Op dat moment kwam er een gedachte in me op: Tabula Rasa. Als ik dit wil overleven dan moet ik haast maken. Als het mijn hersenen bereikt of mijn hart aantast, dan is het over. In mijn hoofd maakte ik een schema om elke drie uur of zo vaak als nodig mijn fluxer te gebruiken.
A thought surfaced in my mind: Tabula Rasa. If I want to survive this I’ll have to hurry. If it reaches my brain or my heart, it’s over. In my head I prepared a schedule to use the fluxer every three hours or as often as I needed it.
Don Andrés Batista no creía en fantasmas. Ni en predicciones, ni en maldiciones ni en brujas. Para él lo único real eran los hechos desnudos. Durante seis décadas había ejercido la magistratura con fiero criterio aferrado a la verdad, la justicia y la demostración mediante la prueba confiable. Consideraba por debajo de la inteligencia humana dar fe a supersticiones “baratas”, amén de ser un enemigo declarado de la mentira.
Mr. Andrés Batista did not believe in ghosts. Nor in premonitions, curses or witchcraft. He was interested only in bare facts. For six decades he had served as regional magistrate with fierce devotion to truth, justice and demonstration through tangible evidence. He considered it an insult to human intelligence to believe in tawdry superstitions. He was a self-declared enemy of lies.
Kerron sinulle tarinan, jota kukaan ei kertonut minulle. Kukaan ei ole kuullut sitä. Annan tarinalle sanat, koska se haluaa tulla kerrotuksi täällä meren ääressä, niin lähellä kaiken alkua.
I will tell you a story I heard from no one. No one has heard it. I will give it words because it wants to be told, here at the far end of the sea, so close to the beginning.
These days I’m not ashamed of lying at all, you see; lying and exaggeration are just the fashion lately. If it weren’t the Age of Lies, after all, then the Coin of Truth would be worthless!
For the latest in our author/ translator interview series, we're delighted to welcome Mike Jansen, writer and translator of the story 'Fluxless'/ 'Fluxloos', which appears in our December 3rd, 2018 issue. Mike was kind enough to provide bilingual answers to our questions, so we hope you enjoy reading more about his work, and about the Dutch SF scene.
Kun je ons iets over jezelf en je schrijven vertellen – hoe ben je ooit begonnen met fantastische literatuur?
Can you tell us more about yourself and your writing – what first got you into speculative fiction?
Ik heb altijd alles gelezen dat los en vast zat, sciencefiction, fantasy en horror.…
