Welcome to the African Speculative Fiction Bundle!
This is the most comprehensive collection of African speculative fiction authors ever assembled. With the complete bundle containing nearly 100 authors and over 145 works it stands both as an excellent introduction to the rapidly evolving canon of African SF and a unique one-time collection of their works. From established stars you might know such as Nnedi Okorafor, Tade Thompson, and Sarah Lotz, to upcomers like Wole Talabi, Chinelo Onwualu, Nerine Dorman, Dilman Dila, and so many more.
The bundle starts in 2012 with the first AfroSF and goes right through to 2020 with the first special edition anthology from Omenana magazine, providing a healthy cross-section of African SF over eight years and in some cases the development of individual authors from their first publication onwards. And it is precisely for these reasons I have selected anthologies over novels in this inaugural bundle so as to better represent the full scale of African SF, though you will find too the bonus individual collections Kabu Kabu by Nnedi Okorafor and A Killing in the Sun by Dilman Dila.
The road to this bundle has been paved by the work of countless African writers, editors, publishers, and most importantly readers. For too long was the African experience, imagination, and insight, held captive and until relatively recently only glimpsed through the thick lens of other cultures and their inherent biases. In a big way this is what the new wave of African Speculative Fiction is about: telling our own stories, revealing our vibrant cultures from within, sharing our unique perspectives, and writing ourselves into futures that for so long seemed to spell our doom by virtue of our absence.
Indeed, our progress over just the last eight years has been phenomenal. We have not only won international awards like Arthur C. Clarke, World Fantasy, and Nebula, etc., but gone on to create our own like the Nommos now in its fourth year, the SSDA Award now in its eight year. African publishers such as Jalada Africa, Seven Hills Media, StoryTime, Short Story Day Africa, DADA books, Pan African Publishers, and Black Letter Media, all of whom contributed to make this bundle, have actively encouraged and published more speculative fiction than ever before, and we have only just begun.
In this vein, the charity giving chosen for this bundle is the African Speculative Fiction Society, to help with the tireless unpaid work of this collective NPO. The ASFS was formed in 2016 and primarily at present is focused on the Nommo awards. The awards are nominated and voted upon by ASFS members for excellence in four Speculative Fiction categories. The importance of these independent awards and the ASFS as a part of building a robust and diverse homegrown African SF canon cannot be overstated nor underestimated.
Cover of Omenana to Infinity Anthology
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I trust you will enjoy all the works in this bundle as much as we did in writing and publishing them for you. I hope you will be introduced to new authors to look out for, new ideas about the world from our perspectives, and see an inclusive future that proves we are so much stronger together than we can ever be apart, especially in these trying times and the times still ahead.
A massive big thanks goes out to all the authors, editors, and publishers, who made this possible, and especially Jason Chen of Storybundle for giving us this chance to present our works to you. – Ivor W. Hartmann
* * *
For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.
AfroSFv1 edited by Ivor W. Hartmann
Lagos_2060 edited by Ayodele Arigbabu
Terra Incognita by Nerine Dorman
Jalada 2: AfroFuture(s) by Jalada Africa
If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus six more more books, for a total of ten! That’s a total of five StoryBundle exclusives!
A Killing in the Sun by Dilman Dila
Kabu-Kabu Stories by Nnedi Okorafor
AfroSFv2 edited by Ivor W. Hartmann
AfroSFv3 edited by Ivor W. Hartmann
Omenana to Infinity by Omenana
Imagine Africa 500 edited by Billy Kahora
This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub, .mobi) for all books!
It’s also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.
Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.
Get quality reads: We’ve chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.
Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that’s fine! You’ll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.
Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there’s nothing wrong with ditching DRM.
Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to the African Speculative Fiction Society!
Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you’ll get the bonus books!
StoryBundle was created to give a platform for independent authors to showcase their work, and a source of quality titles for thirsty readers. StoryBundle works with authors to create bundles of ebooks that can be purchased by readers at their desired price. Before starting StoryBundle, Founder Jason Chen covered technology and software as an editor for Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com.
For more information, visit our website at storybundle.com, tweet us at @storybundle and like us on Facebook. For press inquiries, please email press@storybundle.com.
The Climate Crisis is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. Never has the impact of our modern civilisations on the Earth been so clearly evident. There is no single person on the planet who is not directly affected. Even if somehow, we all banded together today and did everything within our global collective power to mitigate the effects, we would still feel the impact of the changes we have wrought on the biosphere for centuries to come.
As temperatures rise, as the seas rises, as weather patterns change, as biodiversity shrinks, as large-scale catastrophes become common place; like zoonotic outbreaks of Ebola and Corona virus from humans moving into, consuming, and drastically reducing wild areas; storm surge flooding; wild fires; etc., so too do we change. The relative ecological and climatological calm that has persisted for tens of thousands of years, that has allowed us as a species to thrive, is no more. In response to this instability many once leading countries have instead of reaching out turned inward, looked to isolation as a solution, encouraged the rise of fear-based extremist attitudes, policies, and practices. But is this who we are, are we as a species driven only by fear, no, it is historically evident that it is co-operation which has best served us. Just as we are rapidly approaching a climate tipping point, a thermal runaway that could irreparably imperil the entire biosphere, so to must we as a species reach a tipping point in common consensus and action to change how we live, and hopefully the latter comes before the former.
Given this specific theme of Climate Crisis, AfroSFv4 is asking you to look forward a single decade into the near future of 2031. How have we responded, how has the Earth? Do you see a continuing apocalypse, or have we risen to the challenge, and if so how? We are looking for well-researched, carefully extrapolated, deeply character driven narratives that explore this most imperative theme.
Works submitted may be: Science Fiction short stories only as per the theme and guidelines:
1) Only African writers are eligible (writers born in Africa, or having domiciled in for over 10 years, and/or holding citizenship in an African country).
2) The submitted work must be an original work, nothing that infringes the copyright of, or is derived from, another author’s work of fiction, is overly lewd, hate speech, etc.
3) Must be unpublished (not previously published in print or online).
4) No simultaneous submissions (only submitted to AfroSFv4 and no other publications).
5) No multiple submissions (submit only one work).
6) Single works with multiple authors will be considered as long as they all meet our African writer criteria.
7) Submission format: UK English, double spaced, font Times New Roman 12pt.
8) Word Count: Minimum: 1500 Words, Maximum: 10k Words.
THE SECOND
DEATH: WHY NIGERIA NEEDS TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT ITS ALIEN BLESSING CAME AT A PRICE
By
Bidemi Akindele
I was fourteen when the
alien disease killed my mother. They took a risk, she and all the others who first
investigated the impact site. I understand that, believe me, I understand how
different the country was back then but it’s not the loss that keeps me up at
night, weeping into my girlfriend’s hair. It’s the silence. After all these
years, no one wants to talk about it. There are no erected memorials. There is
no day of remembrance. There are still no published studies on the disease that
killed them. No one wants to acknowledge the early price we paid for all this rapid
wealth and development. Every time we petition or protest, the government tells
us to move on, to look how far we’ve come, to forget the past and embrace the
future in silence.
Why is it so hard for people
in power or at privilege to admit and acknowledge that their success came at
someone else’s expense? America, Japan, Europe, South Africa, Nigeria… I
could go on.
They say you die twice.
Once, when you stop breathing and a second time, later, when somebody says your
name for the last time. I will not be let myself become complicit in my
mother’s second death at the hands of this government. I will not be silent. I
will not speak of politics or offer opinions. I will simply tell her story.
My mother’s cough started
three days after she returned from the impact site in Abeokuta. At first it came
in random spurts only once a day or so. She said it was nothing, always with a
smile. After a while, we stopped asking if she was alright. Father said not to
worry, the investigation at the site was stressful because of the strange
things they found there. But then after almost a month, the cough began to
worsen, until it became an endless dry, hacking that echoed through our house
day and night.
My father finally convinced
her to see a doctor. When he saw her, the doctor had her admitted and put her
through dozens of tests. It took a week and we visited her in the private ward
of the Federal Hospital every day after school, staying till about four p.m. Then
one day my father told us that we needed to stay a bit longer.
Doctor Shina met with all of
us late in the evening. I remember that the sun was a low orange ball in the
window behind him and that he was unshaven and looked exhausted. He walked into
my mother’s room, a little bit surprised to find the entire family there, including
my seven-year-old sister Teniola, sitting on the leather chair beside my mother
– his patient. He glanced at my father with a look that made me think he expected
my father to ask my sister and I to go and play outside while they had a grown-up
talk, but my father said nothing. He became more direct and said, “Mr. and Mrs.
Akindele, I’d like to speak with you privately, if I could.”
“Doctor, please, anything
you want to say to me you can say in front of my family,” My mother croaked
from her bed. “My whole family.”
My father smiled and waved
his hand. “Please, go ahead.”
Doctor Shina cleared his
throat and said, “Madam, I examined your lung biopsy sample yesterday and then
again today. There is a unique and very worrying pattern of extensive scar
tissue and some residue of cadmium, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and another
material we have been unable to identify so far.”
He paused, adjusted his
glasses and looked at me and my sister before turning back to my mother and
saying, “I’m sorry Ma, but it seems you have some kind of severe pulmonary
fibrosis. It’s quite bad.”
I saw my father squeeze my
mother’s hand on the hospital bed. She squeezed back and the veins on her
forehead strained against her skin. She said nothing. He said nothing.
Then Doctor Shina said, “That’s
not the only problem, I’m afraid,” and my young heart sank in my chest like an anchor
would, at the bottom of the sea.
I think my father almost
asked me to take my sister out of the room then because when he glanced at me,
he looked like something was stuck in
his throat. But he didn’t send us out.
Doctor Shina said, “I also
found some abnormal cell growths so I requested an analysis. I’ve checked and
checked again but it seems conclusive now. It’s cancer. Lung cancer.”
My mother started to cry. I
don’t think she wanted to but she did anyway, and it seemed to make her angry
because her lips quivered, and her palms curled into fists. She probably already
suspected it was the thing they’d found at the site. She probably knew but she
couldn’t say because it was all secret. I was in shock, unable to think about anything
except the fact that my mother was going to die.
“What do we do next?” she
said, her tone belying the fear that her body was broadcasting. “Is it
treatable?”
I looked first to my mother,
and then at Doctor Shina.
“We still don’t know what
the particles in your lungs are so I cannot say much about the fibrosis. But it
looks like the cancerous cells have metastasized since they are already in your
bloodstream. Still, we have several treatment options available, and they may
work for you by the special grace of God. We just need to start treatment
early.”
I wondered then how many times
he had said those words to other patients, perhaps in that same room and in
that same tone. And how many of those patients had died shortly after hearing
them.
“Good,” my mother said
flatly.
“Thank you, Doctor,” my
father said with a diluted smile. “Please make all the necessary arrangements.
Whatever you need. She works at the ministry, so the government will pay for
everything, don’t worry about cost.”
“Yes sir. I’ll come back
soon.” Then he turned and exited the private ward. My father’s gaze followed
him all the way to the door and when the door closed behind him, so did my
father’s eyes.
Four weeks later, fifty-one
of my mother’s colleagues were also diagnosed with the accelerated fibrosis and
cancer combination. That was when the government had them all moved to the
Central hospital in Abuja. My father enrolled me in a boarding school and sent Teni
to live with my aunt Folake in Gbagada. I don’t know what happened in Abuja
because the medical records were sealed. Neither does my father. He had to
watch the woman he loved waste away while doctors did things to her without
consulting him. He was still struggling in the courts to have the records
unsealed years later, when he died of a heart attack.
In the years since their
deaths, the government has profited from the reverse-engineered alien
technology recovered at the Abeokuta site. Nigeria is now the world’s largest
provider of macroscale gene-alteration services and Lagos is becoming the genodynamic
technology capital of the world, thanks to its proximity to the impact site,
but I hope you understand that these are all fruits of the poisoned alien tree.
A tree that was watered by the blood of my mother and her colleagues. A tree whose
branches are trellised by the misery that came with diagnoses families like
mine received in stark hospital rooms from well-meaning men like Dr. Shina. A
tree sustained by persistent government erasure and silence.
It has been six years. We
are not asking for much, we are just asking for an acknowledgement of our pain.
Our truth. Acknowledgement that the present prosperity of this nation was
purchased at the cost of fifty-two lives – no matter how inconvenient that narrative
is. Acknowledgement that those lives mattered.
We are all made of stories
and in the end, there is no greater injury that can be done to a person who has
suffered their first death than to change their story, to deny their narrative.
It makes their second death more tragic. I will continue to tell my mother’s
story everywhere, online, during interviews, on panel discussions, during
protests, everywhere, and I will not stop until it has a new ending, one that does
not bring me to tears whenever I tell it.
______________
•Bidemi Akindele is a musician and artist whose provocative work has been exhibited in 23 countries. He is the son of the late #Abeokuta52 campaigner, Professor Jude Akindele and the current Vice President of the Abeokuta Truth Alliance (ATA).
Abeokuta52
__________________
₦AIRALAND COMMENTS
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Ahmed-Turiki: Powerful
Story! God Bless Bidemi for not giving up on the truth about his mother and all
those who died. There is an ATA protest planned at the site in 3 days. Everyone
come out and join us, let the government know that we will not be silenced! Aluta
continua! Victoria ascerta!
November 16 10:34
OmoOba1991:
<Comment Flagged and Auto-Deleted by NLModeratorBot>
November 16 10:41
SoyinkaStan1: Sorry for
your loss. No wonder there were so many questions the minister of science and
technology didn’t respond to when they announced that they have awarded the
Abeokuta exploitation contract to Dangote. Hmmm.
November 16 10:54
Abk52_Warrior: Please
share this link on all your social media accounts since it’s no longer
accessible on the Guardian News website. Even proxies and backchannel servers aren’t
working. I will keep testing and update you. But please share. Its personal
stories like this that will eventually force the government to tell the truth.
November 16 11:17
QueenEzinne: I am
sorry for this boy’s loss and I am sure his mother was a good person but trying
to blame her death on Nigeria’s blessing is just wrong. Why can’t he accept that
she was just sick? Why must he now put sand-sand in our garri? This ‘alien
thing’ as you people are calling it is nothing more than the hand of God
appearing in Nigeria’s life and God’s hand is always pure.
November 16 12:09
MaziNwosuThe3rd: Hmmm. This
is a powerful post. I know say that site get K-leg from day 1. Make government
talk true o!
November 16 13:52
GBR: God bless
Bidemi for not giving up. For those of you wondering why the government would
try to cover up the deaths: it looks like they are using some of that
technology to develop weapons. There is something fishy going on. Just go to TheTruthAboutTheAbeokuta52.com
and read all the posts, especially the ones by the account called ‘Mister52’.
November 16 23:09
PastorPaul_HRH: @SoyinkaStan1
Hmmm. Your head is correct.
November 16 10:34
EngineerK32: This is
nothing but slander by foreign powers to discredit us because we didn’t sell
exploitation rights to them. ATA is trash. I wonder how much they paid this
traitor to lie.
November 16 15:22
ShineShineDoctor: This is
Doctor Shina. The same one from Bidemi’s story. I am currently in London. If
anyone knows how to contact Bidemi, please inbox me, I need to warn him.
November 16 15:54
Abk52_Warrior: @ShineShineDoctor
Warn him about what?
November 16 15:57
OmoOba1991: <Comment
Flagged and Auto-Deleted by NLModeratorBot>
November 16 16:01
LadiDadi999: @OmoOba1991
Whats wrong with you? Don’t you know how to have a sensible discussion? Lack of
home training.
November 16 16:39
GdlckJnthn311: Look, I
understand how this boy must feel but it’s just not true. I have been working
at Dangote Technologies since 2023 and the alien technology has never once
caused harm to anyone in my team. I have personally touched some of those
materials myself. I will direct anyone interested in facts and not fiction to
read the paper: “Technical Report No. 93: A Targeted Risk Assessment of the
Abeokuta Exploitation Site” which is available for free download on the
Ministry of science and technology website.
November 16 17:05
ShineShineDoctor: @Abk52_Warrior
I was attacked on my way to Knightsbridge to discuss my recollection of his
mother’s case with Dr. Maduako at UCL. There were two men with knives. Thank
God for the group of Croatian tourists who intervened to save my life. They
took my wallet, my phone and all my notes on his mother’s case. This morning I
heard Dr. Maduako was in an accident. I don’t know what is going on but I think
Bidemi is in danger.
November 16 17:26
Abk52_Warrior: @ShineShineDoctor
OMG. OK. Can’t say much here but let me contact my network and see what we can
find. For now, please make sure you only login in using a proxy. Stay safe.
November 16 17:28
LekanSkywalker:@Abk52_Warrior@ShineShineDoctor
Ghen Gheun! Una don start fake action film. Hahaha! Gerarahere mehn!
November 16 18:46
PeterIkeji_Jos: What is
all this nonsense about a cover-up? I swear some people turn everything into
conspiracy. Next thing you people will say Sgt Rogers killed his mother with
the cooperation of the CIA and wiliwili. Mumu nonsense.
November 16 20:15
GBR: Seriously
you people that think this is some conspiracy theory bullshit need to pay
attention. Don’t be blinded because naira-to-dollar exchange rate is good now
and you have constant power supply. 27 employees at Dangote Technologies have
disappeared in the last 4 years. Read the posts on TheTruthAboutAbeokuta52.com. Go to the LifeCast and Twitter
feeds of @TheAbeokuta52Lie. Read Doctor Shina’s comment above. There is a
sensible, realistic and pertinent case for the government to answer and the
evidence is only growing. Open your eyes.
November 16 21:09
SoyinkaStan1: @ShineShineDoctor
You are lucky you are in Britain. If it were Nigeria they’d have killed you for
sure. The silver lining is that London has CCTV cameras everywhere so they will
probably catch the attempted murderers, and when they do, the investigation
will finally expose this whole thing! The truth is coming.
November 16 23:24
Abk52_Warrior: @ShineShineDoctor
My ATA contacts tell me that Bidemi was trying to sneak into Nigeria through
Benin republic to attend a planned protest. No one has heard from him since. I
can connect you to the protest organisers. Inbox me a private email address.
Don’t use anything public. Set up a new account on encrypted LegbaMail. Stay
safe.
November 16 23:58
GBR: Did you guys
see this yet? https://cnn.com/2026/11/17/politics/ nigeria-britain-sign-long-term—genodynamic-technology-exchange-contract/index.html
Be careful @ShineShineDoctor
November 17 11:09
Abk52_Warrior: @ShineShineDoctor
Did you get my last message?
November 17 11:43
Abk52_Warrior: @ShineShineDoctor
Please respond if you can see this.
November 17 16:11
Abk52_Warrior: @ShineShineDoctor
Doctor Shina?
November 18 09:11
<Comments have now been closed on this post>
WOLE TALABI is a full-time engineer, part-time writer and some-time editor from Nigeria. His stories have appeared in F&SF, Lightspeed,Omenana, Terraform, AfroSFv3, and a few other places. He edited the anthologies These Words Expose Us and Lights Out: Resurrection and co-wrote the play Color Me Man. His fiction has been nominated for several awards including the Nommo Awards and the Caine Prize and his first book Incomplete Solutions, has been published by Luna Press. He likes scuba diving, elegant equations and oddly-shaped things. He currently lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Wami threw her legs over the low wall, then reached for the sack
and dragged it over to her. That was the last of the things she could find that
could be useful to her. She ignored the ache in her joints and the sore spots
in her soles as she scuffed the dust on the cement, half-dragging, half-walking
the sack of provisions to her fort.
She sat for a few minutes, sipping water from a ships’ sachet as
she looked down on the silent colony. She was the last one, all the others were
lying cold and still in their homes or in the church where some had gathered in
their last days.
She didn’t know why she was
still alive; perhaps the blessings the Deacon had so fervently dispensed while
they had huddled in the church had clung to Wami, had insulated her from the
fear and the dying. The prayers didn’t help her parents though, or anyone else
for that matter. She had woken up this morning, and none of the others had; not
even the Deacon.
Wami had thought about what to do while she had smoothed her
mother’s hair and draped a fine cloth over where her father lay still holding
her mother’s hand, on the floor of the church. She knew she didn’t want to stay
here with them. They might have looked like they were sleeping; but she was a mindful
girl at her ten years and she already knew what death looked like. They were
never coming back; they had joined the Sky-spirit and now they could only watch
her from above.
The time for sadness would be later, now was the only
time that was important; her last promise to her mother that she would watch
for the ship when it came. Their last days were spent talking about what to do,
and who would come to help them. The Deacon was on the channel to the
Sky-spirit almost constantly as the remaining villagers trickled in at the last
day; but Wami didn’t know how to use the uplink machine or what codes to use.
When it was obvious that she needed to, all the adults were too
sick to show her. She did know that if help came, it would arrive at the Star-Port.
If she moved there and waited for them it would be better than waiting at the
church. Besides which, the church building was starting to feel like dust and
silence, and loneliness… and Wami didn’t like that at all.
This morning she had checked in at the infirmary, the Mess Hall
and the Library – they were either deserted, or packed with the still forms of
the people who used to be vital members of the Colony. She had not wanted to linger
in those places, either. Wami was old enough to take care of herself; Mother
had already taught her how to boil water and make porridge, cut fruit and cook
meat.
Wami was unique her whole life, so far the only child on the
planet, the only infant at planet fall. Mother had said she had been made on
the ancestor home and she had been carried with her in the long sleep between
the Old World and this new one. The Ship-spirit had woken mother up five years early
from her deep sleep so she could birth Wami in the safety of the ship’s artificial
gravity and radiation shields, rather than take any chances so close to her
term on their new home.
Naturally conceived children were precious to the Sol Senate no
matter where they were, over the whole reach of humanities’ struggling grasp.
Since their arrival here, everyone else had been too busy setting up domes and
water plants, selecting tasks from a roster the Sky-spirit presented; to
properly court and marry. Wami’s mother and father were the only couple when
they had landed, and five years after planet-fall, they still were, more or
less. One of the Deacon’s persistent sermons was that the young men and women should
stop playing with themselves and start playing with each other.
Wami didn’t know what that meant, and when she asked mother what
that meant she only smiled and said “We’re building something here, Wami. There
will be plenty of time to please the Deacon later. Other children will come
when we are ready.”
Wami checked her screen-reader, it was full from her library
downloads. She could sit here and read while she waited out the rescue ship,
and she had at least four weeks of the last of the old supplies before she
needed to go down to the well and fetch water, or forage from hydroponics for
fresh leaves. She had just opened the animal pens and loosed the creatures to the
wild.
The water pool and feed troughs were mostly automated and there
was nothing else on the dusty Planet that could harm them. It seemed kinder
that way, considering there was no-one to tend them. They could roam and forage
wherever they wanted, whatever was affecting the people wasn’t affecting them.
They knew what they needed better than Wami did.
Wami settled down for the night, watching the stars wink on as
the sun set. The brightest star was the Sky-spirit, where mother and father
most probably were. She waved at them to show she was doing what they told her
to do. It should be enough for them to know she was all right and had enough to
eat and drink – she actually preferred the left-over ship concentrates, anyway.
No one else liked the concentrates – once they landed they
pushed them to the back of the granary, but Wami had been eating them since her
back gums got sore; she found them more convenient as they didn’t require chewing,
and she didn’t mind the taste. She was a frugal girl, a single sachet was
enough for a meal, and the sticky paste would not irritate her mouth in the long
weeks until the scheduled med-ship would dock with the dentist aboard. They
also didn’t go bad; their shelf life was hundreds of years.
Wami’s mouth had begun to
ache only after the med-ship’s last visit, but she bore this inconvenient irony
with a stoic stubbornness. She didn’t want to visit the settlement again unless
she had to, what with all the bodies in the Infirmary and the Church. The
concentrates and water were pre-packaged in a sack and loaded on a dolly, and
presented the opportunity to avoid the village as long as they lasted.
Wami had simply dragged the dolly over the still dusty roads to
set her bunker on the roof of the control tower to keep the Sky-spirit company.
It could look down and see her, and know she kept her faith. Mother and father could also watch over her
and know she was doing as best she could.
She had brought her toys with her, so she wouldn’t be any lonelier
while she waited for help to come.
She dusted the concrete in front of her shade-cloth and set her
friends down on the ground. They were from her mother’s-mother back in the time
they had all lived around the Ancestor-star, on old Earth. Grandmother had
lived in the Kenyan highlands as a girl at the time the rains had stopped
coming. Wami loved to hear her mother tell her stories about how they had moved
with the toys over the cold distances to their new home, here, where their new
life would begin.
The memory of meeting the toys for the first time comforted her
now. Mother had brought the toys in a little carry-case from ship storage as
the beige marble in the ship’s viewer became fixed and grew bigger and bigger,
then she introduced them to Wami. She was delighted from the moment Mother
switched them on.
Mother had said: “This is Waja with the lights and the
dancing-stick and the speaker and this is his friend Kimi with lights and the
cymbals. They shine at each other while Kimi plays. This is Wami with the
wheels and she dances between them, while Biti here is the drummer and keeps
time for her. I’m too old for them now, but I wanted you to have them before
you were born, before I even knew you were coming.”
Her five-year old self had asked: “My name is Wami too, did
you name me after her?”
Mother had answered: “Wami means ‘pretty’ in our old
language. You’re both very pretty, so you’re both called Wami. One day when
you’re old enough I’ll teach you more of how we used to talk before we began to
speak only Panglish. There are so few of us now who remember the old tongue, but
this is why everyone is coming here; to start again and fix that.
Now listen very carefully
to what Waja asks you, and then answer with all your heart.”
And Waja had blinked his lights and said: “[I Love you] [Do
you love me?]” Perhaps it wasn’t just the words that crackled from the tiny
speaker above his heart, or the flash of the different colored light that
seeped from points in his face or along his uniform or the way he tilted his
head when he spoke; Wami understood him clearly with the special wonder that
any child has for her world.
Wami had answered immediately: “I Love you!” and she knew she
did from that moment on, with all her heart…
Wami suddenly felt very sad as her toy friends lined up on the
concrete before her. Now that she was settled and safe, all the things that she
had seen began to weigh on her.
Waja cocked his little head, “[Is anything wrong Wami?]”
“I’m all alone now, Waja.” Wami dabbed at the tears rolling down
her cheeks. “Play for me.”
Waja waved his stick at the others, “[Don’t be sad Wami. We’ll
play for you until you’re not lonely anymore.]”
“I’m very lonely now, Waja.” Wami sobbed, “Play for me with all
your heart.”
“[We will, Wami],” Waja said, and Kami and Biti and little Wami
agreed, “[We will dance while you are awake; and we will play while you are
asleep. We will play will all our hearts until you are not alone.]”
And so they began…
***
Captain Sancha Cortosa held the steering steady as she swung the
jets onto the baffles. “Locked and loaded guys!” she announced over the
intercoms, “You know what to do, spread out and report back to me every
half-hour. Call me immediately if you find something.”
“Aye-aye” and “Roger-roger” and “Ten-four”
fed over her coms-bead as the various teams set their call-signs and scooted
out of the opening bay.
“Nothing looks wrong, Captain.” Gunnery Sergeant Diego Baptista
looked up from his feeds, “I don’t get it. The Satellite AI Star-mind is
traumatized, sure… but nothing is wrong with it. No stellar radiation or cosmic
waves, no physical damage to the colony to speak of.”
“We’ll know when we get reports in, Diego,” Sancha snapped the
buckles to lift out of the command chair, “In the meantime let’s just get used
to this gravity, and search for survivors. We have trained our Multi-National
Colony Response Team for years; that is us and this is not a
drill.”
“I’ll suit up.” Diego nodded, “Although I’m not sure there’s
anything to target.”
“Just run through our roles, Diego. I need my munitions marine
ready for anything,” Sancha rubbed her shins, aching against the extra weight,
“This is the first colony distress we’ve ever had, and we’ll go by the book on
this run. We don’t know what we’ll find. Aside from the slightly heavier
gravity, this place is supposed to be quite tame. Everyone has their job. Just
do yours and I’ll do mine.”
*
Hours later Diego found her on top of the Star-Port staring at a
makeshift shelter. He thought he heard a ting-ting-ting-tat-tat-tat
sound as he rounded the roof-door, but it stopped as he approached the
crouching woman.
“Report.” She stood as her marine neared.
“Negative human life-signs, all six hundred and four lost,”
Diego sighed, “They’re taking them for autopsy now. We’ll know in a few hours.
What’s this?”
“She is the missing girl. Star-mind managed to track her
life-sign until a week ago. She was the last of them. I think the Star-mind only
stayed sane because of her toys.”
“What… Oh meu Deus!” Diego gasped in surprise as he saw
the little form huddled in the back of her play-fort.
“You have children of your own, I recall.” Sancha stepped away
from the pathetic sight. All the empty ship-rations and sachet packets had been
carefully rolled and stacked in a neat pile. A bucket half-full with well-water
rested under shade-cloth in the back of the shelter.
“Two; a boy and a girl, they’re both still very young – ten
years and eight. About the same age as this little girl.”
“Children are always the hardest to find like this.” Sancha
pressed her bead, “Ten-Four:
Containment on Star-Port roof, it’s the missing girl; acknowledge.”
“Ten-four, Star-Port roof.” the medic team buzzed back.
“On our way.”
“What are those?” Diego pointed as he dialed down his suit-alert
to stand-by.
“They’re Out-System designer toys.” Sancha looked down at the
line of mechanical dolls watching her. “Solar-powered and built to last.
They’re educational. They blend light, sound and motion, and are capable of an
emotional connection with children. No real computational power to speak of,
not even Type 1 intelligence… more like a 0.7… They’re just toys based on
universal human tropes.”
“But you said they were communicating with the Star-mind …?”
Diego slipped off his face-plate to better see beyond his AR screens.
“The LED’s of the ringmaster toy and the percussion toy are an
ancient Morse-code communication; Star-mind has been eavesdropping on the
instruction between these two. These toys have prevented the Star-mind from
looping into a catatonic state, kept it in the present with minor variations of
rhythm; and they’ve entertained it. They’re the actual heroes in this tragedy,
go figure.”
“Sancha…” Diego’s voice trembled. “She looks asleep, poor little
thing all alone for those five weeks. How did we help her? What have we
changed? We arrived a week too late.”
“Don’t …!” Sancha snapped, “We keep to our jobs, Sergeant! Yours
is the protection against physical threat and mine is the protection of the Senate
Intelligent and Robotic assets. Just because we fuck between flights doesn’t
mean you know me! I don’t care as much for these people as you do! That’s not
my job, save all your compassion for someone who needs it!”
Diego didn’t pay attention to her outburst; he just closed the
distance between them, then folded her into his arms and held her as she
resolved to stay steady. “Just because you work with machines doesn’t mean you
are one.” He whispered into her ear as he held her.
She was rescued from his comforting as a burst from the
infrastructure team to her micro-bead allowed her the opportunity to gently
push Diego away. “Engineering has something.” Sancha smiled gratefully at the
big man. “Roger-roger: Report please, Poul.”
“Roger-roger.Captain,
we’ve found something on the potable water supply ducts in the settlement
font.”
“Explain, please. This is your specialty.”
“The deep-drill water filters trap the minerals that the
colonists reuse in the hydroponics and on the fallow fields, typically sodium
and brine salts. They take the filtered powder-residue and just spread it in
hydroponics if it’s from the Sulphur trap; or dump it on the salt-lick if it is
from the brine filters.
“The other water from the surface aquifers and other drill-sites
they just drain into grey-water pools without ever drinking it. It’s naturally
brackish so it’s fine for the plants and farm-stock animals. This is a
desert-type planet for the most part, so there’s no fresh rainwater.”
“So?” Sancha shrugged, she wasn’t making any connection.
“The drinking water filters, Captain, specifically for the
humans.” Poul’s voice sounded tense. “This starlight is slightly darker than Solar,
with more orange light. Things look the same color under this light, but
they’re not the same. Even on Earth they look very similar… Somewhere in the
last three months, they’ve hit another mineral in the deep drill that looks
like pure Sulphur; but isn’t.”
“Well, what?” Sancha lost her patience with the young geologist.
“I don’t think I should speculate…” Poul sounded flustered.
“Just you fucking guess!” Sancha snapped, “That’s why you’re
here.”
“Orpiment, Captain.” Poul sighed, “Not just Sulphur. It’s an
arsenic mineral. I’ll have to check with medical for the autopsy results when they’re
ready, but I’m sure about one thing. If it is what I think it is in these
quantities; then these guys were dead months ago and didn’t know it. The stuff
builds up in human tissue until it reaches a critical mass, then it’s all over.
Organ failure; typically, while one is asleep. Medical will have to confirm
this.”
“Thank you.” Sancha groaned quietly; the tension that had been building all morning started to ebb from her. “I’m sorry…” She accessed her toxicology archive and watched the entry for ‘arsenic’ stream in.
“Captain, I understand.” Poul interrupted in his heavily
accented Panglish, “There is very little pain. It is not the worst way you
could go.”
“She looks like she’s sleeping.” Diego stood up from the body,
“You can hardly tell she’s dead.”
“Apparently Arsenic is something that can do that. There is very
little decomposition; medical is confirming this from the first autopsy
results.” Sancha looked over the colony, “They confirm ‘heavy metal’ poisoning.
This settlement is still viable; we can make sure this never happens again with
a few adjustments to the process tech. We can fix this…” Sancha looked back at
the little bundle “… but we can’t fix them…”
“We should bury them properly.” Diego crouched to look at the
little line of toys staring back at him, “Up on the hill, these dead should
always be part of what we’re building here.” Diego must have triggered a
proximity sensor on the line of toys, because the troop leader squeaked “[Ninakupenda],
[Unanipenda]” from the tiny speaker in its chest.
“What’s that mean?” he squinted up at Sancha. “Why did they stop
playing when we got here?”
“That’s their imprinting command. They’ve lost the connection
with the girl, and then her last instruction ran its course. Whatever she told
them to do, it’s done now.” She stepped to the edge of the tower, below her the
bodies were being arranged in rows on the Starport’s geocrete slabs, “It
usually only works for children. You and I can’t imprint; we’re past puberty.
That’s when adult sex hormones re-wire the brain, and the toys can’t track the
complex human emotions after that. I don’t know what condition she placed on
them, but you should put them in their sleep-box to hibernate them.”
“How does it work?” Diego carefully picked up the leader; he was
convinced the toy was waiting for him to say something.
“The child repeats the first word or phrase and then the toys
will settle into the child’s language pattern, whatever it is. The toys learn
to love that child and will teach them all sorts of advantageous developmental
behavior. In return… they get a child’s unconditional love as feedback.” Sancha
sighed, and waved absently near the little corpse, “You have young enough
children, and you should take those with you when we leave here. Just use the case
over there and take them. They shouldn’t be abandoned here; they are not useful
to anybody but a small child. They’re just toys. They will reset and
recalibrate language settings when another child is presented to them.”
“Thank you, Sancha.” He stooped and opened the small carry case.
Lining the niches for the toys, a nanite repair-gel shimmered in the sun’s
light.
“They just need to be loved…” Sancha shrugged. “If I can save
nothing else on this planet, at least I can save them. I must put the Star-mind
into hibernation and transport it next. The Type 5 is too emotional for this
kind of work, I see that now. Losing this colony nearly drove it insane. It had
even learned to speak Swahili to better interface with the colonists. Now, the
Star-mind is the only thing left that can communicate in that language besides
these toys, and it is having an existential crisis. At least his systems logs
are still in Panglish. It pains me to consider this, but for the last week the
only things speaking Swahili have been a Star-mind and a troupe of toys. The
toys will automatically switch language when presented with a new opportunity,
unfortunately I will have to expunge the Star-mind and recalibrate it.” She
inhaled long, before she spoke again.
“Think of it, the Refugia of an ancient
language will end – and by my hand. Here I mean end as in gone from Old Earth,
from this world and from the Universe. We can’t have this happen again. My
report will insist on Type 3 for future colony Star-minds.” She sighed and
stared over the bustle of her team in the buildings below and the shrouded
forms lining up on the Star-Port pavement. “They were nearly ready; they were only
weeks away from a sustainable, agrarian settlement; so close. Diego when you’re
done here, respectfully process the bodies. Bury them on high ground above the
water table as they fall out of autopsy. Identify and match them from the
colony records by name. More than a people died here; a language, an entire
culture… all their hope for a different future. I’ll be in the ship with the
clean-up and Transport reports.”
“Captain, nobody ever suspects the water of harm. This could
have happened anywhere in human space, even back on Old Earth. We Humans die
very easily when we’re isolated, there is always this risk when we set out. You
simply can’t take this on yourself.”
“I’m not, Diego.” Sancha headed
off the roof. “My lesson from this tragedy is that my machines require contact
with more people. I can work on that.”
Diego nodded as he put the toys into their slots, first the
drummer then the little dancer, then the percussionist.
“[Ninakupenda], [Unanipenda]” insisted the ring-leader as
he placed the others into the case.
“There you go; brinquedinho inteligente.” Diego smiled at
the toy and placed him in his slot, “I know another little girl who will love
you again.” As Diego followed his Captain back to the ship, he convinced
himself that the lost look on the little toy’s face couldn’t have been there; that
it was incapable of comprehending what had happened here.
The End
Caldon Mull has had a long publishing career in Technology, and various Game publications under different nom de plumes, and in his own name. He has traveled extensively throughout Africa and Central Asia, and has worked in Antarctica. When he is not currently working in a Technology field, he is usually writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, and looking to expand his Genre work into new directions.
We had just settled into bed when we heard you climbing up the
wall.
Our beds were soft, and the covers, pulled up to our chins. Grandma,
after telling us a bedtime story – the one about the time Ijapa went up to
heaven and ate all the food – had gone to her room, eager to retire. We smelled
the death approaching her body, and sadness crept onto us as we watched her
limp her way to the door. Grandma was always convinced that we could not see
her in the darkness.
You were struggling to pull yourself over the fence when we saw
you. Taiye went first, to stand by the large window in the room we all share, then
the rest of us (Kehinde and Idowu) followed. We stood together by the window,
pulled the heavy blue drapes apart and watched as you struggled to cross over.
The fence that surrounds our small house is high, but the part
that you managed to scale is lower, brought low by others like you who had
tried to do the same thing, but failed, quite painfully. Did you not know? We
are treasured, cherished. So treasured that our parents, just last month, gave
their lives so that we would not be caught by another, who, like you, had been
in search of our golden mat. We were born with it, this mat made of shimmering
links of gold and worth a small country’s decade-long budget. Our mother pushed
it out with our placenta, and without it, we will cease to exist.
Grandma did not bother to fix the fence because she thought the
wall on that part of the house was high enough, coupled with the extra
security. So, we let her believe we were safe. What she did not know would not
hurt her.
While we watched you eventually climb down the fence, sticking
your feet into the grooves left by your compatriots, we smiled because we knew
what was to come. You made it into the compound as we knew you would. Several
others had. We watched as you made your way closer to the house.
The small pink house, with its large windows, which looked like
a cottage home, must have been the least of your worries when you thought of
all the ways you could take what you came for. Tales of our mat have travelled across
seas and deserts, and we have seen many others such as you who have tried to
steal it. Others like us, who lacked protection like ours, have had their mats
stolen. We dreamt of their deaths when it happened, watched them writhing in
pain, burning in a fire that no one else could see.
We watched as you picked your way through the tall grasses and
navigated the grave markers. We watched as you stepped on the homes of our
relatives – including the long dead and recently buried. We felt nothing for
them.
Our eyes must have called you when you were close enough, our purple eyes that we have been told make people feel like they are looking into purple glass. Our eyes which unsettle people, sending them as far away from us as they can get. Our eyes must have called you because you looked up. It was sudden; you raised your right leg, trying to avoid the barbed wires scattered around the grave markers, and you met our eyes. We looked at you too, all three of us, our hands linked, and we saw into your mind.
We saw that you really didn’t want our mat. Under the light of
the sun, you were a civil servant, slaving away for long hours and receiving a
paltry salary in return. We saw your mother, lying in bed from an illness she
would never recover from, and we felt pity for you. We saw the fear in your
eyes, raw, naked, unfettered. We could see that you didn’t really want to do
this, but what could we do? We were merely threads in fate’s spool.
You stepped on the barbed wire anyway – it was inevitable, you
would have stepped on something. You really shouldn’t have shouted, as that’s
what wakes them up, every time.
Grandpa stood first, dug out of the earth like an earthworm in
search of water. He shook the sand from his body and looked in the direction of
the sound; your direction. Others followed slowly – they were not quite as
hungry as Grandpa. We have a lot of dead relatives and it had been a while for
him. They all unearthed themselves, some of them stuffing eyes back in their
sockets, others fixing joints that had come loose. Through it all, we watched.
We knew Idowu thought you were quite handsome. We could see why
she would think so. You were dark-skinned, the kind of man we liked, and you
had a strong jaw. It was easy to think you were handsome, but we were only
twelve and grandma would not approve of such thoughts, so Idowu banished them. She
held her breath instead, and allowed the grief of your impending end to settle
beneath her collarbones while we continued to watch.
The look on your face as you registered what was happening
hollowed out our bellies. Usually, we would be amused at what was to come, but
this time, we were not. We wished we could go down and help you, but we could
not. We could never leave the house, ever. So, we watched as grandpa towered
over you and looked you over – you were still crumpled on the floor and your
leg was bleeding, poor you. Without saying anything, he grabbed you under your
arms, and he raised you from the ground. His joints creaked as he did this. You
shouted, begged, and did everything you could, we could do nothing but watch,
and listen. You looked at us as you begged, and then we saw, you did not regret
this. For your mother, you would have done it over and over again. We turned
away and wiped our tears, and we were surprised – we did not cry for people
like you.
We could not continue to watch after this. We heard you struggle
against grandpa’s hold, begging, with the other dead relatives witnessing –
there to make sure grandpa got his turn, that you did not escape.
When grandpa squeezed you to his chest and entered into the
ground again, we did not watch. We were too busy sobbing into our palms, collecting
our tears, and wishing we could destroy the mat, and ourselves along with it.
END
Simbiat Haroun is a certified foodie. She lives in Nigeria but barely goes anywhere, preferring to spend her time at home reading and writing. She writes both literary and speculative fiction, but the latter is her first love. She enjoys writing stories about strong women doing amazing things. She is a graduate of the Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop.
I’m
no god. Not by a long shot. But I suppose I’m not exactly human either. At
least, not anymore. It isn’t everyday one chooses to dissociate and sever all
ties with their own kind, is it? Some would think me the worst kind of traitor,
others, a mad scientist of sorts. But they all speak because they are ignorant.
They’ve not seen the monsters that I’ve seen; that I still see. People don’t
know that if monsters are only found in hell, then the earth is hell. But I have enough experience to
know that monsters don’t have horns on their heads or dribble fire and
brimstone from their mouths.
Devils
walk amongst us, live inside of each of us. They wear clothes like us and talk
like us. Maybe even love like us. Look in the mirror and tell me truly.
What
do you see?
*
The
place reeks of trauma, sorrow and despondency. The internally displaced persons’
camp is less of a camp and more of an open air gathering and this particular one
boasts of more than two thousand people. I see only a handful of men here; most
of them are probably dead from the insurgence that forced their wives and
children here in the first place. I walk among them; unseen, unheard, unfelt.
As you know, the things you see exist in three dimensions which by Cartesian
coordinates are in the x, y and z directions. What you don’t know however and
probably never will for decades, is that things can also exist in the negatives
of these directions. In other words, there are actually six dimensions of
existence: three positive and three negative. I now exist in the negative
dimensions or as some people have termed it in ignorance, the astral plane.
Have you never heard people of science talk about matter popping out of nothing
in deep space? Where do you think that matter comes from or rather, crosses
over from?
I
exist in the true negatives, not the flawed gibberish you were taught in
Cartesian algebra, and so I am unable to interact directly with the normal
plane anymore. You think this is sad? No. I think it is a blessing.
I
drift through the camp, a ghost in the machine of physical existence. Some of
the people seem to shamble about aimlessly, others are talking in hushed tones.
But the majority simply sit and stare at nothing, into nothing. These are the
ones who realize the extent of their situation. The ones who know that their
lives are changed forever. For the worst. They are the ones who know fate has
shattered the pane of their lives with a sledgehammer and left them to try and
reassemble the shards of the remnants.
Few
of the children play, though even the manner in which they do so speaks of
something hampered and possibly mangled within. Most of them don’t bother
anymore, though. You can see them huddled with their mothers, trying to cover
their eyes and faces from the dark, dark spectrum of life that fate has chosen
to show them a bit too early.
My
eyes rest on one child in particular. Bushy hair speckled with sand, he runs up
and down, chasing his plastic ball with all the vigour and innocence of
childhood. Maybe he’s one of those children who choose to stubbornly hold on to
their youth, regardless of circumstance. Or maybe this child didn’t have to see
gunmen butcher his father with a machete or watch them restrain his mother and
take turns desecrating her womanhood with their twice-cursed manhoods. Maybe
the child didn’t have his raped and battered mother pick herself up after, and,
taking his hands, run through kilometres of shrubbery and grasslands to one of
the many IDP camps in the state while their village lit up the night in flames.
Or
just maybe the boy is as oblivious as stone.
Scrawny
and bare-chested in tattered khaki shorts, I watch him play with his little
ball. He smiles as he runs and for a moment, I feel the stirrings of something akin
to brotherly affection for this child. The relief trucks haven’t arrived yet
and I wonder what will happen to these people when their hope is finally trampled
like dry leaves underfoot. I suppose it is hope that fills the boy’s belly, not
food and for now, I guess that should provide him enough energy to play.
Silly
little boy. Save your hopes for the coming days. It will be all you have.
I
see it in many faces here too; that tiny glow called hope. These people hope their
government stands by them, the light in their darkness.
They
hope because they do not know that someone has already been contracted to send
the relief trucks to the camp. Eleven trucks of relief items are supposed to be
headed their way at that very moment. They hope because they do not know that
the contractor has diverted all the trucks, to sell the goods off and make eight
figures, just like that.
They
hope because they do not know that no one cares about what they do not see.
Evening
descends and the people lay mats and spread wrappers across the red earth Thick
forests frame the horizon and the moon begins to crawl up in what promises to
be a cloudless night. The beauty of nature isn’t selective of place or
circumstance at all, apparently. At times like this I wish I could light a
pipe, take a nice drag, and blow smoke into the ether. I would fancy the smoke
going up and up, long after it dissipates, to kiss the surface of the moon. I
do miss some things.
I
used to be a physicist. I suppose I still am, though obviously I don’t practice
anymore. What is the point in helping humanity if we are just destined to be a
scourge to ourselves? I don’t regret denouncing my humanity, not one bit, but
sometimes I wonder if I could have at least tried to change something about the
world rather than cut myself off. I don’t know. Maybe I am at fault too.
I
suppose you’re still wondering how I got here. Pay close attention. The human
body vibrates at a certain frequency and I’d long hypothesized the existence of
the astral plane as a negative region of current space, long before I got
disillusioned with human beings and their ills. So, when I invented the machine
that could reset my natural frequency to safely vibrate in its negative, there
was no hesitation, no second thoughts. That’s how I ended here.
The
downside: I can’t crossover to the normal plane anymore. It’s impossible to
operate the machine from here. I do not really mind being stuck here. It’s
worth it, I guess
I
survey the IDP camp; a community brought together and unified by chaos. Some
people are quietly sobbing now as the reality of sleeping without a roof hits
them hard. Now, they’re convinced it’s all real. No warm bed to sleep in. No
warm bed to make love in. No warm bed to tuck your children in. It’s just red
earth and your mat or wrapper. Those with mats have been here much longer than
those with wrappers. Quite a number are still getting intimate with the
hardness of the bare, red earth. These are the ones who fled when the trouble
had already fallen.
The
playing child I saw earlier is with his mother now and fortunately for them,
her wrapper is long enough to comfortably cover them both as they make a bed of
the bare ground.
An
MRI scan, or any brain scan basically, will not show you the presence of
thoughts or dreams. That’s because these two things manifest here in the astral
plane and not the usual physical dimension. Well, technically, thoughts
manifest in the abstract plane, but
that is another thing for another day. If I walk close to a person, I can make
out the swirling smoke-like mass of their dreams as it radiates outwards from
their brains. Having practiced enough, I can call dreams to me, alter them if I
so wish and send them back or I can simply dissipate them if inclined to do so.
But I can do this for dreams only. It’s one of the few queer abilities I’ve
come to discover here in this plane.
The
boy isn’t smiling anymore now, the pangs of hunger beginning to set in. For a
moment, I think to give him and the other children good dreams of plenty; of
food, exquisite merriment and happiness to last a lifetime. I decide against
that, however. I figure it would be most inhumane of me if I let them
experience all of that and then return to their current world of strife,
anguish and wretchedness. I couldn’t do that to anyone, much less children.
When night falls proper and the half moon is
at its apex, I take away the dreams of all the sleeping children. And I give
them nothing. For come morning, instead of food, blankets and other things, all
these people would have…
Is
nothing.
*
“Your daughter is beautiful, wallahi.”
“Can’t
you see my face? Why wouldn’t she be beautiful?” the father of the girl laughs.
He and his guest are in his garden, seated on a tasselled, indigo rug under the
mango tree in the backyard. It is a windy evening and I imagine the place to be
filled with the heady scent of the vividly colourful wildflowers speckled at
the edges of the surrounding hedges, with some dotting the grounds here and
there. Everywhere must smell wonderful, I suppose, since I am unable to
perceive it anymore. I can’t actually hear them; their thoughts precede their
mouths and sync with it as they form words and thus, I can get completely
accurate conversations without actually relying on my now defunct sense of
physical hearing. I’m still unable to fathom why I retained my physical sight.
Perhaps it’s one of those mysteries I am unable to solve now.
I
float toward the sitting pair. The mango fruits hanging overhead are still
small, green. I think it odd, how I had seen numerous mango trees during my time
on the physical plane and yet I never saw one bearing ripe fruit before. I saw ripe
ones only at the market or roadside makeshift fruit stalls. I drift over their
heads and follow their eyes to the object of their discussion.
A
few metres away picking at one of the wildflowers, a young girl, no more than
thirteen years old, in an amethyst-purple full-length hijab is faced away from
both men. On pulling out the flower; a lovely thing with petals of a soft
orange hue, she turns towards them and approaches with her face all smiles,
highlighting the dainty gap between her upper incisors.
“Baba,
I brought it for you,” she says, holding it out to her father like an offering.
“Thank
you, Amina.” The girl’s father takes it, lifts it to his nose to inhale its
scent .“The flower is as fine and sweet as you.”
The
girl’s grin threatens to split her face in two. She bows her head slightly at
her father, then at her father’s guest. I see a light form in the other man’s
eyes: a twinkle a girl that young should not be able to spark in one so old.
“Amina,
you didn’t bring one for me,” the man speaks.
“Hmm,
sorry Alhaji,” Amina replies, her little brows furrowed. “I didn’t know you
like flowers.”
“Who
doesn’t like flowers? Especially beautiful ones?” the Alhaji laughs and his
full greying beard quivers with the force of his mirth.
“Amina,
go and get one for Alhaji,” her father says, laughing softly. The girl flashes
a smile and runs to a corner of the backyard, apparently seeking a flower that
would render her father’s guest speechless.
“Your
daughter would make a fine woman, Yusuf. A very fine woman.” The Alhaji runs a
finger through his thick beard, his eyes never leaving the little figure in
purple.
The
girl’s father nods his head as he looks at the flower his daughter gave him. I
see his thoughts swirl around his head, a maelstrom of dull and vibrant colours
and I imagine him likening his daughter to the quaint flower between his
fingers. “She will be, Ibrahim.”
“Yusuf.”
The man leans in closer to his companion. “I want to ask for your daughter’s
hand in marriage.”
What? I sharply turn my
head to stare at the Alhaji. I’d heard that marriages like this happen in the
northern part of the country and I had heard it was quite common with adherents
of their religion around the
world. The girl’s father does not share my look of complete shock nor register
my growing revulsion. His eyebrows are merely lifted in mild surprise. “You,
Ibrahim?”
“Yes.
Me,” the Alhaji continues. “I’m willing to wed your daughter. A girl this young
should be protected from the wolves in the form of young boys who are only
there to dim the light of someone so bright.”
In
this moment, I wish I had retained my sense of touch. I want to slap the teeth
off the crazy man, the fire of whose loins could be stoked by a child who has
barely attained puberty. I want to slap the girl’s father for not slapping the
man himself. But all I can do is fume and watch in silence.
Yusuf
exhales deeply and turns his face in his daughter’s direction. The men are
silent for several moments still and the wind picks up, blowing through the
yard and once again I think of how pleasant it would be to sit in this place,
surrounded by the tangy scent of unripe mangoes and the blissful smell of
wildflowers. Amina is still metres away, searching for the perfect flower to
present to the one apparently intent on deflowering her.
“Ibrahim,”
Yusuf speaks up now, eyes still on his daughter. “You have two lovely wives
already. Why would you still want my daughter?”
“Your
daughter, Amina, is special, unique.” The Alhaji turns to Yusuf. “We have been
friends for more than twenty years, Yusuf. Someone as precious as your daughter
should be protected from the avoidable tragedies of life, while also still
being able to enjoy its pleasure and fullness. I can offer her all that and
more. You know so.”
Yusuf
is silent for a few more moments before he speaks. “I know.” He exhales again. A
few minutes pass before he turns to look at his friend. “You have my blessings,
Ibrahim.”
And
just like that, the flame of a young girl is dimmed by a pair of elderly men,
one of who is her own father. I watch, appalled, as the decision is made to
thrust a child into the forays of womanhood while the child, in perfect
blissful ignorance, unknowingly seeks out a floral gift for her impending
husband.
Ϫ
Two
of them hold down the thrashing woman on the grassy earth while a third undoes
his belt buckle and a fourth stands a few feet away, a smartphone in his hands
recording the proceedings on video. We are in the hours of deep night, behind
an uncompleted building, the borders of each individual cement block starkly
visible. This far behind the building, we’re into deep bushes that run for
kilometres behind the building in this godforsaken fringe of the urban
settlement.
I
am a few feet from the group, an incipient witness to a horrifying wrong. One
of the two holding her down has a hand clamped over her mouth. It isn’t her
muted screams or the wild way she struggles against the men that chills my
bones and roots me to the spot; it is the laughter and jeers from her attackers
as they nonchalantly pry her legs apart, ripping parts of her short skirt in
the process.
The
choked screams of the young woman increase in pitch and intensity as the first
one begins defiling her. I stand through it all, unmoving; I can’t bring myself
to stir. The hirsute man currently on her, thrusting away like an epileptic
animal, is smiling and speaking words at her that my stunned mind is unable to
understand. He ends, then getting up, he spits on the woman and takes the place
of one of the men holding her down. Like this they take turns, the fourth man
recording faithfully. When the lady can scream no more and resignation bleeds
from her eyes, she lets her head roll to the side as the men have their way.
Then
her eyes come to rest on me.
At
least, that is what I think. I gaze into her eyes, into that vast sea of brown,
while my heart hammers, and I feel corresponding throbs near my ears,
accentuating a sense of guilt slowly bringing its tendrils around me. Why do I
feel like that?
When
the last man is through, he gets up, lightly kicks the woman on the leg once
and laughs. The fourth man stops recording; he didn’t participate as his
companions did, yet in my revulsion, I am assailed by an inexplicable curiosity
as to why he did not. They laugh and talk about how ‘nice’ the woman was for a
short while before they turn and jog in the direction of the far-off street
lights, leaving behind a damaged woman and a ghost.
Her
eyes are still on me, seeing or not seeing me. I float rooted to my position,
riveted by the enigmatic essence radiating from her staring, brown eyes. I
suddenly feel utterly soiled; tainted in a way so profound I can’t help the
feelings and dark thoughts that crawl into my mind. In that moment, I feel like
an accomplice to the crime those men had just committed and I try to work my
mouth, if only to convey how sorry I am for her; how I would have stopped it if
I could. But my thoughts and mouth are not in sync this time and my maw keeps
opening and closing in soundless stutters.
“I…
I am… I am so sorry.” My own voice sounds like a light breeze to me; weak and
muted. The woman’s eyes don’t leave me and the feeling of guilt within me
augments so drastically that I can’t take it anymore. I turn and rapidly drift
away from the scene, as fast as I can.
I
told you I was no god. Gods do not shed tears.
I
flee deeper into bushes until I come upon a large hill. I hover here and cry
like a child. Do I have anything to be ashamed of? Can you hear a crying
shadow? No. You can’t. I let myself weep until even my eyes tire of me. Who
knows, maybe my guilt will run with my tears and leave me.
I
look to the moon as the tears run silently down. It is full tonight. And
bright. It sits there, high in the sky, above humanity; above all the darkness
beneath and suddenly I long for that. I long to be up there with that moon, far
from all the pain; far from all the guilt.
I
move over the hill slowly, until it drops away and I am hovering hundreds of
feet above the land. The sight of the kilometres of bush and grasslands below
is majestic, more so with the gray light of the planetary sentry above washing
over the land. I turn my eyes up to it, that majestic orb of light. It looks
back down at me like a god, a real god. I spread out my arms and tilt my entire
body back at an angle, reclining on empty air. Then I close my eyes and force
myself to drift upward.
Do
you believe in ghosts, I wonder? I don’t.
I
feel myself slowly rise further above the land, above the tallest trees and
above the highest hills and mountains. I feel the moon call out to me and
embrace me with its light. I rise above the men and women living down below,
rising also above the monsters. I feel myself rising above the murky emotions
that come with being human and the ills and joys of life. I feel myself rise.
Rising
above it all.
END.
Haku Jackson is the pseudonym of a young man that writes in the dead of night (maybe), sleeps all day and eats at ungodly hours. His literary and speculative fiction works have appeared on African Writer, Arts & Africa. He is an alumnus of both Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Workshop and Goethe-Institut’s AfroYoungAdult Workshop. He is a sucker for alternative music bands with abstract-sounding names.
If
the girl sitting across from me had my powers, she’d do what I do every day: be
invisible. But she doesn’t, and she compensates for it by sinking lower into
her seat. Her wings stretch around her to form a dome that shields her face
from view. She’s trying to avoid the attention from the kids at the table
behind her.
Their
leader, Grace – detained here because she kept teleporting people she didn’t
like to the Sahara Desert – had commanded one of the assistabots to play the
“Egnevaing Angle” video. The bot had complied, hovering above their heads so
those at the table and whoever was curious enough to look over could see.
I
turn away from the hologram being projected by the bot and begin to cut my
akara into precise shapes. I’ve seen the video before, and although I do feel
bad, it is impossible to watch with a straight face.
It
starts with the winged girl in a bus-stop, waiting for a hanfo. She’s wingless
and scratching furiously at her back. Working herself into a frenzy, oblivious
to the crowd she’s beginning to draw. Her hand slips into her uniform. She
pulls out a feather. The camera captures her expression of dismay as she looks
at the feather, mouthing one word repeatedly, “No.”
There’s
a snapping sound and she doubles over, body juddering. She mewls loudly. Two
humps start to grow out of her back.
“Someone
help her!” a voice says.
The
person recording abruptly turns to a woman as she pulls out from the crowd.
There are wrinkles between her brows and at the sides of her mouth, which
tighten as she approaches the girl. When they’re close enough to touch, the
woman pauses in her advance, wheezing. It’s hard not to notice the white in her
afro or the way she appears drawn into herself, shoulders close to her body.
Under
the attention of the RERD chip/contacts – you never know with these things – her
wrinkles seem like something carved into her face.
The
woman looks to be in her mid-twenties – young enough to be part of the Second
Generation consisting of preteens and young adults like me. The Geanomic-2:
progenies of the children who survived the effects of the Green Harmattan
forty-three years ago, mutations that reengineered the genes of foetuses
three-months old and below. The alterations for the rest of the country –
adults, mostly – hadn’t been as kind.
Despite
how young she looks, the woman carries herself as if she were older, like the
years were a burden, one for the stoop in her shoulders, a few more for the
wrinkles on her face, the rest trailing behind her like a tail humans haven’t
had the need for in a few thousand years.
“No
touch am o!” someone in the crowd shouts. “I hear of one woman wey when her
pikin dey change, she do mistake touch the boy, na so serious electric just
shock am. Na laik dat she take die.”
The
air ripples with murmurs from the crowd. Someone spits out the word “demonic.”
The woman’s spine straightens and she takes a step forward, reaching out a hand
to an exposed skin on the girl’s leg. She takes a deep breath. Her eyes turn a
bright yellow. The girl’s shuddering stops, the tension in her body
dissipating. The woman whimpers, and as if run through by a hand covered in
ash, her hair turns gray and then back to brown, the white in it more plenty
than before.
It’s
baffling why anyone would find this funny, I know, but as soon as the girl
stops shaking, great wings burst from her back in a bloom of black feathers, rending
her shirt. They’re not bloody, but there’s a slimy sheen to them.
The
girl slinks away from the lady, who has ducked to avoid the onslaught of
feathers. Her wings flutter, perhaps trying to shake off the greasy coating or
responding to her unease, it’s hard to tell. They spread out from her back, and
people stoop or move away to avoid them. She looks over her shoulder and gasps,
her lips moving with the familiar refrain, “No!”
Her
hands reach behind her as if to pull the wings from their stumps. The wings
give one great beat and as quick as a shot, the girl is up in the air,
screaming her head off.
Her
refrain changes to something else: “Jesus! Jesus!”
Her
wings stretch beyond her arms, taking her higher. She knocks askew a
surveillance drone whose beacon has begun to flash red for the unfolding
disturbance. She loops over a train overpass, and in a breathtaking moment,
with the sun as a backdrop, she looks like the representation of an avenging
angel – even if this one was awkward and screaming like her head was on fire.
When
she flies past a com tower, her hands clamp onto the bars for dear life as her
wings beat, pulling her in the other direction. However, she hangs onto it like
a long-lost friend.
“Mummie
o,” she screams. “Mummie o.”
It
takes four flight-aptitude authorities – one of them a geanom with dragonfly
wings – to get her to come down. And even then, she refuses to fly herself down.
They give her a numbing shot and one of them carries her down instead. I would
have thought the story would end well for all the parties involved but she’s
here, at geanomic rehab, which means there’s either something wrong with her powers
or something goes wrong when she uses her powers.
I
study her openly – one of the good things about being invisible. Her wings are
no longer shielding her face but she has created a pile of feathers on the
table from pulling them out. Maybe that’s why she’s here, because she has
geanomic trichotillomania.
She
pauses in her feather-pulling and cocks her head in my direction, her gaze
narrowing. I don’t look away. Some geanoms can sense me, but I’ve never met one
who can see me.
She’s
tall, lanky even. It appears that her body is covered in scales – reticula –
making it a glossy brown. They’re only obvious when the light hits her skin a
certain way, but I’m not surprised. Her geanomaly appears to be of the animalia
kind.
Laughter
comes from the other table. Someone has replayed the video, and it has gotten
the attention of a handful of people in the lunchroom. The girl winces. A few
of her feathers flail. She resumes plucking them out, one at a time, faster
than before. I wonder if they hurt like it does when you pull a hair strand
from your body. Her face gives no indication to support my theory.
I
dip my akara in my custard and take a bite. The people on our table don’t bat a
lid at the spectacle I create. My not being present but still affecting things
around me is nothing compared to Adeyemi, who refuses to sleep because he
always wakes up in someone else’s body, or Ibrahim, whose susceptibility to
misfortune is higher than average and can be transferred to anyone he touches.
He wears a hazmat suit with an automatic call button in case he starts to
asphyxiate in it like he did yesterday.
There’s
Cee, who affects reality any time they say the words “I wish,” and who was
remanded here because they tried to make a potato the Nigerian president. They
had been caught because there are people who watch for these things, especially
when someone with a similar ability had tried to remake the world in her own
image.
We
work with parapsychologists to “achieve a balance between our abilities and our
places as human beings.” For some people like Ibrahim, parapsychologists clear
them for power dampening chips or even a cure. Adeyemi signed the consent forms
for his chip a week ago, and Ibrahim is awaiting feedback for a customised
cure, engineered with his geanomaly in mind.
I’m
actually fine with being invisible. But my psychologist told my parents I’m
using my powers to deal with past trauma. With only a few minutes needed each
day to recharge and reacclimatise my atoms with this reality, I’ve been
invisible for eighteen months.
The
girl’s screaming of “Jesus” gets a bigger reaction from her audience the second
time around. There’s raucous laughter and she grabs a handful of her feathers
and pulls. This time, pain flashes on her face and before I know what I’m
doing, I’m reaching for her hand.
“Stop,”
I say. She looks at where my hand should be and rips out another feather. “Stop
it!” I hiss. I let the hand atop hers appear – gloved. It gets cold the longer
I stay invisible.
“Doesn’t
it hurt?” I ask.
“Doesn’t
it hurt?” she echoes.
“What?”
“Doesn’t
it hurt, being invisible?”
I
contemplate my answer. “As long as I don’t stay invisible for more than
thirteen hours at a time, I’m usually fine.”
“What
are you hiding from?” she asks.
“Why
are you plucking your feathers?” I shoot back.
She
smiles. “I hate them. I hate the attention,” she pauses. “You hate the
attention too. Maybe not the kind of attention I get, but it’s definitely why
you’re hiding.”
“Small-small
sha. If you add trauma in there somewhere, you just might sound like my
therapist.”
She
laughs. “I’m Isoken, by the way,” I say.
“Chinwe,”
she replies, and stops pulling out her feathers long enough to give me a smile.
Because
she can’t see the smile I offer her in return, I give the hand still atop hers
a squeeze before withdrawing it. I’m about to have it disappear again, when I
notice her watching it, hand trailing over her wings, but not doing any
ripping. I let the hand remain visible. I give her a thumbs up.
Her
smile widens, and until an orderly takes her away, her wings don’t lose any
more feathers.
*
The
therapy room is my least favourite place in geanomic rehab. It’s an
average-sized room that the facilitating therapist makes even smaller by having
us sit in a close circle. There are no windows, and the bio-flo lights are
turned on low.
They
used to play “soothing” music until a technopath took out the speakers and
the facility’s power grid because he heard wraiths speaking to him through the
song.
“Isoken,
would you like to be present with us today?” the facilitator asks me.
I
shrug and give her my usual response. “I’m present enough.”
Someone
snorts, but I refuse to pay her any attention. The therapist continues staring
at me. An empty chair in a circle of six people makes me very conspicuous.
She’s trying to pinpoint my face, my eyes probably, with her pensive stare, but
she’s going to have to go a little lower than that. She looks at the tablet in
her hands and I know she’s cognitively writing notes about me.
Someone
stumbles in and we turn.
“Chinwe,”
the therapist says. “Nice of you to join us. How about you grab a chair and
join the circle?”
“Or
she could sit here?” Grace points to the chair a seat away from her. The chair I’m
on. “There’s no one there,” she says innocently.
The
therapist gives her a disapproving look. “Grace, you know Isoken is in that
seat.”
“She’s
not o. She just left. I sensed her leaving.”
Uncertainty
smoothens away the disapproving line of the therapist’s mouth, and before she
can ask, I say in a jaded tone, “I’m still here.”
Grace
does this every time. She pretends I’m not there because I’m invisible and then
tries to trick others into doing the same. It’s a tiring joke. Even if I don’t
want to be seen, I refuse to be ignored – a conundrum, I know. I may not look
like the Isoken from eighteen months ago, but I still sound like her –
something I hope never changes.
Chinwe
looks from Grace to the therapist and then to the chair I’m in. I want to wave,
but what good is that? She walks over to the side of the room, takes out a
chair from a stack and carries it to the circle. The action takes longer than
it should because her wings keep trying to lift her off the floor while she
insists on doing the opposite.
The
six of us watch the scene. Adeyemi has pity turned up to the highest. Cee’s
expression best matches what I’m feeling – a little pity, a little confusion
and a lot of curiosity. The girl sitting between Grace and I is cringing and
clutching her hijab, feet bouncing. A few weeks ago, she had been a blur, stuck
in a loop from constant alterations of her time stream, trying to redo
conversations, events and anything at all that fell short of what she held as
ideal.
She
looks like she’d really like to give Chinwe a do-over or even a bump in time in
order to avoid the scene playing out in front of her. Chinwe’s wings get the
upper hand, dragging her a few steps backward. Grace snickers and I swallow the
urge to lean over and just wrap my hands around her neck for a few minutes.
“Chinwe,”
the therapist calls, her expression kind, “how about you try not to
fight it?”
Although
Chinwe looks like she’d rather do the opposite, she gives it a go, letting her
wings take the lead. They stretch, but not to their full length and give a
small flutter, lifting her an inch or two off the floor. Chinwe’s visage is
grim, her approach unsteady, but she covers the short distance with no problem
and shoves her chair between Cee and me.
Cee
gives her a smile and I adjust my seat to make room for her.
“See?”
the therapist says, eyes glowing with triumph. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Good job, Chinwe.”
Adjusting
to get into a comfortable position with her wings tucked behind her chair,
Chinwe gives the therapist a dubious look, but she’s writing more notes into
her tablet. I use the distraction to whisper, “Give her a big smile. She might
give you a gold star.”
“Really?”
“You
get a gold star, you get a gold star. Gold stars for everybody.”
Chinwe
laughs. Her eyes travel lower. “Where is your hand? You showed it the last
time.”
“Ah.”
I fidget. “I don’t usually let other people see me. I’m invisible most of the
time.”
“Why?”
This
is the second time she’s asking this question, but the directness of this
attempt throws me off so that I’m stunned for a few seconds. My personal
therapist tries to prod the answer out of me by asking subtle questions that
get me to talk and perhaps put things into perspective. He doesn’t push, but
Chinwe’s question jolts, requiring me to think about the reason I keep hiding
and I don’t like it.
“Maybe
if you share why you’re so afraid of using your powers, I just might tell you
why I choose to remain unseen,” I bite out. When I turn away from her, I find
the therapist watching me with that pensive expression. This time, she manages
to catch my eye, and my anger flares, prickling my skin through the coldness
that comes with being invisible.
I
force myself to relax. She can’t see me. I’m safe here. My voice is still
Isoken’s. The therapist finally looks away.
“Chinwe,”
she begins. “I heard about your episode in the dining area. Would you like to
talk about it?”
Chinwe
shifts in her seat. Her eyes leap to me and then back to the therapist. “I hate
these things,” she says gesturing to her wings. “I don’t want them.”
The
therapist sports a thoughtful expression. She writes in her tablet. “And why is
that?”
“Do
you know who my mother is?”
“I
know of her. But no one would know her better than you, so why don’t you
tell us?”
“I’m
different.”
The
therapist nods. “Yes, I know. These abilities—”
“Not
that kind of different.” Chinwe shakes her head. “I’m erm… I’m different,
sexuality-wise.”
Grace
snorts. The therapist gives her a quelling look while I debate how to get away
with strangling her in the presence of six witnesses.
Chinwe
doesn’t let that stop her. “They say the Green Harmattan killed one-fourth of
Nigerians, right? One-fourth of four hundred million people gone, just like
that. My mother’s family, most of them died. Only her twin sister – they’re
fraternal twins – got powers, but it didn’t end up well for her either. So my
mother bought into the idea of the apocalypse, the end-time mania. My uncle
says it’s her way of getting closure. But her way of getting closure is erm…
very…”
“Fundamentalist,”
I offer.
She
nods. “Yes, that word. She was very dedicated to the cause. It didn’t take long
for her to be made a reverend and then she married the founder of the church.
After his death, she became the new GO. They had me some time before he died.”
A chair scrapes, Halima, the hijabi girl changing positions. Adeyemi rubs at his neck. Grace lets out a loud yawn and Cee shoots her a glare that suggests they’re seriously considering altering her reality.
“My
mom knows I…” She flails her hands. “That I am—”
“A
homosexual,” Grace deadpans.
“Grace.”
The therapist’s voice carries a warning.
“What?
She didn’t want to say it. I was just helping her out.”
“Dem send you message?” Cee says. “Stop helping.”
“Now,
everybody, calm down,” the therapist says. “This is a safe place, a support
group. Let’s allow Chinwe her chance to be open with us. Please continue,
Chinwe.”
“We
agreed, my mom and I, we agreed that we’d keep it a secret. Her acceptance of
what I am was enough.”
“That’s
not acceptance,” Adeyemi interrupts. The therapist stays silent.
Chinwe
lifts her chin. “It was enough for me. It’s better than being thrown out or
subjected to prayers.”
“What
about now? Is it still enough?” the therapist asks.
A
beat passes. Chinwe’s feathers fidget. “I can hide being a homosexual,” she
finally says. “But not this.” She gestures to her back.
*
Chinwe
doesn’t say anymore after that. The session ends with Halima sharing her
progress with not using her powers when things don’t go her way. The therapist
gives Chinwe a pat and congratulates her for sharing before leaving. Soon, it’s
just me, Chinwe, and Grace in the room.
Grace
is playing teleporter tag, appearing at random places, shoving and hitting the
assistabot as it cleans up the space. I’m still in my chair, disbelief keeps me
rooted. Chinwe hasn’t left her seat either. She really took me up on my
challenge. Does that mean she’s expecting me to share my reasons for constant
invisibility? I study her. Her head is lowered. She is picking at her nails.
“You’re
still here, right?” she asks.
I
almost don’t answer. I throw Grace a cautious glance. “Yes. Still here.”
“So…”
“You
never said why you’re afraid of using your powers. Not explicitly.”
She
shoots me an exasperated look. “Using it feels like an acknowledgement. Maybe
if I don’t use them—”
“They will not go away,” I cut in. “And unless
you choose to be cured of them, they’ll still be there. Always. Is that
what you want?” She squirms in her seat. “Have you even tried flying?”
“The
facility provided a teacher. She has butterfly wings.”
“You’re
not answering my question.”
She
squirms again. “No.” I scoff. “The thing is… I’m afraid of heights. The
teacher tried to make me feel better by telling me ‘the ground is not your
enemy.’ And I thought, hantie, as long as there’s gravity, the ground will always
be my enemy.”
A
laugh bursts out of me, more anything else, I am amused at her portrayal of a
Yoruba accent. Soon we’re both laughing.
“Oya,
your turn,” she says when we’re done. “Why are you always invisible?”
I
open my mouth, about to speak but not sure of what I want to say or how I’m
going to say it, when Grace suddenly appears in front of us.
“You’re
wasting your time with this one,” she tells Chinwe. “She wants to disappear so
much that she refuses to use her real name. Ask her na. Ask her if Isoken is
her real name? Our madam is pining over her dead sister.”
I
bristle. “You looked in my file?”
“Before
nko? Why won’t I? When you are forming brooding, invisible teenager. Your
sister is dead, Itohan, you don’t look like her anymore, deal with it.”
I
grit my teeth and let her see the hand coming before I punch her. We grapple
with each other. She teleports me to the desert, and then the roof of a building
in god knows where. In one of the rooms, we startle a kid trying to hack into
his mother’s botpot. But I have a firm grip on Grace’s blouse and I’m punching
her, my hand visible the whole time.
When
we return to the therapy room, the attendants are there and ready for us. They
give Grace an anti-geanomic shot. She starts to convulse. I pull away from her
and let my hand disappear just in time, but the assistabots are prepared. They
spray a gaseous form of the serum in my general direction and the last thing I
see as my body goes into a fit is Chinwe shoving one of the attendants in a bid
to get to me.
*
They
can’t give us dampening chips or a cure without our consent, so they make us
think through the consequences of our actions by giving us chores we have to do
manually. Grace gets cleaning the girls’ toilets, and Chinwe and I get weeding
the facility’s field. The arrangement doesn’t please me.
I’d
been visible when I got sprayed with anti-geanom. She saw me. Anti-geanom takes
away your powers by attacking the genes that carry the geanomic trait. It’s not
fatal, but one of the side effects is seizures. Where the cure reengineers the
cells by coaxing the anomaly out of the gene’s encoding, absorbing it to be
discarded as waste, the serum treats the gene like a thing to be annihilated.
It’s
been two days since then, and I’ve been avoiding Chinwe, but I can’t put off my
chores any longer. She keeps glancing at me as I uproot weeds with a fervour
that matches my agitation.
She
shuffles over. “Hey.”
“What?”
She
fidgets. “What do you want? Is it my sob story? Is that why you won’t leave me
alone? What Grace told you, is it not enough for you?”
Hurt
crosses her expression. “Sorry. I just wanted to—” She shakes her head and
turns away.
I
don’t want to feel bad, but I do. I pull out another weed with so much force
that its momentum sends me tumbling. Chinwe hears me yelp and rushes over, the plant
in my hand telling her where I am.
“Are
you okay?”
My
chest heaves and I start to sob. “Grace had no right. Nobody was supposed to know. You
weren’t supposed to see. It’s how I keep her alive.”
“Who?”
“Isoken.
It’s how I keep Isoken alive.” I wipe my eyes. “She’s my twin.” She doesn’t
push. Just stands over me and waits. “There was a fire. A geanomic child
suddenly got his abilities on the train. He couldn’t keep it under control. We
tried to help. I couldn’t get my force-field to work. Isoken though, Isoken was
good at everything. But things got out of hand – an explosion. And then—” I
cough, but the clog in my throat stays in place. My heart twists painfully.
“When I woke up. I looked like somebody else and I didn’t have a sister
anymore.
“We
were identical. Even our parents couldn’t tell us apart, and now, I look at my
face and I can’t see her. I don’t feel like my parents’ daughter. The only thing
I have that’s still mine and hers is our voice.”
There’s
silence for a while. Chinwe settles down on the grass. “Your sister won’t be
forgotten. You’ll always be your parents’ daughter.”
I
laugh. “You’re not related to my therapist are you?”
She
shrugs. “My uncle. I read his books. He’s a psychologist. I think some of his psychologist-ness rubbed off on
me.”
I
chuckle. My breath catches with my next question. “He’s not my therapist, is
he?”
“I
don’t think so.” She cocks her head so I can see the earnestness on her face.
Her
answer quietens my flurry of anxiety. “How do you know my sister won’t be
forgotten?”
“You
told me about her, didn’t you? So I know her now and since I know her, I’ll
remember her. Her friends? They’ll remember her. Your parents? They’ll also
remember her. Just as you told me about her, you’ll tell other people about
her, and some of them will remember her.”
I
start to protest. She shakes her head at me.
“There’s
more to you, Itohan, more to your sister than your faces. But if you’re busy
trying to keep her alive, hiding away from the world, who’ll remember you then?
I know you want to disappear, but do you want to be forgotten?”
We
spend the rest of our time in silence. Her question keeps echoing in my mind. Do
I want to be forgotten?
*
I
tell my therapist about the conversation I had with Chinwe, and he thinks she’s
on to something. He convinces me to meet with my parents for the first time in
four months. I don’t have to be visible, the only thing I’m required to do is watch.
That’s
what I’m doing right now as friends and family mill about the common room. The
inpatients are distinguishable in their grey slacks, hugging, talking, some of
them crying. The facility only allows one open day each month, and a lot of
people are making the most of it.
My
parents stand in the middle of the room, my mother’s eyes combing the crowd. She’s
looking for me; I realise with a jolt. My dad stands beside her. He doesn’t
search for me, but his eyes are fixed to the door. I begin a slow walk towards
them.
“Mummie,
Daddie.”
I
catch my dad’s disappointment before it vanishes. My mother’s eyes stay fixed
on the empty space I’m standing in. When I’m around most people, their eyes
move over to something else with substance to latch on to. My mother’s eyes,
however, never budge.
A
beat passes. She asks. “Itohan, you’re still here, abi?”
“I’m
still here.”
“I’m
so glad you called us.” Her eyes are shining with tears. “We thought you didn’t
want to see us anymore.”
“I—”
A familiar laugh catches my attention. Chinwe is standing ways away with a man
and two children. She’s holding one of the kids and her wings are beating.
She’s two feet above the ground.
“So
you can fly now.” The man is grinning.
She
laughs again. “It’s not really flying, but I’m trying.”
She’s
trying. I turn back to my parents. My mum’s expression is
expectant. Her eyes are now locked in the wrong direction. My dad doesn’t even
try. His gaze is lowered to the floor.
I
look down at my hands. There’s more to me than my face. I don’t want
to be forgotten. My courage has never been anything impressive, not since I
chose to go invisible. But for this, I take a tiny bit from my reserves. I
don’t think. I step away from the coldness of being unseen, into the heat of
sight.
Gasps
follow my reveal. My mother is caught between joy and shock. She starts to sob
my name. “Itohan, Itohan.”
When
my dad finally looks at me, he doesn’t tear his eyes away, almost as if he’s
afraid I’ll disappear again, and I try not to. I can’t stay still, uneasiness churns
in my stomach, but I stay visible till the end of their visit.
As
soon as they leave – my dad squeezing my hand and my mum almost smothering me
with a hug – I fade away again, turning to find Chinwe standing in front of me.
“I
saw you,” she says.
I
roll my eyes. “Yes, you and everybody else.”
“No.”
She shakes her head. “Iz naw laik dat.” She smiles. “I mean, I saw you.
I saw what laughter does to your face. How you look when you’re embarrassed.
When you’re trying to suppress a smile, the mirth jumps to your eyes. You do a
weird thing with your mouth when you’re nervous. I saw all of that.”
“And?”
“You’re
a world, all on your own.”
I
scoff, but pleasure sits in my stomach like the burn from a spicy food, slowly
spreading to the rest of me. “For a girl afraid of heights, how do you manage
to sound so deep all the time? Do you lay awake thinking about different ways
to be profound?” I tease, but I can’t stop grinning. “That day at the field,
what did you want to tell me?”
“I
tried flying.”
“How
was it?”
“I
still hate it. But I don’t think I hate myself for it, not anymore. I was
scared, you know? But it took—”
“Tiny
bravery.”
“Yes,
that. Tiny bravery. One day at a time, nothing grand, nothing impressive. Just
living.”
I take another wisp of courage from my reserve and kiss her on the cheek. Her surprise is so comical that I burst into laughter. She grins, doesn’t say anything, and I appear for a bit, just to show her that we’re both grinning like idiots.
Ada Nnadi is a law school dropout, studying psychology at the University of Lagos because she thinks it’ll help her write better characters. She was longlisted for the 2018 Writivism Short Story Prize, and will one day be the mother of many cats. And maybe a dog.
Like many people suffering from
enormous heartbreak, and bereft of real, close friends to help weather the
capricious storms of memory and regret, I turned to drugs.
Not the normal
complement of common, over-the-counter cuts, or street pharma – injectables,
swallowables, smokables – no. I, from the fevered, shadowed depths of my
suffering, began a daily scan of the SEEKING SUBJECTS section of my city’s
various periodicals.
I pored over the
details of these ads, looking for something anomalous, something suggestive of
supreme intoxication and affect, some magical elixir that, I fantasized, would
grip tight in a fist of pain brighter and more penetrating than the sun, and
then render me whole again, somehow cleansed of the psychic stain brought on by
a deliberate and unconscionable act of callous betrayal, my life, no longer in
the ruins of years of beautiful memories.
I suppose I was
ahead of the curve on this, because memory-erasers hadn’t been invented as yet,
merely theorized.
So, I searched. Not
for the fountain of youth, or a phial to armor me against existential crises,
but for a way to forget, obliterate completely and totally, the memory of years
of my ex’s horrific abuses, their cold exploitations of me, my life, and our
relationship. Not merely to bury, but destroy, without destroying myself.
The first foray:
One study, located in a modern clinic decorated in industrial beige, showed
promise, but ended up needing subjects to test a new, “less
addictive” morphine derivative. I declined.
Another study,
across town in a seedy medical office, wanted volunteers to test fast-drying
liquid condoms. As I had no partner, I declined.
Another study sought persons with a specific type of
brain=- trauma. I got a free MRI from it, but did not qualify.
Months passed in this manner, where I would take random
days off work and travel across the city either to refuse, or be disqualified
from participating in some exceptionally odd medical research. My job
performance suffered. I became reclusive.
Then, late one
evening, on the verge of capitulating to drinking myself to death, I saw a
particular advertisement:
**SEEKING HUMAN
SUBJECTS FOR TRANSFORMATIVE MEDICAL STUDY** **SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY**
**FINANCIAL
COMPENSATION GUARANTEED**
The address of the clinic was literally across the block.
I
pledged to call the provided number early the next morning and spent the rest
of that evening gamely trying to sleep, my thoughts a whirlwind of differing
possibilities and potentialities. Eventually, dragged down by exhaustion, I
slept.
I
woke into dawn’s twilight fading to a bright and unseasonably warm morning.
After waiting until the clinic’s regular hours, I scheduled an appointment with
the clinic’s nurse over the phone for later that day and spent hours in a
sudden, new-colored funk: What if this was another marginal disappointment?
What if this offered nothing but another pedestrian research? What if this was
exactly what I needed and I was rejected? What if I was accepted, stayed the
course of the study and it didn’t produce the desired results? The compensatory
nature of the study meant little to me, though my finances had suffered along
with my spirit. (Self-abuse isn’t cheap, you know.)
After what felt like an interminable wait,
I left my ill-kept bedsit and walked around two corners to the office of Dr.
H , located in an anonymous beige
four-story building with a pair of silvered doors facing the street. Behind the
doors was a pale minimalist lobby, with a wooden door for the stairs, dull
metal doors for what seemed a modest elevator, and a stark white-on-black
placard listing the businesses upstairs under a map of the fire exits hung
between the two. The office I sought was the only listing for the second floor;
I opted to use the stairs.
The
office entrance was situated on the opposite side of the stair door according
to the map abreast the exit door. I followed three long sections of a
checker-patterned linoleum floor to a ceiling-high black metal door, behind
which was a warm-colored, well-lit waiting area with two low gray couches staged facing each other
across the lobby’s width. At the lobby’s center was a high wooden circular
counter administrated by an elderly, handsome, slender nurse. She greeted me
with a graceful wave which silently glided towards the couches as if to
indicate that I sit. The couch to her left looked less lumpy than the right
one, so I sat on the edge of the cushion seat, pensive. The nurse bent her face
towards a screen that she tapped at frequently with a bemused expression on her
face.
A
few minutes later she glanced at me and gestured that I come to the desk. I
sprung off the couch and slow-walked to the desk. She pointed to a door
outlined by light that appeared in what had previously been the blank back wall
of the lobby.
“Hi.
The Doctor will be ready to see you in a moment, so please go through that
door, follow the hallway all the way down, make a right at the end and, enter
the exam room marked 9C. It’ll be near the end of the hallway on the left”, she
said in a whiskey-grained voice. She waved me in closer and half-whispered,
“Doctor H works wonders. Don’t be afraid of what happens. This isn’t my
professional opinion, and I’ve never been a patient, but I’ve seen what happens
with the test subjects. It’s… it’s… miraculous.”
I continued on into
the book-stuffed office of Dr. H____, a tall, soft-spoken woman with bland
features and short chestnut hair. After a perfunctory greeting, and the signing
of an NDA, Dr. H____ led me into an adjoining examination room, where she
subjected me to an efficient and thorough psychological and physical
evaluation. In the midst of smoothly drawing my blood into more than a few
sample tubes, she said, almost casually, “You appear to be under some
strain. Has something happened recently that could have induced it?”
“I…”
hesitant, not really knowing whether to lie, then deciding against it,
“…broke up with someone. They broke up with me. A while ago. It was bad.
Nasty. Abusive. I think I’m… still… recovering. From that.”
“I see,”
said Dr. H____, placing the last of the tubes in a box on the counter and
closing it; the box then traveled along the counter and into the wall. She
pulled a pair of black-rimmed glasses from a pocket in her coat but didn’t don
them.
“Well, I
suppose I should tell you about the experiment, while we wait for your blood
work to come back.”
“Doesn’t that usually take a day or so?”
“At labs where
there are a lot of patients, yes. Here, no.” Hand-with-glasses gestured to
a door in the examination room.
“We’ve got
very efficient machines here, and we’re looking to see if your tissues fall
within specific parameters.”
“Ah.” I
sat upright, slightly chilled, in my examination gown. “Do you
think…”
Dr. H__ unfolded
and refolded the temples of the glasses, and said, “I’m very confident
that you’ll qualify, which is why I’m willing to discuss this with you.”
She sat
languorously in a nearby chair. “What will happen, if I am indeed correct
about you, is we – I – will administer two injections. One is a cocktail of
amino acids and a lot of vitamins, mostly B, to re-balance your system, move
you towards something like your optimal health. The other…” she started,
then turned towards a curious knock from the closed door.
“Hold
on.” Dr. H___ strode swiftly to the door and opened it a crack, withdrew a
small sheet of paper extended towards her which she rapidly examined and
returned to the fissure. Dr. H___ turned to me then, smiling widely.
“Sorry about that. Your labs look good, so you qualify for participation.
Where was…”
I was tense. “The other injection?”
“Ah…ah, yes.” She sat gracefully again.
“The other injection is a cocktail of my own devising, a similar
composition as the first, with the addition of an experimental mutagen.”
“…Experimental?”
“Experimental,
and very slightly carcinogenic, but in doses much, much larger than what I’ll
be giving you.”
I scratched at my arm. “Which does what,
exactly?”
Dr. H___ leaned
back in her chair, placing the glasses into a different pocket. “It
transforms you. That’s the experiment.
Two injections, and in a week you come back and we see
what has happened.”
“Sounds risky”, I said.
“Not at all.
All the previous subjects have reported nothing but positive results.” Dr.
H___ counted them off on her fingers:
“Better rest, sharper
senses, firmer skin, weight loss, better digestion, stronger will, improved
libido – you name it, and it’s come back as an experimental return.”
“But what’s the point of the experiment?”
“We’re testing
to see if the mutagen has any side effects. So far, none.”
“Will it cure heartbreak?”
Dr. H___ cocked her
head to the side for a moment, her face in a quizzical expression, then she
quickly returned to her usual nondescript demureness. “If it did, that
would be… tremendous. But no one has reported back that… kind of result.
Maybe you’ll be the first!
“Really,
though, I do expect your stress levels to drop, and this…” she almost
couldn’t say the word, “heartbreak that you feel you’re suffering from
will become something like the memory of a lingering cold, or a badly stubbed
toe. Some pain, then your system will rectify itself.”
“Ah. Well, okay.”
“Let’s get your injections out of the way.”
Dr. H___ pushed a
button and a new box slid forth from the wall. She produced two hypodermic
syringes from it and carefully injected me in the same arm with both, one site
above the other.
“Before you leave, the nurse will give you a card
with your patient ID code and a number to call in case of emergencies, and set
up an appointment for a week from now.” She smiled at me and I could see
the smile barely touch her eyes. “I expect by this time next week you’ll
feel like an entirely new person.” Dr. H__ stood and left the room through a door that
appeared as she approached the wall, and I got dressed, feeling the residual
irritation of two injections in my arm as I moved.
The nurse smiled as I exited the hallway
door, and waved me over. “Hi! How’d it go?”
“It went okay, I guess.” I was anxious to go home and resume my spiraling into grief. She brandished the card like a magician. The numbers were printed under minimal information in jet matte on high-quality card stock.
“Don’t worry, hon, you’ll probably be
feeling much better before we call for your follow-up,” she said, honey-voiced.
“The ID number is your case-file, so don’t lose the card and we’ll see you
soon, okay?”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Have a good day!”
“You too.”
Once out of the office, I shoved the card into a pocket and followed the winding hall back to the building’s
stairwell.
As I stepped out onto the sidewalk, heading
back to my tiny, grubby apartment, I was hit with a warm, healing flush from
within – probably the first injection. Dr. H__ had said it would work quickly.
That same inner glow carried me around the
corner and back to my bedsit, which I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning,
feeling better than I had in… forever. Only certain childhood memories
possessed such verve, such immediate vitality. The day stretched into clear
evening, and after an early supper I lay on my bed, still feeling amazing.
I
slipped into a deep, restful sleep.
For
three days.
Waking to answer the phone, get fired, and then fall back
asleep.
Four days out –
according to my watch – I awoke feeling different – heavier, or thicker, with a
pressing need to relieve myself. I shambled from my bed and into my tiny
bathroom, where I passed what seemed like an enormous amount of bodily waste
into the toilet – I had to flush twice.
I almost didn’t
look at myself in the mirror while washing. Scratch
that – I didn’t look at myself in the mirror. I looked at a different person:
one significantly taller, hairless, no nose or ears whatsoever, red-black
irises on blue-black scleras in enormous turquoise-lined eyes, speckled black
and gray skin roiling like oiled leather, a tri-part mandible over several rows
of slitted mouths, lined shark-like with rows of tiny, knife-edged teeth. Me,
but not me, but me.
The image in the
mirror fazed me a bit, like waking up the day after a haircut. But I still felt
good, though heavy.
Sleepy.
My hands were
webbed. But I still had fingers (no nails? all nail?), so I called the
emergency number for Dr. H__.
“Hello?”
The nurse answered, sounding like she was trying to hide her surprise. I
suspected no one had ever actually called this number.
My voice was a
gravel chorus. “Something’s gone wrong.”
“Wrong
how?” I noticed in myself an ability to discern the exact tonality of a
voice. The nurse sounded tentative, skeptical.
“I’ve turned
into a thing, that good enough for you?” As weirded out as I felt, I
wasn’t angry. I couldn’t be angry. I somehow shaped the basic tone of my voice
to sound more pissed off. “Get Dr. H__ on the line.”
“She’s not in
right now.” A lie. I could hear a slight quail of panic. And also, the
good doctor, standing not too far from
the gesturing nurse. “I can
have her call you back…”
I modulated an
unfelt impatience. “She’s standing right behind you. Give her the
phone.”
There was the soft
susurrus of the receiver fumbling from one set of hands to another, then “Yes?”
Dr. H__, I noticed, had an icy quality as the base tone of her voice.
“This
is Chauncey. I came in last week?”
“I’m
sorry, who?”
I read the ID off the card: “I’m subject AHX42042. I’m
part of your experiment. Something’s wrong.”
“Wrong how?
Can you describe the symptoms?” Despite the false concern I could detect
something in her voice that lay between fear and disdain.
“I look like a movie monster. Is that wrong
enough?”
“Err…”
Dr. H__’s hand covered the receiver, but I could still hear her order the nurse
to pull up my records. “Do you want to come in so I -“
“I can’t. If I
leave the house like this, someone will call the cops. Or animal control,”
I almost giggled. Why wasn’t I angry? Or upset?
“Okay, well, there’s not much I can do over the –
“
“I live a
block from your office. Just walk over,” I said and hung up.
Quickly, I examined myself. My skin was smooth, but
appeared scaly up close. My senses were amplified – I could hear the doctor’s
crepe-soled shoes as she came around the corner, mixed with the sounds of light
traffic, day-traders yelling into cell-phones, babies crying and gurgling and
laughing all around me in my building, the couple three floors above me having
sad, slow sex, could smell the brewing of coffee from the building down the
block, the distinct chemical elements of the dust coating my apartment,
including all the metal proximal to me – the doorknob and the bathroom
fixtures, every screw, and nail, and stud, all the appliances and wires and
pipes – Dr. H___’s knock almost came as a surprise.
“Door’s unlocked. Come in.”
She entered cautiously, expecting something untoward –
there was a syringe of something potent in her coat pocket, next to some keys,
next to a scalpel, the rattling of which I somehow heard like notes in a chord,
and smelled, the same way I could smell everything in my apartment – “Are
you – oh, Jesus.”
“Yeah.” I
heard: her fear, her clothing twisting with rising breaths, the sharpened edges
of her loneliness. It was something to which I could relate. “So, what was
in that injection again?”
“Oh fucking
Christ. Oh fuck.” She backed up against the closed door in quickening
fright. Petrified. Heart hammering.
“I’m not going
to eat you, Doc.” Mock comically, I looked down at myself and back at her.
“Oddly, I feel great. I look weird, but I feel great.”
“Fuck. What
the fuck.” She was about to lose it. Slowly, as casually as possible, I
sat on my bed, reached over into my nightstand, withdrew a colorful knit cap,
and pulled it onto my head.
“Is this better?”
“Yes. A
little. I… I’m so, so sorry.” She genuinely was. “What… what do
you need? What can I do? I’m suddenly at a loss
as to what to do here…” She
relaxed her shoulders against the door and started patting at her pockets.
“I could take tissue samples? I think I brought…”
I tried sounding
comforting. “That sounds good. Take some samples, figure out what happened
to me. Tell me what you can.”
“I, uh, okay.
Extend your arm.” She approached as if I was on fire, touching my extended
limb as little as possible, tamping her revulsion. She attempted to draw blood
with a syringe but my new skin refused the needle. “Hell!”
“No
worries,” I said. I looked at her, held up a finger. “How much blood
do you need?”
The ice –
professionalism, I suppose – crept back into her voice, winning out over the
horror. “One hundred CCs will suffice.”
“Okay. Be
ready.” Slowly, I leaned back from her and, just as slowly, made a small
cut, with my fingernail, on the opposite palm. Bright purple blood oozed
viscously from the wound, and she collected it in two sample tubes that she’d
brought.
“That enough?”
“I believe
so.” I made the cut close by thinking it closed. She leaned in and, with
curiosity in her eyes, examined where the cut had been, feeling the fast-fading
scar with a trembling finger.
“Holy shit.”
I smiled and I saw
from her reaction that it was a horrifying sight, so I stopped. “I’ll
probably get that a lot.”
“Are you in
any pain or discomfort at all?” Genuine concern.
“None
whatsoever. I feel great. I feel fan-fucking-tastic.”
“Fascinating.”
She backed toward the door, never taking her eyes off me. “I’ll run this,
and call you later. You’ll be around?”
I laughed at that,
which seemed, according to Dr. H__’s
vexed expression, more horrible than me smiling. “I’m not planning
on going anywhere for a while. I’ll wait.”
“Okay.” I
could hear her knuckles strain from clutching the doorknob. “I’ll call you
as soon as I can.”
“Cool,
Doc,” I said to the closing door, and to the sound of her running down the
hall and stairs.
I laid on the bed,
attempting to conduct an inventory of my expanded senses, my transformed self,
and fell asleep.
The phone woke me a
few hours later. It was Dr. H__, and she sounded panicked. “Look, I
don’t… I have a hypothesis, but I need an additional piece of info.”
“Sure,
whatever,” I drawled lazily. “What you need, Doc?”
“Do you have a scale?”
“Yeah.”
“Go weigh yourself.”
“Okay.”
Simple enough. I felt heavier, so I surmised I’d probably be heavier. The scale
disagreed. I reported this to Dr. H__, who said, coldly, “Aw, hell.”
“What?”
Part of me was genuinely concerned now. The rest of me wanted to sleep more.
“You came in to cure yourself of heartbreak, didn’t
you?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you still feel heartbroken?”
“No.”
“Do you
feel,” she hesitated, as if seeking the right turn of phrase, “do you
feel like you could love again?”
Reflexively: “No.”
“Do you feel like you won’t, or you’re unable?”
“I suppose it
could happen. I feel… I feel unmarred. Less disconnected from…”
“From others?”
“Yeah. I can’t
remember feeling quite so… open to the possibilities of people, even though
most people now would think I’d eat them or something.” I suppressed a
laugh so as not to ruffle Dr. H__. It was genuinely funny, the thought of me in
this new flesh over a new heart.
“Okay.
Well,” I heard the rustling of papers on her desk, the hum of a laptop
nearby, “this is my theory. We’re still running tests, but I think that
the mutagen has somehow activated some kind of… body overhaul, in conjunction
with your own drive to heal, and altered you. Into… well, I don’t know what,
really, yet, but I can tell you that it’s not bad. Permanent, yes, but not bad.
Kind of interesting.”
“Interesting, how? What do you mean by that?”
I heard a smile that reached her eyes over the phone, the coldness in her voice warming slightly – “What are your thoughts on space travel?”
VK Thipa is the psuedonym of a transplanted AfroBritish polyartist who currently lives on the West coast of the Americas. He has been previously been published on 365 Tomorrows under his birth name, which is unexciting.
Or at least that’s how my Nene liked
to tell it. But she was always one for drama, that one, never believing that
the truth should interfere with good storytelling.
The truth is much less dramatic,
though not any stranger. They actually came for us at sunset. That quiet time
when all the children have been called indoors, when the traffic jams have died
down, and the street sellers have packed up their wares and gone home. Plus,
this was the time when we came out and did our… thing. I wouldn’t call it work.
It was never ‘work’ for me. Anyway, they thought this was the time they would
catch us at it.
But we were never going to be stopped.
Especially not by some overzealous, scared people who called the police,
thinking they could actually do something to us. All that happened is that
those policemen died for nothing.
When you write this history, make sure
to emphasise that last part.
They died for nothing.
*
Let me tell you the story my Nene told
me when I was a girl.
She said that the old gods, the ones who
were here before the colonisers brought their god to trample us under the heel
of Christianity, still walk amongst us. They didn’t dwindle away or get lost in
memory, or forget us. They just had to adapt to their new world and the loss of
so many believers. Nene’s favourite thing was to gather all her grandchildren
around her during the harvest season (the harvest in the village, of course,
because I hadn’t harvested so much as a tomato here in the city of my birth),
and tell us all about the time she had met our god.
The first time, she was a child
walking home with her mother, during heavy rainfall. The sky was dark and heavy
with clouds and they couldn’t see farther than a few steps ahead. They took
shelter under the branches of a small tree, and when the lightning started, it
was so bright and so close that she saw her own shadow on the ground. And next
to it, the tree’s shadow turned to look at her. She pulled at her mother’s chitenge
and the two of them looked up and into the face of a woman, her brown skin
glorious in the light, clad only in the smallest cloth around her hips. As the
thunder boomed loud enough to cause both Nene and her mother to clap their
hands over their ears and shake in terror, the woman raised her hands, threw
back her head and laughed in delight. Nene’s mother screamed, picked her up and
ran with the child’s head clutched tight to her chest.
The second time, Nene said, was ten
rain seasons later. She had been heading towards the river to bathe, and then
she got separated from her friends as they played a game. Following their
footprints, she saw a woman ahead of her on one of the many paths, crouching
down over footprints and making circular motions over them. Each footprint
glowed faintly before rising out of the ground, and as the glow touched her
hand and disappeared, the silver scales that covered the woman’s back,
shoulders and upper arms rippled with colour
Nene had turned to run.
Everyone knew the stories about these
creatures, Nene told us. If you came across them while they gathered whatever
it was they gathered from footprints, they would take away a piece of your
soul. You would return to your village acting like the person everyone knew,
but you would be a ghost of the person you were before. There would be an
emptiness inside you that could never be filled. Sleep, food, laughter, even
life, would never be the same for you. You would wake in the night searching
and searching, but never find whatever it was you searched for. And you would
have nothing to show for it but dirty feet each morning.
So yes, she had turned as quietly as
she could, gathered her chitenge above her thighs and run.
“Stop, girl”, a voice had said to my Nene,
and she had stood, unable to move, like roots had planted her into the ground.
“Turn and come to me,” the creature
said, its voice was rich, warm and bubbling like water. “I didn’t think that we
would meet again so soon. “
She turned, not entirely of her own
free will, and faced it, then dropped to her knees, and flat on her stomach in
submission. The creature’s glowing white eyes revealed her for what she was.
The great river god.
Nene had lain there trembling,
apologising for having the cheek to look a god in the face, awaiting her death
as she felt the god slither towards her and stop, poised above her head.
“I should eat you right now, and leave
your bones behind for people to find”, the god had hissed, “but I’m in a good
mood today. And there’s something different about you. Not many people can see
me during the day, and not twice in their lifetime and live to tell about it.
Definitely not see my work without going mad. You have a gift I haven’t sensed
in a long, long time”
And with that, Nene would say, she
felt the god’s sticky tongue on her head, tasting the sweat running down her
face and laughing in small hissing breaths at the human cowering on the ground.
The god told her many things as she lay there, and gave her a new name. Chipego
– a gift to return to her people and be the vessel of the god’s words.
*
That was over three hundred and
seventy years ago, by her count, and Nene remembered every detail of the story
like it happened to her just yesterday. She had told it to us so many times
that we knew it word for word. And in those centuries, she had not lost faith
in her god, and had passed on this faith first to her clan, her daughters, and
then to her daughter’s daughters. But by the start of the last century, only a
handful of people knew the real stories of the god. People had moved away from
the river to live all over the newly created country. The old borders were not
respected by the new people who came to live amongst them, and of the clans
that stayed, many were seduced by the promise of new lives away from farming
and living close to the river. The history had been lost, mixed up with stories
of other tribes, morphed into impossible myths or tales of women who practiced
witchcraft.
By the nineteen fifties, when my own
mother was also a priestess, belief in the river god was left to those who
lived along the river boundaries. The god had gone quiet. Nene didn’t know why.
She still felt the god’s presence wherever she went. She and other priestesses
followed the old ways, shunning the Christianity that the missionaries tried to
force on them, and the punishments the colonial government exacted on them for
using plants to heal, for birthing at home, for refusing, basically, to be the
good compliant natives they wanted. And when the rumour began that the white
men had decided, through some kind of madness, (because it could only be
madness that drove them to it) to interfere with the river, the very dwelling
place of the god, they had to do something.
And they tried, they really did. The
sacrifices didn’t work, pleading didn’t work, the god stayed silent and the dam
was built. But the real version of how those events played out, those lies
about the clans allowing themselves to be resettled? They never allowed
themselves to be resettled, okay? They weren’t given a choice.
But still, I don’t hold the god responsible
for what happened at all. No one does. By that time, people didn’t even
remember the god’s true name any more. She was now Zambesi, sometimes Nyami
nyami, sometimes just the river spirit who “lived in and protected the life
around the river”. Her priestesses were branded witches and shunned if caught
at their work, so they were reduced to continuing her work in the night. Men
took over and declared themselves the true priests of the god. They crafted
ornaments and walking sticks and prayed and at least that kept the faith alive.
Better than nothing, I guess. They had
reduced her to a spirit, and they expected her to come in all her might when
they called. She hadn’t deserted them, but they really believed that she had,
and so they just didn’t try hard enough, didn’t turn to the priestesses. Whatever
the builders of that dam did, they separated her from us. They severed some
spiritual link… spiritual? That word doesn’t cover what the connection to our
god used to be. My mother said the night they placed that last brick in the
dam, under cover of darkness, like the cowards they were, she woke up with tears
running down her face, sadness overwhelmed her and she wept and wept till her
eyes ran out of tears. Mother also said that Nene didn’t wake up at all that
morning. They thought she was dead,
until they noticed the pillow under her head was soaked through with tears and
small breaths escaped her mouth every few hours. She stayed that way for three
weeks and when she finally emerged from sleep, her very first words were,
“What have we done?”
While the Brits hailed the might of
the British Empire at creating the world’s largest man-made lake and a dam the
likes of which the world had never seen before, my people were in mourning.
Their valley was gone, their god was gone, and they were barely hanging on to
their way of life.
That was just over a hundred a fifty
years ago. I’ve grown up on the true history of our tribe as told by Nene
Chipo. Nene is over
three hundred and eighty years old now, and my mother is over a hundred and
fifty. We’ve all accepted that we will have very long
lives; longer than most humans. This was
the gift from the god. This is part of what our god whispered to my Nene so
many years ago. We’ve learned to change our appearances and our names,
secluding ourselves from a lot of daily community life to avoid too many
questions. Our little village grew into a town, then into a city where you couldn’t
tell who your neighbours were any more, and we could mingle freely again. When
our city opened its doors to the new Siavonga University in twenty twenty-five,
a few kilometres from our house, I registered as a student and studied
geography. I got my first job in Lusitu, north of Siavonga four years later at
the ripe age of sixty, though I looked barely out of my teens, and lived at
home, close to the river.
*
It wasn’t until forty years ago, when
the earth tremors that we had been having since nineteen fifty seven grew into
a full earthquake, that my Nene decided it was time to let me know the full
truth.
“Do you know why you’re called Chipo,
my love?” she said as we shelled groundnuts on the veranda outside my mother’s
house. I nodded.
“It’s because I was such a precious
gift to my mother, who had been trying for many, many decades to have a baby
before I finally came along”.
“Yes and no”, Nene said, shooing a bee
away with a tea towel. “Yes they waited a long time to have you, that part is
true, but also, you had to be given that name.”
“What do you mean I had to be
given that name? I thought the no part is that they also named me after you?”
“No, that’s not the no part. One
doesn’t have to call the first girl child after the grandmother. Those are just
stories. We had to call you that because you also carry this ability that was
given to me.”
I remember rolling my eyes at her, and
she kissed her teeth in impatience.
“The problem is you think I’m always
exaggerating. I don’t exaggerate. Your Nene has always been one hundred percent
truthful with you. You’ve entered puberty now. It’s time for you to know our
purpose.”
*
I waited twenty years before going
down to the lake. I didn’t find it strange as a child, that my family had never
been to see the lake, never travelled to the dam that was within walking
distance of our home. That we had never travelled beyond the Zambezi River to
the west and the Kafue River to the East. But as I stood there on the shore of
the lake, I felt a huge yearning to plunge myself into the water. My body
swayed in rhythm with the lapping of the water at the shoreline and I felt the
earth shake beneath my feet with a tremor.
I reached into my purse and touched the bundle my mother had given me,
more for comfort than anything.
“Hey,” a man walking along the shore
shouted over at me. “Are you okay mama?”
I nodded, not wanting to show the
excitement on my face. “I’m fine”
I hired a humboat that evening to take
me out over the water.
I had to time it just right. Late
enough that the jet skis and boat cruises had retreated for the evening, but
early enough that one of the local fishermen would still be able to take me
over the water.
“Kwasiya taata” I greeted him in the old tongue. He stared at me then inclined his head politely.
“Inhya, kwasiya”
I explained to him where I wanted to
go and we set off silently. He pressed a few buttons on the humboat and the
electric engine started up, floating gently above the water as we headed
towards the dam wall.
When we got to my coordinates, he
pressed more buttons and the boat stopped, swaying gently over the water. He
turned off the lights and we sat in total darkness for a moment. I pulled out
my flashlight and, dropping it into the lake by its opti-line, lowered it about
a kilometre into the water before plugging the line into my phone’s USB port.
What I saw… would you even believe
me? If you don’t, all you need to do is go and have a look yourself. It doesn’t
take any skill at all, you just need to know where to look.
My torch had got caught in the
branches of a tree. The leaves swayed gently in the water and fish darted away
from the light. I tugged at the opti-line to dislodge the torch, then fed more
of the line, letting the torch go another kilometre down. Now there was the
sloping side of a hut visible further down, and what I could swear was a mango
tree. The fisherman gasped as he looked at my phone where it captured the
images from the water.
“What is that!” his voice was shaky
with fear or some similar emotion.
“It’s an app I’m using to visualise
what a village would look like under water”, I lied without missing a beat. Yet
inside, my heart was racing. Another kilometre fed to the line and I could see
a whole hut, and swivelling the torch, a kraal, an old fireplace, a shower
hut…all intact hundreds of years later.
“The images are incredibly life like,”
the fisherman laughed nervously. “All you need is people walking around and I
could swear there was a village at the bottom of the lake. Just like the old
stories”.
“Indeed”, I replied, searching his
face for any signs that he may decide this wasn’t a story and fling me
overboard. He just had that look that said I might be a witch.
He asked if I had gotten enough images
so we could we head back to the shore. I noticed the sideways glances he kept
giving me and memorised his face in case there was trouble later.
A week later, a policeman in our
suburb came over to our house and asked how many women lived there.
“Just me, my mother and my
grandmother,” I lied calmly. If he knew exactly how many women lived in our
house, there would be trouble. He looked around the sitting room as he drank
the cup of water we gave him, and commented on all the old things we had in the
house.
“Is that a kankobela?” he exclaimed in
wonder, pointing at a corner in the display unit.
“Yes, my grandmother has had it
forever”, I replied with a neutral face.
“I thought it was a lost ethnic
musical art form?”
Ethnic? Was he serious? Ethnic?
“It’s a Tribal instrument that took
great skill to master, yes”
When he left, Nene spat on the ground
outside the door.
“Idiot! This is what we have become
now? Using words like that to describe our own? Chu! I knew his great
grandfather when he was a boy and all of a sudden, we’re ethnic?”
We knew then that people had noticed
us. And this wasn’t the time to get noticed at all. I went out that night to
look for footprints. There weren’t as many as there had been even in my
mother’s days. People wore shoes now, children rarely played barefoot, and to
compound it all, everywhere was paved. I had to go a long way before I finally
came across two small footprints in the poorer section of the city. I drew the nchembo
out of my bag. Tracing the outline of the footprint with its pointed end, I
said the words for the offering and the footprint glowed faintly and, rising
out of the ground, headed out towards the river. I repeated the process on the
other footprint and continued hunting more.
I went out every single night for a
month, making sure no one saw me, offering up these gifts to the god, hoping it
would be enough to awaken her. Another earthquake was reported across the internet
and while we breathed a sigh of relief, two houses fell, and only five people
died during the quake.
I went out all night in the rainy
season. It was the best time, when tourists walked barefoot along the lake’s
shore, fishermen took off their shoes as they mended nets along the river’s
edge and children often disobeyed their parents to feel the earth squish
between their toes as they played games.
As the years went by the Earth tremors
grew stronger and earthquakes became more common. The Christians kept on their
gloomy predictions about the end of the world and a turning back to the good
book, while my heart grew ever hopeful. They pointed to pages in their book of
Revelations as proof. It was indeed a
sign of the end of times; just not the ones they thought.
I was celebrating my eightieth birthday
when we finally heard on the news that there was a considerable crack in the
dam wall. Enough to have the government worried and put a plan in place to fix
it. And trust me, I’ve been around long enough to know that if politicians
actually get their behinds into gear, then disaster must be imminent. We had to
act soon.
The first night of the full moon, the
rain fell like it was going out of fashion. My Nene, my mother, my daughter,
her daughter and I went out together. We stood at the lake’s edge, five
generations of believers, holding hands, then we stepped into the water. A
tremor took us to our knees and we stayed there, singing to our god, asking her
to return and bring back the river.
We waded in up to our waists, raising
our arms high above our heads and sang, begged, pleaded for our god to return.
We waded farther, to our necks, still singing. Then, we felt something. It felt
like a giant fish had brushed against the back of my legs. I looked around at
the others and they all had the same look of shock and wonder.
We sang louder into the night sky and
the earth trembled beneath our feet. I felt the same scaly body pass between
first my daughter and I to the left, then my mother and I to my right. We all
laughed in delight. She was here! She was with us!
Another tremor rocked us on our heels,
submerging our heads under water and we came up coughing.
“It’s time to come out!” Nene shouted,
and we fought the waves to get back to shore. The calm gently lapping water we
had entered was now choppy with waves rising above our heads. We had to fight
our way back, gulping water at times as our heads went below the surface. My
heart was full and I felt as though each heartbeat sent a spark of electricity
running through me. As the lightning began and the thunder roared, something
compelled us all to look back in unison and there, illuminated by a flash of
lightning, a huge head rose above the surface. It loomed over us, glowing eyes
lighting up the scaly face. It rose higher to reveal the silver scaled body of
a giant snake. The head morphed slowly into that of a woman, her skin brown as
the earth on a warm day, and she threw her head back and laughed the sound of
thunder into the air. We cried out in terror and glee, stumbling towards the
shore as she flipped backwards and disappeared under the water.
We lay there shaking as an earthquake
stronger than we had ever felt drove us to the ground, then got up quickly,
soaked and shivering, to head towards our home.
We spent the whole day packing and
sending pings across the internet, warning people to leave Siavonga that day.
Telling them they had no time. We were flooded by messages telling us to get a
life, to turn to their god because we were obviously lost. Telling us to stop
believing idiotic nonsense and turn to the true path, to stop stirring things
otherwise the police would be sent after “those mad witches in that house”
We tried. My granddaughter Chipo, who
is amazing with all the new tech, sent out nano skybots to shoot images showing
the amount of rain that had fallen that day and hacked into the aging news
stations to run the footage on a loop every hour, showing the ripples on the
lake’s surface that were obviously being made by a creature moving with a
purpose.
People either praised it for being
realistic CGI or wrote it off as scaremongering. They began to threaten us with
exorcisms, jail or both – for worshipping demons.
An hour before sunset, we were done. A
few precious memories, mostly things my Nene had collected over hundreds of
years, like the chitenge she had woven with her own hands; photographs in the
days before instacapture that showed my mother as a young girl, my very first
cd, back when they still made them, my daughter’s first holochrome with the
images of her sitting at her Nene’s feet and learning to sing the old songs.
They all came with us.
We sat on the top of the hill above
our home and watched at sunset, as policemen walked ahead of a group of people
headed towards our deserted home even as a tremor shook the earth.
“We should go down and tell those
idiots to leave!” my daughter exclaimed.
“It’s too late now. It’ll take us at
least an hour to get down there, only to come to harm”, her daughter replied.
As the men who headed the group turned
into our street, clutching umbrellas against the rain, the earth shook hard
enough to topple the whole group over and a thunderous roar came from the
direction of the dam.
“Look!” Nene pointed, and we all
turned to look towards what used to be Kariba dam.
The dam had exploded. Concrete flew
out up into the air at one end of the dam. Faint screams drifted up from the
people below. Lightning rays showed the gigantic god rise out of the depths and
fling itself head first towards the dam and shatter the concrete where it hit.
The earth shook again, and the hotels along the hills crumpled like paper cups
into the water. The people below began to scatter, some threw themselves to
their knees and prayed to their various false gods to save them, others
clutched at each other in fear. Buildings began to fall around and on top of
them.
We sat where we were, safe from harm
and wept at such needless loss of life. We had told them. Hadn’t we told them?
More flashes of lightning showed our
god smashing the dam, smashing it, returning the river, finally, to its
rightful path. Returning what we had worked for, for so long. Chipo captured it
all and streamed it live over the internet.
I can’t even begin to tell you how many people thought it was a hoax.
But amongst them, our scattered clan began to comment, feeling a shift in their
hearts. Remembering who they were and looking with awe as the waters of the
lake began to recede. With one mighty roar, the god raised herself to her full
height. Over seven metres of her beautifully scaled body arched into the air
and then, with a twist that passed rainbow colours over her shiny scales, the
god dove into the churning water and disappeared, headed towards Cabora Bassa
dam.
At
the final tally, over a thousand people were recorded dead. Those
who refused to leave were the saddest. Such an unnecessary death. We told them
and they died for nothing.
The waters receded as the lake drained
back to the river it once was, revealing huge trees and still intact villages
where the riverside used to be. The politicians blamed the government of the
day for failing to implement the centuries old dam rehabilitation project, and
the finger pointing continued in earnest. Those who could still trace their
ancestry back to the valley began to return and build homes again beside the
river.
Centuries of work, and were we ever
thanked for it?
Of course not.
We were just glad to have our river and our god back.
Muuka Gwaba is a Zambian currently living in Dublin, Ireland. Her interest in african history focuses on exploring the oral histories of our past and using them to empower who we are and what we would like to become. A chartered accountant and psychotherapist, Muuka balances her spare time writing fiction, and eating lots of chocolate while blogging about books, parenting and movies at www.anotherdropofink.com.
