I love books. I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas. I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud. I love the smell of the pages, even of the newest physical books, which were so rarely made. These new books had stiff grey pages made from doubly recycled paper and were printed with vegetable ink that was 100 percent biodegradable and smelled strongly of spoiled broccoli. I loved them as I loved the 300-year-old books that threatened to crumble in my hands.
I loved the immediate page shift of digitals. The crispness of high-definition photo and print. Manipulating and flying’ through information and story was my first real lesson in the art of flight. Before my own wings grew in.
And then there is the information itself—the stories, the voices, the worlds within worlds. When I was in Tower 7, I felt like I was everyone and everything. I was ignorant in my knowledge. Ignorance was my bliss. Even when they did their painful tests, the burning . . . I knew I could always return to my books. Not escape, return. I knew so much, but so little. You can have knowledge, but you are nothing without wisdom.
But this was what the Big Eye relied upon. They gave me whatever I wanted to read. They gave me top secret books and documents because I requested them; I didn’t even know that these were classified materials. To them, I wasn’t human enough to be a threat. I was their tool. I was nothing to worry about or fear. They saw me as they saw the Africans made slaves during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade hundreds of years ago. They saw me as many Arabs saw African slaves over millennium and how some still see Africans today. The Big Eye didn’t think they needed to put a leash on me because my leash was in my DNA. They were the definition of arrogance and entitlement.
For several months I not only read about the towers, but I read about the history and proliferation of information, both oral and written. I was obsessed with it. And this led me to read about the biggest library in the world, America’s de facto think tank: the Library of Congress. While in Tower 7, I’d never dreamed of going there. Escape never crossed my mind, not until Saeed “died.” But a part of me certainly wished to enter its walls.
Many hard copies of the downloads I read were stored in the Library of Congress. Especially when it came to information about the towers. The Library of Congress had the world’s only Tower Records, they were located in its Special Collections and Archives. From what I’d read, these records even had their own room. What was most unique was that every record was kept as a hard copy. There were no digital files. And only one copy. The towers were places of intense stealth research; archiving and documentation were integral to their very existence, but so was keeping information close and within.
Now that I was awake and aware, I understood several things about the Tower Records. If the United States housed the only information there was about the towers, they could monitor control one hundred percent of who got to read these files. The second was that they clearly had something to hide. Why lock down information in this way if they did not? Thirdly, they didn’t want people to know they had something to hide, thus placing the information in “public.” People knew where to find it, even if access was highly restricted. Fourthly, whatever they were hiding in these files was something they wanted to eventually destroy. One copy of a file on paper. Paper did not last forever. All it would take was a fire, or for the cooling and moisture system in the building to malfunction for a week, or a flood, or a thief. They were making these files easy to get rid of. I wondered about this, but had no answers.
It was shady. But this was what I now expected of my first and third country of birth.
It was my suggestion to go to the Library of Congress’s Special Collections and Archives section before we formulated our plan of attack. I’d read plenty but not everything. I’d never thought to research myself. I’d never asked the Tower 7 Big Eye to show me the “File of the Phoenix.” I’d never asked to see the files on any of the speciMen. I wanted to see those now.
We’d discussed it over dinner at Mmuo’s small apartment. Saeed was eating a plate full of crushed concrete, rust flakes, and rubble he’d harvested from a soon to be demolished building. Mmuo and I were eating egusi soup and pounded yam and fried plantain Mmuo had prepared. He’d learned how to cook from his older sister. I just wished he’d agree to wear clothes when he cooked. My belly still ached from quietly laughing as I watched him squirm and curse whenever droplets of hot oil from the pan hit his skin. Mmuo hated clothes so much.
“You don’t have to be a member of Congress to get in there,” Saeed said, finishing his concrete. He had a pad of paper on the table and was doodling on it with a red pen. He was drawing circles and loops. He always did this when he was thinking. “The user cards that Mmuo and I have are for everyone.”
“But those weren’t easy for either of us to get,” Mmuo added. “You have to have a license, passport or ID card, and submit to a background check.”
“So how . . . ?”
“Black market,” Saeed said.
After he’d returned from the Virgin Islands looking for Phoenix, Saeed had gotten a job teaching Arabic at a local Madrasah in New York. They hadn’t been so impressed with his command of Arabic as much as they were with the stories he had to tell about Egypt. Parents brought their children to come hear him talk about the streets and how he’d survived. The imams at the Madrasah loved and embraced Saeed and gave him a room to live in along with his pay. It was here that he learned a bit of how to read in both Arabic and English. They asked no questions about his background but Saeed suspected that they knew he was some sort of speciMen. Saeed said he’d used all that he’d saved up over the months to buy illegal access to the Library of Congress before Mmuo ran into him that day. Saeed could barely read, but he felt the answers he needed were in this building. He hadn’t known about the Tower collection.
Mmuo refused to tell me where he got his money. All I knew was that he had a lot of it.
“If I can meet with a contact, I have an idea,” Mmuo said.
When Mmuo had escaped from Tower 7, the nation’s one and only black congressman managed to find him. Mmuo said the man was the most two-faced person he’d ever met. But he was one of those who used his bad for good. This congressman hated the tower projects and had promised Mmuo a favor.
Mmuo’s rented solar-powered “smart” car had manual drive, a beat-up exterior, and nearly bald tires. “The rental car rep was a racist,” Mmuo said with a shrug. “The man even asked me if I knew how to drive. I saw plenty of fine vehicles in the lot but this one was all he said he had available. The idiot could have rented me a much nicer vehicle and made more money.”
It was a five hour drive to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
• • •
“I look colonized,” Saeed muttered as he gazed at himself in the mirror. I agreed. I didn’t like European suits, and I certainly didn’t like them on Saeed. The colors were a dull navy blue, the tie looked like a noose and he looked so stiff. Saeed didn’t look like the African Arab he was.
“I feel like a robot,” Mmuo growled.
I stifled a laugh when I glanced at him. His suit was custom-made, covering his expansive long legs and arms. And it was grey. He did look like a robot.
It was 80 degrees outside, balmy December weather. I still couldn’t understand why men in this day and age had to wear this outdated attire to look professional and respectable. These clothes were from cold times, before the climate had changed. Why couldn’t the United States incorporate the world’s fashions as the English language incorporated so many of the world’s words? It was plain meshugana.
Our hotel room was small, but we had no intention of staying the night, so this was fine. After the long drive, I took a nap. Mmuo went for a walk. And Saeed quietly sketched fruits on his pad. We all had our ways of calming our nerves.
It was early afternoon. The Library of Congress was a few minutes’ drive away. Saeed would take a quick cab there. We hadn’t dared go to the building earlier to scope things out. The area was always under high surveillance, and we were fugitives.
I straightened out Saeed’s collar and said, “It’s for a purpose.”
“Doesn’t make it right,” he only mumbled. Mmuo also muttered something, in Igbo. At least they didn’t have to wear a burka.
Although Saeed was an Arab and thus would be profiled, he was the most safe-looking of the three of us. He was an attractive young man who could easily pass as the son of a wealthy businessman from Saudi Arabia. And that was what Mmuo was going to make him. Mmuo could not only walk through walls but he was also an intuitive hacker. If electronics were involved, he could manipulate them. This was how he’d gotten me to the 9th floor in the elevator in Tower 7, and it was how he “found” money now, outside of Tower 7. It was also how he was going to get us into the Tower Records. Not only could I read very very fast and remember all that I read, I knew how information was catalogued—from the old ways to the newest methods. I was our best bet in quickly finding what we needed.
However, I couldn’t just slip and reappear in the Tower Records room. I’d read the Congress Library map many times and viewed the 3D image online. But the small room in the Special Collections library wasn’t on the map. I could slip but I wouldn’t know exactly where to come in and I couldn’t risk being seen as I had been in Tower 1.
Saeed needed to escort me in to the Tower Records section. I was to be the meek hunchbacked Muslim woman with her curious, wealthy, politically influential husband. They would watch us, but they would let us in as they did so. Then Mmuo would cause the cameras to malfunction for ten minutes. I’d have to read fast.
A half hour later, Mmuo and I walked toward the White House. A storm was brewing and the air felt charged and smelled soily. It was probably raining somewhere nearby. The streets were busy as was the sidewalk. I could see the White House up ahead and a part of me wanted to stare at it. But that part was small. Most of me was focused and very aware of my black burka and hidden wings. There were men in business suits and women in high stylish heels, tourists with cameras and a few joggers. Almost everyone on the sidewalk was Caucasian. My wings itched. I missed Ghana. Kofi. I pushed the painful thoughts out of my mind. Saeed. Was he in yet?
Mmuo brought out his portable and looked at its round screen. “Almost,” he muttered to me.
“Ok,” I said. But how close was Saeed?
We were nearly at the White House.
“Nice weather, isn’t it?” Mmuo said.
I met the eye of a man with sunglasses. He was jogging across the street, as we passed. I heard him jump onto the sidewalk not far behind us. I pressed my wings closer to my body.
“Yes,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I think we are overdue for some rain.”
“Long overdue,” Mmuo said.
His portable buzzed again, and we slowed down as he read. “He’s going up the steps,” he whispered to me. “I hope that Congressman was telling the truth about his signature.”
“I thought you trusted this guy,” I hissed.
“I don’t trust any black man savvy enough to become a member of Congress,” he snapped.
I sighed. “Sometimes all you can have is trust.”
There was now another man walking behind us. The man in front of us was walking too slowly.
Mmuo checked his portable again. He smiled and said, “Okay.”
I smiled too. Saeed was in.
We walked several more paces. The portable in Mmuo’s pocket buzzed, and we stopped. We were at the White House gates. My heart was slamming in my chest as I looked at the elegant white building. This was not how I’d imagined seeing it for the first time. But then again, I’d never imagined I’d see it in real life. I glared at the symbol of all that had imprisoned me. I imagined it burned black, charred by my Phoenix-fueled flames.
There were seven men and one woman surrounding us. Just standing there. Four in black suits, one in jogging attire, the rest in street wear. Would they grab us? Shoot us? Not in this crowd. They knew who we were. Or maybe they were just profiling the tall African man and the tall crippled African Muslim woman in the burka. We perfectly fit the ridiculous profile I’d read so much about. In the capital and in other focal points of American society like Hollywood and certain parts of New York City, government officials were known for arresting minorities for no other reason than being a minority in an important place. Nevertheless, this time their profiling was dead on. We were terrorists.
“Sir, ma’am, please come with us,” the suited African man beside Mmuo finally said. He was almost as tall as Mmuo but much more strongly built.
“We won’t hurt you,” the stocky white woman in jeans and a t-shirt said. Why did these people always think I was afraid of them “harming” me? But these people weren’t the Big Eye. There was no hand grasping electricity patched to their chests. These were Secret Service. If I were a terrorist, shouldn’t they have assumed I wouldn’t “fear harm”? Shouldn’t they have assumed I’d “give my life for my cause”? These people thought so little of minorities and terrorists. Deep down, they saw us all as cowards, no better than misguided sheep.
“Why?” Mmuo asked. I hesitated. This wasn’t the plan.
“We just want to ask you a few questions,” the man behind us said. They all looked tense, as we awkwardly stood at the intersection. The signal flashed white and an automated female voice told us to walk. None of us moved. People started to impatiently maneuver around us.
“Do you think we don’t have places to go?” Mmuo asked.
“Sir, if you would . . .”
“Why do you people think you should control everything?” he snapped.
“We’re not trying to do that, sir,” another man said. They pressed closer, and I began to feel anxious.
“Not yet,” Mmuo said to me.
“We’re authorized to use force, if we must,” the man in the jogging suit said. “All of us here deem your responses as suspicious activity.”
Mmuo’s portable vibrated in his hand and made the sound of a rooster crowing. In that strange moment, I was reminded of Ghana, again, where the roosters crowed at all times of the day. The seven police surrounding us jumped into motion, pulling out guns and shouting.
“Put your hands in the air!” The woman was screaming in my ear.
Mmuo handed the portable to me and it instantly started emitting an acrid stench of burning circuits and computer chips. I dropped it. Mmuo met my eyes, and I didn’t wait for him to sink quickly through the concrete into the sewer system directly below us.
• • •
I slipped.
• • •
I arrived in the corner of the Great Hall on the first floor. This was a public area, so the 3D map I’d studied gave me the knowledge that I needed to arrive in the exact spot, not an inch off mark. Once I could imagine it, I could arrive there. I cannot tell you how I did what I did. It is not something words are equipped to describe. However, I could guide it. When I was so close, merely miles away, I could arrive on a specific spot. When I stepped into time, I carried my essence with me. So when I stepped out, I remembered they were malleable, both time and space. The closer, the softer.
I heard a gasp as the cool air hit my face. Then someone grabbed my hand and squeezed.
“Act natural,” Saeed said. “Adjust. You’re my wife. Meek, poor English. I am just curious about the towers. Walk with me, Phoenix.”
Saeed and I started walking. My sandals softly tapping the shiny floor. When we reached the center of the elaborate hall, I stopped. “Wait,” I whispered. “Mmuo needs time to get here, anyway. So give me a moment.”
The hall was spectacular with Renaissance art carved into embroidered white columns and staircases. There were colorful panels in the archways and the ceiling reached high above the second floor. I was overwhelmed by the shift from being outside in the balmy air surrounded by Secret Service men and women outside the White House to being in the Library of Congress. I looked down at the floor to stabilize and orient myself. Marble, like Tower 7’s but not white. Brown and yellow with brass inlays. I looked across the floor. The design that we stood on looked like a blooming sun.
“We were surrounded,” I whispered, staring at it.
“Secret Service?”
“Yes.”
“That fast?” he asked. “They must really hate our kind.”
I chuckled despite myself.
“I think the library is on alert,” Saeed said. We started walking again. “About a minute ago, I saw some guards jog past. They looked like they were heading to the front of the building, and they looked worried. But they haven’t asked anyone to leave, so I think we’re ok. They’re likely focusing on the White House and the area around it.”
If so, our plan had worked. This was why Mmuo and I had been at the White House in the first place. A diversion.
“Did Mmuo make it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. He had to catch a cab and this thought did not set me at ease.
We looked at each other and then looked away. I nervously surveyed the room. We were the only people of color in the Great Hall. I was an oddly shaped woman in a black burka, and I didn’t have a library card. I felt ill. What would they do to Mmuo? And what would we do without him here?
My eyes fell on a tapestry on the wall. It was of a tall regal woman holding a scroll. This was the Minerva mosaic that I’d read about when studying the building’s layout. Minerva was the protector of the United States. But I focused on the smaller statuesque woman standing on some sort of globe just below the regal woman’s scroll. She had wings. This was Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. I stared at her realizing that I’d admired this image on the screen at Mmuo’s apartment yet, for some reason, I hadn’t connected her to myself. But now I did.
“They told me it’s that way,” Saeed said.
I nodded. He led the way.
• • •
“If Mmuo isn’t able to alter the file, will they arrest us down here, do you think?”
“Me, but not you,” Saeed said. “If anything happens, leave.”
Minutes later, we were in an underground tunnel that led us to Special Collections and Archives. The man at the help desk had looked at us with such scrutiny when we’d asked about the Tower Records that I thought it was over right then and there. Then he’d said, “Right this way.” We followed him through the stacks to a glass door. He typed in a code, pushed the door open, scrutinized us again, and then held up a portable. He touched the screen and the face of another guard appeared, “You’ve got two, today,” the help desk man said.
“Ok,” the guard on his screen said. “Send them in.”
The pathway was long, the walls white. I shivered. It reminded me of the hallway in Tower 1. All it needed was the grey railing on the sides.
Only two people were allowed in at a time and clearance was tight. As we waited for the guide to check us out, I held my breath and looked through the second set of sealed glass doors into the sterile white room. The glass was most likely bullet-proof. There was nothing on the walls, nothing on the ceiling. The guard only had his silver chair to sit in. I wondered how he withstood spending hours in this place.
He frowned at us. Then took Saeed’s library card and touched it to the flattest portable I’d ever seen. It looked like a hand-sized sheet of glass. It lit up a soft periwinkle then it turned green and said, “Prince Osama bin Abdullah of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and wife are allowed into Tower Records. One hour. No photos, please.”
• • •
I forgot about Saeed guarding the door. I didn’t think about whatever it was that Mmuo had to do to get me into the full system. I ignored the silver buttons that were security cameras stationed in every ceiling corner. I didn’t think about what would happen if anyone checked on us. I thought only about information. Answers. I thought back to my time in Tower 7 when I had their e-reader in hand. Before I began to heat.
These small stacks were arranged in an ancient format called Dewey Decimal. I’d studied it, so there was no need to ask the guard for help. I went to the card catalog in the middle of the room. I paused. “LifeGen Technologies,” I whispered. I knew the name, but this was the first time I brought it to my consciousness, the first time I’d spoken it aloud. I’d always called them the Big Eye, as had the other speciMen I knew. But this was the official name of the company behind the towers, the hand that grasped the lightning bolt.
I looked up Tower 7 and found much of what I’d already read in digital format. Histories, the mystery of The Backbone, architecture. I also found what we were looking for. A single volume containing the “speciMen files” of Tower 7.
I can read fast and retain just about every detail, so I didn’t need the pad and paper that Saeed gave me. As I read, I felt sweat between the feathers of my wings. Even though the room was kept at a cool temperature and low moisture level, I was burning up. My body felt as if it were on fire, but this time it was because I was burning so much as I processed what I read.
“What are you doing?!” Saeed hissed as I threw off my burka.
“Mmuo got us in, right? So, he had to also have done something to the security cameras,” I said. “I remember when I was escaping Tower 7. He’s thorough.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “I need air. It’s too hot.”
“Phoenix, what if . . .”
“We take the chance,” I snapped. “I need to breathe. This is a lot.”
Saeed bit his lip, glanced at the cameras on the ceiling and then quickly nodded. He picked up my burka and got it ready to throw back over me. “Ok.”
My eyes were watering from the stress of what I’d just read about Mmuo. Had they really peeled away all of his already special skin, injected it with some sort of sentient molecular shifting compound and then grafted it back on? I wiped my forehead as I read the most shocking part of his file. I glanced at Saeed.
“What?” he asked.
I shook my head and continued reading. He wouldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. But I could. I’d seen the red creature in the glass box in Tower 1. It had looked like a light dust until I broke the glass and it came out. Then it had shifted and solidified into a tall praying mantis-like creature. The more I read, the gladder I was that I’d freed it.
According to the information in Mmuo’s file the creature was an intelligent alien from Mars, befriended and then captured and brought to earth by a young man from the Mars colony. This young man had forced the creature to divulge its technological knowledge about molecular control and reorganization. This information was passed to Tower 7 scientists and then used to create Mmuo’s skin.
Mmuo had endured the peeling and grafting without any anesthesia. This was why he could slip through more than wood. He hated clothes because his skin wanted to see everything. I shuddered. Mmuo’s file marked him as “fugitive.”
The idiok baboons who could speak in sign language were having their brains tested and extracted. They’d been caught in the Congo and even then were able to fully communicate with their captors in perfect sign language. The Big Eye believed the baboons had quickly taught themselves the language in order to communicate with their captors. What got Tower 7 interested in them was the fact that they could tell the future. One of them, the only female, kept telling Tower 7 to stop doing what they were doing, that if they didn’t, they’d bring the end of the world. But no one listened to her. All the idiok were marked as “deceased,” most of them dying in Tower 7’s collapse.
Saeed was a weapon, as I was. In his file they called him, “The Seed.” (The play on his name was surely not a coincidence. The Big Eye scientists were known to have a sick sense of humor. Even The Backbone was created as a joke.) He was the prototype of the soldiers created to seed disaster zones after dropping nuclear bombs on enemies. “The Seed” were human killing machines who would go in and kill off survivors to make sure the enemies were fully defeated. Saeed didn’t know it but he was resistant to radiation, too. Or maybe he did know. Maybe this was one of the many ugly secrets he kept from me. Saeed could never die of cancer. His file marked him as “deceased.”
There was no file on the winged man. I hadn’t expected there to be. The winged man was someone that Tower 7 probably kept secret from even itself.
My file had its own LifeGen Technologies mini-booklet. My belly dropped. Why did I have so many pages? Why was I a company-wide speciMen, as opposed to just Tower 7? There was nothing more extraordinary about me than Mmuo or Saeed. Saeed was classified as a weapon, just like I was.
As I read, my legs grew weak, and my mind tried to grow cloudy. The information I learned was poison. How could I have no father? How could I be nothing but a cataclysm spurred by weapon engineers and scientists? I was nothing but the result of a slurry of African DNA and cells. They constructed the sperm and the egg with materials of over ten Africans, all from the West African nations of Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, and Benin. Then they combined all that with DNA from Lucy the Mitochondrial Eve, the ten-year-old Ethiopian girl who carried the complete genetic blueprint of the human race. The girl who could remember every part of her life; the girl whom they tried to make immortal.
My eyes watered, but I read on. Something was coming. But I didn’t stop reading. An African American woman carried me to term, and when I was born, she wanted to keep me. They wouldn’t even let her kiss me goodbye. The woman had eventually gone mad and had to be committed to a psychiatric ward in New York, not far from Tower 7. The doctors could not figure out why she had grown so attached to me. They had told her nothing about the type of child I was, and they’d paid her and her family several millions of dollars; she’d rejected her portion after my birth. They gave the address of the psychiatric ward. I would remember it.
I kept reading. There it was. My surrogate had given birth the day after a sizable solar flare. There was a black out, and I’d been delivered in the darkness. When I was born, I was the brightest light in the room. They didn’t know what happened or how it happened. They speculated that maybe there was a chemical reaction because of all their mixing and the solar flare. What they quickly understood was that I was special. And they could cultivate my specialness.
I died when I was 1 month old. I looked about two years old. I’d run a fever, begun to glow brightly, then simply burned up. Minutes later I came back, good as new, a naked two-year-old-looking brown child with a head full of black puffy hair. I don’t remember any of it. The Big Eye were so excited about me, and this excitement was expressed in the way my doctors and the scientists documented my case. They used words like “epochal,” “monumental,” and “revolutionary.” I could burn and then live again. A reoccurring small nuclear bomb. They raised me like an android, not a human. I hadn’t burned again until last year.
There was nothing about me sprouting wings. Not a word. I wiped my face and sniffed. “They didn’t predict that,” I whispered. I stretched my wings until they grazed the ceiling, loving them more than ever. “They hadn’t really predicted anything. They just let themselves think they did.” It was easy to see how they lost control of me.
I slammed my file shut. Then I opened it again and flipped to the very end. I was marked as “Fugitive and lethal. Acquire and manage before end of Solar Cycle.” Then there at the bottom of that page there was one small note. “Information to be used in tandem with HeLa, Tower 4, US Virgin Islands”.
“HeLa?” I whispered. “Interesting.”
Lastly, just before we ran out of time, I had a chance to skim the financial status of the towers. Billions and billions of dollars, euros, and yuan were poured into the towers each year. But here was the twist: even more money was earned through patents, research results, and other things that were called names like “Project X” and “Experiment 626” or simply coded numbers. I had very little time to read and process the information in the financial book but one thing did catch my eye. Eighty percent of the billions earned came from Tower 4 in the Virgin Islands, where Saeed had been sent when they thought he was dead. Tower 4 was the hub of the towers’ income. The money was accredited to the sale of 2839, 2840, 2842, 2843 and 2844. There was also a large portion accredited to “harvests.”
My mind was so full that I barely noticed when Saeed threw the burka over me. I wasn’t paying attention to the guard swiping Saeed’s card again. I didn’t hear him wish us a nice day. I barely felt Saeed’s bone grinding grip of my hand as we quickly, but not too quickly, exited the library. The taxi ride to the Pakistani restaurant twenty minutes away was a blur. Only when I spotted Mmuo at the table did I leave the ocean of Tower Records information that now lived in my head. I joined my two friends in a victory dinner.
Mmuo and I ate beef seekh kebabs and chicken biryani, and Saeed had only water. And at that corner table surrounded by gregarious immigrant men taking breaks from driving their taxies, I told them everything. We spoke of violence, revenge, revolution, and more violence. Mmuo stabbed at his kebabs with a fork and then ate the mangled pieces. Saeed had to hide his angry tears.
When it was all said, discussed, and done, we realized that our plan was the same. Tower 4 in the US Virgin Islands was going down next.