Experience an excerpt from Michel Niva’s futuristic novel, Dengo Boy.

Does that mean he's dead?

Dengue spreading the strange white surface under the Antarctic sun, and within a second, she saw everything flash. When you believe that a boy, a girl, a destroyed blank will die, how about life to look back at the space for a few moments? You might think of that dear mother. Do you lament your father who has never known or perhaps remembered a humorous or traumatic anecdote involving a classmate? Honestly, not many other things happened during her short time on Earth. However (the mind works in a mysterious and unpredictable way, especially the mind of a mutant mosquito), the destroyed dengue fever didn't think about any of these people, rather the story of her mother reading her at bedtime; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She recalled the opening from her heart:

“Once upon a time, on a frozen, windy winter night, the Queen lived. This Queen watched snow fall as she knits by the window. From the window, the snowflakes slowly and rhythmically fell in an unpredictable pattern, like feathers from endless pillows. She was staring in wonder at the fall of snow, so she accidentally stabbed one of her fingers with a needle. Three drops of blood fell into the snow. And the Queen thought to herself. If I could have a daughter as white as snow, as blood red, as winter!”

This opening is always a volatile dengue boy (as he was at the time). In particular, he didn't understand half of the words: what the hell was it? winterwhat was it coldwhat was it snowand why did they spark such attraction?

A precious daughter snowjust as beautiful winter . . .

The mystery of those words, whose meanings had always escaped him, sparked even greater doubt.

It was impossible to know, and there was no empirical way to experience their effects in this future, when cold, winter and snow was gone from the earth (at least not for a miserable boy from Victoria). Naturally, his mother, who spent all her miserable lives at Victorica, didn't really help. All she knew (or as strong as she believes she knows) was that the snow was soft and beautiful, and that the beautiful child's skin had the same colour and pleasant texture, unlike the dengue children, who had a greenish yellow colour with furry skin. For this reason, the dengue boy, like some kind of qabalic rabbis, was convinced that he could access mystical meanings. cold, winter and snowhe will open up the secret of that mysterious sacred breast and how to get the love of his mother.

Because nothing had hoped that insects would turn white like snow and be as beautiful as winter.

The desire to access the mysterious material hidden in these words grabbed the poor insects and he cooperated with all the dictionaries and encyclopedias that he could find in search of answers. He read the definitions over and over again:

winter. noun. obs. The extinction season of the earth's age that occurred between autumn and spring has also become extinct.

Example: “Winter was the coldest time of the year.”

cold. noun. obs. Physical sensations produced by cold temperatures, the characteristics of ancient winters.

Example: “It was cold during the winter, especially if there was snow.”

snow. noun. Precipitation in the form of small white ice crystals formed directly from air water vapor at temperatures below 32°F. This occurs in terrestrial winters and occurs by artificial means on other planets or Earth.

Example: “There was a lot of snow in the winter!”

The poor boy reads these definitions, rereads them, then reads them again, but he has no understanding of his great disappointment. Is that because (as his classmates always argued) he was half wit? winter, cold, snow. Just words. words! Worse, it was a word that had to be explained using other words, and its definition was even more vague and inaccurate.

Wint-er, cold, sn-ow.

The herbular pictograph, which the boy tasted the phonemes through phonemes, was under the illusion that the flesh that once lay beneath the vivid skin had not evaporated before his eyes. But, although removed from the meaning that once brought them to life, what remained was a hollow corpse of meaningless sounds.

Wint-er, cold, sn-ow.

It was an atmospheric phenomenon that so many humans and other species suffered and endured for thousands of years, and now it was merely a planetary mystery, a speculative prose written by fossils, a biblical water and soil sky, a geological stamp!

The only season Pampas and the Antarctic Caribbean knew was summer, burnt, relentless, homogeneous. So when dengue became neutralised, her body still numbed from the poison, believing that she would die, and that she saw her own blood (to be precise, she saw blood that she indiscriminately sucked from Victoria's children and office workers), yes. Boy), a confused F story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

And certainly, the memory she believed that her last body was worthy of was that her poisoned body actually landed on the ice rink of Great Winter Cruise, the flagship of the cruise company that traveled along the Antarctic Caribbean coast, recreating the cold season, and now disappearing from Earth, snow, glacier, and iceberg. Operated using AIS cutting-edge technology, these luxurious cruise ships allow tourists to experience the unique winter joys, including one of the biggest attractions, the largest ice rink on the planet.

And it was exactly where dengue died, ruining the fun of tourists. Imagine the scene: On this impressive slab of ice, 100 feet long and 55 feet wide, crowned the terrace of a 21 feet cruise ship, a massive crowd flocked to try a unique experience, perhaps for the first time, as large visitors were not present. Not only was it an opportunity to slide the unmistakably elegant ice skating strides on frozen sheets, but it was to do so at zero temperatures as the atmosphere in which the rink was installed recreated the harsh winter feel of old New York, lurking long under the waves. Plus, it was Christmas, the busiest and most eagerly awaited season in international tourism. And as the carols rang, the enchanting tourists dressed in fierce courts, moving like swans sliding down the Terra Incognita. It mimics the long-standing things at Rockefeller Center in Old New York, and there are also many leagues now under the sea.

Naturally, the sculptor hired on the cruise ship was sharp enough to replace the flames on Prometheus' right hand with a huge block of pure ice, and the Titans had taken from the deep by the planetary age, allowing these wealthy tourists to recover to the geologic era (as long as the cruise continues) which was permanently eclipsed eclocene to Earth. In fact, this was a cruise company slogan.Great Winter Cruise with 12,000 years of history in one place”, as humans promised to completely recreate the topography of a planet that lost winter, as humans knew it was born and died. Thus, “hibernation” (as the company called the advertising cruise experience) proceeded upwards from the floor, narrating winter history in ascending order. It began with a bottom deck that recreated the Pleistocene end in a giant fridge with robotic mammoths and mastodons, including a family-friendly game in which prehistoric mammals had to be set on fire with sticks and stones before they were attacked. The higher levels provided a variety of experiences from the old winter. Historic included the ability to invade Scandinavian cities on Viking ships, kill, sack, rape, or cross the Andes with General San Martin's white horse. Winter precipitation such as snow, hail, and sleet. There was also a huge igloo with outdoor cinemas, casinos, spas, carousels, cocktail bars and sushi and barbecue restaurants. Ancient frozen delights of ice, snow and cold were the real treasures of the gods stolen by Prometheus himself for the exclusive enjoyment of visitors to the cruise. The skaters slid across the rink in an atmosphere of pure joy, and were saved by Christmas carols, people clashing and dancing with each other cheerfully, shining and laughing at each other with the shared bliss. A true, unforgettable celebration recorded forever in the tourist retinus, a real dream, if mosquitoes had not landed violently on ice links and ruined everything.

This extract has been reproduced With permission to write a novel Dengue fever boy Michel Nieva (translated by Rahul Berry) is now appearing in the snake tail. Available from the North American version Astra House. This novel is the latest choice for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up here and read with us