Last year, some scrawny, sickly, and lazy creatures ended up in a health center. They made them open their mouths and their tongues were blue. Ovine catarrhal fever. The veterinarian discovered, however, symptoms of another pathology. One more proof that it was a plague, a blight: the lambs were stolen.
They snatch them for bulk munchies. As they have already industrialized the bulk harvesting of cherries, apples, tomatoes, pumpkins... We are facing start-ups that are making astronomical amounts of money with their ching-chong. There's the trend hunter with HMD glasses. The uninstallers of beastly hardware. The intermediaries who soak up bytes. And the delocalized stores that exhibit a brand-new theft as a brand-new product. There is a Catalonia of lamb corsairs. Throughout the country, business-organized gangs shave the lambs of the shepherd God and offer them as sacrifices on the highest commercial altars of this vale of tears. And without even saying baaaa....
New technologies have also arrived in the old technologies of plunder. Many stolen lambs are advertised on super popular digital platforms for buying and selling second-hand goods. Literal, animal, and lethal. The seismograph of #cordercat points us to hot zones where the animals of the flock are extracted in minutes and in a few more minutes they are elsewhere being grilled. There is an animal knife between Conca de Barberà, Priorat, Garrigues, Ribera d’Ebre. We geolocate cases like neon signs: Ulldemolins, Vallclara, Llardecans, Juneda… The lamb is now digital first, then real. Pixels make your mouth water and getting your hands on the meat means money. A lot. The price of lamb is sky-high. From 400 to 500 euros per creature. They make them fly holistically, integrally, absolutely: in corrals, enclosures, while they snack, nap, or dream about what they will do when they grow up. They don't steal one. They nab 20, 25, 30. Do the math of the baaaa... A lot of money. A lot is needed for this cluster to function at full flock. Grab your mobile.
Some people bought lambs through the app. Click. They go to pick up the order. In the shop window, a boy is waiting for them, taking care of the animals... Stolen in 24-48 hours. They even have baby lamb sitters. The confusion is total. Unreal shepherds who are real thieves. Real shepherds without real lambs. Accomplice buyers. Ignorant buyers. New professional profiles, masters in thievery. Theft is now R+D. The pickpocket is an entrepreneur. The world upside down. The country is neither going well nor badly.
Because all this happens "in the territory". Thieves from "the territory". Shepherds from "the territory". Lambs from "the territory". Orwellian new-speak in the illiterate Catalan way. All this happens in the empty Catalonia full of robberies. That's why it's empty. But there is no empty Catalonia: there is a Catalonia full of people who do not want to be seen, nor to be robbed. Not to have their food taken away. To have their land, their soul, taken away. The future was not fiction: it is reality.
Did Philip K. Dick make a mistake when he wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (very popular for the film adaptation: Blade Runner). There are no androids, no electric lambs, no science fiction, dystopias, uchronias, utopias... Reality rules, governs, decides. And the lamb is reality. That's why they steal them: because they are real in a real Catalonia. And much reality is missing. We are poor and hungry for the real soundtrack: Beeee…
