Scream of a Siren

I thought I’d flunked my CBE until the prosecutor Serati said, “There’s nothing evidential beyond a reasonable doubt that you will commit a crime within the coming twelve months. Although, given your response attack on your husband in the simulation, we will up the surveillance of your microchip until your next forensic evaluation. Otherwise, do have a good day until next time.”

I felt light-headed as I made my way down the front stairs of the building, the daylight flooding my entire body with relief. I was trembling with glee that I didn’t have to worry about my next forensic evaluation for another twelve months.

Waiting in line at the Body Hope dispensary, I watch everyone. A teenage girl trots by, skin a beautiful, shimmering dark, faux locs tied up high exposing the nape of her neck, unsullied by the glower of a microchip. So free. So young. And not a body-hopper. Citizens in our country who haven’t body-hopped are incompatible with the microchip implant; they experience dizziness, migraines, seizures, nausea, and anxiety, so they’re only instituted to a yearly forensic evaluation.

To manage the high demand for bodies, the Body Hope Facility finds ways to augment “improper” and malfunctioning bodies with bionic technologies to upgrade them to proper condition. Disability rights organizations find that the real issues can’t be fixed by tampering with our biology and replacing it with mechanical limbs. The world should be augmented to make it easier for us to assimilate rather than manipulating us to fit into it.

Papa assumed that having bionic parts would raise the value of our bodies because of their superior functionality, but in actuality, it lowers our value. Bodies like mine are often supplied to those on the waiting list or offered to ordinary citizens since every Motswana is eligible for one free body per lifespan, unlike in other African countries, as the costs of body-hopping are regulated through private and public hospitals.

No one desires to buy or inhabit a body willingly and manage the functionality of its bionic limbs. The only issue I’ve had with this body is the microchip; that’s the disability for me. I’ve been called derogatory names; the label “improper” hardly hurts me. Even if we changed that language, it doesn’t change the real damage weaving itself through my life; it doesn’t remove the microchip noosed into my neck, it doesn’t remove the microaggressions I encounter in my professional life, it doesn’t change what my husband says or does to me. Having an organic or bionic arm makes no difference to me.

I only want to be free.

To live freely.

The line finally inches forward. Up ahead, an older man limps to the dispensary desk, his clothes dilapidated, wrinkles laced into his skin. “Hae mothowamodimo, asseblief, I need help. This is too costly for me to manage,” he says, tapping his bionic leg with his walking stick. “It’s malfunctioning, and the hospital said I could get it fixed or removed, but it costs money for each treatment. Please, I’m still trying to talk to my medical aid, but they won’t fully cover the treatment. What’s the point of paying for medical aid if they won’t help me? Hae, Jesu. This is very painful; I only want it out of me. Why, why did this bloody country give me this body?”

Hae, monna mogolo wa Modimo, I utter to myself.

The woman at the front desk looks uncomfortable as he’s spilling his pleas to her. She keeps uttering, “I’m sorry, malome, I’m sorry. Could I have your ID number? Let me check the system?”

This is not a good look for the Body Hope Facility. The lifespan of a bionic part is a few months to a few years. Some people are lucky not to incur unimaginable pain and functionality errors, and some of the rich can fix those issues with money; the poor who attempt to get out of poverty by selling their bodies can’t make a thebe from selling a body with disabilities. The Body Hope Facility will only accept payment for bodies that aren’t too disabled, using euphemistic bullshit jargon in their questionnaire to assess the impairment levels of a body. The older man is but a teardrop in an ocean of erasure. No one sees the poor and sick. I’ve been in that state, asking for help and not being able to get it.

We must pay the cost of the technology the facility put in us. Besides serving the nation’s cry for more bodies, what cost do they incur? Our lifespans were cut short because of this pressure. What other repercussions will follow?

I step forward to the older man. “Dumêla malome, what seems to be the problem?”

“Joh, ngwanaka,” he says, sighing and leaning onto his walking stick. “Please, talk to these people. No one will help me.”

I’m dealing with more significant expensive issues. I can’t imagine his costs, which are perhaps an iota of what it takes to fund my firm’s monthly operation fees. Such a difference could hardly affect my ability to pay the maintenance fees for my daughter’s Wombcubator. Losing such an amount won’t make a difference to me, but it will make a massive difference to him.

I lean toward the woman with my wrist outstretched. “Please charge his treatment to my account.”

The woman clears her throat, her eyes skimming the screen before her as she taps in instructions. “It will take a couple of days to process,” she says, “and once we get the green light, he’ll be called in for his treatment.”

The man claps his hands into a prayer form and starts sending me blessings and prayers as he leaves, making a call to a relative.

The waiting list system adopted by the Body Hope Facility is supposed to treat each consciousness equally and fairly. Still, news reports declare that they can trace our original identity, and based on who we were, their algorithm decides what bodies we get, which dictates who lives in privilege and who doesn’t. Regardless of how you hide yourself from other people around you, the system will know if you are bisexual, lesbian, gay, trans, Black, Asian, or whatever minority. I find it aggravating that a soul’s first identity is tethered to it regardless of who it becomes in the next lifespan, and whatever oppression its identity carried, it will enslave it into another oppressed body. That to escape this cycle one has to game the system or earn an upgrade; to consider a change in gender or ethnicity an upgrade is ludicrous, for it is only the materialism of this flesh and the laws of this world that muddy the true calibre of our souls.

There are days I wish I owned three bodies—that of a man, that of a woman, and that of a liminal gender—and could decide which to wear every day. But because I have a microchipped body, I am ineligible for that status afforded to some after intense inquiry. It is far more expensive to transition fluidly from one body to another frequently than on a one-time basis, as it requires highly adaptive technology, cloning of the consciousness, and plugging into and out of these bodies. Only 0.01 percent of the population has this status.

Once the dispensary hands me my medication, I storm down the hallways by the maternity ward because I’m a masochist. Getting a dose of crying, cooing, laughing babies warms my heart, assures me that I, too, will have that one day. In Ward 6, Suite 1, a door’s ajar, almost empty, except there’s a baby inside the room. I inch my head inside the luxurious suite with beige walls, a strip of windows overlooking Notwane Dam, splaying golden morning sunlight into the room.

“Hello?”

No one but a cot with a baby inside. She’s gurgling, blowing bubbles with her spit, her legs folded to her chin, her toe in her mouth, with little chubby cheeks. Soft brown skin, downy black hair just waiting to thicken into a rich Afro. She’s so cute I could eat her up. She smiles when I come into her vision, and I smile, too, playing with her little toes. The sunlight doesn’t reach her from the window, and she looks like she needs a bit of sunshine. I take a whiff of her smell—it’s like cocaine to a drug addict. Lavender baby powder. Baby oil. Soft skin. She’s in my arms, chubby cheeks at my lips. Why would someone leave a baby here alone? What would’ve happened if I hadn’t walked in? Poor thing doesn’t deserve such parents. I will take care of you.

“We could go to the garden,” I whisper as she curls her whole hand around my index finger. She stares at me with dewy dark eyes. “Would you like that? Fresh air. The smell of flowers.”

I’m out of the suite’s doors. My body jerks. An electrifying current stabs my every nerve ending. The baby tumbles from my arms. I fall to the ground, convulsing, waiting for the pain to end. A mass of people clad in scrubs, their clogs squeaking on the vinyl flooring, rush past me to the fallen, wailing baby. Oh God, did I break her? I only meant to hold her. I wasn’t trying to kidnap her.

I scream, watching through the windows as the blue expanse of the sky burns with a sun of intoxicating minuscule machines that flit about like hummingbirds from their stations at the police towers through the city air to their miscreant owner. One of them, a drone, unhinges from its docking station, splits through the hospital wall like a bullet, and punches into my shoulder blade, wailing the scream of a siren. A drone registered to my microchip.

The microchip is a foolproof, bona fide police forensic tool.

I can’t kill, steal, or kidnap someone without it delivering a paralyzing shock to my nervous system.

A drone films me as the burn of electrocution drowns me, and I slip into the dark abyss of unconsciousness.