized, the gain of a good night out would yeild a boun­ti­ful har­vest in the form of a full expens­es paid trip to Man­agua or beyond, and mak­ing new friends.

Pas­cal Bidet felt par­tic­u­lar­ly offend­ed because of the ever­more sar­don­ic deliv­ery of pla­gia­rised col­lege boy lib he was hear­ing among all the dif­fer­ent Caribbean Coast Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, and all the oth­er extra stuff of wise cracks peo­ple would say to his face. Some of the Indige­nous lead­ers who felt neglect­ed or left out were now grow­ing mul­lets or get­ting crew­cuts as a sign of protest.

The idea of send­ing Roger Vil­la to the Indi­ans in the coast, was cooked some­where in the crow­bar halls of the Rose­wood Acad­e­my, the Kennedy Bi-Nation­al Cen­ter and/or the Embassy in Man­agua. Some­one want­ed him there tak­ing a piece of the Indi­ans’ pie that was real­ly meant to be out of reach for the Indige­nous and eth­nic communities—and for him; he was only being allowed a taste to stir things up. 

The field agents that were assigned to work with the poet are slight­ly old­er than him and at the time, were aspir­ing to the most tan­ta­mount of lay­ers in their back­sto­ry per­for­mances. Roger Vil­la bare­ly noticed their arti­fi­cial belly­ach­ing as he was try­ing to make sense of why he was there and not fur­ther along the way as an artist. 

(Wal­ter Young, or what he became after dis­ap­pear­ing, was well-informed on Vil­la’s work and on a selec­tion of bio­graph­i­cal and news media that was also plant­ed into his new mind).

It could be worse, he did odd jobs as a stu­dent, and off-brand jour­nal­ism with covert CIA agents felt like he was head­ing in the right direction—on a fake road. The pro­to-nov­el­ist could­n’t imag­ine what it felt like to rely on his art, it was too soon and he was too ter­ror­ized for that. All of his com­mu­ni­ca­tions were hijacked and it was obvi­ous to the gen­er­al pub­lic that was get­ting force-fed the tor­ture show.

The trolls on Roger Vil­la’s Inter­net chan­nels were mak­ing peo­ple insane, or at least scar­ing the sense out of them. After he blew their cov­er by e‑mailing the FBI, media out­lets and his gov­ern­ment, and pub­lish­ing his Twit­ter lists on his web­site, they put him and every­one around him on a 24-hour dox cycle in retaliation.

One of the news doc­u­men­tar­i­ans, Gary Hodge the cam­era guy, was talk­ing pho­tos of him that he would lat­er use to make sur­re­al mon­tages of the poet com­mit­ting adultery—for Bet­sy’s Face­book pages and their mas­sive email cam­paigns. The oth­er one, Con­nor Lowe, was also a writer, he had much bet­ter clients than the poet, he was there to help along with inter­view ques­tions and to make Roger Vil­la feel more des­per­ate and submissive.

His cred­i­bil­i­ty would always be found­ed on all the tor­ment and humil­i­a­tion that he would have to endure for far too long. The trolls were good at degrad­ing the human con­di­tion for the likes of the poet. His in-laws and their extend­ed fam­i­ly hat­ed him. Despite being uni­ver­sal­ly known, it was near impos­si­ble for him to get employ­ment because any­one con­sid­er­ing tak­ing him on was black­mailed and tor­ment­ed before they could even think of writ­ing or call­ing him back.

Before devolv­ing into a being a full-time troll on Twit­ter, Gary Hodge had worked in an exten­sive line­up of top Amer­i­can media out­lets as a pro­duc­tion assistant/intern. He was con­vinced that what he need­ed to move up the food chain was a com­pelling per­son­al brand. He sched­uled as many video con­fer­ence calls as pos­si­ble in pre-pro­duc­tion to shoot the breeze and win the audi­ence over as Vil­la’s guest. When they were out shoot­ing in the field he’d con­nect his phone and Mac book to Vil­la’s hotspot and test the shit out of his cam­eras on his own face dur­ing their down time, hop­ing that that would be enough to make him the next it boy.

The likes of Paul Baher and Chuck­ass Feltch­er were to be grace­ful­ly for­got­ten in the high seas of his­to­ry and their sins dis­solved by the achieve­ment of the greater good. Long gone were to be the days when host­ing a tor­ture show on Inter­net video stream­ing had become the new nor­mal. That was the new plan and every­one had to be on-board—or else.

The first prob­lem that could­n’t be solved was the iden­ti­ty theft troll App. All the peo­ple who had it were hooked on the pow­er trip of dodg­ing their mineal exis­tences. It was com­plete­ly anony­mous, and that allowed the crack bots to be as incen­di­ary and vicious as they could pos­si­bly be. They recruit­ed the poor­est souls they could find for this thank­less glue-snif­fer task; peo­ple who stand up for the low­est stan­dards when it comes to every­thing, whether it be in the mate­r­i­al realm or in the qual­i­ty of their ideas, and the deplorable ethics they uphold.

If one were to ignore the bla­tant intent of reck­less endan­ger­ment that nobody was try­ing to mask, these round the clock mil­i­tary-style social engi­neer­ing shifts and philis­tine mind con­trol hacks could also—with some good old-fash­ioned coercion—be con­sid­ered to be ama­teur per­for­mance art. This was the vio­lent and irra­tional polit­i­cal stand­off, that made the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion give up and look the oth­er way in its peak eupho­ria, and embed dog whis­tle cheers for vio­lence and the apolo­gia of crime in its dark­est hour.

Noth­ing in all the data that made up Wal­ter Young’s cur­rent lev­el of aware­ness could sup­port the claim that he had sub­scribed to receive SMS’ on his prim­i­tive ten-dol­lar Nokia cell­phone. One of the sub­scrip­tions was attrib­uted to Roger Vil­la and a cou­ple of mes­sages even made it to his inbox when they crossed paths. He would become famil­iar with the Twit­ter lists long after his time in this world. The oth­er sub­scrip­tions or text con­ver­sa­tions with whomev­er was there to read them would always be about the nobody poet and why what­ev­er he was doing or that the last thing he said was com­plete non­sense and every­body should just ignore him.

He’d nev­er heard of Roger Vil­la until these peo­ple could­n’t shut up about him. From what he could gath­er dur­ing those hyped up years, was that Vil­la was a Blue­fields poet from the new gen­er­a­tion and that his step­fa­ther had worked for the Region­al Coun­cil in the 1990’s. Aside from Ruben Dario, Vil­la was the only poet he could men­tion with­out wor­ry­ing about get­ting the name right, and that was the only tru­ly use­ful thing about the over­stalked celebri­ty mouth­piece. All the things that he could say about pol­i­tics, colo­nial­ism and race rela­tions were already in every­one’s minds, Vil­la just found new ways of say­ing them out loud.

On his trips out to the Caribbean Coast they’d make a big deal about the shod­dy Cre­ole he spoke and would basi­cal­ly ignore what the peo­ple had to say and the sto­ries they told him about their ances­tral her­itage. Vil­la did a good job of act­ing like he was inter­est­ed in Indige­nous peo­ple’s cul­ture and would use coast ele­ments in his works.

Some­times on the eaves­drop­ping radio show, his wife was­n’t telling him what a self­ish piece of shit he is, and you could lis­ten to him typ­ing away on his key­board to soft instru­men­tal music in the back­ground. Peo­ple would then wait patient­ly for the screen­shots that were pub­lished in real-time on what­ev­er Face­book page the cur­rent “Rufus” was using.

“No one like read no fock­ing book and no book ever change nothing—He writ­ing the Bible.” Miss Ellis, his moth­er, says laugh­ing with a cackle.

“Like every­one no done know that them is all thief and murderer—big mystery!”

“And bunkie man!” One of the lit­tle kids who’s play­ing tag yells from the garden.

 “I no under­stand why them can’t leave the man alone.” Wal­ter remem­bers hear­ing some­one else that he could­n’t remem­ber, with his own ears when he was alive and well in the coast. The man’s face was a difused blur in his memory.

He would get upset when­ev­er it was too rough and he would hear the poet break down and cry like a small child. And now as what­ev­er he was in the duhin­du’s pow­er he too would sob when it was too much and they would­n’t let him guide his own mind or when they would over­load him with data that did­n’t inter­est him. He did­n’t hate Roger Vil­la, he just was­n’t keen in being a lit­er­ary schol­ar. There were all sorts of top­ics that he would have pre­ferred to explore through­out eternity.

“This is where I plant my cas­sa­va…” Luis Salomon says to the cam­era in one of the inter­views in the doc­u­men­tary film that hired the poet as a freelancer.

The Rama Indi­an in old rolled-up jeans and rub­ber flip-flops points at a sprout on the soil with his machete that’s been dulled down into a long dag­ger from exten­sive sharp­en­ing and use.

“… and that is where I plant my dasheen.”

There is a silence.

“Did you get that?” Roger whis­pers as qui­et­ly as he can into Gary Hodge’s ear, he’s hold­ing an upward cam­era angle that makes Luis Salomon look statuesque.

“Yes.” He says out loud after anoth­er long pause.

“I no want them to build that [inte­ro­cean­ic] canal.” He says. “It’s going to destroy every­thing we have here.”

Hodge holds his breath hop­ing that the old­er man keep spit­ting out trail­er-wor­thy sound­bytes like the one they just heard.

“Plen­ty peo­ple here want see progress, them say. All the tim­ber you see here, is bil­lion dollars—not mil­lion. Bil­lion! So we mus­n’t let them thief it like that and destroy the land.”

 “When I was your age, I’m six­ty now, there used to be plen­ty more ani­mals by these parts. We have plen­ty more to eat in the bush, plen­ty more them fish in the sea and in the rivers.”

“Now rivers are dry­ing up and the sea is more and more dead.”

“Before we nev­er have no cows. I nev­er see cow before, until now.”

“The chil­dren them learn Span­ish in the school, every­thing is Span­ish. Them is mes­ti­zo Spaniard is what I tell them when­ev­er you hear them speak­ing Span­ish and play­ing by the trees. Them going want put on one cow­boy suit for ride horse and bull when them grow and drink up.”

“How long have the mes­ti­zos been here?” Gary asks with his head tilt­ed towards the right.

“Long time before but plen­ty start­ed com­ing in with the war and now there is plen­ty more, mak­ing cow farms in the jungle.”

Wal­ter had cor­po­re­al sen­sa­tions that could be noth­ing more than phan­tom pains as far as he knew. He was unable to deter­mine if the dream­scape he was in occurred with­in a bio­log­i­cal mind. Each day he’d lived on Earth had been replayed in his head too many times to remem­ber prop­er­ly. It was as if he was in a coma that out­lived every man woman and child in the human species.

“They’re all Con­tras, the peo­ple com­ing in and tak­ing the Indige­nous peo­ple’s lands. They fought on the same side dur­ing the war in the eight­ies.” Roger Vil­la says over beers on one of the evenings whenz, they were in production.

“How do you know that?” Gary asks.

“Because they all vote for the lib­er­al par­ties. The land invaders in the South­ern Caribbean coast are the peas­ant move­ment that oppos­es the Canal. They’re all Contras.”

The con­ver­sa­tion had been recov­ered from Gary Hodge’s cell­phone because Vil­la for­got to charge his phone or did­n’t charge it inten­tion­al­ly to take a break from being tracked. Either way the cir­cum­stances weren’t scan­dalous any longer. Wal­ter Young could­n’t care less if Roger Vil­la had the inten­tion of get­ting busy with some girl in the com­mu­ni­ty that could be used to make his wife jeal­ous. For all Wal­ter knew, thou­sands of years had passed and that could nev­er be the rea­son that an aug­ment­ed ver­sion of what was left of his mind was being used to scan these recordings.

Despite all the neur­al path­ways that had been blocked or inhib­it­ed, Young was giv­en enough space for his own self-aware­ness to exist as a sep­a­rate enti­ty from the rest of the uni­verse that had been pro­gramed into the sim­u­la­tion he lived in. He’d lost his mind on a num­ber of occa­sions and it had been delet­ed and replaced with an incor­rupt back­up copy. There was a peri­od of time in which Wal­ter thought or knew that he would be briefed on his dis­cov­er­ies on the sub­ject that was imposed on him. That day nev­er came and if it did he was­n’t allowed any mem­o­ry of it.

“And now the Pres­i­dent of Kak­a­bi­la is sell­ing them land for make them farm.”

“They can’t sell land because of Law 445” Vil­la says.

“Well plen­ty peo­ple say that with Law 840 the gov­ern­ment can thief it from we so is bet­ter if we sell it before. I hope we nev­er have to do that because if we do we are only buy­ing dis­grace for our grandchildren.”

Every time Wal­ter Young lost his mind to the point of his own demise, his lat­est work­ing back­up would start over again at the begin­ning of the Roger Vil­la data reel. He always remem­bered every­thing until he was back where the fur­thest point of his pro­gres­sion was made. There were always new details or new ways of read­ing the Nicaraguan author’s sto­ries. There were char­ac­ters that were a cer­tain way for cen­turies like Friede­gunde Klop­stock from The Broth­ers, who he read for cen­turies as a cold-heart­ed butch­er, and then on a new process he grew to under­stand all the suf­fer­ing that she removed from her world.

Anoth­er anom­aly that had been built into his new ontol­ogy was that he would be con­demned to return­ing to an orig­i­nary image that he did­n’t real­ly believe in of him­self. He thought the pro­fil­ing used to build it was thor­ough­ly fraud­u­lent and cor­rupt. It was some pathet­ic social media algo­rithm that some crim­i­nal in India tweeked to squeeze more expen­sive car pay­ments, from the geno­cide and oth­er polit­i­cal trou­bles of his peo­ple and more specif­i­cal­ly to him, his per­son­al tragedies and oth­er cap­tured moments of poor taste. 

His beliefs from when he was alive made no sense to him any­more. There was no for­est left, no one was sup­posed to out­live the spir­it of the jun­gle. Wal­ter was­n’t sure he’d out­lived any­thing, though it does seem like it had been an awful­ly long time since he was a cor­po­re­al being. He was being guard­ed by a slave species because he’d learned that that’s what the duhin­du are, and per­haps he would be like them when he was fin­ished with what he was doing for their mas­ters, rum­mag­ing through every last trace of Roger Vil­la that was col­lect­ed from earth. 

The duhin­du seemed com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to the val­ue of Wal­ter’s long-term mind assign­ments, although they were tele­path­ic and their infre­quent chat­ter could be heard in his mind like the mem­o­ry of audi­ble words or ani­mal sounds.

His mem­o­ries and those oth­ers that had been implant­ed into his mind had turned him into some­one else, who he appre­ci­at­ed more than his organ­ic self. He obvi­ous­ly felt vio­lat­ed and could nev­er tru­ly feel hap­py for his cog­ni­tive gains. Wal­ter yearned for his human body more than any­thing else. He’d learned to love every­thing he’d seen as a flaw when he was human. There was noth­ing he would­n’t give to run from one end of the beach to the oth­er with all his strength, to the point of exhaus­tion and to feel the wind on his body while the waves in the ocean crash in his ears.

Vil­la’s fic­tion gave him solace and allowed his mind to escape from his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty. He’d reliv­ed every day of his life an infi­nite amount of times and felt an excru­ci­at­ing embar­rass­ment by almost every­thing he ever did. In con­trast, read­ing about char­ac­ters from dif­fer­ent sto­ries allowed him an approx­i­ma­tion to liv­ing in the world again and expe­ri­enc­ing events that he could only dream of about when he was alive. Whether the time away was real or sim­u­lat­ed made no dif­fer­ence to him, it had been an eter­ni­ty that cost him his mem­o­ries and was then in turn long enough for him to regain them. 

“Can you rent them the land? Gary asks.

“That we can do.” Don Eduar­do responds. “But that also cause plen­ty prob­lems, because what if them no want leave after?” 

The old man looks into his rub­ber boots that are firm­ly plant­ed in the jun­gle mud. It had rained hard the night before. He’s scratch­ing a mos­qui­to bite on his leg with his dulled down machete.

“And you have the peo­ple who get the mon­ey paid to them. They want be in Blue­fields all the time, buy moto, car­ry plen­ty woman to the restau­rant them, and for­get about the com­mu­ni­ty here.”

Don Eduardo’s moth­er a 98 year-old woman called Jen­nifer was one of the last peo­ple in the entire ter­ri­to­ry who could still speak the Rama lan­guage. They were sup­posed to talk to her the fol­low­ing day in the afternoon. 

In Wal­ter’s sus­pend­ed state of being, he was able to rebuild all the old Rama Indi­an sto­ries that made it to Don Eduardo’s ears when he was a small child in the 1950’s, back then the jun­gle was much more dense and boun­ti­ful and the peo­ple were much more uncon­tact­ed and Indige­nous. He had been him and many oth­ers as a child in an unfath­omable num­ber of sim­u­la­tions that spanned through­out par­al­lel mul­ti­verse dimen­sions. Mayang­nas that appeared in char­ac­ters in poet­ry and that were lat­er devel­oped as myth­i­cal arche­types by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, had rich vivid infan­cies that Wal­ter expe­ri­enced as if they were his own.

The Indige­nous canon that he had essen­ti­at­ed over time rep­re­sent­ed a set of splen­dorous poet­ic games that gave enor­mous plea­sure to his obses­sive exam­i­na­tion. He had nev­er felt any inter­est in lit­er­a­ture when he was alive, but he began to even­tu­al­ly after the duhin­du abduct­ed him. Look­ing back, Wal­ter grew to believe that the his only true con­cern was con­tin­u­ing to live. And that was still a dri­ving force in his present form except now he was­n’t alive any­more. There was one moment of hope that he would replay in his mind every few years. He was still alive in the coast in Nicaragua and every­thing else had just been a bad dream. The years would fly by in the blink of an eye and he would be back in that pro­found dis­ap­point­ment again. 

There was a woman in the jun­gle she was pick­ing fruit and her baby was close by. They were on their way to her sis­ter’s cot­tage, a day and half’s walk away. Kru­ubu she says, they have a spe­cif­ic smell that peo­ple back then knew all too well. The species pop­u­la­tions were ten times high­er than in Walter’s times. His sim­u­la­tions were so good that he was also able to smell their scent, he would nev­er know if it was just like when Berta was a girl. Nonethe­less there was a dif­fer­ence and it seemed worth­while to him in that eter­ni­ty. Kru­ubus were what the ancient Rama called tigers and their was scent strong, it smelled like a very thick ver­sion of a cat pissed house.

Accord­ing to leg­end, the Rama peo­ple are part Kru­ubu and part human they can feel the rain for­est in the same way that the Kru­ubu can, in Rama they both speak the same language.

She gath­ers up her infant son with his toys and hides in the roots of giant roy­al cedar that had been bound three hun­dred years before by an ances­tor that plant­ed rain for­est trees that could serve as refuges for hunters and ani­mals near an impromp­tu agri­cul­tur­al plot in their nomadic plant­i­ng cycles. 

The tree had grown over an erod­ed wall of clay and soil and became a den in the form of a dement­ed claw that was exca­vat­ed by gen­er­a­tions of campers and ani­mals and had grown to become a com­fort­able sta­tion for every inhab­i­tant cul­tured and wild in what would even­tu­al­ly become the Indio Maiz reserve. By the time that Wal­ter was there in a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed excur­sion, it was most­ly buried under the dirt after a peri­od when only ver­min and insects were able to return to the space con­cealed under the piled up clay and tran­si­to­ry vegetation.

The moth­er crawls into the den with her child and set­tles in to a clean dent inside. They would stay there for the night. It began to rain heav­i­ly and it con­tin­ued to for the rest of the night and well into the morn­ing. When the mon­soon even­tu­al­ly passed, the tiger’s smell was also gone, it had been washed away. The moth­er could sense that she wasn’t far away, as she looked around out­side for tracks. 

She could feel her close, and that’s when she turned around and saw the beast pulling her still unnamed child out of the den. Soon after the tiger returned for her as she had sus­pect­ed. The Indi­an woman was run­ning and quick­ly climbed an almond tree with some vines and the kru­ubu was too heavy and old to fol­low her up, so she paced around the tree and wait­ed there until after sun­set. She sat in the high­est branch­es that could hold her and gazed into the rain­fall and the for­est canopy. She decid­ed that she would call her dead infant Sur. 

When she even­tu­al­ly climbed down she decid­ed to walk on the beach for part of the way, it would take more time but she would be safer from the kru­ubu who had already tast­ed her child’s blood. She final­ly made it to her sister’s cot­tage on the oth­er side of the moun­tain. It was there when she could final­ly weep for her baby. 

When Clarence, her sister’s hus­band returned from hunt­ing in the for­est he told them the sto­ry of the three tiger cubs he killed under the rain while their moth­er was far off in the jun­gle stalk­ing her own prey. They ate the ani­mals ten­der flesh in a Ngulka­ng with plen­ty of peppers. 

When Wal­ter was a child he nev­er want­ed to go too deep into the jun­gle, he would make sure he was always armed and with at least four hunt­ing dogs to alert him of any threats in their sur­round­ings. The Rama were part tiger, that was what they believed and orig­i­nal­ly they were just tigers with noth­ing human about them. The Miskitu—his people—were a mix­ture of Mayang­nas and fugutive slaves from Africa. They had escaped from a slave ship in Rio San Juan and grad­u­al­ly made their way North to Mayangna set­tle­ments were they fought bit­ter bat­tles and then began to pro­duce Zam­bos with the Mayangna women that they held cap­tive. Even­tu­al­ly The Miski­tu King grew to dom­i­nate the Caribbean coast as the British Empire’s most trust­ed ally.

Jen­nifer had heard the sto­ry from her moth­er who’d heard it from hers and it was thought to be from before their first Cre­oles land­ed in Mon­key Point in the XVII Cen­tu­ry. An epoch in which they had nev­er seen any­one who was­n’t an Indi­an before and they were still the Old Rama. By their own account there was a time when many of them con­sid­er that they were ani­mals and had no idea that man was its own species.

“We nev­er have no clothes like the Eng­lish and the Spaniard them, and no need for them nei­ther because our minds were clean. Every­where was boun­ti­ful and the bush nev­er fin­ish when you gone into the land.”

There were pho­tos, video, draw­ings and even­tu­al­ly late in the XXI Cen­tu­ry the pyra­mids in the Indio Maiz reserve were exca­vat­ed and that also gen­er­at­ed image libraries that were stored into Walter’s mind and that he could assim­i­late when he rem­i­nisced of being in the jun­gle on a long hike under the trees. When he was alive the roads in the Moquito Coast were lined with kilo­me­ters of tree stumps that nev­er end­ed on both sides of the road and that ran infi­nite­ly into the horizon. 

“We used to have the same lan­guage as the tigers and it was also called Kru­ubu. And all the sto­ries hap­pen right here in the bush, you can see plen­ty marks from the sto­ries them when you walk in between the communities.”

There were 3D mod­els of what sound waves could ren­der from Villa’s phone that began in 2006 and con­tin­ued for the rest of his life. For the most part every move he made was stalked by the most patho­log­i­cal gaze that the most dis­hon­or­able of exis­tences can pro­duce. Trans­porta­tion was a major theme at the time and the top­ic was able to unite more pow­er­ful­ly that reli­gion and pol­i­tics. Oth­er 20th Cen­tu­ry com­forts that sur­prised no one in con­ven­tion­al media, were looked upon as provoca­tive blas­phe­my. Hav­ing some troll’s most ridicu­lous los­er but­tons pressed was jus­ti­fi­ca­tion enough to make death threats, inspire sab­o­tage schemes and orga­nize black mon­tage com­pe­ti­tions in the Kennedy Center.

The first time Wal­ter ever read Roger Vil­la, was years after those incur­sions into the com­mu­ni­ties took place. He wasn’t real­ly pay­ing atten­tion to their simul­ta­ne­ous radio trans­mis­sions when they aired because he was still for­tu­nate enough to have a life of his own dur­ing that peri­od. He could walk down the park in Bil­wi and drink ice-cold beer after night­fall. In those days there was no omi­nous Inter­net and peo­ple would buy prat­ed DVDs with live musi­cal con­certs and TV appear­ances with Span­ish-lan­guage singers from the 1970’s like Braulio and Jose Luis Perales in playlists with White Snake, Air Sup­ply, Michael Jack­son, Pat­sy Kline, Eddy San­ti­a­go and Bob Marley.

What Wal­ter read first was a poem that had been stolen through a screen­shot from Villa’s lap­top in 2022. Years after he’d left Nicaragua fear­ing for his life and Betsy’s insti­tu­tions were still very infat­u­at­ed with him. They’d tried build­ing a site with a pay­wall and that didn’t work because no one in their right mind would ever give their cred­it card infor­ma­tion or any infor­ma­tion to those dement­ed crim­i­nals. That poem was in everyone’s mouth and all the slang Harold Blooms of the day were cheap­en­ing what­ev­er they could in an effort to grand­stand as a gut­ter mind among the scum of the earth.

As far as pira­cy goes, Wal­ter nev­er saw any­thing wrong with it. He would have nev­er been exposed to any­thing as a Miski­to Indi­an from Bil­wi if pira­cy wasn’t run­ning ram­pant and loot­ing the hell out intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. Pira­cy was basi­cal­ly the media where he was from. Roger Vil­la was con­stant­ly caught down­load­ing tor­rents are well and when trolls would tease him about hav­ing a dou­ble moral­i­ty, the poet would defend him­self by say­ing that he didn’t have any­thing against pira­cy, his only prob­lem was that he would real­ly pre­fer to be pirat­ed after he was fin­ished with a project and not being leaked while he was typ­ing away on an incom­plete work. Roger Vil­la would have loved to be able to afford a copy of Tra­dos with­out a tro­jan virus in it, but the boy­cott against him made it impossible.

Anoth­er par­tic­u­lar­i­ty and this one was unique to Roger Vil­la, was that the para­graphs stolen from what­ev­er he was writ­ing were edit­ed in order to put the poet and his fam­i­ly in dan­ger and to pro­voke attacks against them.

“I no want them to build no Canal.” Don Eduar­do says gaz­ing into the cam­era, like a curi­ous child. “I no want the mes­ti­zo them to come here and invade our land. I can’t do noth­ing here, we need the peo­ple in Blue­fields, in the Region­al Coun­cil, in Man­agua and the world to stop this nonsense.”

This was one of those mem­o­ries that Wal­ter couldn’t know if it actu­al­ly hap­pened that way. It was iden­ti­cal to any­thing else that could move through his mind in his sus­pend­ed state. The only dif­fer­ence with this mem­o­ry was, an unjus­ti­fi­able deja vu. He’d seen the trail­er on a phone screen when one day for some rea­son some­one played it on their Android YouTube app.

That night when the Salomon broth­ers land­ed dur­ing the hur­ri­cane sea­son mon­soon, the sea was rabid like a sick hunt­ing dog that you were going to have to put down. When Luis and Bernar­do land­ed in Haulover the house had been blown away part of the coast­line was gone and some of the trees had fall­en. You could nev­er feel bad about strik­ing the sea with all your strength because she was too pow­er­ful. Is only the white man who can ruin the ocean like a cow­ard, poi­son her with his care­less­ness and turn her into death for every­one, humans and the ani­mals alike. Bernar­do remem­bers when his dog as a kid had rabies, the poor ani­mal wasn’t her­self any­more and all she could bring about was suf­fer­ing for the demon that took her over and oth­ers. A lot of the ani­mals went miss­ing after the hur­ri­cane and many were sick when they returned.