Tilepadeion

The explosion was extremely violent. I saw a flash and was blown off my feet. All around me, it was raining stones and sand, a cloud of dust and smoke. Immediately after the explosion, total silence. I was knocked out; I’m not sure how long I lay there on the ground. When I sat up, my left arm was hurting. I felt something wet on my face and touched it: my hand came away covered in blood. I rested my back against the wall beside me and tried to calm down. While I was recovering, a van braked a few metres from me. Two men got out and came running towards me. They spoke to me, but I couldn’t hear them. I had gone deaf; all I heard was a buzzing noise. They helped me up and into the van and we headed to the offices. I saw that the side wall of the pumping station had been destroyed. A fire was spreading over the dry grass towards the stream;

Joaquim Casal is professor of chemical engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona) and a researcher at the Centre for Technological Risk Studies (CERTEC). He has published several works of fiction, including Entropia minvant (Ictineu Prize 2012) and volumes of short stories such as L’esperit de fum i altres relats (2012) and Una recerca en dos temps, which received a Special Mention in the UPC Science Fiction Award 2010. Tilepadeion. Sé què penses (Tilepadeion. I know what’s in your mind), winner of the Manuel de Pedrolo Award for Works of Science Fiction presented by the City of Mataró in 2014, speculates on two technological achievements: the thermobaric bomb and the enigmatic Tilepadeion, which would mean the end of equal weapon strength and privacy of thought. The paths of the intellectually restless scientist Adam Barnes and the equally restless international spy Shedarak cross in a journey that takes them from San Francisco to Akademgorodok, Edinburgh to Barcelona, in an unrelenting game of cat and mouse to find out what is being concealed, and to conceal what is known.