Page 19 of Death of the Author

19 Surprise, Surprise

She woke up at 6:00 a.m. sharp and put on her black T-shirt with the dolphins on it, her favorite jeans with the blue-and-white

Ankara cloth back pockets, and gym shoes. She braided her long braids down her back. She put on some perfume. She put on cowry

shell earrings and her Apple watch with the aqua-blue band. And she even put a thin line of silver eyeliner around each eye.

Today was special.

She’d finished getting ready too early, so she wasted another hour checking her email. The usual. Interview and speaking requests,

news of strong sales from her agent, fan mail, social media notifications galore. It was easy to push it all away. Today,

only one thing mattered.

She didn’t take a cab there. She wheeled. It was a fifteen-minute hike, and it was a cold morning. She welcomed the exercise

and brisk forty-degree air, needing the time to clear her head. This hike was special.

She passed department buildings with both modern and historic designs. Gaggles of twentysomething-year-old students in winter gear, and professor types in heavier winter gear, passed on their way to early classes. More than a few paused to glance at her, but only three actually had the nerve to stop her and ask for her autograph. She was shivering and relieved to be inside by the time she reached the Eisner Building, a boxy white structure sitting at one end of campus. When she arrived at the entrance to the physical therapy gym, she paused, looking at the doors. This moment was special, too. The lights were already on inside. Through the frosted glass, she could see that more than one person was in there. They were waiting for her.

She took a deep breath. She shut her eyes. She imagined herself on the beach in Tobago, looking out at the ocean. Not a soul

around. No family. No Msizi. No fans. No friends. No one. Just her. She was ready. She walked toward the warm waters. Yes.

Walked.

She opened her eyes and pushed the button beside the doors. They smoothly opened and she rolled in. In the gym, Zelu found

Hugo and his two assistants. He’d spoken about them yesterday, and she could tell who they were immediately: Marcy was the

tall black woman who looked like she could lift a car if she had to, and Uchenna was a short Igbo guy who clearly thought

he was still in Nigeria because he couldn’t bother to hide his suspicious expression from her.

“You are Igbo?” he asked her when Marcy and Hugo had stepped to the other side of the room to grab some equipment. He put

a blood pressure cuff around her arm and touched the On button.

“You can’t tell by my name?” she asked.

“You have an Igbo and a Yoruba last name.”

“There’s your answer, then.”

He said nothing for a moment. Then he blurted, “I read your novel. So did my father.”

Zelu raised her eyebrows as the cuff got tighter and tighter.

“My father asked me if we are building robots like that at MIT,” Uchenna said. “I told him that the writer wasn’t even a real

engineer.”

Beep! The cuff released her arm.

Zelu scoffed. “Yeah, we writers are just wannabe engineers, mm-hmm.”

The machine beeped a second time. “Blood pressure’s a little high,” Uchenna said, smirking as he took the cuff off her arm.

“Surprise, surprise,” she said, trying to keep her cool despite the fact that everything inside her was wriggling, desperate to get to it.

Hugo and Marcy returned holding either end of a big stepladder. Zelu was impressed that Hugo had zero balance issues as he

held his side of it. They set it down and Hugo stepped back and stretched. “Whoo! A good start to the morning,” he announced.

“You excited, Zelu?” Marcy asked.

“Nervous,” she admitted. “How many have you done this with?”

“You’ll be my twelfth,” she said, walking to Zelu’s other side.

“How many were able to—”

Marcy held up a hand. “Let’s not do that. This is your day. Let’s venture into it with a blank slate.”

Zelu nodded, glad that Marcy had stopped her from going down the rabbit hole of negativity. As she waited, her mind began

doing the math, weighing and reweighing her chances. She kept thinking about how her parents and siblings would react when

she told them she’d failed (she’d never hear the end of it) or if they got a call saying that she’d injured herself (they’d

never let her leave the house again).

“This is my first time assisting a new user,” Uchenna said. “I read all your paperwork, and I’m rather confident.”

Somehow, this didn’t make Zelu feel any better. She swallowed hard, wishing she hadn’t eaten that bag of potato chips on the

way over.

“Let’s do this,” Hugo suddenly said. “Uchenna, get your phone ready.”

Zelu was wheeling to the table, but now she paused. “You’re going to record this?” They hadn’t discussed that yesterday. This

day was supposed to belong to her. A chill crept up her neck. “You’re not going to post it anywhere on social media, right?

Because people would go bananas, and not in a good way. I don’t want anyone to—”

“It’s just for research purposes,” Hugo said, holding up a hand. “We have to justify all this for our funders, that’s all.

Nothing more. Don’t worry. This is a safe space, Zelu. We’d never ever make any of this public. We’ll protect you. And it’s in the contract you signed.”

Zelu let out a breath. That made sense. “Thank you.” She laughed nervously, embarrassed at how quickly she’d assumed the worst.

“It’s kinda crazy out there.”

Hugo waved a dismissive hand. “No worries. No energy on that. All energy on what we’re here for today.”

“God, I hope I put enough antiperspirant on,” she muttered, looking at the table.

“I still can’t believe you’re you ,” Uchenna said, stretching his arms up overhead. “Your weird book is everywhere. Even in Nigeria.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Zelu said. “My aunt told me that people in the villages are even acting in these local productions for those

who have trouble reading.”

“Even better, I have a Nollywood movie based on it! A bootleg of a film pirating your work!” He arched his back, his hands

on the base of his spine.

She paused, her eyes wide. “No way !” She laughed. “A Nollywood film based on my book? I have officially arrived! ”

“You haven’t seen it?” He stretched his arms up above his head again, this time motioning for Zelu to do the same.

“No!” Zelu said, stretching along with him. It felt good.

“I’ll send you the link. It’s called Game of Robots .”

They all had a good laugh at this. Zelu laughed hardest. “Is it properly terrible?” she asked.

“Yep. The costumes, they look more like masquerades than robots.” He shook out his shoulders, and Zelu did the same.

“I have got to see this.”

“Your exos will need about an hour to process your information when we finish today,” Hugo said. “We can watch some of it

then... but I don’t think you’re going to want to watch the whole four hours.”

“ Four hours?” Zelu exclaimed.

“There’s a part one, two, and three.” Uchenna laughed.

Zelu smacked her forehead. “Ugh! Ridiculous!”

“I’m in,” Marcy said.

“Me too,” Hugo said.

Zelu put her hands on the table. It was cool. She looked at the three of them. This was ridiculous, but a good and unexpected

kind of ridiculous. She glanced back at the table, where her cyan-painted exos lay. She was here, she had to trust, she had

to allow. “Okay,” she murmured. “Me too.”

Uchenna clapped his hands. “Excellent! Though I can’t promise that you won’t be disappointed.”

She didn’t want any help getting on the table from Hugo or anyone else this day. It was slower going, but she managed by herself.

Once she was up there, she did what Hugo had taught her. “On,” she said.

Just like last time, her exos responded, assembling themselves around her legs even faster than before, the metal mesh gently

twisting, smoothly bending and firmly pressing to her legs—almost insectile in its surety of motion. She could hear it softly

vibrating, and if she touched the pieces, they’d have the same warmth as her flesh. This time she expected the wand to pull

itself from her hand, and she let it smoothly drop into its place at her right hip.

They were on. She was ready. The moment had arrived.

She hadn’t been in a standing position since the day of her accident, two decades ago. For the first twelve years of her life,

standing upright had been as simple as breathing. She didn’t have to give it a thought. Then, after the tree, she’d spent

weeks on her back, the muscles in her body wasting away.

Months after the accident, her physical therapist had strapped her body to a table and gradually rotated it from horizontal

to vertical. When they’d brought her to a fully vertical position, held up by the straps around her waist, ankles, and wrists,

it had felt like hell. Gravity pulled at her lower body, and she was more aware of her paralysis than ever. She’d burst into

tears, barely able to breathe, and the doctor had quickly brought the table back to horizontal.

Now here she was, decades later, sitting on a table again, and Hugo was about to push the button to move her into that painful vertical position. Marcy and Uchenna were on either side of her, watching carefully, though they kept their arms at their sides. “Sh-should someone be in front of me?” she asked.

“Relax. The exos have you,” Hugo assured her. He hadn’t even pressed the button yet, and she felt like her spirit was about

to fly from her body. “Shall we proceed?”

She stared at him with wide, frantic eyes, wishing with all her heart that he hadn’t asked her that. Now, yet again, whatever

happened next would be her choice. She glanced at her legs, so stick thin, she could see even beneath her jeans, caged in the delicate metal of the

exos. More than two decades after the accident, they still looked to her like the legs of a child, the child she’d been, stunned

by what had happened to them. But they’d grown. She kept them meticulously shaven; enjoying the smoothness when she ran her

hands over them was how she reminded herself they still belonged to her. She couldn’t touch them now, with the exos wrapped

around her lower half. She hoped she wasn’t about to do even more damage to them. Her family’s voices began to fill her ears.

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she blurted, “Yes. Yes, proceed. Let’s go.”

Hugo pressed the button. The table began to slowly tilt forward. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “No, keep your

eyes open,” Hugo urged her. “And breathe normally. I know it’s scary and feels like shit, but you have to be present for this.”

“We’ve got you, Zelu,” Marcy reassured her.

“But think like you won’t need us,” Uchenna added.

Zelu opened her eyes and saw Marcy nodding in agreement.

The table was slowly angling itself—it had tilted by maybe fifteen degrees. Zelu was looking down at herself when Hugo stepped

directly in front of the table. “The exos will respond to you,” he said firmly, commanding her attention. “The AI is trained

to read your every intention. It knows you. So just be you .”

When the table was angled about forty-five degrees, the effects of gravity began to overtake her. The weight of the world was pulling on her, reordering her skin and bones. Fifty-five degrees. Oh, the pulling. The straps held her tightly in place, but she swore she could feel her spine sliding against the table. What if something snapped? What if she fell? She glanced down at her legs. She saw her left foot stretching toward the ground. Limp. Unmoving.

Now she was at seventy-five degrees; this was the most upright Zelu had been since she was twelve. She frowned down at herself,

but this time not with fear. “I remember,” she whispered. Being eye-to-eye with others. Stretching tall to grab things from

high up. Her knees locking and bending. Back muscles working. Spine over legs. One leg would go forth, followed by the other.

Carrying her. Moving her. Bringing her. She remembered how effortless it was. Not a distant memory. Up close. She saw her

twelve-year-old able body standing beside her body today, separated only by a trivial bit of time and experience. She wanted

to weep. Why am I torturing myself like this? , she thought.

The exos tightened around her ankles. She couldn’t feel them, but she saw them constricting, the metal mesh grasping, intent,

intelligent. She nearly screamed. Then she realized what was happening. They were configuring themselves around and beneath

her feet for balance. They were shifting into a better position... for walking.

“Oh,” she gasped.

The aerographene had tiny wires running through it that used electromagnetic charges to contract or expand parts of itself

like muscle. She’d known this on an academic level, but seeing it on her legs as she was about to step on the ground was something

else. The exos were contracting and tightening all over her legs, making a soft crinkle. Trust , she frantically thought. Trust the technology. She was eighty-five degrees, and it felt like the weight of her legs was going to pull her lower body from her waist until

it inevitably separated. This is when it happens. Shit! Shit! Shit!

“Shouldn’t I have... footrests... so... my legs... won’t... pull?” she choked out, struggling to breathe.

“We’ve found that the stretching of your body and the sensation of it makes for a better transition,” Hugo said. “I know it’s uncomfortable. Try to relax. Only a few more seconds.”

“’Kay,” she wheezed. She somehow let out a long breath and whispered, “Relax, relax, relax, fucking relax.”

And then her “feet” were on the floor. “Zelu,” the exos announced. And then they kicked in 100 percent, tightening a bit more

to hold flush against her legs and waist. At the mystical demarcation where her paralysis began and ended, she felt her body

move to support itself in a way that was subtle yet very, very powerful. She was not going to fall. “Whoa,” she whispered.

Not horrible. No, not horrible at all. “What the fuuuuuuck !” She glanced at Hugo and the others. “Sorry.”

They all laughed. “No worries,” Hugo said, stepping forward to release her wrists and arms from the straps. “Drop all the

f-bombs you want. That often helps.”

Then he released her waist strap.

Zelu was standing. Well, “standing.” She grinned. “My God,” she whispered. “Oh my God.” Her back was still to the table. She

fought with everything in her power not to grab it, not to cling to it. Marcy and Uchenna remained beside her, but now their

hands were out and ready if she needed them.

“What... what do I do now?” she whispered.

Hugo nodded gently. He said slowly, “Touch the hip sensor, just how I told you.”

“Or flex my abdominals?”

“If you can,” Hugo said. “We’ll work up to that eventually.”

She could barely feel her abdominal muscles, but she could flex them a bit. She’d need to see another physical therapist to learn the workouts that would help her strengthen her body enough to properly handle using the exos. But today, she just wanted to know that she could do it. She flexed them now. She gasped. The exos were receptive and amazingly smooth in their response. One step, another step. Distributing her weight, balancing her, moving her legs for her, supporting her, allowing her other muscles to hold her up. She waved a hand down, touching the sensor. A muscle in her back cramped up. She gritted her teeth.

“Where?” Uchenna asked.

“Lower back, lower back,” she grunted, touching the spot. It felt like stone. “Shit!”

Uchenna immediately started massaging the area. Within a minute, the muscle relaxed. She took a few more steps and another

muscle did the same thing. Her body was adjusting and doing so much work to figure out what the fuck was going on that muscles

she hadn’t used in decades were waking up and trying to help. Hugo kept assuring her that this was normal. Maybe it was, but

damn, it was painful.

She pushed through for another fifteen minutes before she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Enough!” she gasped. But then she

laughed. And then she groaned as another muscle cramp ripped through the center of her back.

Marcy and Uchenna helped her back onto the table. Hugo stood above her, absolutely beaming. “Holy shit, Zelu. You did phenomenally!”

“Really?” she said to be polite, but she knew it was true. Despite all the pain, she could feel herself commanding the exos.

She’d even had two moments when she’d glimpsed what it would be like to really do it. Staring at the ceiling, she laughed loudly until she lost all the air in her lungs and it turned into a coughing fit.

The rest of the time was less eventful. While Zelu calmed down and the exos quietly processed the data they had learned from

their trial run, Hugo opened up a laptop so they could watch the Nollywood movie Uchenna had mentioned right there in the

physical therapy room. It was even more surreal than she’d imagined. Whoever had made the film had definitely read her book, had strange ideas about Americans, was a hopeless misogynist, and had hired designers who had no clue how to

construct a costume.

By the time Hugo dropped her off at the hotel’s entrance, she was exhausted, having spent all she had to give.

“You all right?” he asked just before she wheeled to her room.

She looked up at him and told the truth. “I don’t know.”

He nodded with respect. “Better answer than ‘I’m fine.’ Always be honest with me. Because this is going to be weird. No one

is going to be able to understand it when you tell them about it.”

Well, I don’t have anyone to tell about it, so that’s not a problem , she thought. “It’s scary.”

“It is.” He grinned knowingly. “See you tomorrow, though?”

“Yeah.”

He held out a fist and she gave it a pound. “See ya, Zelu.”

She watched him walk away, his hands casually in his pockets. A man with no lower legs. Hugo was pretty amazing.

She wheeled to her room, showered, brushed her teeth, and got into bed. She pulled the covers over her head and waited. She

held very still, trying to indulge in that comforting blend of warmth and silence she loved so much. It was something she’d

learned while in the hospital so many years ago, how to really be within herself.

Stillness. She calmed and rejoined and solidified. She exhaled. She laughed, hugging herself. “Wow,” she whispered. Today

had been a hell of a day. But the main thing was, she had her answer. She had her path. And that night she barely slept, because she could

not wait to get back into her exos.