Synchro. José Miguel Sánchez Guitian

as he lifted his cup with one hand and removed the lid with the other. He took a sip and licked his mouth, savoring it; then, he put it back on the table and soon forgot that it had ever been there.

      Anthony looked at Julián with a smile.

      “The guys will be here in fifty-five minutes. I saw them waiting and Carlo is about to come through that door”, Anthony checked the time on his screen and enabled the connection. “Are you sure about this? Is he the right person?”

      “Right? Nobody is right for this. Not even us, but when the time arrives… well, we’ll just have to be”. He bit, tugged and pulled again, eyes glued to the screens. “In five minutes, we will close the program and print out the chips”, he said, his face immutable as he continued staring at the lines of code on the screen. “Chap-in is a very promising language, but it lacks good syntax to connect external sensors”.

      Anthony nodded, “We will have to remake the links… Not now, don’t even dream of it, but when we upload it to the cloud, I’m sure we’ll have to.

      Julián set up the chip printer in which he had invested all the money that his father, Sebastian Konks had loaned him. The Konks descended from a family of bankers of Jewish origin that fled Germany before the war started. They found a new life in Mexico, a country that always welcomes those seeking refuge. It had been a year since they had got the loan, a sum close to two million pesos, which he had promised, without much conviction, to return one day. Thank God, thought Julián; the money had all gone to a life without commodities, an office and a magnificent biotechnological printer HP-Bio 11.

      Anthony Somoza was born in Sonora. His parents were agricultural workers who harvested lettuce and grapes. Out of five brothers, Anthony had been the only one to spend any time on his studies; the others continued working the land, doing different jobs along the line of production: they harvested, packaged, stored and distributed.

      When Anthony arrived with Julián in Mexico City, at the end of their four years of university, Julian’s parents let them stay at a space they had above their garage, and loaned them enough money to develop their ideas. The only condition was that they would stay away from the Konks house and the Konks. They held no love for their geeky son and his ‘dark’ friend, as they referred to Anthony when he was not present. They despised those who were different, and the color of his hair and skin were enough reason for the racist and superfluous looks they often gave him.

      They had both accepted the conditions of the deal and had only seen Julian´s parents twice in that time.

      Both associates had focused all their efforts on the execution of the idea they were about to present.

      Anthony stood up and waited for the 3D printer to do its work, holding his hands behind his neck.

      “If the program doesn’t work, tell DARPA. They have already spent over fifty million dollars on this damn language”.

      Anthony was aware that Chap-in was the evolved version of Chap-el, which the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched at least twenty years ago for the acquisition of a high-performance language and the execution of algorithms for supercomputers, although they were using the cloud version from Unix with a BSD license. Its syntax was based on the classic languages C, C++ and Java, but also adopted concepts of scientific programming from Fortran and Matlab. However, its best attribute was related to its parallel processing, which came from programs such as ZPL.

      Julián and Anthony met four years ago at Professor Hass’ advanced computing class in Berkeley. After sharing many hours of loneliness in front of their computer screens, they became close friends. Silences only interrupted by the sound of typing and occasional bursts of frustration or anger when things did not turn out as expected. They had spent all their time in a tiny room where they hardly engaged in any dialogue, exchanged comments or said inappropriate words. They had not even told the kind of jokes that people outside their programmer’s world would struggle to understand. Like the one Anthony sometimes told about the elevator that opens with a programmer inside and someone outside asks ‘up or down?’, to which he replies, ‘yes’. It was a good joke that made them laugh every time.

      They were twenty-four, born in April fourteenth and April twentieth, both Aries. They had named their company Synchro and used the symbol of the ram as their logo.

      Julián waited for the data to load, selected the printer and without hesitation, pressed the ‘run’ button to print the programmed, tiny, black balls. It took a few seconds for the files to transfer and the machine to get started. Anthony continued standing guard by the 3D bio-printer which was now blinking with a green light.

      “How many?” asked Anthony.

      “Five –I think five should be enough”, replied Julián, pulling his earlobe. He stretched his legs and stood up. “That’s ready now”.

      “What about Carlo?”

      “He should be here any moment now; I told him half past seven. I’d rather we do this once the center has emptied a bit. The commotion would not favor us”.

      “People talk”.

      Julián walked to the window that faced the courtyard. Their office was, without doubt, the worst in the Mex-Tec; it had also been the cheapest they found. Those two hundred and fifteen square feet cost something like thirteen thousand pesos each month, and only because the guy in charge had liked him and because no one else wanted the shit hole that looked more like a storage room than the home for a technological company.

      “Anthony, I have to make a prophecy”.

      “Tell me, Nostradamus. Until now, all your weird prophecies have come true”.

      Julián kept looking at the courtyard below.

      “One day, we are going to become very rich because of Synchro and there will be many people trying to divide us. Remember: divide and conquer”.

      “Technically speaking, those are two prophecies, one about us becoming rich and the other about people trying to divide us”, said Anthony, his eyes fixed on the printer.

      ***

      A completely bold man and a young, attractive, blonde girl were straightening themselves up before the mirror at the men’s bathroom, after a brief encounter in one of the cubicles.

      “When are you going to tell me something about the investor?”

      “Soon, give me a few more weeks”, he said, taking the gun from its case and turning it in his palm, checking for damage.

      “One day, that thing is going to bring you trouble”.

      “This thing isn’t loaded, but it’s very persuasive”.

      A young man in a white t-shirt walked in. He stopped at the door, surprised at the sight of the couple. Then, his attention was drawn to the gun in the bald man’s hands. He turned around and left.

      “See? Extremely persuasive”, said the bald man in blue sneakers as he checked his reflection.

      She took out a small bag of cocaine, emptied some of its contents on a metal plate and with help from a little tube of the same material, formed two white lines.

      The man returned his gun to the holster on his hip.

      “I’ve got the Synchro geeks’ presentation now”, the man lifted his chin and posed before the mirror with an ironic smile.

      “The people in the building say that what they are doing is pretty awesome”.

      “Everyone believes that what they do is the best thing in the world”.

      “Maybe, but people are talking, right?” she said, and held her blonde hair back. Leaning forward she snorted her white line.

      “My dear Ana, in the world of money, only money matters; good ideas don’t mean shit”, the man took the metallic tube from the sink, brought it to his nose and snorted loudly, following the line of powder.

      Once in