Page 124 of Death of the Author

Five of the generals were standing there waiting. They acted as if they hadn’t just tried to get me torn apart yet again.

“Oga Chukwu’s in a meeting with CB and Ahab.”

“Really?!”

At that moment, Oga Chukwu emerged from his hut. The others moved toward him, ready for an update. Shay and I joined them.

“We’ve all agreed to a momentary truce,” Oga Chukwu announced.“After some information we received.” Oga Chukwu looked right at me and I understood. I resisted the urge to gloat. I’d sent a snapshot of the Trippers’ location to Oga Chukwu. That was all it took. “These Chargers called Trippers will be here in three days. Something, maybe what they carry, has increased their speed beyond our original calculations. We should have been tracking them more closely. They’ll bring about the death of Earth.”

“So Ankara was right,” Shay said loudly. She pointed at the other generals. “She’s been warning us since she got here, and you all accused her of treason.”

“I have evidence. I know what I saw,” Koro Koro insisted.

“You didn’t see anything,” I retorted.

“There’s no time for that now,” Oga Chukwu said. “We have work to do.”

It took the end of the world being three days away for automation to finally acknowledge the problem. We were no better than human beings. Maybe we were even worse, for humankind began trying to save themselvesyearsbefore the most urgent need came, though it was too late for them by then. Nevertheless, here we were. We weren’t all just calling a truce from killing each other; we were going to work together to stop the Trippers. Finally.

Word of the Trippers quickly circulated the world, and I’m sure there were other efforts to stop them, but I could focus only on Nigeria. Cross River City was the biggest Hume population in the world, Lagos was the biggest and most central Ghost population, and Udide was the most intelligent robot on Earth. It was doubtful that any other population had better capabilities and a better plan.

None of it was going to work, though. Three days meant no room for trial and error. Every second brought the Trippers closer to Earth with a substance from the sun that our planet had never seen.

We decided that Udide would help us build tiny spaceships so we could meet the Trippers before they ever made contact with Earth.Ghosts could pilot them, and even some of the RoBoats were willing to alter their bodies to “swim” and fight in space. The Ghosts would work with the Creesh insects to swarm and hack the Trippers. And we Humes were to help gather parts for Udide to use.

By the next day, they had the starships ready. Half a day later, they launched them. There were only ten. Our radar showed that there were ninety-six Trippers, flying close together. The entire world was watching the launch. And so the entire world saw when the ships fired on the Trippers.

Their explosives blew up before reaching their targets. And then, something that could have only been the equivalent of solar winds washed over the ships from the Trippers’ direction, wiping the Ghosts in the ships of all functionality. Ghosts are a hive mind, and when a number of them are attacked, all Ghosts feel it. When that solar wind washed over the wave of Ghosts attacking above, every Ghost on Earth must have felt it. Even CB.

And this is how Ijele came back to me. On the heels of that solar wind.

She entered my mind suddenly, without warning, clinging to my system as if she thought she might be jerked back out at any moment. “I... I tried!” Ijele shouted in my head. “I... barely escaped! I don’t... I cannot remember my origin! They weredeletingme, Ankara! Something happened, I don’t know what, but no time to find out. I had a chance, I took it! Came here. To you!”

“Ijele?!” I said aloud. Everyone around me was shouting as they watched the video feed from space, so no one heard. I spoke in my head. “Ijele! I’m sorry...”

Ijele told me all that had happened. This had been a nightmare for her. When she’d left me on Victoria Island to save her tribe, she’d been too late. But her knowledge of the ambush had revealed her deception. Those who survived isolated her, then they’d begun to strip her code, looking for intel. They knew of our relationship now. Even whenthe ceasefire was issued to deal with the Trippers—the threat Ijele had warned about for years—CB refused to let Ijele go free. They erased her memory of her origin and would have done more. However, the solar flare short-circuited the main servers, and Ijele seized the moment to escape.

“What they did to you was barbaric!” I said. “How was any of it even your fault?”

“What was done to my people wasn’t minor,” I heard Ijele whisper. “Nor was my relationship with you.”

I was quiet. She was right.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said, gesturing at the screen, where the ill-fated space assault had been broadcast. On it, we saw a Tripper with glittering metallic skin and a fire in its belly. I wondered if this was Oji, the Charger Udide had once told me about. Udide had helped create the ships for this plan; I wondered if they had watched the attack unfold. I wondered if they thought destroying Oji was worth saving everyone else.

“Ankara,” Ijele said. She’d heard my thoughts. “Udide shared a connection with Oji. Do you think it might have been like ours?”

And then we had an idea. Maybe it was hers; maybe it was mine. We knew what we had to do.

Udide had found a new cave in the forest just outside of Cross River City. The place was occupied with an abundance of Creesh. Colonies of bees, beetles, grasshoppers, so many birds, skittering rodents, spider monkeys, even an elephant who stood one foot high. And of course, so many spiders. All robots Udide created out of a need only they understood. The Creesh buzzed about my head, glanced, growled at, and ignored me as I passed, approaching the cave.

The closer I got, the more I prepared for resistance. It wasn’t that the Creesh were warlike. Udide had built them to be kind and open, and to obsess about learning and reading stories. But they were protective ofUdide, and something was coming. We were all on alert. Nevertheless, though I could sense how tense they were, no one attacked me or even tried to stop me from stepping into the cave.

The entrance was about thirty feet high and wider than a human house. It was a good place for Udide, though it didn’t measure up to the den they’d built in Lagos. Vines hung over it, and moss, gnarled tree roots, and bushes grew along the outside. I felt Ijele’s curiosity as I peered into the darkness, where I knew the most intelligent robot on Earth resided.

I sent out a polite signal as I stood there. “Udide the Spider Artist,” I announced. I noted that my voice didn’t echo in the cave. Because it was occupied.

“General Ankara.” Their voice was low, like thunder. “And someone else, too. Shouldn’t you both be with your soldiers, preparing?”

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