I was born in the last century, and if my memory isn't playing tricks on me, I remember being born at home. I'm not sure, though. I was too young to notice, but I do remember that my mother wasn't at home at the time, and I was a great surprise to her. She said, "Oh, it's a girl!" when she saw me wrapped up in towels and placed in a basket like Moses. But she didn't leave me floating in the river. Instead, she took good care of me and my twin brother, who had been born two years earlier. We had roast turkey and pumpkin pie to celebrate my birthday.

Not long after, we met my father, a Tibetan monk who would tell us fantastic bedtime stories about white elephants and red dragons. He was a good man— a bit odd, it's true— but really big-hearted.

A few years later, when I was a toddler, we moved to Brazil. Shortly after we arrived, we met a Portuguese adventurer who had died of malaria a few weeks before. One day, he told us about the pirarucu, an indigenous fish of the Amazon (or bacalhau da Amazônia—Amazon cod in English), which has such big, hard scales that they can be used as shoehorns.

He also told us the legend of the pink dolphins that would turn human at night and seduce women—which gave me a ton of nightmares—and how he had crossed the Patagonian desert on a beautiful train called La Trochita.

When I grew up, I went to college and invented a time machine. That's why I'm here now, but the way I see it, things seem to be going really bad, so I'll just pull the lever, pick a random era, and say good riddance to 2025. Hope the ignition works this time. It wouldn't start on the last trip and I had to push the machine uphill.