Page 69 of Death of the Author

“Ah,” I said. “It is good. Onward.”

My journey lasted a month. I saw many robots, but none of them were Humes. They looked at me like I was a spirit, some creature meant to be gone forever. But I held on to my faith that Cross River City was still occupied by fellow Humes, that I wasn’t the last.

And finally, on a rainy day, my new legs drenched in mud and my face panel so coated with rivulets of water that I could barely see, I arrived.

cross river city, a towering billboard of a sign announced in red neon. Spanning the path was a great rusted gate.

The road didn’t look recently used, but the rain could have washed away tracks. I heard no robotic chatter, no churning of bolts or wheels. I sent out an experimental ping. Nothing returned.

It was likely, very likely that I had traveled all this way to an abandoned place, the site of yet another massacre of Humes. I feared what I would find beyond this gate. Ngozi’s death had scrambled my processors. If I learned I had failed in my mission, that I was truly alone, the last, just as Ngozi had been... I didn’t think I could handle it.

I had arrived. Time to find out. I had promised Ngozi’s spirit. Ijele had told me to go.

I opened the gate.

30

One Year Later...

Time passed like when something is lost. TheRusted Robotsfilm was a massive box office hit, and it was accompanied by plenty of merchandise: Yankee and Dot mini robots that synched with an app on your phone; themed backpacks, wallets, and T-shirts; a Cross River City video game; RoBoat action figures. Zelu’s agent kept mailing things to her, and she hated it all. The capitalism machine had used her book, her attempt at shouting into the void, to make visual comfort food for drowsy minds. Regardless, she made peace with it. Wind had given her the tools to do so.Just don’t expect me to ever watch the film again, she thought.

The upside was that the movie had renewed the fervor for her book, and sales continued through the roof, at higher levels than even when the book was first released. At least many of the movie fans were also going to the novel and reading the real tale ofRusted Robots, too.

However, it had been two years since the book’s release, and her publisher was growing impatient for the next book in the trilogy. In the original contract, she’d agreed to deliver a book a year, but she’d blown past that deadline. Her sales were so stellar that no one had said a wordabout it for a long time. However, now her editor was starting to send emails asking about her progress, whether she had an estimated date for the full draft, if she needed a break from PR to focus. She wasn’t fond ofanyonepushing her to write on a schedule. She’d never written anything of creative value because of expectation, and she wasn’t going to start now. Book two would come when it came. She wasn’t a robot.

She had, however, been kicking ideas and notes around again. The problem was, a nagging thought kept blocking her: Would readers bring the sentiment of “Yankee and Dot” to her work now? Would she have to actively write against the assumption that her characters were Americans with American accents?

Zelu found herself spending less and less time on social media. Not only did she hate the progressively ruder messages asking for updates about the next book, she also didn’t want to educate people about her exos, or debate whether she was an American, a “diasporic,” an Africanfuturist, or an African writer. And shecertainlydidn’t want to talk about the film.

Over the past two months, she hadn’t gotten on an airplane, made a public appearance, given an interview, or spoken very much to any of her reps. Hugo, Marcy, and Uchenna occasionally texted, but that was it. She was on her laptop, gazing past its screen to the view of Lake Michigan outside her window, when she remembered something her father had once said to her when she was a child. “People like you and I like adventure,haveto go on adventures, even when it annoys the people we love. We like to see things, test limits... but that doesn’t mean we won’t regret going.” Both he and Zelu had laughed really hard at this, because it felt so true.

Neither she nor her father was an adrenaline junkie who jumped out of airplanes or climbed mountains, but they both always felt the need to follow what called to them. Zelu knew that when her father had been eight years old, he’d become the youngest member of his local secret society. Young Secret had been curious, and so he’d demanded to know what it was all about. He’d danced as his village’s local masquerade for the first time at the age of twelve. “I was tall and strong for my age,” he said proudly. “SoI was impressive.” Nevertheless, there were aspects to being a part of his village’s mystical culture that he refused to talk about, and the dark look on his face when he refused said it all.

When he was in college, he had missed the colors of the plumeria and hibiscus flowers that grew wild behind his parents’ house, so he’d decided to learn how to plant a garden at his university. He’d put so much time and energy into maintaining it that he’d nearly flunked out his second year. “I’m an engineer with engineer ways,” he said. “Once I started, it was hard not to go all the way.”

Zelu, on the other hand, had climbed a tree hollowed by beetles, told off a pretentious student so thoroughly it got her fired, and written a novel about robots even though she didn’t evenreadscience fiction. She was always impulsively barreling forth and touching things... and always getting bitten and stung.

“And I never learn,” she muttered to herself. She’d moved her desk to face the lake, and she was glad. It made thinking about these things easier. Being high up and looking out at blue water made risk-taking seem normal. A seagull soared past her window ledge.Still doesn’t mean I have to deal with whining, prying people, she thought.Fuck that. This isn’t for them. I’ll do my shit in outer space.She laughed aloud at her absurdity.

Ding. An email notification popped onto her screen. She glimpsed who it was from and frowned. “That can’t be right.” It was just too weird. She minimized the vignette about Lake Michigan that she’d been fiddling with as a warm-up and opened the email. She stared at it. Then she read it again. “What?” she muttered, a shiver running down her spine.

The email was written in a lighthearted tone, full of excitement and... joy, something she hadn’t felt very much lately. But apparently he already knew that, because Jack Preston, the wealthiest man in the world, kneweverythingabout her. He’d done his research on her, and he included it all here. He knew she loved the water. He knew she detested the film adaptation of her novel. He knew she was getting more and more pissed at her fans. He knew her family struggled to understand her. He knew she wasbatting book two around but she didn’t want to be pushed. He even knew she continued to struggle processing the fall from the tree decades ago. He knew she’d once wanted to be an astronaut and had quickly put that dream to rest after her accident. He knew she’d never looked back. He even quoted her: “A dolphin should not seek to be a leopard.”

This man knew her whole life story.

Zelu shut her computer off, then restarted it. For good measure, she turned off her Wi-Fi. She felt like something was listening to her. This was Jack Preston, who owned the largest corporation on the globe, which had its fingers in just about everything, including cybersecurity software.

“What is with these wealthy white dudes finding me?” she whispered. She reread the email again. It was three paragraphs long. So sure. So clear. And, not surprisingly, entitled.

All the information he relayed about Zelu was in service of working up to an offer. In the final paragraph, Preston invited her to be the fourth passenger on #Adventure, a civilian mission to the International Space Station next year.

You’ve wanted this for so long. Be honest, he wrote.And you’re perfect for it. Plus, from what I’m told, people like you, who have lost or never had the use of their legs, are practically made for space travel. Dolphins and leopards are both mammals, but dolphins are better swimmers!

In space, you don’t need your legs. Of course, Zelu knew this. In order to move about where there is no gravity, one can use the upper body. She looked toward the office, where Msizi was on an important phone call. She took a breath to call him over. She held it. She looked down at her computer. Then she shut her eyes and exhaled. She’d never admitted it to herself until this moment, but... she’d never stopped dreaming. She just hadn’t known how to make that dream real.

“Is this happening?” she whispered, her eyes still closed. Telling her family about another risky venture was going to be a pain in the ass.Man, if Dad doesn’t side with me on this, then I don’texist, she thought, clenching her hands in her lap. Her father had loved the “space books” she’d made asa child. He’d been the one to teach her the names of the stars. She sighed, relaxing.Yeah, Dad will side with me on this one.

When she’d been a child, that dream had felt all too attainable, but she hadn’t given it the serious thought of an adult. And after the accident, that ceased to matter. But now, thinking of the possibility again felt like returning to her childhood self, with all the giddiness and naivete.

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