I’ve hemmed and hawed enough. I have to go to America. Once I have agreed to do so, what remains is the method. I have no idea how to get there. It was easier when I thought I was a person using a time machine and teleportation device. I could go anywhere by just programming and punching a button. But now that I think back, and have been back, I see that the details blur like staring through gauze. There is no detail, just the effect. I have experimented. I have visited the past without pretending to use a machine. I just concentrate. The problem with America is I have no referent.
In this house of thought, in this bed of imagination, I stroke my lover’s belly, going over the soft folds as she recovers from our exercise, following the lanes laid out between stretch marks. The bed has a canopy, and a filmy netting covers all sides, blurring everything outside. Violins mix with talking drums, coming from memory rather than a hi-fi system. Is this real? As real as it needs to be, I think.
“Nike?”
“Hmm.”
“How do I get to the US?”
Nike groans. “You’re still going?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the child?”
“Junior? She’s with friends.” It still shocks me that Junior found people to play with, but it seems on her own explorations she met children in reverie or some other REM sleep often enough to form relationships.
Nike opens her eyes and simultaneously the lighting of the room increases, though still soft and filtered. “I wouldn’t know how to get there. I’ve never been.”
“That isn’t true. You went to Disneyland as a child.”
“Ahh, so you were listening.”
“I’m always listening,” I say.
“Well, girl, that was a long time ago. I don’t remember enough of it to serve as a pathway through the xenosphere for you.”
“Who built this place?” I ask.
“We both did. We both are. It is constantly being rebuilt within our agreement.”
“Show me what the xenosphere actually looks like. Can you do that?”
Nike sits up. “Yes. You can do that too, you know. At least, you will when you remember.”
“Show me.”
The bed, the fabric, the music all dissolve, and both of us are standing in the dark surrounded by thin strands of organic matter forming a network around us. One is beneath our feet. Each connects with every other one along its length. Some are white, some grey, and, looking closely, they don’t actually make full contact with each other. There is a space across which puffs of either gas or liquid drift. There is some kind of script on each, but it is not readable.
The dark lights up with electricity and the strands break off from each other, only to re-form the links seconds later, not always in the same position as before. Protean cells push pseudopodia into the spaces and correct the lost positions. After this they seem to disappear.
Nike holds my hand and begins to run down the xenoform. The motion does not seem adequate to cover the distance and I suspect Nike is moving the landscape as well as herself.
The xenoform leads us to a convergence point, where a being rests at a nexus, receiving information from all. It is arachnoid, but no spider ever had this number of legs.
In this house of thought, in this bed of imagination, I stroke my lover’s belly, going over the soft folds as she recovers from our exercise, following the lanes laid out between stretch marks. The bed has a canopy, and a mosquito netting covers all sides, filming everything outside. Violins mix with talking drums, building to a crescendo, coming from memory rather than a hi-fi system. Is this real? As real as it needs to be, I think.
Something seems familiar…
In this house of thought, in this bed of imagination, I stroke my lover’s breasts, going over the soft folds of the skin as she recovers from our exercise, following the planes laid out between stretch marks. There is no sweat, but between her legs tastes like pomegranate. The bed has a canopy, and a filmy netting covers all sides, blurring everything outside. Violas mix with talking drums, coming from memory rather than a hi-fi system. Is this real? As real as it needs to be, I think.
I’m not sure if…
In this house of thought, in this bed of imagination, I stroke my lover’s belly, going over the soft folds as she recovers from our exercise, following the lanes laid out between stretch marks. The bed—
“There you are. Don’t worry; I’m here.” Nike takes my hand, and we are looking at the spider again.
“What happened?”
“Thought parasite. Don’t worry about it. You got caught in a recursive loop and would have been stuck there or ultimately consumed.”
“Are they alive?”
Nike squints. “Hard to tell if they have any self-awareness, honey.” She points to the spider. “She knows everything. You can ask her.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
Nike puts a hand on both of my cheeks and kisses me. “Girl, someone needs to bring you back when you get lost. And you will get lost.”
“Won’t the spider tell me how to get back?”
“Your self, honey. You will lose your self, dissipate it in the data stream. And I will collate you and bring you back, me and Junior, like we always do.”
“How long have I—”
“Years. Too long. Go. I’ll be here when you’re done.”
I kiss her. “I will not get lost this time.”
There is a twinkle in her eyes and her mouth twitches as if she is about to say something, but she doesn’t. She turns to leave.
I turn around.
No spider, no strands of xenoforms. I’m standing in front of a naked woman, dark skin, short hair, six-foot butterfly wings extending up and out behind her.
“Bicycle Girl,” says the woman. She has a large mouth with a toothy smile, like she is about to eat prey. “It’s not time yet.”
“Time? Who are you?”
“I’m… Call me Molara. I’m the data harvester. My work here is all but done, but I have to wait for the transfers to be complete before I die. Do you want to amuse me while I wait, Bicycle Girl?” She thrusts her hips forward then, lascivious.
Gross.
“I need to get to America.”
“Maybe I wipe your memory and kill your wife and child, Bicycle Girl. I could do that. Then maybe I amuse myself, whether you like it or not.”
I am afraid, but I see something in her, an emptiness, a lack of substance that tells me this is all posturing.
“Send me to America, Molara. I know you’re weak or dying.”
“Still strong enough to eat you.”
“But you won’t. I have a mission.”
“To help the humans.” She laughs. “Do you remember helping that dissident escape? Tolu Eleja? Remember that?”
“Vaguely. I saw him recently.”
Molara touches my forehead. “Remember.”
And I do.
I had been gazing at possible futures with Junior. Nike. Nike junior. Extrapolating, we had seen Tolu Eleja in… the same meeting with me, Kaaro, Femi, Eric. He seemed important. When I checked in 2066 he was in captivity with S45, but I didn’t know where. I enlisted Kaaro, the only finder left alive, and we… rescued him. Kaaro used a decoy body from Wormwood. I was incorporeal, so it was of no significance. The xenoforms. They affect organic matter, it’s how they heal. They broke Tolu down and absorbed him into the xenosphere, reconstituting him where I instructed, with the resistance groups. So I can teleport. Of course I can. That’s what I did to Ogene when I sprung him from jail, except I never re-formed him. I did it to Kaaro, bringing him to the Lijad back when I thought it was an object of science, not imagination.
But then I see even more. The plant that nearly destroyed Wormwood and had to be destroyed physically and in the xenosphere.
With Molara’s help.
“You’ve helped the humans. You fought with them.” Just being close to her brings a lot more back. We are part of the same system of data. She is, like me, a creature of the xenosphere.
“For our survival, not for theirs,” says Molara. “But what does it matter? Amuse yourself if you must. The humans have already lost this world. The flow of Homians has started and cannot be stopped.”
“So you’ll help me?”
“If you call it that. You’re going to London. In 2012.”
“Wait! I said America. The United States.”
“There’s an electromagnetic cordon around the US, the Drawbridge. You know that. There are xenoforms in there, though. You’ll be fine, Bicycle Girl.”
Molara pushes me and I fall down a tunnel. I know it’s a neural pathway, but it feels like gravity has me, rather than neurotransmitters. I form my metal cocoon with pewter cups and old televisions and gold from mines in Ilesha and tin from Enugu and the roof of an abandoned tractor we used to have in Arodan. Inside, though I am still falling, I feel safe.