I wasn’t the one who wanted to go to the market. DNA did. But I was all for it. We’d been in the Hour Glass for three days, and I was sinking. It wasn’t just what I’d been through, it was my conversation with Force about the role Ultimate Corp had played in me being the way I was. And it was what I was going through. I couldn’t sleep, not alone. Every time I closed my eyes, all the eyes of the AIs were there. In my sleep, I’d speak to them, and they’d think back. They’d show and take me places. Thousands of places, within moments. It wasn’t the going, it was the number of goings.
And each time I returned, DNA would be beside me, gazing at me, sitting up. Frowning. My face would be wet with tears and sweat, and he’d tell me I’d been weeping and saying over and over, “Slow, slow, slow down, slow down, slow down.” And when I was awake, when the headaches came, I wished I was asleep. Thumpa thumpa, thumpa no matter what I was doing, when they descended on me, I was to stop, sit, inhale, exhale, relax. Force’s girlfriend, Dolapo taught me how to do it. Not only was she a coder, but in her “previous life” she’d been an EMT, a high stress job that caused her to look into meditation.
“You can control your heart rate with it,” she said on the second day. Maybe DNA had said something to her, or maybe someone else had heard me sleeping. The place they lived in was practically communal, everyone sleeping in areas close to one another. There was no rain in the Hour Glass, so everyone slept out in the open beneath the restrained storm above.
We sat in a space amongst some cannabis bushes she was growing. The people in the Hour Glass smoked, ate, wove cloth with a lot of this and Dolapo had three lush and well-lit gardens growing three different strains. The plants we sat amongst were flowering and smelled like a parade of bothered skunks.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
“I don’t like to do that,” I said. “I know that sounds weird.”
She shook her head. “I understand. Force told me some of it. Sorry, I forgot.” She looked to her side. “See these plants? They’re beautiful, aren’t they? Focus on them. Their veins, the points on their leaves.”
I nodded and stared at the green hand shaped leaves.
“Take a deep breath,” she said. And then after a few seconds, “Now let it out slowly. Think only about those leaves. The number of leaves, breathe in their earthy smell. Be here. Be now.”
The eyes were still there, but there were thirty second intervals where all I actually thought about were the leaves. All I smelled was their scent. All I heard was their rustle. It was glorious, and the first time I was able to achieve this, I cried.
The day we went to the market was an hour after one of my sessions with Dolapo, and I was feeling clear. Dolapo had lent me more of her clothes and I was wearing jeans, a black t-shirt, and a white veil. She’d even given me a pair of her giant Jupiter shaped earrings after I saw them and commented that they were beautiful.
When DNA asked me if I wanted to go, I wasn’t connecting things. It was only as we walked into the people and motion that I started frowning. People were looking at me, talking and pointing. But people were also greeting Force and patting me on the shoulder. I’d never been to this place and everyone seemed so friendly and welcoming. A woman selling herbs and spices gave me a necklace of fragrant smelling herbs. She’d put it over my head, her face coming so close to mine. “Welcome, AO.” She smelled of curry and the herbs she gave me smelled of mint and sage.
“Where can I get a connection?” DNA was asking Force as we moved through the crowded market. “I need to reach my family.”
“I don’t see why I can’t just—”
“No, AO,” DNA said.
“Agreed. Plus, finding a phone is easy and cheap here,” Force said. “Follow me. I know a guy.”
DNA held my hand, and I wrapped my white veil more tightly around me as we moved through the people. We passed a group of young men sitting on a car that was, for some reason, parked right in the middle of the busy market. The young men were dressed like Fulani or Hausa, but they smiled at me and called to me in Igbo, “Agu nwanyi! Agu nwanyi!” They all fell to their knees, still chanting. This actually made me laugh and my laughter was rewarded with blown kisses. This annoyed DNA, and I laughed some more.
“You didn’t believe me. They love you here,” Force said. “I told you.”
I stood behind DNA and Force as the programmer scheduled a connection for DNA with his parents. DNA was holding the tablet as the connection was made. He wasn’t focused on me. Force wasn’t focused on me. Most in the area had gotten their fill of me. The hand fell on my shoulder and in that moment, I realized I couldn’t see through any of the cameras around me. Not a cell phone, personal security camera or tablet. Nothing. I was being blinded. I was surrounded.
“What?” I turned to see who was grasping my shoulder. The grasp squeezed hard and I knew I was in trouble. I stumbled back, bumping into DNA. Someone ripped off my necklace of herbs. Then there was a wild struggle and press of bodies. Hands snatched and grabbed at me and then were pulled away. I punched and kicked and nearly went down. I couldn’t tell what the hell was happening. Then I stumbled and my body slammed against something. I heard DNA shouting for me and he sounded way too far away. Hands and bodies pressed me against the car. I caught the eye of one of the young men who’d been here when we arrived. He was wrestling with someone wearing a grinning masquerade face, except instead of wood, it was made of gold foil.
“Get on top of the car!” the young man yelled. “Get—” The masked person came at me and the young man was wrestling him again. Similar fights were breaking out all around me. I was being attacked, but people were fighting for me, too! What was it with me and markets? I twisted and grabbed at the car with my good arm. I stumbled onto the hood of the car, then onto its roof. I caught my balance and stood up straight, my white veil fluttering in the wind. When had it gotten windy? My metal feet made dents in the car’s roof but that was the least of my worries. I could see all the chaos clearly from here.
DNA was feet away, trying to shove in my direction. Men with golden masks surrounded me, except they couldn’t get past my protective perimeter of market people. And these men and women were pushing back. The wrestling was getting more intense as the gold-faced men realized they couldn’t get to me. Then I was able to see everything from above. I looked up. A drone, one I could control. I brought it down with a mere thought, turning off its camera eye. It was an Ultimate Corp drone. This was Ultimate Corp? What the fuck were they trying to do?! And how had they been able to blind me? To stop me from seeing through all the cameras?
A ripple of hot and electric rage shot through my body. All the eyes swiveled and for a moment, I felt as if I were in so many places at the same time that my rage felt a thousandfold. A millionfold. I pulled myself in. These golden faced idiots could hurt DNA. That was enough to focus my mind. I stamped my foot on the top of the car so hard that it made a deep dent. This got almost everyone’s attention. I did it again.
“HEY!!” I shouted. “Look at ME!!” I removed my white veil and pulled off the band holding my locks together. I shook out my locks so everyone could see the silver nodule in the center of my head. “See me! AO! The woman with the nerve to kill the men trying to kill her!”
The fighting continued for another minute, gold-faced people pushed and shoved at the people protecting me on all sides. One of them punched a woman in the face and as she crumbled to the ground, a man leapt at the gold-faced man who’d punched her.
I was breathing heavily now, and I could hear my heart pounding in my head, ears, chest, doing a beat that I’d never heard. Tripped up, staccato, wrong. My vision blurred, the world swimming around me—no, not swimming, blowing. The fighting at my feet was growing wilder, the car beginning to shake. I was going to faint and fall off the car. I had to breathe. Ah, there it was. Ultimate Corp couldn’t help themselves. They’d thought they had me, and they had planned to record it. That’s why that drone had been there. And maybe they’d planned to show the world the capture of the crazy insane wild woman. Arrogant. They were always so arrogant.
A pain shot down my arm. Still, I found and flew their drone directly over me in moments, then had it move down and hover a few feet in front of me. And in this moment, everything died down, the gold-faced people looking away from the drone. Those directly in its line of vision, scrambled for cover like cockroaches. I wished the drone’s camera had been panoramic. See me, I thought. Make them all see me. There was no time to push for all of Nigeria to witness all this through this camera, let alone the entire globe. However, I connected it to over half of Nigeria, all of Lagos.
“Cannabis plants,” I whispered. “Please.” I inhaled deeply. And they showed me. Fields and fields of it, waving at me in the breeze, seeking my attention. Just for a moment. Over there. Back at Force and Dolapo’s home. I inhaled deeply. And let the breath out slowly. Again. I inhaled, then I looked directly into the camera eye. “Do I make you feeeeeel uncomfortable? Unsafe?” I snarled. “Have you called all your loved ones to check on them? You want to know why you feel that way? You want to know who’s to blame for me?? The same people who made your mobile phones. The same people who made your children’s toys. The company who sells you the super-meats you put in your husband’s okra soup and pounded yam.”
Breathe, I thought.
“They are responsible for me. How did we get to this?” I paused. “Olives. If you do not remember the Ultimate Corp olives that caused five children to be born with horrible deformities, rush to the internet, look it up. The stories are all there. I am one of those children. You see, my mother loved olives. Especially when she was pregnant. Maybe it was the salt, or the taste, the nutty flavor olives are famous for. Or the firm fruit texture.
“And so I was born. With one arm and one arm stump. Legs with unformed femurs and no joints. One lung. My intestines in a knot. They made sure I lived, though. Then when I was fourteen, another so-called ‘accident’ that crippled me further. I have a cybernetic arm, cybernetic legs, human-made intestines and a human-made lung. I’ve got neural implants, see my head? I thought I was me because I was me. That I chose all this for myself. But what is choice when you have little choice? It’s not just me. It’s you, too.”
Breathe, I thought.
“We have pollen tsunamis because of Ultimate Corp’s periwinkle grass campaign in New Calabar. Naija people, which of you owns the land you live on? How many of you are Ultimate Corp academic scholars? Vomiting up rhetoric for your PhDs. Those few of you privileged enough to make it to university, are you studying what you want to study or are you studying so you can do what makes them more money? Which of you can afford to drop out of university? What are your real dreams? I’m a self-taught mechanic, my parents were professors. Olives.”
Breathe, I thought. I turned to look at everyone around me. All eyes on me, outside and inside. They were listening. So many. And I’d ensorcelled them. There was DNA. I turned the camera to him. The gold-faced people moved away from the camera’s eye and, in turn, away from DNA. I looked at him as I spoke, but I spoke to the market people of the Hour Glass around me. “People of the Hour Glass. I just got here. I was tired and you embraced me. Thank you.” I was calm now. “I’ve seen what they do.”
Someone in the group shouted back. “We all have, girl!”
Even more people shouted more affirmation.
“We’ve seen what they do,” I said again.
“We all have!” More people shouted this.
“We’ve seen what they do,” I said again.
“We all have!” Even more joined.
I grinned, tears welling in my eyes. Days ago they’d tried to kill me in a market, now here were free wild people protecting me. “We’ve seen what they do!” I shouted.
“WE ALL HAVE!” Now there were fists in the air and the voices sounded hoarse and low, there were mostly men in the crowd. Now almost everyone was in the market space. I could see more people coming. Their phones up, recording. Recording me.
In the height of the moment, one of the gold-faced people leapt on the car. He tried to grab me and out of nowhere, I saw Dolapo scream, leap and throw herself on the man.
“Dolapo,” I shouted. “What are you doing?”
They went down, the man punching at her. I could hear her grunting in pain, and I was about to throw myself into the mix when another man grabbed at me. He was very strong. Instead of twisting away, I grabbed him back with my dead arm . . . which clearly wasn’t dead. There was a mad scramble toward the car, but I was barely aware of it. I was barely aware of anything. My body was acting. Again. Reacting. Oh no! My arm was acting on its own. Again. In my mind, I’d given this phenomenon a name, though it had only happened once. Kill Mode. I shoved at him with my flesh hand as he tried to grab me again. Idiot! He managed to get his hands around my throat. He was choking me but only for a moment, because my cybernetic arm pulled back and I was pulled back with it! Then I saw my left fist punch the man so hard that it smashed his gold mask.
The market space burst into violence. Shouts and grunts, as people fought and I was pulled back. I fell hard on the ground, my metal hand still in a fist, pressing to my face. It smelled of blood, was wet with it. My left arm buzzed and then went numb again. “Oh,” I whispered. Someone was hoisting me up, and suddenly DNA was in my face. He pulled me along, and somehow Force was in front of him pulling him, as was a bloody-nosed Dolapo. We were battered left and right, but by the backs of people. The market people were shielding us, giving us a way out as they fought. We arrived at a red car.
“Get in, get in!!” Force shouted.
I threw myself into the backseat with Dolapo and Force and DNA climbed into the front. “Go!” Force said to the car and it went. I was lying on my side, my face to the car seat. I slapped my arm. I might as well have slapped a slab of scrap metal, dead again.
“Dolapo,” I breathed. “Are you all right?”
“Better than the other guy,” she said, her voice nasally. She sniffed and coughed a laugh. Then she groaned with pain. “I have never fought a man in my entire life.”
DNA’s sling of cloth hung around my neck, and I tried unsuccessfully to push my arm into it. I peeked outside. “I don’t see them following us.”
“They will. My God, how the fuck did Ultimate Corp get into the Hour Glass?!” Force asked.
“You all have too much confidence in your privacy,” DNA muttered. “When they see a threat to their finances, they’ll fly into a pit of fire. They’ll just make sure they use fire-proof drones.”
“Why are they coming after me so hard?” I asked. “The government isn’t even here!”
“AO,” Force said. “You can control tech with your mind.”
“Badass,” Dolapo said, pinching her nose and tilting her head back.
The drones were about a fourth of a mile away and gaining fast.
“They’ll taser the entire car, knock us all out. Shit,” Force said. He looked hard at me. “Get rid of them, AO.”
“Already have. They’re gone,” I said. I rolled over and grabbed my arm and shook it. Nothing.
“Good,” he said. “We have a chance then. I have a plan.”
DNA, Dolapo, and I leaned in.
Force’s plan for us was insane.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he said. “I mean, think about it, it’s all you really can do. If you don’t go . . .” He didn’t need to finish what he was saying. The Hour Glass had been infiltrated by Ultimate Corp operatives. I could see them now that I knew to look. They were everywhere. Except where we were driving. Nothing was where we were driving. Not a camera, not a drone, not even a person with a mobile phone. Within a mile radius. We were driving down a paved road so black that it could have been laid down yesterday. The land around us was populated by thousands of heliostatic mirrors, each the size of a car.
“This was a Sunflower Initiative Solar Farm before the Red Eye started,” Dolapo said. “The power tower was at the center of these mirrors but it was blown down long ago.”
“It’s a total dead zone now,” I said.
“Has been for a while,” Dolapo said. “The Oracle Solar Complex wanted to harvest the parts but—”
I gasped. “We’re at the edge, aren’t we?” I said. I could see it. Literally see it. The digital shield of the anti-aejej. To my new senses, it looked like billions of tiny pink jelly-like things wriggling about to form the shield. It was making a soft hissing sound. And beyond were the swirling violent winds. Force stopped the car right where the road continued into the storm.
The four of us sat there, silent. The four of us knew. “Okay,” DNA finally said. He got out of the car. I turned to Force. “They get you, you’re done,” he said.
“I know.”
“You have something that scares the shit out of them,” Force said. “You threaten their existence. You just exposed them to—”
“All of West Africa,” I said. “On mobiles, TVs, tablets, oh, why’d I do that? Why’d I—”
“Do NOT second guess yourself,” Dolapo said.
“Agreed,” Force said. “Own your actions. Always.”
DNA slapped a hand at the window. “We need to do this,” he shouted. “Come on, AO.”
I jumped as sirens started to sound.
“Force,” Dolapo said, looking at him with wide eyes. Force didn’t seem surprised at all.
“AO, go!” he said.
I looked and I saw it flash in my mind, a symbol in the shape of infinity. Dolapo was shouting in Yoruba. She’d let go of her nose and blood was dripping out and still she shouted at Force to hurry.
“Code Red,” I said. “Force, what’s Code Red?” The symbol was bouncing all over the Hour Glass’s local network as a text message.
Ignoring both me and Dolapo, Force leaned out of the truck. “DNA, you have my anti-aejej?”
“What?” I said. “Anti-aejej? What’s going on?!”
“I do,” DNA said, grabbing it from a back pack I’d never seen before. “Wish we had masks, too!” All I had was the water bottle I’d been carrying in my pocket before this all happened. Deep pockets will always be the best thing about clothes.
“I didn’t think it would be like this! Turn it on! Turn it on!” Force said, clicking his seatbelt. “Go! The Hour Glass anti-aejej is about to shut down!”
“Are you crazy?!” Dolapo shouted.
Force looked at her with eyes so full of rage that Dolapo immediately shut up.
“What?!” DNA shouted, rushing back to the truck.
“Force,” I said, grasping the car window. “Wait, wait, why?!”
“Because I sent the command! In five minutes. It’ll stay down for exactly four minutes. That’s enough time to send a bunch of those damn soldiers to a flying death or trap them where they can’t come after you. You’ll have a head start. But you need to get moving!”
“Will you be all right?”
“No!” Dolapo shouted. “We’ll be—”
“This car’s weighted to withstand the winds,” he said, but the look on his face didn’t convince her. “We’ll be okay. We always are. Everyone knows to go underground if they hear sirens. And the shelters are all over, it’s hard to be far from one. Some of the soldiers will try to follow people in; there are going to be fights.”
We moved back as he wildly turned the car around. He stopped and waved to us. “Make all this count, AO. Go!” he said. “Before you can’t.” Then he and Dolapo were off, sending up a huge wake of dust.
I turned to DNA. “I don’t . . . people are going to die! I can’t have that on my conscience. The Hour Glass is run by an AI; Maybe I can—”
“Don’t, AO!” DNA said, his eyes wild. He grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me to his face. “Are you trying to kill yourself? I’ve been wondering this for a while now!”
“I’m not,” I said, staring at him. My dead arm nearly slipped out of the sling. “I just—”
“Did you already forget yesterday!”
The dust from Force’s car still floated around us. The sirens blared. It had been a week since the morning I’d left my apartment to go and buy ingredients for a quiet dinner.
I grabbed my hair and sighed loudly. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I tied my locks back, covering the silver nodule in the middle of my head as he held up the anti-aejej and turned it on. I could feel it immediately, and it was much stronger than the one DNA owned and had left behind at Force and Dolapo’s place. I shivered, feeling a staticky itch in the back of my throat that tasted like the smell of those sheets of fabric softener my mother liked to use.
“What happens now?” I asked. “What if someone is outside without protection?”
“Like Force said, it’s happened before,” he said. “That’s why there are sirens. People know how to not just survive, but live here.”
We were facing away from the border, so we saw it happen. It was like a great beast pausing for a moment to admire the meal it was about to enjoy and then swallowing it in one gulp. When the anti-aejej was on, because it was early afternoon of the day, you could see sunlight peeking through the top of the dome, the storm blustering over its surface. We were far enough from all the Hour Glass villages with their buildings and outdoor communal dwellings, so the moment the anti-aejej went off we were able to watch the dust and wind attack. It was like watching the end of the world.
We rushed to the border. We were going to die out there.