A Museum of People

I wake on a cold wooden floor, staring at two light-brown eyes, my head on Jan’s lap. He brushes my braids aside, fingers, thumb against my palm. “Your hand is healed.” I sit up. “How do you feel?” he asks softly, worried I might break.

I stare at my hand, clean of damage. My migraine, gone. The handprint burn mark on my shoulder blade, gone. The skin whole on my forearm. Pain is a strange, foreign thing. The sensation for it dissipates with each death. Before, the physical and emotional effort required to process my pain and grief depleted my body—now, it feeds my body. Instead, I devour the velocity of pain’s explosion, I guzzle its cataclysmic terror as it spreads through my nerve endings. I understand Moremi now, how violence satiates her anger, confines her meekness, avenges her hurt since no one will rise to the occasion as effective as a vengeful dead woman.

“Babe,” Jan says, caressing my cheek.

“I’ve died three times,” I whisper. “I’ve lost—I don’t feel bad. Bad for everything that I’ve done. The guilt is gone or going, but a large part of it is deceased. I feel . . . good. Is this how serial killers feel? No, not serial killers. But doing something terrible, feeling no remorse but a good high? I did nothing terrible but murder and bury a young woman, yet I lived my life as if every day I was sinning. My parents believed that the sins of the flesh are tied to the sins of the soul and kept themselves from sinful acts to keep themselves pure. I’ve never been strictly religious, but I know God is out there, that our souls depart to heaven or hell when they cease to exist through our reincarnations. My flesh was attracted to ill will and vices; it’s the sin of my flesh and not my soul. I wonder if this is what it feels like to have transcendence into enlightenment, to be absolved of everything. I feel surprisingly spiritual, and my body feels like a vessel, a spaceship I’m traveling in. A body has never felt like this to me. Reincarnation and body-hopping don’t feel like this, do they? Is it because I’ve tasted death? I thought I’d see God’s light or something. But I feel the more I die, the more death transmutes me spiritually, possibly bringing me closer to my spirit form, to Matsieng. I feel this deep desire to enmesh myself in Xem. The way society speaks of Matsieng, it’s sometimes in demonizing tones, but Xe is our ancestor, and Xe is us. I can feel Xem in my blood, in my breaths. We’ve been clinging to being governed by this city’s laws rather than a higher consciousness.”

Jan stares at me, perturbed. “I . . . Your parents died.”

“Death is not real, Jan. It’s a journey to another world,” I say. “The pain is there, a bit, the grieving, but it’s not as strong as before.”

He frames my face. “I don’t want them to kill every good part of you. Don’t leave, please.”

“I had to interfere, otherwise you’d have a wounded leg,” I say. “At least I can heal quickly.”

“Through death,” he says. “That is a very dark, occult place you’re going to. Don’t interfere anymore. I will handle what comes to me. Listen to me: never do that again.”

“I want to,” I whisper, “if it’ll remove all this pain, the burden. Do you know what this means for us? I can survive anything; I can do anything without a second’s hesitation. Hesitation wastes time. Difficult decisions need to be made, decisions that to you may seem evil, but are for the right purposes. The more I die, the more I can take on Moremi.”

“Your child,” Jan says. “What about your child?”

“I will protect my child from everything and everyone. That will never change.”

He pulls me into a hug. “You’re still there. You’re still you. Please don’t leave, please.” He rubs my back. “We have to use the cleansing unit. I don’t know what they mean to do with us, but I have to disrobe—”

“They’re cowards taking advantage of their power if they watch us,” I say. “Let’s get this over and done with.”

He stares, surprised and concerned, effortlessly removes his clothes, and we step naked into the next room. The room is dark-embalmed. Two meters by two meters, ribbed flooring, ceramic-tiled walls. One entry door and one exit door, opposite each other, like a sally port. On either end through the glass part of the door, warm light bathes wood-paneled walls. I hug my body.

“Legs apart, arms spread out,” the soldier yells.

Cold air prickles my skin as I raise my hands. It snags at my thighs, stomach, and breasts. Jan stands close behind me, buffering me from their prying eyes. I don’t give a fuck. I pleasure myself with the sounds their bones will make when I shatter their lives.

One of the soldier snickers on the PA system. “Bastards,” Jan mutters.

A hiss and a strong, cold spray of water and disinfectant pours through every opening in the walls and ceiling. Water, like death, transforms our physical appearance but can’t scour our crimes. Several minutes pass, being tossed by the cold froth. A buzz. The cold-water spray stops.

“Please approach the door, exit, collect your newly furnished clothing,” a disembodied female voice says.

Jan and I approach the sealed door, sandals on the ground. We enter a cubicle room similar to a sauna. Clothes fresh and laundered and folded on the seat. We get dressed in beige cotton pants and cotton shirts and enter a foyer-like space of light where the soldiers await. As they handcuff us again, I register the time on one soldier’s watch. 19:57. Fifteen minutes left. Who’s next? Terror clutches my throat, and I’m sickened at my thoughts: Please let it be Limbani.

“Sorry, forgot to release the warm water,” one soldier says, smiling. “This way.”

We turn down a narrow hallway. What is going on? They usually evacuate you from the body, or are we going to be tested on like the other prisoners? But why clean us?

We turn into a wide doorway with a plaque hanging on its rectangular arch: Museum of Life. Inside, empty. Edges of light, branded with steel. What seems like a long hallway is a room with white, face-up displays on plinths, running the length of the room and separated at intervals. Each display unit sits opposite a sheet of wall with brushed-steel doors and clear, rectangular glass punched into the upper-top section, exposing a sleeping face. I freeze, blood thudding in my ears, my eyes taking in the scene.

Millions of doors.

Millions of faces.

Repeated across the wall’s long periphery. A museum of people sleeping in the walls. Trapped. The display shoots sharp, bright light into the ceiling. Jan and I recoil. Four men block the second exit.

“Sit,” a voice says. “You must be tired.”

I jump. A woman appears from a hidden door in the wall. I gasp. Prosecutor Serati Zwebathu, in formal wear, a tablet in her hand. She points to a shelter in an alcove with three cushioned seats, a table, and a strand of lights hanging in the center. “Take off their handcuffs. These are our valued visitors.”

The soldier’s eyes bolt out. “Ma’am, she crashed—”

“I heard. That’s an order.”

“Ee mma.” The soldier removes our cuffs, his jaw tightening with fury.

“How many are left?” she asks him.

“Her daughter, the husband, and a brother,” he responds. “And the lover.”

“The brother, he owns a multimedia newspaper, you said?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a liability.”

“We’re processing him. He’s under the serum. We’ll return him to his house before his wife and kids arrive. He shouldn’t remember any of today when he wakes up at his home.”

“Good, the last thing we need is a news media rat spilling its guts,” Serati says. “They could sway public opinion in the wrong direction.”

Blood rushes to my face. “What the hell’s going on?” I shout. “Why are you talking about my brother?”

“Are you arresting us?” Jan asks, rubbing his wrist as I ask, “Is my husband here?”

“Nothing of the sort,” she says, staring at Jan, ignoring my question. “But we do need to talk.” Turns to me. “Nice to meet you again, Nelah.” I stare at her hand, the watch, the time: 20:03, and I’m dizzy with anxiety. She shrugs. “Mr. Koshal.” Shakes Jan’s hand. He stares at her, stunned. “I was really looking forward to that weekend braai your husband invited us to. He was at the office—I bumped into him leaving to see your daught—”

“Get the fuck on with it,” my panic shouts just to get her to finish her spiel.

She sits down, crosses her legs, stares into the space above us as if she can see a beautiful memory whilst Jan and I glare at the seats as if they are electrocution chairs.

Serati cocks her head to one soldier who forces us to sit with the heavy prod of his gun.

Serati raises her palm. “As per our protocol, we don’t inform microchipped persons of our preparations to remove their microchip. Instead, we process them through a trial to ascertain their purity. A Murder Trial, we call it. Without them knowing, they can’t trick the system. Generally, with human nature, when the walls are down, and no one is looking, they are who they are. When they know they are being tested, like with the CBE, for example, they put up a different—most often false—version of themselves to prove to society their capability.”

I take a deep breath, and the weight of all my sins settles on my knees.

“Each microchipped person is given a criminal scenario, and their response to that scenario determines if they are pure or criminal,” she says. “That is how we determine the removal of a microchip, certain that this person is safe for our society.”

Jan shivers beside me, and I steel myself for the reveal.

“You were one of the selected microchipped to undergo removal. You were fourth on the list.” She pauses, and I clasp my hands into fists, to hold myself together from the overwhelming inevitability. “What that means is the three microchipped people before you passed. Pure. They were given the exact same scenario: a hit-and-run in a discreet location.”

The words hit me like bullets.

A nuclear bomb of terror climbs my spine.

Bile claims my throat. It’s over. It’s all over.

“You failed dismally,” she says. “Instead of reporting the hit-and-run, seeking medical care for your victim, you killed her and buried her with your lover.”

I close my eyes, shutter myself in darkness, away from reality.

Then: “We know everything you have done,” Serati delivers. “You are guilty of the murders of Moremi Gadifele, your mother, Magetalene Bogosi, and your father, Loeto Bogosi, and the illegal disposal of their bodies, as well as the assault on your brother, Limbani Bogosi.”

I am unhinged, the seams of my skin unstitch themselves, and I am falling, falling, falling apart.

This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. Tears flame my face. My daughter. My daughter. But the silence is jarring and unsettling. I expect commotion, to be processed and for my consciousness to be suctioned out onto a Mind-Cell disk.

I look up. Serati’s eyes shimmer with delight, and an unrecognizable fear clings to my skin with sweat.

“The deadline is Sunday,” she says.

Incomprehensible words sputter from my mouth. “D-d-deadline?”

A smile slices across Serati’s face. “Moremi has to kill your family by then, or you must have obstructed her to win.”