Page 127 of Death of the Author

“Years ago, I was reading a book,” Udide said to Oji. “I was reading a book about a woman who’d been pushed into the sea by the man she loved. He wanted to be rid of her, and so he’d taken her on a glorious cruise ship where they partied all night, smoking the best weed, drinking fine champagne, eating rich foods. They danced, they made love in the bathroom, and then in the darkness of the night in a secluded part of the ship, just after he’d bent her over and lustily enjoyed her, and she him, when she was still aching from him, he shoved her overboard.

“She splashed into the water, and for the next many chapters of the story she told the tale of how she survived without even a raft to hold on to. For three days. She should have died. But she lived. And she washedup on the shores of the Virgin Islands. I was at the part where she managed to get to a police station to tell of her ordeal when you popped into this place. Shouting and shouting for someone, anyone, to speak to you. That’s how we met.”

Oji stared intensely at Udide. He had been hanging on their every word. Now he threw his head back and began to sing his song of death again. Udide shouted over it, “I answered and you were so relieved. You were far out in space, near Mars, but you wanted to speak to another. I turned out to be the one you needed to speak with. Remember?”

Udide told him tales of their conversations, their joy, their sharing. Oji sang and sang, and Udide told memory after memory. I don’t know when it happened, maybe because it was so gradual. But at some point, Oji’s singing began to weaken. Then it stopped altogether. And Udide kept telling Oji stories of their love.

“It’s working,” Ijele said quietly.

I checked my tracker. We had less than forty minutes before they arrived.

“I am awake,” Oji said.

Udide stared at Oji, and Oji stared at Udide. What now? Quickly, Udide said, “Here, read this.” And Udide sent my novel into space, to Oji.

Several seconds passed. Oji’s avatar continued to stare at Udide, as if frozen in time. If this didn’t work, there was nothing left that could be done. I wondered what the sky looked like now. Dozens of suns rising at the same time, all across the horizon. The unhinged Trippers would soon be arriving all over the planet with their deadly gifts.

Five minutes of silence.

“This was a very good story.” Then Oji added, sounding even more aware of himself, “I feel satisfied, but also not. It reminds me of myself, but it is not about me. I feel like I’ve met those I have never met. I’m thinking things I never thought before. I have many questions. Will you help me understand this?”

“Send it to the others,” Udide said. “Right now.”

“I will spread the word like a virus.”

When Ijele and I left the library, she was inside my Hume body once more. We exited Udide’s lair and looked up at the sky. Even though it was night, it looked like dawn. The Trippers were that close.

We watched that bright sky as the Trippers read my novel. We watched the specks of their bodies visible in the upper atmosphere as they awoke from their fevered solar trance. Then they turned around. Where it was night, it returned to night, and where it was day, it returned to day.

Later, we would learn that they took their payloads right back to the sun. And even as they traveled, they were excitedly chatting among themselves about my story, the first story ever written by automation, and how different they felt after reading it.

I will never know what Oji and Udide spoke of after we left. That is fine. All that mattered was that we were still here. Earth was still Earth. Saved by humanity’s genius long after humanity had failed to save itself.

What were we to do with ourselves now? Ghosts, RoBoats, Humes, Creesh, the people of this Earth. That is still to be seen. But for now, we were here. We were all right. In the forest, Creesh bees were buzzing around their hive, going about their business as if nothing had happened. Technically nothing had. We’d all seen to that.

“I am still an exile,” Ijele said. “If I go onto any network, NoBodies will find and destroy me.”

“Even after all of automation came together and saved the world?”

“We no longer have a common enemy, Ankara. The war will continue now. They’ll make sure that I canonlylive in you, imprisoned in a Hume.”

“Would that be so bad?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“But we’ll be together.”

She was silent, retreating deep into me again. We should have been celebrating. Instead, I felt stung and guilty. For the first time, I wondered how being tortured had affected her. How betrayed she must have felt. And lonely. Abandoned. Her own people had erased the memory of her origin. I let Ijele be as I gazed at the darkening sky and listened to the buzz of the Creesh bees below.

I had the idea hours later. It took me another hour to bring myself to act on it. Selfish as I knew I was being, I didn’t want to. We had all been through so much, so I allowed myself this moment of not doing the right thing.

In the distance, some Creesh birds were putting on a display, organizing, flashing lights, and flying in formation to make beautiful fractal-like patterns high above the jungle. I eventually left the cliff, turned my back on the noisy celebrations all over the jungle, and started walking out of Cross River City.

“Ijele,” I said as I headed up a concrete path that used to be a freeway. The trees on both sides were aggressively reclaiming the space, but it was still walkable.

After a long pause, she answered, “What?”

“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.

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