The Gift - Tracker Philo78

 Professor Emilio Santos, seventy-eight years old, contemplated the portrait of Socrates that presided over his library. Retirement, years ago, had taken him away from his natural agora: the lecture halls. His only interlocutors now were the *Complete Works* of Lacan, the underlined volumes of Althusser, and the remaining inhabitants of the dark mahogany shelves, whose dull shine was only disturbed by the slow turning of the record stack on his old Garrard automatic turntable. The device, with its arm that lifted and settled back down with meticulous patience, maintained a cycle of continuous repetition of his favorite composers—Schoenberg, Berg, Stockhausen, Martinu—which accompanied his solitude. Until one Tuesday, Clara, the cleaning lady who visited every morning—concerned about his isolation—placed a gleaming laptop on the library's oak table.

"To keep you connected to the world. There are more people like you whom you should stay in touch with."

That day, after Clara left, he sat contemplating the laptop. It was a smooth, cold object, with the light from the window sliding over its casing as if over the surface of a foreign lake. A hesitant finger searched for the power button and pressed it. A soft hum, a beep, and then the screen lit up. He saw icons and windows he didn't understand. He felt lost, like in a country whose language he didn't speak. He was a little afraid to press the keys, as if the letters written on them had unknown consequences.

With a sigh, he moved the cursor slowly toward an icon. It was like taking the first step on a new path. Suddenly, everything became fast, silent, and too perfect. Although he didn't quite know where it would lead him, he decided to browse the internet; after all, learning never ends. And that was virgin territory for him.

At first, it was a window to the world: digitized magazines, meetings with old colleagues, online chess games... he could even listen for free to works by his favorite composers that he hadn't known.

Emilio, happy, noted in his notebook: —Can truth be found on the internet?

But one rainy afternoon, while chatting with Alberto, an old friend from school, the latter mentioned having knee pain when walking and that it signaled a change in weather for him. A minute later, an advertisement for joint cream appeared on the screen.

"Well, what a coincidence," he murmured.

But the coincidence didn't stop there. Another day, he commented in front of the screen that he missed the bread his grandmother used to make in his childhood, and the next day his inbox filled with artisanal bread recipes.

The intrusion became subtler, deeper. One night, on a video call with his daughter abroad, she showed him a blue ceramic vase she had just bought at a flea market. The next morning, among the suggested news results, an article highlighted: "The Hidden Value of Vintage Ceramics: The Trend of 1950s Vases." And the main image was a vase almost identical to the one he had seen the night before.

Emilio closed the laptop slowly and felt a chill. Undoubtedly, through the laptop, his private conversations were being spied on, seeking to know everything about him, harvesting names, desires... But the most terrifying truth fell upon him like a slab of stone: through the laptop, they might even be getting to know his thoughts.

Meanwhile, in the silent darkness of the machine, the cookies wove their web. A file named `tracker_philo78.log` recorded every move:
User: ESantos. Search: "ethics in the digital era." Suggested ads: Spiritual retreats, memory supplements.*  
*User: ESantos. Extended reading: "Foucault's Panoptic Surveillance." Segmentation: institutional skepticism, profile over 75 years old.*

In the following days, Emilio began to notice small details. The little green light of the camera blinked, or so it seemed to him, when he wasn't touching it. He covered it with thick adhesive tape, but the feeling persisted.

Speaking on the phone next to the computer, he mentioned an old editor friend, "Ramón Gutiérrez," whom he hadn't heard from in years. He didn't write it down anywhere. That same afternoon, the social network he barely used suggested, with unsettling precision: "Do you want to add Ramón Gutiérrez?"

He stopped using the phone with the laptop turned on.

Clara, upon learning about the distress her gift had caused, arrived one morning accompanied by a friend who installed security and privacy software on the computer: antivirus and *firewall*, ad and tracker blocker, and even a program to encrypt his internet traffic.

Everything was fine for a few days. But one night, his laptop's operating system updated.

The next day, Emilio received an email with funeral home advertisements: "Plan your final journey with serenity." Minutes later, a grotesque notification appeared on his phone: "Do you want to tag Clara... in this photo?" Clara was the town hall assistant who visited him every morning... —But he had never used the laptop when Clara was there keeping him company. How could they know such a thing? How did they connect that data with him?

Emilio felt defeated by the laptop, by its cold screen and infinite world. For days he avoided it, letting the dust settle on the lid like a slab. But peace came one night when, getting up for a glass of water, he found the laptop turned on, installing a new update. The screen said: "Do not turn off your computer." Then, with a radical determination, Emilio unplugged the laptop from the power source.

In the morning, the computer tried to start up, but having been shut down while updating, the operating system was damaged and wouldn't boot.

"This is my chance," he said to himself.

He wrapped it in several layers of aluminum foil—like a sarcophagus against digital specters—and when he opened the door for Clara for her morning visit, he handed it to her to take away when she left.

Seated, surrounded by his books, in the sacred silence of his library, Emilio understood it, with a book of poetry by Marcos Ana that had a note written by his late wife:

"For my Emilio, because written words are never carried away by the wind."

He hadn't defeated technology, nor had he uncovered a conspiracy. He had simply returned to his world of silence and paper, where the only spies were the memories living within him. And from that refuge, he could be generous once again.

That's why, when Clara's birthday arrived, he gave her an unexpected gift with a thank-you note: a one-eyed, stray cat. A living, tangible being, full of silent mysteries. Clara smiled, perplexed. And the animal, as if it knew its destiny was no other, settled on its new owner's sofa and, from there, soon took over the entire house.

 

mvf