Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

I went to the demonstration against the closure of the Cines Ideal at the Plaza de Jacinto Benavente, and no sooner had it begun than I inopportunely broke wind; it’s been happening more and more these days. But no one around me noticed. I regretted going there, because the crowd was negligible and those who did show up were mainly human rubble like myself. No young person in Madrid cares that the last cinemas in the city are vanishing. They have never set foot in them. Since childhood they’ve been used to watching the films devised — if you can use the word film to describe those images that the present generation find amusing — for the screens of their computers, tablets, and mobile phones. Osorio, in his optimist mode, says that since the cinemas are gone, I will have to get used to seeing films on the small screen. But I won’t get used to them; in this, too, I will remain faithful to my tendencies of old. I have lived too long to care if they call me a fossil, a Luddite, or, as Osorio says to tease me, a “conservative irredentist.” I am all that, and will continue to be so as long as my body holds out (which I doubt will be much longer). I break wind again; but no one has noticed it this time either, to judge by the indifference on people’s faces.  Osorio must be the last friend I have. We talk on the phone every day, to be sure that we are still alive. “Good morning. What’s up? You still standing?” “Apparently. At least it looks that way.” “Shall we meet for a coffee later?” “Yup.” I don’t remember when we first met; certainly not when we were young. The hazy swamp of my memory tells me that it was twenty or thirty years ago. I know I was a journalist in my youth; Osorio says he taught philosophy in secondary school, but I’m not at all certain that he was a teacher, and even less of philosophy, since he knows little of the profession or the subject. He has never read Pascal, for example, whom I like a lot. Maybe he has forgotten how he made his living, and his memory is as shot as mine. Maybe he is trying to dupe me and himself by inventing a past. And he is well within his rights to do so. We have agreed to call each other every morning to see if one of us has departed this world in his sleep, and to notify the competent authorities to incinerate us, so that we may disappear completely.  “The last of the cinemas may be closed, but they’ve opened a new bookstore,” Osorio says to lift my spirits once the sorry farewell ceremony for the Ideal has ended. “There are now four in Madrid. I don’t guess you’ll complain. Four bookstores! More than in Paris and London, I assure you. It’s an outright luxury.”  Another tall tale, the product of Osorio’s pathological optimism. What he calls a “bookstore” is actually a simulacrum, a firefly that lights up at night and dies out almost simultaneously. This so-called bookstore — I dropped by there yesterday or the day before — was the property of an old codger from Malasaña who put his library on sale before retiring to the next world: a motley collection of ragged volumes pawed at, leafed through, and put back on their dusty shelves by the handful of shoppers present when Osorio and I went in to take a look around. I bought a slim tract by Azorín, a compilation of articles on Argentine literature, mainly Martín Fierro. I had never heard of it, and it cost me just a few cents. Naturally, in the shop, amid the old codger’s books, I broke wind again, and there was nothing I could do to cover it up. No one cared, except for Osorio, of course, who smiled one of his devilish smiles and briefly flared the wings of his nose in disgust.  I didn’t find any of those old-fashioned novels I like nowadays. Since the practice arose of ordering up novels custom-written