Page 114 of Death of the Author

“We’ve been here before,” Ijele finally said. “We were trapped together and we became stronger from it. We will find a way out of this.”

In so many ways, we were one. But the fact was, Ghosts and Humes couldn’t truly coexist. The only end to this war would come when one side won or they’d both destroy each other. And whichever it came to, the Trippers would then finish us all off. Still, I tried my best to protect both myself and Ijele. Just after the incident where I’d been taken to the prayer shack, out of paranoia I’d created something. I went to one of the forest scrap pits and found a piece of metal. And from it I created a sort of hood that fit magnetically around my eyes, blocking my view of the sky. If it ever thundered and I was with others, I could slip this hood on and avoid Ijele looking away from the lightning and keep my lights from flashing blue. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I hooked it to a notch on my hip and carried it around like a lucky charm.

“The humans are gone,” I said, touching the hood I’d made. “This may be our turn.”

“We haven’t had as long as they did,” Ijele replied.

“No. We haven’t.”

We stared over Cross River City, a city that was really a jungle. A beautiful, doomed place, like every place on Earth. Doom, doom, doom.

45

#Adventure

Zelu lay on her bed, flipping through her own novel. She’d open to a random page and read a passage, and the scene would flood through her memory like water. When you wrote and edited and polished something so many times, it became branded into your brain. It took only a few words to bring it all back, despite the fact that she hadn’t reread the novel in years, since it was published. Yet she still could not summon book two.

She rarely went on social media these days because the harassment was so annoying. She could post a random quote, a response to something in the news, a photo of a dolphin, even a passive-aggressive comment about theRusted Robotsfilm, and eighty percent of the responses would be along the lines of “We don’t care about anything you say. Shut up and give us book two.” But she couldn’t give what wasn’t there. That was just a fact. She wrote short stories (that she never submitted anywhere), she journaled, she sketched, she took notes, but none of this led her down what she’d mentally started calling her “robot runway.” She wanted to get there more than anyone, but it was what it was. She wished everyone would shut the fuck up and leave her be. Including her “gently nudging” editor and agent.

She read through the beginning of her first novel again, visualizing Ankara’s green face screen in her mind. Feeling her. She seemed close enough for Zelu to touch. “Turn back, Ankara,” Zelu said with a laugh as she read. “Lagos is not a good place to be right now.” She maneuvered herself onto her back, thinking about where she wished she were right now.The Galapagos Islands, she thought. She’d always wanted to swim with the aquatic iguanas that looked like miniature Godzillas.Or maybe all alone on a small but luxurious yacht run by robots and AI, out in the middle of the ocean, where there’s nothing in sight but blue water and sunshine. Well, maybe Msizi could be there, too, if he wanted. Yeah, I like that.

She leaned her head back against her bed’s aqua-blue cushioned headrest and shut her eyes.Outer space. In the black void. The Earth beneath me. Free.She pinched her chin, enjoying the idea. She thought of the Chargers inRusted Robots. They were able to travel the universe forever. The sane ones, at least. “What would that be like?” she whispered to herself. The freedom of it. The being of it. Untethered from Earth, the mother ship.I can imagine it, she thought. She blinked as it softly settled in her mind like a tiny organic spaceship from another solar system. She nodded to herself, realizing it.I want to do more than imagine it.

Instead, she picked up her phone and doomscrolled for a while. Then, she didn’t know how she got there, but she wound up on a website full ofRusted Robotsfanfiction. There were hundreds of works written by people frustrated that there was no book two, who’d taken it upon themselves to produce one. There were chapters, short stories, novellas, and even thirty full novels! All posted for everyone to read and comment on. She frowned, knowing she should click away. Knowing she should leave her fans to have their fun and revel in her worlds the way they chose to.Leave it alone, Zelu muttered.Leeeeeeave.

But she didn’t leave. She kept reading. And she kept fucking reading. By the time she got to the novel titledYankee and Dot Fall in Love in New New York, which had been downloaded more than a thousand times, she was gnashing her teeth and holding back tears. “No, no, no!” she groaned.Only one short story she saw called her characters Ankara and Ijele. Everyone else was using the film as the foundation. How was this possible? These were readers, right? If they were writers, weren’t they usually also readers? She squeezed her eyes shut and took several deep breaths before finally breathing the word “Clarity.” She still felt like crying, though. “Fuck this shit,” she whispered.

She pulled up her email application, quickly wrote a message, and hit Send before she could overthink it. She turned her head to look at the lake stretched out beneath her condo. “Would be cool,” she whispered to herself. To get away from the world and everyone on it with their bullshit. To go to a place where no guns were necessary.

Minutes later, her phone chimed with an email. A response. Already! She skimmed the message and then read it seven times. Then she sat there with her mouth hanging open.What did I just do?

Jack Preston’s response said,I washopingI’d hear from you! You ready to do that thing that’s bigger?Then he quoted back to her the very words she’d said on that terrifying night in Nigeria when she was running for her life:I’d be more prepared in outer space than all of you who can walk. And then Jack asked if she was ready to go, because he was putting together the group of civilian astronauts for his company’s next mission.

Zelu wasn’t going to respond to him. But he didn’t bother waiting for her response, calling her a half hour later. Despite the more rational part of her, which knew this would only lead to trouble, her incessant curiosity convinced her to pick up. She was surprised to find that she enjoyed the conversation they had. Jack’s enthusiasm and genuine nerdiness for the program was infectious, even to her. The first mission that she’d turned down had gone well. On this next one, he himself would be the fifth civilian astronaut. He’d gone on and on about how it was going to raise money and awareness for the climate change and heart disease research funds he’d put together. Honestly, Zelu didn’t really understand or care about this. Her motives were more self-driven. But it was nice to listen to someone so ambitious and optimistic about the future. Jack had a lot of projects hewas looking forward to, including the construction of a new hospital and public university in Nigeria. Both would receive funding generated by the momentum of this next adventure into the cosmos. “Progress both ways,” he said. “On the ground and beyond our planet. Zelu, join me,please. Bethatsci-fi writer. I want to do this with you.”

“I hate roller coasters,” she blurted. “Ever heard of an astronaut, civilian or otherwise, who can’t stand roller coasters?”

“We can train that out of you,” he said. “You learned how to use those exos, right? All it takes is training and ambition. See, the difference between NASA and #Adventure is that NASA will do everything to show that you aren’t good enough, and with #Adventure, we’ll do everything to make itpossible. If you want it, you can get it.”

By the time she got off the phone, she was overwhelmed. She’d written Jack on a whim, but she’d known how he’d respond. Now she’d set something in motion, just when her life had been settling.Why’d I just do that?, she wondered. But she knew the answer to that, too. Oh yes, she knew. She wasn’t finding book two here. Maybe she’d find it somewhere else.

Msizi pressed his temples and groaned. Zelu licked her lips, trying to figure out what more she could say to somehow make this conversation less painful. But nothing came. She’d told him everything, and even as she’d said it, she’d wondered if maybe she was making a terrible mistake. She hadn’t thought this through, and she knew it. And yet, she couldn’t find it in herself to hit the brakes.Telling Msizi now, it all began to feel real. She reached out to take his hand, but he pulled back, jumping to his feet.

“Zelu, let me understand this,” he said, his voice louder than usual. He shook his head, striding to the large window that overlooked Lake Michigan. “Oh my God,” he muttered. Then he said something in Zulu. Zelu caught only the last part, which she knew was equivalent to “Fuck!”

“What?” she said. “Understand what?”

“Youreached out tohim?”

“Yeah. It was spontaneous, but I—”

A vein in his forehead looked ready to burst. “After all that’s happened... Mind you, the Nigerian madness happened because of your impulsiveness, too!”

Zelu flinched. Msizi had never blamed her for that before. He sounded like Chinyere.

“Says the man who returns to Durban every two months,” she snapped back. “I guess when you do it, it’s not ‘impulsive.’”

“I’mfromthere!” he shouted. “I know where I’m supposed to go and what I’m supposed to leave alone.”

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