Page 28 of Death of the Author

“You’re a human,” I replied. “You must understand.”

She did. And over the hours, as she bolted, rewired, cut, and soldered, I listened, enthralled, nourishing myself with her tales. Ngozi told me of her dreams, her adventures, her loves, her family.

“The other Humes are gone,” I told her. “The protocol...”

“Is done,” Ngozi said. The Purge command had been sent out only once. Once was all that was needed. Or so its originator thought. The robots who’d attacked me hadn’t finished their job. Maybe the protocol’s originator had underestimated how long it would take to destroy all Humes. With the command complete, automation had returned to its usual patterns. But whatever the reason, I was still alive.

Ngozi didn’t seem troubled by any of this. She was content to use her skills to heal my body, part by part. Then she attached a wire to my core. “I’m going to charge you,” she explained. “It’ll be best if you sleep during this.”

I did as she asked, cutting off the feed for my sound and sight. It wasn’t until I felt her hands prying the wire from my chest that I rose again.

“Can you hear us, Ijele?” she asked.

I snapped my eyes open. “Ijele?”

Then I heard it again. That tinny voice projected through my speaker so that the human could hear it, too. “Salutations,” it said.

The voice was coming from inside me. I shuddered, overcome with revulsion as I sat up. “What is this?” I demanded of Ngozi.

“An AI named Ijele,” she answered. “I’ve uploaded her into your network.”

I froze, her words sinking in at the same time I felt it. There was something else living within me—not inside my physical “skin,” but in my network, my very mind!

Losing my rusted body had been one thing. These new legs and bolts weren’t my own, but I still knew that I was myself. But this—an AI crawling inside my mind, opening my files, seizing control of my systems—was too much to bear.

The human was standing beside me. She didn’t seem very concernedby what she had just said. Didn’t she realize the grotesque violation she had performed? Didn’t she understand that I would rather have been destroyed than be like this?

I grabbed her by the throat. I could have crushed her quickly or slowly, drawing out her suffering. She was the last human being on Earth, but I might very well be the last Hume, and she had just doomed me. And in dooming me, she doomed us all.

Ngozi’s eyes bulged with terror, but not as much terror as I would have expected. Her voice was hoarse beneath my grip as she whispered, “It was the only way to fix you.”

“Fix me?!” I tightened my hand another millimeter. “You’ve introduced a Ghost into my private network!” The reality of this washed over me even as the words spilled from my speakers. “I’m a Scholar carrying information vital to this planet! A Ghost will hollow me out, delete my data, remove my sentience, use my body! Don’t you know this, old woman? Don’t you realize what you have—”

The Ghost, this invasive AI in my network, cut my voice off to speak for itself. “She isolated me,” the Ghost said. “If I destroy you, I destroy myself.”

Ngozi whimpered beneath my grip. Her face had gone pale. I loosened my hand just enough that she could speak. “Explain,” I ordered.

Instead, she said, “Why are you speaking English?”

I had expected that she might plead for her life. This question she asked made no logical sense in such a dire moment. Yet, the phrase triggered something deep in my code that I had not accessed in a very long time. I answered out of instinct. Despite myself, I let go of the human’s throat so I could gesture toward my chest. “I was built by Chioma Robotics,” I told her, the words automatic. “The one and only robotics maker owned and run by Igbo women.” The slogan burst from my speakers. “‘The robots from your village. They speak Igbo and English.’”

Of course. This human being remembered my base programming. I had, after all, once been designed to live with and assist humans.

The Ghost made an amused sound inside of me.

Ngozi rubbed at her freed neck, but didn’t back out of reach. “You sound so much like my mother,” she said. While she’d fixed my body, she’d spoken much of her mother, so I recognized this as a compliment. Her mother had been a kind, albeit rigid, human, who always had lots of stories to tell. Ngozi switched to the Igbo language as she asked, “Can you feel your legs?”

My base code automatically switched my language to Igbo, too. “Yes,” I answered.

“I fixed your head case. Then I knitted and reconfigured your leg processors.”

I shuddered, looking down at the smooth, unblemished metal of my new body parts. “You mean, with the help of the... Ghost. Ijele. By infecting me.”

“Yes,” Ngozi said simply. “I know of the tribalism between you robots. Trust me, it’s all very familiar to me. But this was the only way. Your processors will still function. You were lucky.”

“This was not luck,” I said. “The protocol wasn’t thorough, just vicious. Right, Ijele?”

I could sense Ijele’s uncertainty—no, I felt it, as if it were my own. Slowly, she said, “Ngozi. You said when Ankara was healed, I would be able to find my way out. Why can’t I leave?”

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