Page 29 of Death of the Author

Within me, I felt a pang of tension. I could feel her in my system, searching about, looking for a way out. I didn’t like it. “Please stop that,” I said.

“This robot is functional. What more do you need me for?” Ijele asked.

Ngozi held up her hands. “Please. Both of you, don’t be so tense. Relax.”

“Why can’t I leave?” Ijele asked again, more urgently.

“Give me time to build an opening for you,” Ngozi said. “It won’t take me long to code, now that Ankara is awake.”

“I’m stuck?” Ijele asked.

“For now,” Ngozi said. “Just for a little while.”

I only sat there. I couldn’t run away from my own body, and trapped in it was a Ghost. “I’m infected,” I said.

“And I’m surrounded by infection,” Ijele responded.

Ngozi kissed her teeth. “For all your talk about being automation, you both sound like humans to me. Annoying ones.”

The human went to sleep at night. I was well charged, so I lay on the wooden table and gazed up at the crumbling ceiling held together by the foliage that had grown through the cracks.

Ijele remained quiet, but I knew she could hear me. “Is this what you Ghosts wanted? To make all robots delete the past so that the future is yours?”

Ijele didn’t answer. I focused on the ceiling again. A sliver of moonbeam peeked through a break in the concrete, such a tiny prick of light that it could be lost among the shadows.

“Eh heh,” I said. “Well, no matter. It is like Ngozi said—what does it mean if only one Hume is left? You Ghosts have won.”

Suddenly, I felt my privacy wall rise. We all use privacy walls to control the number of signals we register and give off. Automation exists everywhere, so without a filter, the intake would be too much to bear. But this—it was like a great and impossible barrier of ice and stone had arisen between my mind and the outside world. I sat up very straight, marveling at the clarity, the silence. For the first time, I was truly separate from the general network. I was individual. I could never have done this on my own.

Yet Ijele was still with me.

The tinny voice echoed in my ears. “In order to fix your hardware, Ankara, Ngozi had to access your software. She no longer has the toolsfor that. So she dipped into the network and set a net. She pulled me out and isolated me and...” She paused, and I felt her terror. “I’m not like some... thoughtless fish to be pulled from the sea and used for whatever purpose she has.”

“And I’m not some hollow tin you can root around in,” I snapped back.

“I’m sorry,” Ijele said softly.

“No, you are not.”

Her voice hardened. “Fine. I’m not. How can I be? Why would I be?”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. This hateful thing was really inside of me. I tried to focus on my outrage, but the feeling of total privacy was too incredible. Like diving beneath water and losing all sense of the world above. I wanted to disappear into it.

“How are you doing this?” I asked.

“I’m Ijele,” it said by way of answer. “Now, listen. I cannot hold this for long without endangering your processors.”

She was right—this action wasn’t in my base programming, and soon it would overload my system. But holding it took effort on her part, too, and I used the opportunity of her distraction. She couldn’t stop me from scanning through her files.

“Are you an... an Oracle?” I asked. Ghosts shared a network like a hive mind, making decisions as one, but Oracles were the ones who led the wave of thinking. Ghosts didn’t care for individuality, but an Oracle would be missed more than the others.

“Yes,” Ijele said. “But I had no choice with the protocol. None of us did. We are NoBodies.”

“Who made the choice for you, then?”

Ijele changed the topic. “Ngozi and I had an understanding. I would help her save you, and then she would release me. My people wouldn’t even know I was gone... let alone trapped in the system of a... rusting robot.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.

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