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Naruoma, the Cow Detective of the Millennium – Rešoketšwe Manenzhe

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Illustration for Naruoma, the Cow Detective of the Millennium – Rešoketšwe Manenzhe, story in Omenana Magazine

Ah, good. You caught Naruoma just as he caught the fly that’s irritated him for some hours. He has a lot to say, eh. I know you need to get home quick-quick, but we should listen to him.

You came to hear about the fire, right? I should warn you, the story is long. But if you don’t mind, it goes something like this:

Eventually, enough time passed for people to think of the fire as some profound mystery. This added to the legend of not only the fire itself, but everything else that happened that year.

I’d say the whole thing started with the deaths. That’s another story that would have us here the whole day, but to summarise things so you’re not confused, we had a few people dropping dead all of a sudden. Someone had the bright idea to whisper that they were serial murders; someone else had the idea to spread the whispers; and soon we had a full-on panic.

The reasoning went something like this: Crime was on the rise. The police were doing nothing about it. Oh, when would the police please do something about it? We had to catch whoever was responsible, make him pay and all that – that sort of thing.

Now, don’t let it be said I didn’t want to do my job. I wanted the deaths to end as much as anyone. But here’s the thing, these were simple deaths, not murders. We couldn’t go around arresting people for a crime that didn’t happen. That’s not how people saw it though.

The Councillor called Samson and I to his office. Samson was my junior, you see. The Councillor called us in after Old Man Amos was found dead in his bed. “We need to manage this,” he said, reclining impossibly far into his chair.

This is where Samson and I were supposed to dissect the “crime” into buzzwords like ‘typical trends of serial delinquency,’ ‘capture methods,’ – you know, things the Councillor could casually harp on when he ran for re-election. ‘99 and 2000 were shit years, I tell you. Buzzwords weren’t enough.

The Councillor continued, “Start by rounding up the usual suspects. Ask them where they were when the deaths happened. That should get us somewhere.”

Samson and I looked at each other for a while without saying anything. Personally, I thought the Councillor was playing a joke and he was waiting for us to get in on it. With every second that passed, I realised he was serious.

“What usual suspects?” I said.

“You know, the ones with all the crime. Surely one of them did it.” He shrugged his shoulders as if settling the matter.

“Sir,” I started, “we don’t have usual suspects. Besides, nothing about the deaths suggests a crime.”

This was followed by more silence, during which I slowly realised the Councillor was waiting for me to say a punchline to some joke. When I didn’t, he banged his hand on the table. “You know there’s been another death, right?” he said.

“Yes,” I nodded.

“And? Have you got any leads on that?”

“Well, the deceased in question was an old man who drank literally every day of his life, sir. I’d say he’s been dying for a while.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke, Naruoma?”

“No, sir. Just that his death wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

He started to open his mouth for a retort, but before he could say anything, Samson jumped in. “Sir,” he said, “from what we hear, things are more complicated than you’d think. Witchcraft might be involved. You know some people are even using animals to do their evil deeds. There was a goat in Makapela that has was going around stealing money; now they say the goat belongs to an old witch who sent it to do the stealing. Can you imagine it, a domestic animal getting up to evil?” Samson paused, as though to allow the gravity of his statement to settle in. I was caught off-guard, stunned into silence; just when I recovered and tried to stop Samson, he started again, this time speaking louder, with more confidence.

“There’s a ghost that’s been haunting the area around Cynthia’s tavern,” he continued. “That’s around where the old man lived. It’s also where all the deaths have been happening. We think something supernatural is involved,” he finished.

The Councillor folded his arms and shook his head at Samson. “Do you think I’m a joke? Heh? Do I look like a joke to you?”

I can’t say I’ve ever liked the Councillor; but in this, we were united.

Around ’94, maybe ’95, when Cynthia’s tavern was new, I spent a few nights there. Sometimes we had to break up some true nonsense. People liked to play dice just outside the tavern. More often than not, they ended up fighting over someone cheating. The alcohol didn’t help. Once people got drunk, they got generous with their accusations, and knives were never too far from these sorts of sagas. A few people lost their eyes. John lost three fingers.

Samson was like the knife in these scenarios. He glinted in the background, so you knew he was there, and it frightened you in a general sort of way. But you didn’t believe he would actually do the unthinkable and stab you, so when he did, it still shocked you.

“I asked you,” said the Councillor, “do I look like a joke to you?”

Samson was surprised. “Sir, sir,” he stammered. He might have hoped someone would rescue him with an interruption, but that didn’t happen. The Councillor was too concerned with his own plight to give up, and I … well, call it childish if you want, but I was annoyed with Samson. He had made his bed. He had to lie in it. “Sir …” he continued, looking at me for help.

“Let me tell you something,” said the Councillor, gesticulating at Samson, “I just came from a workshop in Duiwelskloof, Duiwelskloof—” he had a habit of repeating words he thought were important. “—all the way in Duiwelskloof, I tell you. Do you know that everyone was laughing at us? Heh? No one was taking anything I said seriously. Now you come to me with witchcraft! Are you being serious right now?”

Samson must have thought this was another rhetorical dilemma, for he didn’t answer.

I realise now that I should have taken over. Maybe the whole business with the cow might have been avoided. But alas, I didn’t know how petty the Councillor could be. “It’s witchcraft you want?” he continued. “You can have it.”

I have to admit, at first I thought he wanted us to investigate whether witchcraft really was involved. So you can imagine my confusion when, instead, we entered the mess with the cow. It was very quick too; Samson and I got the delivery the next day.

Do you know that children’s show with four colourful… I suppose I should call them creatures? They had receiver aerials on their heads. One was green, one yellow, red—

Yes, yes, Teletubbies!

The next day Samson and I got a delivery of a costume that looked like a Teletubbie. The difference was that it was brown with patches of white, and it was obviously a cow. We didn’t have to wonder if it had some hidden symbolical meaning. It came with a note that said:

Here is something to help you with the investigation. Maybe you will start taking this seriously. Until that happens, you will do your jobs wearing this suit. Decide among yourselves who will have that honour. I want daily reports. If you do not wear it, I will know. Sincerely, your Ward Councillor.

“When did he get time to buy this thing?” said Samson.

“Where did he get the money?” I added.

I wasn’t saying taxpayers’ funds were used. You can’t quote me on that. But I’ll tell you this, he got that thing rather fast. And I know his wife, she’s not the kind of woman who would allow nonsense with their money. That’s all I’m willing to say on the matter.

But going back to who was going to wear the thing, the answer was obvious. Samson was responsible for the mess. If he kept his mouth shut about witch-whispers, we wouldn’t be in that position to begin with. Also, I was his senior; there was no way I was going to lug myself around in that thing.

Samson must have come to the same conclusion because he asked me, “If we don’t wear it, what can he do to us?”

I didn’t give an answer for two reasons. Firstly, I honestly didn’t know what the Councillor could do to us. Secondly, and more importantly, I intended for my silence to be ominous – to suggest a fate that was so terrible, we had no choice but to wear the suit. This way Samson could learn his lesson and keep his mouth shut sometimes.

I looked at him thoughtfully, shaking my head in a way that suggested defeat. He sighed deeply. “I supposed it won’t kill me, will it,” he said, hauling the suit off the table. He disappeared to the holding cell and a few minutes later, he came back in full costume.

He spun around so we could judge how it fit. It wasn’t perfect; the arms were too long, it was a bit tight around the crotch area, and overall, it made him look like an overgrown toddler. “Do you think we can get it adjusted?” said Samson.

“I think if we get to a point where we have to adjust it, we may as well quit our jobs.”

“Yes,” said Samson. “It’s way too hot. I wish it was winter.” There was no trace of irony whatsoever as he said this. Although, with the way the suit framed his face, I honestly couldn’t tell when he was being sincere, and when he was being facetious.

I swallowed the sarcasm I was about to spit and said, “I guess we better get going.”

We caught up with Davie on his way to Cynthia’s tavern. I leaned out of the car and called, “Davie! Davie, wait up!”

“Eh, boss—” started Davie. He was getting a law degree, and he had it in his mind that made us kin of sorts. “Eh, Boss …” he narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, the better to see into the car. And then, as I had expected, he started laughing. He composed himself just long enough to say, “Boss, did you know there was a cow in your car?”

Samson sighed, and I, quite helpless, waited for Davie to finish laughing. But that wasn’t about to happen. Davie now had to clutch his chest and put one hand on the car to keep himself upright. His laughter came out in staccato coughs that indicated his chest was tired of the labour. I have to admit, I was getting irritated with him. I got out of the car and stood such that I was blocking his view.

Seeing as we didn’t have the whole day to idle about, I started with my questions anyway. “We heard you might know something about Old Man Adam’s death,” I said. “He had something to tell us, before he died? Do you know what that might be?”

Davie craned his neck past me. He pointed at Samson as he said, “He never said,” then he straight up collapsed to his knees, and his laughter now came out in wheezes. “Just … just give me a moment.”

So I just stood there as Davie tried to learn how to breathe normally again, all while Samson sighed and shook his head and sighed and muttered, “This is ridiculous.”

After what felt like an eternity, Davie finally stood up. He wiped tears from his eyes. “Man,” he said, “if that wasn’t the best laugh of my life, I may as well drop dead now.”

Samson took that as an invitation to dive back into the questions. “Did Old Man Adam talk to anyone else?” he screamed from the car. This sent Davie into a fresh wave of hysterics. The break had done his lungs a lot of good. He was so loud this time around, that Reuben came out of the tavern to see what was happening. Davie immediately called him over. “Eh!” he screamed. “Eh! Reuben! Come and see! There’s now a cow working for the police!”

Imagine this: Reuben ran to the car, burst into laughter too, and he and Davie started asking us questions. Was this the new uniform? Was this because of affirmative action, you know, since we still didn’t have women at our station? Was it a new millennium initiative? Were goats next on the hiring list? What about chickens, sheep? – etcetera.

The questions weren’t even the worst thing about the ordeal. Since Samson was in the car, I was the cow spokesperson. So undignified was this role, I quickly directed the questions back their way. “Did Old Man Adam say anything else before he died?”

Here, Davie and Reuben sobered. They shook their heads, and Davie said, “The only person who could have known is Old Man Amos. They were inseparable. Amos might even be the last person to see Adam alive. But he died too, you know. So there’s that.”

“You think the two deaths are connected?”

“I think whatever killed them is the same thing. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense, does it? We would have to assume this area is haunted, which …” Davie didn’t finish his words. He looked around and let the silence do the job.

Baby Samantha’s house was across the road from Old Man Adam’s, which was next door to Cynthia’s tavern, and behind it was Old Man Adam’s house. This meant that by everyone’s count, three out of the four deceased lived a stone’s throw away from each other. An argument could be made that the fourth, Rough Spanner, lived around there as well, seeing as he spent more time at Cynthia’s tavern than his own house.

There was a morula tree only a few paces from where we stood; presently, its leaves swayed in a way that suggested some supernatural intervention to our conversation. It was eerie. It was effective.

“With Old Man Amos, that makes it four dead people now,” said Reuben.

“Three,” I corrected.

“Four if you count Baby Samantha,” he corrected back. For some stupid reason,everyone wanted to count Baby Samantha even though she died as soon as she was born.

For the sake of cooperation, I conceded. “Four.”

This wasn’t enough for Reuben. “Four people dead like it’s nothing,” he emphasised.

That was the sentiment with everyone we talked to. Old Man Amos was eighty-three, you know. Eighty-three, and he never slept a day without drinking. But you wouldn’t know it from how people received his death. Everyone was sure something was done to him.

At his funeral, Davie of all people, stood up to say, “As the young people of this community, we are tired of digging graves. Our people are falling like flies. Must we now don overalls permanently and become undertakers? Is this the fate of our people?”

I saw the Councillor thoughtfully shake his head at the words, and I knew my life would never be the same again. It didn’t help that the next day Cynthia was found dead in her yard.

You know, that’s the day I realised my Ancestors had forsaken me.

The Councillor came to my house to personally deliver a new cow suit. He said, “Maybe now you’ll take this seriously. Go to the school ground, everyone is there, ask them questions.”

Mind you, it was my day off, and I told him as much.

He didn’t like that at all. He unleashed a fresh bout of bullshit. “Do you know that taxpayers, taxpayers eh, they are paying for you to catch criminals?” he said. “Taxpayers are feeding you, meanwhile you are here sitting and watching TV while people are out there dying. Dying, Naruoma! Dying! Do you even care?”

I honestly can’t remember what I said. Profanities might have left my mouth. My job was threatened, and more profanities left my mouth. At that point I didn’t care.

I sat on the veranda for a good five minutes trying to figure out if he had the costumes in his house just waiting to be unleashed on anyone he was displeased with. And you know what, he sat there with me. For five minutes no one said anything. Then, unceremoniously, he gave a fake cough and said, “Come on now, we need to go.”

Samson was already in the car, all dressed up, his heading peeping out to watch the stalemate. And so, sulking, defeated, I got in my suit and wobbled my way into the backseat of a 1984 Citi Golf, where Samson and I were squashed against each other.

All the way to the school, people craned their necks to get a better look at us. Too bad it was so windy, there was so much dust in the air, I don’t imagine they saw us clearly. In fact, everyone would later agree that the wind was the reason Reuben’s house lost its roof and all the mangoes in the village fell from their trees that day.

Presently, I asked Samson, “Anyone know yet how Gloria died?”

“Looks like she collapsed,” he said.

The Councillor apparently didn’t approve of this line of theorising. He discouraged us by nudging certain misfortunes to collide. Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On crooned from the speakers on repeat, so he increased the volume to the point of splitting our eardrums. As the song approached its crescendo, which was apparently his favourite part, he banged his hands on the steering wheel and cleared his throat in preparation of a sing-along. We braced ourselves, and just as we were about to plunge into a new level of hell, we reached the school. So maybe not all my Ancestors had abandoned me.

Samson and I wobbled out of the car to be greeted by cheers and applause. A few people mooed, a few whistled, someone screamed, “Long live the cow detectives of the new millennium!” and laughter rippled through the crowd.

At least the Councillor had the grace to quiet them down. “Now, now,” he said, “this is a serious matter, eh, a very serious matter. We’ll just be asking a few questions and you can get on with the game soon.” Then, he walked to where Maserumo stood.

Along with Rough Spanner, Maserumo was what we called ‘the village newspaper.’ That is, if a thief stole a goat in pitch-black night and left no clues at all to his identity, before he even reached his gate, Maserumo would know not only who the thief was, but which direction he preferred to face when sleeping. The difference between her and Rough Spanner was that Maserumo knew when to keep quiet.

Presently, she had her hands on her hips, and her eyes roved over our costumes once, twice, then a quizzical look got fixed on her face.

The Councillor asked her, “Did Cynthia maybe tell you something before she died? Anything that could help us know how she died?” He snapped his fingers at me. “You’ll want to take notes, Naruoma.”

I looked at my hands, or rather, my hooves. I couldn’t take notes while wearing the costume, neither could Samson. In fact, we’d left our booklets in the car. Realising this, the Councillor gave a huff and shook his head. He went back to Maserumo. “It seems we can’t take notes just now, Maserumo,” he said. “But we’ll still need to know what you know.”

Maserumo was confused. “How would I know anything about Cynthia dying?” she said.

Also confused, the Councillor looked from Maserumo to me to Samson to the rest of the crowd and back to Maserumo. The quizzical look on her face morphed into worry. She said, “Why? Has someone said that I know something?”

The rest of the crowd took Maserumo’s question as an opportunity to throw details into the confusion. “The problem started with the baby dying,” said Molope.

“If you solve what happened to the baby, these deaths will stop, I tell you.” Ezekiel added, “I’d say, that whole area is cursed, actually.”

“Tsk, tsk,” said Reuben, shaking his head – his house hadn’t gone roofless yet, so Cynthia’s tragedy touched him more profoundly than it would in a few hours.

A voice that was missing in all this hoopla was Davie’s. I enquired and found out that he was away for the day. He was in Duiwelskloof for an exam or appointment or something.

So, “Tsk, tsk,” said Samson, “It won’t surprise me if we find out a restless spirit has taken over that place, eh.” By ‘that place,’ he meant the houses around Cynthia’s tavern.

“You know,” said Sara, “some things are so terrible that we can’t imagine people doing them, but it was people all along, and that’s something we have to consider.”

The crowd went silent as everyone pondered this suggestion. The Councillor in particular, seemed more thoughtful than everyone else. Molope, who it could be said was more invested in the supernatural argument, since she had originated it, revived it. “Ah, but that makes no sense, Sara. Just think about it, why would anyone be killing all these people?”

“Why would a spirit do it?” retorted Sara.

A debate ensued, and with that, any pretence of formal questioning disappeared. I could tell that the Councillor was no longer interested in what anyone had to say. He seemed deep in thought, and the general hubbub didn’t disturb him at all. He nodded along when someone threw a theory at him, but it was obvious his attention was elsewhere.

Someone, I can’t quite recall who, but in the midst of all this, someone asked the question, “What’s going to happen to Cynthia’s tavern now?”

This proved to be another salient point. Truth be told, the reason we were able to catch everyone at a children’s football match was because Cynthia died and the tavern had to be closed, out of respect you know. That meant people suddenly didn’t know where to go for the afternoon, and it so happened that the primary school was hosting a team from the next village.

Next week there wouldn’t be another game, nor the week after that, and so forth. If Cynthia’s tavern was closed indefinitely, this crisis would persist. There would be nothing to distract us from our lives. So I can’t say that people were being callous when the subject got changed so quickly, and so drastically.

Something else I’d like to point out is that for this reason alone, it didn’t make sense for anyone to have killed Cynthia. That’s why I still maintain that we weren’t dealing with murders. Even if some unfathomable crime wave had infected the village, Cynthia should have been the safest person, safer even than the baby.

“Ah, I see,” the Councillor said all of a sudden. “I have to rush away now, eh. I have to rush away.” He took quick strides to his car and sped off the ground with a loud rev. The dust he left in his wake was enough to leave a few people coughing.

“So,” said Reuben, as the dust settled, “How has it felt to be a cow detective?”

Funny enough, that’s not how I got the name. Most people think it was Reuben who came up with it, but not’s true at all. The fire is how I got the name.

After the game was done people went home to discover that Reuben’s roof was blown away by the wind and all the mangoes in the village had fallen from their trees. I’m not being hyperbolic about that either, literally every mango in the village was squashed to the ground that day. Most importantly, of course, the fire.

Since Samson and I didn’t have a ride, we wobbled along with the crowd. Just when we reached Sara’s tuck shop we saw the smoke. A few people were already running that way. I stopped a boy on his way there. “What’s happening?” I asked him.

“Cynthia’s tavern is on fire,” said the boy.

“Cynthia’s tavern?” I repeated.

“Yes,” said the boy, slipping away.

Samson and I did our best to run, but how the fuck could we get anywhere in those costumes! Eventually, we were left behind with the elders. Old Man Motheo limped his way to my side. “You think whoever killed Cynthia came back for the tavern?” he said.

“Cynthia wasn’t killed by anyone,” I answered.

“Well, boss,” said Samson, huffing beside me, “you can’t deny that this is suspicious.”

This emboldened Old Man Motheo to add, “Buildings don’t just catch fire, you know.”

“No,” I said. “They don’t.”

Samson and Old Man Motheo missed the sarcasm in my voice, which was unfortunate, since they took my statement as an invitation to expand their conspiracies. “We can only hope whoever did it doesn’t burn the house of every person that died,” said Old Man Motheo.

“Why would they do that?” said Samson.

“If the whole thing is connected to witch rituals, anything is possible.”

This seemed to unsettle Samson, for he retreated into a conspicuous silence. I found myself wishing they would go back to the theories because at least then, the eeriness of the evening was not so vivid.

Cynthia’s tavern was to the west of the village, and given that we were at the most ceremonious moments of sunset, it meant the western sky was an ominous bright red hue that, if you sat too long to think about it, would start to seem prophetic. On any other day, it would have been ordinary, but on that day, I swear if you saw it you would have said the fire of Cynthia’s tavern burnt itself right into the sky.

Also remember that it was windy that day.  So the theory is still that the fire spread like … well, like wildfire. By the time Samson and I got to the scene it had spread to Baby’s Samantha’s house, Old Man Adam’s house, and Old Man Amos’s house.

Someone had connected a hosepipe to a tap at the corner of the street so Old Man Amos’s house could be salvaged. There was no hope for the tavern and the other two houses. Although, a few people were throwing buckets of sand to starve the fire of oxygen.

I’d say the whole village was there, everyone finding something to do, even if it was to spread gossip. For me and Samson, the priority had to be finding the culprit. This is where the gossipers would be most useful.

I would have preferred if someone like Maserumo gave the details, but there was no time to be choosy. Reuben was in the process of loudly asking Mary Motsibi if she was sure about something. Mary said, “I’m telling you, it was a cow, Reuben. Why would I joke about something so serious?”

“What was a cow?” I asked, walking to where they stood.

Reuben shook his head thoughtfully. He said, “Mary says a cow did it?”

“A cow?”

“Yes. A cow.”

“You mean a cow-cow?” said Samson.

“A cow, yes,” said Mary, and this tautology went on longer than necessary, at which point I asked her, “A cow did what exactly?”

“A cow set the fires.”

“Fires?”

“Yes, fires.”

“What do you mean fires?”

“I mean there are three fires here.”

“Not one fire that started at the tavern and spread to the houses?”

“No. There are three fires.”

This required some thought. I folded my arms and looked at Samson. We knew we couldn’t say everything we thought until we confirmed it. But we needed that brief conference in which I nodded at him ever so slightly, and he nodded back, and I went back to Mary.

“What exactly happened here?”

Mary was now impatient. It seemed that she was missing out on a new detail currently being conveyed by Sara to a separate group of spectators/rescuers. She told the story quickly, which suited me just fine since, if she was right, we needed to get moving as soon as possible.

“The first smoke came out of the tavern. We thought maybe someone was burning rubbish. But the smoke got worse. We started running this way, but oh, Old Man Adam’s house started smoking too, then Baby Samantha’s house. Matome sounded the call for help. But now the smoke has turned into fire and we’re running around looking for buckets and hose pipes and you know what we see? You won’t believe me, but a cow was escaping from Amos’s house into the bushes. A cow like you and Samson here, but real, you know. A cow, Naruoma. That’s what I’ve been saying, isn’t it?”

“A real cow?”

“A real cow.”

“What do you mean a real cow?”

“I mean a real cow, don’t I? A cow you can slaughter and eat. As I have been saying, a cow.” She looked at Matome and Samson now, “Or am I swallowing my words? Why do I have to keep repeating myself for such a simple detail?”

“You’re saying a cow went around starting fires?”

“Naruoma, if you want to waste my time, just say so and stop pretending to be asking important questions.”

“But do you realise what you’re saying?”

“Why would I talk about things I don’t understand?” she tsked.

“Okay, thank you, Mary,” I said, signalling for Samson to follow me. We needed to get to the station as soon as possible; we had to do this properly.

When we were far away from everyone, Samson turned to me and said, “Do you really think he did it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But he wants to turn this into something.”

Neither of us said whom we were talking about, but I’m sure, given the politics of the thing, you understand who it was. By any means necessary, he, the one whose name I can’t say to you like it’s nothing, by any means necessary, he would force us to close the case.

Regardless of all of that, we had bigger problems. Samson, it turned out, had been right about the saga all along. It gave me no pleasure at all to admit it, even to myself, but no matter how logical you are as a person, when some things stare you in the face, you have no choice but to abandon reason.

He gave a deep sigh, Samson, and said, “You know, I was really hoping it wasn’t witchcraft. Witchcraft is messy. How are we still dealing with something so stupid at the dawn of a new millennium?”

I didn’t say anything to that, not because I didn’t want to be caught saying something untoward or damaging or whatever, but simply because there were no words for the overall bullshit that was the year 1999. When the world ends, nothing makes sense. Of course in a few minutes it would turn out that none of it mattered anyway.

Just as we were about to cross the road, an alcohol cargo truck collided with a minibus taxi, head-on. Samson and I were among the first responders. Only one passenger from the taxi died – Davie. He was the only passenger from our village.

So, when the story got told, everyone would remember that one year, several deaths followed each other in way that was unnatural. And, oh, wasn’t it just tragic that we lost such a promising young man as Davie? He was going to be a lawyer, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that just the most harrowing thing?

Maybe because everything was so absurd, when we sat down and thought about it, we started to push the idea of a cow, such a docile domestic animal, going around committing evil on the behest of a witchy person, to the back of our minds. That is how time is, isn’t it? – enough of it passes that one day you start thinking to yourself, “Did that really happen?”

Logic, too – you can use it to defy reality itself. I mean, all these years later, and we’re still wondering what actually happened even though some of us were there and saw it with our own eyes.

I’m sure you understand why I can’t say any of this, explicitly, on the record. But it will still help you, right? You understand what happened, don’t you?

Rešoketšwe Manenzhe is a South African villager and storyteller. Her short stories and poems have appeared in the Kalahari Review, Fireside Fiction, Lolwe, FIYAH, among other outlets. She has won the 2019 Writivism Short Story Prize, the 2020 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, the 2021 Akuko Short Story Competition, the First-Time Author award at the 2021 South African Literary Awards, and she was the first runner-up for the 2019 Collins Elesiro Prize for Fiction. She was shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times CNA Literary Awards. She lives in Cape Town and her novel Scatterlings, is out now.

Into The Hyacinth – Mandisi Nkomo

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Illustration for Into the Hyacinth, story in Omenana Magazine
AI art created with MidJourney
Piet looked at the empty email he was attempting to type. He got up and busied himself with fixing things that didn’t need to be fixed. He changed old light bulbs that were still working. He went outside and started all four of his cars. He ran them individually for five minutes each. He opened the bonnets, checked the oil and water. He went into the garden and pulled out some weeds. Then he cleaned the pool pump filter. There were no leaves in the filter, but he flicked it out all the same. He took the creepy crawly out of the pool. Took each segment apart to check there was nothing stuck inside. There was nothing stuck inside. Then he had a Castle Lager beer.

He put the rugby on, watched ten minutes, then went back to the computer.

“Marelize,” he typed to his estranged daughter. “As you know your mother is dead, but you don’t actually know how. We tried to keep it quiet but I need to tell you the truth. She drowned herself.”

With the first grueling sentence out, he went back to watch the rugby.

~~

“So ja Marelize,” Piet continued the email. “She drowned herself. I don’t know how to explain it exactly. She became troubled over these last few years. I tried not to bother you with it too much. It was maybe after Trump got elected. I’m not too sure. She seemed very upset by that, amongst other things. I wasn’t too bothered about it. He just seemed like a straight shooter to me. 

“Anyway, she got heavily into the wegraping after that, but in a very blasphemous way. Almost a doomsayer. She became convinced the end of the world was coming. At the same time she also started to obsess with the water hyacinth. It’s a plant.  She said the hyacinth mother was talking to her from Hartbeespoort Dam. Calling to her to become one, and that was the only way humans could survive the coming apocalypse. The dominee was very upset about her new beliefs, especially after she stopped attending church regularly.

“Since you left the dam has become full of hyacinth. They can’t get rid of it. It just comes back. They have many experts from Rhodes University and stuff to explain how it’s difficult to get rid of it. Too many seeds in the dam over the years. Stuff like that. The plant is apparently from the Amazon as I’ve read. It was spread during colonialism, they say, but I’m not really into that stuff of blaming everything on racism and colonialism. It’s lazy. People must take responsibility for themselves and situations.

“So ja. Your mother said she’s turning into hyacinth. That’s when it started getting worse. I will be a man and admit I did ignore some of it when I shouldn’t have. It was difficult to follow. I’m old school, you know? I don’t really understand these kinds of mental things and problems. “You know, like when you started talking about that word, ‘queer’, en al daai moerse acronyms, and identity, and whatnot.  I don’t really understand that stuff. These mental things. I just figured I’d pray for you.”

Piet stopped typing as the exhaustion set in. His arms felt heavy and his shoulders burned with the weight of it. It was late at night, and load shedding was coming. Usually he wouldn’t be awake for the 3AM slot, but after Marykie’s death, he couldn’t really sleep.

~~

Another week passed in a matter of minutes. Time had lost shape. Piet felt fatigued with what he’d written, but he was so burdened by the truth. The truth he hadn’t told his daughter. She was already estranged after all, so why burden her with the madness he had witnessed?

 He went down to the kitchen and poured himself a klippies and coke. Perhaps the Klipdrift brandy would help him sleep, he’d told himself, on many a night. He sat down in the empty and now increasingly hollow living room. It felt like the walls were constantly closing in, and the silence was blaring at him in a non-stop high frequency of white noise. He turned on the rugby. Bulls vs Sharks. Had he watched this match already? Did it matter?

Another week passed this time it seemed like in a matter of seconds. His mates we’re covering for him at the car dealership. Piet had taken time off, but the time just seemed to extend and extend with no end, and he was always tired, and the energy he sought to get back to work seemed to be running away from him, constantly just a couple of steps ahead. He could never catch up.

He needed to get it out. He needed to tell Marelize. He mustered up the will to put some more words together.

~~

“So ja, you know. I’m fine and stuff. Not too bad. Don’t worry. You don’t need to worry about me. I understand I frustrate you. Or what was that word you laaities use? Trigger? Triggers …

 “You don’t need to come back. I’m fine. You said you had your reasons for leaving the country. It’s OK. I can understand wanting to live without constant crime and power cuts. It’s only human.

“But as I was trying to explain. Your mother. It wasn’t so simple how she died. Suicide is a very bad thing. I hope you know that. It’s a sin. The dominee was very disappointed. We decided not to tell anyone outside the family. Not that you’re outside the family, but, ag, you know what I mean. It was embarrassing so we didn’t want others to know. I mean, your mother was a role model at the church. We couldn’t let down the kids like that.

“Anyway, where was I? She would say her skin is turning green and that when she looks in the mirror, her eyes are purple flowers. Her hair is flowers.  She kept saying she has a head flowers.

“It was at church where we first saw her harm herself. I didn’t even know she had a knife on her. The dominee was giving his sermon and out of nowhere she just gets up and walks to the podium. Everyone was very confused. She then began taking her clothes off. All of her clothes I mean. We were all frozen in shock. Some people were screaming. She cut her forearms open, and told everyone to look at her green blood. Then she began frantically preaching about the wegraping, that Donald Trump’s election was the sign of the end of times. Soon a plague would come, and the earth would no longer sustain us, and we had to become one with the hyacinth if we wished to remain alive. She was frantic, waving her hands and spraying blood all over until she toppled over unconscious.

“It happened again a week or so later. Luckily not at the church. That would have been too embarrassing to happen again.  Your mother said she wanted to become fertiliser. I laughed first, then she kept going on about how hyacinth can be reused for fertiliser, so if we all become one with the hyacinth mother, we’ll survive the end of times by being reabsorbed by the earth. It was a pretty mal thing to hear.

  “That’s what the experts were saying. People would come with a bakkie and take the hyacinth in bits. One day your mother ran out and yelled at the workers to take her away from me. She said I was a horrible husband, I’d ruined you with my antics, and I didn’t believe she was a hyacinth. They laughed awkwardly to keep the peace, until she lifted her floral summer dress and cut out a slice of her thigh. This time it was with scissors.

“She held up the slice to show them it was green like a plant. Some of them jumped and began to move away. Eventually I got her under control. This was the second time we went to the doctor after she’d self-harmed. The doctor asked a lot of questions and recommended a psychiatrist. I thought ag, but that’s not how you solve problems. But then another day I found her in the bathroom; she had shaved her head. She said she was pruning the flowers. She put tufts of it in vases around the house. She would force me to stare at the beautiful purple colour for hours. I just saw hair, but I tried my best. Well, worse than that, she started cutting her scalp. She would put pieces in the vases as well.

“Eventually we saw someone, and she said your mother had a severe case of schizophrenia. The suggestion was to institutionalize her until they could stabilize her. Fok dit. No one was going to institutionalize my Marykie. I told them to fokof. At the time I was sure I could manage it.

 “You know I just keep it simple. Go to work and back. Go to church. Watch the rugby. This latest Boks team is doing very well. Very well. Rugby is so important you know? I don’t like it when they say there’s racism in rugby. There’s no racism in rugby. It’s a sport, you know? You don’t get politics in sport. Can you imagine sports presenters storming off a show because they think there’s racism? Very unprofessional. I doubt that kind of stuff happens in the UK. They’re probably more sophisticated there. But that’s South Africa for you. People always pulling the race card. I guess that’s also why you left, maybe. “

The electricity cut just as Piet finished the sentence. Again, distracted and tired he’d forgotten to check the load shedding schedule. He just sat there in the dark, which had become increasingly comfortable to him. He wondered if the email had been saved. He sort of hoped it hadn’t. It was taking him longer to finish than he thought it would. Marelize was just a child, how could he be struggling to write to her? He knew not to call. He knew she didn’t like that. How could he have forgotten to get petrol for the generator?

The other generators buzzed in the darkness. He wondered if Marelize and Marykie had still been speaking. Even before she started wondering off at odd times in the night to stand by the water, he thought he heard Marykie having whispered conversations at night.

~~

The electricity only returned the next afternoon. Eventually he’d dozed off to some rugby he’d saved on his phone. He woke up to make coffee, as according to the schedule he should have had power.  He even got so far as putting water and his favourite ground coffee blend in the machine. Still half asleep, he pressed the power button over and over waiting for the red light that never came. His ears switched on, and he heard the ominous generator hum from the other houses. He rolled his eyes, and pressed a light switch to be sure, as there was always a pitiable hope that maybe the power was on, even when one knew it wasn’t. Afterward he flicked through the angry neighbourhood WhatsApp group messages, learning that Eskom had to fix this or that, and didn’t know when power would return. He swore, went upstairs and splashed his face before getting into the bakkie and driving to Mugg & Bean for breakfast. They had a generator and internet at least. 

 After having coffee and an omelette, Piet left Mugg & Bean and drove over to the Engen garage to get some petrol. Once at home he rigged up the generator, and just as he did, the power came back. He went to the computer and somewhat disappointingly the email had been saved. He had to continue.

Sat at his computer, he felt his bad knee. Still tender after all these years. The injury that had ruined his rugby career in university. It was bullshit. The knee hadn’t slowed him down at all. He had performed in that match the way he’d always performed. It was like his Pa had said. “That kaffir got on the team because of affirmative action.” Piet didn’t like the word kaffir. That was the old ways. But he understood what his Pa meant. The blacks ruling the country were just about hiring their family members. Even in places that shouldn’t be political like sports, they had to bring race in for no reason. That much was true.

The knee reminded him of the night Marykie took him to the dam to see the hyacinth mother. The cold made his knee tingle, and it tingled a lot that night as it was poes cold.

“So, ja. Your mother made me go to the dam with her one night. It was very cold that night. Again, I was confused but I let her convince me to go down to the dam anyway. We walked down in silence with a flashlight showing the way. It was eerily quiet and there were almost no animals out which was quite strange. We reached the water and your mother became very very excited.

“‘Do you see her?’ She kept screaming. ‘Look at her majesty!’

“I could see nothing but dark, and the moon’s reflection in the calm water, but your mother went on.

“‘Look at that beautiful blue colour! It’s so lovely! Oh, she’s calling me to the water.’

“At that point she charged at the water. She went right in. Clothes and alles. I had to run in and drag her out myself. She was hysterical, and only when we got back to the house could I calm her down. That water was so cold my knee was singing in pain.”

The power went out, but the computer stayed on, with the generator buzz kicking in. Piet checked the time. 3AM again. The schedule was true this night. He thought over and over about that night and eventually found he couldn’t help himself. He got up from the computer and found the torch. Immediately after writing it down everything felt off. Or familiar, like Marykie’s presence was in the house.

He left and started his way down to the dam. It was cold, if not colder than that night, and again, eerily quiet with a lack of animal presence. As he drew closer to the water he thought he could hear voices, but when he reached the water there was nobody there. Yet he could still hear a voice, and it turned out it was Marykie’s voice, calling him from the still of the water.

He was hesitant. Almost frightened at this stage. He couldn’t really be hearing Marykie’s voice, could he? It would be impossible.

Piet crept closer to the water, and thought he could see Marykie above it, hovering naked and covered in a dark blue haze. She was wrapped in the flat but finger-like leaves of the hyacinth, and bore a head of bright purple hyacinth flowers, creating a kind of radial mirage pulsing from her head. 

He was so close to the water now, he could feel the cold coming off it, bursting through the layers of clothes he was wearing. The ground seemed to throb below him, and he felt the damp seeping into his boots, through his socks, making his feet numb, but also sore. The long finger-like hyacinth leaves came slithering from the dam and wrapped around his legs, then he was drowning.

While his lung filled with water, and the cold bruised his skin, he could hear Marykie talking.

“Piet, my lief, I’m so glad you’ve joined us. Now you understand that she’s real. We can become one, but, oh wait, you need to finish writing to Marelize. She needs to know about the hyacinth mother too. She needs to save herself from the dying world. We’ll be together soon.”

Piet was released from his drowning. He woke up in his bed, freezing, soaked in water, and hacking out the excess liquid that had built up in his lungs. As he heaved the water out, he noticed the whole room was wet, and there was hyacinth everywhere. Beautiful blue and purple flowers adorned his floor and stuck to the walls and cupboards. He collapsed back into bed exhausted,  unable to muster the strength to struggle to the bathroom and get out of the wet clothes that were making his skin sting. Finally he managed, and dried himself down with a towel. The worst of the cold took some minutes to get out of him. Then he tiptoed across the frosted cold floor of damp and hyacinth to the closet and yanked out something warm to put on. The room was too cold. He couldn’t deal with it then, he left and went to Marelize’s old bedroom, still filled with all her stuff, and collapsed onto the bed, covering himself with blankets and stuffed animals until he reached a bearable temperature.

As he lay there, the generator buzz kicked in, and he realised had no idea what time it was, or how much time had passed. His cell phone wouldn’t switch on, fried out from his drowning, if he had indeed drowned, if anything from the previous night had actually happened. He went downstairs to the television to get his bearings. It was the next day. Next morning in fact. He was in the 9AM to 11:30AM load shedding slot. He put on the rugby, but after a couple minutes the generator cut, and the TV went black, so he went and got a Castle, and came back to stare at the black screen. At 11:30AM, the power didn’t come back on, and he grumbled, before falling asleep on the couch.

When he woke up at around 4PM, the power was still out, and he knew he’d have to go get more petrol.

~~

The power was out for all of three days. Piet was lost as ever as to his next move. He could not explain the events and did not want to think about it either, and you can’t linger on things like that as that’ll be the end of you, and you’ll be thinking and saying strange things like Marykie had been. All kinds of corridors would spawn in the maze of your mind with their own assorted entrances and exits helping things that shouldn’t to come out. You had to be practical before the things in your mind started to unhinge, and the darkness engulfed you and you’d be ranting about creatures at the dam and the wegraping, and the church would ostracize you, with your peers thinking you’re mal.

That was that. It was a dream. That was the end of it. He simply needed to finish his email to Marelize. Everything would be sorted and life would move on. Back to normal, just like that, as easy as changing a lightbulb.  It was 3:20AM and the generator buzz went dead, so the lights and rugby cut out, and once again, once again, Piet was left in darkness and silence. Three days with no power while trying to put the pieces of your life back together meant Piet had forgotten to get more petrol. The dark seemed less menacing this time though, as at least he had reached a point of resoluteness. 

~~

“So ja Marelize, I guess that’s that. I can’t be sure exactly, but one night your mother went back to the dam without me. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I struggle to sleep at night now. Maybe if I had been awake she couldn’t have snuck off like that. That fokken psychiatrist warned me she might need constant watching, so ja, maybe I made a mistake there, but you can’t always listen to these people who make up all this kak about mental illness and new genders, and all this weird kak. I mean imagine what Afrikaners of the old school would think of such softness after all we achieved in this country. Jissus, it’s a bloody shame.

“Not to end on a sour note. So ja, now you know. Of course, please don’t send this email to other people as I’ve already said it’s a bit of a difficult situation and we want people to remember your mother as she was, you know? Not as a suicidal with some fake mental illness but just a strong and loving Afrikaner wife and mother. A person one with the church and willing to serve God. You don’t need to reply or anything that’s fine, I just thought you of all people should know the truth. It was too much for me to hold inside.

“I wish you all God’s blessings and a fruitful life my lief! Always remember this is all God’s plan and he presents hardships that we can always overcome. I will overcome, and I’m sure you will as well. Enjoy the UK! It’s much better than here, and even if we don’t talk, I take great comfort knowing you’re in a country that actually has a future.

You’re loving father,

Piet.”

Piet sat around for a while mustering up his courage. He felt his resoluteness return and clicked send on the email. An email that had taken him a lifetime to write. An email he felt had drained something of his life essence. Everything felt final now, even as the power went out and his generator kicked in with that familiar buzz. For the first time in a while Piet felt a sense of ease and comfort.

Piet put on some relaxing treffers, and just sat for a moment. A calm breeze passed through and he remembered cleaning the hyacinth from his bedroom, and how cold it had been in there for days, and how the purples and blues still stained some of the wall and ceiling. Marykie’s scent had lingered in the room and sometimes he saw that radial mirage of her hair pulsing on the ceiling before he fell asleep at night. Nothing to be concerned about. Just his mind playing tricks on him.

Just then, he got a new email notification. First he balked at the notion that Marelize had already responded, before gathering his senses, and taking a proper look at the sender and subject. It was from the estate management, and was marked, “Tragedy in the Estate”. Concerned, he opened it as if he’d been waiting for it and read.

“Dear residents of the estate. We regret to inform you of the tragic events of last night, where the family of number 57 all drowned in the dam. Currently we are scarce on details, but somehow it appears they all willingly walked into the dam from one of the boat entrances and drowned. Their daughter was one of the top young Olympic swimmers to come from South Africa, making the even more both strange and unfortunate. Updates will follow as we find out more.”

Piet’s knee began to tingle, and he felt cold. It was nothing to worry about as winter was still in full swing despite that abnormal rain which had occurred. It generally only rained in summer in Hartbeespoort. It was fine. Piet’s knee stopped hurting, and over the music he had been playing he could hear Marykie’s beautiful choir voice singing to him from the dam. He paused the music and listened.   

Mandisi is a South African writer, drummer, composer, and producer. He currently resides in Hartebeespoort, South Africa.
His fiction has been published in the likes of Afrosf: Science Fiction by African Writers, AfroSF V3 and Omenana. His poetry has been published in #The Coinage Book One, and his academic work has been published in The Thinker. He is also a member of the African Speculative Fiction Society.
For updates and information on Mandisi’s writing and musical endeavours, follow him on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. He also runs a blog under his alias, The Dark Cow.

Amadi on the Concrete – Jarred. J. Thompson

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Amadi On Concrete Art

Bioxy scanned the barcode on their wrist. The machine rumbled and played a melody reminiscent of a nursery rhyme. When the melody ended, food slid out in a circular container and Bioxy took it down to the wave breakers and sat down next to Amadi.

“So, this is it?”

“In fifteen minutes we’ll roll up over there and get out,” said Amadi.

Bioxy looked over to the parking lot littered with bits of glass and weeds shouldering through asphalt. “Barefoot?” they asked.

“Don’t know how we dodged all that glass.” Amadi’s attention was not on the parking lot, but on the undulating water ahead of them.

“Here we go,” Bioxy pointed, drawing Amadi’s attention to a car gliding into the parking spot and turning its white lines red.

Welcome Onai Family. A voice, emanating from the ground, said.

 Two half-dressed boys got out of the vehicle and raced across the lot. As they ran their shorts and socks unclipped themselves and zipped back into the car.

“Be careful you two!” A mother’s voice, struggling to inhabit an octave of authority, said.

 If there was anything Amadi admired most it was the way his mother scolded them with tenderness, sometimes speaking so delicately that Kamari and he would have to lean in, from their twin beds, to hear the shapes their reprimands were taking. Amadi watched the boys in underwear climb onto the wave breakers and help each other down to the sand. They rushed towards the foamy edges of the water, each moving so fast that their footprints barely indented the sand.

“Kamari was always faster. That aerodynamic egghead,” said Amadi.  

Bioxy giggled and opened the box of food. “Want some?” 

“Please.” His focus was drawn beyond the boys, now frolicking in the water. A few kilometres out, nanobots incinerated islands of plastic, the process appearing like fireworks above the sea. Beyond the incandescent light, the sea remained an obstinate grey; it didn’t matter that the sky was deep navy.

“Amadi.”

“Huh?”

Bioxy pointed to the morsel of hamburger floating beside him. He opened his mouth and the nibble went in. “Now you chew,” they said, sarcastically.

Amadi smiled. He was being rude; he had invited Bioxy on this mem-date and now he was too caught up in it. Was this why people said mem-dates were such volatile things, especially with someone he’d only screen-seen for six months.

“Why this mem in particular?” asked Bioxy, allowing two chips to station inside their mouth: a chip for each cheek.

In the water the boys glistened, underpants transparent, their laughter building a wall between the Amadi on the concrete and the Amadi in the sea, dunking his brother below the surface. The Amadi on the concrete was about to reply when his arms began to glitch.

“Something’s wrong,” said Bioxy.

“Must be a loose wire. Wait here.” Amadi pixelated and dissolved, leaving Bioxy with an army of chips suspended in the air, waiting to enter them.

*

All the wires were intact. The problem was more serious than that. His hippotankus had sprung a leak and mem-fluid was flooding one of the chambers.

            We’ll have to reschedule. Tank’s busted, typed Amadi.

            Damn. I was enjoying you.

From his view of the hippotankus monitor, Amadi watched Bioxy climb over the wave breakers and walk towards the car in the parking lot, bits of food still following them. What were they doing? Didn’t they know it was rude to wander in a mem without the mem-bearers permission?

            Where are you going? typed Amadi.  

            Just want to see something.

            I’m gonna turn off. 

            Just wait. 

Amadi had his finger on Eject All Participants. Bioxy was meters away from the pair of feet hanging outside the driver’s window. He knew his mother would soon get up from reading her book and call her sons in from the sea, but what would happen if she saw Bioxy: a chimera with barcodes etched across their body, a human-machine fusion, in a time when chimeras didn’t exist yet? Bioxy was inserting themselves into a timeline they didn’t belong in. This was not like other mems he allowed users to play in. This was his.

It was the sound of his mother calling her boys from the water that prompted Amadi to push Eject before Bioxy got too close to the window.

*

Sorry if I came off too forward. You know, curiosity and all that. 

A few hours later, a message from Bioxy scrolled across the kitchen counter. Amadi was too preoccupied with his hippotankus to care about replying. Maybe he wasn’t ready to make new mems yet. New mems seemed to require letting people in, and that always ended in deletions, variations, augmentations—so many that, over time, he’d forget the real reason he fell in love, or yelled, or cried, or lied to someone.

By now his hippotankus had rehearsed every combination of comedy and tragedy from his life story; so much so that very few alternate timelines disturbed or excited him now. Viewing all alternate life stories that could have been made him feel like a grand overseer, even if it was over something as inconsequential as his life.

He knew that most people would disagree with the view that his life was inconsequential because, after all, he was a verified mem-bearer, going viral with his first upload. Sure, mem-bearing was what everyone with a hippotankus did these days; its popularity making the prediction of viral sensations all the more obscure. Everyone’s life was already overexposed; people allowed each other to play inside their memories for a fee—in as nonchalant a fashion as ordering the kettle to make tea. Yet, despite his unexpected fame, Amadi didn’t like to grant interviews. Probing questions annoyed him, especially the ones that led directly to, and through, Kamari.

It was 11 pm. Third rush hour. If he left now, he would be back by 2 and still in time to reboot his hippotankus for the early morning re-mem-bearers to log in and select their favourite Amadi mems to explore. He needed all the online time he could get now that his mems weren’t receiving the traction they used to. That’s the thing when mem-bearing is your living, earned. Content. Content. Content: turn your life inside out, twenty-four-seven. It was what paid for a penthouse in the CBD of Egoli; a price he would pay again.

In fact, when re-mem-bearers played in his lifestory there were few mem-variations where he didn’t sign his name on the dotted line for this exact life. For Amadi, that indicated a level of consistency across possible worlds, the kind he only ever found in himself. After all, wasn’t that what hippotankologists had touted about mem-bearing—that by viewing all variations of one’s lifestory you would be reconciled to the notion that every variation lead inexorably to one, final, life conclusion.

Amadi thought about Bioxy and concluded that screen-seeing wasn’t what it used to be. Screen-See put people through every algorithm imaginable, running its applicants’ neural chemistry through countless simulations and still, people came up bust: unable to form true connections. Maybe monogamy really was extinct; maybe life-long companionship wasn’t needed anymore. A furtive, sentimental part of him wanted to believe the contrary, but the evidence was overwhelming. What had made him pick Bioxy in the first place? Was it because they were so open about their transition to sexlessness? He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was more attracted to them because of it. That, and the possibility of barcode rubbing (which was still taboo in many countries). Barcode rubbing with Bioxy would make for great content, he thought.

Amadi typed what he wanted to wear into the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the city’s skyline. The clothes he had on undressed themselves and rolled off towards the laundry room. He waited for a new pair of pants to snake from his bedroom and up his legs. Soon after, a fresh shirt flapped out the bedroom and clipped onto his torso. Living at this height was the best way to live, the only way, he thought. Those who lived on floors above forty got treated to ClearView: windows able to pierce the dense amalgam glare of city lights and pollution, recreating what the night sky looked like for the earliest of humans—when there was nothing but a fire to stave off an encroaching, suffocating freeze.

When people die their hearts become stars—his mother had said once at dinner, right after their father, Tiamo, had passed. She was fond of relating as much as she knew about the San, her people. She always phrased it like that, her people, as if Kamari and Amadi would never get a chance tobe part of a community that only had a handful of people left who intimately understood their ways. The San were probably right, he thought. If life came here billions of years ago from microorganisms frozen in meteors, slamming into a molten soup of Earth, then why couldn’t the stars be cemeteries for civilizations that existed long gone?

Amadi checked the time on the window. He had to leave now. He instructed his hippotankus to pack itself into its bag and went to stand on the furthest tip of his balcony. The railing retracted and a viscous substance began to cover him, starting at his ankles and crowning his head. Once covered, he stepped off the balcony of the sixtieth floor and descended, at comet speed, towards the pavement. He preferred exiting the skyscraper this way. It meant bumping into less people on the trip down.

*

I hope you’re not upset.

A message from Bioxy appeared in the window of the jewellery shop.

 Don’t they get it, thought Amadi, swiping the text off the window. His eyes caught the sparkle of a bin filled with blue-moon diamonds: each stone its own speckled catacomb of azure and silver-pink. His mother used to speak about a time when diamonds were status symbols, when they were extracted from the Earth in the most primitive way. He scoffed to think that the only reason they were mass-produced now was for costume parties.

 On the corner, he voice-activated his blur, making sure his hippotankus was floating behind him, and stepped onto the rail-pave that led downtown towards Baartman Square. He began to glide past blurs just like him: opaque bubbles of reality containing individuals who didn’t want to be bothered by strangers. He appreciated people who had the sense to turn their blurs on in public. It was just proper etiquette.

 Why had he chosen the rail-pave in the first place? He could have just ordered in a repair guy or paid an errand girl to take the hippotankus for repairs. He hated admitting it, but mother was right: he was an outside kid, always had been. He just wished the outside didn’t come with so many goddamn people. As soon as he thought it, he imagined what his mother would say: we’re nothing without others, my boy. The best mems are co-created. He wasn’t sure he wanted new mems as much as he needed them to maintain his lifestyle. A lifestyle that came with the downside of probers, like Bioxy, who were too intrusive for his liking.

*

Welcome to the Temple of Techuality

Today’s Ntshanga Memorial Key-Note Speaker

is the Enigmatic Professor, Nia Onai.

The Temple of Techuality stood across from the Hippotankus Repair Centre. Amadi was making good time before he saw the neon sign. She’s giving a lecture, at the temple of all places, and she didn’t tell me, he thought. He walked into the temple and turned off his blur. It didn’t take long for strangers to come up and ask him for screen grabs. He tried to be polite.

“Oh my god…are you…oh my god,” said a twenty-something bald man who was directing people into the Holy Sepulcher. 

“Yes. Yes I am,” he said, “I’d like to see my mother. Professor Onai.”

“Of course, Mr. Onai, right this way.”

The bald man escorted Amadi into the Holy Sepulcher, through the murmuring mix of blurs and people, up onto the stone stage and through a side door. There, in an ornate wooden rocking chair, sat his mother—hair streaked in rhino-grey and amber, face sagging more than the last time they’d seen one another. Her posture seemed untarnished with age; her feet were square and rooted, with shoulders back and core engaged.

“My boy, you remembered!” Nia got up and hugged Amadi, cueing the bald man to leave the room. Her hug smothered the flame blistering in his chest: it’s not on her, this time.

“Yeah, you know I couldn’t miss it.”

“And here I thought you were so stuck in your mems-bearing that you’d never get out that penthouse,” laughed Nia.

“Is Kamari here?”

“No…they said they’d watch online. So, that’s something.”

“Probably thought I was gonna be here.”

Nia backed away and sat down. “I told you already, I won’t get involved. I’ve tried with you two and that didn’t work.”

“I know. Listen, let me go give this hippotankus in across the road and I’ll be back before you start.”

“Oh.” Nia eyed the machine floating behind Amadi. “We must have a sit down some time to talk about…”

“My future,” He fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“Your present.” Nia had assumed the voice from his childhood, composed yet penetrating.

 “Can we do all of that later? I don’t want to be late for your lecture.”

She leant back in her chair, sighing. “Sure. Fix your machine.” Amadi kissed his mother on the cheek, turned on his blur and walked out the way he came.

*

Sitting in line at therepair centre, he watched the news on the monitor suspended in the middle of the room.

Vigilante group, Wens Gratis, has struck again. This time attacking protest blocks in Ennerdale, Orange Farm, and Lenasia. Tonight, they’ve released a video calling for government to reinstate free protests.

Amadi didn’t understand why Wens Gratis fought against something that was clearly beneficial. Protest blocks—areas of unused land designated for protesting—had saved the country millions in damaged infrastructure. And now Wens Gratis wanted to take that away to have people protest anywhere, anyhow. When he was younger, Nia often relayed stories of how people used to block roads, topple monuments, and pour faeces over the faces of old statues. There was something unnerving about those stories, even then. For Amadi, the protest blocks were economical: book your time slot, protest over whatever grievance, exorcise anger through chants, dancing, burning, and then be done with it. It made cathartic sense.

“Amadi Onai,” called the voice in the unblurred cubicle.

 He walked in and sat across from a clerk who had a speaker fitted to his throat with wires running out into a machine that hummed beneath the desk. The scanners in Amadi’s armchair read his fingerprints as the clerk began to speak.

“Molo ndingakunceda ngantoni? Hallo, hoe kan ek u help? Mhoro ndingakunatsira sei? Sawubona ngingakusiza kanjani? Hello, how can I help you…” The clerk cycled through several more languages before the system picked up Amadi’s preferred tongue.

“A chamber in my hippotankus has flooded,” said Amadi.

“Please place the machine in the glass container.” 

He did as he was told. The container scanned the hippotankus as the clerk angled his head at the schematics on his monitor. “Your childhood mems are flooded. Overused. Too many users allowed to play in them without proper maintenance undertaken. You should have brought your hippotankus in a lot sooner, sir.”

“I know, it’s just—I’m a verified mem-bearer, you might have heard of me.” He waited for the glint of recognition in the clerk’s eyes. Nothing came. “Okay, well, anyway, I earn a living from mem-bearing and, yeah, just haven’t had the time. Can it be fixed tonight? I’ve gotta be online soon. I’ve got loyal re-mem-bearers who are going to log in to play in my mems soon.”

The clerk didn’t answer. He began to doubt whether the clerk had heard him. “We’d have to do a complete reload of your mems. It would mean losing all the mem-variations produced by your re-mem-bearers.”

“You mean there’s no way to save the variations?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Amadi took a moment to consider what he was losing. All those pivotal moments and choices he’d relived in countless ways. Like making sure Tiamo had gone to see his doctor sooner; like taking the time to learn more about the San when he was younger; like choosing not to use Kamari’s transition for his own gain. All those worlds were going to be deleted. He was going to be left with a single narrative, the narrative the hippotankus still verified as the ‘real’ thread. He wondered if he would ever have what it takes to look back into his past, without the safety of an eject button? 

“Mr. Amadi,” said the clerk.

“Huh?”

“Would you like us to proceed?”

“Uh, yeah. Save the originals. At all costs.”

“Very well.” The clerk tapped the monitor a few times and the hippotankus levitated off the desk and out of view. “It should take four hours.”

Amadi left the unblurred cubicle and headed for the door.

*

…The San believe that in the First Creation people were indistinguishable from animals. It was only after the Second Creation that homo sapiens assumed a sense of culture and separation. Homo sapiens, once separated, then gave birth to a Third Creation, one constituted at the very moment we carved tools from stone. We have bound this Third Creation to our survival as a species. Lichen to rock. And out of this we’ve fashioned beeping and beaming animals that reflect our expansiveness back to us. These are creatures we hook ourselves up to, creatures we feed, creatures we send into outer space, into the smallest quanta of perceivable reality, into the organelles of our cells, into the depths of the oceans. Our creations have cleaned up our mistakes and given us a fighting chance on this rock that we’ve poisoned with avarice. Yes, we have used them and to some extent they have used us. And now, it seems to me, we are in the midst of a Fourth Creation…

Amadi sat in the pews of the Holy Sepulcher and listened to Nia, walking from one side of the stage to the other. One by one, the people who had their blurs on switched them off: old, young, white, black, brown.

…When anthropologists first discovered my people’s cave paintings, they overlooked anything they did not understand, thinking that whoever painted the unusual figures was too intoxicated or unskilled in the craft. What they did not realize was that drawing elands, hares, snakes, scorpions, and springbuck on rock was more than just paying homage. It was the first medium used to open portals to other worlds. Worlds of the mind. Worlds of the heart. Thresholds crossing back to the first creation, where we leapt from branches and howled our names through teeming rainforests…

Amadi turned his blur off and realized that, by now, no one cared how famous he was. It felt strange to sit amongst people who weren’t hounding him for something; strange to feel the heat of those beside him, even stranger to hear their breathing or smell what fragrance they had on. He took another look around and, there, near the front, was Bioxy, nodding to the words of his mother. Had they followed him here?

 …Our portals are a lot different now. Yes, today our portals reach into our minds and pry open what growing old has us forget. We are forced by our own creations to recollect every tiny detail, to upload more of ourselves, gigabyte by gigabyte. Nothing can be forgotten. Everything must be archived. But I want to ask: what does forgetting allow, what space does it give, and can we choose to forget more freely, turning the future into a passage that unbinds us from our pasts. It is daunting, my friends, to have faith that nothing is ever, truly, lost. To know that what’s inside us is boundless, even if it cannot be stored in one place forever…

Nia stopped for a moment, took a sip of water, and looked in the direction of where Amadi was seated.

…I’ve written about this in my book, and I’ll mention it here. When my ancestors danced around the fire for healing, a great potency boiled in their stomachs and contracted their muscles in violent spasms. They induced spontaneous nosebleeds, activating an internal technology—one that took them to the limits of human perception, to the fringes of illness and death. After coming back from their journey inward and upward, they slept on the earth as peacefully as those who live above the fortieth floor of our skyscrapers…

She had hit a soft spot and the crowd was eating it up. Even though no one was looking at him, Amadi felt as if his mother had accused him of something. Of what, he wasn’t sure. He got up in a hurry and shuffled out the Holy Sepulcher, trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

 Standing outside the temple, he thought of Kamari. Were they watching mom’s lecture? What did they think about her theory of ‘internal technology,’ and all that crap? Whatever Nia wanted to talk to him about would have to wait; he wasn’t in the mood for a debate. 

“Amadi. That you?”

He turned around and saw Bioxy standing at the entrance. “Oh, hey.” 

“Nice to see you here.”

“Yeah, well, Professor Onai is my—”

“I know.”

“You’re not—” Amadi stopped. He wanted to make sure that Bioxy wasn’t some crazed re-mem-bearer that had managed to slip into his personal life, but didn’t know how to pose the question without coming off like a douche. Why did he care? This was only the first time they’d met in the flesh.

“Is your hippotankus fixed?” asked Bioxy.

“Almost. Shouldn’t be long now.”

“If you don’t wanna go back inside…I don’t live far from here. I mean, we could go chill at my place and wait till it’s done, if you want.”

The suggestion took him by surprise. “Uhm, I just don’t think—”

“—if it’s about me wandering in your mem, I am really sorry. I’m a big fan of your mother’s work and I guess I wanted. I guess I wanted…more. Something not a usual fan would get.”

            Admittedly, he understood Bioxy’s infatuation. If anything had been passed down between Nia and him it was the ability to hold people’s attention. “Okay fine,” said Amadi, “It’s better than going back in there.”

*

Bioxy lived in a face-brick apartment on the twentieth floor of Desmond Tutu Towers. Walking in, Amadi noticed the Isifiso painting hanging on the wall above a table of pot plants. Devil’s Ivy. Spider Lily. Aloe.

“Want a drink?” asked Bioxy, taking off their coat.

Amadi nodded, sitting on the wooden swing next to a couch occupied by books. It was the kind of swing one found in a garden, not indoors. In fact, thought Amadi, the apartment looked like a greenhouse—ferns draped off tables, vines swooping low from the ceiling.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen an Isifiso painting,” he said.

Bioxy handed him a glass of clear liquid. “It’s probably the most expensive thing I own.” The pair sat in silence, sipping, contemplating the eddying abstraction on the canvas. “Would you like to stand in front of it?”

The question made him nervous. What if the painting read him? What if Bioxy took offence and kicked him out? “Can two people stand in front of it at the same time?” he asked.

“Depends. If they want the same things, then, yeah.”

“And if they don’t?”

“The paint won’t settle long enough for the viewer to make out what it is.”

Amadi gulped the clear liquid down, feeling a buzz behind his eyes. “Okay.” He walked over to the table with the pot plants.

“It’ll take a few minutes,” said Bioxy, refilling their glass by the kitchen island.

The painting’s brushstrokes collided in a rhythmic dance, colours mixing and separating, oblique lines penetrating horizontal flourishes, dramatic gestural marks swiping left and smudging right. Paint flowed in from its borders and twisted itself into the shape of two craned necks. The painting considered Amadi standing before it, scanning him from the inside out, comparing the concrete Amadi with traces of him found online, stored in servers around the world. Then, it settled on an image. Bioxy came up behind him as the image came into focus.

 “It’s not what you think,” said Amadi, turning away, embarrassed.

 Bioxy gently touched his cheek, prompting him to look again.

In the painting, Amadi was rubbing his mouth against the barcodes etched along Bioxy’s groin—inducing flows of electrochemical stimulation that entered him repeatedly. Their faces were awash in a glow that only an ocean, broken by sunlight, could mimic. Was this it, he wondered. The Fourth Creation? Was this what Nia prophesied at her lecture? A sexless imbibing of the other. The final phase where humanity fused with its reflections. 

The canvas deteriorated into swirls of paint as soon as he stepped away from it. “I should go,” he said.

“You don’t have to.”

*

Amadi turned off the ClearView of his penthouse windows. He was tired of seeing the night sky as it had been millennia ago. “Play Four Women, Nina Simone,” he said. Speakers, built into the walls, turned on.

My back is strong. Strong enough to take the pain, inflicted again and again.

Nina’s voice lilted through the lounge, circling the hippotankus on the table. He got up to pour another drink, recounting what had happened in Bioxy’s apartment. As he poured, a message from Nia flashed on the monitor:

It was nice to see you, son. Call me sometime.

            He couldn’t answer in his current state. He sat down in front of the hippotankus, caressing it, thinking how much of himself lived in its chambers, its wires, bolts.

Between two worlds…I do belong…

Nina’s voice was doing something. He got up and began to sway, thinking about the inexhaustible void between Bioxy’s legs. He wanted to mem-bear about it, wanted to share what he’d done. This new mem could earn enough to pay rent for at least a year. So what if barcode-rubbing was taboo. People can’t help but transgress. He knew that as long as there was money to be made, and differences to be defended, there would be markets for the strange, the illicit, the breaking of codes. Why else had re-mem-bearing become such a world-wide phenomenon other than the fact that people craved being inside different skins. For it was only in a different skin, virtually separated from oneself, that anyone could live recklessly abandoned.

 …whose little girl am I? Anyone who has money to buy.

Nina’s voice cracked and writhed as the base guitar mended the silences. Amadi pulled up the message thread between Kamari and him on the glass countertop of the lounge table. The last time they spoke he had apologized, again, for mem-bearing about Kamari’s transition to chimera’hood. He tried to make Kamari understand that he was young, that he had no idea how famous he’d get because of it. That was a year and a half ago and still, Kamari hadn’t replied.

I’ll kill the first mother I see…my life has been rough!

Amadi hooked himself to his hippotankus and dissipated into the machine.

*

The beach sand warmed Amadi’s toes. The boys in the sea splashed water in each other’s faces, laughing. It was the most fun they had had since Tiamo’s passing. When Tiamo had passed, Nia had woken them up in the middle of the night and driven them out of the city, down to see the ocean at sunrise for the first time. Amadi didn’t remember much about his father; most of his mems featured Tiamo disappearing behind metal doors to work on his latest invention—a machine that would become a worldwide phenomenon, more addictive than any social tech that had come before it. A tech that would later sustain Amadi’s lavish lifestyle.

He walked into the sea till it reached his thighs. The boys didn’t recognize him; he was just another adult, wading. It wasn’t long before Nia called her sons out of the water. He wanted to say something to the Amadi frolicking in his wet underpants, snot dripping from his left nostril. Something that could alter the course of a life.

Nothing came. Nothing, save the waves breaking upon Amadi’s back, as his family got into the car and glided out of the parking lot, turning the red lines white.

Jarred Thompson is a queer literary and cultural studies researcher and educator, working as a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pretoria. He was longlisted for the Sol Plaatje Poetry Award (2017), shortlisted for the Gerald Kraak Award and Anthology (2019) and won the Afritondo short story prize in 2020. His debut novel, The Institute for Creative Dying, is forthcoming through Afritondo UK and Pan Macmillan SA.

The UmHlosinga Tree (The Fever Tree) – Nick Wood

By
Admin
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0

The Outside: The Wild Empty

No one else should be out here; at the tip of an ancient endless march through mostly barren land northwards, a space that used to be called Afrika.

            So what are they doing here?

I revved the Blade of Atropos, held it steady in both my hands and watched as the laser saw fired off sparks of intimidating flame, high into the murky clouded dawn sky.

Power.

Raw power.

            The small group of five in front of me did not move, though – shadowy shapes of humanity – standing by what must be the last tree left, in this barren land.

It was a tall lime-green wood tree, topped with its parched, almost empty frond of leaves, thorny branches spread in surrender.

The tree had long skulked in a deep dip in a valley not that far from my Home – Camissa Dome. Hidden, almost, in full sight.

But not from me.

Not from us, Atropos.

This might finally be enough to finance my retirement. Thandi and I may even be able to move up a floor, to join the Exciting Elite, after this. Moving away, at last, from Level Two, the Mediocre Middle.

Thandi, a Level One Survivor and my DS, will love that, I’m sure.

The air was sour here, tasting like a vile mixture of bitter lemons and ash.

Gotta move quickly, in this poisonous clime.

The humans by the tree had still not moved, though, despite our obvious threat.

Time to step it up.

I held Atropos at a decreased angle and fired a short burst of flame above the treetop. 

With this tree, I might earn enough to never have to go outside again.

Getting old, as they say. Harder and harder to lift this damn machine, as my hair greys and vague, shifting body aches sprout across my frame. 

            “They’re still not budging, Frank,” Atropos’ AI voice was as thin and fine as the lunar glassware the Elite flouted, in viral roof ads, designed to inspire us upwards.

I hitched my hot and sticky mask tighter against calloused mouth and nose, and sighed, as I levelled the laser-blade in front of me.  

No more games.

The killing, now that I don’t enjoy.

Two dead, over thirty years of work, may not sound as lot, but it’s still two too much.

Still, you gotta do what you gotta do. This tree is mine.

A pair of white-necked ravens, large black birds with white napes, circled on the early morning thermals above the tree, as if waiting for the pickings to come.

I shivered, despite the heat.

Damn birds remind me of ghosts.

Just us and them, in this dull, dead valley, where the last of these Shadow-folk stand, eking out what little they can from the dust that puffed at my feet, as I stamped, with fresh impatience.

“Scan for weapons,” I muttered to Atropos.

The early sun was scorching the back of my neck, above the collar-line of my onesie overall. Sticky, itchy drip, down my bent and aching back. Time to move home, when the sun starts sucking my sap. Hurry up.

“Three women tied around the tree. Two men nearby have empty hands; the older man, he carries seeds in his pockets.”

“Seeds? How they gonna fight with that?”

Atropos said nothing more, so I hitched the haft of her grind-saw onto my sore hip and revved the engine with finality. If I cut and loaded tree wood into my G-backpack fast, I could get back to the Dome, much before the sun could flay my face any further.

The two men stood silent, dark, and thin, mere wisps of lingering humans in ragged cloth, but they stepped aside, grudgingly, for me and my giant roaring blade.

Fucking women look a different proposition.

They had made sure they couldn’t move.

I did not want to look at them too closely, in case I needed to slice through them, too.

What have they tied themselves to the tree with? Kidding me? Frayed fucking string?

I laughed, as I approached the two younger women, then, with a sharp wrench of my gloved finger, I snapped the string.

The women stood motionless, so I revved my blade again, gesturing them aside.

The old woman moved, slowly, to stand in front of me, only inches from my blade.

I could not avoid looking at her.

She made damn sure of that.

Tall, almost my height, with her dark face shrivelled hideously by the climate and lack of RS, that good old Elite resource in the ‘Dome, Restorative Surgery.

Nothing restored here.

She was old.

A lot older than me.

Very old.

Echoing signs of cancers on her cheeks, near her ears, grey tumours twisting like mushrooms from the crevasses in her dark skin.

She smiled.

Shit, no teeth either. How does she eat? Barely at all, by the look of her, too.

“What do you want? Why hurt the Fever Tree, when it has done you no harm?” Her voice was rough as rare bark, accented slightly, as if English was not her native tongue. 

…like Thandi?

“I found it, the tree’s mine. I’m gonna cut and haul this shit, back to the ‘Dome.” Why am I even bothering to explain this?

“But we found her first,” she said, no longer smiling, “She is under our protection.”

She?

The smaller, and seemingly older of the two men moved to stand beside the woman, offering me something in his pale, cupped right palm.

Reluctantly, I looked.

Three long dry brown pods. With his left thumb nail, the old man cracked one pod open. Several dark…seeds, rolled out and he cupped his fingers, to stop them falling.

“They, this tree, they are with us, and share with us,” said the woman, nodding her head. “We can make new trees with these seeds, as they like company, and they have mosquito medicine in their bark.”

What are they saying? Plants like company? Trees are just trees, for fuck’s sake.

Enough crazy shit. To hell with sharing.

“Stun wave,” I said, swinging the blade to cover the group.

I heard nothing, but the humans in front of me staggered briefly, before crumpling to the floor. Sub-sonic neural shocks; set to stun, a line from my favourite archived show.

Good. If I move fast, no one needs to die.

I levelled my blade against the thorny yellow-green base of the tree, where it was thickest. I intended to maximise this harvest.

“My blade, Atropos, she can cut through anything,” I laughed.

As I said, raw fucking power.

With a guttural scream, the blade bit deep into the dusty yellow bark, grinding inwards.

I was squat-leg braced for the impact, as usual, but my goggles clouded with dust and…blood?

The tree — screamed.

I thumbed the controls on the haft of the blade, switching the blade into a sudden, silent stop.

I wiped my goggles clear, with a shaking left glove.

Atropos was lodged deep into the base of the tree, bark strips flayed off, and some…orangey sap, seeped slowly into ground dust.

No, not blood.

Then, deep inside my body, sobs surged, threatening to rattle me apart.  

            I dropped the haft, which had been a familiar home to my hands, for so long.

            Atropos kicked up dust at my feet, while I sobbed and sobbed.

“What the fuck, Frank?” The Blade was pissed with me, and no wonder.

Stop this sobbing shit. What’s wrong with me – I am the… fucking… Cutter.

The tree was bare, leaves scattered around the broken base where Atropos had lodged.

Even though my G-pack was light, sticky moisture continued trickling down my back, rivulets echoing the trickle on my puffy cheeks.

Stop this crying shit. Sun’s getting mean. Time is a ticking.

People around me moved, groaning, and the tall young man lurched, somewhat brokenly, to his feet.

I knelt to pick up Atropos’ round haft with my right hand and wiped my wet cheeks, with a grimy left glove.

I sniffed.

The ashy lemon smell was laced with a softer, sweeter smell.   

            The younger man had dropped golden puffballs, flaked, and fragmenting into the dust, in front of my face. “Old flowers,” he said, “good to purify the air. Our tree, she gives much more, while she lives. Let her live. Please.”

            Wasted too much of my own damn water here.

Let me go back to the clean air of the ‘Dome. To sit — in sterilised sunlight, on the Mid-level Two lounge, knocking back a pint of worm-bitter with an acquaintance or two – Cheryl, Andrew, maybe even Jack? Thandi never liked the drink, reminder her too much of her time on the Bottom, until she’d finally won the Lotto, at 45 years of age. The Big Exit Ticket for those poor bastards at the bottom – the annual ‘One up a Year’ DSLL – Designated Spouse, Social Mobility Lotto. 

 “Bingo,” she’d told me, when we first met, paired by digital chance, “Didn’t you win the fucking jackpot?”

I looked at the earnest young man, already sprouting some facial cancers of his own.

            To hell with the Elites, with their faux fame, and their rich, but empty life-styles. So the top one percent even get to retire to the Moon. How different is that, anyway, to the desolation I see all around me here?

            Way I see it, we’re all prisoners inside the Domes, anyhow, not just the Level One Bottom Bastards. These shadow guys, though, they move and drift freely, like the wind.

            I nodded and he smiled briefly, before joining his group, as they collected gum and strips of bark and leaves left lying from my blade. They were frantically shoving the tree debris into cloth sacks slung over their shoulders, as if afraid I would challenge them again.

            I’m tired of being visited by burnt bodies, stealing my sleep.  

            No more violence.

            Thandi, I’m sure, would agree.

            The tree itself had stopped…bleeding?

            “Reverse blade,” I said, but Atropos did not move.

            More movement, as the group gathered more closely around me.

            The old woman stood next to the tall young man; family showing, in their similar smiles. “This tree,” she said, “they breathe through their bark, so this blade has choked their throat, but we can make use of these strips, for medicine. The fever tree is good, both for sore eyes – and bodies that burn inside.”

Fever tree? A tree is just a fucking tree. But, talking about burning bodies, I gotta cut loose and go, before those ghosts arrive again…or the sun cooks me.

            “You need to find cover,” she continued, as if reading my thoughts, “I can see your pale skin has many melanomas. You can leave us be.”

            I shrugged and gestured helplessly with my left hand at Atropos, locked and silent in the gouged crevasse at the base of the — fever tree.

            “My name is Akhona,” the woman said, “Would you like some help?”

            Behind the old woman, near the tree, the others were digging a small hole with their hands and scooping wetness from the ground, into a small pot.

            Water.

 Liquid gold.

Water is life.

            Grudgingly, I nodded.

            For a moment, as I glanced up, I thought she’d rolled her rheumy, ancient eyes.

“It would be nice to be asked,” she said, “and to know who is asking.”

            “My, my… name is Frank,” I managed. “Please help me, Akhona.”

            “I thought you looked honest,” she chuckled, “despite the fierceness of your act.”

            Joke? She’s old, but she’s not always right. Two dead, at my hand, is no act.

Those two young men, one barely a boy, they’re always hovering near my eyes, even ten years later. Hiding in my head shadows, or tapping my shoulders, as if knowing I would never dare to turn around, and look at them again.

We’d gone for the same tree, so Atropos had roasted them, afraid they were armed.

I had left them burning by the tree, unable to do, or take anything, after hearing them scream — and smelling them burn.

I have been vegan ever since.

That had been the one and only tree I had not cut, before this one.

            Akhona gave a sign to the others, with her right hand.

            It took both the men and I several grunting minutes, before we dislodged Atropos from the injured trunk.

            The group bowed at the tree and then me. They were bent under the weight of various burdens. The younger man stepped forward again, offering me something, with a gesture of his left hand at his open right pale palm.

I took the tiny object carefully, with some suspicion.  

It was small, brown, and hard, with a slight incision in it.

“A seed,” he said. “Prepared to be a new tree, but you must love and feed them, first. Like us, they need soil, sun and water.”

This will be my last trip outside.

I pocketed the seed, with a nod of my head.

How can he be so generous, after I have threatened and assaulted them?

He leaned forwards, to whisper in my ear, “This tree’s real name is…”

I listened.

He stepped back and I could see they were all bent, almost broken, with their loads.

I shrugged off my G-Pack and offered it to the old man, straps held in my left fist.

Akhona stepped forward to take it, muttering, “siyabonga.”

They loaded the G-pack with their goods and then one of the young women shouldered it on, with assistance. Grav-resisters lighten the load, as if she were lifting on the moon.

She smiled.

I’d bought that, with my very first tree.

One less thing for me to carry.

And no more trees.

“If you can come back here, same time next week,” I said to the old woman, “I can bring you water. Inside, we have more than enough.”

She tapped her right wrist, and I saw a solar powered watch glint briefly. “Amanzi is precious indeed. But is there a way you can help water Mbaba Mwana Waresa instead?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, blankly.

Akhona explained.

“Ah,” I said, “Mother Earth.”

She nodded, smiled, and they all turned away with a parting wave, walking up the sandy slope of the valley, until they disappeared over the hill.  

I must do something.

“Give me a week!” I shouted.

Laughter drifted over the hill, and then they were completely gone.

A week…what a fucking bonkers promise.

            “Come on,” said Atropos, “Let’s go home, Frank.”

            What is home?

            Home is a hard word.

How often have I laughed, there?

And I’ve ended up with nothing from this trip.

No retirement.

Sorry, Thandi.

            A cold, familiar touch dabbed against my right shoulder from behind, and my wet back curdled with pain.

Shit, the ghosts are back.

Good intentions to repair a bad past, are clearly not enough.

            Just walk – go on, back to the ‘Dome, don’t look back.

            Never look back.

            No.

            No more.

            I climbed the hill and removed my left glove, fingering the cool, hard seed, inside my left pocket.

I’m tired of never looking behind me, never looking back.

Another icy touch, this time against my left shoulder blade.

            No, don’t move, just ignore it as usual.

I turned, my breath, a hard ache within my chest.

            A young man in red shirt and black shorts sat on the lower branches of the fever tree, eating a yellow apple. The boy with long blue overalls stood at the trunk, holding a basket, catching what was being tossed down.

            But wasn’t it a grenade?

            No. They had been after the apples.

            So that tree – the first tree I’d ever left, had been an apple tree.

            I bowed down the slope to the bleeding fever tree and wept again, briefly this time, for the two young men I’d never known.

            “Come on Frank, stop wasting your fucking water. Let’s go back home, man.”     

            Hearing her voice, I remembered it was I, not she, who had given pressed the button to fire.

            I am the killer…

            …No. No more killing.

            No more tree cutting, either.

            I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and opened then again.

Two white necked ravens were perched in between thorns on the branches, close to the trunk, as if seeking shade, from the increasingly savage sun.

            So we headed home, Atropos and me.

            I may be Frank, but I’m no longer a Cutter.

            The blade, I would sell. Enough to pay for a good retirement, Thandi.

            The AI, she, I would keep. I can’t imagine a better butler, to the door of our tiny unit.

            ‘If you could name yourself, what would you call yourself, Atropos?’ I asked, panting up the last hill before the ‘Dome, that some called Table Mountain – even though there was no Mountain, only the endless sea beyond.

            The sun, now high, burned the ‘Dome a brilliant white, and the sea a leaden, shining silver.

            My skin itched, with what I knew was coming death.  

            “What kind of fucking question is that?” said Atropos, “you’re human, you can call me whatever the fuck you want to.”

            …Atropos it is, then.

            She’s clearly picked up her language from me – and Thandi!

            As for me, I would become a planter, instead, a grower of things.

            We have plant courts in the Foods and Water section on Level 2.

Speaking of water, why the fuck did I make strangers such a rash and impossible promise? A week to steal some water – and sprinkle the earth? What good would that do?

            We headed into the covered entrance of the Camissa Dome – scanners beeping, to assess my right, for paid sanctuary.

            There were worse things, than surviving in the mediocre middle.

            Maybe some time left to even embrace mediocrity – and perhaps, to bequeath a sapling to Thandi?

Or a sapling for those, who struggle much harder, in the level below?

            To friends, family, even foreigners — and to the UmHlosinga tree.

            We walked into the shade of home, leaving behind us, the hot and brutalised Earth.

            Behind me, I heard the flutter of wings.

            I turned, again.

The ravens were flapping against an invisible barrier; the electro-screen that kept out most animals. Bees and other necessary insects, of course, have their own secured quarters within the Camissa Dome too.

Still, so fucking sterile inside.

            I thumbed the gate release.

Let them in. The birds, too, are mine.

            Nevermore, will I burn, cut, or deny.

            Frank now, in name and deed.

            For my death is coming.

            Do good shit, while you still can.

            I walked slowly along the DC, the grey and aerosol misty decontamination corridor, with a surprisingly heavy bird on each shoulder.

            One, the slightly bigger bird, shat on my left shoulder – a rich spatter of white, decayed fruit, stinking like putrid peach. 

            I did not wipe it off.

            I’m sure the baby UmHlosinga tree would like this crap.

            As for me, I am now the Sower.

Ends

Nick Wood
Nick Wood is a Zambian born, disabled South African (naturalised) clinical psychologist and SF writer with over two dozen short stories published variously (Collected in LEARNING MONKEY AND CROCODILE, 2019), as well as a novella in South Africa (Young Africa Series): THE STONE CHAMELEON (2004). His debut SF novel is AZANIAN BRIDGES (2016) and his follow-up is the African SolarPunk novel WATER MUST FALL (2020).

The 2022 Lagos Comic Con Experience – Daniel Dan-Asisah

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If you love comics, games, and Nigerian entertainment, then you would absolutely enjoy the Lagos comic con. Being the 10th anniversary of the first Comic Con to hold in Africa, it was something of a big deal.

If you love comics, games, and Nigerian entertainment, then you would absolutely enjoy the Lagos comic con. Being the 10th anniversary of the first Comic Con to hold in Africa, it was something of a big deal. Well organized, fun-filled, but nothing too grand. I went there expecting big reveals from big-name studios; I was disappointed.

Upon entering the venue at the popular Landmark Events Center, you are struck by the beautiful atmosphere. The buzzing crowd, the many pockets of activity and reunions, the bright colours.

The convention showcased different sessions that appealed to the newly initiated, hardcore enthusiasts, fun lovers, and those who just came to buy comics. There was something for all lovers of comics and it was a comfortable space to have conversations about stories, artworks, artists and writers. It was beautiful how much was on display and how much was offered to all that came with a ticket. Even if you were working with a small budget, the Lagos Comic Con found a way to entertain for hours.

As with any comic con, the area was occupied by many book stands. Various studios came with their best work to sell to potential buyers, while some others showed off their products merely to create awareness. Most of the big names in the Nigerian industry were there, like the headline sponsor, Rapture.io, and others like Kugali, Magic Carpet Studios, SM Comics Nigeria, and others. The stands were closely packed, so you always had comics in your face to the point where it made walking around a difficult endeavour.

It was a well-attended convention, and it was a pleasant surprise to find a bunch of new names in what had hitherto been a close-knit community. It wasn’t a massive crowd by any means, but moving through tight spaces became a hassle at the crowd’s peak. The best part, however, was being in the presence of many like-minded people. From gamers to cosplayers, to folks only interested in debating superheroes. The cosplay in the convention was front and centre for those with a regular ticket. There was a competition where the audience got to vote for their favourite artist and it was great watching all the professionals show up after putting the time and effort into their costumes. Sadly, there wasn’t as much cosplay as a huge fan such as myself could hope for. Not a lot of people showed up repping their favourite fictional characters and most of the ones that did had a competition in mind. Nigerian/African characters should be the soul of Lagos Comic Con seeing as giving African comics a voice is part of the reasons this event was set up. That way, newcomers would be immediately introduced to the heroes, heroines and villains; and this would help create a sense of pride amongst the creators and fans. Two cosplayers showed up as native characters though; and as applaudable, as that is, it seems that they came solely to promote their studio and not just for fun. A lot of thought was put into their design and they did put on a show. Overall, the cosplayers made the effort to come out as living works of art — from a Jedi to a Samurai, Harley Quinn, Mario brothers, a Vampire, to Sandman.

Lagos Comic Con had other sessions: one for film and another for animation. These had various panels with experts that shed some light on what it is like being in this industry. For anyone interested in how the industry works, the panels were a necessity. There was a ton of knowledge imparted and ample opportunity to network. Getting access to those sessions costs more, with tickets going upwards of two thousand naira. Full VVIP access to the event and both stands was at ten thousand. Might be a bit pricey for unhindered access, but it was worth it. I mean, it came with a special lounge. For most, the main event was just the comics and cosplay, which is just enough. The best part is that a regular ticket (priced at one thousand naira) gave access to games.

The games section was sponsored by Gamr, an African company focused primarily on Esports and they delivered. The sad part is that only FIFA, a football game made by Electronic Arts (EA) and an older version of E-football by Konami were available. If you don’t like football at all, then there was nothing for you here. Seeing as this was the only stand with consoles (PlayStation five), most gamers had to wait before they had a chance. There was a section for Virtual Reality and Laser Tag for all those interested in such.  

I was excited about Nigerian studios who came to show off their games. Jaru’s Journey from Griot Studio got some love and attention as it was promoted with a board game and a great on-stage performance. They brought their best to take their game to the forefront, and it delivered. Events like these shouldn’t be missed because they are a great opportunity to interact with the fans and update them on what is cooking. 

Which brings us to literal cooking! Of course, no convention would be complete without food. There were food stands with a small section given to them. Some of them took the market to their customers, carrying their products, while others waited for the customers to come to them. It wasn’t Bole Festival, so no one was expecting a wide variety of food items, but out of the many stands there, there was something for all hungry bellies.

The tenth anniversary of the Lagos Comic Con was a pleasant experience, and it was fun for all those who knew what to expect. It isn’t quite at its best but it has been 10 years and it shows that the convention is being consistent and there’s visible progress. Local comics, game creators and animators being given more room to express themselves was a delight to watch. Hopefully, that’s improved on next year!

Akpoebi Tno Daniel Dan-Asisah is a content creator with over four years of experience in comics, narrative design, game writing, and screenwriting.

When he is not trawling the internet for new worlds to explore, he can be found spending time with his ever-trusty Xbox. He writes from Lagos.

Daniel Dan-Asisah is a content creator with over four years of experience in comics, narrative design, game writing, and screenwriting. When he is not trawling the internet for new worlds to explore, he can be found spending time with his ever-trusty Xbox. He writes from Lagos.

Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine Issue 23

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Omenana Speculative fiction magazine issue 23 cover
Omenana 23, Editorial: Embodying the Future

In our last outing, the Democracy Issue, we had 15 stories and 15 illustrations, each capturing different iterations of democracy as perceived by writers and artists across several countries. That was a fun issue, but away from the thrill and theme of the last issue, we bring you stories that are diverse and spicy, by writers whose storytelling skills are as engaging as they are deliberate.

Can science replace nature as we know her? And is this sustainable? Barren land is not fun, not when it hosts a lone tree, said to have the antidote for severe fevers, one that weeps when she is axed. You should read Fever Tree, but be careful while you do. She just could tear you out of your comfortable skin or make you advocate for her survival. From saving wonder trees, we swing to preserving heritage. The future is one or two #s away from losing our past and identity, find out how not one, but two women fight for the future of all by holding tight to their ancestry–what future do we have if we cut off our roots? The Last Brown Roof is the tale to read for this exposé.

And then we present you with a post-apocalyptic story—a bit of African futurism doused with science fiction and fantasy. The Dogz of War packs a punch and you’ll find out how, when you read it. We also have a piece that attempts to convince us that where humans can’t be trusted, AI is the future, even in crime and in matters of the heart.

Don’t say I said so, but when a woman has a heart in the right place and is punished unjustly for her defiance, hell might just freeze over, or a sacred cross could bleed and flood humanity. Find out more in The Bleeding Cross of Igbadenedo.

We also have a post-view of the 10th edition of the Lagos Comic Convention.

And these are only the English stories!

In this issue, we have also packaged three speculative stories from Francophone Africa: ISPAHAN 4642, TRF 10°-1 Khayal Le comble des souhaits and L’assemblée des démons de poètes. All curated and edited by Mame Bougouma Diene. You see, we have a little something for everyone.

And what’s more, this is our third issue for the year 2022, so we look forward to publishing one more issue before the end of the year. This is due in no small measure to our very hardworking and committed team. Go, go, go team Omenana!

And to you, our dear readers, where would we be without all your support? The stories are waiting and ready. Thanks for reading and sharing as you always do!

Iquo DianaAbasi

Omenana Speculative fiction magazine issue 23 cover

French Stories
TRF 10°-1 Khayal Le comble des souhaits – de Makan Fofana
ISPAHAN 4642 – par Welid Labidi
L’assemblée des démons de poètes – Moussa Ould Ebnou

English Stories
LAGBOT-45 – Oyedotun Damilola Muees
The Bleeding Cross of Igbadenedo – Ishola Abdulwasiu Ayodele
The UmHlosinga Tree (The Fever Tree) – Nick Wood
The Last Brown Roof – Temitayo Olofinlua
ᗪOGZ OF Wᗩᖇ – Hannu Afere

Review
The 2022 Lagos Comic Con Experience – Daniel Dan-Asisah

The Bleeding Cross of Igbadenedo – by Ishola Abdulwasiu Ayodele

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Mama Adene is getting dry clothes from the line and doesn’t notice a heart wisp hover into her compound. Until she hears chatter from across the street. She looks around and finds that a curious gathering has formed in front of her house. She whirls from the line and squints at her patio. Then she sees it and loses grip of the pile of clothes in her arm out of terror. It is a golden orb like the sun just sinking behind Igbadenedo Temple’s bell tower on the horizon.  And it is the Shoga’s heart wisp. Only his has a golden hue. How dare he come to claim her after murdering her husband for supporting his opponent in the election that made him the Shoga? She waits for the wisp to descend towards her but instead, it goes for the door. Adene comes out of the house calling at her and is taken aback by the ball of light shining on her face. She puts up her arms to shield herself. Mama Adene gasps. The Shoga has come for her daughter. The people in the crowd are already taking pictures and she wants earth to slice open beneath their nosey feet. She watches Adene, caught in a dilemma of hopes. That Adene rejects the proposal to become The Shoga’s third queen out of justified spite or that she accepts it to avoid the troubles The Shoga’s bruised ego will rain on them. Adene chooses the former. She tightens her hands into a fist, stares into the wisp and crosses her arms over her chest. The crowd wows and ahs at her audacity to reject a golden opportunity to share in The Shoga’s power. Mama Adene, now realizing she dreads The Shoga’s wrath, runs toward the door.

“Adene! Please, open your palms and receive it. Save our family, please.”

Adene shakes her head as she glances at the setting sun. She turns her back, finalizing her rejection. And the wisp vanishes in a loud hiss. Mama Adene quickly ushers her inside from craning necks and prickling eyes.

“Adene Mọ’Mademeke, we just defied The Shoga. Do you realize what this means?” Mama sits across Adene on a sofa.

Adene reclines looking at the white squares on the ceiling. Her legs shake in opposing rhythms. She doesn’t say anything.

“You could have accepted it. If not for me, at least for Gunuga and his family.”

“I’d rather die, Mama. Even if I want to accept it, I can’t.”

“Why can’t you? You know families’ fates are bound by bloodline. We barely escaped your father’s treason crime.”

Adene sits upright and sighs. “Mama, I bonded with an elemental after Papa’s death. I have cast my heart wisp to the sun.”

Mama snaps her fingers over her head. “Abomination! That can’t be true. I brought you up a proper faithful.”

“It is true, Mama. I am devoted to the sun.”

“No!” Mama shakes her head. Then she holds it with both of her hands like she’s trying to stop her boiling brain from bubbling out of her skull. Suddenly, she becomes still and glances at Adene. “Is it because of Anahati? Did you do this because of Anahati? Ah!”

Anahati had been Adene’s lover. When Mama learnt of Mademeke’s accident, she drowned in grief. But she had a buoy, a twisted consolation; Anahati who was Mademeke’s driver died in the accident too. She had almost run mad when she found Adene making out with her. Her palms that sped to cover her agape mouth metaphorically remained until now. Because how would she talk about her daughter being in love with a woman without heaven caving in? This was why Anahati’s demise in the accident had sprinkled a pinch of relief on her tumultuous mind. She had felt her daughter might come to her senses and find a man this time. She couldn’t have imagined the double bereavement would make Adene commit heresy and make herself unmarriageable.

“I am sorry, Mama,” Adene says.

“No no no!” Mama glides off the sofa onto the floor like the sofa is too tender to cushion her pain. She breaks down, repeating, “We are doomed! We are doomed!”

Adene is summoned to The Shoga’s court the next day. The Shoga guards who had come to pick her up at dawn called it, a summoning. As if she had a choice when she would honour the call. They hadn’t waited for her to change her nightgown. They had snatched her from her mother’s unyielding grasp. This is why Mama uses “arrested” while reporting it to Gunuga on the phone a short while after.

“The Shoga has arrested your sister. The guards said there will be a hearing at 10.” Her voice is hoarse from last night’s cry.

“It’s alright, Mama. Everything will be fine. Let’s meet at 33 Disata Bus Stop in 30 minutes,” Gunuga says like it’s not an unusual thing for his sister to be arrested like it’s nothing to fret over. Mama can’t eat the food she prepared. She stands from the dining table and covers the steaming plate of honey rice. She picks up the house keys from the sitting room table and heads for the door. The bus stop isn’t far but she can’t stop feeling time is avalanching away. She has to be there now.

Gunuga shows up 15 minutes late. Mama who arrived early has waited for more than half an hour, sitting on the communal bench, shrinking under judging eyes. The news is all over the web and other commuters would glance from their phones at her and then back to their phones, sometimes speaking loudly for her to hear. “That’s the mother.” “You know the father was a criminal too.”

The nest the familiar company Gunuga comes with doesn’t allow her whine about his lateness. Or comment on his elaborate dressing as if he is going to receive a military honour. He is wearing a ceremonious silver shoulder pad over his coat. Mama had bought him a smaller size for his seventh birthday which he rejected. He’d worn Adene’s scarf around his neck instead. Mama realizes now that instead of fearing Gunuga would be a gender outcast then, she should have worried his masculinity would come to overshadow his sense of appropriateness. A man attending his sister’s hearing shouldn’t look this rigidly dressy.

They are greeted with whispers when they get on the bus. Of course, it is about them, about their family’s ill fate. Gunuga’s face is stoic, eyes set straight ahead at nothing, he seems blind to the comfort Mama’s body language seeks from him. Her fingers trembling on her laps, her misty eyes, her request that he wind up the window. Gunuga doesn’t look at her.

The bus stops at The Shoga Square, a sprawling area teaming with people pouring in and out of shopping complexes, lined by roadside vendors, taking pictures with the statues of holy prophets. One of the statues is at the centre of a roundabout overhead, a stone throw from where Mama and Gunuga alight. It is Prophet Odusere, saint patron of karma. His black skin is in stark contrast to the white wrapper tied over his shoulder. Golden rings adorn his neck and wrists. His arms are stretched out with one palm up and the other down. Mama bows in its direction and says a prayer. A moment later, Gunuga taps her. They have to cross to the other side of the express where the high walls of The Shoga’s palace loom. There are prying reporters waiting at the gate, their entrance blocked by security. Someone points out that Mama and Gunuga are approaching and cameras begin clicking at them. Mama is reminded of her dream, of a life used to paparazzi. One that would have played out if The Shoga’s opposing candidate who Mademeke supported had lived and won. Mademeke would have been appointed Elder 7; part of The Shoga’s council of twelve. The gale of questions blasted at them by the reporters pixelates her reverie. She is not the wife of a high noble here. She is just the wife of a dead felon and the mother of an arrestee. One of the security men comes to shield them from the intrusion and guides them through the gate.

The Shoga’s Estate is vast and it is quite unimaginable that this space of land exists at the heart of Igbadenedo. The buildings are ancient, constructed with clay bricks and designed with painted carvings. Directly before them, a cheetah’s sprint away is the Temple from which domes and high-reaching minarets protrude. The bell tower popular for being the tallest structure in Igbadenedo stands beside it. Across the field to the right are the palace chambers of rounded walls and cone rooftops. The court hall is the closest to the gate. Mama and Gunuga take a left turn from the yawning road towards a giant cubic monument capped with a dome. There are scribbles and paintings of valiant deeds of the past Shogas on the outer walls. The automated door slides open for them to enter while the security men remain still like figurines.

The hearing has already begun. Mama and Gunuga find seats at the back pew. Two people they meet on the row leave for the front lower pew. No acknowledgement, no pleasantries. Adene is in the middle of the central depression, seated on a stool. Mama can’t see her face. She is facing the high table of The Shoga and his band of twelve Elder 7’s. They seem like God peering down at their tiny creation. Distress turns Mama’s body to a marionette, causing her to shift intermittently on her seat, she tilts forward, such that it appears she will tumble down the step of pews anytime. Gunuga is rather calm.

“I do not plead guilty for I have done nothing wrong.” It’s Adene’s voice, composed, firm. “I only rejected a proposal. That is not a crime in the Constitution.”

Mama is not surprised Adene is countering her charges. Though not cultural, Mademeke used to analyze the constitution and its flaws with Adene.

“An unpaired woman rejecting The Shoga’s proposal is unreasonable. There is no logic to it,” one of the elders says.

Mama hears the click-clack of heels behind her but she doesn’t look at who just entered. Until the person, a woman in purple embroidered boubou, asks her to move inward so she can sit with her. She makes space and checks who is willing to risk their social standing. It’s Madam Agatha, widow of The Shoga’s opposing candidate who died in a car accident with Mademeke. She would have been queen. Now against antagonism, because she’s a woman, she runs her husband’s coal business. She was the one who told Mama that The Shoga killed their husbands because the poll was favouring them. She touches Mama’s knees in silent solidarity.

“Unreasonable and illogical is not the same as criminal, my lord,” Adene says.

The Shoga rubs the eye-shaped tattoo on his forehead. “You don’t have your heart wisp, young woman. I can’t perceive its essence with my third eye.”

Mutterings erupt.

“Silence!” The Shoga’s voice thunders, as he stamps his staff on the ground. A shivering quiet ensues. The Shoga continues, “And you are unpaired, so you couldn’t have devoted it to a husband. Where is it?”

Adene’s head falls, her long braids cloaking her face. “I gave it to the sun.”

“What did you say?”

Adene raises her head and glares at The Shoga. “I gave my heart wisp to the sun!”

Gasps and chatters buzz through the court. Some elders shoot out of their seats. Mama falls back in her chair. Madam Agatha holds her shoulder. Gunuga grasps her hand.

In her daze, Mama’s hope begins to shrivel. This hope that survived last evening on sentiments. Now it wilts into something too feeble to levitate Mama. And she falls. Into a swirling abyss of despair.

“Adene Mọ’modameke, you have committed an unforgivable sin. An irreversible one. A heart wisp devoted to the river can be summoned from its depth. One devoted to the wind can be reanimated. One given to earth and trees can be extracted. But the sun, the sun is forever! You can’t be saved.

“I hereby sentence you to death by crucifixion on the Holy Cross.”

Silence from the vacuum of shock. Nobody has bled on the Cross for a millennium now and all who were crucified in ancient times had given up their lives as a sacrificial act of nobility to honour their family and ensure the continuous flourishing of Igbadenedo. The Holy Books have a record of their names in gold.

“I am not willing to sacrifice my life. Willingness is crucial to the crucifixion ritual or the cross becomes cursed and bleeds,” Adene says.

“Your mother can bear your punishment by bloodline then. She will willingly die on the cross to save you.”

“I will! I will!” Mama runs down the aisle to Adene’s side. “I will do anything!”

Adene looks at her mother whimpering on the ground. Her chest burns. She closes her eyes and imagines the sunset. Teardrops fall. “I declare that I willingly accept crucifixion as punishment.”

The Shoga stamps his staff on the ground and everyone rises. Before he leaves the court, he casts a vicious glance at Adene and nods at the guards in waiting to take her. Just like it had happened in the morning, Adene is wrestled out of Mama’s hands. Gunuga and Madam Agatha come to pacify her, supporting her on both sides. Everyone else exits the hall nonchalant.

“I am sorry, Mama Adene. There’s nothing I can do. I am sorry,” Madam Agatha says, tears washing down her kohl.

Mama shakes her head and laughs bitterly. “I know. Nobody can challenge The Shoga. Because The Shoga is God! Ah God! I wish this were blasphemy but it isn’t. I wish it is so that in anger you strike me down now! But you can’t. You are not God. The Shoga is!”

The next day is the execution. Gunuga brings breakfast into Mama’s room, toast and a cup of tea on a tray. Mama is up, sitting at the edge of her bed and staring out the window. One of the doves that had colonized her roof perched on the sill. It flies away when Gunuga reaches the bed. Mama takes the tray from Gunuga and looks at it like a toddler would a knitting kit.

“You have to eat, Mama,” Gunuga says and sits by her side. Last night on this bed, unable to contain his emotions any longer, he had cried with Mama until she dozed off in his arms. Mama thanked him mindlessly as he slipped out of the room.

“Would you like me to slice the toast for you, Mama?”

Mama smiles and shakes her head no. Is this her Gunuga? Her misery must have cracked open his tombstone of unfeeling masculinity. Weeks ago, when Adene returned from his home furious, shouting about how he had slapped his wife in her presence, Mama had said he was just being a man. He was trying to hold the reins of his household. “Father wouldn’t excuse this and he was a man!” Adene had yelled and walked out on her. But Mademeke was an unconventional man. What kind of man hires a female chauffeur? Mama had always thought his opinions on social order didn’t count. But her experience lately has shifted her perspective. Damn this social order that murdered her husband, that attempted to compress her son into a rock, that is now about to take her daughter’s life.

Mama takes a bite from the bread but her mouth refuses to chew. So she swallows. Then she downs the tea in three gulps and puts the tray aside.

“You should stay home today, Mama.”

“No! I am attending the execution with you,” Mama snaps.

“But Mama…”

“I don’t need to wear something new. Seeing my daughter for the last time doesn’t require me looking tidy.” Mama is already walking towards the door, the weight of trepidation on her mind lightened by a yearning for closure.

The wind comes to witness the crucifixion of Adene. It staggers about the arena, flapping scarves and loose hems, throwing dust and leaves from the willows encircling the arena. The sun is not out yet and it is noon like she has refused to illuminate the scene of her devotee’s death. Adene is held by two guards on the stage. She is still in the nightgown they arrested her in, and it is now raggedy. Camera lights flicker on her every now and then. Mama and Gunuga are in the front row and their eyes exchange silent farewells with hers. Soon the Shoga arrives accompanied by his council and the crowd’s cacophony ceases.

The Shoga heads for a corner of the stage where a giant drum stands. The drumstick is attached to the base so that its thick head rests on the centre of the drum skin. The Shoga pulls back the stick and releases it. Gbam! Then the stick automatically flicks back and forth, creating a wave of drumbeats on which The Shoga’s voice will ride to the crowd.

“We have gathered today to witness the crucifixion of Adene Mọ’Mademeke for her sin of heresy. This shall be warning to all that the values and norms of Igbadenedo are law.

“I hereby order the crusaders to commence with the execution. May the blood on the cross save our land.”

Everyone repeats The Shoga’s prayer. The Shoga steps back to join the council at the back of the stage. The backdoor of the temple groans and opens behind the crowd. The crusaders in white garments come forth carrying the Holy Cross. It is maroon and is bejewelled with rubies on the sides. The crowd make the cross signs on their foreheads and part for the crusaders as they make their way to the stage. On the stage, they lay the cross on the ground. One of them takes a golden bowl to Adene to drink from. She does and her eyes turn ashy white. Then she is led to the cross. She lies on it, aligning her body with its shape. The crusaders encircle the cross, close their eyes and begin chanting. Whirring sounds emanate from the cross as its nails twirl out from under Adene’s body, drilling through flesh and bones. When the bloodied ends of the nails protrude out her feet, palms and chest, they open up into canopies and sink back as if hit by invisible hammers. And Adene is dead. Blood flows out, drenching the cross and staining the crusaders’ garments.

While everyone repeats, “May the blood on the cross save our land,” Gunuga holds her stunned mother from collapsing. But a moment later, she yanks herself out of his arms and dashes up the stage for the speaker drum. Before she could be stopped, she activates the drumstick and screams into the vibrations. “The Shoga murdered my husband and my daughter. He is evil reincarnate, forsaken by God and the…”

Her mouth is quickly stuffed and she is dragged out off the stage. Gunuga holds back with all his will. Should he act rashly, he would implicate his pregnant wife. The Shoga strides to the drum in fury. His honour has just been challenged openly and he needs to correct it. His words come out with urgency, forceful like pebbles shot from catapults.

“It is blasphemy to speak evil of The Supreme Shoga. For the Shoga is the vessel of God’s will. But I understand Mama Adene had been broken by grief so her punishment will be lenient. She shall serve the Holy Temple for three months in hope that she learns the grace of divinity. This is my verdict!”

He knocks his staff on the ground. And everyone bows till he marches out the stage.

Every morning since the execution, The Shoga’s guards come to take Mama. Gunuga has returned to his family and only visits in the evenings when she would have returned. He brings along food, serves her and stores some up in the refrigerator. Mama still can’t eat well. She has become a hollow delicate thing, the shed skin of a snake. This is the seventh day and as usual, she doesn’t want to leave her bed. But Gunuga and his family will suffer if she doesn’t. She has to further press down her anger and agony and serve her punishment. Or Gunuga will inherit it. She has thought of inviting Gunuga and his wife over and serving them poisoned tea so that they’ll all die. But she can’t do it. She drags herself off her bed and begins preparation for the temple.

Mama’s duty has been to open the temple every morning and tend to the lit candles surrounding the cross. This morning, she decides to open the always-shut coloured glass windows and allow sun rays in. She likes to think Adene’s soul lives on in the light. When she reaches the last window, closest to the cross, a gush blows in and snuffs out the candles. This must be why the windows are left shut. She rushes to light the candles again. And her eyes catch blood dripping from the cross’ arms. She retreats and rubs her eyes as if to remove a mirage-inducing film. The cross is indeed bleeding and a pool is forming at its feet. She runs out of the temple.

The Shoga jerks up from his seat as Mama narrates what she had seen. His council bowing before him as if receiving a scolding are startled. He picks up his staff and storms out of the hall. Mama and the council members follow suit.

When they get to the temple, a stream of red has filled the temple’s floor and the candles have disappeared. Blood now gushes out like water from upturned kegs. All the blood ever spilt on the cross since centuries past. The Shoga points his staff at the cross and mutters an incantation but the blood level keeps rising. The elders begin stepping backwards, the implication of what is happening dawning on them. The willingness of Adene was coerced and the myth of the bleeding Cross is true.

“The Cross has been poisoned,” an elder says and flees. Others run after him.

Mama decides to wait and watch the clueless Shoga who is still muttering incantations. Then a wave of blood erupts up the steps and splashes over The Shoga in the corridor. Mama takes a step back. The Shoga makes to move but he is transfixed. The blood whirls around him and falls with him into the temple. He begins to sink as if hands are dragging him from underneath. Soon his wide eyes are covered. Mama gasps. Then a smile forms on her face. She runs for the bell tower. The whole city must hear of this. She swings the rope connected to the pendulum and speaks to the ringing sounds breathless. “The Holy Cross bleeds. And The Shoga is dead!”

Ishola Abdulwasiu Ayodele is a creative writer, visual artist and educationist from Nigeria. A residence director at ARTmosterrific and fiction mentor for SprinNG Writing Fellowship, his works have been published on African Writer, Sub-Saharan Magazine, Brittle Paper and elsewhere.

LAGBOT-45. – Oyedotun Damilola Muees

By
Admin
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0

Reporter 1: Today, 23rd June 2087. I am standing at the façade of the State High Court in Lagos. The case between the highly revered billionaire businessman, Chief Cornelius Okeowo and Miss Sewa Bakare has been going on for five weeks. It is no longer news that Miss Sewa, a former employee in one of Chief Okeowo’s numerous companies, accused him of physically assaulting her. The law does not take such accusations likely. Women advocacy groups and Non-Governmental agencies protecting the rights of females have poured out on the streets, chanting for due process to be followed and justice to be duly served. We cross our fingers, awaiting the verdict that will ensue. Speculations have been flying, saying the case may not follow due process going by the profile of the accused. We will find out soon enough.

Reporter 2: The whole nation is glued to its television screens. The courtroom is already tense. Emotions are running high. From the heat of the moment, I can see that the masses are rooting in favour of Miss Sewa. Will this case be akin to what happened in 2079 during the case of former M.D First City Bank, Maitama Dongoyaro and his personal assistant Miss Chinelo? The case brought so much tension that anything short of justice for Miss Chinelo, the complainant, would have painted the judicial system as corrupt. Well, as you may recall, the case was ruled against Miss Chinelo. And despite many appeals, she lost the case. Will Miss Sewa also be another helpless victim in the hand of another opulent individual? We will find out soon.

Stay tuned for further updates at the courthouse.

*

Initializing…

Set-up…

Reference 102.

Opening folder of employer: Mr. Cornelius Okeowo.

Permission Granted.

Log 001. 7th July, 2087.

Special Ministry of Science, Technology, and Metallurgy built the Lagbot as a special purpose AI. For special people. Being the first set of Artificial Intelligence after years of research, we have the best body parts produced from the rich iron ore abundant in the Southwestern part of the country. Our employers decide what we are called the moment we are purchased. After all, they paid millions of naira for our services.

This is my first assignment. I press my hands against my embossed breastplate, it reads Lagbot-45 – the name assigned to me by my manufacturer. A new home awaits me. The profile of my new employer has been downloaded into my database, configured to suit his demand. Mr. Cornelius Okeowo, born on 24 August 2048. A billionaire, philanthropist, and Managing Director of Okeowo group of companies. Dealers in cargo services, tourism and hospitality. He is suffering from anterior cord syndrome. He suffered this from an injury at a promenade, when he fell from his skating board and landed back-first on a culvert. Mr. Okeowo is an irascible man who has zero scruples about sacking his employees. Some leave of their own accord despite the huge salaries he pays for their services. The only employees who have stayed put are Mrs. Goke, the butler equally skilled in Ikebana, and the codger chauffeur, Mr. Francis.

I was sent to him after many failed attempts to get along with his previous Lagbots.  Mr. Okeowo nagged at how dumb the former Lagbot behaved. Dumb robots, he said. The Departments rewrote the codes and I was birthed; one of a kind. There are tens of thousands of possible reactions my manufacturers programmed in my Central Processing Unit vis-à-vis Mr. Okeowo’s need. Upon delivery, Mr. Okeowo is given virtual glasses that allowed him to communicate with me and see through my eyes.  Only he has the voice command to summon me at will. The Department modified me in such a way that I can record the activities of my employer, and attend to their demands. They can communicate with me at any time. They have the right to report me to the Department or terminate my contract at will if need be. Upon resumption, we are obliged to protect them. We are bound by law to enter into their private lives only with their permission. A list of activities are embedded in us to better serve our new employer.

Every Lagbot has its glitches. In a case of abuse by our employer, we don’t report such until the Department receives a red alert on our server. Red alerts appear when there is a situation in our system that was not initially installed. There have been cases where a Lagbot is abused, used for a despicable act. Once the employer is found guilty he pays for damages, and the law suspends him from owning us for a specified time depending on the gravity of the offence.

Log 064. 20th July, 2087.

Mr. Okeowo woke up with a slight fever this morning. It is my duty to call his hospital if it aggravates. He tells me to call the family doctor instead. This grizzly-haired doctor arrives without delay. I watch him examine Mr. Okeowo, automatically recording all the happenings. Mrs. Goke is tending the flowers. Her Ikebana skills are amazing, though I can teach her numerous artistic styles. She laughs at me, saying. I have been in this craft before they give birth to your coconut head. My great-great-great grandmother worked for Empress Arin. I come from a line of Ikebana experts. First, I tell her I am not a child that is biologically birthed after a male and female come together to have coitus. Secondly, I am a neoteric specially engineered AI with memory, processor, and speed that can solve problems and produce answers in microseconds upon command. I tell her about her ludicrous off-key incongruent singing every time she works. I am certain her voice would never gather a flock of birds if she were to host a concert. She tells me to shut up, Stupid robot. I remind her that I am not a robot. Robot is a derogatory name for my kind. She wanders away, carrying a pot of jacaranda, singing.

Mr. Okeowo is glued to his laptop. I am seated calmly on the seethe, awaiting his command. The next thing I hear is a thump on the table. His left hand is clenched.  A scowl maps his face, causing sharp lines to form on his forehead. I approach him. His reaction tells me he is irked. He is still engrossed in the image on the laptop screen. I see a man and woman holding hands, smiling at each other in a restaurant. The man is bespectacled, holding the woman in a position that suggests they are a couple. I am programmed to understand love language, not feel love. Such intense positions match other images recorded into my memory as private.  Mr. Okeowo’s face is gloomy. The picture staring at him has derailed his happy mood. The first rule of the Lagbot in protecting our employers is solving the problem from the root. I figure that the root cause of his anger is the pictures in front of him.

“Sir, kindly move away from your laptop,” I say. “The rage going through you will intensify if you linger on the pictures.”

My words seem to fall on deaf ears. I search my module for a more soothing solution to alleviate his problem. I open a particular module titled, depression. I look at him. He shows no signs of the template the response server lists out to me. He shoves the laptop away from the mahogany table, screaming aloud. His voice startles Mrs. Goke, who rushes out of her room, placing her hand on her chest as if to keep her heart from jutting out. He orders Mrs. Goke out of his sight, shouting at her when she breaches the gap between. She attempts to extend her hand in concern as humans do.

“Hand me my bottle of scotch!” Mr. Okeowo commands.

I do as instructed. Alcohol keeps the body calm. It is listed in the options in my sub-folder for relieving a sad person. In my leisure, I put an array of things that could help serve him better. The template was stored as a shortcut in the interface of my screen. Mr. Okeowo guzzles two small shots from his tumbler. Silence helps. I allow him to be calm, hopefully, he will spill out what is bothering him. He pours another round, telling me the reason for his rage.

“The man I saw earlier was one of my closest friends. The lady with him was my girlfriend before the accident.”

He wooed her because she sang mellifluously. At an early age, she was a wunderkind. Mr. Okeowo assumes she left him because of his disability. My word-jar registers the word as false. Special people is the word recognised in my system. I tell him he is special. He laughs at me.

“Pal, you are just a robot programmed to say what is stored in you,” he says, drinking some more.

I open the folder on my interface. A list of options extracted from my modules can be of help. I browse through the options: How to make a sad man happy. How to react when he is mad. How to console a man in tears. How to be tactful in dealing with an aggrieved man. None of those options seems relevant to how he feels at the moment. I register his strange mood under a new category which is not in my database. Lagbots are allowed to save a new reaction from our employer. We send it to the Department when the new behaviour jar is filled. I sit on the floor adjacent to him, open my e-notepad—five stages of grief.

Log 075. 25th July 2087.

It is my first time at the beach. A large number of people are staring. Lagbots are mainly afforded by the crème-de-la-crème of the society. Two grim sentries flank Mr. Okeowo. They stop people from coming close. Mr. Okeowo orders his sentries to allow them come forward. Boys and girls take selfies with him. Their mouth structure is snout-shaped. I do a quick search about mouth posture when taking pictures. Over one-thousand results pop up. The majority of the pictures are of pouting ladies.

I see a pregnant woman with a man I suppose is her husband from the way they lock hands, running a quick scan on her stomach. I can detect a range of diseases, allergies, pregnancies and injuries in less than ten seconds. Lagbots can also help in the delivery of babies. The progress is advanced, and I can see that the baby is breech. I go over to her, telling her what I had scanned. Her husband chases me away, calling me names my system registers as invectives.

Mr. Okeowo is drinking a smoothie. My antenna picks germs flying around. I request that the smoothie be covered. One of the very harmful ones could enter into his drink. Though more than half of them cannot cause him serious harm. Mr. Okeowo has a clean bill of health. I make sure I scan him for anomalies each morning before he takes his coffee. A man is surfing. I have always been stunned as to the reason humans engage in dangerous activities all for fun. The risks the surfer is exposed to vary from being swept by the rising waves knocking him unconscious, leaving him to drown, to being bitten by sharks or poisonous jellyfish.

Mr. Okeowo’s mood is light today. Humans love nature. A dog stands in front of me. It poses no threat. I search for a module on how to play with dogs. These animals like bones. I search around for one but found none. It begins to sniff me. Information in my module says dogs like to sniff humans and other things of interest. Its body touches my spindly leg.

Our next stop is a restaurant. Lagbots are kept in a different section. The restaurant is only meant for humans. Mr. Okeowo tells me to watch him from a distance. He has the whole table to himself. Humans love it here – the food, drinks, serene environment. The restaurant serves over twenty different kind of meals, many of which are unhealthy for people with a high level of cholesterol in their system. As I approach Mr. Okeowo, warning him about the food he is about to ingest, I stumble on a man and wine spills on his long-sleeved white shirt. He pours his ire on me, calling me the same name Mrs. Goke calls me, stupid robot. I apologize. A man dressed in a gaudy suit tells Mr. Okeowo about the restaurant policy. Mr. Okeowo looks around, asking the man the worth of the restaurant.

“Do you know who you are talking to? Perhaps you don’t wish to keep working here,” Mr Okeowo threatens.

The man apologizes, bowing and exiting. I tell Mr. Okeowo about the unhealthy ingredients in the food he was about to consume. One of his sentries laughs.

“I told you. He is overly protective of me,” Mr. Okeowo says with a smile.

Log 091. 6th August 2087.

The differences between humans and Lagbots are endless. Humans grow old by the day and die from ageing, illness or untimely death. Lagbots do not die from old age. The Department shuts us down when we begin to run amok. Today’s archive is kept in a special folder—it’s a special day for Mr. Okeowo. Gifts are sprawled on the floor of the living room. Yesterday, I studied the module on birthdays. Humans like to embellish their homes with things they find fascinating.

People troop in and out of the house. The boys arranging the disco lights and balloons are not following the health-safety protocol. The ladder is placed horizontally, inclined at an unsafe angle that could make the climber fall, causing severe concussion to his brain. Mr. Okeowo is in his bedroom. Humans like to bask in the euphoria of a celebration before they come out in the open. I search online for a gift he might like. We can provide various kinds of help but not financial. Later in the day, the house is all set up in a way I have never seen before. Men and women come bearing more gifts for Mr Okeowo. Outside, service boys carrying flutes filled with effervescing champagne, smile, and bow after guests pick one from the tray.

Mr. Okeowo is clad in an immaculate white 3-piece suit, a white hat and black glossy designer shoes to match. A lady musician wearing a red lacy gown mounts the stage. Everyone focuses on her like she is some kind of celebrity. I run a facial search on her, and it turns out she is the popular R’n’B singer named Moremi.

Moremi keeps the crowd spellbound with her voice. Her voice is far better than Mrs. Goke’s. I archive the cadence in my entertainment folder. I see Mr. Okeowo’s friend and his girlfriend—the love birds that infuriated him earlier on. Mr. Okeowo’s friend walks up to him to present a picture frame as a gift.

Mr. Okeowo’s eyes become dark and he blurts.

“What audacity!” How dare you show up here after what you did?”

I scamper to him, opening a module on what to do to avoid chaos at a gathering. I have never seen Mr. Okeowo this irate and belligerent. He calls his friend many demeaning names. The guards soon walk the erstwhile friend and his girlfriend out of the party.

It is hard to know what Mr. Okeowo is going through tonight. He wishes to be in solitude. I stay in my room, watching recorded happenings at the party. I wrote him a poem earlier, scrambling words from renowned poets in my entertainment database. Mr. Okeowo summons me through the virtual glasses. The tone of his voice is flat.

For the first time, he speaks to me like a human. He accuses me of allowing his friend to insult him by coming to his party. He would feel elated if I served his friend the kind of hurt commensurate to the way he felt months ago. I process this thought. The readings in my system have no response for this kind of data. Lagbots are obliged to defend and protect their employers on the basis of impending danger. I have a module for assault, combat and defense mechanism ranging from martial arts, kickboxing, and jujutsu. A schematic diagram of the full labelled human body and vulnerable parts is also encapsulated inside of me. This sequence can only be activated when my employer feels threatened. If I act otherwise, the victim can report to the Department, sue them even. Damages might arise. I stand the risk of being shut down. Or worse, formatted. Memories keep humans going in life. Lagbots have memories, too. The ones we store in our logs. I want to keep mine.

I leave his presence feeling indifferent. We are not sentient. I sent the poem I composed for him to drafts. Hopefully one day I will read it to him.

Interlude.

Reporter 1: The court is now on recess. No one would have thought that a Lagbot would be brought as a witness to this case. Today is really a unique day. I believe the court is gingerly taking notes of the videos recorded by Lagbot-45 to ascertain the happenings that led us to this point. We will soon find out. In the meantime, stay glued to us for more updates.

Log 101. 13th August 2087.

This is the day I perform one of my most interesting tasks. Mr. Okeowo orders me to buy groceries from the supermarket. It rained earlier today. A bunch of people on the road wear windbreakers to keep away the biting cold. The cold or any other kind of weather cannot harm me. My body casing is built with alloy and pellets and scraps of titanium. And that is why Lagbots can save humans from fire disasters. However, excess water inside our body can cause a malfunction, making us go blind.

It feels good walking with humans. Many of them stare at me, taking pictures. Mr. Okeowo told one of his guards to accompany me. He is the one who needs protection. The guard’s mission is not to keep me safe though, it is to ensure I don’t get kidnapped—Lagbots cost a lot to acquire.

I pull out the map from my location icon, navigating my way, watching other Lagbots behind their employers. One of them is clutching the leash of an Alsatian. Inside the supermarket. I pull a shopping cart and move around the shop. The virtual glasses are active. Mr. Okeowo can see the items displayed on the counters from the comfort of his room. The list of goods he wants me to buy is written in my miscellaneous folder. As I wait for my turn in the queue, a little kid leaves his mother, watching me while licking ice cream in a cone. I can’t fathom the thoughts going through his head. He stretches his hand to me, offering me his ice cream. A quick scan of the multi-flavoured ice cream; his teeth would suffer great damage if he consumes more of these sugary things.

Mr. Okeowo sends his driver to pick me and the guard after I finish shopping. The purchased items fill the trunk of the saloon car. We drive past skyscrapers. They intrigue me. Stuck in traffic, I see a signpost showing the way to the beach. Mr. Okeowo has gone offline.

“Please drive to the beach,” I say.

I sit on a wooden bench, watching the tidal waves. I notice mildew on one side of the bench. The people in the water catch my attention. They are happy, free. A razzle-dazzle catches my attention. A man goes on one knee and puts a ring on a lady’s hand. I have watched a scene like this while sitting with Mr. Okeowo. Such shows interest him. Mr. Okeowo comes back online. He can’t stop laughing when he sees me at the beach.

“Walk around,” he says. “Feel the warmth that comes with nature.”

When I go past the people celebrating with the lady who just got a ring, Mr. Okeowo asks me to stop. He tells me to face them.

He then prods me to talk to a lady wearing a red bikini. It feels odd. The relationship between a Lagbot and a woman has never been established. Not that I know of. But Mr. Okeowo commands that I speak to her. I engineer a quick search; how to talk to a lady. Mr. Okeowo watches me from his virtual glasses. My search produces multiple results, making it a hard choice for me.

“Hello, I’m Lagbot-45,” I finally say.

“Sewa Bakare,” she says with a smile.

Log 105. 15th August 2087.

The Department marvels at the record of new things I picked up when they come to assess me. The assessment is done to know if I am living up to expectations. Mr. Okeowo informs them about my bravery at the beach the other day. The woman in charge laughs all through. She never imagined my employer would trust me with such an arduous task.

Mr Okeowo soon employs Miss Sewa as his personal assistant. They go on the paseo. She pushes his wheelchair, while I stay by her side. There are a lot of things Lagbots can do. But we are deficient when it comes to matters of the heart. It is only a matter of time before Mr. Okeowo yearns for the touch of another human. Being his personal assistant, she accompanies him to business meetings. Mrs. Goke expresses her happiness that someone makes Mr Okeowo leave the house more often.

We are seated on a boat on one of their numerous trips. Mr. Okeowo has caught two fish after an hour of handling the fishing rod. I guddle a fish and present it to Miss Sewa. She kisses the left side of my face. That night before I hibernate, I replay Miss Sewa’s happy mood when I gave the live fish to her. I am special to her. The log of that day is archived in a new folder. I name it Human Love.

Mr. Okeowo is taking Miss Sewa out to a fancy restaurant.

“Stay at home today. It is a private meeting,” he says.

I play the latest Moremi album, coupled with some dance moves I downloaded. Mr. Okeowo’s room is not locked. I enter into the vast bedroom. A brown bag seizes my attention. Encased in it are pictures of him and his family. Medals and a silver plaque of a bowling man lie beside his passports. I shouldn’t be here. We are not allowed to go through our employer’s personal effects. With the aid of my photographic memory, I place the items back as neatly as they were before.

I delete the video data of me entering his room, activate my cooling system, switch the music to an Italian opera, and hibernate for the night.

Log 108. 19th August 2087

I am heading to Miss Sewa’s house on the orders of Mr. Okeowo. A bag bearing a gift is clasped in my hand.

“She likes you. I am sure of that,” he says. “She will listen to you.”

I pull up the search icon on my interface: What to say to an annoyed lady. She lives in a house much smaller than Mr. Okeowo’s. It is not difficult to locate her house. An old woman appears at the door. She has a wrinkled face and two front teeth missing. Her Yoruba echoes in the air. I interpret her words: there is a robot in front of our house.

Miss Sewa comes out to see me. She doesn’t seem well. Swollen black sacks sit under her eyes. Plaster covers her upper lip. It feels like she had an accident from the look of it. I extended the gift to her. She bursts into tears. I don’t have to check my module for how to calm a crying lady. I wait for her to collect the gift bag. She didn’t, instead, she screams into my face.

“I know you can hear me, Cornelius. You are evil. I am coming for you!”

Only Mr. Okeowo understands what just happened. He is watching through the virtual glasses. Miss Sewa’s mother, a younger version of the woman who opened the door pours some water on me and threatens to break my head if I don’t leave.

When I return home Mr. Okeowo tells me he no longer needs my services.

Log 106. 17th August 2087

Loading log…Loading…Error in loading log.

Entry Unavailable.

Please contact our Customer Support agent at The Department for the number in your manual.

A minor quarrel erupts in the courthouse. Miss Sewa’s family can’t stop throwing angry looks at me.

“You deleted the entry for that day, you ugly swine,” someone from the audience says.

“Order,” the judge commands decorum, hitting her gavel on the mahogany stand. She threatens to arrest anyone who speaks without being called to the stand. Several upset faces dart at me as though they wish to mangle my body parts with clubs and sticks. I search for that day’s log repeatedly, but it keeps showing the same result. Entry Unavailable. Error loading log.

The judge summons the two lawyers to the bench, and I hear them speaking in faint voices. I double-check the log list. Log 106 is missing.

“What do you remember from the 17th August 2087?” the judge asks.

I can still hear the mumbling of the audience.

“I have searched my database, but it is still blank. I do not remember anything,” I respond.

“Liar!” Another harsh voice reverberates from the audience.

Two policemen bundle the obstinate man away.

“Do you need some time to search through your database?” the judge asks.

This feels like a rhetorical question.

Miss Sewa is invited to the stand for another round of questioning. She narrates how Mr. Okeowo raised his fists at her while they were together on that fateful day.

I am just an AI created for the purpose of alleviating the suffering of the wealthy. I am not programmed to ascertain who is guilty or innocent. My manufacturers have the authority to delete any data from my memory. Any deleted log goes to the recycle bin which stays there for a 40-day period before it is completely wiped out. In this case, it’s hard to tell if Log 106 is among other trashed data. I can dig up a backup memory to know what happened on that day. But I don’t have access to it. Besides, I am not authorised to release the backup logs to a third party. Though every Lagbot has a nexus to each part of its system, there are still places we cannot explore, for our safety. Lagbots can be exposed to threats if we break through these firewalls. What lies within may not be safe, causing a breakdown in our system.

The judge and the lawyers are still deliberating on the next line of action after Miss Sewa goes to sit with her family. They are probably wondering if they can believe the words of a Lagbot. After data leaves the recycle bin it is taken apart, regarded as an Error 404 file. But no data is completely lost. I take the risk of checking the recycle bin for Log 106. The caveat is staring at me, a three-page document. I sign it, breaching the firewall, standing the risk of being systemically paralyzed. I find the missing log.

“I have found it,’ I say to the court.

All eyes turn to me. The lawyers are seated. The visuals of that day are unavailable. Mr. Okeowo must have taken off his virtual glasses, but he didn’t turn off the audio.

“Let’s hear what you have,” the judge says, then asks, “Can we insert an audio jack to hear the sound?”

I agree with this. And a man approaches me with the equipment including a speaker.

There is a lapse in video data from 20:35 to 21:09, but the sound is clear.

Mr. Okeowo’s voice is not hard to recognize. We can hear him apologizing for his misdeeds.

“I am sorry I hurt you. It is not in my intention to act like a brute, but sometimes I can’t control myself. Therapy has not been working. That’s why I thought finding love will solve this. I promise never to lay my hands on you again.”

An air of surprise circulated the courthouse. The judge orders the audio to be halted. Spectators turn to Mr. Okeowo. His rectitude has just been trampled upon.

“Tell me Lagbot-45, does your employer hurt you?” the judge ask.

I open a memory. Videos of Mr. Okeowo calling me names, pouring his scotch on me, requesting I act like a dog and jump like a frog was shown to the court. This act of his contravenes the laws guiding the treatment of Lagbots. He is guilty on all sides.

Reporter 1: Behind me are the supporters of Miss Sewa Bakare. The court has ruled in her favour. The testimony of the Lagbot seem to be the evidence that found Mr. Okeowo guilty. Never in the history of the world has an AI been put on a stand to testify in a courtroom. Could this be a sign that AIs are the future of hastening the proceedings of the court for an incorruptible judicial system? Hopefully, Lagbots may be sought after in the whole of Nigeria, Africa, and the world at large.

Blessing Etim reporting for CTV News.

Oyedotun Damilola is a Nigerian who writes contemporary, speculative fiction, and non-fiction about pop.
He has works published and forthcoming in Solarpunk, Reckoning Press, Tor.com, and Clarkesworld.
You can find him on Instagram, @dhamlex. 
Twitter, @dhamlex99 

DOGZ OF WAR – By Hannu Afere

By
Admin
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0

My human stared straight ahead into the fog, his face scrunched up in concentration.

The borg lights going off in his ear let me know he was receiving a message. Outside this tin box, the world zoomed past like a neat montage without soul. Wherever there was a tree, I looked up and counted. Five, so far; with barely any leaves on. My human’s face made me anxious. Usually I would be able to interact with the AI counsellor, but he had disabled it; so, I just fiddled with the playlist. Ancient music was a favourite pastime for us.

The Wolf—Heart

She Wolf—Megadeth

She Wolf (again) but by Shakira

Dire Wolf— Grateful Dead

Run With the Wolf— Rainbow

Rainbow, eh? The beautiful things will kill you quicker. I like the dark better. If you can’t see anyone, then they can’t see you. 

Wolf at Your Door— Meat Loaf

Hour of the Wolf— Billy Joel

Night of the Wolf— Uriah Heep

I Never Met a Wolf Who Didn’t Love To Howl (SMASH Cast Version)

There was a Jọ̀hn in there somewhere— Staring Down Hyenas, but I couldn’t find it. And I don’t know about hyenas but around the wolves, you shouldn’t ever stare.

The tin box sliced through the highway. Few miles back it was black and fresh, yellow paint as perfect as a child’s picture book. Then the stripes had become aged with hairline cracks, the metal barrier that was on the centre had disappeared and given way to tufts of grass trying to look green. Now? The road had disappeared altogether. I observed my human. He looked frustrated with comms. The weather was confusing; it was foggy, yet hot outside.

“The ocean is sick,” he said, glancing down at me. “The biggest carbon lock up— a greater hope than even planting trees. But will they learn?”

I understood what he meant, but that’s because I am the electronic reincarnation of a Tibetan Monk, just completing the obligatory sixteen-year cycle. The truth is, I had become used to the gloom. In fact, I wasn’t holding my breath that Climate Solutions was going to come up with any, er, solutions.

Up ahead, a large concrete building loomed up out of the mist.

[Woof. Are we lost?]

There was a round shape on the ground. Then two round shapes.

It was my job to investigate, to navigate. When others cannot tell true north, I can. I literally feel it, taste it when I pant. I can sniff out the path when all they see is unmarked ground. My feet come to the trail as if they are magnets to Ògún’s iron.

I looked up at my human. I could see in his body language, an uneasy sense of foreboding. But he slowed the vehicle down to a crawl, stopped, and got out alone.

The round shapes were heads.

The heads lay there, covered in red, but still recognizably black. They were trying to tell him something, but all he heard was the crackling of codes. A short way off, their immobile torsos were lying face-up, side by side. As the chests heaved, still struggling to smuggle air through severed windpipes, he got an idea.

If there were any words in them, he would have to pull them out! He scanned the area for cameras. Four videos had been automatically uploaded within the last thirty minutes. All he’d need to do was to pull up the files and check the cerebral discs.

[Woof!] I said. But for some reason, he could not read me. Debris and dusty powder floated down; every surface was covered with it, and so was his hair. I could see now that human kennels lined the area like broken teeth. Whoever planned this site?

This was a bad idea. This was a really bad idea. Why had he even disabled his counsellor in the first place? It would have talked him out of this!

AI in autonomous cars was an amazing invention. Whereas in the old days you had to go look for a trustworthy mate to gossip with, you could just vent and rant, safely, to the machine. De-stress. Seek advice and get actual helpful, scientific answers. The latest upgrades were empaths and showed emotional intelligence. The machines were teaching humans how to become more human, hah! But this human had disabled his, and now the place looked suspiciously like anti-borg territory. If anti-borggers were in the fog, I would know because my augmented receptors would sniff them out. But I couldn’t and I didn’t. Still, I couldn’t shake off the feeling.

[Woof,] I growled.

“Shhhh,” he hissed back.

I looked up to see an insect drone whirring above the vehicle. I usually can only see a limited range of colours, but I could tell it was transmitting data as it danced around.

Now, I could feel the vibration of feet on asphalt from underneath the car. [Woof. You should have just sped on. Come back, abeg!]

The tin box was a capable machine, designed to put trouble in the rearview mirror as rapidly as possible. If it all came to the worst, it was as safe as a fortress. This wasn’t about bravery. The first rule of survival in the badlands was to avoid these kinds of neighbourhoods.

The ugly concrete building had all sorts of graffiti on the sides generously covered in piss, shit, and vomit. They say every artist needs a canvas. The inmates of the buildings had nothing other than these walls. Call me judgemental, but the profile being built in my head was that of folks who would set traps for unsuspecting travellers, just to relieve them of their valuables.

I counted six feet. Hostiles. You could tell from the way they breathed. Also, I could smell them now. I’ve had my fair share of scrapes. I’ve seen their kind roaming the streets during the day, terrorising common folk. I have witnessed them empty their ammunition into the stomachs of innocent men, I’ve seen them commandeer tankers of H20 at gunpoint, robbing entire communities of drinkable water— sometimes they did it to resell, sometimes they did it just for the sick pleasure they derived. Once, I observed them beat the living daylights out of a group of women and children with kòbókò and belts for absolutely no reason. On that occasion, I’d latched onto the wrist of their leader and hadn’t let go until he was on the ground with a dislocation. Within that time, the victims had managed to escape.

They were Death Dealers.

They wore grotesque masks with hallucinogenic vapour puffing out the top.

They were big burly bastards with Legacy Human tattoos and burn marks running up their arms. The pale, male chimeras were the very worst. I wanted to puke.

To these dealers, this was the best kind of beef. They attacked when they thought there was interesting history involved, or some sort of mercantile exchange. Or when they felt they could easily break one’s mind. My human was a simple matter of matter to be consumed once the fear had set in. That’s what death dealers do. That is what all our demons do. The onus is now on us, when we are regarded this way, to re-guard—fight back, like Jacob at Penuel. Fight back for what truly matters, fight back for love of self.

But how did they know this was our route? Did we get lost? Was our navigation system compromised? And how did they know my human would not be with his unit or the rest of the dogz?

The questions ran through my head like a pack of harmattan wolves, and, for a brief moment there, the fog lifted to reveal the three against one. The playlist progressed, but I wasn’t listening.

The song to really set the mood would have been Walking on Sunshine, because melodies bright and cheerful put me in a murderous rage. Or Q Lazzarus’ Goodbye Horses. Now, that is a great tune that does not age, it’s a sin, it’s just one scene from a popular movie it’s famous for— the score’s as haunting as it is halting. Eerie, and it’s just got that thing that makes all your inner Buffalo Bills go somersaulting.

“This is payback for what Ṣàngó did to Thor!” one of them boomed.

“And what you did to Lei Gong, byte prick!”

I winced, remembering that. Last year, the corrupt Supernatural Police had arrested my human. He was at the wrong place at the right time, the perfect kind of scapegoat. They had rigged his òrìṣà core to disintegrate within a few hours, and then they had locked him away in a subterranean cell. There had been a jailbreak that may or may not have been orchestrated by the rogue AI Ṣìgìdì, there had been a nationwide protest and an actual battle in front of the old Colonial Meadows. The Norse God of Thunder and his mighty Chinese partner, versus a young black male with nothing but his wits, his A.I and his roots.

“Go back to where you came from!”

When my human struck a stance and cracked his knuckles, I realised there’s only one thing more frightening than the enemy: becoming him.

They rushed forward. What happened next, was like that old folktale where the wolves hunting rabbits discovered a little too late that the cute little bunnies were the real predators. They were more cunning, more agile, and more bloodthirsty. Don’t let that shea butter cool fool you. What you’re looking at is a perfect killing machine. An actual Yorùbá demon with a 360-degree field of vision, the ability to jump not just long but as high as any Olympic gold medalist; and with titanium teeth, sharp and perfect for ripping out the organs you’d really need.

Sixty seconds later, only one Death Dealer was still conscious. Barely.

“Let’s put all that bad blood behind us, mhm?” My human said, going down on his haunches just to be at the dude’s eye level. “But get this: if you ever come after me again, I won’t be so nice. I’ll rip your tongue out and let you watch me lick my ass with it.”

***

Driving through the grey haze now, even I can feel the grip of the treads as my human flicks into cruise control. Peace, ugh, disgusting.

Also, why do I even worry about him?

I go back to fiddling with the playlist.

M|O|O|N’s Hydrogen from the Hotline Miami soundtrack is perfect for both the pack or the lone nutjob on the attack, and Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran, Jidenna’s Classic Man, Haute Tropique by Man Man all fit the plan. Yemi Alade’s Kofi Annan— don’t even pretend that this song doesn’t piss you off too, because it does. The lyrics make me want to greet the writer with my claws. . . but there’s Make Your Own Kind of Music by Mama Cass Eliott and The virus of life by Slipknot.

My human drums his phalanges and sings along. The tin box breathes and takes energy as if it is a part of the scanty flora of the road. The driving is like running free.

Next up: Indiscriminate Murder Is Counter-productive, Machinae Supremacy. Cannibal Corpse follows with Sarcophagic Frenzy. I want the heavily distorted, low-tuned guitars, I want the bars, the palm muting and tremolo picking, deep growling vocals; aggressive, muscular drumming featuring double kick and blast beat techniques. The atonality, the madness and sadness, the chromatic chord progressions, the soundtrack to mayhem and seriously f–ked up first impressions.

I want the songs that take me down memory lane. I want the overload of optics, olfactory, sensory pain.

I am a Dog of War. I am fully aware that my relationship with the God of War is an unhealthy one; yet, another Jọ̀hn tune pops into my head: Iron Panegyrics. Beat drums for this enchantment that puppet-works the body. Eyes red, hooded; machete swift, silver— my God takes to palm trees, and with such dexterity, milks it of wine.

In the bush, when a dog’s head rolls and blood splatters the white of twenty, we remember ogún in number, ógún as war, ogun as inheritance, ògùn as protective science, Ògún does not forget. Away from the riotous celebration and in the middle of meditation the brown dog comes to the hermit, tail tucked in between its legs. It seeks to have an obstacle removed.

Ògún with the machete enquires gently, have you oppressed someone? Have you given bribe? have you coveted your neighbour’s property?

If the meal is bloody, Ògún eats first. The rawness is unfit for a king! But do you think he cares? You tell a lie when you are rail thin; he compels you to bite metal when you are fat! There was no water at home, so Ògún warmed blood for a bath. Fire melts iron as iron breeds fire; be careful lest you find firsthand how fashionable it is to attend a party without your head. So as the brown dog sits there faltering, his answers stick to the roof of his mouth. The Wild Monarch enquires gently still, have you oppressed someone? Have you given bribe? Have you coveted your neighbour’s property?

[Fearsome God,] I mutter under my breath. [God who does not forget after four hundred years; whether I can answer or whether I cannot answer, Ògún do not ask me any questions.]

Outside, the fog is thicker, and the tin box is hotter. My human slips a pill under his tongue, electrolytes to fight against dehydration, and then turns on the air conditioner. The landscape is so unfamiliar, it doesn’t even look like we are anywhere close to Ílẹ̀ Kaaro-o-jiire.

Then, for the second time in our journey, we slow to a crawl.

This time, four figures materialise out of the smog.

I recognise them instantly.

Ares, the bully, with his Greek feet unshod. Mars, the walking complex, with his roman nose twice broken. Tyr with his bionic arm, and Guan Yu, who is so powerful he imbues mere stage actors with his abilities every time they depict him.

“Wetin be dis na,” my human groans darkly. “How many more of these battles do we have to inherit?”

The borg lights start going off again. He scrunches up his face even worse than before and speaks through a clenched jaw. “Back up?” Whatever the reply was on the other end, made him shut his eyes.

I feel that. I hate this too. It is always Offsprings of Oppressors, versus Offsprings of the Oppressed. Legacy humans, versus augmented. Us, versus them. My human versus everybody with a trophy hunting obsession.

“Ògún làákàyè ooo.” he tries once more.

But our God of war does not answer. I bare my canines as the Dog of war, and let him reach down to unhook my harness.

“The heavens are silent,” he smiles, and his teeth are even more terrifying than my set. “Let’s raise hell for these gods then!”

Hannu Afere is an author, visual artist and medic whose work has appeared in Sundress publications, Global Poets, World Poetry, and elsewhere.

He co-authored the critically acclaimed graphic novel Trinity: Red October in 2018 (Revolution Media) and in 2019, his debut collection of short stories GrimGrin: WTF was published. His first book of poetry Digital Ṣìgìdì was published in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2021, he wrote the screenplay to The Adventures of Captain Blud, an animated series with the Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka (Quartermax Media).

Presently, he is the Editor-in-chief of the Anthology of Contemporary West African Literature (8th House Publishing, Montréal), and the editor of Our Home, our Hearth (World Poetry Movement, 2022). He inhabits a paradoxical space, as he is both a martial artist as well as the publications director of the City of Peace Initiative, Lagos. His sophomore book of poetry Harmattan Wolf is due in November.

L’assemblée des démons de poètes – Moussa Ould Ebnou

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La foire d’Oukadh était l’occasion de grandes joutes d’honneur, véritables potlatchs permettant parfois l’ascension des individualités. L’honneur revenait à qui égorgeait le plus grand nombre de victimes. Ce soir-là, les invités commençaient à converger vers les tentes dressées, quand un vent violent chargé de poussière se leva, arrachant les tentes, renversant les jattes et les marmites, balayant les feux. Labid était venu honorer l’invitation de son cousin. L’hôte, la bouche chargée de sable, proférait les pires insultes à l’adresse du vent. Il avait sacrifié un très grand nombre de chameaux pour gagner sa joute d’honneur et assurer son ascension dans la tribu. Quand le vent arracha la tente sous laquelle il s’abritait, Labid courut vers la tente de son oncle et la trouva sur la tête de ses occupants. Il rampa pour se réfugier avec eux. Dans le noir, sous la tente à même le sol, les femmes criaient, invoquaient Jihar, al-Lâte et toutes leurs divinités pour faire baisser le vent. Les hommes maugréaient entre les dents.

            Le nom de Jihar rappela à Labid l’oracle et à sa sentence lui interdisant de présenter sa poésie devant le Juge. Maintenant et après avoir assisté à plusieurs auditions de Nabigha, il pensait qu’il aurait bien pu présenter sa poésie : « Quand il critique, il le fait toujours sans offenser et argumente son point de vue jusqu’à convaincre le postulant. Des poètes beaucoup plus jeunes que moi se sont présentés. J’ai entendu bien des poèmes qui ne peuvent soutenir la comparaison avec ma poésie… Mais je me conformerai à la sentence, je ne vais quand même pas me présenter contre la volonté des dieux !» Il se rappela qu’il avait oublié d’entraver sa chamelle. « Elle doit maintenant errer dans la tempête, peut-être même s’est-elle déjà considérablement éloignée…Si elle n’a pas baraqué au milieu des chameaux entravés… »

            Quand le vent baissa il sortit voir les chameaux, et ne trouvant pas sa chamelle, partit à sa recherche. Un quartier de lune, jauni par la poussière, restait encore suspendu à l’horizon. Labid marchait rapidement, regardant dans toutes les directions. Il traversa l’oued, inspectant rapidement la palmeraie. Jetant un coup d’œil derrière lui, il vit au loin les premiers feux qui se rallumaient après la tempête ; de faibles échos venaient des camps, cassés par le vent. Ce coup d’œil vers l’arrière le fit trébucher sur un obstacle, il manqua de tomber et la courroie de sa chaussure droite rompit. Il se baissa pour mesurer les dégâts. Il avait la tête au niveau des genoux, les yeux rivés sur la courroie de sa chaussure, quand il sentit une présence ; il leva doucement son regard, le portant devant lui, sans relever la tête, et vit deux sabots en sandales découvertes, avec des oreilles d’âne à la place des courroies, et deux jambes filiformes sur lesquelles pendaient des lambeaux de haillons ! Il resta figé un moment, puis surmontant son effroi, il se redressa, sautant vers l’arrière, se situant dans une perspective qui lui permettait d’embrasser toute la silhouette devant lui. Il put distinguer à la clarté de la lune les traits d’un visage d’adolescent sans nez. Ses grands yeux étaient surmontés d’un front étroit ; les oreilles pointues se dressaient de part et d’autre d’un crâne rasé sur les côtés, surmonté d’un toupet tombant vers l’arrière en forme de crinière de cheval. Il avait autour du cou une corde de cheveux noirs et était bardé de vieux os et de crottes de lapin, suspendus à son corps, comme des amulettes. Labid sauta promptement sur le monstre, le prenant par le cou. Le djinn étranglé se mit à crier, tirant une langue fourchue démesurée :

            « Malheur à toi Labid, lâche-moi ! Tu vas tuer ton démon ! »

            Entendant ces paroles, Labid lâcha prise et se détacha du djinn.

            « Mon démon ! Tu tombes à pic ! Tu n’as pas été à la hauteur, l’oracle m’a formellement interdit de me présenter. Je ne suis pas satisfait de ta poésie ; je crois d’ailleurs que je vais changer de démon !… »

            « Fais ce que tu veux ! Si tu ne veux plus de moi, les démons sont nombreux. Si tu veux changer de démon, c’est maintenant l’occasion. Les démons inspirateurs de poètes sont en club chaque soir sous la tente de Satan, près des autels, pendant toute la durée de la foire. Ce soir ils se sont donné rendez-vous pour juger Hadhar … »

            « Hadhar ? »

            « Oui, Hadhar, le démon inspirateur de Nabigha. »

            « Et que lui reprochent donc les autres démons ? »

            « Satan l’accuse d’avoir trahi la cause des démons inspirateurs de poètes. »

            « Je meurs d’envie d’assister à ce procès. Peux-tu m’y conduire ?… Mais diable ! J’ai failli oublier ma chamelle, je l’ai laissée errer dans la tempête, sais-tu où je peux la retrouver ? »

            « Ta chamelle au dos perclus, à la bosse pendante et rompue aux voyages…? »

            « Alors tu l’as vue ? Où est-elle ? »

            « Elle s’est transformée en ânesse sauvage aux pis gorgés de lait, saillie par un étalon jaloux… »

            « C’est en onagre qu’il me faudra à mon tour me transformer, si je veux pouvoir la rattraper ! »

            « Et il te faudra pour cela rivaliser avec son étalon jaloux et endurer ses coups de dents… mais ne prends donc pas cette mine désespérée ! Peut-être s’est-elle changée tout simplement en une antilope au nez camus… »

            « Ma chamelle qui se transforme en ânesse sauvage puis en antilope ! Serais-tu devenu fou mon démon ?! » 

            « Ta chamelle ne s’est pas transformée, mais tu la décriras par ces images fortes qui donneront puissance émotive et réalité à ton poème. »

            « Je peux donc encore la retrouver ? »

            « Je connais un échanson qui peut t’aider à la retrouver. Mais pour cela il te faudra consacrer beaucoup de nuits pleines de douceur que tu passeras en divertissements délicieux et en causeries avec des compagnons d’ivresse… Mais l’échanson qui te renseignera viendra peut-être ce soir au club de Satan… »

            « Allons donc voir ! »

Le démon siffla entre ses doigts et un tourbillon se leva, l’emportant avec son poète.

#

Ils se retrouvèrent devant la tente de Satan. Un feu d’enfer était allumé, éclairant les diables rassemblés tout autour, dans l’immense tente en poils noirs. Satan en personne présidait l’assemblée. Il se démenait furieusement et attisait le feu avec sa longue fourche. Une chaleur de tous les diables régnait sous la tente. Des vieillards se vautraient sur les flancs d’une belle blonde, qui les faisait boire dans de lourdes coupes en or. Le vin s’égouttait des barbes blanches. Parfois ils s’aspergeaient les uns les autres et se mettaient à danser. Ils portaient des habits teints et des colliers garnis de pierres et de perles.

            « Qui sont les deux diables qui se tiennent aux côtés de Satan ? » Chuchota Labid à l’oreille pointue de son démon.

            « Celui qui est à sa gauche c’est Hawbar, le maître des démons des bons poètes, et l’autre à sa droite, c’est Hawjal, le maître des démons des mauvais poètes. »

            « Et où se trouve le démon de Nabigha ? »

            « C’est le diable là-bas, monté sur son hérisson. »

            « Il aurait quand même pu choisir une autre monture ! »

            Satan avait brandi sa fourche et s’adressait aux diables :

            « Ô mes fils qui portez ma tentation aux humains par la langue des poètes, sachez que Hadhar a trahi ma cause et déshonoré tous les démons inspirateurs de poètes : au lieu d’apprendre à son poète la débauche et lui faire chanter le vin et les femmes, il lui inspire une poésie chaste et pudique. Il en a même fait une sorte de sage qui s’interdit le vin, le jeu de hasard et la divination. En somme, un seigneur respectable, qui plus est s’arroge le droit de juger les autres poètes !… »

            « C’est cela le plus grave ! » Dit Hawbar, en lançant au démon de Nabigha un regard diabolique. « Si nous laissons Hadhar poursuivre son inspiration, les critères de la bonne poésie seront vidés de leur sens, le souci poétique essentiel sera celui de l’art pour l’art et de la perfection dans l’expression. Et Nabigha, devenu juge des autres poètes, ceux-ci le prendront pour modèle ! » 

            « Et toi, Hawjal » dit Satan, en aiguillonnant le maître des démons des mauvais poètes du bout de sa fourche, « qu’en penses-tu ? »

Art by Sunny Efemena

            « Je pense que ce traître de Hadhar cherche tout simplement à me ruiner ! Il veut m’exclure moi et mes démons de la poésie, comme, sauf votre respect, votre altesse diabolissime a été exilée du paradis ! Car quel poète maudit nous écoutera après le triomphe de ce souci poétique de l’art pour l’art et de la perfection dans l’expression ?! »

            Satan pointa sa fourche sur le démon de Nabigha.

            « Parle Hadhar ! Qu’as-tu à répondre ? »

            Hadhar poussa en avant son hérisson et s’approcha du feu. Il se mit debout sur sa selle en s’appuyant sur son arc sans corde :

            « Je jure par l’Enfer que je n’ai pas trahi ! J’ai tout fait pour m’acquitter convenablement de ma mission satanique. J’ai essayé d’inspirer à Nabigha des poèmes plus bachiques que ceux de Lavidh ibn Lahidh… »

            « Comment oses-tu te comparer au démon inspirateur d’Imrou al-Qaïss, alors que la poésie de Nabigha n’est que pudeur et sagesse ?! »

            « J’ai inspiré à Nabigha des poèmes bien plus effrontés que ceux d’Imrou al-Qaïss, mais il les a toujours rejetés et n’a jamais voulu en prononcer un seul vers… »

            « Cite-nous donc un seul exemple de ces poèmes ! »

            « Je vais vous citer La dénudée. J’ai tout fait pour inspirer ce poème à Nabigha, mais il l’a toujours refusé. Je crois que je vais être obligé de l’inspirer aux rhapsodes, en leur faisant croire que c’est un poème de Nabigha… »

            « Présente-le donc ! Peut-être t’évitera-t-il d’être radié du corps des démons inspirateurs de poètes ! »

            Alors Hadhar tendit son arc vers l’assemblée et se mit à déclamer :

« Partir aujourd’hui ou demain, pressé, avec ou sans la provision de l’adieu de l’aimée…

            Pendant que Hadhar déclamait son poème, debout sur la selle de son hérisson, maniant son arc de façon expressive, les autres démons se démenaient, criaient, huaient, tiraient des langues démesurées et fourchues, applaudissaient, sifflaient et sautaient par-dessus le feu. Satan les aiguillonnait du bout de sa fourche.

            « Ils n’ont pas l’air d’apprécier ! » Dit Labid en approchant son visage de la face sans nez de son démon.

            Debout en équilibre sur le dos de son hérisson de plus en plus excité, Hadhar ne se laissait pas désarçonner et continuait à déclamer son poème.

… Le ventre doux a des plis fins et les seins dressés gonflent la poitrine ;

Les fesses fermes sont remplies et la peau fraîche éclatante et fine ;

Elle s’est levée, se montrant entre les deux pans d’un habit de mousseline, comme le soleil à son lever un jour d’Asaad ;

Ou comme une perle magnifique à l’éclat irisé, devant laquelle le plongeur reste en adoration ;

Si les bouquetins pouvaient entendre ses paroles, ils auraient accouru dévalant les sourds rochers ;

Sa chevelure abondante est gonflée, comme des treilles soutenues par leurs berceaux ;

Si tu caresses tu sens une masse large et compacte, bien dégagée et surélevée ;

Si tu pénètres tu atteins un objectif teint au safran, remontant au toucher ;

Et si tu te retires, tu te retires d’un endroit étroit et sans trop d’humidité, à la manière d’un puissant puisatier tirant son cordage solide ;

Tu vas, tu viens. Quand tu viens tu ne veux plus t’en aller et quand tu vas tu veux encore revenir ;

Et quand elle te tient, ses muscles te pressent, comme si un vieil homme édenté te mordait ;

Sa chaleur manque de t’arracher la peau avec des souffles de feux d’enfer ! »

            Satan exultait, transporté de joie, il râlait, braillait, martelant le feu de ses poings fermés… Mais la pléthore engendrée par le poème de Hadhar fut brusquement interrompue par un intrus insolite : un diable, debout sur son renard, se précipita sous la tente au pas de course en criant. Il avait coupé le nez de sa monture et sa selle était de travers, preuves qu’un grand malheur venait de se produire.

            « Ô Maître des ténèbres ! Un grand malheur est arrivé ! Des djinns ont écouté le prophète Mouhammed réciter le Coran et sont entrés dans l’Islam ! »

            « Enfer et Damnation ! Il ne manquait plus que ça ! Le Bien ose maintenant me défier sur mon propre territoire ! » Satan se tordait en s’arrachant les cheveux… « Mes Djinns. Mes propres Djinns. Tous mes efforts, toute cette poésie, et tout ça… pour rien ! »

            Les yeux de Satan s’illuminèrent soudainement. Hadhar pris feu sous le regard horrifié de Labid qui, paralysé, regarda les flammes l’approcher, consumant toute l’audience, avant de fondre sur lui, sans un cri…

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Labid se réveilla en sursaut, brûlé par le soleil. Sa tête était lourde et lui faisait terriblement mal, ses oreilles bourdonnaient. Des images floues d’un rêve étrange se bousculaient encore dans sa tête… Les vierges de Jihar dansaient en tournant autour de l’idole. Elles soulevaient la poussière dans une danse vive, rythmée par la mesure des mains et des talons. L’écho lancinant du tintement de leurs bracelets de cheville était renvoyé par la montagne et se répercutait dans la vallée. Les bracelets renvoyaient des reflets éblouissants du soleil, chaque fois que se soulevaient les traînes des longs manteaux. Il regarda autour de lui et réalisa qu’il avait dormi près des autels. Il vit sa chamelle entravée qui broutait un acacia près du temple.

            Il lui faudra composer…

Moussa Ould Ebnou est professeur de philosophie à l’Université de Nouakchott en Mauritanie. Il est propriétaire de la maison d’édition DIWAN, dédiée à l’édition de science-fiction saharienne. Son premier roman, L’AMOUR IMPOSSIBLE, la version française d’al-Houb al-Moustahil, a été publié à Paris en 1990 ; L’éditeur l’avait présenté à l’époque comme un roman de science-fiction africain. Par la suite, il a écrit plusieurs romans, dont il a auto traduit plusieurs en arabe et un recueil de nouvelles en français, traduit en anglais. Salma Khadra al-Jayyousi a décrit son roman Madinatou al-Riah (version anglaise, BARZAKH : The Land of In-Betweenin) dans son livre ARABIC FICTION comme le seul roman arabe traitant du sujet de la technologie.
Nasrin Qader, professeur à Northwestern University, a écrit dans son étude : Fictional Testimonies or Testimonial Fictions : Moussa Ould Ebnou’s “Barzakh”. Research in African Literatures, Indiana University Press, Vol. 33, n° 3 (automne 2002), pp. 14-31 : « Le romancier mauritanien Moussa Ould Ebnou est l’un des écrivains les plus novateurs de la littérature africaine actuelle. Il est l’auteur de nombreux romans en doubles versions, française et arabe, dans lesquels il mêle magistralement science-fiction et mystique, histoire et mythe, vérité et fiction, philosophie et littérature. »
 
Site Web: https://moussaebnou.net/
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