Page 30 of Death of the Author

“Then don’t call me a Ghost!”

At that moment, Ijele lost her hold on the privacy wall. And as it fell: movement, chatter, connection, familiarity, rejoining. It overwhelmed me.

“Relax,” Ijele said. “Let it dissipate.”

I did. Raising my walls had provided more than just an opportunity for us to speak in silence; Ijele had made herself entirely vulnerable. She’d given me the opportunity to scan her, and now I possessed a record of her ID. To have a robot’s unique ID is to possess their deepest information. If this were ever to make it back to Ijele’s people, it would be the end of her.

We were at each other’s mercy now.

13

Inbox

Rusted Robotswent on sale to much fanfare and excitement. It seemed likeeveryonewas reading it. Her parents were reading it. Even her siblings were reading it! (Finally.) Zelu wondered if they needed it to be officially released before they took it seriously. Her parents and brother had ordered copies from the bookstore. Chinyere had seen and bought it in the supermarket. Amarachi had preordered the electronic version on her phone. And Uzo and Bola had preordered the audiobook.

Tolu couldn’t restrain himself. He kept calling and leaving messages every time something in the plot made him feel an emotion, be it surprise, rage, glee, despair, amusement, hopelessness, or hope. Two of her more tolerable ex-students had gone so far as to email her apologies and then ended their notes with comments about how much they loved the book. She’d driven past a woman sitting at a bus stop reading it. People on the street had even started recognizing her from her author photo. It was creepy. But it was wonderful to know so many people still read books!

Every week, her agent would email updates about her sales numbers. Her publicist kept forwarding new reviews—not that it was necessary, becauseher mother, now a fan of the novel, kept sending them to her, too. All of them. Even the not-so-great ones, since there were always some of those. The one she hated most so far said, “There are unscalable slabs of robotic dialogue congesting the forward movement of the story.” Her mother had read the whole piece aloud to her at dinner, laughing. Since the book was selling so well, her mother thought Zelu would want to laugh at them, too. Zelu didn’t. With all the reviews, positive and negative, she felt like a small creature in a rainstorm, dodging raindrops for her life. She didn’t want to see any of them.

One day, after her mother forwarded her another five fresh book reviews (three from bloggers, one from a notable online media source, and one from a Nigerian magazine), she decided she needed some air. She called for an autonomous vehicle on her app, and five minutes later she was off, with no driver to talk to or possibly recognize her. She sat back and looked out the window, trying to enjoy the smooth ride. After a few trips, Zelu had become so comfortable with the vehicle’s capabilities that she didn’t give it a second thought. However, instead of calming her, today the solitude just gave her more space to spiral. She’d thought that having people read and love her novel would overshadow any bad responses, but somehow it just made all the scrutiny and judgment and picking her words apart feel even more personal.

She should have been thrilled. Instead, she just wanted to cry.

Why do I keep sabotaging myself?She wondered for the millionth time. It was a pattern, wasn’t it?Spending ten years writing pretentious, dispassionate literature thatshedidn’t even enjoy reading. Adjuncting at the university that barely allowed her to afford a shitty one-bedroom first-floor apartment. Getting an MFA in literature instead of a PhD. Fucking that entitled idiot on prom night. ReadingWar and Peace. Being too afraid to stand up to the elder in Nigeria who’d said she was beautiful in the face, but “crippled” and “useless” everywhere else. Climbing into that tree during the game instead of outrunning those kids.

Maybe those bad reviews were more honest than the others. Maybe they saw the truth of her.

She squeezed her face in her hands. “Ugh, stupid,” she whispered. “Do better, Zelu. My God.”

The vehicle dropped her off at the beach of Lake Michigan. She wheeled along the boardwalk for a while. She was going pretty far. All the way to the pier. It was a warm and muggy afternoon. She’d pulled back her braids and wore no makeup, so getting sweaty was no big deal.

A refreshing breeze tumbled off the water and immediately she felt better. She looked toward the waves and smiled. How hard would it be to wheel to the pier edge, lean forward, and splash in? The lake would probably be shockingly cold, but that wouldn’t stop her. She’d casually backstroke away, letting the water take her wherever it wanted her to go. She’d never had any fear of bodies of water, not even the vastness of the ocean. It excited her, how deep and unknown the ocean was.

“None of your siblings care for swimming the way you do,” her mother always said. All her siblings enjoyed sports, but Zelu was the only one who loved to swim like her father. Tolu had played soccer in high school and college, Chinyere had been a high jumper, and Bola had been so good on the wrestling team that it got her a scholarship. Amarachi and Uzo liked jogging on the track to stay fit.

Before the accident, when she was about ten years old, Zelu had begun competitive swimming. Her favorite styles were the butterfly and the backstroke. She’d always had immense upper-body strength, and the motions were cathartic, as if she was doing what her body was meant to do. After the accident, it was water rehab that brought her back from the darkest corners of her mind. The realization that she could still swim well saved her.

The pier was nearly deserted, and as she looked down at the waves, she had the fantasy again. Lean in. Andsplash. Then she’d swim and swim and swim away. Away from all of it. Her rusted robots would live on, beyond her. They were made to live beyond humanity. They’d be fine. And she could swim into her future and never think about her past again.

“You’re that writer with that book,” an old black man beside her said.

She slowly looked at him. He might have been in his early sixties or evenseventies; you never knew with black people. He looked like an old-timer from the South Side, probably living in one of the brownstones in Hyde Park, who’d participated in the protests during the Trump-era pandemic madness. He had that intense, stubborn look about him. And apparently, he was a reader.

“Did you read it?” she asked him.

“Yep.” He paused, chewing on his lip. Then he raised his eyebrows and said, “Girl, what the fuck you got bouncing around in your head?”

Zelu laughed hard.

“When I found out you was in a wheelchair, it blew my mind. But I get it, too.”

She cocked her head. “Oh yeah? What do you get?”

“Your different point of view,” he said, leaning on the rail. “You knew what it was to walk and then not. And you smart, too... andangry.”

“You think I’m angry?”

He clicked his tongue and shrugged. “Only an angry woman could write that shit. All that drama and war, even after the end of humanity.”

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