The short story “Conversations with Yoni Rei” (“Conversaciones con Yoni Rei”) by Pepe Rojo was published for the first time in 1998.
Since his birth, Yoni Rei has been a guinea pig for experiments by the company that literally owns him. Over time, he ends up rebelling against what was done to him with the same terrible results of the experiments conducted on him.
“Conversations with Yoni Rei” is a story really short and brutal in its intensity. It tells some stories from Yoni Rei’s life and a few conversations with him that give us an idea of the experiments conducted on him and his rebellion against the company that used him as a guinea pig for his entire life.
Yoni Rei was an unwanted baby so in the society in which he was born it was legally possible for him to become a corporation’s property. When he grows up, he rebels against his owners committing terrible acts that mirror the way he’s been treated for his entire life. This makes him a character that can be hardly likeable but he’s a victim who can only resort to shock to get some visibility.
In some ways, in “Conversations with Yoni Rei” Pepe Rojo reprises the themes of “Grey Noise” developing them in an even more intense and ruthless way. The protagonist suffers from an extreme alienation caused by a company policy that reduces people to property. Yoni Rei ends up being even self-destructive showing a tendency to nihilism and an inner fragmentation that mirrors that of the society that allowed him to become a lab rat.
To shake people who passively accept being controlled, Yoni Rei makes dramatic gestures but with what results? In a less violent but nonetheless brutal way, Pepe Rojo uses his stories to get people to think offering no ways out. This approach is tricky because it might go too over the top with his metaphors but I think in this case the author manages to avoid excesses and for this reason I think “Conversations with Yoni Rei” is worth reading. It’s available in an ebook on Amazon USA
