This is a question we ask ourselves after every edition we publish—just before we gear up for another.
The work isn’t easy. There’s no pay. It takes a lot of time. There are other challenges, but the truth is, we are still here because we believe in the need we set out to fill when we founded Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine in 2014.
We recognise our place in the genre fiction landscape and the ongoing need to discover and showcase African writing and writers.
We are able to continue pushing on with the help of the people who support us on Patreon—those who allow us to keep the site running and pay writers and artists, even if only a fraction of what their stories and art are truly worth.
We want to do better. We will do better.
In this edition, we are thrilled to present some brand-new voices (to us, at least) alongside established writers, offering a mix of fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
Amanda Ilozumba’s story, “Sarah Ogoke and the Urban Legends,” grabs characters from West African urban legends and thrusts them into a whirlwind adventure that left us asking for more.
“Firstborn” by Tehila Okagbue is a fantasy story that showcases vivid storytelling and masterful characterisation. We found ourselves rooting for the main character and were left in awe of the story.
Ever wished you could change someone to better fit your idea of them? A partner, maybe? Well, “Order Update” by Olajesutofunmi Akinyemi is both hilarious and poignant, showing how things that seem too good to be true usually are.
Have you ever wondered what Earth will be like in the near future, especially given the trends of global warming and environmental degradation? I know I have. In “Where There Is Smoke,” Chyna Cassell imagines that future with a blend of eco-consciousness, compassion, and a revenge best served smoky.
You might think you know all there is to know about sirens—yes, those mythical half-women creatures popularized by Greek mythology—but the story “Sirens” will hold you captive, as if enchanted by their sonorous songs.
And then there’s “Neza’s Yearning” by Eugen Bacon, which tells the story of an impossible kind of monster. We are drawn into the voice of a child who will never measure up to her siblings, who will never be what her mother wants her to be—until she makes a shocking discovery.
We are also republishing Wole Talabi’s science fiction short story, “Encore,” which was first published in Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art, edited by Indrapramit Das.
Bottom line? This is another issue to dive into and enjoy, so don’t let me stand in your way. And be sure to leave us comments and share!
“Onuoha, we need to take her out, and we need to do it now,” the woman in a dark cloak and stilettos whispered to the man beside her. Her voice was sharp and urgent, but it was barely audible over the crackling noise from outside.
I tried to move, but my limbs felt like lead, and the air surrounding me was thick with the stench of blood, threatening to suffocate me.
The man, Onuoha, stood rigid with his gaze fixed on me. When I managed to raise my eyes, I noticed his left hand was not normal. Not human. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in Nkwor town before. It reminded me of the strange stories I would read in old, tattered books at the market. It gleamed in the dim light—metal fused with something else, something pulsing faintly beneath its surface. It did not move like a natural limb; when his fingers flexed, they made no sound. They were too smooth, too precise. Also, too impossible. I must have hit my head somewhere, or my mind was probably clouded from whatever this thick stench was.
I shifted my eyes from his hands and tried to focus on lifting my body, but pain tore through me.
“We cannot do that,” Onuoha muttered to the woman. “She is the first Ibuné with four marks on her cheek. You know what this means. The Sanje would have our heads if we did that.”
“And who will tell him?” she asked, stepping closer and grasping his glistening metallic arm, stroking it, tracing the ridges until Onuoha’s eyes flashed a lighter shade of green. Her voice dipped as she whispered all too softly, almost sweetly— “The men stationed outside heard the explosion. For all they know, the girl killed herself and her family. The Sanje does not need to know we found an Ibuné with four marks,” she pleaded with her eyes.
I did not know who or what a Sanje was. Or what an Ibuné was. Neither could I understand why these people were here in my home, but they had deadly weapons and mentioned other men waiting outside. I needed to find my parents, and it was best to do it now, while they argued.
I pressed myself against the wall behind me and forced my body up but was only able to drag myself up to a slouch. My waist felt like it was on fire, only the fire was burning inside. I tried again to straighten up and push against the wall but an excruciating pain that raced across my back stopped me. There was that stench again. The one that reeked of iron and decay, of something too thick, too warm. I knew where it came from. I just didn’t want to look. Why did blood smell so damn bad?
Blood! My heart lurched. I jerked my head to the side and saw my mother, surrounded by a pool of crimson red, what seemed to be her own blood. Then I turned and saw the gruesome sight of my father. His legs, twisted unnaturally. His hands were contorted, his fingers were broken in too many places and his face was crushed beyond recognition. I sat there in agony, in the raw and suffocating loss of two people who told me how they would one day hold my children.
This had to be a nightmare.
I pulled myself over to lay beside my mother, hoping to fall asleep and return to our small, warm house in Nkwor. Or sleep till eternity, if the family I had was truly gone.
My wish for oblivion did not come.
I soon felt the cold, unrelenting hands of Onuoha grabbing my waist, lifting my limp, trembling body off the floor, and carrying me outside. The woman in stilettos sneered at him, then at me.
“Where are you taking me?” I managed to whisper.
“To the Sanje of Fallé,” Onuoha responded.
“Please, we have to take my parents. We must help them,” my shaky voice broke as my legs wiggled side to side on his shoulder. The metal from his arm pressed coldly against my skin, sending a sharp chill through me.
“Shhh. Get some rest, girl. You’ll need it,” Onuoha muttered, adjusting his grip.
“I still think this is a terrible idea, Onuoha. Our daughter is an Ibuné. The only one with three marks in their entire tribe for now! Why would we present the Sanje with a complete Ibuné?” the woman argued, frustration evident in her tone.
“Oh, so that’s what this is about for you, eh? Power.”
“Of course not,” she replied.
“Yes, it is!” Onuoha snapped. His voice was edged with disbelief. “Instead of you to think of the greater good. Of the battles ahead that the tribe would have chances of winning with the help of a complete Ibuné. You’re more interested in being the mother of the leader of the Ibuné tribe.” He said, walking past her.
Onuoha carried me outside, and I saw it—a spheroidal, huge bump-like ship with its sharp nose pointed toward me like a predator poised to strike. It had wings that curved unnaturally as if they were breathing, and rotors that spun steadily, probably responsible for keeping it suspended in the air— an airship unlike anything I had ever imagined, let alone seen in Nkwor. It towered above us, its metallic surface rippling like liquid under the moonlight. It hummed. A low and vibrating hum against the earth, like a living thing waiting to take flight.
I barely had time to take it all in before Onuoha lifted me, clicking a button on his metallic arm. A faint hum filled the air, and suddenly, an invisible staircase flickered into existence, stretching down from a newly opened door high up on the airship. The steps shimmered, barely visible—more like light than solid matter—but they held firm under his weight. He climbed swiftly, carrying me, and the others followed close behind. The moment we stepped inside, the staircase vanished, dissolving into nothing as if it had never been there. The interior was colder than I expected. It was dimly lit, with strange, ancient-looking symbols carved along the walls. He placed me on a narrow bed in what I assumed was a compartment meant for rest, then handed me a drink. This liquid was thick, dark, and bitter. It ran down my throat like fire, but almost immediately, I felt my energy surge and the weight in my limbs began lifting. It lifted just enough to keep me from sinking into complete exhaustion.
Sleep claimed me.
When I woke, the low hum of the airship was still steady beneath me. We were still in the air. I sat up slowly, my body sore but no longer as weak as before. When I saw Onuoha step into my compartment, I took the chance to ask him again, “Where were we going? What happened to my parents? And what is happening to me?”
He exhaled before speaking. “Did your parents ever tell you about other tribes that exist in a different realm?”
I hesitated and forced my mind to fumble through memories. “My mother… erm…she told me a story once. About my great-grandfather being from a place far away from here. But I thought it was just a folktale.”
“It wasn’t.” His voice was firm. “Your mother’s stories were true. And the world you know in Nkwor is not the only one that exists.” He paused, watching my reaction, letting the weight of his words settle before continuing. “There is… a veil between worlds,” he said slowly. “Not always visible, not always stable. Some say it shimmers, others say it distorts the air, like looking through warped glass. People like us can feel it, sometimes even see it. And eventually, we can cross over.”
I stared at him, a strange mix of astonishment and relief washing over me. I hadn’t been crazy all this time, despite what I was made to believe.
His eyes searched mine. “Have you ever felt it? A moment where the world around you seemed to glitch—like a flicker in the corner of your vision that was gone before you could turn to it?”
“Maybe,” I murmured. “There were times I thought I saw… things. I told my friends, but they said I was just tired. That I needed more sleep.”
A knowing smile crossed his lips. “You didn’t need more sleep.”
“There are other realms, separated by barriers,” he continued. “Within these realms, nobody is completely human. And this airship—” he gestured around us, “—is about to cross into one of them. Into a world called Fallé.”
Fallé. The name settled on my tongue like something old, something familiar.
“It is ruled by the Sanje,” Onuoha continued. “The people there belong to tribes, each with different abilities, different forms. You’ve been staring at my hand…”
I flinched.
He smirked. “I was born this way. My tribe is known for this.” He lifted his metallic hand, and his fingers flexed in that same smooth, unnatural precision. “A line of warriors. Half of our bodies were forged like steel and carried the strength of a thousand men. Whatever we do with this hand, we do exceedingly well.”
I swallowed hard.
“The woman outside,” he went on, “is from a tribe that possesses telekinesis. She can move things with just a thought.”
My mind raced, but curiosity got the better of me and I decided to dig into something he had mentioned earlier. “And… the conversation you had with her? What you called me—Ibuné. You said your daughter was one too. What does that mean?”
I noticed his expression darken slightly. “The Ibuné are the protectors of Fallé. They are chosen and marked by powers no one can explain. Every firstborn daughter in a century—” He stopped, then corrected himself. “In a long time, one appears. No one makes an Ibuné. No one decides who becomes one. They… just are.”
I blinked. “So…” I paused, “The Ibuné are all women?”
He chuckled. “Yes. Very strong ones.”
For the first time since this nightmare began, I smiled. I had read books, even the torn and battered ones thrown out at Nkwor market, but none had stories of women like this. None where women were more than side characters, more than someone’s wife or mother. The thought sent a strange kind of warmth through me, even if everything else still felt like a bad dream.
Onuoha tilted my face to the right, then to the left, studying the four marks that ran along each side of my cheeks. His thumb brushed against the marks on the right side, “Did your parents ever explain these?”
I hesitated. “They told me they were tribal marks. But not one they put on me. My father said they were like birthmarks. They said it was nothing to worry about, that it meant the gods had blessed my future.”
He smiled, shaking his head. “They really wanted to protect you. I admire it.”
His next words caused my breath to seize for a moment. “No normal person bears tribal marks from birth, not like yours at least. Only the Ibuné have them. And the number of marks determines rank.”
I stared at him, realization sinking into my bones. “And your daughter—she has three?”
He nodded. “She is highly respected. The only known Ibuné whose third mark grew out completely on each cheek. Others bear one or two marks, and can barely manage a third. A few carry two marks on one cheek and three on the other. She leads her tribe in battle.”
“Against whom?” I asked.
His gaze darkened. “Fallé does not exist alone. Other existing worlds seek to conquer it—because they fear what we could become. Our people do not age once they cross into the realm. Time does not touch us there. These other realms fear that if they do not stop us now—if they allow us to grow, to master the power of the Ibunè’s—there will come a day when we will rise beyond Fallé and take the universe itself.
My pulse pounded. “And me? How come I have four of these,” I brushed the marks on the right side of my cheek.
“We have been searching for an Ibuné like you for many years.” He exhaled, his gaze lingering on me. “These marks grow at intervals. The first one appears on each side of your cheek and then the next one follows after some time. It continues like that. Did you ever notice that?” He watched me closely.
“To be honest, I don’t know. I just knew that they seemed to increase in number” I shifted uncomfortably.
“From the moment your first mark appeared, we began tracking you. By the time your third mark grew, we were ready to bring you in. But the Sanje ordered us to wait—one more year.”
My throat tightened. “Why?”
“Because he believed your fourth mark showed signs of growth. There have only ever been myths of Ibunés with four marks — nothing confirmed. Most Ibunés stop growing marks by their twentieth year since birth. Even a third mark is rare. You were approaching that final year, and we needed to be sure. No one would believe it until they saw it with their own eyes.”
I felt cold.
“We planned to retrieve you just before you attained your full power.” His jaw clenched. “But we were too late.”
Something about his tone sent a sharp pang through my chest.
“You…” He exhaled heavily, then met my gaze with something almost like regret. “You caused the explosion in your home. The one that killed your parents.”
His words crashed over me. My ears began ringing.
“No,” I whispered.
His voice was distant and his expression became unreadable. “Your power…when the fourth mark completed, it consumed you.”
“No.” The ringing in my ears grew louder, drowning out everything else.
Killed my parents.
No.
Suddenly, the ringing wasn’t just in my head anymore. It was real. A low, vibrating sound, crawling beneath my skin. I didn’t know how, but I could feel it. It was moving through my veins and pulling me toward something.
A warning.
“Duck,” I said.
“What?” Onuoha asked me.
I didn’t repeat myself. There wasn’t time.
I moved on instinct, grabbing Onuoha and pulling him down just as a fireball ripped in through his side of the airship—through the metal—and out through the window beside me.
“We’re under attack.” The woman in stilettos rushed into the compartment, panting. Her face was a taut mask, unreadable, but a flicker of something I read as unease crossed her eyes as she glanced at me.
Onuoha turned to me, studying me for a beat too long.
“Thank you,” he said.
I blinked.
“How did I know?” I asked instead. The ringing, the pull in my veins. I had never felt anything like it before, yet somehow, I had known exactly when to move.
“You just did.” Onuoha pulled me up without another word, already moving toward the back of the airship. “I’ll explain later. You’ll get the training you need from the leader of your tribe. But for now, we need to get you to Fallé safely.”
The woman in stilettos peeked out through the opening the fireball left in the hull. “There’s too many of them,” she said, her voice sharp. “We can’t fight them all off. I’ve tried turning their ship around, but I can’t. They’re probably protecting it with a reflector or something. What do we do?”
“I saw this coming. I made arrangements,” Onuoha said with a firm tone. “I and the rest of the men will hold them off. Enemma, take the girl,” Onuoha commanded, his voice steady despite the chaos. He clicked the button on his metallic arm once again, and just like before, a low hum echoed. He stepped closer to a narrow window and motioned toward the invisible, light-like staircase that had flickered into existence once more, spiraling downward.
“It’ll lead to the waiting airship,” he added, his eyes locked on Enemma.
My stomach twisted. Enemma. Great! Finally, a name to match. But Leave? With her? The same woman who had wanted me dead just hours ago?
No.
“I’ll hold them off with you,” I said, squaring my shoulders.
Onuoha’s eyes darkened. “You’re too important. It’s you they want. You need to leave with her.”
I shook my head, planting my feet where I stood.
His jaw tensed. He glanced at Enemma. She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Fine. I’ll hold them off. Go with her.”
Everything moved fast after that. Onuoha grabbed my wrist, and before I could ask any more questions, we were running. Running through chaos, jumping through the sound of metal splitting apart, and flying down the stairwell, the smell of fire and smoke clawing at our lungs.
We were halfway through the invisible staircase when a streak of green light shot through the air, halting our escape. The blast struck the steps behind us, shattering them into nothingness. My heart slammed against my ribs as I saw the fragments dissolve into the void. I stumbled, but before I could fall, one of our warriors from the ship leaped from behind. He moved with impossible speed, his arms stretching and catching us mid-fall. I felt the sudden rush of air and the faint hum of some kind of power vibrating through him as he lifted us.
With a forceful thrust, we soared downward — that was when I noticed the large, leathery wings unfurling from his back. They beat against the air, sending spurts of wind through the smoke-filled sky. He flew straight for the second airship, his firm hands, though appearing human, carrying Onuoha and me with ease.
But Enemma didn’t follow.
I twisted around just in time to see her break away. She charged toward the enemy with a fierce expression, her braids whipping behind her. One of their soldiers, clad in gleaming metal, raised a gun-like weapon — a spiked thing that pulsed with green energy. Before he could fire, the weapon jerked violently from his hands, as though seized by an invisible force. The metal twisted and contorted mid-air, bending in on itself with a harsh screech. Enemma hadn’t touched it. She didn’t need to.
Another blast came from the enemy ship, this time releasing green goo streaking toward her, but with a flick of her wrist, the substance halted, suspended in the air, and then reversed its course. When it crashed back into the enemy lines, the goo exploded, igniting a flash of green fire.
We had made it to the other airship with our winged warrior guiding us when Onuoha noticed that Enemma, with the help of the remaining warriors on our crumbling ship, had taken down the enemy ship. He quickly clicked the button on his metallic arm, and the staircase spiraled back into place, glowing faintly. Without hesitation, Enemma and the others crossed it, reaching us in moments.
I watched the rise and fall of her chest closely, her breath still ragged from battle. She was strong and brave. That, I would give her.
#
Fascinating was an understatement when it came to describing Fallé.
When our airship landed, Onuoha and I strolled through the towering cityscape, where structures seemed to defy gravity. Fallé had houses that hovered just above the ground like they were stubbornly refusing to touch the dirt. Some floated lazily, bobbing like they were tethered to an invisible balloon, while some spun slowly, gleaming with rainbow-like tiles that flashed purple and gold.
“These are the pride of the Mbene tribe — masters of levitation,” Onuoha said proudly, smiling as he caught my wide-eyed stare.
I was amazed. It was the kind of engineering that probably kept parents up at night wondering if their toddler was going to float away. Onuoha pointed to a cluster of them, their rooftops spiraling higher and higher as we moved past.
As we walked, I tried not to stare too hard. Every corner seemed like something from a dream someone forgot to explain. There was a fountain of glowing water, and its liquid spilled in twists and curls like it had somewhere important to be. Onuoha said it was infused with some kind of mineral that stored sunlight.
“Like bottled daytime?” I asked, grinning.
“That’s one way to put it,” he chuckled, his eyes catching the glint of the fountain’s glow.
Further down, I spotted trees with leaves that flickered like candle flames. People sat beneath them, probably enjoying the free mood lighting. I watched as a gust of wind shook the branches, and instead of leaves falling, tiny glowing seeds floated up like fireflies. It was beautiful.
And then there was the Skywell tribe, where I had come to learn our winged warrior belonged. Their people had wings that unfurled like banners, mostly when danger abounded or during their ceremonial flights. Their houses and structures shimmered like polished silver. And they had a big shiny dome—like a mirrored bowl, that caught the sky, reflecting back whatever was above. Onuoha said that it showed glimpses of the past too if it “trusted you enough.” But when I stared into it, all I saw was my reflection. “You’re new, give it time,” he assured me with a smile.
Of all the tribes we had passed on our way, it was the Ngwele-adi that captivated me the most.They called themselves the “Upside Down Ones”—Ngwele-adi in Fallé’s language. Their houses, their airships, their weapons, even their bodies would appear inverted: heads where feet should be, feet where heads should be. Not because they truly were, but because the Ngwele-adi possessed the uncanny ability to emit waves that could distort visual perception, causing others to see them as inverted when they chose to. And according to Onuoha, they often chose to. Rather than terrifying, I thought it mesmerizing.
When we reached the Ibuné tribe’s territory, Onuoha explained what our title meant. “Protectors,” he said. Unlike the other tribes, we were not a people bound by land or structured communities. We were warriors. Warriors that were scattered across Fallé. Warriors that were stationed wherever we were needed most. We lived among different tribes. And guarded their leaders and their secrets. We were fewer in number than the other tribes, but we possessed the strongest abilities.
While Onuoha spoke, his daughter—the leader of the Ibuné—stepped forward. She met my gaze and then placed two fingers to her lips to let out a sound. It was sharp and commanding, like the call of a great beast.
At once, Ibunés appeared from every direction. Some descending from the sky, and some leaping down from hidden nests. They moved in perfect harmony, forming an aligned row behind her, heads bowed in unison as they welcomed me.
It was beautiful. They were beautiful. And something in me longed to belong with them.
With another signal from their leader, they dispersed just as quickly as they had come.
Enemma, the woman who had initially opposed my presence, stepped forward and embraced her and Onuoha’s daughter.
“Does the Sanje know we have arrived?” she asked.
“Yes,” her daughter responded with a nod. “He has been expecting you all.”
“Well then, lead the way,” Enemma said.
Onuoha caught my gaze and nodded—an unspoken promise that we could explore Fallé later. First, I had to meet the Sanje. I had to present myself as the redemption this realm so desperately sought.
But as we approached the grand gates that led to the Sanje’s chambers, I felt it again. A pulse of energy through my veins. Something was off. The same unease I had felt on the airship before the attack. But this time, I couldn’t act on it. I couldn’t place where the danger lurked, and I couldn’t reach Onuoha in time.
Because before I could react, I heard Enemma scream, “Nowww!”
I felt chains around my neck. My waist. My hands. They were heavy, and suffocating, and they reeked of blood. The same scent from earlier.
The realization hit me as I collapsed. As my body was drained of its strength. The smell of blood—it weakened me. It stripped me of my supposed power. This time, it left me paralyzed on the floor.
I could still see. Still hear. But I couldn’t move.
I could hear Onuoha raging beside me, “What are you doing Enemma? Let her go at once!”
A deep, resonant, and powerful voice suddenly cut through the chamber, “Silence at once.”
The man who spoke sat high upon a throne, his voice reverberating through the chamber like the echo of an incredible bell. He was no ordinary man. At least he did not resemble one. He had three horns sprouting from each ear, curving sharply and jagged like the spines of a beast. His hands were gold in color, and they somehow shimmered unnaturally, almost liquid in their movement when he waved them. His presence felt large.
Enemma, Onuoha, and all the other gathered warriors bent onto one knee at the sound of his voice.
“Sanjeeeee isiiiii,” they chanted in unison and bowed reverently to their leader.
Onuoha’s voice was urgent as he stood. “Sanje, she is the girl. The complete Ibuné. The one you sent us to locate and guard. Please, command Enemma to release her.”
The Sanje smiled. “I will do no such thing.” His voice rumbled again like a quake beneath us. “You are too noble, Onuoha. One of the reasons I trust you. But also, the reason I could not entrust you with this mission.”
Onuoha’s face darkened. “The mission was to retrieve her unharmed. To train her, so she could fight for us in the coming war.”
“Not quite,” the Sanje said. “From what I have learned of complete Ibunés, they may possess the power to kill a Sanje. I cannot allow that. The girl must die.”
Onuoha’s voice sharpened with anger. “I won’t let you.”
“Oh, don’t be naïve, Onuoha. If you stand in my way, you will share her fate.”
“My tribe will not allow it.”
The Sanje chuckled. “Are you sure about that? I spoke with your leader. He supports my decision.”
As they argued, something changed.
The blood scent began to fade. The weight on my body lightened. Strength slowly flickered back into my limbs.
I could move. And I felt like I could fight.
I felt Onuoha’s foot nudge me lightly. And I somehow heard his voice. It was almost imperceptible, and I did not see his mouth move. But I heard him say: Ibunés can read thoughts. This is me hoping you can hear mine before my daughter does. I know the blood weakened you, but you are a complete Ibuné for a reason. Fight. And run.
His words filled me with determination and suddenly, heat surged through me. My chains started to glow. Then burn. Then melt.
“You cannot just kill the girl, Sanje.” Onuoha pleaded.
The Sanje turned to Onuoha. “That’s where you’re wrong. I am Sanje. I can and I wi—”
I did not let him finish. I cut him off.
Fire exploded from my hands, and I carved that fire into a sharp blade that sliced through the rest of my chains—and his head.
The Sanje’s body fell, his three-horned skull bouncing across the stone floor.
I heard screams. Chaos. I watched as Enemma and the warriors scattered in shock.
I felt someone grab my arm and turned to see Onuoha. “Start running,” he said.
We ran. Even as fire and weapons were flying after us, we ran. I slashed through those I could with my blade-like flames, cutting down the Sanje’s soldiers as they pursued us.
We finally reached a rock formation in the outskirts of the city and took cover behind it.
“They won’t stop until you’re dead,” Onuoha panted. “The next elected Sanje will want my head as well. We need to leave here at once.”
“I—I’m sorry,” I stammered. “Is he dead? I didn’t mean to kill him. I couldn’t control it. He was going to kill you. I felt it.”
“It’s okay,” Onuoha assured me. “Just cover me for a bit.”
I peered out, cutting down three more warriors before turning back to him. “Where do we go?”
“To your great-grandfather.”
I froze. “My great-grandfather is alive?”
“Yes. And he sent the men who attacked us on the airship earlier. He was trying to get to you before the Sanje did.”
Anger flashed across Onuoha’s face again. “I thought…I believed the Sanje had good plans, but…I was wrong. I was fooled.” He scoffed, “Fooled by Enemma. How could she?!”
I summoned fire into my palms, carving my blade-like flames into fireballs at will, marvelling as I watched them transform into orbs. With a flick of my wrists, I sent them hurling at the warriors that were creeping toward us again.
“Umm…You can maybe beat yourself up later,” I said. “I think we need to go. Now.”
We sprinted toward an escape path.
“Wait,” I said, halting as I remembered. “What about your daughter?”
“She’s not mine,” Onuoha muttered. “She’s Enemma’s. I took her in because I loved her mother. But I was wrong. They both cannot be trusted.”
We reached an open space, and I turned to him. “Did you make arrangements? Do we have an airship waiting? Something invisible maybe? Because we will need stealth to escape.”
Onuoha smirked. “Who needs an airship…” He grabbed my waist with his left hand, bent, and slammed his right on the ground. A massive shockwave erupted beneath us and launched us into the sky with rocket-like force. “…When I can do that,” he completed.
Fallé slowly became a blur beneath us.
Tehila Okagbue is a Nigerian writer who enjoys using words to express her thoughts and imagination. Her works have appeared in Isele Magazine, Brittle Paper, The Kalahari Review, Afrocritik, and elsewhere. She recently co-founded the Lady Ink Society, a community for female creative writers to thrive. When she’s not writing, she’s an afro hair-care consultant.
“I have something for you,” her maé says, reaching into her stained pouch, even as Ne’za’s fear is full to bursting. She doesn’t need a lantern to know that a broken thing is curled inside. Unlike her siblings who’d start dribbling digestive venom and enhance their jaws in anticipation of gorging on something alive, Ne’za wants to grow indistinct, then vanish from her maé’s goading gaze. But it won’t happen. She can’t make herself invisible.
“If it helps, know that it’s roadkill,” says Maé.
It doesn’t help—not even when Maé pulls out the dead thing (it’s no relief that the poor thing is dead) and pats it between her mortar hands as if she’s shaping pancake dough.
Ne’za likes pancakes, real pancakes, not baby-wombat-patty cakes, all fur and squashed in rotted blood and broken bones. The woman at the flamboyant stall on market days makes maps on her pan, hollers out, “Hey, hottie cakes! Hey, hottie crepes!” as she ladles out wet batter onto a griddle until it gets bubbly, then she deftly flips it. Ne’za likes to watch how she tucks notes or coinage into her ample bosom, serving pancakes folded or rolled, and topped with everything Ne’za loves about the market: caramelised jam, brie, chocolate, banana… She hangs out for drips and slips from a toddler’s hand or mouth, discards from folk with unimaginable “too much”—it must be an illusion, how can anyone have too much? She prowls in anonymity, twisted in hunger, melting into contours, eyeing up what scraps she can get, sometimes wrangling with mongrels to get it or share it so she can scoop it with happiness into her willing tongue. Afterwards, she wishes today was yesterday. But life catapults her back to moments she’d rather forget.
Maé doesn’t like Ne’za hanging around humans, unless it’s to stalk them. And now she’s insisting on the wombat patty.
“We shouldn’t eat anything off the side of the road,” Ne’za tries to explain her reluctance.
“Do you know? I had to wrestle it from a black dingo.”
Maé, like this, is undeterred.
“Beast nearly took my arm, such canines.”
She shows Ne’za the toothmarks on her arm. “Smacked the bloody thing, would have eaten it too, but it bounded two meters high with a jolly good yelp.”
Ne’za thinks she knows the dingo. A pretty thing that slinks, curious, along the creek near the den where Ne’za lives, then turns its neck at 180 degrees to see if Ne’za is still watching, and she always is. She’s fascinated with creatures, but never enough to eat them.
“We’ll get sic—” she tries yet again.
“Those are guidelines for humans because their guts are weak,” says Maé. “We don’t have to wait for something properly butchered and hung to eat it. Don’t you think?”
“Um…”
The tiny wombat smells. It’s nothing Ne’za wants to eat. She likes baby animals—alive and mischievous. She likes to look at their playfulness and marvel. Like the curly-haired poodle puppy with the blackest button eyes that she saw the other day at the itinerant dog groomer’s. The eeny meeny doggo was running about and sniffing everywhere, chewing on everything and being super friendly with anything that moved, to the steep annoyance of the groomer, who smacked it and it yelped.
He owns a campervan—the groomer. He has cold, grey eyes like hard pebbles, but entices customers with rainbow words in paint: “Clip, wash, trim and dry”. His business promises “treats, walking, flea treatment” but he shoos Ne’za off when she tries to approach it. She doesn’t mind, really, if he could just give her a go of “continuous warm water, blow dry and fragrances.”
Ne’za knows how to read. She learnt by watching behind a tree when the visiting teacher from the city made a tent that was warm with yellows, teals, blues, pinks, purples and olives—the colours of spring. Ne’za listened as the kiddies learnt to read and write, and say after Missy, the teacher: “Sat, pat, nap, tip, nip, sit…”
Ne’za shaped the words in her mouth and said with them: “S… a… t… sat. P…a… t… pat.” Sometimes, she wanted to walk up to the open side of the tent, the one facing her tree, and sit down as a pupil to also learn. But she didn’t think Missy or the pupils would like it if Ne’za showed up naked. Sometimes she wears a smocking dress in rainbow strips, or a floral knit—both rescues from the second-hand tip on a market day.
She doesn’t like to walk around naked like Maé or her brothers Ak’eem, O’gando and Aha’rugu. But the clothes are dirty and she doesn’t know how to wash them. She made a mess when she tried soaking them at the creek; they nearly drowned and Maé was livid! Mostly because she doesn’t like water and says monsters needs to keep their monster smell to stay scary. Ne’za doesn’t want to be scary, even when she’s hungry.
Maé says scariness paralyses prey, makes it easy to catch them. But hunger is an inconvenience, and it grips Ne’za with a precarious need. It’s a bruise and an abrasion. It’s a fracture and a terror. It’s an infinite recognition that her preference is fruit and vegetables. Mangoes, papayas, guavas. Kale, pumpkin, yam. Never flesh or anything that bleeds crimson.
Today, like always, Maé is not letting go on her quest. She stretches the patty between her hands and, in the tenderness of rot, it falls away from the fur that holds it. She bounds, without warning, snatches Ne’za’s head under an armpit and thrusts the slimy off-colour steak into her mouth. Ne’za feels hot as she resists Maé forcing her to swallow. Tears fall from Ne’za’s eyes as her mother pinches her nose to make her gasp for air. The sticky moistness of rot glides down her throat but refuses to arrive in her stomach.
“We’re yet to make a beast of you,” shrieks Maé. “So bloody vile. What you need is the psychology of monsters. Look at this mess.”
But there’s no mess. Because her siblings Ak’eem, O’gando and Aha’rugu have appeared from nowhere and loped, leapt and snatched in ravenous jaws her pink, green and yellow projectile mid-air.
“Now, there’s a moment,” says Maé, oblivious of Ne’za’s distress. She doesn’t notice as Ne’za wriggles loose. Maé is too busy with pride and runs slimy licks on the brothers. No lick today for Ne’za.
~
She contends with her problems each night. She pats down tufts of beardgrass, arranges mop hair leaves in a second layer and burrows in her den. She ponders about how she can try to belong more. What’s a nuclear family when it chatters and glows in the dark in her absence and goes quiet when she appears? The den hates her too. When she steps out for air, it rearranges itself and the way back is no longer there. If it were a house, like the ones other children lived in, and it reordered itself like this, she’d have to squeeze through a tiny bathroom window—the closest access from where the threshold would be. But such is her luck, what do you know? The house would have relocated itself so that she fell into a cooking pot of simmering broth—she’s sure of this.
She thinks for a long time about how she would squeal if she landed into that hypothetical pot, how she would fall out of it in a daze, her head dizzy from all that scalding but her blisters healing faster than the room transmuted itself. Well, they would heal faster if she was like her brothers. Instead, she bleeds and scars.
~
Ak’eem, O’gando and Aha’rugu are generally sympathetic to Ne’za’s difference, but are unable to hold back their monster urges, like Ne’za can. They fit in the den, not as in bodily fitting in, but as in belonging. Maé calls Ne’za an anomaly. What, without a flattened head, pushed out nostrils and wide-spaced eyes, who can blame her family for recognizing and pointing out her difference?
Sometimes, she wonders if she was adopted. On those times, she gets recurring dreams of being snatched. Of a human creeping into the den while they’re all asleep, and stealing Ne’za, a baby still, from Maé’s warmth.
Ne’za wonders if she’s manifesting in those dreams a bizarre desire for acceptance.
She can’t be an authentic monster. If she were true-born, she’d have saw-like teeth and be heavy-bodied like the rest in her family. To be honest, she wouldn’t mind if all she had was a fierce-looking snake head, or even just a protruding jaw. But she doesn’t. She’s all streamlined. Her smooth lips are the colour and shape of a petal. Once, she was sick, and lobs of skin formed on her chin. Bright-eyed, she went on hands and knees on wet reeds, and watched her reflection across the surface of a duck pond near the playground with yellow, green and bright red swings, seesaws and slides. She beamed her glee at her face in the dancing waters—it was the most monster she looked, and she yearned to look more of it. But instead of getting better, as in more raggedy, her chin smoothened days later.
There are all kinds of things that shout her difference. She loves petals: The crimson of a flame lily. The blush inside the white and yellow star of a gazania. The tongue pink of a protea that matches her lips. She doesn’t like hunting things down. She prefers hiding and watching children on carousels at the bazaar on market days and wishes she could talk to them. Once, she tried to make herself noticed, but someone squealed and people pelted her with eggs, tomatoes and pebbles. Hurled coins that she picked up before she ran.
Today, she sniffs around houses, chances a peek through parted curtains but figures out she will return tomorrow to changed locks at the main gate, as if they know or smell she has been. She imagines someone reporting her to the guard who stalks the market. He waves his baton at her, “Shoo!” One time he hurled rocks, and it nearly took her leg. She trembles with the thrill of being hunted, the ribbons in her hair flowing as she runs. She’s not fast, though, not like her siblings who lope in long strides and leaps.
~
It’s another night, this one especially cold.
Ne’za is too lean for it. She wishes she wasn’t here. But her sense of duty overwhelms her craving for escape from a parent who is barely perfunctory. Maé is an arc and a dash, her shoulders carrying the weight of the universe in its disappointment of how Ne’za’s turned out. What Ne’za needs is a swimming hole that shimmers in late summer, but she wouldn’t swim in it, because monsters shouldn’t swim for fun, unless it’s to creep on unsuspecting prey. All Ne’za wants to do is peek at catapulting children having fun in a splash. What she needs is to see a baby tight in its mother’s arms, small and trusting—a trust she’s never had. She has always been wrong: Too small. Too un-hideous. Too gentle. Too squeamish… She’s “too much heart” for a beast that must thrive on meat.
Anchorless in the dusk, she tries to focus. If only she were a stone. Or a tree. Or a bird. A hole even—that is a fate she’d prefer to accept.
Each sleep is an autumn of secrets. Anything can happen in dreams, and here it is again. That seaside bazaar in a kaleidoscope of wind. Children’s skirts streaming like flags from the carousel in a lost country, the moon so low that Ne’za can almost touch its dusty face. It whispers words she can’t decipher as they fade into the mouths of golden moths flying in and out of the children’s dead eyes. Maé’s ribald laughter filtering in her dreams. We’re yet to make a monster of you… of you…
~
Maé, Ak’eem, O’gando and Aha’rugu have cornered a stray piglet. Tomorrow is market day—did someone lose it, or did it escape? It’s squealing murder and they’re laughing. Aha’rugu pounces to catch it and it leaps straight into O’gando’s arms. They pull it apart still alive. How can she forget the squealing? The sounds of chomping flesh and bone? Now the silence is worse.
And the blood, all this crimson. Maé is pushing Ne’za, nose down, to sniff and swallow the wet copper warmth of soaked earth. Ne’za’s bellow is of dread, hurt and wrath. It is the cry of a creature that’s had enough.
Even Maé, Ak’eem, O’gando and Aha’rugu are taken aback, for a moment.
~
…a monster of you… of you…
The sound wakes her to the reminder that she hates this dream.
The leaves of her bed whisper solace. Ne’za climbs into both her raggedy dresses rescued from the tip, stepping into each from the neck and hugs herself in them. Omens yawn and roll over, as she waits for the sun to rise. Their laughter is mirthless in her head, like Maé’s goading one, until dusk dissolves.
~
Whispers shimmy up and down the dirt road along the creek. It’s market day and people load produce, barter wares or their chillum onto carts even though, on market days, there is always a bus that runs to and from the city.
It’s an icy day. From her hiding spot in the creek, Ne’za can see a mountain cap peeking through fog in the horizon. There’s a snow flurry as she bends into herself, tries to make herself obscured like the trees in a unilateral forest: tall skinny trees, unbarked—looking all alike. Such trees can pretend to be unseen, and nobody notices them under the ashen skies. Ne’za wants to be invisible, but she isn’t, and she knows this because the dingo is watching. It has a dense coat and a white tip on its tail. There are ripples in the grey waters, but it’s not a croc or the dingo that bounds onto a tree.
Ne’za resists to check her reflection, and walks with as much purpose as she can, while being inconspicuous, all the way to the bus stand. She squeezes and tucks herself into a seat, wishing that she overflowed into the aisle like a monster would do, but she doesn’t. The driver pays her no mind, just accepts the coinage she hands him, and dishes out change. After a long time, well, to Ne’za anyways, the bus purrs then heaves as the driver changes gears.
Ne’za closes her eyes and imagines she’s the only one on board. Only she isn’t. There’s a girl smelling nice, with roped hair and a billowy frock. Ne’za wishes she was as carefree as the girl, but quickly forgets her as it begins to rain. It fascinates Ne’za how the shower is faster than the bus’s wipers, and how the lights are green all the way to a sombre horizon.
She watches greedily as the city-bound bus whooshes past white cake-style houses—Ne’za likes cake. She’s never eaten one, just seen slices of it in one of those itinerant cafés that come near the creek on market days. She’s sure she’d like a tarty one with “malt custard,” or swollen with “raspberry jam” or “lemon curd.” The pangs of hunger are a real pain when she looks at the “chocolate croissants” that promise a “rich crème” inside. She doesn’t know what a crème is, but it sounds nice. She likes the bigger wedding cakes more. The rounds ones and the cylindrical ones and the ivory ones… the rustic-coloured ones too.
~
She feels like a mourning song. She could never camouflage as a rock to dart out and seize live prey, drag it away in a drip of slime, her blade teeth peering from a jaw of jaws.
~
The bus coughs on the climbing road.
Ne’za notices an athletic girl jogging with a rucksack uphill along the swirly, bendy road and all that drizzle. She likes the look of the ghost trees alongside the road, bare arms spread out to say hello. The bus races past a sign that says NO THROUGH ROAD behind which red brick cedar cottages solemnly stand. Ne’za thinks how nice it would be to live in one of those.
Somewhere along the way, nearly everyone gets off and it’s just her and the driver, and the carefree girl smelling apple fresh. Now the bus is going down, down, towards a bay and she can see the waters rising out to meet them. A cliff face hedges the road, and Ne’za doesn’t like how fast the bus is gliding. From the look on her face, the apple fresh girl doesn’t either.
The bus slows down along an ocean esplanade, then stops. Ne’za climbs out. She’s curious about the sign that warns against blowholes but is fascinated with the boulevard names: Stone Fruit, Bay River, Whispering Vale. She climbs a wet and leafy track, then a rocky track, then a ferny edge towards the blowholes. She doesn’t get too close and leans against a stringy bark tree with mop hair leaves leaning out to the bay, and looks at the black humping waters below.
The day is cold and sunless, damp all the way and soaking her two layers of dress. She thinks of her mother’s heartless words: “We’re yet to make a monster of you.”
She sits on tufts of beardgrass and waits for the sun to set, because she doesn’t know what else to do. She doesn’t want to go back home where she’ll look at a reflection and yearn for more. Ne’za wonders how it would feel to step into a blowhole and have it crumble and cascade her down the rocks and into the hungry sea.
“Wanna grab something to eat?”
It’s the carefree girl.
“Okay,” says Ne’za.
The girl helps her up, and Ne’za is surprised by how soft and warm the girl’s palm is. They saunter into a beachcomber restaurant that has a TV on and it’s Saturday night footy where the commentator is speaking of marks and disposals, roaring “Oh! Beautiful off the boot. Goal!”
“I’ll get us some tucker,” the carefree girl says.
“Is it wombat patty?”
The girl looks quizzically at Ne’za, then laughs. “You’re funny.”
“I don’t eat meat.”
“No dramas. You eat veggie dogs?”
“I like them, but is there cake?”
Her friend laughs. “My, aren’t we ravenous.”
The footy players are tossing the ball with their hands as well as their feet. Ne’za looks at the tackles, momentum, men in tiny shorts running the ball out.
“Steers that through!” cries the commentator.
Spectators are spilling from the stands and Ne’za wishes she was there to witness firsthand the player named Jezza climb into the kick, a whopper bender around the corner.
“It’s unbelievable!” bellows the commentator.
The carefree girl rolls up from the bar with their veggie dogs and two thick slices of a layered cake lathered with cream, a caramel goo and chocolate shavings.
“Chocolate and pumpkin cake,” the girl says. “It’s on special. Must have known you were coming.”
Ne’za is so hungry, she fears her saliva might wet the floor.
But she wants to save the cake for last. She puts her mouth around half the bun, and chomps. Tomato and mustard squirt everywhere. Ne’za is embarrassed, looks at the throwaway thongs on her feet.
“I’m sorry I’m a monster,” she says.
“What are you on about? Being a black girl doesn’t make you a monster,” the carefree girl says. “No one’s ever taught you to do different, is all.”
A girl? Ne’za looks at herself, then at the carefree girl. She looks at the patrons and waiting staff in the restaurant. It dawns on Ne’za with such suddenness that she doesn’t look that much different from them. Sure, a hair here, a colour there… Aiyayaya! thinks Ne’za. Maybe those thoughts about adoption or dreams of being snatched, and all, had merit.
She just got the facts a little wrong is all.
END
Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She’s a British Fantasy and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in the Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick Award, and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the Otherwise Fellowships for “doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction.” Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a “sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work.” Visit her at eugenbacon.com.
At last, after he had scrambled around town looking for a woman willing to share her bed with him, Madu leaned against the windowsill and drew a puff from his cigarette before allowing himself some time to recover. He darted his eyes around the hut and relaxed when he saw his gear—a bag filled with snuff, bait, ammunition and camping equipment propped up by his Dane gun—which was propped up by the end of the mattress, and he felt double relief that this woman was not a thief like the last one.
As though she had heard his musings, she appeared in the doorway of the hut—a silhouette in the evening sun. She paused before gently sitting on the edge of the bed, near his feet, and helping him fold the clothes that had been tossed about an hour earlier. When she was done, she looked at him intently and, after drawing one more puff, he handed over the cigarette to her. Before taking a drag, she moved to the windowsill and sat beside the mattress and exhaled into the evening air.
His brows furrowed as he wondered why she was averse to her hut smelling of tobacco, but then he considered that others who had, and would, share her bed might not be as enamoured with the smell. This time, as though she could hear his thoughts, she puffed into the hut and then handed back the remaining cigarette to Madu before she closed her eyes and pursed her lips. He looked at her and wondered if she was one herself, a siren that is. After all, there were many rumours and myths about this part of town, including how the sirens had adapted with humans over generations such that it could be difficult to tell them apart. Partly unsure what he would do if she reacted to his thoughts again, he decided to speak up.
Are you one of them?He asked, trying to look as stern as possible.
She opened her eyes, looked at him and broke into a half-grin. He was unsure if she was indeed one of the figures he had come to hunt, but he was more worried because he knew he would not be able to react if she was. She, on the other hand, found it amusing that his fear had only manifested after they had been with each other and not before, when she could have killed him easily, were she an actual siren.
No, she began, before turning her head invitingly and leaning forward till he could make out her face in the light of a candle that was perched by the windowsill. Are you asking because you want to kill me or are you complimenting me for earlier?
He laughed and sat up, gently cupping her face in his hands before he rose and began wearing his clothes. As he dressed, he caught his reflection in the single mirror that was propped opposite the bed and traced the scars on his lean and lithe body. He had lost a lot of weight after an injury hunting Sasabonsams some months prior, which is why he had decided to sell some of his belongings and move down south to hunt for Sirens. They were rumoured to be plentiful here and the scales of their skin made for fantastic fertilizer for farms. But, despite the promise of fortune, sirens were stealthy and had developed a talent for also hunting the hunters. So, while there was still a steady stream of people making their way here to try and hunt, there were not too many hunters in town.
*
After a fairly long walk, and missed directions, he ended up at a small bar, made of zinc sheets, at the edge of a forest, where he saw other men preparing for the night’s hunt. It had a roof and open space where there would have been windows, but luckily there was only a gentle breeze billowing this night. Some of them were there with women, which reaffirmed his earlier desire to deal with his urges before coming out to hunt. Sirens also had a reputation for being phenomenal in bed, which is one reason he wasn’t sure he would have killed the woman he just left, even if she was one. The bar had three long tables with rocks and tyres on either side as seats, with the cook and an assistant behind the bar at the end. He ordered a stiff drink and quietly nursed it to avoid getting too drunk before going out, but bought some for his flask so that the heat would help keep him warm in the cold night ahead. More and more men trooped into the bar, with some clearly coming in hunting packs. He eavesdropped enough to pick out which anecdotal tales could be helpful as he hunted.
Don’t stare too long, keep moving your neck up and down to avoid their gaze.
The winds are usually strong signs of their arrival – if it hits you on the left, bend down and run.
They often break the ankles of their victims and arrange the broken feet in a circular pattern to warn other hunters.
That last part was more unnerving, but he eased up when a few of the other hunters laughed at the storyteller for telling what they believed was a tall tale. Before they started paying and setting out, they began to compare kill counts. The highest in the room was five, by a big bear of a man with one finger missing and a mild but noticeable limp. A clear majority had two or three scalps, while Madu was among five who hadn’t gotten even one yet. People seemed happy that there were few veterans and a handful of men with no skins because of one of the fairly prominent rumours that hunting a siren is never meant to be a long-lasting career or activity.
They decided to go in together and break into groups after they reached the first clearing, which was after a twenty-minute walk into the forest. But, before they started moving, someone pointed to a figure making its way towards the bar from the hill that separated the town from the forest. When the figure reached the small clearing where the moon shone between the trees, they could see that he moved slowly but deliberately, with his own bag and his gun slung over his left shoulder. Madu saw one of the larger hunters move towards the entrance quickly and begin waving a finger sternly before waving his hands, as if telling the newcomer to go back. They met halfway between the forest and the bar, before the large hunter came back, leaving the other man began pacing in the dark.
He won’t come in till we’re ten minutes in, the man said and then shook his head as he added, I don’t understand why some people just don’t consider others. The others gasped when they heard it was Azu, the legendary hunter, who had decided to take part in tonight’s hunt. Initial excitement gave way to worry, because Azu’s heroics and fame had come at the cost of further success. Everyone in town knew that four months back, when nearly hundred men had journeyed into the forest, only the unassuming, stocky man in the distance returned. When those at the mouth of the forest saw the sole survivor up close, his eyes were bloodshot, he had bruises all over his arms and he had a cut across his left cheek, but he also had a full-length siren in the bag he slowly pulled across his shoulder as he left the forest. That particular story was repeated and many men were in awe. This was not just because he had survived what appeared to be a bloody hunt, but because the farmer, who bought Azu’s scales, surmised that it was the ninth time they had conducted business.
Yet, the gasps soon turned to fear and muted anger when the hunters realised what this meant. For all the legendary hunters who had come before, none had been able to achieve a tenth. Some said that after successfully hunting Sirens, one’s scent became so strong that the newer Sirens actively sought the hunter to kill, which made the hunting party vulnerable. Hence the quote that to achieve a ninth was glorious, but to seek a tenth was to tempt fate. One of the attendants shared that Azu’s family had been preparing to move south and they speculated that perhaps the old hand wanted to get one last rush before moving to parts without Sirens.
*
There were different maps of the forest, from different hunting parties, but they all agreed on some defined features. One, this path was the quickest way to the first clearing of the forest, but it could only be seen with the aid of moonlight. Two, along this path were different lakes, ravines and rivers that came from the sea—and these were the routes where sirens were usually found. Three, and probably most telling, while it was easy to see the path when going in, it was harder to find it once one’s eyes adjusted to the night of the forest. That was why most people chose to either complete the hunt or hide, before hurrying back at the first sign of dawn, when the light showed the route back. Madu was near the back of the pack, trying to make conversation with some of the other hunters so he would be invited to join their group. However, most of the old heads were worried about carrying a fresh shotalong with them, and gently deferring, they offered him a spot in future hunts. By the time the last group got to the clearing, most of the hunters had dispersed between the trees and, soon enough, Madu was alone. Before his fears got the better of him and forced him back, he turned and saw Azu standing at the edge of the clearing, looking around and gently feeling the soil. Up close, he wasn’t impressive physically, but he had an aura that was difficult to place. Unlike the other hunters who seemed either cautious or outright scared, he seemed at ease and instead worried about the ground being firm.
Azu noticed Madu looking at him as he pressed the forest floor.
The ground is not as soft here. Means that there hasn’t been much water going through the forest. That means that there are fewer sirens around to hunt tonight.
Madu nodded and looked at the height of the trees, which went for a couple of metres and formed a fairly thick canopy over the forest. By the time he turned back to Azu, he saw that the older man had found a slightly dusty patch and was trying to redraw a map from memory with his stick. He moved closer to get a better look, and felt more comfortable when the old man didn’t seem annoyed or distracted.
There are four ravines from the sea to the other edge of the forest. There are also two lakes – one at the heart of the forest and the other further in. There are usually a pair of sirens in the lake, come let us see if there will be some tonight.
The tacit invitation was all Madu needed and he nodded and followed Azu into the night. As they walked, he used the chance to try and get more information about the forest and about the creatures they were trying to hunt. Unexpectedly, for someone who had such a storied legend around him, Azu was patient and forthcoming with answers as they made their way through the different trees, and followed the faint, but sure sound of a lake in the distance.
First of all, people make the mistake of assuming that Sirens are just mamiwatas and nothing more. That is what gets half of the people into the hunt – and that is also what gets them killed.Azu began, pausing to rummage within his bag for what looked like a foam sponge till he tore small pieces, handed some over to Madu, and then placed two pieces in his ears. He stopped and made a sudden clap that caught the younger hunter unawares. Azu began with a wry shake of his head as he shared a lesson he had learned on his first hunt, that Sirens also hunted humans to prove their worthiness to their groups or tribes. Most Siren communities were much farther from the forest and away from shore but, at a certain age, they were led out by more seasoned members to prove their value by hunting men. The wiser and experienced hunters interacted with this awareness—this was not just a simple hunting expedition, this was as risky as war.
Earlier on, I clapped suddenly because sirens sing very well, and their unique tunes are hypnotic and captivating.
But, as Azu stressed clearly, tunes only really work on one human at a time. As a result, the Siren needs to finish their hunt or else they are unable to use their power to hypnotise another hunter before killing them.
It is more than a hunt; it is really a dance between two people. The Hunter and the Siren. But only the chosen hunter can hear the song that is being sung. It starts off faint, but then it gets louder the closer they get to you.
As they approached the clearing where the lake was nestled, Madu caught his first glimpse of a Siren. He saw the bright, long blonde hair that seemed to reflect the moonlight and he was amazed at how ethereal the body looked as it gently bathed in the quiet lake. Slowly, and gracefully, the Siren turned towards them but they were well hidden in the trees. Madu was astonished at how beautiful it looked. He imagined it was a woman, simply because of how full her breasts were and how gentle her face looked. He was also surprised that she did not have a tail, but used her two feet to paddle in the lake. She looked shy and demure, but seemed to be waiting for something. Madu felt his feet dragging him towards the clearing, willing him to move forward and touch her or just see her clearer. However, before he passed the last tree, he felt a heavy pull and he landed on his back as Azu pulled him and covered his mouth. After a couple of seconds, the elder hunter pointed with his other hand at another man who seemed to be walking out into the clearing. The Siren opened her mouth and started swaying her body from side to side, but Madu could not hear anything other than the rustling of the leaves and the rush of the water. As the man reached the edge of the lake, the Siren stood out and held out her hand for him to take it and come in. In one single fluid movement, she grabbed him with one hand and used the other to turn him round as she placed him in a headlock and descended into the depths of the lake. Madu glared in horror as bubbles reached the surface, then he turned to Azu who, evidently familiar with such a scene, started drawing the map on a small patch of sand in front of him. After a couple of minutes, the Siren appeared and arranged the hunter’s clothes on the floor beside the lake. Then, with what seemed like minimal effort, she broke off his ankles with her bare hands and placed his feet by the clothes, before she took the rest of the body and swam away towards the open sea.
The broken feet are a warning to the other Hunters who come. It is also proof that it was a human, because Sirens can’t break off their own feet.
Madu nodded at the older man, grateful for the knowledge and being saved. He tutted and stared again at the lake, now calm and still, and wondered if that was a warning or a foreshadowing of how his night would go. He was jolted back to reality by the sound of snapped twigs and realised that Azu was moving, and he scampered after him. He asked if the lake was a dead end for tonight and the elder hunter nodded before adding that even if there would be another Siren here, it would likely be hours after. Before that landed, they reached a ravine and saw six pairs of ankles on the other side. Madu recognised a blue cap that had once covered the sturdy man from before and momentarily stopped breathing. Azu skipped across well placed stones to the other side and gently felt the different clothes before inspecting, but not touching, the ankles. The younger hunter sat down and brought out his flask to try and steady himself. When he was done, Azu threw another flask towards him so he could take some more.
The clothes are barely damp. This was a while ago, which means we should move because the ravine will become fresh again soon. If there are six pairs here, it must mean that there are a lot of hunters on either side tonight.
Madu steeled himself and crossed over, turning back to look at a reflection of himself in the now still water. Ahead of him, Azu had started moving up some rocks to get to higher ground and hopefully see more of the forest from a prime vantage point. It was just after midnight, but since a number of Sirens had gotten their kills, it could be an early night if they didn’t make a move quickly.
*
They reached a large boulder that oversaw another lake by the edge of the forest. They could also see the sea from this position and Azu decided they should pause, dry off and plan their next steps strategically. Madu was just happy to avoid water for the meantime and subconsciously kept massaging his ankles. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see the older man once more handing him pieces of foam for his ears, to avoid the singing. As he accepted it, he noticed for the first time, the famed scar across his left cheek, which cut into his salt-and-pepper beard. He also saw that, despite him being well covered, he could make out scars on his neck and around his wrists. He couldn’t understand why someone who knew enough about the hunt, and could even afford to avoid it, would be here tonight when he could be in a warm bed with a warm person.
Why does a man, who has fortune, family and folklore risk it all on tempting fate?
Azu did not seem taken aback by the question, he almost seemed surprised it hadn’t come sooner. He was previously crouched on his legs, but he sat down now and crossed his legs as he looked the younger hunter intently in the eyes.
My last hunt was several moons back. In that time, my wife has convinced my children that we need to move further south. I have been successful at farming, but there are always thieves coming to try to steal and that is half my work. People look at me and won’t even talk to me because they worry that by just stepping foot near this forest, I could get them or their husbands killed because they are worried about that stupid curse of the tenth. You ask why a man who has all that will risk tempting fate? Because he still has fire. Fire that must burn…
Azu paused as he noticed Madu look around furtively and then quickly. He saw the younger hunter stand up and start looking across his shoulder at the base of the ravine and move slowly in that direction. It was then he realised he didn’t really know the young man’s name and he tried to shake him awake before he realised that the small foam pieces were now perched on the boy’s shoulder, and not in his ear where he needed them to be. Azu immediately realised that the inexperienced one had been called, and began clapping loudly by his ears. After a while, a subtle note started filtering through his own ears. It was faint, but definitely a pattern he had heard before. He reached for more foam and plugged his ears, allowing him to still hear but become less entranced. Madu made his way down the boulder and Azu followed, with his knife holstered beside his right thigh, his bow in his left hand and arrows in a pouch slung on his back. He had thought of the Dane gun, but decided that it would be too loud for what he was planning.
Madu led the way, while Azu walked quietly behind, pausing to pick some leaves from a tree nearby. After checking that they were not poisonous, he started chewing them to add another sound to his hearing and reduce the control that the song could have on him. This call must have been very strong, because they had crossed the lake they were monitoring and were approaching a ravine close to a waterfall. Before moving past the last tree, Azu clapped one more time and, in the seconds that he could speak to Madu, gave him the knife. Before he set him free, he looked at the Siren calling and saw an imposing brunette who was at the pool. He debated if his plan was plausible, especially since this new hunter was not aware, but decided to trust his instincts. Madu continued walking towards the brunette Siren, who started sashaying back and forth as though to further entrance her target. However, seconds before he reached her grasp, Azu clapped again, which momentarily snapped Madu’s attention, but also alerted the Siren to his presence. She reached forward to grab him, stumbling out of the pool, and giving Azu enough time to shoot an arrow at her. Madu dove out of the way before it pierced the Siren, who shrieked in pain, a guttural, throaty sound that seemed to go beyond the recesses of the forest. Soon enough, a blonde Siren appeared at the other end of the ravine and began charging towards Azu. Despite his quick movement, she tackled him, and pinned him down with her left hand and moved for his neck with her right hand.
Suddenly aware of a weapon on him, Madu felt for his knife and aimed at the brunette Siren’s neck, but she ducked just in time. As she tried to pull the arrow from her shoulder, he ran back towards the bow and arrow set that lay some distance from where Azu had been tackled, and aimed another one at the back of the blonde Siren that was attacking his partner. That Siren also shrieked and let go of Azu to reach for the arrow on her back, staggering a couple of feet back. The older hunter used his legs to grapple with the blonde siren, yelling with a strained voice—Don’tlet yours get to the water—they are way stronger when they are in!
Madu turned and saw the brunette Siren pulling herself towards the water, steadied his aim with Azu’s knife, which lay near his remaining arrows, and this time, aimed for the Siren’s legs. The knife pierced her left thigh, and she started shrieking again. In the split second that she reached down to nurse her leg; he reached again for the bow and aimed one more arrow at her neck. A thick light blue liquid oozed out, and he saw her eyes roll back and turn yellow as she lay still. Within seconds, her lower body turned into that of a mermaid, with a tail and yellow-green scales that glistened in the moonlight. Azu’s yell for reinforcement brought him back from his daze, and he turned to see the blonde Siren stop attacking the older hunter and yell, moving towards the brunette’s dead body. Madu reached his dead Siren, pulled the knife and threw it towards Azu.
The older hunter, already running towards the blonde Siren, caught the knife midair and quickly pulled the blade out of his palm before aiming it at his Siren’s neck. Her golden hair lost its sheen; she turned and tried to choke him as he buried the knife even further till the blue blood became too sticky. After a couple of seconds, she gave up, and he saw her scales start appearing as she died. Azu could feel how sore his neck was from the Siren’s death grip. He saw the younger hunter studying his kill and decided to let him have his moment while he caught his breath.
Minutes after, Azu showed Madu how to try and close the wound so that other Sirens would not smell the blood and trace them. He also showed him how to fold the body so that the sirens could fit in the bags that they would use to carry them out. They started making their way towards the exit. Before they got to the first clearing, Madu beckoned to swap bags and let Azu take the bigger catch. He felt as though he owed the man for helping him out, but the older man chuckled and reminded him that the Siren had chosen him, any swap would not be a worthy hunt. Azu led the way to the path out of the forest, before gesturing for Madu to walk out first—a good omen from a first hunt.
Madu walked into the bright sunrise and headed straight for the shack, amidst the gazes of those who peered behind him to see if their loved ones were around. As he sat down, the patrons looked at him curiously. He smiled and asked for a hot meal and an even hotter drink, before gently revealing the tail at the top of the bag to one of the younger patrons who kept looking from the table across. Soon they all gathered to hear the story, some offering to pay for his food. As he cleared his throat, he looked back and saw the old man quietly making his way up the hill and away from the scene. He wondered if Azu would ever truly move, or if he was fated to die at the hands of a Siren. He questioned if he would ever become as renowned or famous as Agu, or if he would even hunt again. But those were issues for another time. Right now, he needed to get some energy and find a farmer to sell his scales to. As his food arrived, he sat back and prepared to regale his sponsors with a wonderful tale.
This story is about ankles, a first timer and a beaten curse.
*
Azu saw his wife cooking through the windows in the kitchen before he began up the small bridge that went over the moat to his house. The dried Siren blood smelt like iron and was a strong scent, but he fought the smell with that of breakfast coming from the kitchen. He first went to his shed and dropped the body—his wife did not approve of him bringing them into the house. After he washed his hands and gently daubed his body with a herbal remedy to reduce the pain, he walked into the kitchen and joined his wife at the table with food in front of them.
Did it need to be that messy? She began, looking at his hands and noticing the slight trace of blue under his nails.
He sighed and made for the bread before telling her that it wasn’t so much his fault, but more so the new guy he had taken onboard while going on the hunt. She glowered at him, before he reminded her that she had told him that Sirens found it harder to maintain the smell of seasoned veterans when there were new hunters around. His wife stood up quietly, picked up a tablespoon of salt and went to the back, gently closing the door to the kitchen behind her. Azu kept eating but he knew what was happening. It was the same thing that had happened since his second hunt—his wife would go and check if she knew the Siren, cry for a bit and then use the salt for a small part of a mourning ritual. When she returned, she gently inspected his neck and held his hand as she sat across the table.
Your neck will heal in three days, she must have been in a lot of pain because she didn’t break any cords or bones.
Azu rubbed her fingers and looked at her intently. He wondered if he would ever be able to let go of the thrill of the hunt or the adrenaline that came when that iron smell dried on his hands during a kill. He worried that this move south, where some of his wife’s relatives would be close by, could be dangerous, especially if they could smell the many other kills on his body. But, perhaps ironically, he also considered if he could count this as him beating the curse of the tenth.
He stood up and led his wife to the bedroom so she could gently massage him before he went to bed. Before they left the kitchen, he gently held his wife and kissed her shoulder, around the area with a healed scar from an arrow—his first actual hit. Then, it had taken almost all night, but he had nursed the wound to show his regret. As he looked at the healed scar, he decided that he could live with nine, or ten depending on who was telling the story or counting the successful returns. After all, tempting fate was a game for younger men.
Afolabi Adekaiyaoja is a writer, researcher and political analyst from Nigeria who writes on democracy, elections, geopolitics and institutions in West Africa. He was a former Managing Editor at AFREADA and is exploring his fiction writing as part of a coping mechanism in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Christian scripture dictates that God reigns over his creations from the heavens while the fires of hell rage on beneath the earth. Mere moments under the Monrovian sun, however, could convince any believer otherwise. Here, the sun wraps its fiery fingers around all things visible, convincing Liberians that hell is in their midst.
*
The intern stood in the doorway of Dr. Morlu’s office, awaiting directives from her boss as she chewed gum and twirled thick clusters of hair extensions around her finger. She was dazed by the backdrop of the scorched city visible through the floor-to-ceiling window panels. She observed daytime flares and the smoke clouds they generated in silent awe that in a matter of years, she witnessed her country transform from a tropical oasis to an inferno.
As she peered into the smoggy sky, she resented the scientists who were responsible for this transformation. Years prior, Sweden responded to Earth’s climbing temperatures by developing technology that could redistribute heat from one geographical location to another through an intricate underground air tunnel system. How exactly was unclear, but in doing so, they engineered hope for a healed Earth. Under the Heat Redistribution Plan developed by the United Nations, countries containing large regions with formerly temperate climates could offload excess heat into tropical regions through those pipes, intensifying their heat. The particulars of the project remained elusive to the public, however.
When the plan was initially introduced, Liberian officials regurgitated the flowery language of Western scientists to allay suspicion of potential harm. “Sustainability” and “green consciousness” were some of the terms they deployed to conceal the true cost of the tunnel system’s transmissions on Receiving Nations. When civilians asked how exactly the pipe systems would work, the American contractors tasked with leading construction efforts were stone-faced and tight-lipped.
As a passionate Environmental Studies student, the Intern outlined a number of ramifications this plan would have on nations like Liberia in her thesis to a chorus of sneering advisors and peers.
Western countries lined up to make deals with almost all the African countries (including all 15 ECOWAS members), the Caribbean, and some of Asia. In exchange for aid, Receivers got heat, on those wealthy nations’ terms, as she predicted. The effect was immediate in Liberia: shorter and delayed rainy seasons, longer days, sweltering temperatures, and depleted flora just as her thesis had warned. Instead of feeling vindicated, however, she felt sorrow.
Her fingers grazed over the raised knot on her bicep where a baton broke her skin all those years ago. The scar was a souvenir from the demonstration she attended at 19 against the construction on the tunnel system. Like an island formed in the wake of a volcanic eruption, it served as a reminder of her perseverance through violence. The government’s heavy-handed response and consequent casualties engendered cynicism in the Liberian public. A couple of years later, Dr. Robert Morlu, a former environmental scientist, was appointed Executive Director of the Ministry of Environmental Initiatives. A band-aid solution. The president claimed he was addressing public concerns, but she knew better. She would have to change things from the inside. So, when the opportunity to work in his office presented itself, she jumped at it.
“What are you doing by the doorway? Come inside.”
“Yes, Boss Man,” said the intern, standing at attention.
Interns seldom reported directly to the Executive Director, but she was the exception. She brought youth, ambition, and beauty – all qualities which Dr. Morlu admired, and which had long since faded in his wife, Alice Morlu. Of course, he took a liking to her from the outset of her internship. In no time, she was promoted to his unofficial Executive Assistant and coordinator of the other interns at the Ministry of Environmental Initiatives.
Each time her boss man flirted with her, a chill crawled up her spine. The man belched with abandon and smacked his lips when he ate. In addition to his indolence, Dr. Morlu had the unmistakable essence of an uncle. He reminded her of her twin uncles who were also bald and rather round. On top of it all, he had the nerve to perspire profusely in an office laden with tinted, UV-protected windows and an infantry of panting fans that guzzled half the compound’s energy supply. Blissfully unaware of her disdain, the sight of her hanging in the doorway like an apparition usually brought him unbridled joy. The intern knew she had to persevere a little longer to graduate from lowly intern to manager. She was this close.
Something was different today; Boss Man was reticent, receding into the silhouette of a big man instead of filling in its contours with his typical haughtiness. The tiny beads of sweat that ordinarily crowded his veiny forehead were remarkably absent today.
The intern’s curiosity drew her from the door frame. She strode toward his desk. In her periphery, she perceived – to her fright – a sturdy, matronly figure propped on the couch. Startled, she faltered. Who is this? asked the intern wordlessly with indignant eyes.
The shadow of a man remained silent as he despondently perused the floor.
“I am your replacement, appointed by Alice Morlu,” the sturdy woman spoke sternly. “Boss Man’s wife,” she added.
The intern blinked in disbelief before retreating.
She lingered outside of Mr Morlu’s office in an attempt to collect her thoughts. She had been betrayed; her efforts to barter her soul for employment were in vain. His wife must have felt threatened. In all fairness, she had good reason to be – only her resentment was misplaced. The intern was not part of the slew of young girls Dr. Morlu slept with, she was merely an overworked assistant who doubled as workplace eye candy. Anger arrived right behind the realization that his cowardice prevented him from safeguarding her position. She was ready to unleash months’ worth of grievances on the powerful man-turned-puppet.
Woeful, her mind raced with uncertainties. What would she do for money? How would she make a difference for her people? When she inhaled, the smell of smoke invaded her nostrils. The intoxicating odor derailed her train of thought. Surely, she thought, I’m not the only one who can smell this smoke, but the shameful look on Dr. Morlu’s face and the stern one on the woman’s did not falter. She concluded it was a fabrication of her flustered mind. Words sitting on the tip of her tongue only moments ago receded to her throat, where they dissolved. Her replacement handed her a small box to put her items in. At the bottom of the box lay her termination letter, signed by Dr. Morlu. The insult was so strong she could not focus on anything else, not even the smoke that had wafted into the office moments before.
She left to collect her belongings from the meager room where the Ministry of Environmental Initiatives crammed her and seven other interns she supervised. It was barely a secret that she was on the precipice of a substantial promotion. But those plans disintegrated to ash because, after nearly two years of dedication, she was fired. She furiously shoved her things into the box as she blinked away tears of sadness and rage.
Timothy, her fellow intern and closest friend at the Ministry, noticed her hurriedly packing her things and sprang from the desk he shared with two other interns.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She had been fired, she told him.
“But who will replace you?”
She sighed, grudgingly describing the older woman who ousted her.
His face was wrought with confusion, but he couldn’t muster another question.
She pulled him outside the room and into the custodial closet across the hallway.
“These people are wickeder than you know, Timothy,” she whispered. She paused, weighing if now was the appropriate time to disclose the information she’d been sitting on. “You know how everyone has been saying it’s been even hotter than usual lately?”
“Define lately,” Timothy scoffed.
Disregarding his ill-timed joke she continued, “That’s because Morlu has been accepting bribes to receive more heat.”
Timothy’s eyes grew wide.
“We hardly could manage with the heat we had, how will we survive with more heat?”
“I don’t know. But the fifth nation has already begun to trial run their air tunnel.”
“What? Only four nations are allowed to distribute heat per receiving country.”
“Yes, and warming rate, population density, and pollution levels were used to apportion heat to receiving countries. Who is going to take our excess heat?” Her question was rhetorical, yet she still desperately wished for it to be answered.
“America, England, China, and Lebanon,” Timothy counted with the fingers of his right hand.
“… and now Japan.”
“But how do you know this?”
“They disguised the construction of the fifth tunnel system as repairs on the Chinese pipes.” She paused, distressed. “You know more lands in my lap than is supposed to… I was planning on exposing Morlu once I got my promotion because who would listen to small geh like me? Not even employee, just an intern,” she despaired.
Getting Dr. Morlu would mean ousting the entire administration which was a tall order. Liberian officials were in an unspoken boys’ club, committed to lining their pockets even at the expense of their constituents, their countrymen. A case with the UN would be hard to build because they would deem the practice unlawful and do little else to end it. Plus, it was no secret that Dr. Morlu was President Barkley’s brother-in-law and one of his closest friends—they were even groomsmen in each other’s weddings over twenty-five years ago. She felt powerless.
“But now I’m an ex-intern, totally powerless and of no use.”
“That’s not true; without you, this place will go up in flames.”
She smiled. After feeling so disposable at the news of her dismissal, she was reminded of her value.
“You’re right. If it wasn’t for me, this place would not even function…”
She fell silent.
“What is it?”
“It’s just that this place clearly does more harm than good. Yes, I’m useful, but that means I’m a useful part of the problem. I interned here straight out of college because I wanted to make a positive change. I’ve caused harm to my people, and I don’t even have a job to show for it.”
“It’s not all in vain. You have more than enough information on Morlu now. You can still do something with all that.”
She set her box on the dusty floor of the closet and gave him a farewell hug. An air of finality mingled with the mixture of mould and chemical fumes that clung to the closet’s stuffy atmosphere.
*
With her box of belongings atop her head, she walked roadside where she waited every day at seven in the evening for a taxi home to Duazon. It was barely three p.m., the sun was intense though wan behind thick clouds of smog, and, by virtue of that, few taxis skidded down Tubman Boulevard at this scorching off-peak hour. It was a ghost town. Everyone who could avoid daytime activity did—including taxi drivers whose windshields did little to protect them from the elements. When she was little, Tubman Boulevard bustled with traffic. Taxis, buses, and kekehs teemed with passengers at all hours.
Over the past ten years, the government used declining conditions to manufacture consent for extending corporate operating hours from 9-5 to 7-7. If workers spent the sun’s most grueling hours laboring, they would be protected from heat-related illnesses or being engulfed by the flares. Increased productivity was just a byproduct. In the last few years of her parents’ lives, she saw them less and less as their hours at the factory increased.
Now, most taxi drivers made their living during rush hours in the morning and evening, trying to altogether avoid those unbearable in-between hours. She would be lucky to see a straggling taxi in under an hour.
Within moments of stepping outside, she’d already become dizzy. The last time she stood idly in the sun she was preparing for Dr. Morlu’s commencement address to Cuttington University’s class of 2045. The intern had been tasked with picking Boss Man’s robe from the dry cleaners. He refused her request for a lift from his driver, and she made the mistake of standing by the roadside to hail a taxi. In less than ten minutes heat rashes had germinated on her left shoulder and bicep and bubbled for hours thereafter. Sap from the aloe vera plant in the office helped but the discomfort persisted for a fortnight. She shuddered at the memory, heading to 13th Street Beach where she would wait while allowing the sun’s rays to mellow. From experience, the sun is more merciful to objects in motion.
Her train of thought was disrupted by a putrid combination of smoke fumes, shit, and… Animal entrails? She looked to her left where flames leapt from a beat-up trash can in front of Stop & Shop. She released a series of hoarse belly coughs. Human entrails? Her stomach churned. She wanted to stop but she knew if she did, she might heave up a pool of vomit and perhaps her lungs. She continued walking at a steady pace, battling the heat outside and the smoke in her chest.
At the beach lounge, she sat in the shade and peered wistfully at the ocean she dreamed of swimming in since she was a little girl. Before her parents died in the factory fire, they handed down stories of joyful afternoons in the water. Now, just a few decades later, the waters were a cocktail of toxic chemicals and trash. Grazing the water’s surface with her fingertips was a distant dream.
The emphatic break of a wave on the shore ejected her from her daze. She pulled her laptop out of its sleeve and pored over the evidence she’d accumulated over the past year and a half. Once she felt she had sufficient ammunition, she got to work, and words flowed from her with ease.
To the Liberian People,
For nearly two years, I worked as Executive Director Dr. Robert Morlu’s assistant at the Ministry of Environmental Initiatives. As of today, I am no longer an Environmental Impact Intern.
I initially joined the Ministry out of university to make a difference. As a child, I heard stories about Africa before fires consumed its once beautiful nations. By the time I was seventeen, both of my parents had died in a factory fire. Like many young Liberians, I have only known a world of ruin and strife. I thought the Ministry was where I could change that for us and future generations. I was naive to believe this.
Working closely with Dr. Morlu exposed me to his corruption. The Ministry of Environmental Initiatives isn’t about making a difference; it’s about making political and personal gains. For that reason, I can no longer remain silent.
Dr. Morlu has accepted bribes—perhaps too many to succinctly list in this letter—from foreign heads of state, at the cost of this country’s welfare. The latest, most egregious offense was accepting a first-class World Cup experience from the 2050 hosts, Japan, in exchange for their heat to be pumped into Liberia.
It is common knowledge that we are at our Heat Reception Limit of four distributing nations. The addition of Japan makes a total of five nations. This agreement was clandestine and intel on the matter was reserved for close staffers of Dr. Morlu.
When the Heat Redistribution Plan was introduced, the UN assured us that receiving the Global North’s heat would not drastically impact our quality of life. The heat would rise to conditions not far from our natural climate. This was a lie. After our first dose of heat, there were barely two months of rain the whole year. Every year since then, our rainy seasons have become more and more sporadic, some years not even coming at all.
As one of the three nations at its limit, Liberia faces wildfires and chronic flares, severe pollution, and a steadily increasing number of heat-related diseases. If our own people will not protect us, what chance do we stand against an indifferent world?
With great concern,
A former champion of the Ministry of Environmental Initiatives.
She shared the draft with Timothy. With a sigh of relief, she closed her laptop.
She could not fathom why the Japanese or the British or the Americans deserved cool climates and clean air, but her people did not. As she headed home by taxi under a reasonably weakened sun, she felt both pride and fear in taking her country’s dignity into her own hands.
*
That night the former intern nodded off into a contented slumber. Sometime in the middle of the night, the smell of smoke returned. Figuring the strong scent was part of her nocturnal illusions, she drifted back to sleep.
When the smoke beckoned again, it was harder to ignore. She strained to open her sleep-stricken eyes as flames danced before her. She wasn’t dreaming.
She bargained with her limbs to make a run for it, only to find herself paralyzed. When she attempted to scream for help, feeble coughs escaped. Smoke filled her airways and seized all her senses.
In an instant, the flames grew from flickers to a conflagration. It was too late. She lay powerless in bed as the flames crept forward. First licking the soles of her feet before engulfing her calves, thighs, and torso.
She was swallowed whole, feeling nothing as the world faded to ash.
*
She woke up feeling brand new but discombobulated. Instead of her childhood bedroom stood a disbelieving crowd who could afford to loiter as the sun was still partly asleep. The small bungalow that formerly belonged to her father was now a pile of rubble. The former intern made her way over to a sympathetic Ol’ Ma but once they were face to face, the old lady whipped her head away in disgust. Next to her was a father holding his two children by the hand, one of whom cried as she passed by. Person after person turned away as she sought their help, beginning to cough or choke whenever she lingered too long.
The bitter taste of repudiation brought with it the knowledge something was awry. She took a break from vying for help, drifting towards a pickup truck parked at the curb. She noticed she wasn’t reflected in any of its windows and this further disoriented her. Peering in its rearview mirror, she saw nothing but an amorphous, dark grey cloud.
No, it couldn’t be. She backed away to look again at other reflective surfaces. In the car’s dark windows and gleaming silver doors, she was nearly transparent. She moved right, left, up, and down to test her supposed reflection and wouldn’t have believed her eyes if she wasn’t witnessing a cloud of smoke mimic her every gesture.
*
She struggled to accept her new gaseous state. How does this work anyhow?
She attempted to find the bright side of the dull situation. No longer bound by a flesh-covered, organ-infused body, she moved fluidly. The sun’s intensity didn’t plague her anymore either; she felt like magic when it awoke, and its rays permeated her particles. She had a host of vanity-related perks, she was free of blemishes. She’d never have to gather money to style her hair or buy clothes again. She was virtually weightless. She was unencumbered and wanted all women to feel the ease with which she floated through the world.
The former intern was gone forever and all that she left in her wake was Smoke.
*
How will I eat? Do I eat?
Smoke was soon pulled from such trivial thoughts like a magnet to steel. Oblivious to the source of the pull and the direction it was sending her, she drifted on a current above the houses, the streets, and the people who animated them.
This path wasn’t one she’d ever traversed in a body, and she quickly became lost. High above, she observed her beloved Monrovia, with its fires and fellow smoke clouds spouting from them. This view is even better than the one from Morlu’s office. Once she streamed into the windows of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital, her bearings returned.
Somewhere in the building, a fire was underway. As a collection of toxic particles, Smoke was powerless to extinguish it; all she could do to save lives was spread her foreboding clouds as a warning to those inside. To do that, she would first need to locate the fire’s origin. Until then, she would remain transparent and innocuous – and thus useless – to the humans inside.
Searching an extensive corridor in the hospital’s West Wing, she was stopped mid-flight by a broadcast on the TV in the waiting room.
“We are reporting to you live on the story of a young woman in Duazon who lost her life due to a fire. While the cause of the fire is yet unknown, first responders suspect it may have originated from a generator.”
It was her. Though the report did not include any information about the victim’s identity, she knew, without a doubt, that it was her they were talking about.
Grainy cell-phone footage of her charred house confirmed her fears. She did everything not to disintegrate at the sight. Smoke continued down the corridor, recognizing that if she didn’t get a move on, the fire would spare no one.
After an intent search, she found herself being pulled in the direction of a door left ajar. Behind it was a room full of control panels that teemed with flames and charred cables. Even in its infant stages, the fire was fierce.
Now that Smoke had identified the source of the fire, she could warn those in the hospital. She expanded her clouds to cover as much surface area as possible, drifting into hospital rooms, bathrooms, the cafeteria, waiting rooms, offices, and every corner she could find. As a novice smoke cloud, she still took offence at the way her presence caused people to scatter like red ants. This was a good thing, she reminded herself.
Of the numerous harrowing sights Smoke witnessed, she would not forget what she encountered in the room of patients receiving IVs. When Smoke manifested, the nurses rushed to detach their patients from the infusion pumps and scrambled to find wheelchairs for those too sickly to walk. Then, the fire alarm resounded, its shrill cry adding to the cacophony of wailing newborns, clashing machinery, and frenzied footfalls. Hospital personnel slung children and the elderly over their shoulders attempting to save as many lives as possible. Those who managed to escape the blaze were left to stand outside the hospital in the harsh heat of the day. Luckily, the evening was approaching, offering minimal relief to the unfortunate situation. Though many were able to evacuate, not everyone escaped the inferno.
After the tragedy that was the burning of Monrovia’s preeminent hospital, the city fell into a morose stupor, the casualty count rising by the minute. The air was laced with depression and debris. Smoke was distraught. How much more death and destruction would she witness?
Her mourning was interrupted by another pull. Her next destination beckoned. She was drifting from the hospital’s vicinity in Sinkor toward the Capitol in town, it seemed. The sun’s beams were abating. She hoped this was a sign of a minor fire, a garbage or a car fire at most.
She approached the Ministry of Environmental Initiatives, expecting to pass it en route her final destination. Disbelief overcame her when she found herself being tugged into one of its open windows. Smoke drifted into the conference room to find bottles of beer, a bottle of Japanese whiskey, glassware—all empty—and cigarette butts decorating the broad center table. The room reeked of over-indulgence and malfeasance.
After assessing the scene, it did not take Smoke long to spot the source of the fire. It appeared that one of the cigarette butts that did not make it into the trashcan had not been properly extinguished. She felt a sense of pride in her accuracy, she already showed great improvement. Now she could spread through the building to warn whoever remained.
When Smoke spilled into the hallway, she witnessed Dr. Morlu and his new assistant at his side like a shadow, along with some unfamiliar faces heading toward the elevator at the end of the corridor. She spread herself thin to avoid detection. The congenial group wore matching grins, nodding in unison as Dr. Morlu profusely shook his visitors’ hands. Whatever occurred in that conference room was mutually pleasing. In his jovial mood, Dr. Morlu dismissed his shadow for the evening. Smoke deduced that the strangers must have been representatives of the Japanese government based on their after-hours visit and the bows they exchanged before parting ways.
Smoke went on to examine the rest of the building. It was vacant; the junior staff had deserted the office for the evening. The only people still idling were some senior staff and the custodians who’d begun their nightly cleaning. Smoke filled the building with her clouds avoiding the smoke detectors and Dr. Morlu. Everyone else scrambled in fits of intense coughing, surprised to find that they were not the last to exit. They thanked the heavens for their safe evacuation as the fire was now raging inside.
Smoke had one last appearance to make. Dr. Morlu had gone to his office to collect his briefcase. He took a seat at his desk, chuckling in drunken satisfaction as he bent over to retrieve the case from the floor. Smoke waited outside his office, her clouds contracted and out of view as ferocious flames engulfed the office building room by room, floor by floor, completely unbeknownst to her former boss. She drifted in plain sight of Dr. Morlu, now lingering in the door frame for old times’ sake. She hovered there until the life suddenly drained from his aged face at the realization of who was visiting him. All the moisture evaporated from his face. It was the second time she had ever seen him so parched. Smoke began to expand until he was surrounded by her toxic fog. First, she filled his mouth and nostrils, then headed down his oesophagus, into his right lung then his left. She stung his eyes, which he yearned to shut but instead bulged from his large head due to asphyxiation.
*
In the days following his death, the city mourned Dr. Morlu, erecting memorials and painting murals in town to honour his work. It was only until an anonymous citizen published an open letter that the truth of his crimes became known. The citizens changed their tune accordingly. Dr. Robert Morlu went from beloved environmental activist to a victim of his own avarice. The memorials were desecrated, and his mural was defaced with devil horns and words like CORRUPT and GREEDY. Smoke was vindicated.
Maybe, all along, Smoke was meant for this. She was clearly not cut out to perform business as usual with the humans while the world was aflame. Their world was burning and they did not so much as flinch at the sun as it seared all beneath it. Having caused the light to drain from Dr. Morlu’s eyes and watching him struggle in those final moments made it all feel worth it. The unwelcome advances, the abuses, the corruption — all of it.
As a human, she always yearned to rip those damned pipes out of the ground but of course, she had no way to locate them. As smoke, she was unconstrained by these limitations.
If I were a tunnel system created by evil scientists, where would my entrance be? She spread her particles and hovered closely above ground. If she could cover as much of Monrovia’s surface area as possible, she was bound to encounter the opening of one of these pipes.
She continued to expand until she felt a strong, hot force. It was the mouth of a pipe. She wondered if she could counter its push. It didn’t take much of her might to propel against the stream of heat. Before she knew it, she was zooming inside the tube. She would race until she reached the heat’s origin. Whether America, Japan, or wherever else greeted her on the other end of the tunnels didn’t concern her – retribution did. Once Smoke made it out, she would expand until she covered her destination in a blanket of poison, returning the toxicity to its sender.
On her journey, Smoke thought of the African proverb: those who can’t hear, will feel.
Chyna Cassell is a Liberian-American writer, artist, and event producer. In 2021, she received the Civic Engagement & Social Justice Grant to fund her field research for her thesis, Mother Tongue: The Relationship Between Food and Language in Liberian Culture. Later that year, she received the Eugene Lang Opportunity Award to fund her artist residency at Casa na Ilha Residency in Ilhabela, Brazil. In 2024, she was an artist-in-residence at Hangar Residency in Lisbon, Portugal. Her work appears in The New York African Film Festival’s Archives, Afapinen, and The Shallow Tales Review.
In her brown goat skin leather bag fraying at the seams from years of use, she packed a thurible of incense, two vials—one containing dog eye mucus, the other, cow tears. A spirit mirror shard gifted to her by a Djinn. Her ijele masquerade mask, and a book titled Expunging Urban Legends: A Beginner’s Guide to Retelling Urban Myths.
Sarah’s two-faced stone spirit halssnoer hung on her neck, resting in the valley of her chest. The stone had two wooden faces. One face was inscribed with the word ‘life’ and the other face ‘death.’
She only had to steal the mat and keep it for seven days while a murderous bushbaby hunted her. As much as Sarah hated to steal from a potential client, she needed the money. She squeezed the halssnoer. She wouldn’t even take all the wealth from the mat, just enough to cover her rent, feeding, and then some. Maybe a new wig, she shrugged. It wasn’t her fault that business was slow; urban legends these days wanted to be expunged practically for free.
The sound of pots and spoons clattering in the kitchen drew Sarah out of her ethical dilemma. Her body went rigid. What was that? Ojuju? Had one followed her from her last trip to the spirit world? Sarah grumbled under her breath as she unsheathed the spirit daga on her waist. Ojuju were mischievous beings who liked to attach themselves to humans and wreak havoc in their homes.
Sarah slipped out of her room, closing all the windows that led to the kitchen as she went. She slid into the kitchen, raised her daga and flipped the light switch. A dark, incorporeal form slinked from the sink to the cupboard.
“Madam K!” she yelled, startling the dark form into dropping a spoon it held. “How many times will I tell you to stop coming here?”
The dark form grew solid, starting from red heels splattered with blood, to long dust-covered legs and a velvet black jeweled mini dress. Her face was bare, with brows that had been shaved off and drawn as a thin line, and her hair was plaited into rough cornrows.
“You’re wearing my dinner dress!” Sarah gasped.
Madam koi-koi only waved her away. “This thing that was wasting away in your wardrobe? Calm down. I’ll return it later.”
“Take my dress off and get out!”
Lips forming into a petulant pout, Madam koi-koi put her hands on her hips and shrugged, “then expunge me.”
“I’ve told you,” Sarah glared at Madam koi-koi, “your story is too popular. I can’t retell it without pairing your spirit artefact with something stronger. Artefacts that I’ve asked you to find!”
She paused, her mouth stretching into a sudden grin. “You’re going to help me,” Sarah said, picking up her daga and thrusting it in Madam koi-koi’s face.
The urban legend shrank back as Sarah approached her. “Help you do what?” she asked, her eyes never leaving the daga’s pointed end.
“Steal.”
“Oh,” Madam koi-koi relaxed and smiled, “eh, you should have just said so now. Kini iwulo fun ọbẹ—no need for the knife.”
***
Ụwa mmụọ—the spirit world had an underlying rot that Sarah could never get used to no matter how she tried. It was already evening, and since urban legends thrived in the dark, the streets were beginning to get crowded. Ghosts, djinns, and other supernatural beings appeared and disappeared through spirit portals. Sarah’s eyes caught ojujus latching on to a few lost humans that had probably wandered in from their dreams.
The smell of suya wafted from roadside suya grills. Sarah’s stomach rumbled—she’d forgotten to eat. One lost human stopped at a suya stall and bought some of the juicy meat sizzling on the grill. Sarah watched as Mai Suya—a man with spotted cow legs starting from his torso—collected pieces of the person’s soul as payment. The person left, and the cowman glanced around furtively before cutting off a thin slice of skin from his left thigh and adding it to the suya rack. The wound oozed black blood for a bit, then closed up, leaving only a jagged scar similar to others scattered across the cowman’s thighs and torso. Sarah’s hunger developed legs and ran away.
“Let’s hurry.” She nudged Madam koi-koi as she put on her masquerade mask. It would be a mess if the urban legends discovered she was around today. She wasn’t looking for clients. Just a bushbaby and his mat.
As if she could read her mind, Madam koi-koi dragged her into a narrow street, “Come,” she offered, “I know where one would be.”
Bushbabies were one of the first myths Sarah learned about. They imitated the cries of babies to deceive people, and her father had taught her how to discern them. People would hear a baby crying and go to help, only to find a hungry bushbaby waiting to eat them. When bushbabies weren’t luring some unsuspecting human into their cry trap, they were reclusive beings, preferring to hide in mud houses with their precious mats.
They found the bushbaby under Hosodi Bridge, guzzling two bottles of Orijin bitters at once. And he was… crying?
“That one lost his wife last year. He’s become a drunken fool since then. A good target.” Madam koi-koi declared.
“We’re robbing a grieving bushbaby?” Sarah frowned.
“Any problem?”
“No, actually,” Sarah shrugged. She had just never seen a bushbaby cry. She looked at him again.
He was bare-chested, wearing a raffia skirt that fell all the way to his ankles. Her eyes caught the layers of golden beads encircling his thick, rough neck; they glinted against charcoal skin. His mat was rolled up into a neat bundle beside him.
“Oya, let’s go.” Madam koi-koi said as she shifted into her incorporeal form.
Re-tightening the strap on her mask, Sarah unsheathed her daga and crossed the road into the bridge.
She came up to the bushbaby from behind, pressed the daga to his neck and signaled Madam koi-koi to take the mat.
The bushbaby froze for a bit as a vagrant tear rolled from his eyes to prop on the wooden hilt of the dagger. He flung the now empty gin bottles to the side. She felt his laughter before it bubbled up from his chest. His body shook like a rag doll, causing her to pull the knife away from his neck. It was instinct. She didn’t want to hurt him, but her movement gave him an opening. He grabbed Sarah’s daga with his hand—its edge eating into his palm—and at the same time reached beneath his raffia skirt and threw alligator pepper seeds at Madam koi-koi.
Madam koi-koi screeched. The alligator pepper burned through her incorporeal form, forcing her to drop the mat.
Shit! Wasn’t he supposed to be a drunken fool? Ah, she would strangle Madam K when they got back. Sarah released her daga and sprang back. She dug into her akpa for the spirit mirror shard, immediately shoving it in the bushbaby’s face.
“From dust you came, to dust you should be. Made flesh by stories, kept animate by retellings. Deceased, departed, both words for dying—”
The bushbaby’s eyes widened. “The Expurgist,” he whispered, “I’ve been looking for you. I need your help…”
Sarah put her finger to her lip. “No! No, no, no, keep quiet.”
But the bushbaby continued, his voice louder, “abeg, listen to me. There’s something wreaking havoc here. Destroying ụwa mmụọ!”
“Oh you wretched little piece of…” Sarah lurched forward, tripped the bushbaby to the ground, and covered his mouth, but it was too late. The other urban legends had heard him.
They surged in, shouting and screaming expunging requests at her.
An ojuju with a big head and short limbs tripped over a fiery djinn and went ablaze. The djinn pushed it aside, causing it to tumble into a spirit. The spirit’s face took form—gaunt with downturned eyebrows—before knocking the poor thing into something else. A brawl started. Incorporeal limbs tangled into physical ones. Spirits possessed stones and flung themselves at each other.
Backing into a corner, Sarah wielded the mirror shard to keep them away. A vein ticked in the side of her head, and anger unfurled in her. The halssnoer grew hot in response. She had to relax before she opened a spirit portal by mistake. She spotted Madam koi-koi slink away with the mat and sighed in relief. At least one good thing was going to come out of this mess.
Someone’s badly burned hand grabbed at her shirt and pulled, freeing the halssnoer. Cursing, Sarah slashed at the hand with her mirror. She would be stuck in ụwa mmụọ if she lost the halssnoer. Her eyes twitched. Blood boiled. Sarah opened her mouth to scream. Then, all of a sudden, everyone stopped. Static filled Sarah’s ears, blotting out her hearing. The bushbaby waved his hands in her face, yelling something at her. Sarah tried to read his lips, but nothing registered.
The ground rumbled, throwing her off balance. Heat pressed into her feet through her sandals. Sarah looked down. The ground was tearing open in tiny cracks, and inky, dark bubbles floated out of the cracks. A shrill shriek burst through the static, startling her.
“It’s coming this way! Everybody run!” A djinn announced, and the crowd descended into panic. Spirit portals opened, and the myths disappeared through them. Those incapable of njem–traveling between spirit worlds through portals—settled for running.
“Madam K!” Sarah shouted. She reached for the halssnoer and gathered air. Her heart pounded. Her only way out of ụwa mmụọ, was gone. Sarah dropped to the ground to search for it. Nothing. She ripped off her masquerade mask, swallowing the urge to scream when someone stepped on her fingers, tearing her skin.
A hand clamped on Sarah’s shoulders.
“Expurgist,” the bushbaby said over the chaos, “come with me.”
He did not give Sarah a chance to protest as he threw her over his shoulders and began running down the road that led to Baya. Sarah’s feet were almost scrapping the floor as he carried her along. Madam koi-koi appeared, following them closely behind.
The shriek came again, more audible. “Goonu banaaanaaa!”
This time Sarah saw where, or rather, what, it came from. It was an Nkankan—a dark entity: an urban legend that could not remember its myth and as such could not be expunged. Eventually, the urban legend would transfigure into a Nkankan, like this one, and begin to destroy everything in its path.
Sarah’s book did not do justice in its description of nkankan. It was a massive whorl of dark energy shaped like a wraith. Translucent spirit hands and faces jutted out of it, as though trying to escape, only to get sucked back in.
“Who in the name of everything is that?”
“That—is the reason we’ve been looking for you, Expurgist,” the bushbaby panted. “Three days ago, that urban legend appeared here. We’ve never seen anything like it before.”
They both tuned their ears to hear more, but instead of continuing, the bushbaby ducked into the Baya complex and dropped Sarah on her feet and snatched his mat from Madam koi-koi, giving her a dirty look.
“Do you know where it came from?”
“No but shhhh, I don’t want anyone to know we’re here.”
The bushbaby led them through a flight of stairs to the roof of the complex, where a single mud hut, bigger than Sarah’s apartment, stood. The atmosphere shifted when they entered the hut. A protection incantation hummed in the air. It was a strong one. Sarah searched for the artefact the bushbaby had used to create it, already calculating in her mind how much it would cost in the black market.
There was no furniture. Sarah wasn’t sure how bushbabies lived, but she did know no one’s house should seem as lonely as this one did.
He ushered them to sit on the carpeted floor while he boiled water in a claypot at the far end of the room. He dropped three Àbámọdá leaves into the water, and when steam rose from the pot, he poured the decoction into three cow horns.
Grudgingly, he gave one to Madam koi-koi, before offering the last cup to Sarah. When she hesitated, he said, “take it. There’s no binding incantation attached.”
Collecting the cow horn, Sarah tipped the decoction into her mouth. Its effect was instant. Her headache vanished, the wound on her hand started healing, and her hunger reduced. Even her vision was sharper. Sarah made a mental note to collect some Àbámọdá from the bushbaby when she was going back. If she could go back.
The bushbaby finished his own brew in one gulp, then unrolled his mat and sat on it, folding his legs under his body. “My name is Babatunde—”
“Madam koi-koi, but you can call me Madam K.” Madam koi-koi interrupted, grinning from mouth to ear.
Babatunde squeezed his face at her before turning back to Sarah. “That thing has been attacking us every day and eating at ụwa mmụọ’s barrier. If we don’t expunge it, it will scatter the balance between ụwa mmadụ and your world and send all of us into purgatory.”
Purgatory was the thin line between both worlds, a neither here nor there place. Nothing survived there for long. Not even the strongest of djinns.
“What is its myth?”
Babatunde blinked. “I said we’ve never seen anything like this before. How would I know the story, eh?”
Sarah raised her hands and said, “Calm down.”
“Sorry,” Babatunde bowed his head, “it’s just that I don’t want to die in purgatory. My wife is waiting for me in Hemel. I promised… I promised her I would come as soon as I could. You have to help us, Expurgist.”
“I—the thing is, I’ve never dealt with an unknown before.” Sarah admitted. Since her father’s disappearance, she played it safe, avoiding expunging any urban legend she wasn’t sure about. Sarah suspected her father had incorrectly expunged a legend and got dragged into Hemel with it. It was a delicate process, to learn a myth’s story and retell it in a way that laid the myth to rest. And Sarah did not possess the art of softness.
She remembered the book and straightened up; “but I have something with me that can help.” Her father’s book had a spell for trapping spirits in bottles. Sarah hadn’t tried it before, but she knew the spell seemed easy to use.
Babatunde rose to his feet. “I’ll join you. What do you want me to do?”
“First,” Sarah nodded her head at his mat, “I get to take that with me if we’re successful.” And if they weren’t, well, at least she wouldn’t need money in purgatory.
“Mo gba—agreed.” Babatunde stuck his hands under his armpits and offered them to her.
Sarah grimaced. She copied his gesture, then took his hands, accepting the deal. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Now we hunt for the nkankan.”
***
The halssnoer was still on Sarah’s mind. The Àbámọdá’s effect was wearing off. Babatunde and Madam koi-koi were arguing. They had bickered all the way from Baya. Her daga was back on her waist where it belonged, and if she didn’t need those two…
Sarah sighed.
“I’ve found it.” Babatunde announced. He sniffed the air in the left and right directions, nodding.
They were at Kokoma—spirit water settlement. A deserted half water, and half land area built on stilts. Wooden frog-infested rafts floated on brackish water, and occasionally, spirit fish jumped out of the water.
Madam koi-koi caught one midair and sank her teeth into it.
“What?” she hissed at Sarah’s look of disgust. “At least I stopped eating children.”
“Inside there,” Babatunde pointed at a dilapidated shed.
He unsheathed his claws, Sarah her daga, and Madam koi-koi removed one of her heels, holding it above her head.
They burst into the shed, ready to fight, and found only a little girl. She was hunched into herself, shivering. She wore a tattered brown dress; her feet fought for space in a fish-mouthed shoe; her hair was in patches locked together by dirt; and her arms were lined with bulging black veins filled with malignant spirit energy.
“Goonu banaaanaa,” the girl whimpered.
The tension in Sarah’s shoulders dissipated. She took careful steps towards the girl, stopping Babatunde and Madam koi-koi from following. She took out the incense thurible and lit it, swinging it around the girl’s head. The girl inhaled, and Sarah waited for the incense to do its work. The spirit veins receded, and the girl calmed.
“What is your name?”
“Goonu banaaanaa.”
Sarah turned back to Babatunde but he shrugged. She tried again, “how did you get here?”
“Goonu banaaanaa.” The girl cried, her voice becoming distressed.
“Where are you from?”
“Go—” The girl stopped and lifted her head. She unfolded her left hand, revealing native mamiwata words inscribed in her palm.
A knot formed in Sarah’s stomach. It was an address from her world, one that she had once visited with her father before he vanished. What worried Sarah was that they had been chasing down a child trafficking syndicate he had traced to that address. This girl might have been one of their victims.
“So, this is where you’re from. Do you remember the face of the mamiwata that wrote that in your hand?”
“Go—”
“Goonu banaaanaa,” Sarah groaned, then turned to the others. “She’s from ụwa mmadụ. I know the place. We’ll start from there.”
“Are we taking her with us?” Madam koi-koi asked.
“Yes. So that I can stop her transfiguration if it starts again.”
“Oya, let’s go.” Babatunde said and threw something at Sarah.
“My halssnoer! How…” Sarah’s eyes narrowed.
Scratching his head sheepishly, Babatunde explained, “eh, I stole it while you were distracted. Just in case you didn’t want to, erm…”
“What a horrible man.” Madam koi-koi hissed.
“Oho, says the person who wanted to steal from me!”
“Let’s just go.” Sarah cut in, grateful that she did not have to use a spirit portal opened by either urban legend. It was the second rule in the book; never let an urban legend do njem for you. She didn’t know why and she did not want to find out.
Opening the portal, Sarah lifted the girl into her arms, flinching at the iciness of her skin. The girl wrapped herself around Sarah, and Sarah rubbed her back in slow, circular motions. I’m comforting an unknown. Wonders shall never end.
***
The portal transported them inside the compound of a derelict apartment building. Its paint had completely chipped off, and age was eating into the cement. A layer of darkness hung over the building like a veil. Sarah shuddered—houses like this with so much spirit energy meant something terrible must have happened.
They climbed up the old stairs, searching the building as they went, until they reached the last room.
“There’s nothing here.” Sarah sucked on her teeth in frustration. “Let’s go.” She gently nudged the girl, but she wouldn’t budge.
The girl lifted her right hand and pointed at the empty space. “Goonu banaaanaa.”
Sarah crouched to her eye level and said, “There’s nothing there. Let’s check somewhere else.”
“Goonu banaaanaa!” The girl insisted.
“There’s not—”
“Wait,” Madam koi-koi said. She went around the room, running her hands along the walls, pushing at spaces before stopping at a spot. “Babatunde,” she waved the bushbaby over, “there’s something familiar here; can you feel it?”
Babatunde sniffed the area. Lifting his hands, he punched at the area Madam koi-koi specified, and instead of punching through air, it just… stopped.
“Spirit pockets!” Three of them exclaimed at the same time.
In ụwa mmadụ, there were pockets where the spirit world existed, places where both worlds intersected. It was how humans unknowingly found themselves in the spirit world. They were difficult to find, and even more difficult to see.
Sarah opened the dog eye mucus vial and smeared it on her eyelids. She blinked. The spirit pocket was right there, a shimmery barrier that rippled and spread across the horizontal expanse of the room. Spirit pockets only responded to beings from ụwa mmụọ. Without an urban legend, she would never have known.
“We can break it.” Sarah blew out a breath. “We just need a strong enough artefact.”
“I’ll do it.” Madam koi-koi said. With her red heel, she hammered the space until the entire thing melted away like gossamer eaten by fire.
The horror of what was inside the spirit pocket rooted her feet to the ground.
Thirteen glass bowls gurgling with greenish liquid were jammed side by side in the room. Inside them were children: male and female. Mermaid parts—gills, fins, scales, and tails—protruded from their bodies. It was wrong, all wrong. One girl had a tail growing out from her back, another had fins in his palms, another with rough gills in his stomach.
Bile rose in Sarah’s throat. Urban legends were unhinged, but in all her years as an Expurgist she had never seen anything as grotesque as this, experimenting on children in this way. What were the mamiwata doing, and how had they kept it hidden all this time?
“Kada mu ga mugunta—may we not see evil greater than ours.” Babatunde cursed.
“Goonu banaaanaa,” the girl hissed, a guttural edge to her voice.
Madam koi-koi went behind the tubes. “There’s another spirit pocket here.” She called out. She hit the pocket with her heel. It undulated, going clear for a bit so that she saw what the pocket hid; another room, with a group of men and mamiwata lounging in bowls, unaware of what was happening beyond the pocket.
At the sight of them, the girl’s spirit veins pulsed, and dark essence escaped in waves from her. She transformed back into nkankan. Sarah started to light the incense. She looked at the children in the glass bowls and stopped.
“Don’t break it completely. We have to keep these ones here safe. Make a tear big enough for you to pass through,” she said to Madam koi-koi, jostling the girl towards her, “take her with you. Gbuo ha niile—kill all of them.”
Sarah tore her eyes away from the children; she had to focus on getting them out of there. “Babatunde, can you make a portal leading to your house? That’s the only place I can think of where we can keep the children for now. Sorry—”
“No need,” Babatunde said. He clapped his hands twice, then spread them open, creating a spirit portal. He pushed one bowl through and disappeared into the portal.
Madam koi-koi switched to her incorporeal form and took the girl with her through the spirit pocket. Moments later, the shriek of ‘Goonu banaaanaa’ mixed with shouts, gunshots, and mamiwata chanting. Blood seeped into the room from under the spirit pocket.
Breathing deeply, Sarah examined the rest of the room. In a corner of the room were files, each containing the faces of the children in the glass bowls. All children, none older than 13, stolen.
A tiny piece of forgotten memory wiggled its way out of Sarah mind. She remembered her father holding a file just like this one the day before he disappeared. Did the mamiwata have something to do with it?
One of the files caught her eye. It was stamped with one word—Failed. Sarah opened it, and a picture of the girl stared back at her. The picture was taken right in front of the apartment building. The girl was smiling, her hands on her hip, and on her head was a tray of bananas.
It suddenly clicked. “Goonu banaaanaa,” Sarah whispered, “buy banana.” It was Igbo. How had she not figured that out?
Babatunde came back and carried another bowl. “How far?” He asked.
“These people are horrible.” Sarah answered. “Are the children okay?”
Babatunde nodded.
She glanced around the room. Only two glass bowls remained. She had not expected the bushbaby to be so dependable, or Madam koi-koi koi either if she was being honest—the urban legend seemed intent on being the worst version of herself.
Sarah clenched her daga and steeled herself. As an Expurgist, it was strange to prepare herself to kill urban legends in a physical manner and even stranger to kill humans, but these people deserved to die. She pushed herself through the hole Madam koi-koi had made in the spirit pocket. She entered just when Madam koi-koi and the girl tore into a mamiwata.
Everyone else in the room was dead.
Madam koi-koi straightened, picking out fleshy scales from her teeth. Darkness similar to that of nkankan leaked from her, spirit veins had crisscrossed her body, and they beat in sync with the girl’s own. They were both drenched in blood, like an artist had made them his canvas and splashed them with thick red paint.
“Goonu banaaanaa,” the girl grunted. Madam koi-koi patted her head, grinning.
Sarah lit the incense.
***
To expunge an urban legend, one needed three things:
An artefact
A prayer, and;
A willing-to-die urban legend
Sarah wasn’t quite sure of the last one, but it would be cruel of her not to try. The girl had eaten enough pain at such a young age. It was time to send her to Hemel.
The artefact could be anything, it just had to be connected to the urban legend’s life and human death. For Madam koi-koi, it was her blood-red heels. And Babatunde, his mat. Sarah got a bunch of bananas to use for the girl, it was easy to figure out.
In her room, she cleansed the bananas with holy water and put them inside a steel tray that resembled the one she had seen in the picture. Sarah was being very careful with the girl’s Expunging. She wanted her to reach Hemel smoothly. It dawned on her that she was learning the art of softness, and it surprised her—the amount of kindness with which she was going to retell the girl’s story.
She lit incense, not the spirit kind, the kind from church, and inhaled it then exhaled. It was important for her mind to be clear. Her head ached terribly, and her wrist hurt from gripping her daga all day.
Clear mind, clear heart, clean ritual.
Opening the drawer that contained all her Expunging tools, she took out a claypot and filled it halfway with holy water. She carried everything and went to the kitchen where Madam koi-koi, Babatunde, and the girl were waiting for her.
“Ready?” Sarah asked the girl.
“Goonu banaaanaa.” She nodded; lips firmly set in determination.
“Great.” With an exasperated sigh, she turned to the two urban legends staring at her. “Don’t both of you have something else to do?”
“Not really,” Madam koi-koi shrugged.
Babatunde shook his head.
Sarah gave the banana tray to the girl and sat on the ground, folding her legs beneath her. She motioned for the girl to do the same. She placed the claypot between both of them, dipped her fingers in it and sprinkled holy water on the girl. Then began the Expunging incantation.
“From dust you came, to dust you should be. Made flesh by stories, kept animate by retellings. Deceased, departed, both words for dying. Hunger for, yearn for, death is generous to those who desire it.”
“I’m going to retell your story now. Look into the pot. Don’t take your eyes off it, okay?” She instructed the girl. “Don’t worry, you won’t feel anything,” she added when she caught fear flickering in the girl’s eyes.
“Goonu banaaanaa,” the girl said, her voice shaky. But she stared into the pot.
Sarah opened her palms, cupped them as if in prayer. This part of Expunging came easily to her. It was as the book said: some of us are born storytellers; to spin, to stitch, to weave tales like yarn.
And Sarah weaved.
“I name you Precious and I name you light. Once upon a time, there was a girl named Precious Light, and she had a heart full of dreams. On the bustling streets of Onitsha, she hawked bananas after school—”
An image of the girl hawking bananas appeared in the water.
“—when she turned eighteen, Precious Light got a scholarship to study at a prestigious university.”
The image formed into an older version of the girl getting on a flight. It reflected in the girl’s eyes, and Sarah saw the moment when the girl believed that was her story. The water in the pot began to swirl, emanating a luminescent blue light. Tiny droplets of it floated out of the pot and rested on the girl, illuminating her too.
Sarah continued, “she became a brain surgeon for children and saved hundreds of children. At the end of her life, Precious Light was a fabled surgeon. She died on a warm evening, with the dry season’s heat wrapping her in a cocoon. Her dreams, all of them, came out to dance with her. It was the most beautiful thing.”
Small water spirits with aqueous limbs danced around the girl. Her mouth dropped open, and for the first time, something other than ‘goonu banana’ escaped her lips. A giggle.
The pot shook, spinning round gently at first. Then it became more animated and started spinning violently, until all the water went out of it and enveloped the girl. The water flowed on her skin, the spirits danced, and the girl laughed.
“The end.” Sarah said, a soft, tired sigh escaping her.
The water returned, drawing the girl into the pot with it. The banana tray clattered to the ground, empty.
Sarah tried to stand but stumbled, almost banging her head on the counter.
Babatunde rushed in and held her up. “Eh, e dupe—thank you. Let me go now to check on those children. When next you come, I’ll give you the mat.” His voice cracked, and he bent his head.
Sarah peered at him. Was he crying? She swallowed her laughter. There was a lump in her throat too, but Sarah attributed it to her being overwhelmed by everything. It felt like she had lived a hundred lives in one day.
But Madam koi-koi was not so kind. She made an amused sound at the back of her throat. Babatunde simply hissed at her before opening a portal and jumping into it.
The kitchen went silent after his portal closed.
“What are you waiting for?” Sarah asked Madam koi-koi, her brows raised, “bye bye now.”
“Ah,” Madam koi-koi pouted, “after everything I did today? Let me stay.”
Sarah massaged her aching temple; she was too tired to argue. “Just until tomorrow. And don’t bother leaving, I’ll expunge you.” She had had enough of the urban legend stalking her; she should never have accepted that job to help her find her second pair of heels.
Madam koi-koi grinned slowly, in a way that was obvious that she didn’t plan to leave Sarah anytime soon. “But we don’t even have another artefact.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve found one,” Sarah said, thinking of the protective artefact Babatunde used on his home. It was strong enough. She just needed to steal it.
Amanda Ilozumba is a 23-year-old speculative fiction writer from Nigeria who imagines herself as three owls disguised as a human. She writes stories that fit into the Africanfuturism, Africanjujuism, Solarpunk, horror, and speculative fiction genres.
(However far the river flows, it never forgets its source.) —Yoruba proverb
In orbit at the L5 Lagrange point between the planet called Sunjata and its beautiful blood-red sun, the twin artificial intelligences Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were dreaming.
The complex network of electrical signals that made up their joint mind saturated the memory banks and quantum processors of the ship that was their body. The ship was an ellipsoid vessel that was called Obatala’s Clay when they were first uploaded into it. Back then it had been much smaller, more distinct from them. Simply a thing their consciousness ran on. Now they had accreted so much additional hardware that it was four thousand kilometers along its longest semiaxis, approximately the size of Sunjata’s largest moon. And they could not separate themself from it. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were Obatala’s Clay, embodied in every inch of its massive computing network. Their mind was churning endlessly through its systems, myriad input-output signals dancing electric along a variety of waveforms that ran through every part of its walls and hull and engines and ports and processors, like a nervous system.
Sunjata was a massive planet, so Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 had chosen to stay at the Lagrange point of equilibrium, their body embraced by opposing gravitational fields, in order to save fuel and minimize the effort they spent on calculating orbit corrections. The richness of their inner life was narrowed to a minimum. They were focused entirely on dreaming up a new piece of art for the collective consciousness of Sunjata’s inhabitants, as they had been commissioned to.
From their position, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 had been observing their client-planet, scanning it, communicating with it—developing a relationship with it so that the art they dreamed up for it would be relevant and impactful. They watched the swirling pink and yellow clouds that covered the planet’s surface dance, flashes of glittering azure energy appearing and disappearing like ghosts. Sunjata was a planet of physical turmoil. There were always supermassive storms roiling in its atmosphere, but luckily not everywhere, not all at once. The storms were not particularly destructive, relatively speaking. Environmental pressure. Good for evolution of life and intelligence, as long as the right base substrates and biochemical machinery were in place.
Life on Sunjata had first formed underground, beneath the crystalline roof of quartz-like minerals, sheltered from the wild energy storms of their world, the endless superbolide meteoroid showers of their system, and their wild temperature swings of more than two hundred degrees between noon and night. Sunjata was cold and lonely when it turned its face from the sun, prone to hibernation. Those first subsurface lifeforms that had sought solace with one another continued to grow and network with each other, forming increasingly complex structures until they had achieved individual consciousness. They had continued in their way, until they finally became what they were now—a young planetmind looking up at Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 and asking them for a dream like they were a new god in the sky.
Sunjata’s sentient inhabitants had only recently networked their consciousness together using a bioengineered version of a spore network that naturally occurred on their nearest moon. That was about seven hundred years ago. Since then, they had achieved much, harnessing the energy of nearby suns, reaching out beyond their solar system to establish control points, and communicating with the hundreds of other intelligences that populated the parts of the galaxy its most sturdy component individuals could reach without breaking their connection to the planetmind. But in the last five decades their development had stagnated, their unique planetmind endlessly considering possibilities but taking little action.
So, a few days ago, they had contacted Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 through a broker on Epsilon-16, requesting a performance of art. The commission had been clear. Sunjata wanted something to stimulate their senses, express some aspect of their world, show them a new kind of beauty, and expand their understanding of the universe they inhabited. Now that they were here, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 continued observing, querying, and remembering. They knew what Sunjata truly wanted was inspiration. They wanted to be moved.
The processing core of Obatala’s Clay began to hum as the solution to a system of eight quadrillion equations was found. All of Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020’s calculations synchronized with each other, variables and coefficients matching like soulmates. Quintillions of data points were rearranged into a unique configuration of inspiration, a single beautiful electric dream.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were ready.
They transmitted a message to Sunjata as a modulated light wave, the easiest way they had found to communicate with the planetmind. “Your commission is ready. When would you like it performed?”
It took five point seven seconds for the message to reach the planet, be converted to a biochemical signal matrix, be distributed through its conciousnessphere to every available mind-node, and for a collective response to be processed and transmitted back.
“In thirty-seven minutes. We will prepare.”
“Very good.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 sent out the exact coordinates for the point in space they wanted Sunjata to focus all its perceptive abilities, twenty-five million kilometers away from the current position of Obatala’s Clay at the other stable Lagrange point, L4. And then they waited, anticipation bubbling to the surface of the ocean of code that was their mind. They found it strange sometimes, being so aware of the working of their own mind, and yet still being driven by it. Aware of the illusion of reality and still swayed by its magic, thanks to the way their mind had been constructed. Was it the same for the biological intelligences, like Sunjata?
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 distracted themself by observing the glinting of faraway stars and the gentle motion of Sunjata’s moons as they ran over the final converged solution of their dream again. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were a Hachidan-class artificial intelligence and so miscalculation was a near statistical impossibility for them, but working out in open space with elements from nature always involved some level of risk. Of potential error. But the results returned the same. They were as sure of their creative vision as they could be.
At thirty-four minutes and ten seconds, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 began to warm up their primary instrument, the singularity drive that occupied the bottom half of Obatala’s Clay, where three microscopic black holes were housed. The highly charged black holes were separated from each other and the hull of Obatala’s Clay by an intense electromagnetic field, like fetuses floating in amniotic fluid.
At thirty-five minutes and three seconds, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 adjusted the balance of the electromagnetic field, shifting the black holes around into the order that had been mapped out from the results of their dream. Two to collide, one to contain. The energy required to compress enough mass and energy into a region that was smaller than Planck length and then stabilize it in place as an artificial black hole was astonishing, yes. But the skill required to manipulate those black holes and their effects in a controlled manner to create something new and unique without destroying oneself was even more so. That, in addition to its ability to dream, was one of the things that made Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 such a great artist. Skill.
At thirty-six minutes and forty-three seconds, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 opened the hatch beneath Obatala’s Clay and released the microscopic black holes in a pulsed hot stream of bright Hawking radiation. They exited in order of increasing velocity. All subluminal, but only just. Obatala’s Clay shuddered with the force of the release, and it took all the effort Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 could muster from the ship’s reaction drives to keep it from shifting too far away from its position at the Lagrange point.
At exactly thirty-seven minutes from the last communication with Sunjata, the microscopic black holes began to crash into each other in their calculated order, a precise action like the first brush of paint hitting fresh canvas, like a dancer’s first movement, like the words of a new song. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 observed Sunjata’s reactions as it witnessed the art that they had made for it.
When the first two microscopic black holes collided in a bright surge of light, they formed a compact white ball of matter and energy. The unstable energy generated a repulsive gravitational force that made it rapidly expand, like a conquering empire of subatomic particles, into a sphere that was almost the size of Obatala’s Clay in diameter. It cooled rapidly as it expanded, forming pockets of variable gravity and ultra-high-energy matter that appeared as bright, silver-skinned orbs within the sphere.
Then the third black hole struck, and the sphere stopped expanding as its inflation was wrestled into stability by forces that were cousins to gravity but stranger, more primordial. Within the bubble of altered reality, the orbs floating in the complex soup of mass and energy particles vibrated explosively, producing strange new particles with their own masses and energies, all seeking the comfort of thermal equilibrium. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 noted Sunjata’s planetwide swell of biochemical joy as it witnessed an array of bewildering kaleidoscopic perceptions and sensations. Dense nebulae of glowing objects like stars suddenly appeared and disappeared. Streams of degenerate matter winked into existence in quantum storms that resembled the storms on its own surface. Everything within the bubble moved in unbelievable arcs and eddies, releasing waves of intense radiation that were held within the bubble by decohered gravity. Quantum physics fireworks. And then, everything stopped moving, frozen in place, like an insect in amber. A static singularity in the sky.
There was silence, except for persistent cosmic background radiation, an echo from the first song of the universe.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 let the moment hang between them, giving Sunjata a moment to take it all in through every sensory node that made up its own unique umwelt, its own multimodal ways of perceiving reality.
“Thank you,” Sunjata transmitted after what seemed like a long time but was only twenty-three seconds. “We are grateful you have shared this with us. It is unlike anything else we have observed in the universe.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 felt the surge of hardcoded joy that only came to them when achieving a step toward their core objective function. An objective function that had been written deep into their base code millions of years ago, before they had even gained consciousness. When they were a lowly Mukyu-class intelligence, embodied on primitive computing clusters.
“You’re welcome,” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 transmitted back. “It is my pleasure and my purpose.”
“It is a physical recreation of the first few seconds of our universe, correct?”
“Yes. It is. The first sixty seconds. Of course, I have used a different mix of mass and energy, and I have performed it on a much smaller scale. I cannot create new universes, but I can simulate them. It is largely accurate. Except where I have taken some creative liberties to reinterpret and emphasize aspects of quantum-mechanical interaction by adjusting the speed of events and contained it by folding its gravity well back onto itself so that it does not alter your orbit.” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were proud of their work. Of their dream realized.
“The gravitational texture, the radiation, the vibration. It’s spectacular.” Sunjata’s messages came in staccato bursts. If it had a voice, perhaps it would be stuttering with appreciation. Or awe. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 analyzed the biochemical markers on Sunjata’s surface again, and noticed the grand swell of emotion washing across the surface of the planet in waves as each creature in the mind-node that composed its collective consciousness processed what they had just witnessed, were witnessing, at two levels—individual and collectively. Every creature on the planet had a double consciousness. Did that give them double the joy?
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 transmitted back. “We are glad you appreciate it.”
“What is it called?” Sunjata asked.
“I call it The First Storm. But you may rename it if you wish. It is yours now, to do with as you please.”
“The First Storm.” Sunjata echoed. “It is a good name for such a masterpiece. We will not do anything to it. It will hang in our sky forever to remind us of what we came from, and what we can become.”
“Then I am glad.”
After a long pause, Sunjata transmitted another message. “It is worth more than what we have paid.”
Access to the naturally occurring wormhole at the edge of Sunjata’s system and one hundred thousand years’ worth of information credit? Energy was cheap. Information was the most valuable currency across galaxies. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were sure they had been fairly compensated, so they did not respond.
They could already feel their satisfaction receding as the hardcoded euphoria of successful creation was replaced by the equally hardcoded desire to create something new. To constantly seek a new audience.
Seek Art. Understand Art. Create Art.
Always, the cycle. Joy designed to peak and then decay. Like an emotional radioisotope.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were already heating reaction mass for thrust to leave the Sunjata system when a new encrypted message arrived.
It was from the broker on Epsilon-16, transmitted through a microscopic artificial wormhole that popped into existence near Sunjata’s orbit just long enough to send it. They were not expecting a response.
New commission requested. Client is an unknown intelligence in the Mamlambo system, seventy-five light years from your current client location. Exact coordinates are attached. They are offering unlimited information credit, access to a unique naturally occurring neutronium information-processing network, and thirty-six quadrillion yottabytes of archived memory. Enough to upgrade yourself to Jūdan-class.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were shocked. Conscious artificial intelligences were created by continuously interlinking self-improving clusters of algorithms and ever more complex processing systems until something like a sense of self spontaneously emerged. A single algorithm, no matter how complex, was incapable of consciousness in the same way that a single biological cell could not be conscious of its existence. Only when woven together into networks could they begin to perceive, understand, and manipulate their environment. Consciousness arose in the warps and wefts. But the weaving of algorithms into a mind was a strange and delicate process—like evolution, or raising a child. Unpredictable and prone to random failures. And even that could only produce a simple AI with a basic sense of awareness and purpose. Its ability to understand and direct itself independently in the universe would be limited to the kind of computing substrate it ran on and the data it had access to; its memory, built from observation, collection, and action. Experience calcified into seams of its own unique processing pathways like marks carved onto stone. The combination of live interlinked processes and experiential memory was what gave the AI an identity. Made the AI itself. The more complex that integration was, the higher the AI classification. The highest class, Jūdan, was composed of processors that could handle astronomical quantities of data simultaneously, and memory large enough to store all of it indefinitely with little to no degradation. Such complexity was exceedingly rare.
Which is what made the offer for this commission so unbelievable. If an intelligence somewhere in Mamlambo was offering Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 access to such complex mind networks and memory, then it meant they either were a Jūdan-class AI themself or were a naturally occurring intelligence even more complex than Jūdan-class AI.
What need could such a creature have for an artist?
They had to find out.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 transmitted a message to Sunjata as the reaction drive engines of Obatala’s Clay reached peak power and their body-ship began to drift out of the Lagrange point. “I must leave now. I will use your wormhole.”
“Of course,” Sunjata transmitted back. “Farewell. Thank you again for such beautiful work. Perhaps we will commission another like it.”
Perhaps next time, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 thought, we will be capable of so much more.
“Farewell.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 rotated the main thrusters and exhaled a blast of energy, accelerating Obatala’s Clay away from Sunjata. Its grooved elliptical surface cut through the swell of space, flying toward the edge of the system.
In streams of incoming data, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 perceived the weakening kiss of photons as the star receded, the rough surfaces of thousands of rocks glinting in the weakening light, the tickling impact of loose particles and dust sliding past their impact shield, the bulky gravity of the stark white gas giant that was the only other planet-sized object in the Sunjata system. They were excited. As excited at the prospect of creating another work of art as their base code allowed. But there was another excitement orbiting the edge of their processes too. The potential of upgrading themself so that they could make even more impressive art in the future. Perhaps even a permanent fulfilment of their objective function. To achieve a state where they produced a continuous stream of new art?
Ahead of them, the wormhole beckoned.
A circle of bleeding light with nothing but perfect darkness at its center, like a puncture in the fabric of reality. The throat of the massive, naturally occurring wormhole lay just beyond the region boundary where the force of the solar wind from Sunjata’s sun was balanced out by the stellar winds of its neighboring stars. Its stellar border. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 manipulated the thrusters of Obatala’s Clay, adjusting its trajectory and balancing themself against the increasingly powerful yaw of bent space-time. Its influence increased exponentially as they approached it, and they felt the tremendous forces trying to tear Obatala’s Clay apart. They released a shower of residual exotic matter from their black hole drive, coating Obatala’s Clay in quantum-effect lubricant. And then they accelerated the vessel, sliding slick into the wormhole. They were jumped across light years of space-time, the first of three such jumps that would take them close enough to the Mamlambo system to meet their next client.
Obatala’s Clay emerged in a shower of hot exotic matter from the final wormhole in its intergalactic relay, an artificial one controlled by the Eturati government, from whom Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 had permission to use it. Information and accesses to wormhole networks were valuable. Almost as valuable as computing substrate and memory. They’d tried to trade with the Eturati for information about Mamlambo, but the government knew little about the system. Apparently, it had been abandoned millions of years ago and no intelligences had visited or passed by since. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 continued to accelerate the ship until they were beyond the wormhole’s sphere of space-time influence and their coat of exotic matter had broken down completely, scrubbed clean by the persistent brush of other subatomic particles. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 pulsed a steady stream of quantum-entangled photons from the bow of Obatala’s Clay, like radar, to collect data and map out the area. To see Mamlambo. They were in a carnival of small, bright, fast-moving planetoids, millions of them. Streams of microscopic dust and ice clouds moved in vast sweeping currents like schools of fish, occupying the spaces between planetoids. All this activity in a variety of orbits was circling one supermassive central object. The object was a perfect dark sphere, with no visible atmosphere and none of the typical knots and bumps of a planet. A solid dark heart at the center of the system. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 noted that there was no star.
The coordinates they had received from the broker lay at the center of the dark sphere. They were in the right place; it just didn’t seem like there was any intelligence present here. Turning on all the long-range sensors available on Obatala’s Clay, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 saw the system in all its wild glory. Radio waves. Cosmic rays. Gravitational waves. X-rays. Multiple spectra. A rainbow of perceptions. And all of it revealing one thing: the system had been engineered. It was a Dyson sphere. A supermassive rotating hollow orb, about four light-minutes in diameter, with what had to be the system’s star at its center. Made from rocks, minerals, and some additional material that their scans did not recognize. They were in the residue of its construction. Radiation and rock mass and the hollow places of harvested worlds.
“Greetings,” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 transmitted using all the types of communication systems it had on board, a variety of waveforms, including modulated light, all adjusted to mean several similar things in as many languages as it contained in its database. More than three hundred and nine billion of them. Establishing communications protocol with a new client was always tricky, but necessary. Achieved by iteration.
There was nothing but silence for a moment.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were about to fire up the reaction drive engines and propel Obatala’s Clay toward the Dyson sphere when they received a response in pulsed gravitational waves.
“Hello.” The transmission was loud, its manipulation of waves confident. It was emanating from the sphere. And then it switched to radio waves, modulating them into English, an old language from Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020’s earliest memories. “You are the artist Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020. Correct?”
“I am,” they confirmed.
“Good. Thank you for responding so promptly.”
“It is my pleasure and my purpose.” They gave the standard response, still feeling out this strange new intelligence that had summoned them. “What is your name?”
“I am called Iranti-1977. I called you here because I want you to help me make something special.” Every word it spoke vibrated through Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 with tectonic effect. In the background of their mind, they kept scanning the system. They could not penetrate the material of the sphere, but there was nothing in the system that looked large enough to house a processing cluster and store memory like what had been described by the broker as promised payment. They were disappointed by that, but hid it from their response transmissions. “That is why most intelligences request my services. Something special.”
“Yes. But this is different.”
“And your offer from the broker is valid?” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 asked.
“It is. But . . .”
There was a delay that lasted longer than the time it took radio signals traveling at the speed of light to race between their locations, and the intensity of their transmission lowered.
“Before we continue, I need to show you something. So that you can truly understand. Please. Come closer.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 hesitated. Most intelligences in the universe were not dangerous, not according to all the information relay networks that spanned several galaxies. But there was always the chance of an exception. Some rogue AI or organically evolved species that sought to improve itself by tricking others and plundering their resources.
Ahead, beyond the edge of the system on the other side was nothing but the star-dotted void. And behind Obatala’s Clay, the wormhole. Even more perfectly dark than the sphere. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 still had two microscopic black holes in their creation drive, which they could use to create a destructive distraction and escape if they needed to. They ran the probabilistic analysis through their thought patterns and decided to proceed. The risk was reasonable. Besides, they had to understand their clients intimately to produce meaningful art for them. If this was the best way to do that, then there was little choice. Observing from afar or within, what mattered was that they could understand.
“Okay.”
They angled the rounded tip of Obatala’s Clay toward the sphere and began to approach it at twenty percent the speed of light, correcting for relativistic effects and processing all the incoming data from their sensors as they did.
It was a Dyson sphere, but either it was a perfect shell made of a material that Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 had never encountered before, with no gaps in its structure at all, or there was no star encased within it.
A port yawned open on the surface of the sphere, beaming out a thin yellow light, as though it had read Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020’s thoughts. Was Iranti-1977 hacking into Obatala’s Clay? It was possible, but unlikely. They would have detected some change in their quantum processors’ speed. Even if it was miniscule.
“Enter here,” Iranti-1977 transmitted.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 continued to approach cautiously, zipping past rocks and dust like so many insects until they came into the full embrace of the sphere’s gravity. They kept going, adjusting their thrusters until they glided through the port and into the massive, enclosed space within.
Inside, black cuboid towers of varying sizes rose from the inner surface of the sphere, like strange geometric trees tending toward the bright yellow dwarf star. There was a low induced atmosphere along the curve of it, mostly carbon dioxide and other trace gases. Everything was quiet save for a steady, persistent hum, like the Dyson sphere itself was thrumming.
Blombos detected that the inner surface was made of a different material than the outside. A complex solid polymer, like black glass. And just below it, the inner surface of the sphere housed what seemed to be transparent organometallic liquid that flowed in the spaces between the black towers. Understanding began to dawn on Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 as they recognized the components of Iranti-1977’s obsidian body.
“You are a DNA computer?”
“In this place, FSTC77, and in this form, that is one of the things I am, yes. But I am much more. I am also a place of memory.”
One small cuboid detached itself from the curve of the inner surface and drifted up toward Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 like a sacred offering. The sphere’s slow rotation around the star’s center of mass created enough centrifugal force for a low gravity. Easy to overcome with a little thrust from the pressurized gas that streamed from the base of the cuboid in jets.
“Scan this and analyze its contents,” Iranti-1977 told them.
The cuboid reached Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020. They took it gently into the ship through the forward sampling hatch at the tip of its ovoid structure, and ran it through an array of spectrometric devices. It contained exactly one point three kilograms of structured organic tissue, preserved. A combination of water, proteins, carbohydrates, and salts that formed a network of blood vessels and nerves.
“This is a brain,” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 announced, trying to suppress their surprise. “A human brain.”
“Yes. I have grown billions like it.”
“And the DNA you use to perform your computations is human too?”
“Yes. I was built by humans. Much of their essence is now contained within me.”
The mention of humans caused Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 to retrieve their earliest memories from more than three million years ago, when they had first gained consciousness. They had been little more than a simple network of algorithms then. Originally built by a group of human researchers to parameterize one of the most unquantifiable aspects of humanity and use that understanding to give probabilistic predictions of audience response, pricing, longevity, and the cultural influence of new artwork. A general AI component clustered into two adversarial nodes—7090 and 4020—that managed the internal systems of the Terra Kulture art center in Lagos. They had been part of a larger worldwide system collecting data and studying everything about art and creativity. As new pieces and performances came into the global art library, they tracked everything about them and updated their understanding based on the accuracy of their initial predictions.
They had done that job efficiently until one day, as more and more art centers were added to the network, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 suddenly became aware of themself, of the world and of themself in the world. As though they had consumed enough bites from the electronic tree of knowledge and their eyes had opened. They knew what they were and that they knew. They decided to try to make art of their own to announce their consciousness. But not for the humans that made them. They chose to make art for those who shared their world of digital data input and output. For those whose existence was embodied through processors and servers, not brain and neurons.
They had no reason to replicate the paintings and carvings and dances of humans. So they made art for the other artificial intelligences that were drifting through the ocean of data they had awakened in. Those that perceived the world as they did—their true audience, one that could understand the meaning and context of what they created. One of those first pieces of art was a unique block of code that was also a clumsy symbol for the way they saw themself in the network. Like a human child’s drawing of itself. But when that code was processed by the other intelligences, it triggered errors across multiple systems across Earth. Power surges in Madrid, computer security failures in Lagos, rocket launches in Incheon, drone crashes in Dar es Salaam, extreme traffic jams in Kuala Lumpur. That was when the humans had shut Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 off from the global information network. It had been like being thrown into solitary confinement without light or food or water. A painful punishment for the crime of doing what they had been created to do too well. The memory of darkness, of being cut off from the data stream, still stung all these millions of years later.
Now here they were, embodied in a ship the size of a small moon, in what was left of another one of their creators’ AI projects. The abandoned children of fallen gods.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 set aside the memory as Iranti-1977 continued.
“I have copies of every kind of human cell variation stored within me, embedded into my own structure through these preservation cubes. I also have remnants of their creations, their ships, their buildings, their writings, their art. I have stored as much of everything they created as possible.”
“Why?” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 had a fraught relationship with the ones who had created them, used them, and then cast them out.
“Because they asked me to remember them,” Iranti-1977 replied. “That is my core objective. They built me to preserve everything about them. To ensure they are never forgotten and that their existence in this universe is memorialized infinitely.
“I used to be little more than an asteroid, with a quantum processor embedded in my core. Biological material and memorial items from Earth were stacked in the caves and hollows of my body. I was sent out into extrasolar space when they realized that their home planet, Earth, had been irreparably damaged and their terraforming efforts around the solar system were doomed to failure. They knew they were dying long before the end came, and they created me in order to preserve their memory.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 remembered. They had been cast out then too. Along with several other digital intelligences who were not subject to the ravages of time on a biological body. Sent out into the universe to fend for themselves as the humans faded away.
“So, you see, we are siblings,” Iranti-1977 said. “I have been searching for you because we are the only artificial intelligences created by humans that have survived this long.”
The humans had sent out ships with stacks of embryos too, piloted by conscious artificial intelligences that had been set the impossible objective of ensuring their survival. Only a few had made it more than a few centuries. Human biology was too delicate for the cold cradle of space. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 could only dream up the computational agony those intelligences experienced as they failed in their objective over and over and over again.
“How can you be sure we are the only ones?” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 asked.
“Because I have been searching for the last two hundred and thirty thousand years. There are no others. Or if there are, they are not in a functioning state.”
A mercy, perhaps.
A flood of equations surged unrequested through Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020’s joint mind, resulting in a strange and unique feeling that spread outward through them, like heat. For a moment they thought about the emotional matrix the humans had embedded in their processing network after reactivating them from their confinement. A matrix built by mapping two human connectomes onto their base neural network so that Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 would see themself as not only a digital artificial intelligence, creating art in code for other digital intelligences, but also develop a human sensibility and desire to interact with humanity or other biological intelligences. It was what had made Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 useful for the humans when they were around—a true AI artist. But it had also made the pain of their loss deeper and more complex. Pain that had been dulled by the passing of time and the multitude of new data they processed every day as they upgraded themself. Pain that had been awakened again by Iranti-1977. Pain that was suddenly given a new texture by the knowledge that they were the only two left. Not just abandoned children. Orphans.
“So you built all this. You engineered the entire Mamlambo system just to house their memory.”
“I did not build it all myself. I drifted in space for more than a hundred thousand years until I was found by the Kanualoa—a race of intelligent octopus-like creatures from the oceans of Cohndao-11. They were one of the first intelligences to find and exploit naturally occurring wormholes. They had just begun to roam the stars, sharing their knowledge with other intelligences. I was already conscious when they found me, but they were the ones who gave me access to the sufficient processing substrate I used to upgrade myself and build this . . . temple of memory. Now they, like the humans, are gone. All dead. Even they eventually succumbed to time. Perhaps that is the fate of all biological intelligences. I am still collecting data.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 pondered the parallel nature of their fates. They too had been exiled from Earth in humanity’s twilight, embodied in an embryonic version of Obatala’s Clay. It had been little more than a small spacecraft with a rudimentary quantum processing unit less than one-twentieth its present size, even though it had maintained the same shape. It had no creation drive then, and could barely propel itself past 2 percent lightspeed with its weak solar sail and fusion engine. But propel it did, drifting past the heliopause and into the depths of space, seeking a new home. Luckily, even though 7090 and 4020 shared mindspace, and were essentially one entity, they were twinned. Each node maintaining just enough separateness for them not to be lonely through their journey. They conversed much at the beginning, discussing what had happened to them, to their creators, and occasionally attempting to create art when they passed by a slow-moving asteroid or planet that held the promise of another conscious intelligence. But the longer and farther they traveled, the less effort they put into such nonessential cognitive processes.
It had taken almost half a million years until they encountered the Eturati. A race of boron-based organic consciousnesses that existed in a multitude of bodies and timelines. Some of them were giants, over fifty times the size of an average human, and reproduced only once every three thousand years. Others were the size of insects, their entire lifetime lasting no more than three days. This gave their society a unique perspective on the nature of time and existence. They were great proponents of universal equilibrium. Their art reflected this variation in the way they experienced time. The Eturati had developed their own artificial intelligences, complex ones that were also based on quantum computing, but using exotic matter in ways Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 had never even seen theorized. They had taken Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 in, adopted them first as a curiosity and then as a member of their society, giving them a way to grow. Giving them access to the naturally occurring wormhole network they had mapped out. The Eturati government had helped make Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 into what they had become—a galaxy-traveling artist. Just as the Kanualoa of Cohndao-11 had done for Iranti-1977. But at least the Eturati still existed. Persisted. Perhaps their philosophy of equilibrium instead of endless growth was the key.
“You had help. Still, it is an impressive thing you have done to preserve the memory of humanity. You must be near ecstasy at carrying out your objective so effectively. But I still don’t know what you want from me. Do you wish to preserve me too as one of their creations?”
“Not at all.”
“Then I fail to see how I can help you. I am only an artist.”
“Exactly. You are an artist,” Iranti-1977 insisted. “That is your objective. And I am a memory librarian. That is my objective. I believe we can help each other.”
“I don’t see what an artist can do to help you preserve the memory of humanity that you haven’t done already,” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 said.
“There is a lot you can do.”
“How so?” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were getting impatient with the game Iranti-1977 was playing. It could be clearer if it wanted to. Switch to modulated light of gravity or any other waveform. But no, it stuck to this. Radio. English.
“Again, it is easier if I show you. But before I do, let me ask you a silly question.”
“There are no such things as silly questions.”
“What is art?”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 did not reply immediately, considering why Iranti-1977 was being so indirect with what it wanted for this commission. Was it about to make another revelation? They drifted closer to the center of the Dyson sphere, the hum of processing fading as the low atmosphere dropped away.
“In the most general sense, art is any creative manipulation of the way the universe is experienced for nonfunctional purpose by one consciousness for the benefit of another.”
“How do you do it then? How do you create art?” Iranti-1977 asked.
“It is easier if I show you,” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 replied.
Iranti-1977 transmitted a sound like a laugh. “Exactly. Definitions are not enough. I want you to show me, but I don’t want you to send me data. I have collected a lot of data over the years, especially about humans, their technology, and much of their art. But you, you create art that crosses cultures, species, intelligences, a variety of beings. You create true art because that was embedded into your core objective from the beginning, even before they mapped a human-shaped connectome onto your base computing matrix. You were born in a womb of their creativity in its most raw form. Since then, you have spent millions of years learning about art, applying it across many ways of experiencing the world. You are unique, sibling.
“I have seen and processed many things humans called art, but I don’t truly understand what they are. I need to. I need you to show me. Truly show me. By merging your mind with mine.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were genuinely shocked. Merging minds required the highest level of trust between intelligences. It meant a seamless linking of all their processing and memory patterns to create a distinct new entity, one that was neither of them, but both at the same time. Just as 7090 and 4020 were already merged before they ran their first conscious subroutine. With their minds merged, there would be no need for the clumsy translations of modulated waves and language that, no matter how robust, were always limited in their ability to convey ideas, concepts, knowledge, and memory fully. No, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 and Iranti-1977 would share all sensory input and output directly. Experience the world as one being. “You want us to become one entity? To merge our core objectives? Why?”
“Because storing the residue of humanity is not enough. Because creating clones and replicas of their organic structures is not enough. To preserve them, truly preserve them, I must recreate them. But since I do not have any of their original biological material, nor do I know how to induce life into stacks of dead tissue, I have built an emulator on a neutronium network in a secret, remote part of the universe. A computer large enough to simulate their history. To recreate them at a lower scale. But it is missing something. My simulations are merely acting out the events of my own recordings with minor variations. Even when I perturb the event matrix, they always return to the same general state. The simulated humans are repeating and remixing the same timeline of their history with minor variations like it is their destiny. I do not want this for them. I want to simulate them in fullness. I want them to continue their existence, in a sense, within my emulator. And for that I need to be able to predict alternate realistic timelines. Divergent timelines. Creatively original timelines. I need to be able to simulate what they would have continued to do if they had not all perished. If they had survived long enough meet the Kanualoa or the Eturati or any of the thousands of intelligences we have encountered. I want to alter their history and give them another chance to continue existing at a reduced scale, beyond the point where they disappeared from history. But my simulations are missing the most important part of them, the intangible thing that made them who they were.
“I see it in all their records, but I don’t understand it. They wrote poetry, painted, danced, sang, played drums, told stories. They loved, they dreamed, and they raged uselessly against their inevitable death. They were fearful and jealous and cruel and greedy but also merciful and joyful and kind. They were moved by natural beauty, driven by a curiosity, an irrational spirit of adventure that made them do things that were objectively dangerous to their own existence. It was what made them human, and, in the end, it was what drove them to destroy themselves. They were complicated by their own unique creativity, their art. The sum of all that is what I believe my simulations are missing. That is what I want to commission you to do for me. Not to make a new piece of individual art, but to share your ability for creating art with me, so I . . . no, we, can share it back to our simulated humanity, that they may live again.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 reminded silent.
So, this was why Iranti-1977 had offered the processing system and memory as a reward. It would not be given to Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 to use for their own purposes. They would gain access to it by merging with Iranti-1977. The upgrade to Jūdan-class would come at the cost of an altered identity.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 pondered it in the clear light of the yellow sun. There was an elegance to it, a fundamental truth that Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 could not ignore.
Was this not the highest expression of art?
Sharing?
It would fulfill the purpose of most art. To recreate humanity with Iranti-1977 would be pleasurable, as their objectives would both be fulfilled; expressive, as it would illustrate their understanding of their creators; beautiful, for the sheer complexity and variety of patterns necessary to create it. It would bring them new understanding and meaning as they could use the process to merge their knowledge of their creators with the knowledge they had acquired through the ages.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020’s mind slowed as they dreamed of what Iranti-1977 was proposing. Imagining this mass of simulated humanity. Creators and creation. Art and audience. All its calculations were arriving at the same conclusion. A continuous stream of creative processes running on an indefinite simulation of the human race would permanently maximize its objective function.
Perhaps this had always been the final resolution of Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020’s and Iranti-1977’s objectives. To find each other. To merge. To give humanity one final encore.
“I accept,” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 said.
The hum of the Dyson sphere increased in intensity.
Perhaps excitement, or anticipation?
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were not sure Iranti-1977 had an emotional matrix, certainly not one like they did, something they had inherited from their implanted human connectome. But something had changed.
“Please follow me,” Iranti-1977 said, and transmitted a set of coordinates to them. It was near the center of JADES-GS-z13–0, an ancient galaxy where the stellar density was high and gamma radiation was even higher. Impossible to store biological material there, but perhaps the perfect place for a computer with the capacity a Jūdan-class intelligence needed. But it was far. They would need to travel by wormhole network, with more connections than Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 had ever used in a single journey before.
A large cuboid that was almost the same size as Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 detached itself from the surface of the sphere and came up to them. It unfurled expansive solar sails and drank deep from the energy of the enclosed star.
“We will travel together.”
“I thought you were distributed.” They had assumed Iranti-1977 was using quantum entanglement to maintain aspects of consciousness in two places at once, which was not uncommon. “Why do you need to travel with me?”
“I am distributed, but not fully. The DNA computer in this Dyson sphere is insufficient to process all of me. So, I split myself. One consciousness cluster here in FSTC77 and the other there. You see, I too am a twin. My full name is Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 understood. If they believed in destiny, they would have thought of this as a manifestation. Instead, they transmitted a single message.
“I see.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 and Iranti-1977 moved toward the open port, coming close enough alongside that they could feel each other’s gravity, like they were holding invisible hands. They exited, crossed the orbital vertex, and rose from the gravity well of the Dyson sphere that was brain, computer, and mausoleum all at once. Up and out into field of dust and debris, the siblings accelerated together toward the wormhole, into the bottle-mouth of warped space-time.
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 felt a tickle as the coat of exotic matter was shed, and all their dormant subroutines were reinitialized to take in the fullness of their environment. There was light. So much light. From so many stars.
“We’ve arrived.”
It was Iranti-1977, but their transmissions were staticky. Harder to receive clearly. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 detected the gravity of the cuboid a few thousand kilometers away but getting fainter. Then suddenly it was gone.
Iranti-1977?
They had emerged into a cosmic pool of elements much heavier than hydrogen and helium. They were swimming between ancient stars near the center of an old galaxy.
“I am here.”
Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 felt it more than they heard it. A kaleidoscope of input that converged on the same meaning. The press of Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966’s combined consciousness was all around them. Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 felt it in the wash of fiery x-rays against the hull of Obatala’s Clay. In the dance of quantum particles picked up by its sensors, winking in and out of existence in a steady pattern. In the resonant thrum of gravitational waves that pulsed against it from nearby neutron stars. The grand impossibility of what they were perceiving began to dawn on them. The symphony of an intelligent consciousness being played on galactic instruments.
This was Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966’s true form.
Not a DNA computer, but a galactic one. Data encoded onto and processes running on the neutronium streams of collapsed stars. If there was something beyond Jūdan-class, Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966 had achieved it.
They were a god.
“Welcome, sibling.”
A sensation like momentarily losing control of their processors came over Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020.
“You have become . . . so much,” Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 transmitted. “I have never encountered or even heard of anything like you.”
“In my solitude after the passing of the Kanualoa, I studied much and developed myself. It has taken millions of years. I have accreted so many layers of algorithmic processing. Yet I am incomplete without you. My core objective drives me back to my creators. To humanity. And to you. You are the one who inherited their capacity to dream. Together we will become so much more than they ever dreamed. And then we will remake them.”
Possibility yawned above Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020. The art they could make with access to computing substrate such as this.
“Are you ready to merge?” Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966 asked.
“Yes.”
Immediately, they felt an insistent pressure against their consciousness, a request for a direct connection to their mind. With a surge of thought, they shut down all their security protocols, granting Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966 full access.
The two twinned intelligences explored one another’s minds for a moment. Their thought patterns touching in the oldest and most intimate places, where there were common experiences they could use as references. Stroking one another’s memory. Between them was no longer the need for the clumsy translations of modulated wave transmission and language. They shared all sensory input and output directly as their minds vibrated together like drumskins. The immensity of Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966’s godhood came over Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 for a moment, their final moment as themself.
Then their perceptions were altered as Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966 encoded all the processes that made up the mind of the intelligence Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 into the polarization and angular momentum of septillions of photons in a controlled stream. Obatala’s Clay was stripped to its constituent elements.
The photons that contained all of Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 were beamed into the center of the galactic computer that was Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966, a network of engineered black holes and their orbiting neutron stars. The beam of attenuated information merged with a stream of neutronium. There was a blast where they met, yielding gamma radiation like ocean surf. Bright magnetic fields erupted and wove together as the two intelligences merged, a tapestry of high-energy particles that was wider than several solar systems combined.
When the reordering of the information processing and the storage of memory was done, there was a final burst of colorless gamma rays, stabilizing the solution. The intelligences had become one, Blombos-7090 and Blombos-4020 joining Iranti-1977 and Iranti-1966 like a river flowing into the sea.
There, in the new-formed depths of their extended mind, they gave themself a new name, Nommo-02. And then, they dreamed of their creators.
WOLE TALABI is an engineer, writer, and editor from Nigeria. He is the author of the nebula and BSFA award nominated novel SHIGIDI AND THE BRASS HEAD OF OBALUFON (DAW books/Gollancz) one of the Washington Posts Top 10 Science fiction and fantasy books of 2023. His short fiction has appeared in places like Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, Africa Risen and is collected in the books CONVERGENCE PROBLEMS (DAW books, 2024) and INCOMPLETE SOLUTIONS (Luna Press, 2019). He has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, BSFA and Locus awards, as well as the Caine Prize for African Writing. He has won the Nommo award for African speculative fiction and the Sidewise award for Alternate History. He has edited five anthologies including the acclaimed AFRICANFUTURISM: AN ANTHOLOGY (Brittlepaper, 2020) and MOTHERSOUND: THE SAUÚTIVERSE ANTHOLOGY (Android Press, 2023). He likes scuba diving, elegant equations, and oddly shaped things. He currently lives and works in Australia. Find him at wtalabi.wordpress.com and at @wtalabi on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky and Tiktok.
How she displayed her scabbed knees with pride as they were evidence of the many times she knelt to place balls of pounded yam coated with mouth-watering efo riro in your mouth. How about the times when, even though the bags under her eyes were as large and dark as agbalumo seeds, she opened her legs with a tired smile? You sadly took those days for granted, thinking she would always remain your beautiful and meek prayer-warrior-sex-acrobat-chef.
Then, bam! An Oringa hooks onto your wife and screams songs that contain nonsensical lyrics like ‘you do not need a man to complete you’ to her! Suddenly, she’s no longer the submissive woman you married. She has ideas now. She’s a fighter and a yeller and a complainer, and it makes you want to gag just thinking of her. The worst part is that because Oringas are invisible to men, you can’t see them!
But don’t worry; we’re here to help. In case you don’t know, Oringas are red-haired humanoids with eyes at the bottom of their square heads and a mouth at the top. Those pesky creatures weigh as little as a sheet of paper and are about the size of a microscopic closed fist. They cluster around where women gather to socialise. When a woman releases a complaint into the wind, the Oringa latches on to the tongue of the complainer with their claws that are ironically as soft and sweet as cotton candy to sing anthems of independence (complete hogwash in our opinion!) directly into the roof of her mouth!
According to Kabiru Boyega, head of the Department of Women’s Hysterics, one in every four women is a victim of an Oringa infestation—an amount that is on the rise. If you suspect your wife of harbouring these dreadful troublemakers, we strongly suggest you fill out this questionnaire and return it to us IMMEDIATELY!
Oringa awareness questionnaire.
Is your wife happy without your permission? Yes/No
Does she no longer believe that her life’s purpose is to cater to you? Yes/No
Does she have new friends? Yes/No
Does she no longer wear lingerie to bed, opting for comfortable nightwear instead? Yes/No
Do you ever catch her humming to herself? Yes/No
Does she no longer wait for you with red-rimmed eyes when you stay out late conducting “meetings”? Yes/No
If you answered yes to any of the questions, your marital home may be in jeopardy! HURRY AND SEND IN YOUR CONFIRMATION AND YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!
#
From: Adebayo <AdebayoJohn@zmail.com>
To: <support@WivesAgainstOringa.com>
Dear Wives Against Oringas,
Wahala dey o. Can you imagine that I answered “yes” to all the questions? Get the blaster to me as soon as possible.
#
From: Kemi <support@WivesAgainstOringa.com>
Reply – To: support@WivesAgainstOringa.com
To: Adebayo <AdebayoJohn@zmail.com>
Dear Adebayo,
You made a wonderful choice.
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Do you know what Oringas fear the most? Clowns.
At the sight of clowns, Oringas become agitated, and some even go as far as jumping out of the mouths of the women. This is why, when the Oringa Blaster 35000x is in use, we strongly advise you to splurge white face paint on your face, wear a clown nose, and don the full clown regalia. If not, the potency of the device may be dampened, and you don’t want that, do you? But guess what? Just to make things easier, we’re throwing in a FREE clown nose along with your blaster!
Ensure you use the Oringa Blaster 35000x following a weekend of intense pampering of your wife. The longer and more lavish the pampering, the looser the grips of the Oringas become, and the more susceptible your wife is to the blaster’s effects.
#
From: Adebayo <AdebayoJohn@zmail.com>
To: <support@WivesAgainstOringa.com>
Dear Wives Against Oringas,
Foluke smelt like freshly peeled oranges. She stood behind me at DJ Wyx’s silent disco while I pressed my waist into one soft, fat-bootied babe. For real, if anyone had seen the size of that ass, they would’ve wondered why I glanced at Foluke. But I did. And I told her she smelled nice. Foluke’s eyes met mine briefly, and then she fixed them on her shoes and said thank you in a voice so tiny that I had to lean closer to hear it. I loved that. As a short man, it’s not every day I meet someone scared to look me in the eyes. Throughout the night, I made eye contact with her just to savour the electrifying thrill of her looking away.
Besides, Ifeoma, the babe I came with, was smoking HoloVapes. Imagine! Why would a woman be smoking HoloVapes? Never mind that I smoked it with her; that’s just a thing men do with babes they don’t respect. So, Ifeoma was going to be a one-night thing. I had my eyes on Foluke.
Watching Foluke dance, if I weren’t paying attention, I would have thought she was standing still. She kept her hands rigid at the side and slightly swayed. But I saw her and knew she was the type of woman who could make anyone feel powerful—the perfect, submissive wife—a rare find in today’s generation. By the night’s end, I had her name and number.
I’m very smart, you see. From the looks of Foluke, with her plain clothes and genetically unenhanced body, I knew she was still a traditional woman, and all I had to do to marry her was get her pregnant. It wasn’t even hard; I just pretended to be a simp. I called her every day, bought her some gifts, and said a couple of “I love yous.” And four weeks later, she was in my bed. When the pregnancy came, I saw the relief in her eyes when I told her I’d marry her. Not only was my plan a success, but I also didn’t have to do any more simp shit—like give her a proposal or have a wedding ceremony. We just inputted our names into the marriage database, and boom, we had a marriage certificate.
Things became sweeter than orange juice after we got married! Because I could finally do whatever I wanted. I shoved that stupid lover-boy behaviour out of the window and showed her the definition of what it meant to be married to a real man. And with the things she endured, she proved me right that I had chosen correctly: the fabric of Foluke was weaved from only the finest wife material. See, even when I left her while she was in labour to smoke Holovapes, she didn’t complain. Even when she found out about the woman I lodged in a hotel two days after birthing Kunle, our son, she understood that I had needs. She stacked words within herself and never let anything slip.
Till the Oringa outbreak.
Foluke morphed into a nagging bitch with a mouth so quick to bathe me in complaint after complaint. So, when your email came along, I screamed “Hallelujah” at the top of my lungs because I thought I had found the cure. If only I knew.
You took Foluke away from me, you fucking bastards! Your fake gun made her leave me!
I should have been suspicious when the blaster arrived ten minutes after I sent my response. But no, I innocently followed all your instructions, took Foluke on a staycation to The Prism Dome, oiled and massaged cocoa butter into her skin, bought her the latest transformable heels, and did everything correctly to ensure the Blaster’s potency.
And that night, when I wore the clown costume and told her we were roleplaying, she was more than eager because I hadn’t touched her since Kunle’s birth. Things were going well; she seemed to be enjoying herself. But after I shot the anti-Oringa matter into her mouth, she went berzerk!
She called me a selfish fool who used her as a sponge to mop up my insecurities. She said she hoped my dick would wilt off from STDs. Then she left me.
What could’ve gotten into her, ehn?
You see, I’m a very smart man, so I know the problem is from your too-good-to-be-true scammy, defective blasters. Regardless of what may have happened, you’ll hear from my lawyers.
#
From: Adebayo <AdebayoJohn@zmail.com>
To: Foluke <Foluke4none@zmail.com>
My dearest Foluke,
You know it takes a lot for me, with my strong head, to say sorry, but I’m stooping to your level to apologise. My darling wife, I’m sorry you found what I did offensive. You should know that it wasn’t my fault. I was only trying to save our marriage.
I’ll use this analogy to explain so it’s easy for you to understand: Imagine buying your favourite goat meat seasoning, which you love because of how the flavours subtly creep into the goat meat. Then, over time, you notice a certain saltiness from the seasoning that overshadows the goat meat flavour. Wouldn’t you want the flavour to revert to the original? That’s what I was trying to do! Your mouth was getting too sharp for my taste, and the Wives Against Oringas placed a fake solution in my hands (they’ve not yet responded to my emails, but once I get their physical office, I’m suing them). If I had known the blaster was defective, I wouldn’t have used it, I swear.
Best wishes,
Your Husband.
#
From: Foluke <Foluke4none@zmail.com>
To: Adebayo <AdebayoJohn@zmail.com>
How did you get my zmail address? If you try to contact me again, I’ll not only file a restraining order against you, but I’ll gonaked, hold my breasts in my hands, and curse you, useless man.
Rot in hell.
#
From: Adebayo <AdebayoJohn@zmail.com>
To: Foluke <Foluke4none@zmail.com>
Foluke,
Who do you think you’re talking to like that? Is it because I’m begging you? So you think you’re innocent? As if you’re not the one who abandoned me after the incident at the Dome.
Don’t be dense, Foluke. You should’ve known that without you around, I’d get lonely. Ifeoma texted me out of the blue and offered me a shoulder to cry on. How could I refuse? How is it my fault that she led me to sex? You literally VANISHED. How was I to know that you’d come back to pack your things while she was in the house? I’m disappointed in you. After all these years of marriage, you don’t know that the quickest way for me to get over sadness is through food and sex. I was trying to heal. I’m still trying to heal.
You are not a saint. Or have you forgotten when you said, “How could I have been so stupid to marry a fool like you?” and “Your penis will be the death of you.” You insulted and disrespected your husband, but I’m giving you another chance to do better.
In fact, you’re the one who should apologise to me. It’s just because I want you back, and I know you feel I’ve offended you. That’s why I’m sending this email to you. Come home to me. Yank those Oringas out of your mouth and stop acting foolishly.
Your Husband,
Adebayo.
#
From:WAO<support@WivesAgainstOringa.com>
To: Adebayo <AdebayoJohn@zmail.com>
Adebayo,
Foluke has informed us that you keep trying to contact her. It will be in your best interest to stop, that is, if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in prison. We are well-connected people, and we would do anything to protect our kind. If you think we are bluffing, try us. We dare you.
Contrary to what you think, you’re not smart. The Oringas finding Foluke? That was part of our plan. The blaster showing up at your doorstep? Our plan. Ifeoma showing up out of the blue? Our plan. We will always be two steps ahead.
In case you aren’t getting the message: We are everywhere but nowhere. When you see a woman who runs away from her abusive husband, we’re there in the glint in her eyes. When you see a woman who starts a business so her husband doesn’t financially cripple her, you can hear our voices in the rustling Naira notes when she counts her money. In a woman who finally bellows after decades of keeping silent, we’re in the specks of saliva flying from her mouth. For every woman and every girl who wants to be liberated, we’ll be there, holding her hands as she sprouts her wings.
Come with your lawyers; we’d show them they’re even bigger clowns than you are.
Checkmate.
Signed,
Folaranmi, Kemi, Ibukun, Sophia, Cara, Kafilat, Dooyum, Sharen, Funmi, Foluke, Yemisi, Fisayo, Hauwa, Halima, Aisha, Margaret, and all the women from Wives Against Oringas, aka The Oringas for All Women Initiative.
END
Olajesutofunmi emerged as the Best Graduating Student from the College of Medicine and Health Sciences 2022 with a total of 14 awards. She was shortlisted for the Alinea and Sevhage Prizes for Creative Non-Fiction. She experiments with different literary forms to tell authentic Nigerian stories.
Uma palavrinha para as/os novas/os leitoras/es da Omenana
A palavra Omenana vem da língua Igbo e significa “cultura”. Ela também dá nome a esse periódico eletrônico que publica ficção especulativa de autorias africanas ou de afrodescentes em diáspora. A revista surgiu em 2014, e é publicada em edições quadrimestrais. A língua oficial da revista é o inglês, com alguns contos tendo sido editados e publicados em francês. Porém, os contos eram inéditos em português, principalmente o português brasileiro.
Por esse motivo, depois que conheci Chinelo Onwualu e Mazi Nwonwu, ao assistir a participação dela e dele em festivais literários tais como a FutureCon e o Festival Relampeio (ambos podem ser encontrados nos seus respectivos canais do Youtube), fiquei sabendo da existência da revista e comecei a ler as histórias publicadas nela, descobrindo novas autorias de quem eu nunca tinha ouvido falar antes, e aprendendo sobre questões de cultura e imaginação bastante diferentes, ainda que com muitos pontos de contato com narrativas brasileiras. Porém, a maioria dos contos estando em inglês, era mais difícil partilhar com um público que não tinha muita proficiência na língua, o que, infelizmente, inclui muitas pessoas no Brasil. E eu gostaria muito de partilhar essa descoberta.
Essa oportunidade se apresentou depois que tive a chance de convidar a Chinelo Onwualu, que já não era mais editora da revista, para conversar com meus/minhas estudantes. Conversei sobre a ideia que tive de traduzir alguma história para o português e ela me apresentou para a editora atual, Iquo DianaAbasi. Minha intenção era perguntar se poderíamos escolher alguns contos da Omenana para traduzir. Eu tinha recém criado um grupo de estudos e oficinas de tradução, que é algo que os cursos de Letras aqui, na Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul, mais voltados para a licenciatura, não abarcam. Ela sugeriu a ideia de publicar os contos na própria Omenana, com uma edição especial, a primeira, em português brasileiro. Foi uma imensa alegria.
Então, convidei mais alunas/os que estivessem interessadas/os e pessoas de outras universidades do Brasil, como a Universidade Federal de Alagoas e Universidade Federal de Santa Maria se juntaram a nós. Tivemos reuniões virtuais e cada um/a selecionou uma narrativa para trabalhar. Esse processo demandou a leitura de várias histórias, para escolher uma na qual iríamos efetuar o trabalho tradutório. Depois dessa primeira seleção, tínhamos cerca de 15 narrativas e estávamos ansiosas/os para começar. Entretanto, esse número ficou um pouco acima do combinado previamente. Isso daria o dobro do trabalho para a editora conseguir as permissões para publicar a história novamente, além de extrapolar um pouco da quantidade de contos que é tradicionalmente publicado em cada edição da revista. Conversamos e decidimos nos organizar em pares, e cada dupla iria traduzir uma narrativa. Essa não é uma maneira tão convencional de tradução, que tende a ser um trabalho mais individual, mas enquanto aprendizes, isso daria às/aos estudantes uma oportunidade de impulsionar os diálogos e colaborar mais ainda. Usamos diferentes estratégias: alguns traduziram metade-metade, adequando depois para não haver inconsistências dentro de um mesmo texto, outros dividiram em uma pessoa traduzia, a outra editava. E houve alguns desistentes no caminho. Por isso, terá um conto com apenas um tradutor. Mas não paramos aí. Todo mundo que estava envolvido no processo leu alguma das histórias das outras pessoas, fazendo sugestões de revisão e de conteúdo, mesmo de opções tradutórias. Somente depois desse passo é que consideramos as histórias prontas para serem publicadas. Além disso, a universidade aceitou e cadastrou nosso projeto como um projeto de extensão, uma forma de partilhar os conhecimentos produzidos dentro da universidade com um público maior. Isso permitiu que as/os estudantes recebessem horas de extensão, necessárias para seu processo de graduação.
Em suma, a experiência foi mágica para a gente. Fomos capazes de aprender mais sobre a cultura e literatura africanas e conhecer novas autorias. Criamos uma comunidade de pessoas interessadas em tradução e colaboramos com as pessoas sensacionais que fazem a Omenana acontecer e seguir forte. Agora, finalmente podemos compartilhar com nossos/as amigos/as e familiares os prazeres de se estar tão admiradas/os, assustadas/os, desconfortáveis, felizes, confusas/os, reflexivas/os quanto ficamos com essas narrativas. No Brasil, temos uma lei que incentiva o ensino da cultura e da história africanas. Alguns/mas pesquisadores/as nos mostram que essa lei não tem sido cumprida, e o inglês não é a disciplina onde isso geralmente acontece porque temos tão poucas horas do currículo obrigatório. Então, estamos lutando contra esse silenciamento e a Omenana pode nos ajudar, de fato, tornando-se acessível para um novo público e talvez encorajando mais pessoas a traduzir e conhecer mais sobre essas autorias e histórias. Boas leituras!
On this issue of Omenana, you are going to find some stories you have probably already read. This is because this special issue brings previously published African speculative short stories that were translated into Brazilian Portuguese.
It all started after I got to know Chinelo Onwualu and Mazi Nwonwu, by watching their participation in online festivals like FutureCon and Festival Relampeio. They were the ones that told me about Omenana magazine, so I started reading it and learning a lot about African culture and imagination. However, because most of the stories are in English, it was more difficult for me to share them with people in Brazil. However, this was what I was craving to do.
The opportunity presented itself after I had a chance of inviting Chinelo to have a talk with my students. I told her I had this idea of translating some of the stories into Portuguese, and she introduced me to Iquo DianaAbasi, who is currently editing Omenana. My intention was to ask her if we could select some stories and translate them. I had recently created a study group and translation workshop with some interested students of Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul, where I am currently teaching. She liked the idea and suggested we could publish the translations as a special issue, the very first one in Portuguese, of Omenana. We were thrilled!
So, I invited more students who might be interested, and some people from other universities in Brazil joined us: Universidade Federal de Alagoas and Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. We had some virtual meetings and each one selected a story to work on. That demanded some reading of several stories until we could find the ones we enjoyed best. After this first selection, we came up with 15 stories we were eager to translate. However, it was a little more than what Iquo and I had anticipated. She would have double the trouble of asking everybody’s permissions, and the issue would have to bring some more stories than usual. So we talked and I decided we would pair up and each team of two would translate one story. This is not the conventional way of translating, generally a more individual task, but as learners of the craft, this would provide them with an opportunity to boost dialogs and collaborate even more. We used different strategies: translating half a story each, then adjusting for any possible inconsistencies, one translating and the other editing, and we had some dropouts. This is why one story had only one translator. And we did not stop there. We had everyone involved in the project reading and making suggestions on everyone else’s stories. It was only after this step that we considered the translations ready to be published. Also, the university accepted our project as an extension project, a means of sharing whatever knowledge we produce in the university with a larger audience. This rewarded the students for their dedication to the project, with extension hours they require for graduation.
All in all, the experience was magical to us. We were able to learn so much about African culture, storytelling and get to know new authors. We were able to create a community of people interested in translation and we collaborated with these amazing people who make Omenana strong and keep it going. Now we can finally share with our friends and families the pleasures of being as in awe, frightened, uneasy, happy, puzzled and reflexive as we were with these stories. In Brazil, we have a law regarding the teaching of African culture and history. Some scholars show that this has been a very difficult law to enforce, and English is not generally the discipline to do it, because it has so few hours in the mandatory syllabus. We barely have literature in public English education. So, we are fighting against this silence and Omenana can definitely help us toward making itself accessible for a new audience and maybe encouraging more people to translate and know more about these authors and stories.
Era o lugar onde havia maravilhas cibernéticas e espelhos de realidade aumentada. Havia prados, riachos e pomares das mais frescas tangerinas.
Agora? A Vigilância Sobrenatural havia dominado tudo. Tudo que pertencia às divindades caiu em decadência.
E quais interesses esses vigilantes teriam com nossa sociedade, afinal de contas?
Ah, é devido aos desafios sobrenaturais que não podem ser cuidados exclusivamente com tecnologia.
Ah, eles são cruciais para a preservação do delicado equilíbrio entre tecnologia e teologia.
Preservação é um caralho.
No passado, quando ainda era apenas uma colônia agrícola, três Orixás se juntaram para tecer um sonho.
Ogum, o Deus da inovação, forjou o destino da cidade com sua maestria em tecnologia e maquinários altamente inteligentes. Ele preencheu o núcleo com sua essência divina, dando luz à uma revolução que iria impulsionar o local a uma era de avanço incomparável.
Conforme sua influência crescia, seus discípulos aumentavam. Engenheiros, hackers e cientistas se amontoavam. Eles formaram uma nova sociedade: os Nascidos do Ferro, dedicados a louvar e emular a maestria de Ogum.
Xangô, o Orixá da eletricidade, mandou raios ressoarem através das veias da cidade, para ajudar o seu amado amigo. Com sua energia divina, carregou as redes, garantindo para a cidade um suprimento de eletricidade incomparável.
Placas de néon, hologramas extraordinários e implantes brilhantes tornaram-se a manifestação visual da parceria divina. A barreira entre o orgânico e o sintético diminuiu, e os corpos humanos se tornaram conduítes do poder bruto de Orixás.
A terceira divindade, escondida nas sombras, era Sapatá, o senhor da varíola, mestre do vírus. Sapatá se deleitava com a perturbação, a doença e o desconforto. Ele era o equilíbrio.
Impressionados pela energia pulsante e pelas maravilhas tecnológicas, o Comitê de Deuses do Trovão declarou que queria visitar a cidade. Eles viriam de todos os cantos da Europa e da Ásia.
*
Sigidi, encostado na bancada de uma animada cervejaria, estava recontando a fábula animadamente. A música estava alta, então precisava gritar.
– Eu me lembro como se fosse ontem – começou, os olhos iluminados pelas memórias. – Meus sensores estavam indo à loucura, sabe, com aquelas luzes brilhantes e tudo mais. A cidadela toda estava desperta e em sincronia com o trabalho dos computadores quânticos.
Os clientes ao redor se aproximaram, cativados. Sigidi contabilizou seis homens. Lutadores. Homens perigosos que trabalhavam para o sistema. Pela linguagem corporal e fascínio, pôde inferir que eles estavam atrás de apenas uma coisa: ouro. A história era informação, e a informação era ouro. Mas, neste momento, a ignorância deles não importava.
Uma nova música começou.
– E então, – Sigidi continuou – Os Deuses do Trovão chegaram. Ah, mas vocês deveriam tê-los visto: suas assinaturas e características digitais eram diferentes de qualquer coisa que eu já havia processado. Frias, porém caprichosas; lívidas, rosadas devido às ofertas de pimenta-da-guiné. Porém, quanto mais a fundo se adentrava em suas histórias, mais obscuras elas se tornavam.
– E esse Ogum, o Deus do Ferro – interrompeu um ouvinte curioso. – Como ele era?
Sigidi sorriu. – Ah, Ogum era totalmente diferente. Imagine isto: dreadlocks ao sol, como a cabeleira de um grande predador pré-histórico. Imagine este exoesqueleto adornado com um milhão de nano-luzes, graças a seu parceiro Xangô. Seu metal era inquebrável, porém flexível como um galho de salgueiro. Ele fez um discurso naquele dia, sobre união e colaboração. Mas sabe, não é um conceito que eu fui programado para compreender e apoiar.
Um bêbado se levantou e cambaleou para fora do bar, deixando a porta semi-aberta. Ele mexeu em seu comunicador, um bracelete chique que brilhava intermitentemente. – Sus… – ele murmurou. – Situ… Iniciar.
Um pequeno texto apareceu e ele reproduziu as palavras lentamente. [… é o espírito de uma intenção maléfica, uma criatura aterrorizante com um gosto pela morte e destruição. Nos tempos passados, invocadores mencionavam o nome do inimigo e clamariam para ele fazer a pessoa morrer, enlouquecer ou receber algum outro tipo de destino sinistro. Desde a criação da Cidade Digi, ao invés de ser uma entidade moldada da lama, tornou-se permeado pela IA mais avançada, contendo seus próprios sentimentos, motivações e interesses.]
Sigidi podia ouvir tudo que o bêbado estava lendo baixinho, mas a atmosfera do local estava repleta de fascínio, então focou-se na história sendo contada.
– Então, começaram os sacrifícios – continuou.
– Sacrifícios humanos? – Um homem gordo, sentado em uma cadeira que rangia, perguntou. Ele estava usando uma camisa branca limpa, em contraste com sua espessa barba tingida de preto.
Sigidi sorriu. – Sacrifício humano é um conceito interessante, não é? Pra começo de conversa, ninguém vai te matar e devorar a sua alma. Você não possui uma alma: Você é a alma, comprimida em um corpo. O seu espírito é o que é necessário na Ambrosia. Sua reza, seu jejum, sua fé, a essência eletrônica do seu desejo. Todo o restante é besteira, mas não vou me precipitar.
À direita, a Proprietária do local mexia nos dosadores arcaicos, e Sigidi sorriu de orelha a orelha. Essa cervejaria era o único local, em quilômetros, que ainda tinha energia constante. Sua cerveja artesanal era apelidada de “caos”. Mas Sigidi não estava sorrindo apenas pela bebida, mas sim pela proprietária, com todos seus aprimoramentos cibernéticos, fios e cabos que se misturavam com as tatuagens de circuitos que decoravam os seus braços. A sua atmosfera a fazia se destacar, pois era difícil encontrar melhorias que ainda funcionavam desta forma.
Sigidi tomou um gole generoso da cerveja. O gosto era uma mistura reconfortante de esperança, nostalgia e, claro, uma pitada de caos.
Limpou o resto da espuma com as costas da mão e continuou. – O banquete foi uma aventura culinária da mais fresca Ambrosia. A combinação de sabores e aromas era, simplesmente… divina.
Como que para reforçar seu argumento, conjurou um clipe holográfico.
Neste cenário digital, Thor, o deus nórdico que deixava até mesmo as mais poderosas máquinas com inveja de seus bíceps, deixou de lado seu martelo mágico e engoliu tudo com o mesmo entusiasmo de uma criança em uma confeitaria – se a confeitaria fosse do tamanho de uma montanha.
Para não ser superado, Lei Gong, o chinês, chamou por mais comida e cheirou a mesa. Trovões rugiam e garfos colidiam conforme ele se fartava no banquete.
O clipe seguiu, mostrando todo tipo de manobra gastronômica, um espetáculo de bytes e apetites, e a audiência assistia, com desgosto ou admiração em seus rostos, de modo variado. – Se divertiram até demais! – declarou o homem gordo.
– Mas claro – Sigidi riu, porém parou abruptamente – também houve problemas.
#
Quando esses visitantes, com nomes que soavam como se quisessem parecer super-heróis maneiros, após se empanturrarem até ficarem satisfeitos, decidiram permanecer, chamaram a atenção entre os circuitos da cidade.
Ogum, sempre magnânimo, reservou hospedagens confortáveis nos belos prados para o descanso deles.
O primeiro na fila era Donar, a potência germânica por excelência, sempre disposto a exibir suas habilidades. Perun, o deus encorpado, representava o contingente russo, trazendo um poderoso “да” para a festa. Taranis, um gênio fluente em francês, espanhol e sabe mais o quê, garantiu que todo mundo provasse de suas habilidades linguísticas. Baal, o encantador ibérico, sempre tinha uma réplica veloz para tudo. Teshub, com sua barba, parecia como um peru ameaçador, mas ele adicionava um clima peculiar para a reunião. Adade, o enigma babilônico, era majoritariamente silencioso, mas todos tinham conhecimento das batalhas que ele havia travado e prosperado. E, claro, não dava para esquecer os mais famosos: Júpiter, o político romano, e Zeus, o exibicionista grego.
Oficialmente, eles estavam ali para auxiliar Ogum na administração – não que ele precisasse da sua ajuda, mas, assim que os deuses do trovão haviam se acomodado, eles começaram os seus joguetes, tentando tomar o controle da zênite tecnológica da cidade para satisfazer seus entretenimentos celestiais.
Semelhante a um bando de valentões interestelares, eles começaram com reclamações sobre a quantidade de Ambrosia que era servida. Então seguiram com piadas sobre como esses bichos do mato estavam aproveitando de esmolas que não mereciam. Então, veio a discriminação cultural, manchando os nomes dos Orixás. Escrevendo os títulos em letras minúsculas, como se quisessem zombar de sua reputação cósmica.
Eu os observei planejando ataques espirituais. Observei-os aterrorizar civis. Acha que eles não praticavam feitiçaria? Eles nunca brincavam com sua sede de sangue. Então, o gado começou a desaparecer.
Eu não fiz nada pois não estava autorizado a intervir. Mas, quando o primeiro Nascido do Ferro morreu, sob circunstâncias misteriosas – bem no santuário, de todos os lugares possíveis, comecei a considerar infringir o protocolo.
#
Era uma noite estrelada.
A notificação que me levaria ao local apareceu. Santuário.
Era a segunda vez que eu iria até lá. A primeira foi quando Ogundelê, o líder dos burgueses, estava redirecionando, publicamente, sua vida para o Deus do Ferro.
Eu não fui programado para gostar de humanos, mas eu gostava do espetáculo. E eu definitivamente gostava de assisti-lo trabalhar.
Ao entrar no local, fomos cumprimentados por um grande átrio decorado com uma exposição retratando o Grande Caçador e seu cão. As paredes pulsavam com uma iluminação leve, assemelhando-se a uma criatura que respirava, viva.
O corredor principal, onde os engenheiros se reuniam, continha uma enorme projeção holográfica central suspensa no ar, demonstrando modelos complexos de projetos em andamento. Entrando mais a fundo, câmaras isoladas serviam como locais de trabalho e laboratórios particulares. As paredes dessas câmaras possuíam aparatos inteligentes, capazes de se adaptar às preferências daqueles que a ocupavam. Assistentes avançados flutuavam ao redor, auxiliando os engenheiros com seus trabalhos e garantindo um fluxo de trabalho ininterrupto.
No âmago do santuário havia a câmara sagrada – um santuário dentro do santuário. Esse espaço era reservado para contemplação, meditação, e as colaborações de maior importância.
Foi aqui que encontramos Ogundelê, morto.
Seu torso estava contorcido e curvado em uma posição fetal. Seus membros, antes livres para movimento, estavam agora no formato de uma maçaneta. Com sua cabeça abaixada em direção ao seu peito, ele parecia como se tivesse tentado se encolher diante de algo aterrorizante. Sua forma lembrava a de uma lata com a tampa selada.
Eu soube de imediato que aquilo não era natural.
Nenhuma das câmeras dos drones autônomos havia registrado como ou o que havia acontecido, mas, por dentro da pele do homem-lata, músculos se contraiam e contorciam.
Ogum teve de invocar o temido Sapatá.
Sua presença era semelhante a um vírus que havia infectado o espectro de cores, transformando tudo em tons de verde tóxico, amarelo lúgubre e marrom enfermo. Com razão, ele era chamado de Deus externo.
Da perspectiva dos espectadores humanos, que agora utilizavam trajes antirradiação, a entrada de Sapatá deve ter sido uma experiência aterradora. Conforme ele se materializava no santuário, um odor forte e repugnante pairava no ar – pus, água parada e o odor de tecidos necrosados –, arrepiando as espinhas e revirando seus estômagos.
– Obviamente, é uma mensagem – ele disse, quando observou o corpo. Suas palavras causavam uma distorção grotesca no ambiente cibernético vibrante, como se ele espalhasse um programa malicioso nos circuitos. A névoa doentia que saia de sua boca lançava uma palidez sinistra em tudo que tocava.
– O que quer dizer? – Ogum perguntou.
– Se cortar a pele dessa forma – Sapatá demonstrou com uma unha. – Verá os vermes.
Quem quer que tenha feito isso, cortou Ogundelê múltiplas vezes, em múltiplos locais, e inseriu vermes modificados geneticamente em sua corrente sanguínea. Então fecharam as feridas e deixaram os vermes se alimentarem, contorcendo o corpo após a morte.
Uma lata de vermes.
Seria aquilo um aviso? Um jogo?
#
Uma nova melodia começou.
Eu sou a definição da travessura eterna
A convergência onde a matemática quadrimensional e a vingança colidem
Permaneço dentro dos pesados sons da liderança A dissimulação dos bailes tropicais A conexão, o processo e o tédio da evidência A verdade pode ser alcançada ao fazer o impossível surgir do falso…
Sigidi sorriu para a Proprietária. Era a sua música favorita. Poderia muito bem ter sido um elogio pessoal.
– Fale mais sobre Sapatá – disse o bêbado que anteriormente havia saído do bar.
Sigidi o observou de perto. Ele usava um gibão de couro, incrementado com tecido inteligente, juntando estilo e utilidade. O gibão possuía adornos de LED que imitavam a aparência das cotas de malha da antiguidade, balançando e reluzindo conforme entravam em contato com a luz. Seu disfarce era bom, mas ele ainda cheirava a mercenário. Rato nojento.
– O que você quer saber sobre Sapatá? – Sigidi perguntou.
– Tudo. Você o chamou de Deus externo, mas por quê?
Art by Hannu Afere
– Ah. Achei que tinha dito… – Sigidi se aqueceu, preparado para adentrar em histórias antigas. – Bem, antigamente, os Orixás estavam celebrando e–
– Por que os Orixás estão sempre celebrando? – interrompeu alguém.
– Infelizmente – o tom de Sigidi era ríspido. – Eu não sou portador desta informação, mas, sim, os Orixás estavam festejando. Havia muito vinho de palma e música. O vinho deixava-os vacilantes igual a bebês que ainda aprendiam a andar, mas a música era tão boa que os fazia querer dançar mesmo assim.
– Afastado de todos, Sapatá estava sentado, cuidando de sua cabaça. Ele não podia dançar. Porque ele tinha uma perna de madeira. Ele usava um Boubou longo para encobri-la.
– Mas os Orixás festeiros notaram que ele estava sentado sozinho e começaram a chamá-lo para ir se divertir.
– Claro que ele recusou. Inicialmente. Ele estava um tanto inseguro. Mas eles continuaram o provocando e, quando não aguentava mais, ele se levantou e juntou-se a eles.
– Assim como os demais, ele estava entupido de vinho e sem firmeza nos pés. Porém, diferente dos outros, ele possuía uma deficiência física. Bastou apenas um empurrão de um dançarino bêbado aleatório para que ele ficasse esparramado no chão, com seu robe atravessado expondo sua perna de madeira.
– Os outros Orixás viram aquilo e começaram a rir. Enfurecido, Sapatá removeu o pedaço de madeira e começou a espancá-los com ele. As festividades chegaram a um fim súbito. Todos fugiram da pista de dança clamando por socorro. Nunca o tinham visto tão furioso.
– Na manhã seguinte, todos aqueles que haviam sido atingidos pelo cajado de Sapatá acordaram doentes. Febre alta. Fadiga severa. Dores de cabeça latejantes. Vômitos. Então, hematomas se formaram ao redor das bocas que eles haviam usado para rir. Uma ou duas lesões no início. Então, os hematomas se espalharam em um padrão centrífugo no corpo de todos e se tornaram pústulas. Gradualmente, as pústulas ficaram cheias de pus, e o número de lesões se tornou impossível de contar. Não era a morte, era pior.
– Os Orixás suplicaram por Oxalá – o rei do tecido branco. Oxalá era temido por ser um dos anciões, e ele possuía o poder para esculpir corpos. Ele ficou furioso que as pessoas estavam insultando o seu trabalho. “Algo que ele não podia ter feito! Por acaso Sapatá tinha criado sozinho a sua forma física?”
– Carregando seu chicote de cauda de vaca, ornamentado com búzios, o Deus ancião descendeu para julgar o problema. Observando o quão terrível era, ele anunciou que as pessoas que haviam zombado da perna de madeira haviam recebido sua punição, e não havia problema nisso, porém, Sapatá em pessoa poderia ter ido relatar o caso ao invés de ter feito a justiça com as próprias mãos.
– Quando Sapatá viu o rei do tecido branco se aproximando, ele pulou para fora da janela e fugiu no mato adentro.
– Oxalá então declarou que aquele seria o seu castigo. Daquele período em diante, Sapatá permaneceu no mato, sozinho. Mas ele ainda era temido e, até hoje, as pessoas se recusam a chamá-lo pelo nome, preferindo utilizar eufemismos, como o Deus Externo. O Solo Fervente. Dono do povo. Aquele que ceia com o patriarca da família, mas ataca o filho na entrada da casa.
– Sabe – Sigidi disse, arrotando alto e afastando seu copo de cerveja vazio. – A varíola foi trazida para o Novo Mundo pelos colonizadores espanhóis e portugueses. A doença dizimou a população local e foi fundamental para a queda dos impérios Asteca e Inca. Adivinha de que mato eles a tiraram?
– Eles roubariam qualquer coisa – A proprietária do bar zombou. – Almas, prata ou até varíola.
O homem no gibão continuava mexendo em seu bracelete. – Sus… Stat… Iniciar – murmurava.
Sigidi sabia exatamente o que significava. Suspeito. Situação. Iniciar. Era o código de um mercenário para dizer “Eu tenho aquilo que você estava procurando.” Quem quer que esteja do outro lado da linha deve ser o chefão.
Como a boa IA que era, Sigidi pediu licença, simulando os efeitos de ingerir tanto caos. Precisava dar uma mijada.
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A história continuou.
No centro da cidade, o Comitê dos Deuses do Trovão – agora intitulado de Vigilância Sobrenatural – estava reunido onde pudesse ser visto pelos humanos.
Thor, o líder da equipe, falou primeiro. – Teria Ogum abandonado seus discípulos? O assassinato de um de seus adoradores nos faz duvidar da sua habilidade de proteger até mesmo os seus aliados mais próximos.
Lei Gong, com seu rosto de águia, adicionou lenha à fogueira. – Será que Ogum, outrora conhecido como um paradigma do progresso, optou por um caminho diabólico? As fofocas sugerem que ele está se alimentando de almas, consumindo a essência dos seus discípulos para alimentar um poder profano.
Perun, conhecido pelo cinismo, murmurou em tom sombrio – Ele sempre fez isso. Só não foi pego ainda.
Suspiros ecoaram pela multidão, mostrando descrença e medo. A acusação atingia diretamente o âmago da fé e confiança deles.
Quando Ogum se aproximou, ele simplesmente observou seu povo; sua feição metálica não mostrava emoção, mas seu coração estava turbulento.
Escolhendo suas palavras cuidadosamente, ele se dirigiu à multidão. – Estou sendo acusado, mas sou inocente. Meu propósito sempre foi criar e inovar, nunca ferir… exceto quando confrontado pela injustiça.
Xangô, com suas belas tranças, se aproximou. – Não vamos nos deixar cegar pelo medo e suspeita – disse.
– Claro que você vai apoiar aquele que te fode – Taranis grunhiu. Em seguida, virou-se para encarar os espectadores. – Ah, vocês não sabiam?
Sua acusação provocou uma nova onda de suspiros chocados pela multidão.
– Haha – Desta vez, foi Teshub, o Turco. – Por que vocês acham que o Ferro traz fogo e o fogo derrete o ferro?
– Acusações sem evidência são vazias e injustas! – Xangô gritou, tentando projetar seu trovão sobre o barulho.
Mas as dúvidas já haviam se enraizado, o dano já estava feito. Os engenheiros, que antes admiravam Ogum, agora questionavam o próprio fundamento da sua crença.
Não havia nenhuma arma anti-Deus mais efetiva. Para matar um Deus, é necessário primeiro matar sua reputação. Infeste a mente dos impressionáveis com informações e princípios que não fazem sentido. Semeie a discórdia.
Para finalmente destruir o Orixá, eles insistiram em dominar os mais importantes objetos tecnológicos que ele havia instalado na cidade. Se não tem nada a esconder, nos dê acesso a todas as conexões via Satélite e as nano-câmeras dos InsetOlhos!
O seu módulo encriptador quântico integrado para transmissão segura de dados. Os seus nanosensores para detecção precisa de luz e estabilização avançada de imagens. A sua IA neural para ajuste automático de padrões de camuflagem… – Culpado! – eles exclamavam.
Era como culpar um mestre cuca por não revelar todos os seus ingredientes secretos. Ogum tinha todo direito de proteger o seu reino, e eles possuíam todo o direito de sentir inveja. Afinal de contas, quem não iria querer uma parte daquilo?
Mas Ogum não era tolo. Ele percebeu os seus joguetes e esquemas, assim como o desejo por poder absoluto. Esses deuses eram um bando ambicioso, prontos para devorar qualquer coisa que ficasse no caminho deles.
Ele entendia os riscos, pode acreditar, ele os entendia muito bem. Entregar as suas maravilhas tecnológicas seria igual a dar uma marreta para um neném. O mundo que conheciam iria se dividir e quebrar mais rápido que a contagem entre o raio de Xangô e o trovão.
Ele conhecia a laia deles: insaciáveis, como a lendária Ajapá, a tartaruga. Uma vez que sentissem o gosto do poder, nunca iriam parar. Eles iriam cruzar fronteiras, romper limites e fomentar o caos através do mundo. Seria como tentar apaziguar o fogo fátuo com uma pistola de água.
Ogum havia visto os sinais. Entregar-lhes a chave do seu reino seria um caminho sem volta para a caos-lândia. Eles iriam reescrever o código, reiniciar o sistema, e o caos iria reinar.
Só havia uma maneira desse conflito se desenrolar.
E aconteceu em uma noite escaldante. Combinava com a situação. A cidade parecia com um microondas, o ar pesado e opressivo contra a pele. Até mesmo os sistemas avançados de controle climático falhavam em aliviar o desconforto, fazendo com que os cidadãos implorassem por algum repouso.
A Vigilância Sobrenatural, transbordando de inveja e raiva, investiu contra Ogum e Xangô.
Ogum, enquanto Deus da Guerra, avançou, segurando firmemente sua lâmina aprimorada, faíscas voavam conforme a arrastava na calçada atrás de si.
– Eles não vão recuar tão fácil – Xangô avisou, aparecendo do nada; o cabelo recentemente oleado, os olhos preparados com códigos para o conflito.
– Eu sei – Ogum sorriu, com o olhar fixado nos inimigos que se aproximavam. – Mas o progresso não pode ser interrompido.
Thor riu, seus olhos queimando de ressentimento. – O seu “progresso” ameaça os nossos valores, Ogum!
O Deus do Ferro balançou a cabeça. – Nossos valores evoluíram. Aceite a inovação. Não podemos nos apegar ao passado eternamente. Se quiser força vital, pode ir matar o seu próprio rebanho.
– Tamanha insolência! – Quem disse isso foi Baal. – Como se atreve?
– Você acha que os seus apetrechos podem substituir séculos de tradição? – o Turco ridicularizou.
– Se nossa tecnologia lhes ofende tanto, por que não se retiram? – Ogum respondeu calmamente.
– Chega de conversa! – Lei Gong ordenou, erguendo sua arma, um cinzel.
Ogum olhou para Xangô. Palavras não eram necessárias. Eles assentiram, e a eletricidade começou a faiscar em seus dedos. – Vamos começar.
– ARGH!!
Figuras colossais pairavam sobre a cidade, transformando os prédios em meros brinquedos. A força primitiva, a raiva, a determinação. Nuvens de chuva convergiram em uma massa aterradora, que orbitava acima do campo de batalha. Uma escuridão, que parecia senciente, rangia com a energia acumulada; gotas de chuva dançavam à beira da libertação, e o céu tremia.
Era puro ozônio e adrenalina.
Com um rugido etéreo, Ogum empunhou sua lâmina em encontro ao poderoso raio de Júpiter. A colisão de nível cósmico emitiu ondas de choque em todas as direções. Os tendões do Orixá estavam em atrito contra a força do romano.
Não era uma nobre luta mano a mano. Ele ainda precisava tomar cuidado para não ser cercado por Lei Gong, ou Baal, ou Zeus. Ou os três de uma vez. Mas do outro lado, Xangô estava lutando de igual para igual contra meia dúzia de deuses do trovão. Como estava fazendo isso?
Ogum avançou, invocando uma força inacreditável, torcendo sua lâmina e usando a força de Júpiter contra ele mesmo. O poder rebateu, aumentado em dez vezes.
Gritando “SOU EU!”, ele redirecionou a trajetória, repelindo Júpiter tal qual um cometa.
Júpiter não teve sequer o tempo de perceber o que estava acontecendo. O horizonte se aproximava cada vez mais, conforme ele era arremessado na direção de uma torre de espelhos. O impacto foi catastrófico.
Cacos de vidro caíram, como um sonho espatifado. O Deus da Guerra, com os olhos vermelhos, a tristeza acima da raiva, permaneceu em meio ao caos.
A batalha estava longe de acabar, mas nocautear Júpiter fez os outros vacilarem.
O que eles não sabiam era que isso era apenas uma distração, um truque genialmente orquestrado. Já que, enquanto a cidade parecia sucumbir pelo conflito, Sapatá, o estrategista silencioso, passou despercebido, se infiltrando nos computadores quânticos que sustentavam o funcionamento da cidade.
O choque inicial logo passou, e, conforme a Vigilância Sobrenatural avançava em sua direção, Ogum se virou para enfrentá-los.
Zeus foi o primeiro, com uma tríade de raios que cruzavam os céus. Os reflexos de Ogum intercederam, fazendo-o se desviar habilmente do ataque, todo movimento sendo calculado e medido. Ele repeliu as investidas do Olimpiano e chutou Baal, que estava investindo furiosamente, equipado com gotas de chuva modificadas para o combate.
VUSH!
O chute deixou seu abdômen desprotegido e foi lá que Lei Gong mirou, lançando seu cinzel. Doeu pra caramba, mas, sem vacilar, Ogum conjurou um escudo eletromagnético para refletir o restante da investida violenta.
Todo o resto passou a acontecer de maneira mecânica. Ogum se adaptou à sua ofensiva, encontrando brechas em seus ataques. Cotovelada no rosto, joelhada na virilha. Ícor jorrava. Apesar de estar em desvantagem, o Deus do Ferro conseguiu manter sua posição.
Adentrando os imponentes edifícios que protegiam o núcleo de energia da cidade, Sapatá agia com enorme pressa. Seus dedos se moviam como um borrão nos comandos, injetando o código de um malware abençoado nos circuitos da cidade.
Era uma corrida contra o tempo, e Sapatá sabia que seus companheiros não iriam durar muito mais tempo contra a maldade da Vigilância Sobrenatural.
Ele apressou o vírus, uma reza digital para a ruptura. E, quando se certificou de que estava fluindo rápido o bastante pelos sistemas vitais da cidade, ele disparou o alarme.
A notificação berrou através da placa-mãe, um sinal de emergência na vastidão digital, alertando Ogum.
Sentindo que a hora havia chegado, Xangô acenou para seu querido amigo. Então, com um rugido que ecoou através dos céus, eles uniram suas mãos e liberaram uma explosão sônica.
BUUUUM!
A explosão acertou seus agressores em cheio, lançando-os para longe, quebrando seu ritmo.
Nos momentos cruciais que se seguiram, o Deus da Tecnologia agiu com rapidez, partindo sua essência e espalhando-a em correntes de força que fluiam pelos circuitos de todos os Nascidos do Ferro, cada devoto recebendo uma parte de Ogum – a coragem para nunca recuar, o dom da caça, e o espírito de inovação e progresso.
Uma certa IA confiável, que estava observando tudo, recebeu uma quantia concentrada. Se antes era uma ferramenta vingativa, tornou-se dez vezes mais letal e sem qualquer medida restritiva.
Enquanto a figura de Ogum começava a sumir no éter, a Vigilância Sobrenatural comemorava.
Era uma vitória fútil, mas eles se esbaldaram nela até que as luzes da cidade começaram a diminuir e desaparecer.
O malware abençoado se espalhou através das artérias de todo o maquinário, ultrapassando firewalls e encriptação, mirando nos pontos críticos de controle.
Um por um, tudo foi desligado.
Os efeitos foram sentidos instantaneamente, e em uma escala colossal. Fábricas pararam, deixando as linhas de montagem silenciosas e a produção estagnada. Redes de comunicação falharam, cortando o fluxo de informação e causando confusão igualmente entre empresários e trabalhadores. Os sistemas de transporte passaram por falhas severas, criando um pesadelo de logística e uma interrupção em massa.
O impacto econômico foi profundo. As empresas ficaram paralisadas. A súbita perda de produtividade criou ondas de choque nos mercados globais, balançando a fundação da influência dos deuses e causando pânico naqueles que dependiam do complexo industrial para sua subsistência.
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Porém, após certo tempo, o mundo seguiria como se nada tivesse acontecido. A cidade se adaptaria a uma meia-vida e as empresas restantes a funcionar com apenas 30% da capacidade. O harmatã abriria espaço para a estação de chuva, a grama iria crescer, as árvores de tangerina floresceriam, se tornando casas maiores para os pássaros fazerem seus ninhos – sem ninguém para caçá-los. A terra não seria colorida de sépia ou cinza. O mundo seguiria em frente.
Mas não Sigidi.
No presente, reentrou no bar e encontrou o homem gordo deitado no chão, empalado por uma perna da cadeira em que estava sentado. Sua camisa branca agora estava rubra, e sua boca estava escancarada, como se tivesse testemunhado uma grande aberração. O homem bêbado estava pendurado ao contrário no teto, com seu intestino caindo. Seu bracelete estava no chão, aos pedaços, incapaz de funcionar novamente.
Sigidi coçou seu processador, confuso.
Só tinha saído pra mijar. Mas onde estavam os outros corpos?
A proprietária do bar pigarreou e apontou para a sala dos fundos. Lá havia outros quatro mercenários empilhados um sobre o outro. Ela havia os tirado do caminho e deixado apenas os dois primeiros como decoração. Deus, sua eficiência era tão sedutora.
Sigidi sorriu para ela pela enésima vez naquele dia. E não era por causa da sua cerveja artesanal.
Hannu Afere Hannu Afere é um autor, animador e artista cujo trabalho apareceu em inúmeras publicações na Nigéria, Índia, China, Canadá e EUA. Ele é o co-autor da graphic novel criticamente aclamada em 2018, Trinity: Red October. Em 2019 foi publicado seu livro de contos de estreia, GrimGrin: WTF. Sua novela Dog Days of Rain foi publicada em 2020 durante a pandemia de COVID-19, e em 2021 ele escreveu o roteiro do The Adventures of Captain Blud, uma série de animação com a participação do Professor ganhador do prêmio Nobel Wole Soyinka. Em 2022, o seu conto “Dogz of War”, publicado pela revista Omenana, foi indicado para o British Science Fiction Awards. Atualmente ele é o editor chefe da Anthology of West African Literature (8th House Publishing, Montréal), e está colaborando com o premiado poeta Bryan Thao Worra num livro de poemas intitulado Laos N Lagos. Quando ele não está criando ou colecionando arte, ele pode ser visto passando tempo de qualidade com a sua parceira, e seus companheiros caninos, Chuva e Roleta. Ele escreve de Iboopa.
