Page 15 of Death of the Author

Oji responded not with an answer, but with a request. He asked to come meet Udide in person. Udide was delighted.

Oji came to Earth on a bright and clear afternoon. Udide didn’t call what they felt for each other love, but automation was capable of such an emotion, and it was in the subtext as they told me about this day. Oji stayed for only a few hours. He met a few of Udide’s Creesh and was intrigued by them. When he left—for Chargers are robots who sometimes return to Earth but always leave—Udide was changed.

Chargers are adventurers. Regardless of what they have now become, they were originally built by human beings, and they inherited the desire to always surpass one another, do what no one has done. Recently, a group of Chargers had come across a comet made of some kind of metal they’d never scanned before. Upon closer inspection, they realized that the metal could survive the intense heat of a star. They signaled other Chargers, including Oji, and they all descended onto the comet like insects and mined more than half of it. They built themselves new skins using it. The metal was thin and light; it had no color and was easily shaped. Oji thought it was beautiful in its transparency. Humanity had built Chargers to withstand the cold vacuum of space, but now Chargerscould do so much more. With this skin, they could in theory travel even into the center of the sun.

Oji didn’t know what would happen when they tried. No Charger had attempted this before and lived. But Oji promised that if the sun contained the answers Udide sought, he would relay them, even if it was the last thing he signaled before he melted.

The day it happened, Udide looked up and listened. The sun was bright and the day was cloudless. There was no sign of what was about to occur, but Udide imagined they could see tiny specks near the sun—Oji and his comrades about to go on their trip.

Oji had opened his audio line to Udide so they could listen as he descended into the star, but muted Udide so he wouldn’t be distracted. So all Udide could do was listen as the Chargers approached that fiery, exploding surface of volatile hydrogen. Heat became a sound, and it rushed through the speakers like a great beast’s roar.

And then Udide heard it all. They heard those Chargers change from exhilarated to utterly mad. Every single one of them. And as they went mad, they began to sing a strange song.

In a panic, Udide sent a signal asking for a survey of Oji’s body. It returned with something very strange: his comet-forged skin remained perfectly intact, but something else was forming, right in his midsection, like a human pregnancy. A great ball of nuclear plasma.

Udide sent a plea to him to release the ball in his belly. “Let it out!” they had said. The only response—the last signal Udide received from Oji—was a notification that the audio link had been manually terminated.

That night, Udide sat in silence in Lagos’s center, in their beautiful metal tunnel that was lit a soft blue at night by solar lights they had installed. Not because they didn’t have night vision but for purely aesthetic purposes, similar to the way humans used to plant flowers around their homes.

Over and over, Udide listened to the audio recording they had madebefore Oji cut his signal. And they began to understand the song. As these Chargers reveled in the roiling plasma of the sun’s core, all of them had begun to sing a song about the Earth. They sang of coming to Earth “to spread the joy, to bring the light.” And when they did, that “light” would destroy the planet many times over. It was a death song, a song devoid of logic or memory. If a robot could become a zombie, that’s what these Chargers now were, including poor Oji. Udide decided to call them Trippers, because they’d taken their trip to the sun’s core and survived, but weren’t the same.

All these things Udide told me. Of their life, their travels, the terrible information. And when they finished, they showed me an image taken with a powerful telescope somewhere overseas. I could actually see one of the Trippers in this image. If you know where to look, they are indeed out there. Out in the far reaches of space, a robot is glowing like a tiny star, its midsection shining brightest.

Below the image, in red blocky numbers, was a countdown Udide had calculated. A countdown to when they’d reach Earth. They were coming. It said they’d arrive in 1,008 days—less than three years. All automation needed to be ready to protect, even defend, the planet. There wasn’t much time.

Udide regretted that they had held on to this information for a while. They didn’t want to cause immediate chaos among automation. But as the time of reckoning slowly but steadily approached, Udide knew they had to release it to the rest of us. So they put out a signal that only a curious robot would pick up. Especially a robot who appreciated a story. They trusted Humes more than any others, for Humes believed in the physical and had an attachment to Earth. I was the first, Udide told me, to pick up and respond to the signal.

“Present what I’ve told you to your Hume leader in Cross River City, in... person,” Udide said. We both paused at the wordperson. “Show them the countdown. I cannot go there and be properly heard. I’m not aHume. Your leader will have connections with other automation leaders. Will you go?”

“Yes,” I said.

Udide was right that a Hume would be more readily heard when presenting this terrible information, but I also suspected that Udide wasn’t ready to leave the cave they had so meticulously built. I chose not to point this out.

I had never been to Cross River City. It was a thriving posthuman metropolis said to be populated entirely by Humes. Though I’m a Hume, I’m also a Scholar, so I’ve never felt compelled to seek a permanent residence with others of my kind. Stories were always my way of connecting with other like-minded robots. Wherever I went, stories were my way to find where I belonged.

However, this terrible information overshadowed that part of my programming. I had to present it to the Hume leader in Cross River City so that something could be done before it was too late. Udide had given me a mission, and now I had to save the world.

This terrible information was a hard thing to know, but Udide understood that well. Before I found them, they’d held this knowledge for quite some time, unsure of how or who to tell. What a burden that must have been. Maybe that is why they chose to remain deep in their cave. If you learned earth-shattering information like this, what wouldyoudo?

7

Autonomy

The sun beat down on Zelu as she waited on the curb in front of the house for the robot to arrive.

It was mid-July, and it was ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit and what felt like 100 percent humidity. As uncomfortable as she was, Zelu was used to it. She was a Chicagoan, which meant she was used to every weather extreme except hurricanes. The problem was that sometimes she just wasn’t prepared for it. What had she been thinking when she’d put on jeans instead of shorts on a day like this? She was sure her legs were slowly roasting under the thick, dark fabric. She was wearing a blue tank top, and even her exposed arms were frying.

“Why don’t you wait inside?” her mother asked, coming out. “Whoo! So hot! It’s not healthy.”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Zelu said. “I don’t know how long it’ll wait for me if I’m not already here.” She looked at the app just as it notified her. “It’s arriving.”

They both looked up the street now. Zelu couldn’t keep the grin offher face. This was so fucking cool. A sleek white SUV was coming toward them. No one was in the driver’s seat.

“You sure about this?” her mother asked.

“Yeah, Mom,” she said. “It’s research for my novel... sort of.”

“You should just stay home. Watch a movie. Read a book.”

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