“… and our land … is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far and illuminates what’s outside it…”
Mahmoud Darwish, To Our Land.
#
It is a warm August afternoon in the year 2118 C.E*.
They are at the top floor of a mid-sized wooden one-storey house with a large grassy yard, deep in the heart of the Creeks, in those parts that were referred to as interior Akwa Ibom before the war, far from the bustling city centers and their artificial fauna.
They are in a study that is really just a near-empty room with a carved seat and a wiry tan bamboo desk, and an old, pale blue two-setter couch made from what might have been some sort of cellulose fabric, which seems to be a reading nook. Scattered on the table are a pile of coarse, brown, bio-pulp papers and notes, one of those cheap bio-metal tabs everyone has now, and a reusable pen.
It is quite cool as there is just one small circular stained-glass window atop the couch, and it is also quite dark, save for the meagre sunlight dripping into the room from the window like hot drops of water, and some ethereal purple light, spilling into the room from under a small carved oak wood door in the corner.
“Those foreign scientists… They came from all over, you know. The president thought he was onto something huge, and so he absolutely splurged. There were geologists from Spain, botanists from Portugal, petroleum engineers from the UK, chemists from India… All over the world. It was a team of almost 30 scientists, and none of them were Nigerian. I was the only Nigerian working with them, as their lab scientist, helping them to clean the saucers and prep the tools, and used as a tool myself.”
She pauses to adjust and clean her glasses with a little blue cloth. There is a meticulous method to the way she cleans, perhaps because her glasses are archaic, horn-rimmed, medicated — a delicate antique — or maybe it is because she has learnt the hard way the virtue of handling things with care. Her wiry, tired hands lift the glasses back to her eye carefully.
Her entire body is small, hollow, wood brown, like a carving, and almost swallowed up by her outfit, a threadbare cellulose fabric (C-Fabric, as it’s called these days) sweater worn over a cheap stretched out blue bio-satin dress.
There are lines around her small mouth and veins showing on her taut skin. She has been through a roughening that made her age faster, made her look like a 70-year-old relic, although she is in her 50s.
But she is strong in spite of it, and it shows in the way she twists her mouth to contain the tears that sometimes threaten to undo her, in the way she adjusts herself demurely on her seat; a fragility that was learnt, a fragility that is strength.
“Are you okay, Madam Ivy?”
It is Dr Douye Tari who asks. The couch making a wheezing sound as he leans forward on it.
She looks at him and forces a small smile, just like the one she learnt to affect whenever she was harassed at the commission, just enough to conceal.
“Yeah. Yes. Yes. I’m fine. Thank you. Very fine.”
She shakes her head to better dispel remnants of the bad memories.
“Back to my story. Where were we? Ah yes. The scientists. They were very shady people, those scientists. But they were smart. You see, when we first discovered the gas in liquid form in that erosion puddle I already told you about, we thought this was a liquid form of energy. But they discovered that it was a form of gas, and that its real origin was from a type of shale rock.”
“Shale rock? The same one that crude oil is found in?” Douye asks.
“Yes. But these ones are different. You see, some bioremediation microorganisms used during the cleanup to break down toxic oil residues in the Niger Delta soil, had somehow seeped into the fissures of some shale rocks and had interacted with the fossil fuels already existing there to create this new gas.”
“How is that possible?” He asks again.
He is relaxed on the couch, long legs spread out in front of him, brows furrowed, and his fingers rubbing his left ear, which houses a ridiculously expensive dangly lab-grown gem (G-Gem) earrings with a design of the Idia head from Ancient Edo.
“We are not exactly sure. But we figured that the simple reason for that is the C-2 robots.” C stands for the Commission for the Recovery of the Niger Delta (CORND), the organization the robots belonged to. They were used to dispersing microorganisms during the cleanup and another name for them was –
“Spray balls? You think they had something to do with this?”
“Possibly, Dr Tari. Those little things could enter anywhere, and occasionally they did. It’s a theory, though.”
Dr Tari looks down in thought, his hand still flicking his ear.
He is a good-looking 36-year-old, with a full beard, dressed in expensive mush leather jeans (made from mycelium, which is all the craze now), and bulky Hi-Tech copper glasses that he doesn’t accept are out of style. Born to a prince father from a privileged Ijaw royal family and a French doctor mother, and being a doctor himself, he exudes an air of organic opulence.
And he reminds Madam Ivy so much of her own mixed-breed son—Lumen. She makes a mental note to call him and his wife later, see how they and her grandchildren are doing.
As Douye contemplates, Nkoyo Etim Tari, his wife, known to everyone as Koko, continues pacing, unsettled, worriedly wringing her ring-studded fingers. They are all cheap biopolymers, except for her custom ₦10 million Cartiér teardrop cut, grown diamond, and emerald wedding ring.
That is the kind of rich that she is.
The kind of rich that grew up dirt poor in the inner sectors of the Creeks, which still smelt like crude oil, and had to hustle her way through life, making a name for herself, till she met her rich husband.
The kind of rich that feels that they should maintain an affinity with the poor, despite wearing custom Lucién, who is the hottest fashion designer right now, and expensive Hi-grade Lyocell jeans.
When she finally stops pacing, the final click of her custom-made, ethically sourced hemp (ES-hemp) Lucien black heel boots on the wooden floor echoes across the small room.
“The spray balls… I remember as a child growing up in these Creeks, we were always warned to stay away from them, because what they were spraying could cause rashes and burns on our skin. Doesn’t that mean the gas is unstable and dangerous?”
“Of course not.” Madam Ivy answers quickly, stressing the “Not”. “Listen, whatever process those microorganisms went through in that shale rock, it purified them, stripped them of harmful effects, especially towards humans, plants, and animals. As for petrol-based products, lithium-based products, iron, and some forms of metal, that is a different story.”
“Mm hmm.”
The old lady licks her dry lips.
“They tried harnessing it, those scientists. But it never worked. It melted iron, metals, all sorts of conductors, lithium-based things. Whenever they brought such things close, it would pulverize them. Its original chemical function is to neutralize such stuff. Even as a renewable form of energy, it is still doing its clean-up work. No heat, no flames, no burning, it would just melt them. Clean and efficient.”
The two guests shudder and look at themselves in fright.
“I don’t know, Madam Ivy. That sounds like the gas is indeed dangerous.”
“He is right.” Koko agrees. “Madam Ivy, we watched it pulverize our son’s ball, melt it into freaking nothing. First you say it is not dangerous, now you say it does that to everything…”
“Not everything, obviously. Just the ones it’s averse to.” As Madam Ivy speaks, the single-line tribal mark on her left cheek deepens into a frown. “What make was your son’s ball?”
“It’s plastic, one of those cheap plastic balls that can still be found in sectors here.” Duoye says with a grimace, as if voicing out that he had bought cheap plastic for his son somehow demeans him.
“No wonder. It also reacts to plastic, especially the cheap petrol-based plastics. How exactly did your son’s ball get in contact with it?”
Koko takes a deep breath.
“We actually came around with the children to visit my parents. It was my mother’s birthday yesterday. We decided to play a game of catch-ball with the children this late morning on a small, picturesque piece of depressed land, not far from my parents’ place. During play, the ball flew out of my hands and got lodged in a tree, some distance from where we were playing. My husband and I went to retrieve the ball. And well, somehow, the ball fell into this pond, that bubbled and glowed a kind of purple. And we watched the water melt that ball. It was a scary sight.”
Douye leans forward, touches her hand and takes up the story.
“So, we asked her parents, who had worked with the commission in their earlier years, and they directed us to the CORND headquarters to get answers. We went there and there was nothing, nothing at all. The few old hands milling about told us about you and where we could find you, that you might have the answers we were looking for.”
The end of the story hangs in the stiff air of the room, as if afraid of touching the ground and evaporating, as Madam Ivy reflects on their story.
“I’m confused though. How did you manage to contain it, if it seemed to destroy everything?” Koko asks suddenly.
“Oh. The scientists discovered that wood and glass could contain it. And I discovered that those same resources could also act as its conductors.” She answers in the midst of her musing.
Koko looks at the older woman, at her vein-filled hands, at the pinch of her lips as she focuses on something on her tablet, and wonders if she should get her help after all this. How long had she been staying here? And what has it done to her? Were her children aware?
But instead, she asks,
“You discovered?”
Madam Ivy looks up from her tab.
“Yes. Ever since I was sacked from the commission, I have been doing some on-and-off research on the gas, which I call Aethelene by the way. Don’t ask me why. It just sounded good at the time.” She breaks off to consult her tab again.
“And I discovered a lot of cool stuff about it, like the fact that it reproduces in the presence of sunlight and water. Also, it’s practically harmless to humans, with no side effects, even when the human is wearing anything that contains harsh metals, steel, petro-based products, or lithium-based products. It just melts the other stuff and leaves the human intact. And this is the real game changer…” Her face seems to glow, and her tone is almost breathless, as she focuses on them.
“Apparently, it can be harnessed only with natural resources sourced from the earth or mild materials derived from natural products. I’m not done with the research though.“
The others are silent for a while, then finally,
“You were sacked?” Douye asks.
Her expression falls and becomes taut again.
“Yes. I was sacked from the commission, threatened, and made to sign an NDA. The order came from the president’s office.”
“Why?”
“Well, Dr Tari, I got wise to the foreign scientists. They had discovered the potential of the gas and how harmless it was. I didn’t even know the full scope then. But they discovered something special about the gas that they wanted to keep to themselves and so they lied to Ubong Samuel, saying the gas was possibly more dangerous than a radioactive element and that he should shut down the research and bury everything, so as not to risk a destruction worse than the massive oil spill of 2039.”
“Which is valid.”
“Yes. Except, they were lying, Dr. They were lying. I knew they were. So, I dared to meet the president and tell him myself of what I knew, tell him of everything that had happened to me, how I was harassed and abused in secret, even though I couldn’t get any concrete evidence” Her hands are trembling now, and there is at last, a little glimpse of the weakness that once held her captive.
“And do you know what he did? He laughed. Ubong Samuel might have been a decent president, but he was not a good man. He accused me of telling tales because I was made a mere lab scientist, and he sacked me. And he made me sign an NDA, so I wouldn’t say a thing.”
The air is thick when she finishes, and she lets herself sink deeper into her seat as if a huge load has been rolled off her back, and it seems like the room has gotten warmer during her tale.
Guilt creeps into Koko with this new warmth, and it comes with a weight that bears down on her, an unwanted load that tries to stifle her and she is aware of the strained pitch of her voice when she asks,
“Why didn’t you come out about this all this time? Ubong Samuel has not been president for over 20 years now, and he is bedridden currently in Malaysia.”
“I was scared. Very scared.”
“Of what?”
“The presidency. I try to follow the news from here, you know. There are files filled with information on the gas, lots of files that could only be accessed by the president, but none of the other presidents even breathed a word about the gas. One even tried to shut down the cleanup. I… I thought it was an organized secrecy now, and that if I tried to speak up, I would be silenced immediately. I have a family, a son, and wonderful grandchildren. I couldn’t take the risk.”
Koko tries to find words but how does she reassure this woman? How does she reassure herself?
“I… I… I didn’t even know about all this. And I doubt the other presidents did. Whatever files exist or existed, God knows what hole Ubong Samuel dug and threw them in.”
A short silence again.
“And you are sure that this gas is completely harmless to humans and other living things? You’ve tested it?” Douye asks.
“Yes. Of course. You know what? Let me show you…”
***
Light spills out first, scattered streaks of bright sunlight yellow, slowly bathing them in its warmth, as the carved wooden door creaks open. The suddenness of the radiance momentarily blinds them, and they open their eyes to a sight that stuns them speechless, motionless, and near breathless.
Before them, on a pale cream cane wood table with bent legs, is a nearly 2 feet-tall glass jar with a wooden latch, facing the sole open window and the sunlight, and housing the only thing in the room, the cause of their entrancement – a sort of gaseous substance, that thrums, and throbs, and glows a vibrant, magical purple. Whatever it is, it is alive and its glow reflects on the walls, mingling with the rays of sun and washing the room in varying hues of purple, and white, and lavender, and indigo. And it emits an energy that pulses in the room, and it is as if the room is alive, one big purple organism.
Koko steps forward hesitantly, breaking through the trance that holds them, the glow in the room reflecting dimly on her glassy Lucién bio-silk shirt, which shimmers and shines on her dark skin. She approaches the glass jar reverentially, for surely, this must be holy ground, and stands in awe, staring at the subtly rippling gas.
Madam Ivy walks past her, strolling easily to the jar, the glow bouncing off the stretchy surface of her gown. She unlocks the wooden latch, opens it slightly, and thrusts her fingers in. Koko takes a step back, unable to peel her eyes away, and watches the older woman twirl her wry fingers inside the jar. Slowly, the gas swirls around her fingers and starts pulsing actively, rising rapidly towards the opening of the latch. She quickly pulls back her fingers and locks the latch, but not before some of the gas escapes.
They watch enraptured as the gas sways slowly through the air, as if dancing a slow dance with gravity, before it drops delicately to the ground. Koko follows its rhythmic journey down and now notices that there are a few spots on the ground, stained with this same pulsing gas, and that the floor is wooden.
Madam Ivy looks up at them triumphantly.
“I cannot believe it.” Douye breathes out, awe imprinted in his voice. This is the future, a clean future, a sustainable future, a lucrative future, and he, Douye Tari, would be a big part of it.
He who had grown up, seeing people throw around careless talk about his family, because apparently his grandfather had been one of those who had orchestrated the sale of huge swathes of the Creeks, or Niger Delta as it was called then, to a particular foreign company – a sale which triggered the bombing of several oil facilities, which in turn caused the massive oil spill that almost destroyed this region and kick-started the country’s second civil war, the End War.
His grandfather was greedy and kind of a klutz, but why are they still being defined by his legacy? His parents and he have had to work extra, involve themselves in all kinds of philanthropic work to clear their name, and still…
But this… He can feel it. This will change everything.
“I can’t believe it.” He whispers again.
Koko can’t either. She slowly takes off the rings on the fingers of her left hand and bends to touch one of the glowing spots on the ground. The gas is chilling and it swirls around the tips of her fingers, pulsing and twitching like a million tiny fairies are floating through it.
In a world like this, where everything is grown and cultured and controlled in labs, where labels were the norm and everyone is concerned with who produced what and how it was produced, where everything is lifeless and has a dull shine to it.
Here… here is something that seems to draw its essence from the life source of earth itself, something that shines vibrantly and unashamed, unfettered, uncontrolled.
Koko regards it and its aura, and suddenly she feels that if she stays there longer, she might actually start crying and never want to leave. So, she stands up abruptly and walks out of the little room, and one by one, the others walk out with her too.
***
Rich, dense foliage stretches for miles on both sides of the road, casting long shadows on the smooth stone-laid road. The trees blend with the bio-steel streetlight poles, so it seems like the light emanates from them, and it gives the road an ethereal feel. The road is empty, quiet, with only the chirping of forest insects and the occasional villagers passing with wooden carts and bamboo baskets as company.
They are floating at a leisurely pace and Koko can take in the sights of the Across Delta Link Road that they are travelling along. They pass an old man in a threadbare, cheap, cellulose-based C-fabric shirt and matching trousers, which look like a knockoff of those high-quality bio-linen clothes that changed colours when one moves; this one just glitches tiredly, now a pale yellow and then a sad dull green. He is driving a wooden cart with sparse foodstuffs inside, and he pauses in his walk to stare at the car as they pass, before going on his way.
Ah… The car –
Personalized for Koko, with smart polymer paint that flows through all the shades of grey, from a mildly angry cloud to the dense charcoal of a moonless night sky, the squat, boxy, tempered bio-steel electric car is Hyundai’s latest offering from their Anodyne collection, a hard-edge departure from the classic arch style recycled-steel (Re-steel) cars that is commonplace now.
They are out of place here.
The big cities where Koko stays are filled with long, smart houses longer than these trees, and roads crisscrossing the sky, and floating cars, and selfish people cosplaying as nice.
But this place feels like they stepped into a time machine and went back to a period when everything was not grown in a lab, including humans. A time her grandmother called “simpler times”, when cars rode on tires on asphalt roads, and children read from white paged notes, and clothes and songs and art and people were simpler.
Now, everything is careful, everyone is more complicated and living feels like a brittle cracker.
They are out of place here and no one is more aware of that fact than Koko.
On trips like this, she typically pays more attention to the foliage and the ambience and considers how successful the clean-up of the Niger Delta was in the aftermath of the spill, and how potent government actions can be when it is backed by constitutional strength and disciplined political will. Today though, she is too overwhelmed to think. So, she just presses her head to the car window and sighs.
At the driver’s side, Douye’s phone beeps and lights up. He looks at it and sneaks a look at her.
“Davina just texted me. The entourage got to the villa since 3pm. The children are watching TV. She said she tried reaching out to you several times.”
Koko shrugs.
“My phone is on airplane mode.”
He nods and turns back to the road.
Koko makes a mental note to tell Davina off for allowing her children watch TV at this time, and then she promptly forgets.
They ride in silence for some minutes and then he looks at her again.
“We have to talk, Koko, before we get back.”
She remains glued to the window.
“Can you hear me, Koko? I said we have to talk.”
“Uh uh… About what?”
“About the gas, Aethelene, and its implications for your big meeting tomorrow.”
She grimaces.
“What meeting?”
“Have you forgotten? With the foreign aid guys?”
She remembered. The foreign aid guys, who according to the black brief currently sitting on Koko’s desk, are an entourage from the Organisation of United Nations and the One World Bank Project.
“Of course, I haven’t forgotten. So, what about them?” She adjusts on her seat, annoyed, but not quite figuring out whether it was the thought of meeting those people or the idea of talking about state matters here, when all she wanted to do was watch the sky and the trees.
“What about…? Are you serious? Madam Ivy said she suspects that they might have something more sinister than aid in mind, seeing as they are asking to be part of the last batch of the clean-up exercise. There is a possibility that they just want access to Aethelene.”
“Yeah. She did.” That woman was highly distrustful of foreigners, and maybe she should be, too. “There is also a possibility that they don’t know about the Aethelene gas and they just want to help.”
“Hmmm… But what if she’s right? What if they are not to be trusted?”
Koko sighs heavily and twists her mouth.
“I don’t know. Maybe we refuse the aid?”
“Valid. But are we going to refuse it in a public meeting? That could cause outrage.”
She chews on this. He is right, of course. Her predecessor became unpopular because he refused aid and tried to shut down the cleanup. And she had campaigned on that flaw in his decision.
“I could stop the… the… meeting from being televised or live-streamed.”
Douye scoffs as if to say, Like that would do anything.
“But the news will still come out, and people will still get outraged.”
“Ugh!” She melts deeper into the mush leather chair, exasperated. “So, what do I do then? I’m completely blank.”
It’s been less than a year since she was sworn in as president of the Republic of New Naija, a fresh-faced 31-year-old articulate lawyer/business content creator and here she is, already stuck on what to do.
Thankfully, Douye isn’t, and he had been formulating a plan since they left Madam Ivy’s house. He smiles now.
“I’ve been thinking, yeah and I suggest we assemble a team of intelligent scientists and like, expert engineers in the country – Madam Ivy could head them, to do in-depth research into the gas, and slowly introduce it into the New Naija energy sector. After the successful rollout in our country, we start selling to other countries at our own rates. Boom! How does that sound?”
Koko looks at her husband with a mix of admiration and wariness. On the one hand, that idea is quite impressive. And on the other hand, where was this sharp business acumen coming from? From a pediatrician, no less?
“Yeah. That could work. But that could take years. Years… What of these foreign aid people? How will I stall them?” What of the indigenes of the Creeks who were still recovering from the trauma of the spill? How would she convince them to agree to this? What would another round of mining do to their land? As thoughts tumble about in her head, Douye starts talking again.
“We will find a way. Tell them something. Maybe tell them the people are still… You know… full of anger, for foreigners. So, to avoid any mishaps, we will appreciate it if they hold off their aid, until the emotional scars of the people heal. The entire world is more sensitive now. They will accept that explanation.”
She sighs and focuses on his big hands as he controls the steering stick, and there is silence for a while, save for the low humming of the car. They are now out of the forest roads, the colours of the stones on the road are more visible now, and Koko can see children playing in the rain, in the yards of those circular, flat-roof Enhanced Mud (EM) solar-powered houses scattered along the road. They are lucky. When she was their age, the air wasn’t this clean.
“Koko…”
“Mmmmh…?”
“This thing is huge, massive, revolutionary, and it could be the answer. It could be the tool that would transform New Naija, turn us into a world power.”
“Or it could be the weapon that will destroy us again, turn us against each other once again. It always starts with something like this. Don’t you remember?”
Because she does. She remembered pictures of pain in her history texts; growing up in a highly evolved world that is still struggling; her grandmother’s scars from surviving the spill and the war; cracked farmlands that looked like they were recovering from a bad bleeding; a world with a lifeless energy; and a people who still harbour deep scars and trust issues.
“So, are you saying you are going to continue with Ubong Samuel’s style? Bury everything and pretend the Aethelene doesn’t exist? When it could transform the Creeks and the entire New Naija?”
Koko is a little disappointed. Clearly, her husband doesn’t remember.
“I… I don’t know, okay? What if we don’t need it? We have done well for ourselves so far, without it. What if we don’t need Aethelene’s transformation?”
“Ugh, Koko. Your self-righteousness sometimes gets to me. What are you even saying?!”
“Why are you all up in arms against me, D? I thought we were talking.”
“We are, Sweet,” his voice softens as he turns to look at her briefly, and places his palm on her thigh. “But I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to take advantage of this miracle. All this time, the Creeks have suffered vilification and abuse from the rest of the country, who accuse us of using up the country’s resources on the cleanup. If it weren’t for the Niger Delta Clean-Up Act of 2047, the clean-up would have been abandoned a long time ago. It is time for us to get back to contributing to the success of the country. It is probably for a time like this that you were elected as President.”
“It is probably not.”
“Koko…”
“Fine. I will think about it.”
She will think of a way to move heaven and earth to protect her people and make sure that their resources benefit them. She is not sure she became president for this, but she knows she will do it, anyway.
But for now…
She turns back to her window, she closes her eyes to sleep, and she dreams of purple gas and a future.
C.E: Common Era.
