Episode 1
The Computer Scientist
He emitted a desperate groan as he felt a sharp pain, opened his eyes and glimpsed someone dressed in white. His eyelids closed again and another painful prick forced him to wake up. The frenzy of staff in white dressing gowns and pajamas throughout the room was unceasing. That tide of activity that swept from one side to the other overtook him, he didn’t know where he was or what was happening, he tried to get up, but his strength failed him, he chose to desist and return to Morpheus’ world.
“What’s your name, what’s your name?” he listened insistently.
“Ra… pha…” he muttered with both eyes closed.
“How many pills did you take? How many pills did you take?” the young woman questioned again in a firm and determined voice.
He found it difficult to keep his eyes open, he just wanted to sleep, and those people were bothering him.
“Let me… I am… sleepy…”
“No way. Wake up!” he ordered the voice.
The pain caused by the heavy pressure on his earlobe opened his eyes, and he angrily searched for the cause of the attack, but his wrists were bound to the stretcher.
“Calm down, cooperate, it’s for your own good.”
He understood that he was in the hospital, in the emergency room, he was very sleepy, but alive. The last thing he remembered was the titanic effort he made to press the red emergency key on his state-of-the-art mobile phone.
Suddenly he was more lucid and alert; the intravenous injection given by the nurse on the young doctor’s orders had had an immediate effect. The doctor, already in a softer tone, began to interrogate him for his medical history. She asked him if he had any allergies, if he had any illnesses, if he was taking any treatment, his family history. Rapha answered docilely while he was fascinated by the beauty of the doctor; “Alice”, he could read off the identification card that was hanging from her unbuttoned gown.
For the first time in his life, he felt relaxed, calm and at ease with a woman, except for his mother of course. He entertained himself by watching Alice, her swaying around the room, writing on the computer, whispering orders to the nurses in a velvety northern accent:
“Activated charcoal stomach pump, then psychiatric consultation.”
Rapha remained fascinated, Alice was tall and slender, brunette with tied long hair in a ponytail, blue eyes and full lips. Her swollen breasts were trying to escape from the generous neckline, wasp waist, behind the medical scrubs you could guess a tight ass.
“Yes, my shift today is twenty-four hours, I leave at eight in the morning,” he heard her say to a fellow worker.
After the typical sermon about the goodness of life and the stupidity of suicide, she encouraged him to look for solutions to his problems. Alice said goodbye very politely and wiggling her way through the critical care room to the hallway to her office. She had to continue attending to the long line of patients who were still waiting for medical attention in the waiting room. Rapha watched her in a daze as she walked away.
After finishing vomiting, he was transferred to the psychiatric area. First thing in the morning he had no choice but to have a long and sincere talk with the specialist.
Rapha was a chubby kid, even in his own in style, not good at sports and all the games that required physical effort. Given his peculiar appearance, he often had problems at school and in his small hometown, famous for its iron bridge, which is located in the Alpujarra Mountains of Granada.
He was always the focus of ridicule and scorn from his classmates, who made fun of him. This caused him a great social isolation, becoming a reserved person. In his childhood he only found refuge in novels, comic books and history encyclopedias, becoming an avid devourer of literature of all genres.
He reached his adolescence suffering from extreme shyness. The only advantage was that he had a lot of free time to devote to study and to one of his favorite hobbies, computers.
Genetically he was more like his father than his mother, so he inherited his short, greasy hair and short height.
His move to the city and entry into the university environment did not change his life much. He already had premature alopecia and great myopia, adorned with thick, unstylish, high-prescription glasses that made his morphology stand out even more.
He graduated with excellent grades, which allowed him to easily look for his professional future as a programmer. He found it in Almería, a city in the southeast, on the Mediterranean coast. But too far away from the only stable and loving relationship of his whole life, his little family. He adapted his work to his lifestyle, became his own boss. His profession was carried out at home, with no schedule. He was presented with the development of an application or the design of a web page, he only had to concentrate, immerse himself in the task and dedicate all his time to it. He found that he worked better at night, his Internet connections were clearer, his computer was much faster, and his web pages went up more quickly. So, he changed his life habits, sleeping more in the morning and working on his projects in the afternoons and evenings.
