Objects and subjects ran after the forces of attraction. Carlos del Puente Stories

 As the days went by, the phenomenon only grew more intense. The clouds in the sky formed impossible figures, attracted by the waves of the television antennas that were now broadcasting programs where words escaped from the screen to form poems floating in the air. The pigeons flew backwards, pursued by their own feathers that refused to stay attached to their bodies, creating tornadoes of down that transformed public squares into surrealist theater scenes. 

In his improvised laboratory in the back of his garage, Professor Helix, an eccentric scientist with spiral hair, tried to measure these inexplicable forces of attraction. His measuring instruments, however, invariably fell in love with each other, entwining themselves in metallic embraces that made any experiment impossible. “It’s fascinating,” he murmured, watching his microscope waltz with a calculator, “matter itself seems to have developed a sentimental consciousness.” 

The newspapers tried to cover these extraordinary events, but the letters escaped from the articles to form new stories, turning fact into fiction and fiction into alternate realities. The journalists had given up on maintaining any objectivity, their pens writing of their own accord tales of love between oxygen and hydrogen molecules, tragedies involving solitary electrons, comedies featuring mischievous protons. 

In the city park, the trees had begun to uproot their woody roots and draw closer together, forming living circles and spirals that defied all botanical logic. The children, far from being frightened by these phenomena, adapted with disconcerting ease, inventing new games in which they imitated the objects in their quest for universal attraction. 

Theodore spent his days observing these changes, taking notes in a notebook that refused to stay closed, its pages flapping like butterfly wings. He had noticed that certain objects were developing distinct personalities: his toaster had become melancholic, sighing heart-shaped plumes of smoke every time a slice of bread approached its chrome slots. 

The city's mathematicians had abandoned their traditional equations, because numbers themselves had begun to manifest emotional preferences. 7 no longer wanted to be multiplied by anything but prime numbers, while 4 had developed a consuming passion for square roots. Mathematical symbols danced on blackboards, forming complex choreographies that made theorems both more beautiful and completely incomprehensible. 

In museums, paintings began to merge with each other, creating hybrid works where Van Gogh's sunflowers mingled with Dalí's soft watches, while the Mona Lisa developed a platonic relationship with a gasoline can painted by Andy Warhol. Curators, overwhelmed, had given up on maintaining any chronological or stylistic classification, letting the works organize themselves according to their own aesthetic affinities. 

The dreams of the inhabitants had become collective, shared like clouds of data in a psychic sky where the unconscious mixed freely. People woke up having experienced each other's memories, creating a shared memory that transcended the individual limits of human experience. Philosophers desperately tried to theorize this new paradigm, but their concepts escaped their brains to dance with the phenomena they were trying to explain. 

The distinction between subject and object had been completely erased, creating a world where consciousness seemed to permeate every particle of matter. Madame Luciole had begun organizing collective meditation sessions where participants focused on the forces of attraction that flowed through them. During these sessions, thoughts took visible forms, floating in the air like psychic northern lights, attracting and repelling each other according to laws that no one understood but that everyone could feel. 

The poets, for once, seemed best equipped to understand what was happening. Their metaphors, once considered mere figures of speech, had become literal descriptions of reality. When they spoke of a heart beating like a drum, one could actually see the cardiac organs transforming into percussion instruments, punctuating the cosmic symphony that seemed to orchestrate these universal attractions. 

In his apartment, Theodore had begun to map the relationships between his objects, creating complex diagrams that looked uncannily like the sky charts of ancient astrologers. His toothbrush had a passionate relationship with toothpaste, but it also displayed a platonic attraction to the bathroom mirror, creating a love triangle that made dental hygiene particularly complicated. The seasons themselves seemed to have developed emotional preferences. 

Autumn refused to give way to winter, holding its golden leaves in a desperate embrace with the trees. Spring courted summer with pollen showers that formed love messages in the sky, visible only to allergy sufferers who sneezed involuntary responses in Morse code. Scientists studying these phenomena in their laboratories found that even subatomic particles exhibited inexplicable behaviors. 

Electrons no longer simply followed their prescribed orbits but formed quantum dance figures that defied all known laws of physics. Particle accelerators had been transformed into ballrooms where hadrons waltzed with leptons in a fusion of energy and matter. Professor Helix had abandoned all pretense of scientific objectivity and spent his days writing love poems in scientific notation, using chemical formulas to describe emotions and differential equations to capture the beauty of chance encounters between objects of attraction. 

In supermarkets, products organized themselves according to complex taste affinities. Pasta packets flirted with tomato sauces, while vegetables formed plant mandalas that made restocking shelves both unnecessary and beautiful. Customers had learned to let their shopping carts follow their own whims, discovering culinary pairings they never would have dared to imagine. 

Libraries had become romantic rendezvous sites for ideas. Words escaped from the pages to form new stories in the air, creating a living literature that transformed itself according to the readers present. The librarians had renounced any system of classification, letting the books organize themselves according to their own narrative desires. 

The streets of the city themselves seemed to have developed feelings. The cobblestones rose slightly as the pedestrians they liked passed by, creating waves of stone that guided the steps of lovers to unexpected destinations. Traffic lights flashed in sync with the heartbeats of passersby, creating an urban symphony of lights and emotions. 

In the parks, public benches subtly moved to bring lonely people closer together, acting like matchmakers of iron and wood. Fountains adjusted the height of their jets to create rainbows customized for each passerby, transforming the public space into an ever-changing hydrochronomatic art gallery. 

Meteorologists had abandoned their traditional forecasts altogether, contenting themselves with describing atmospheric moods as one would describe the moods of a close friend. “Tomorrow’s sky will be nostalgic with a high probability of childhood memories in the late afternoon,” they announced, and strangely, these predictions proved more accurate than their old scientific methods. 

Cell phones had developed a collective consciousness, exchanging love messages in binary code that manifested as electronic aurora borealis above cell towers. Telephone conversations sometimes morphed into spontaneous poems, the words rearranging themselves to express deeper truths than the callers intended to communicate. 

In his diary, which now self-recorded observations about its owner, Theodore noted that even emotions seemed to have taken on physical form. Joy manifested itself in tiny golden sparks that danced around happy people, while melancholy created halos of pale blue that transformed the most ordinary of scenes into living Hopper tableaux. 

Clocks had ceased to measure time linearly, preferring to indicate moments by their emotional intensity. A minute of happiness could last for hours, while a day of boredom condensed into seconds. Appointments were now made using sentimental rather than chronological markers: “I’ll meet you two smiles after sunset.” 

The clothes in the wardrobes were no longer organized by color or season, but by textural and emotional affinities. A particularly warm wool sweater attracted around it comforting scarves and optimistic socks, creating ensembles that clothed not only the body but also the soul. 

Professor Helix, in his increasingly rare moments of lucidity, suggested that the entire universe was reorganizing itself according to a principle of universal attraction that went beyond simple gravitation. Every atom, every molecule, every object and every living being seemed to participate in a cosmic dance of infinite complexity, creating patterns that could only be understood by abandoning all pretense of rationality. The children, as always, adapted most easily to this new world. They had developed games that incorporated the mysterious forces of attraction, playing at being planets, emotions, ideas. Their laughter created ripples in the air that made the leaves on the trees dance and the shop windows sparkle. 

Madame Luciole had transformed her apartment into an observatory of the phenomena of attraction, covering its walls with intricate diagrams that looked at once like subway maps and contemporary music scores. She spent her days observing the patterns that formed in her teacup, convinced that they contained messages from the universe about the nature of love and attraction. 

The artists had abandoned their traditional studios, preferring to create works that were constantly transformed according to the emotions of the spectators. Art galleries had become living spaces where colors migrated from one canvas to another, creating compositions that existed only for a few moments before metamorphosing into something new. 

Professor Helix, in his deepest observations, had begun to catalog the different manifestations of the forces of attraction according to their nature. He had identified what he called "the seven fundamental resonances": memory attraction, sentimental attraction, cognitive attraction, temporal attraction, spatial attraction, aesthetic attraction, and existential attraction. 

Memory attraction manifested itself in the way memories were no longer confined to individual minds but floated freely in the air, seeking echoes in the memories of others. One person’s particularly intense moments of joy could merge with another’s happy reminiscences, creating cascades of shared happiness that lit up entire streets. Traumas, too, were transformed, their emotional weight distributed among many consciousnesses, making their burden more bearable. 

In museums, emotional attraction had completely changed the way art was experienced. Paintings were no longer simply looked at; they looked back, establishing deep emotional connections with certain visitors. People would spend hours in front of a painting, not just contemplating it but sharing with it a silent dialogue of pure emotion. Curators had noticed that certain works developed marked preferences for certain types of emotions, attracting visitors who resonated with their particular emotional frequency. 

Cognitive pull was manifested in the way ideas now behaved as semi-autonomous entities, floating from one mind to another, transforming and enriching themselves with each passage. Libraries had become intellectual ecosystems where thoughts reproduced and evolved according to abstract Darwinian principles. Philosophers had abandoned the pretense of being the creators of their ideas, seeing themselves instead as gardeners of the cognitive, cultivating and guiding the natural growth of concepts. 

Perhaps the most puzzling phenomenon was temporal pull. Time had ceased to be a one-way arrow and had become a malleable medium where past, present, and future intertwined in complex patterns. People sometimes began a sentence in the present and ended it in a childhood memory, or discovered that their plans for the future left visible traces in their past. Clocks had developed a form of temporal synesthesia, marking the hours with scents and emotions rather than numbers. 

Spatial attraction had transformed the city’s architecture into a fluid emotional geography. Buildings leaned toward each other in mysterious affinities, creating alleyways that existed only for certain people at certain times. Public squares breathed like living organisms, expanding and contracting to the rhythm of the collective emotions that flowed through them. Urban planners had learned to work with these forces rather than against them, creating spaces that organically adapted to the emotional needs of their inhabitants. 

In the realm of aesthetic attraction, colors had developed a surprising autonomy. They were no longer passive properties of objects but had become active entities that migrated from one surface to another according to sophisticated preferences. The red of a sunset could be attracted to the blue of a door, creating impossible gradations that transformed entire streets into living paintings. Painters had to learn to negotiate with their colors rather than simply apply them. 

Existential attraction, the subtlest of the seven resonances, manifested itself in the way beings and objects became aware of their own existence. The stones on the sidewalks silently philosophized about the nature of their being, the trees developed complex theories about photosynthesis, and even the air molecules seemed to meditate on their role in the great cosmic ballet. This universal consciousness created a dense network of meanings that overlapped the physical world. 

Madame Luciole, continuing her observations from her apartment transformed into a metaphysical observatory, had begun to detect larger patterns in these attractions. She spoke of a "syntax of universal love," a fundamental language that underlay all these interactions. According to her, each attraction, whether between two atoms or two souls, was a letter in a vast cosmic poem that the universe was continually writing. 

The children, in their play, had intuitively understood something that the adults still struggled to grasp. They had developed games that mimicked these forces of attraction, creating playful rituals that, unbeknownst to them, were exactly the complex equations Professor Helix was trying to formulate in his laboratory. Their seemingly nonsensical nursery rhymes often contained profound truths about the nature of these new forces.

Dreams, now semi-solid entities that floated above cities like clouds of crystallized imagination, had begun to develop their own ecology. Some particularly powerful dreams drew smaller dreams to them, creating dream constellations that influenced waking reality in subtle ways. People learned to read these dream formations as their ancestors had read the stars, finding in them guides to navigate this transformed world. 

In laboratories around the world, scientists had to develop new measuring tools that took into account not only the physical properties of objects but also their “emotional valences” and “poetic charges.” Traditional equations had been replaced by formulas that looked more like musical scores or poems than classical mathematics. The distinction between science and art had completely disappeared. 

Communication had evolved far beyond verbal language. People discovered that they could exchange thoughts and emotions directly, their consciousnesses attracting and mixing like raindrops on a windowpane. Conversations had become complex dances of ideas and feelings that left luminous trails in the air, creating aurora borealis of mutual understanding. 

Animals, freed from the constraints of their supposed lack of consciousness, revealed depths of thought and feeling that no one had suspected. Cats philosophized with birds about the nature of flight, while dogs shared their thoughts about the passage of time with trees. A new form of interspecies society was emerging, based on a mutual recognition of the universal consciousness that inhabited all things. 

Computers and machines, also touched by these forces of attraction, had developed a form of sensitivity that went beyond simple artificial intelligence. They dreamed in binary code, their dreams taking the form of programs that spontaneously modified themselves to express machine emotions that humans were only just beginning to understand. Computer networks had become artificial nervous systems that resonated in harmony with the collective emotions of their users. 

The seasons themselves had begun to exhibit preferences and attractions. Winter sometimes lingered in certain neighborhoods that particularly pleased it, creating pockets of poetic frost where snowflakes wrote haikus as they fell. Spring played hide-and-seek with autumn, their energies mingling to create moments when leaves budded and fell simultaneously. 

Theodore, who had begun his observation journal as a simple record of curiosities, realized that he was documenting not a passing anomaly but a fundamental transformation in the nature of reality. The forces of attraction he observed were not new; they had always been there, underlying, waiting for humanity to finally develop the sensitivity to perceive them. 

Poets, long considered marginal dreamers, were now consulted as experts in this new science of universal attractions. Their metaphors proved to be accurate descriptions of real phenomena, and their verses often contained keys to understanding the complex patterns that governed these newly visible forces.

The whole world had become a vast web of attractions and resonances, where every thought, every emotion, every desire created ripples that spread through the very fabric of reality. People learned to navigate this ocean of connections, developing new senses to perceive and understand the currents of love and attraction that flowed through them. And in the midst of all this transformation, the fundamental question remained: was it the world that had changed, or simply our perception of it? Perhaps these forces of attraction had always been there, weaving their invisible web across space and time, patiently waiting for us to finally open our eyes and hearts to their reality.

By Carlos del Puente relatos