Warrior Mine – Masimba Musodza

      In a cold, damp cellar, under a large Victorian house in a small village near the Teesdale town of Barnard Castle, Dominic Mufuka stared down at the still form on the bed and marvelled at what can be accomplished with stolen things. He glanced appreciatively around the cellar, recalling how they had appropriated equipment from hospitals, and made new devices from scratch.

     They had worked diligently, and secretly. By day, and by night, they were Zimbabwean immigrants fleeing the political and consequent economic crisis that had engulfed the once African post-colonial showcase, doing menial jobs, living on the fringe of British society and planning to set up their own care hospital. Away from appearances, Dominic Mufuka was an obscure biotech theorist with papers that expounded on the possibility of the reanimation of dead organic matter. To his left stood Chandapihwa “Chanda” Musami (Mrs Dominic Mafuka for three years now), a victim of the glass ceiling at a few tech companies, who had privately pursued research in the transmission, storage and retrieval of data between organic matter and computer chips. To his right, Nolwandle “Nolly” Sibanda, a specialist, end-of-life care nurse. To her right, her boyfriend, Pikirayi “Banjo” Kambanje, whose previous life in the purchasing and supply department of a large Zimbabwean company had imparted the skills with which they had procured medical equipment from various institutions around the UK.

     A website and a large sign outside the house announced (quite truthfully) that a private hospital specialising in palliative care was to be set up here soon. Thus, the comings and goings of the Order of the Black Spear in this little village in the Teesdale Valley, attracted no further attention beyond casual curiosity.

     The young man who lay on the bed had the body of the Zulu king Tshaka as portrayed by Henry Cele. Necrosis had claimed some of his skin, but, if all went according to plan soon, fresh skin would replace it. His name, poetically enough, was Tichakunda Kapfumo; We-shall-conquer Little-spear. He had come from Zimbabwe as an infant with his parents. Last week, he had been stabbed in a public park in Peckham. Nothing to see here, just another victim of the knife culture among Black youth in London.

     Mufuka stared at the interface at the side of the bed, and allowed his feelings to come to the surface for a moment. This was the culmination of their work, their forays into branches of sciences that mankind had once been fascinated with, then abandoned because of ethical considerations. Dr Emmanuel Frankenstein, whose story framed such ethical considerations for posterity, might have understood their sense of triumph at this moment. “It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet,” Mufuka quoted.

     “Well, I am thinking of that American spiritualist, John Murray Spear, and his New Motive Power,” said Chanda.

     “And I am thinking of the priests of hundreds of African religions, and arcane apothecaries who know the herbal concoctions that can suspend life, those that can resurrect it, and those that can bend it to one’s will,” said Nolly.

     “On the shoulders of giants we stand,” said Banjo, taking her hand.

     Mufuka stretched a trembling hand towards the interface, and his index finger touched the icon labelled ACTIVATE. For nearly a minute, nothing happened. Then, motion agitated Tichakunda’s limbs. The eyelids quivered for a moment, then, he was staring up, his gaze keen. His breathing was mild. Apart from these actions, he was completely motionless.

“The organic equivalent of a computer reboot,” said Mufuka. “How long will it take?” It had taken days with all the animals they had experimented on.

Nolly checked her tablet. “The projection has narrowed it down to under twenty-four hours now. But that can change as more data on his vitals comes in.” The medical profession would go nuts if they learned about the programme she created, which interacted with different organs and taught the relevant parts of the brain to work them again.

“But he is alive in every sense of the word!” said Mufuka, his voice barely above a whisper. “We have achieved that much. We halted necrosis and decomposition, and reanimated organic material that had been dead!”

Jubilantly, they trooped out of the lab. The “rebooting”, as Mufuka called it, would take a while. How long that would actually be had proven impossible to predict, but Chanda was convinced it would be days before Tichakunda would even become aware that his eyes were open, or his brain receptive to their signals.

The party was in what was to be the hospital’s main office, one of the few rooms the decorators had completed. It probably should have ended with the couples pairing up and taking the party to a more intimate level, but everyone was too boozed to do more than grope their loved one as they swayed to the Ethiopian jazz all four of them could not get enough of.

The next thing Mufuka recalled was Banjo’s bearded face filling his vision. “Ticha’s gone, Dom!”

Like a seasoned warrior, Mufuka banished all sleep and the ravages of last night’s revelry with a sharp effort of will. Silently, quickly, he followed Banjo to the hidden lab in the cellar, where Chanda and Nolly stood helplessly over the now-vacant bed.

“I came to check on him as soon as I woke up,” said Chanda. “I have no idea when he got up, but he did!” She held up her tablet. “It would appear that my programme for retraining his brain will not be needed!”

“Of course it will, Chanda,” said Mufuka.

“But this disappearance shows that he is fully aware,” said Banjo. “If I woke up in a lab, I would get the hell out of there, too!”

“But we don’t know the extent of his awareness!” said Mufuka.

“We know what he is capable of,” said Chanda. “The projections….”

“You project, darling,” said Mufuka, heading towards the door. “Banjo and I are going to drive around and see if we can find him!”

Banjo grabbed several phials of the purpose-designed tranquiliser, and followed him. They drove around the country lanes for three hours and met nearly thirty people, but no one could say they had seen the young man whose picture they showed from their mobile phones. It was when a couple of hikers stared long and hard at the van that it occurred to Mufuka that it would be imprudent to have so many people recall that four strangers in a van were looking for a person no one had seen in the area before. If Tichakunda was found, and his unique abilities were apparent, someone would remember who else had looked for him.

Dejected, the four sat in the lab. The other three looked to Mufuka for ideas on the next move, he was the person most able to think on his feet. The others used the scientific method, and there was a lot of data to go through before they could imagine a solution.

“We need to get out of here,” said Mufuka.

“The house in Wales…” Banjo began.

“Out of Britain,” said Mufuka. “Do you not see what kind of a storm is coming when Takunda is found?”

“But the project, Dom,” said Nolly.

“We can continue the project somewhere else,” said Mufuka. “It is just as well that we never got to explain to Takunda why we resurrected him. That part of our secret is safe. Let’s get packing.” He rose. “Protocol 5, everyone.” 

Protocol 5 was, essentially, breaking camp and removing all traces of it. By early evening, all of the questionable equipment was boxed, ready for shipping under the auspices of a charity that supported hospitals in Zimbabwe. Banjo would travel with it, of course. The computers were taken apart and incinerated.

As the remaining three, Mufuka, Chanda and Nolly sat in the lounge, they could focus on the fact that they had lost their creation. Mufuka could see parallels with Dr Frankenstein, whose own monster had fled soon after being animated.

“Frankenstein’s creature did not run away, Dom,” Chanda reminded him. “He ran away from it first, remember. He was horrified at what he had made. Tichakunda ran away from us.”

“But he will have the same disorientation,” said Nolly. “Like Frankenstein’s creature, there will be no one to tell him who he is, what he is, and, most importantly, why.”

“We must look to the future of the project,” said Chanda. “We now know that we can reanimate a human. That is how far we have gone, technologically, and it is a giant leap.”

“And we lost our first subject!” said Mufuka. “Not only did we lose him, but we know nothing about Tichakunda at all. What his thoughts and feelings are, or, even if he has any.”

“We have his profile,” said Chanda. “And we have all the projections of how he could behave after resurrection.”

“They were based on the assumption that he would only begin to act after we had instructed him on his new purpose,” said Mufuka. “His escape changes everything.”

“I can come up with new projections,” said Chanda. “But I will need all my data.”

Shutting down the project had been the right thing to do, still, Mufuka reflected. All they could do now was hope for the best, hope that, despite the spiralling of events, time was still on their-

Nolly’s yell snapped him out of his musing. She had the remote on the TV, skipping back to about a minute, raising the volume. LONDON STABBING the headline screamed. “Police have stated that while they are taking eye-witness accounts and CCTV footage seriously, they are not in a position to comment on reports that the attacker demonstrated superhuman strength…” The inset expanded to show a young Black Londoner, the sort you saw in the area south of the Thames, who appeared to be highly distressed. “He was like Predator, fam! My man march in here and just started frowing mans against walls, walahi!” The image snapped back to the presenter, who was trying to keep a straight, professional face. “Police would also like to apologise unreservedly for issuing earlier a picture of the young man they believed to have single-handedly carried out the attack, who bears a striking resemblance to another young man who died last week in a similar episode of gang-related violence. In a statement, police said they deeply regret any distress the image would have caused to the family of Tich Kapfumo as they still mourn….”

“He’s in London!” said Mufuka.

“But, how did he get there so soon?” said Nolly. “Flagged a lift, or ran all the way?”

“Whichever, it shows that he knows what he is doing!” said Mufuka. “He is not a zombie.”

“But what about this attack?” said Chanda.

“It’s not as random as it looks,” said Mufuka. “Black youth killing Black youth has become common enough in London for the police to simply go through the motions of investigating. But we know something they don’t; Tichakunda Mapfumo is no longer an ordinary Black youth.”

“Do you think he is going after the gang that killed him?” said Chanda.

“I think if you sat down and did one of your projections, you would come to that conclusion,” said Mufuka, rising. “Come on, we must get to London at once!”

“You know where you can find him?” said Nolly.

“I have a few places in mind,” said Mufuka.

They took turns at the wheel of Chanda’s Vauxhall Astra, pulling up outside a house in Peckham at fifteen past ten. The Mapfumo family home. In the living room, the curtains were drawn, but the light peeped through the edges.

Entering a stranger’s home was easy if both the occupants and visitors were Zimbabweans. After they had exchanged formal greetings and offered their condolences to a visibly apprehensive Mr and Mrs Mapfumo, Mufuka made the introductions. “We apologise for coming this late, but that is how long it has taken us to travel from the North-East of England from the time we heard about this tragedy. Tich was a friend of my son back in Zimbabwe, they were at infant school together. You may not remember me, of course.”

The Mapfumos leaned closer at the trio, as if to get a better look. Their unease remained, however.

“The face seems familiar, sir,” said Mapfumo, politely. “I am grateful that you thought people you last saw so long ago, and so far away, were important enough to cross the country to be with at this time.”

“So far from our country, each other is all we have, you know,” said Nolly.

“The way God works….” said Mrs Mapfumo, shaking her head as if in awe of the way God works. “We bring these children to what we think is a better life for them…”

They all made sympathetic noises and intoned platitudes about the will of God. Mufuka could not shake off the notion that the Mapfumos were hiding something. Even as Mrs Mapfumo moved to rise, to see what she could do in the kitchen, their body language said they wanted their guests gone immediately.

“We shall not take too much of your time, dear parents,” said Mufuka. “If we set off now, we should be back before three.”

“As if there is any need to leave right away!” Mrs Mapfumo protested. But the relief on their faces was apparent. They stole glances at the door.

“You know, we were expecting four people from the North-East,” said Mapfumo. “Two men and two women. That can’t be you people, can it?”

“He’s here, isn’t he?” said Nolly.

“Tichakunda!” Mrs Mapfumo cried, her gaze on the door. “Come out, son!”

The door swung open slowly, and there was a mephitic waft of chemicals before Tichakunda strode in and stood in the middle of the room like a prize fighter before the match. He wore the sneakers, sagging jeans and hoodie of a typical southwest London teenager. But, there was something about his bearing, his mien, that evoked an understanding of life as it ought not to be. Maybe it was the discolouration on his face, the patches of dead skin. Mufuka wondered what else on him had failed to resurrect.

He bore down on the trio. “So, you followed me home.”

“Tichakunda, you died last week,” said Mufuka, rising to confront him. “We brought you back.” He was aware of Mrs Mapfumo crying softly in the background behind her son. “We are here to take you back to your new home. It must have been frightening when you woke up, but all will be explained.”

“Why did you bring me back?” Tichakunda asked.

Mufuka noticed then how Tichakunda’s eyes looked to a point to his right. He wondered how well he could see, if he relied on other senses besides sight.

“We want to build an army of warriors to fight for Africa’s cause,” said Nolly, rising to slowly circle Takunda. “Warriors that can take on every rebel group, every professional soldier working for every despotic regime. Warriors that would make that long-held dream of Pan Africanism a reality by being invincible to every force that challenges it.”

“Takunda, if you return with us, we could….”

Nolly’s voice trailed off as he brushed past her and made his exit. There was a stunned silence for a moment, then Mufuka led the pursuit. Outside the main entrance to the house, he looked this way and that and turned back to face his companions. “He’s gone!”

“Can we catch him if we get the car?” said Chanda.

But they all knew the answer to that.

“Do you think he understood what I told him?” Nolly wondered.

“Of course he did,” said Mufuka. “But he has places to go, people to see. That is why he came back to London. The fighting on these streets, that is his war. Africa and its problems mean little to him.”

“But we made him into this!” said Chanda, vehemently.

“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me,” said Mufuka. “Those were the words of Frankenstein’s creature to him, quoting the words of the first man to his Creator. Takunda never asked us to bring him back any more than he asked his parents to bring him out of Africa.”

A cool breeze blew about them, carrying Mrs Mapfumo’s gentle weeping for her son into the night.

                             END