I am knowing what space is looking like, but in my rememberings I am often seeing it from cockpit of flying mech. And always there is being noise of war, much katakata and booming and screaming. But when I am watching stars fly past the window of our cabin so fast they are turning from points to lines, I am seeing also that the blackness is moving but not moving at the same time. It is looking like we are being frozen but I am hearing in my ear all the engine of the shuttle working and I am hearing even the small small part that is moving this spaceship and I am knowing that we are moving because of science and the way engine is working. But then I am also thinking something else is different between now and the space that I am remembering.
“It is so quiet,” I am saying to Ify.
That is what I am noticing even when we are docking, and then Ify is taking me to the shuttle that is moving us through space station docking port to another bay, where we are getting onto another shuttle and returning to space. We are moving fast, almost like Ify is hiding me. And all the while, as we are walking and riding bus and then riding new, smaller shuttle into space, Ify is looking this way and that. Like she is searching for someone who is never arriving.
After the short flight to Colony that is looking much bigger than where we are first stopping, Ify is letting out a sigh that is sounding like disappointment. Then we are entering space station that is being called Alabast and there is already conveyor belt that is taking us to other train that is taking us to the home where Ify is staying. Grace is staying on the train and going to a different place that Ify is not telling me about.
Everything in Alabast is quiet. Sometime there is no sound, like in space. Sometime there is sound but it is like there is cotton filling your ears or it is like grenade is going off too close to your face and you are hearing nothing but whine and everything else is soft soft and hard to hear. While I am following Ify, there is being many people around us, but no one is talking to us. No one is stopping to chat or to ask where we are coming from. Even people that is scanning our data and seeing my visa is not looking at us, even though I am seeing my face on the screen that is being reflected in his false eyes. We are just moving and I am following Ify, and she is walking through all of this almost without stopping, even though we are twisting and turning and going round corners and up and down moving stairs and platform that is taking us from one place to another. It is dizzying me and I am wondering if anyone is ever standing still here.
Her home is big and I am wondering if it is just her who is living here. It is as big as entire floor of an apartment in Lagos or even Abuja. The ceiling is high and the chair and table and desk is all spread out far and there is so much ground and the window is taller than two of me and there is so much space it is like the world outside is being held inside.
Ify is asking me something and it is like cotton is in my ears, then I am shaking my head and I am hearing her asking me if I am wanting to be resting or spending some time here or enjoying some of Alabast before we are going to the hospital. I am wondering why she is asking me this and maybe it is because I am sometime staring at thing with my mouth wide open like it is catching fly and maybe I am looking like I am seeing thing for the first time when I am not sure if I am seeing them for the first time or not. I am knowing what space travel is feeling like. But before this voyage, my body is not knowing what space travel is feeling like. And now it is.
But there is too much here that is new and strange, and I am feeling in my brain like I am reaching for something with my fingers and it is grasping nothing, and I am knowing that I am reaching for purpose. I am wanting to be doing something. I am wanting something to be focusing on. So I am saying no.
She is watching me in silence for some time, then she is moving to her main room, what she is calling her living room, and she is waving her hand at chair that is too big for me because when I am sitting in it, I am feeling like I am sinking in it, like it is eating me, and I am struggling against it, but Ify is putting her hand on my hand and it is calming me down. The chair is then molding itself around me and I am leaning back and feeling warm and it is pleasing to my skin. Then Ify is sitting down in chair in front of me that is hovering above the ground, but she is leaning forward and not saying anything.
“Do you need to rest?” I am asking her. I am seeing her now, seeing how tiredness is darkening the skin under her eyes and how it has dried her skin, how even after she bathed herself in the shuttle watercloset when we left Earthland she still moved without ease. I am seeing the way her finger is twitching, and I am seeing that her eye is bloodshot and that she is quivering with the effort of trying not to be collapsing onto the floor. And I am seeing that she is not like me, who is not needing to be resting ever. Who is not needing to be eating or drinking thing. Who is not needing to do other thing that red-blood is needing to be doing. Ify is needing to be doing all this thing, but she has not been doing this thing, and it is paining her. “You must rest,” I am telling her.
I am getting up from my seat and I am walking to her and putting my hand on her shoulder hard so she is feeling my grip strong and knowing that she is to be doing what I tell her. At first, she is not moving, then I am squeezing, and hurt is showing on her face. Then she is getting up and I am letting go.
“I will wake you,” I tell her. Then I am watching her walk into her bedroom. She is standing at the threshold for a long time with her back to me, as though she is looking inside and not recognizing what she is seeing, as though what is before her now is not matching what is in her rememberings. But then she is walking through, and the door is sliding shut behind her. I am walking to the closed door and pressing my ear to it to hear what is happening, but I am hearing nothing, not even crying, then I am hearing rustling that I am knowing is bedsheets and then I am hearing snoring.
My footsteps are silent as I wander the apartment. I soon find a room that I am knowing to be Ify’s office. On the desk is many tiny machines, including small small bees I know she is using to be taking apart and examining thing. I am seeing tablets and styluses and even document that is printed out and that is having diagram of brains and the insides of red-bloods. I am seeing a closet that is housing white coats and kaftans and slippers. I am seeing dust that is settled over everything, and that is how I am knowing that no one is walking through this place for a long time.
At the window, I command the blinds to open and I look down and see, from high up, a room filled with hospital beds, and I am knowing without anyone telling me that this is who I am helping. Some of the people in hospital bed is glowing red in my screen and I am knowing that this is red-blood, but some is glowing blue and I am knowing that this is synth, and I am wondering what synth is doing here when Ify is telling me I am the only synth left.
My mind is reaching out to talk to them, but it is like my fingers fumbling through smoke. I am trying to hear a signal or feel their presence, open my mind to them, but it is like they are expired. Even though machine connecting to them is telling me they are still alive, their brain is telling me nothing.
I am opening my mind wider and wider and nothing is coming back until I am finally hearing ringing. It is not a sound I am usually hearing when my mind is connecting to another synth’s, but I am thinking maybe it is different in space.
I activate the communication signal, but then hologram opens up in front of me.
At first, it is shaped weirdly because window is distorting it, then I am backing up, and that is when I am realizing that hologram is being projected from me.
The woman in the hologram is squinting, then saying, “Ify? Ify, is that you?”
Metadata is beaming into me from the call, and it is telling me that the woman in the hologram is Céline Hayatou, female, age nineteen, black hair, brown eyes, non-cyberized, graduate of Alabast Polytechnic, chief Colonial administrator of the Centrafrique Satellite Colony of Alabast. I am remembering my journey with Ify through the Colonies and when we are stopping briefly in Centrafrique and Ify is looking like she is searching for someone who is never coming and I am knowing she is searching for this person.
“Who is this?”
I am saying nothing, because I am knowing that when Ify is searching for this person and not finding her, she is sadding.
“Where’s Ify?”
But I am just frowning at her.
“Wait.” Then she sucks in breath, and surprise is shining in her eyes. “It’s you. You’re . . . you’re the cure.”
I am not liking that she is calling me thing and not person, so I am saying, “Ify is sleeping. Do not disturb her.”
“I just . . . I want to make sure she is okay and—”
“She was looking for you.” My fists are clenching at my side and it is taking much effort to be unclenching them. “When we arrived in Centrafrique, she looked for you. Everywhere, she looked for you. Where were you?”
“How dare you? I’m a Colonial administrator. I have an entire Colony to run! Who are you to talk to me li—”
“I don’t know you.” My voice is even when I am saying these words. I am thinking of the hurt on Ify’s face and how she is being tired as we are traveling and wanting something badly, and I am knowing that what she is wanting is for this woman to be telling her hello and this woman is not doing that, so I am angering. “And I am not caring who you are. Ify is here to be doing work, and she must rest. Do not disturb her.” Then I am ending the transmission, and hologram is winking away and there is nothing blocking my view of the sick people below that Ify and me are to be helping.
As soon as I am entering hospital, they are putting me in chair that is hovering over the ground and dressing me in gown that is feeling too big on me. Everything is white and smelling like it is too clean. Whenever I am seeing hospital in my remembering, I am seeing it full of people who is dying, people wearing military uniform, people missing arm or leg or missing part of their face. Sometime when I am thinking of hospital, I am seeing image of tent and I am feeling heat on my skin and I am seeing dirty robot that is stomping around and trying to stop people screaming by feeding them chemical. And sometime when I am thinking of hospital, I am hearing quiet and it is because everybody is dying and there are being only a few of us left, and I am thinking that in all of my remembering, hospital is meaning death and dirt and blood. But here hospital is clean and there are people wearing gown like I am wearing who are walking or who are smiling and talking, and sometime I am looking into their room and seeing them in bed with nurse watching them and chatting like they are being neighbors on the side of the street in Lagos.
I am feeling hand pressing on my shoulder. Gently but still firm, like it is trying to be telling me something, and I am looking up and seeing Ify and she is not looking at me. She is looking ahead. But she is squeezing my shoulder.
“Don’t be nervous,” she is whispering to me, beneath her breath, almost like she is saying it to herself too.
It is making me to be feeling better to be seeing her like this. The way she is moving and standing and holding herself is telling me she is feeling certain and comfortable and she is not being afraid of anything.
Soon, we are going into part of hospital where there is being fewer and fewer people. And soon we are getting to part of hospital where there is being no one but doctor and nurse and sometime droid that is helping them. Then she is bringing me into room that is large but not as large as main room in Ify’s apartment. In the center is being a machine that is part bed but part cylinder that the bed is going into. And there is a console next to it and a desk and many machine I am not knowing.
There is white wall surrounding me everywhere and there is much space to be walking around in and very little furniture. But even though it is looking like there is much space, it is still feeling like prison. The walls are meeting over my head to form dome shape so it is looking like I am inside a bulubu ball that is being cut in half.
Feeling is warring inside me, and I am not knowing why but my heart is racing racing and when I am standing, I am moving from feet to feet, just bouncing like child that is needing to go to the bathroom. I am nervous. Then I am hearing Ify’s words in my head, replaying, and she is saying, Don’t be nervous, don’t be nervous, don’t be nervous.
“This is where we will work,” Ify is telling me. “This will be your bed, and I will make it as comfortable as possible for you. All you will have to do is lie there. And we will take breaks whenever you need.” Grace is in the room too, and she is moving to stand beside Ify, and she is holding a tablet in her hands. At first, she is saying nothing, and I am wondering if it is like this between them in space, where Ify is leading and Grace is following. But there is different energy in the air between them. They are moving like people who have spent much time together, not like leader and follower but like equal. Like how synth and soldier is working together when Xifeng is leading us. “Grace and I are here for whatever you need.”
I am looking at Grace, and Grace is looking at me, and I am hearing Cantonese lullaby that she is singing to me back in Nigeria. It is sounding and feeling like thing that is happening in remembering that is not mine, hazy and sometime with static, but my body is telling me that it is thing that I am experiencing. Even though it is feeling like dream, my body is telling me that this is truth. Grace is singing to me in language that she is knowing and that Ngozi and Ify are not knowing, language that we are sharing. Something inside me pushes me to smile at Grace, and she smiles back, then she bows to me and leaves.
Now it is just being me and Ify who are the only breathing thing in this room.
Ify is going to her desk and turning machine on and preparing machine and then she is looking at me. I am thinking that she is seeing something in my eye, because her face is becoming softer and she is looking like how mother in remembering is looking at child. She is looking at me like her whole face is saying it will be okay, and at first I am not trusting her because some part of me, deep inside past my skeleton and my organs, is remembering that everybody I trust—even Xifeng, even Enyemaka—is sometime telling lies to me, and I am tired of people telling lies to me. But Ify is putting hand on my shoulder, then she is asking me, “Do you want to see them?”
For a long time, there is only question in my eye, because I am not knowing what she is meaning, then I am knowing, and I am knowing now that I am nervous. I am having purpose and I am knowing that I am to be serving others and doing good thing and that I am being good person, but I am nervous to be doing this thing. Ify is looking at me, and I am nodding my head.
Then the wall we are facing is opening like it is blinds on a window turning from vertical to horizontal, and I am seeing before me row and row and row and row and row of hospital bed with body that is in it and that is not moving. It is going on forever, like sea that is never-ending. And I am not even trying to be counting them. It is different, seeing them this way, than seeing them from the office in Ify’s apartment. They are closer. Their danger feels greater. I am wanting even more to be helping them.
That is why I am here. It is purpose that is being given to me, but it is also purpose that I am choosing for myself. There is thing in my brain that is making me special, and it is thing that will be helping these people. And this is the future I am choosing: to be helping these people, some of whom may be my brother and sister.
And this is making me to not be nervous.