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THE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF COCAINE

to each other as if they had found something suspicious, although they weren’t quite sure what. It took me some time to realise that it wasn’t anything hidden inside the steamer that they were concerned with, but the steamer itself. They started backing away from it.

‘Careful. Don’t get too close,’ the policeman who had made the original finding warned his friend who was sneaking up for another look.

They backed away towards the kitchenette, leaving me standing in the middle of the room wondering what was going on. They spoke in hushed tones, so I couldn’t pick up much. However, I did hear one word repeated several times: bomba. I laughed to myself.

‘It’s not a bomb,’ I said loudly, smiling in relief. ‘I’ll show you.’
I bent down, picked up the power cable and went to plug it in at the wall but two of the police crash-tackled me to the ground before I could get there. The lieutenant then jumped on top of me, digging his knee into my neck.

At that exact moment, the major in charge of the prison requisa appeared in the doorway. He took one look at me choking on the ground and immediately demanded an explanation. The lieutenant did a re-enactment of what had just happened, completely exaggerating the part where I went to plug in the steamer. He made me look like a suicidal terrorist making a desperate leap with a fuse in my hand, and himself look like an action hero who had stopped me. The major glared at me. He wouldn’t go near the machine, but he wouldn’t let me get up to tell my side of the story either. Since the policemen were still sitting on top of me, I couldn’t show him how the machine worked. I did my best to explain without the use of my hands, but admittedly, I was never good at doing sound effects and my impression of the noise the steamer made did sound rather like a bomb exploding.

My machines were confiscated and the governor couldn’t get them back for me. I didn’t want to push him. There was still so much more for me to learn about the way things worked and I might need his help in more important matters.

San Pedro wasn’t like any other prison – it was like a small city with its own unique set of rules and its own bizarre economy. For a start, you couldn’t count on the prison administration for anything, not even to maintain the buildings, so everything that needed to be done or bought was done or bought by the prisoners themselves. And