A Zero-Sum Game. Eduardo Rabasa

that define each individual, he could explain real events without having to wait for them to occur.

      He investigated innumerable causal relationships, looking for recurring patterns. Beginning with the most obvious categories—social class, nationality, skin color, religion—he managed to corroborate common suppositions. In general terms, people’s thoughts and actions could be blocked out, according to the specific group they belonged to. Ponce concentrated his attention on the remainder, the minuscule deviations within a single group. Why did some millionaires wear denim jeans and jackets? What was the difference between adulterous believers and their chaste counterparts? What did women who lied about their age have in common? Why did hoods indicate a tendency to mindless acts of violence?

      He tried out his theory on hundreds of the most elusive variables: the type of music listened to, favorite sexual fetish, being an early morning or night person. Almost all these variables fitted within more general categories, but some stood out for their predictive power. Among people with an average income, those who had had wooden toys were, as a rule, less given to accumulation; those who couldn’t dance salsa had a greater tendency for masochistic relationships. He refined and purified until he arrived at the famous Ponce Questionnaire. Seventy-one questions that summarized the narrative of human behavior. With a margin of error of ±3.14%, it could predict political opinions, consumption patterns, movie preferences, the cost of an engagement ring. Armed with his database, Ponce would consult his cyber-seer and note down the answers. It never failed on the outcome of an election, the sales volume of a new model of car, the numbers of demonstrators at a protest march, or the average abortion figures in a particular stratum of women.

      It also worked at an individual level. Once a person had allowed him to take an X-ray of his soul, G.B.W. Ponce was the owner of his future. He knew, with terrifying precision, what that person would think or choose given certain alternatives. On one occasion, a progressive colleague had made a virulent attack on his method—the very idea of its implications deeply alarmed him. Ponce announced a public challenge: the colleague should hand him a sealed envelope containing a document outlining his position on various controversial topics, his normal mode of transport, the number of jackets with elbow patches he had in his closet, and other personal peculiarities. He would then complete the Ponce Questionnaire. The computer crunched the data and came up with the right answer on subjects such as his views on homosexuals being able to enlist in the army, the hours of television he allowed his children to watch, whether or not he believed in personal pensions, and his favorite cruise route. The humiliated professor retired in silence. Ponce’s flamethrower had melted his waxen autonomy.

      Each fresh success gave him greater confidence. He was to be found in the most venerable seats of learning, giving presentations to packed lecture theaters, always dressed in the same way: red canvas tennis shoes, slightly torn jeans, and a white shirt, plus his indispensable dark glasses. He enjoyed seeing the effects of his provocations. Once, he turned up at an ultraconservative university disguised as a robot. He explained to the audience he was going to demonstrate that the only God they should worship was the automaton each and every person has within him, and followed this with barbed statements claiming that fundamentalism could be explained by purely material circumstances. When he stated that 87.3% of evolution deniers treated their subordinates worse than chimpanzees, one young man could take no more and made a lunge for the sound equipment to turn off the microphone. G.B.W. Ponce came down from the stage in a series of jerky, mechanical movements to the sounds of the insults and boos of his devout audience.

      What was revolutionary about his method was that it removed the need for studies and surveys. The responses to the questionnaire were sufficient. He updated his databases to keep them fresh and developed parameters for balancing the different variables, including the hedonistic slant inherent in advancing age. Having nothing more to prove to academia, he published a voluminous book of his findings, entitled God’s Dice. He was careful to keep it beyond the comprehension of non-initiates: the book didn’t explain anything. There were thousands of tables with statistical links from which the author could extract at will the conclusions he wanted to develop more explicitly. His authority was such that the arrows of causality began to point in every direction. It was no longer possible to tell what was the origin and what was the outcome.

      One man read that self-sufficient women whose partners were addicted to videogames and marijuana tended to break off their relationships. After even the slightest argument, he would accuse his wife of wanting to leave him. He fought against the growing tension by increasing his dose of marijuana, and spending whole days playing videogames. When his wife finally departed, he self-pityingly accepted the fulfillment of the Poncean maxim.

      A bureaucrat learned that public servants with double chins, over twelve years of service in the same post, and a predilection for sensationalist magazines, often stole the office staplers. He was enormously relieved to see that statistical absolution of his peccadillo.

      A bored housewife read that, in 73% of cases, the first lesbian experience in her stratum occurred with the domestic help. Coming back drunk from a meal with her best friend, she called Josefina into her bedroom and tempered her confusion with imperative commands until she achieved satisfaction. Thanks to God’s Dice, she ran not the slightest risk of her new secret being discovered.

      G.B.W. Ponce was intrigued by the practical reach of his paradigm. When he received Perdumes’ invitation, he was certain that Villa Miserias was the ideal laboratory in which to pursue his grand passion: codifying social existence down to the last minor detail. He made it a condition that his questionnaire would be distributed to every resident in the estate. Fabulous! No problem. That’s what Taimado and his Black Paunches are here for. He installed himself and his meager belongings in Building 29 and acquired two adjoining spaces in the commercial zone in which to launch his consultancy business, $uperstructure. When the transparent sign on a black background had finally been put up, Juana Mecha exclaimed to anyone who would listen: “If it isn’t the same river each time, at least it looks the same now.”

      15

      One of the keys to Quietism in Motion was precisely the fact that it included motion. G.B.W. Ponce had demonstrated that ascent of the social ladder was accompanied by an acceptance of the beliefs of the new rungmates. The members of the former “us” immediately became “them.” This in itself was not particularly important. What did matter was ensuring the changes of status were visible: making it clear that the only barrier to excellence was looking back at you in the mirror each morning. Selon Perdumes’ favorite example for highlighting the possibilities of social advancement was Mauricio Maso.

      Maso arrived in Villa Miserias by accident while still in his puberty. He was living with other children in a sewer, earning a living by entertaining passengers in the metro: on the floor of the subway car he would lay out a T-shirt covered with pieces of broken glass and roll around on then. His skin was like a bloodied sheet of sandpaper, adorned with a maze of raised scars. He withstood the hardships of his profession by inhaling the glue supplied by his boss each night when he reported in. But that irascible tyrant only let the boys keep enough of their earnings for a couple of tacos and a soda.

      One time, Mauricio Maso overdid the glue and came out of the metro feeling very disoriented. In search of somewhere to shelter from the rain that was making his wounds burn, he jumped over the wall surrounding Villa Miserias and took refuge among the garbage containers, where he competed with the stray dogs for a share of the leftover leftovers recently discarded there: eating a piece of fat on the bone only left him hungrier than ever. Then he stuck his head into a container in the hope of striking lucky, and found something better than food: a bag of marijuana some parents had found in their teenage daughter’s bedroom. He improvised a pipe from an empty water bottle, reactivated his glue-induced stupor with a couple of puffs, then lay down among the trash to gaze into the density of the clouded night sky.

      A group of kids passed by on their way to a party and immediately recognized the smell. They followed the scent until they came across Mauricio, sprawled out, absorbed, firmly grasping his bottle in his right hand. He seemed to hear them say something, but the words formed waves in the air that broke before they became comprehensible. The most resolute of the kids opened his fingers one by one to liberate the weed, leaving in his hand a bill equivalent to two weeks’