Magician of space and memory
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"I almost died the day I was to be born. The umbilical cord
was tied around my throat and I was facing the wrong way. First words I ever heard were:
'This one's a Martian!' " |
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| Ki-rin lives in a tropical island, in a planet close to the center of the
galaxy. His home is an enormous fortress close to the ocean, away from cities or any other
large concentrations of people. |
| Born to a middle class family in the tiny country of El Salvador. The year
was 1968 and his parents were discovering Yoga and other practices from the East. Having
no siblings, he had a big house and hundreds of toys all to himself. His first true
friend was a big German Shepherd named Kim. |
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In the fortress, Ki-rin has amassed a great collection of artifacts,
machines, talismans and holy objects. He waits there, quietly learning and studying,
analyzing and synthesizing, while a a mission is assigned to him and a group slowly
converges on the island. |
| He grew up full of fear and admiration for the poorer people around him, who lived in
the undeveloped and overgrown areas of the city, mirroring it like a secret dirty
labyrinth existing behind the gloss. |
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"I don't go out looking for them or try to convince them.
When a mission comes, I quietly call them and they don't take long to arrive." |
"One day, playing in the backyard, I heard a
ghostly voice singing in an unknown, yet vaguely familiar, language. I was in a trance.
When I met the girl behind the voice, I was overwhelmed. She took me as a good friend but
nothing more, and, after a year had passed, she left and I never saw her again." |
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He has survived countless missions, bringing back from each one another
bit of knowledge, another book, another scroll, another wooden doll. All of these he holds
on to, knowing that each one is a key, and that each of these keys will open one, and only
one, door in the Universe. And, soon enough, a mission will come for which that particular
door will be the main obstacle. |
| Around the age of 11, long after his parents had separated, he moved to a new
neighborhood, a brand new development called "Satellite". There he encountered a
little gang of kids who would become his lifelong companions. |
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After a long wait, a group is finally assembled, and Ki-rin leaves his safe fortress,
his warm planet. He leaves everything behind and travels with his companions, never
to come back until the mission is completed. |
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A bloody civil war had been quickly growing all around him and one night
it came home in a mass of green fatigues and black metal. His mother and him were taken by
the National Police and, after a desperate struggle, they managed to leave the country in
a mad rush to stay alive. |
"In San Francisco, I felt alone and vulnerable among
strange creatures from many worlds. The unimaginable things that happened in the city
scared me and attracted me. So I dived into this new reality very tentatively, taking over
12 years to find my place in a new circle." |
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The missions involve going out to the distant planets, the edges of the galaxy, the
outskirts of reality, where the Mother has been forgotten and darkness and chaos have
taken control. Here he must be reborn as a local creature, and struggle, maybe for several
lifetimes, just to remember who he really is, who is there with him and what they are
there to do. |
| He returned to El Salvador many times, to see his friends in the
"Satellite" and his Dad, of whom he was slowly becoming a distorted mirror
image. But slowly, the north became his new home and he came to realize that he had found
new companions in the voyage. |
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"You must be ready to go anywhere and do
anything,
and be ready to stay there forever,
until your work is done." |
