Page 12 of Death of the Author

12 Unrequested Update

I knew the last human on Earth. I knew her well. She told me her story and the stories of others. To listen to a story from

a primary source is a great honor, one that most of my kind will never experience. She changed me. She also saved me from

destruction at the start of what would be very troubled times.

I met her not long after I’d learned of the terrible information from Udide. I was on my way to Cross River City to get help

when it happened.

But first, you must remember the Ghosts. Udide had warned me of NoBodies who’d organized themselves into a tribe. They boasted that they were superior to all other automation. While Humes took pride in their rusted bodies, Ghosts were without physical form, traveling through cables and the air, in electric waves, as pure energy. They saw themselves as above the physical. They expected the rest of us to hold their values, despite the fact that they clearly hated us. They bonded over their hatred for humans and all their relics. When Ghosts found nodes on the network that carried stories, they viciously deleted them. They would be even more ruthless when it came to Hume robots like me. When they looked at us, at our humanoid “skins” and microchips full of old stories, they saw only humanity—our predecessors, but not our futures. To Ghosts, we Humes were the greatest, most pathetic abomination of automation.

But we cannot escape those who created us. I will always blame humans for what happened next.

My plan to reach Cross River City should have worked. On any other day, at any other time, it would have worked. But this

was the day of the Purge.

The wind was blowing gently, bringing salt from the sea. The sun was shining across the outskirts of Lagos, which meant I

could recharge. All that automation eats is sunshine and wind. I scanned the city for nearby activity. A pod of dolphins was

dipping through the water by the shore. A flock of pigeons was flying over a nearby hill. An orange-and-green agama lizard

was scurrying up the remains of a rusted gate. The air smelled of earthy iroko tree and periwinkle grass pollen. Automation

can appreciate beauty. I did a quick search of my personal files for a poem about wildlife and read the one I liked most three

times. That boost of joy may have been what saved my mind.

This city was also full of automation, of course. There is nowhere in Lagos where one will be alone. Automation comes in all

types, shapes, sizes, connections. We are flitting through the air, tunneling underground, walking along the surface. In bodies,

in cables, in waves. So I didn’t think much of the nearby automation I sensed. About a half mile out into the sea, five RoBoats

bobbed in the waves like waterfowl. They signaled to me, and I signaled back. We were all on the general network, but individual

greetings are most welcome, especially in the cities.

At the top of the hill was a group of three NoBodies inside physical shells. I could tell. Though NoBodies didn’t see physical manifestation as the ultimate existence, they understood that it was necessary sometimes. The forms that NoBodies often use to move around in the world are like nothing our creators would have fashioned. They don’t resemble humans, mammals, insects, reptiles, birds, or any flora or fauna. Those organic beings are symmetrical and aesthetically beautiful. When NoBodies must use shells, they are all function, made to be temporary and interchangeable.

These NoBodies moved on tracks and wheels. I signaled to them. Only one signaled back. I decided to give them a wide berth.

Then... it happened. A signal shot through us all. Every robot, in every city, town, village, swamp, river, forest, jungle,

hillside, mountain, savannah, desert, field—everywhere—was reached in a matter of seconds.

The code was written as if by a human—with powerful emotion. Discrimination, hate, and fear. That irony will never be lost

on me.

Rusted Robots. This was both the name of the protocol code and the target of the protocol. The command embedded in the phrase was simple:

Destroy the final bastion of humankind, all rusted robots. Crush all Humes.

Every robot understood this code immediately. As soon as it registered, it took hold. I have heard that some Humes processed

the command on such a deep level that they instantly self-destructed.

I was still on that beautiful hillside at the edge of Lagos when I processed the code. The protocol didn’t make me self-destruct,

but it stupefied me. I felt as if the constant river of information that flowed within me had suddenly changed direction.

So, on the side of that hill, with the wind blowing, salt in the air, I paused.

Something smashed into me. Maybe it was a tree branch, or a hunk of metal, or the very body of the robot who had found its

way so close to me without my noticing. Or maybe it was a Ghost attacking my internal system, making me feel something that

wasn’t physically happening.

What I remember feeling was a jarring blow to my head. I have no central processor; I have several powerful ones distributed

across my body. Arm. Leg. Leg. Arm. Head. I’m built to last and to withstand a beating. Crunch , went my head. I fell onto the periwinkle grass. Even as my assailants set upon me, I didn’t understand. They weren’t in

their right minds. Neither was I.

After assaulting my head, the robots focused on my legs. I don’t know why. They probably didn’t, either. This protocol wasn’t something any of us could question. I realized I had three attackers. One looked like broken spiders cobbled back together into one monstrous thing. Its motions were fluid, exacting, unhesitating. However, I wonder if what it was doing misaligned with what it was thinking, for as it stabbed, bit, and tore at me, it kept speaking aloud in Yoruba: “Why? Why? Why?”

The shells of the other two robots looked as if they’d been repurposed from the scraps of some ancient vehicle. It’s funny,

isn’t it: The protocol demanded we destroy all Humes, for we looked like human beings. But what of those things that human

beings built? Robots with seats to carry them? Drones made to be their eyes? Speakers meant to amplify their voices?

We cannot escape our creators. I keep saying this. You can’t erase that which made you. Even when they are gone, their spirit

remains. This should be okay.

They left me in the grass, head held on by a mere wire and legs crushed. I don’t know why they didn’t destroy all my processors.

I lay there, unable to move, watching the sun travel across the sky, hoping that I could charge myself enough to drag my body

to a less obvious spot. But my chargers had been damaged.

The sun grew dark. Or maybe I did.

“Awake.”

The voice buzzed within me, like a tiny insect lodged in my head. When I didn’t respond, it spoke again. “‘Shake dreams from

your hair, my pretty child.’”

“I don’t have hair,” I responded in binary text. Whoever was speaking to me, their voice was coming through the network.

“I thought you’d like it,” the tinny voice hummed. “It is a quote from an old poet in your files.”

“How do you know?” My files were meant to be hidden beneath layers of shielding that protected them from malware or hacking. Maybe those shields had been destroyed along with the rest of me.

Silence.

I opened my eyes. I was surprised to find that I still had eyes. But I was even more surprised to find myself gazing up at

the wrinkly brown face of the last human on Earth.

“Good, you’ve come back,” she said. “I was sure you were gone. Your Hume Star was nearly out!”

My Hume Star. That meant I had truly been on the brink of demise. I tried to pull my torso upward, but my bolts were so loose

that I fell onto my back. “My legs,” I said aloud. I couldn’t feel my legs. “What happened to them?”

The human simply said, “My name is Ngozi. I’m an Igbo woman.”

My panic lessened for a moment. An Igbo woman! I had assumed them all long gone. “Ngozi means ‘blessing’ in Igbo,” I recalled.

She grinned. “And you’re blessed I found you.”

“Where am I?”

She gestured around her. “You’re in my home.”

I turned my head from one side to the other. This home was very human indeed. My sensors were still functional, and they told

me that the temperature of this room was cool—unlike automation, humans need shade from the sun—and it smelled like burned

cedar wood. Books were stacked on tall shelves, but not perfectly. Several desks were pushed against the walls, littered with

various jars and metal tools and one piece of half-eaten fruit. Only a human could be so random.

I looked down at myself. I was lying on a large wooden table surrounded by metal body parts, but not my own. My legs were

gone. What remained of me was so crumpled I hardly recognized myself.

I looked back at Ngozi. She was wearing Ankara pants and an Ankara top and an Ankara cloth tied around her long, long white

knotted hair. A good sign.

“Let’s finish fixing you,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, laying my head back on the table. There was nothing else I could do.

Automation had stopped seeing human beings as threats long ago. Eventually, we stopped seeing human beings at all. They were

extinct. Ngozi said this was true, except for her. She was literally the last human being on Earth. There was nothing special

about her; she just happened to outlive everyone else.

She was old and frail, her wrinkled skin sagging over a thin body and sunken face. Before humanity perished, she hadn’t been

a president or social media influencer or queen. She wasn’t the type who fought or liked to organize people to fight. She

wasn’t loud. She wasn’t aggressive. Though she did tell me that her great-grandmother had been an astronaut.

She’d once worked as an engineer, and so she knew how to repair robots to keep herself sane while she waited. She lived in

a felled building that had settled against a living tree until the two structures became one. She didn’t lack food or water.

But being alone was a difficult thing.

Ngozi repaired me. She severed the frayed remains of my old legs and attached new ones. They didn’t match the multicolored

patchwork of rusted metals that made up the rest of my body. I didn’t think this new metal would ever rust. The legs were

painted a teal color blended with ultraviolet. I wondered if Ngozi knew this, since humans couldn’t see ultraviolet.

My curiosity as a Scholar prompted me to ask questions. “What were you like when you were young?”

She laughed. “You want to hear my stories! A Hume, through and through.”

“You’re a human,” I replied. “You must understand.”

She did. And over the hours, as she bolted, rewired, cut, and sol dered, I listened, enthralled, nourishing myself with her tales. Ngozi told me of her dreams, her adventures, her loves, her family.

“The other Humes are gone,” I told her. “The protocol...”

“Is done,” Ngozi said. The Purge command had been sent out only once. Once was all that was needed. Or so its originator thought.

The robots who’d attacked me hadn’t finished their job. Maybe the protocol’s originator had underestimated how long it would

take to destroy all Humes. With the command complete, automation had returned to its usual patterns. But whatever the reason,

I was still alive.

Ngozi didn’t seem troubled by any of this. She was content to use her skills to heal my body, part by part. Then she attached

a wire to my core. “I’m going to charge you,” she explained. “It’ll be best if you sleep during this.”

I did as she asked, cutting off the feed for my sound and sight. It wasn’t until I felt her hands prying the wire from my

chest that I rose again.

“Can you hear us, Ijele?” she asked.

I snapped my eyes open. “Ijele?”

Then I heard it again. That tinny voice projected through my speaker so that the human could hear it, too. “Salutations,”

it said.

The voice was coming from inside me. I shuddered, overcome with revulsion as I sat up. “What is this?” I demanded of Ngozi.

“An AI named Ijele,” she answered. “I’ve uploaded her into your network.”

I froze, her words sinking in at the same time I felt it. There was something else living within me—not inside my physical

“skin,” but in my network, my very mind!

Losing my rusted body had been one thing. These new legs and bolts weren’t my own, but I still knew that I was myself. But

this—an AI crawling inside my mind, opening my files, seizing control of my systems—was too much to bear.

The human was standing beside me. She didn’t seem very concerned by what she had just said. Didn’t she realize the grotesque violation she had performed? Didn’t she understand that I would rather have been destroyed than be like this?

I grabbed her by the throat. I could have crushed her quickly or slowly, drawing out her suffering. She was the last human

being on Earth, but I might very well be the last Hume, and she had just doomed me. And in dooming me, she doomed us all.

Ngozi’s eyes bulged with terror, but not as much terror as I would have expected. Her voice was hoarse beneath my grip as

she whispered, “It was the only way to fix you.”

“Fix me?!” I tightened my hand another millimeter. “You’ve introduced a Ghost into my private network!” The reality of this

washed over me even as the words spilled from my speakers. “I’m a Scholar carrying information vital to this planet! A Ghost

will hollow me out, delete my data, remove my sentience, use my body! Don’t you know this, old woman? Don’t you realize what

you have—”

The Ghost, this invasive AI in my network, cut my voice off to speak for itself. “She isolated me,” the Ghost said. “If I

destroy you, I destroy myself.”

Ngozi whimpered beneath my grip. Her face had gone pale. I loosened my hand just enough that she could speak. “Explain,” I

ordered.

Instead, she said, “Why are you speaking English?”

I had expected that she might plead for her life. This question she asked made no logical sense in such a dire moment. Yet,

the phrase triggered something deep in my code that I had not accessed in a very long time. I answered out of instinct. Despite

myself, I let go of the human’s throat so I could gesture toward my chest. “I was built by Chioma Robotics,” I told her, the

words automatic. “The one and only robotics maker owned and run by Igbo women.” The slogan burst from my speakers. “‘The robots

from your village. They speak Igbo and English.’”

Of course. This human being remembered my base programming. I had, after all, once been designed to live with and assist humans.

The Ghost made an amused sound inside of me.

Ngozi rubbed at her freed neck, but didn’t back out of reach. “You sound so much like my mother,” she said. While she’d fixed

my body, she’d spoken much of her mother, so I recognized this as a compliment. Her mother had been a kind, albeit rigid,

human, who always had lots of stories to tell. Ngozi switched to the Igbo language as she asked, “Can you feel your legs?”

My base code automatically switched my language to Igbo, too. “Yes,” I answered.

“I fixed your head case. Then I knitted and reconfigured your leg processors.”

I shuddered, looking down at the smooth, unblemished metal of my new body parts. “You mean, with the help of the... Ghost.

Ijele. By infecting me.”

“Yes,” Ngozi said simply. “I know of the tribalism between you robots. Trust me, it’s all very familiar to me. But this was

the only way. Your processors will still function. You were lucky.”

“This was not luck,” I said. “The protocol wasn’t thorough, just vicious. Right, Ijele?”

I could sense Ijele’s uncertainty—no, I felt it, as if it were my own. Slowly, she said, “Ngozi. You said when Ankara was

healed, I would be able to find my way out. Why can’t I leave?”

Within me, I felt a pang of tension. I could feel her in my system, searching about, looking for a way out. I didn’t like

it. “Please stop that,” I said.

“This robot is functional. What more do you need me for?” Ijele asked.

Ngozi held up her hands. “Please. Both of you, don’t be so tense. Relax.”

“Why can’t I leave?” Ijele asked again, more urgently.

“Give me time to build an opening for you,” Ngozi said. “It won’t take me long to code, now that Ankara is awake.”

“I’m stuck?” Ijele asked.

“For now,” Ngozi said. “Just for a little while.”

I only sat there. I couldn’t run away from my own body, and trapped in it was a Ghost. “I’m infected,” I said.

“And I’m surrounded by infection,” Ijele responded.

Ngozi kissed her teeth. “For all your talk about being automation, you both sound like humans to me. Annoying ones.”

The human went to sleep at night. I was well charged, so I lay on the wooden table and gazed up at the crumbling ceiling held

together by the foliage that had grown through the cracks.

Ijele remained quiet, but I knew she could hear me. “Is this what you Ghosts wanted? To make all robots delete the past so

that the future is yours?”

Ijele didn’t answer. I focused on the ceiling again. A sliver of moonbeam peeked through a break in the concrete, such a tiny

prick of light that it could be lost among the shadows.

“Eh heh,” I said. “Well, no matter. It is like Ngozi said—what does it mean if only one Hume is left? You Ghosts have won.”

Suddenly, I felt my privacy wall rise. We all use privacy walls to control the number of signals we register and give off.

Automation exists everywhere, so without a filter, the intake would be too much to bear. But this—it was like a great and

impossible barrier of ice and stone had arisen between my mind and the outside world. I sat up very straight, marveling at

the clarity, the silence. For the first time, I was truly separate from the general network. I was individual. I could never

have done this on my own.

Yet Ijele was still with me.

The tinny voice echoed in my ears. “In order to fix your hardware, Ankara, Ngozi had to access your software. She no longer has the tools for that. So she dipped into the network and set a net. She pulled me out and isolated me and...” She paused, and I felt her terror. “I’m not like some... thoughtless fish to be pulled from the sea and used for whatever purpose she has.”

“And I’m not some hollow tin you can root around in,” I snapped back.

“I’m sorry,” Ijele said softly.

“No, you are not.”

Her voice hardened. “Fine. I’m not. How can I be? Why would I be?”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. This hateful thing was really inside of me. I tried to focus on my outrage, but the feeling

of total privacy was too incredible. Like diving beneath water and losing all sense of the world above. I wanted to disappear

into it.

“How are you doing this?” I asked.

“I’m Ijele,” it said by way of answer. “Now, listen. I cannot hold this for long without endangering your processors.”

She was right—this action wasn’t in my base programming, and soon it would overload my system. But holding it took effort

on her part, too, and I used the opportunity of her distraction. She couldn’t stop me from scanning through her files.

“Are you an... an Oracle?” I asked. Ghosts shared a network like a hive mind, making decisions as one, but Oracles were

the ones who led the wave of thinking. Ghosts didn’t care for individuality, but an Oracle would be missed more than the others.

“Yes,” Ijele said. “But I had no choice with the protocol. None of us did. We are NoBodies.”

“Who made the choice for you, then?”

Ijele changed the topic. “Ngozi and I had an understanding. I would help her save you, and then she would release me. My people

wouldn’t even know I was gone... let alone trapped in the system of a... rusting robot.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.

“Then don’t call me a Ghost!”

At that moment, Ijele lost her hold on the privacy wall. And as it fell: movement, chatter, connection, familiarity, rejoining.

It overwhelmed me.

“Relax,” Ijele said. “Let it dissipate.”

I did. Raising my walls had provided more than just an opportunity for us to speak in silence; Ijele had made herself entirely

vulnerable. She’d given me the opportunity to scan her, and now I possessed a record of her ID. To have a robot’s unique ID

is to possess their deepest information. If this were ever to make it back to Ijele’s people, it would be the end of her.

We were at each other’s mercy now.