Page 26 of Death of the Author

26 Opened

Zelu walked down the red carpet of the Hollywood theater wearing a gorgeous pantsuit made from Ankara cloth that had been

custom designed for her. If you looked closely, the white-and-blue pattern was made of shapes that looked like cogs, nuts,

bolts, and processor chips. Similar cloth hung in fringes from the sides of her exos, the effect making the exos look like

part of the suit itself. This was an outfit designed for a proud robot, and she loved it so much that she’d had a swatch of

the fabric framed and hung it in her condo.

The media had started calling her the “African cyborg,” which she rather liked. As she moved down the carpet, photographers

shouted at her to turn left, right, smile, show off her exos. A journalist shoved a microphone in front of her and asked what

had inspired her look.

“In the story, the robots draw from the best of humanity,” Zelu said. “Well, I like to draw from the best of robotics. It’s

a symbiotic relationship.”

The line to get into the theater was moving at a snail’s pace. The paparazzi cameras kept flashing in her face, and the more she accommodated their requests to pose, the more fixated she became on how her uncovered legs must look, unmoving within the exos’ metallic molds. Her outfit had been designed to draw attention to them, but these people didn’t understand how the technology worked or why it was so miraculous. Why would they, when they took being able to walk for granted? They probably thought the exos were a gimmick to promote the movie.

Zelu had nothing to do with the creation of this movie, and everything inside her was screaming that watching it now would

be a bad idea. However, her agent had absolutely insisted. “It’s only a few hours. This all came from your mind, Zelu. Your

fans want to see you. ”

Zelu had decided to pick her battles. She was okay with this—the red carpet, the fake smiling, the stupid questions being

screamed into her face by indecipherable silhouettes hiding behind camera flashes. At least she’d been able to get an extra

ticket for Msizi. He was a few steps to her right, looking hot as fuck in his matching Ankara pants and kaftan. He was having

a great time, posing obnoxiously beside her while holding out his hands to present her as “the Queen of Robots.” She was okay

with him shouting that he was “her best friend” to journalists when they asked who he was. She was okay with random people

whose faces she recognized from her favorite TV shows and movies pulling her into group shots with them. She was okay.

And then the movie started.

Rusted Robots was a story that would translate well to the screen, her film agent had told her back before they auctioned the rights. And

the studio that had snapped up the option was one of the best in the world, with an endless list of commercial and critical

hits. She’d decided to trust them—the director, the writers, the producers. She knew nothing about making movies, and they

were professionals with decades of experience in the field.

No one had reached out to ask her about the script or the casting or the sets. No one had even invited her to an early private screening. That had been fine by her. She didn’t want to meet and interact with all those people. She was busy riding the wave of her novel’s early success. And her film agent had kept reminding her, over and over, how lucky she was—so many movies were optioned, even went into production, but were never made. But now, as the opening scene began to play, she wondered if, even then, they’d known.

Her novel was set in Nigeria after humanity had died off. The robots populating that world carried digital DNA left behind

by their creators. Zelu had written her characters as holding African DNA. She hadn’t fully expected her readers to understand

this, but it was at the heart of the plot, just as much as the theme of humanity was. The drama, the twists, the communities,

the languages, the accents, all the robo-bullshit was drawn from Nigerian cultures and people and politics.

All this, the movie chopped away. Ankara’s character had been renamed Yankee and Ijele was Dot. Zelu had known that from the

trailer, but it only went downhill from there. If Zelu’s novel were an Ankara fabric, it was as if the movie had stolen, scraped,

bleached, stretched, reshaped, and inverted it, and mass-reprinted some botched shadow of the original. The whole movie was

set in the United States, not a hint of Nigeria. This wasn’t an adaptation. It was a gutting. This film was cliché, vapid,

confused, steaming trash. She didn’t recognize the story she’d written at all.

And the audience loved it.

There was a standing ovation at the end of the film. When the lights came on, people were laughing, completely enchanted,

congratulating each other. Strangers reached over the aisles to pat her on the shoulder. They were taking up all the air in

the room; there was none left for her.

“What an accomplishment, Zelu!” some stranger shouted toward her. “You’re a genius!”

People thought she had done this to herself?!

She was sinking inside her seat. She was falling. Only Msizi noticed. He grabbed her hand and pulled up so they could get out of the theater as quickly as possible. People kept congratulating her as they passed through the crowd.

If they like this trash , she thought, what will they expect of me with book two? Fuck!

She wanted to spit. Msizi did the smiling and laughing and responding to comments for her. When people tried to approach Zelu, he stepped in front

of her to head them off.

“Almost there,” Msizi said.

“Zelu!” Someone managed to squeeze in between her and Msizi, holding out his hand for her to shake. He was an average-looking

white man of average height, wearing an average navy blazer over an average white dress shirt. But this was no average man.

This was Jack Preston, the wealthiest person in the world. He owned and acted as CEO of the largest and most powerful corporation

on the globe, and he’d acquired several other companies in the last decade, too. There wasn’t much you could buy these days

that did not move through something he owned. The man had even funded a private spacecraft company that launched commercial

rockets and took human passengers into space.

Zelu would have been stunned at any other time. However, she was still reeling from the agony of sitting through two hours

of her life’s work being ground through a blender. Jack Preston would have to wait. She stepped sideways to get around him.

He stepped sideways, too. Zelu glared at him, her lip curling. What the hell?

“You look like you didn’t like it,” he said.

She needed out of this exchange, out of this theater, out of this country, off this planet. “I hated it,” she growled. She blinked. Shit , she thought. Shouldn’t have said that. Not to him. Not to anyone she didn’t know.

Jack just grinned and laughed heartily. “That’s a shame. Because from now on, when people think of you, they’ll think of this.

Well, until you do something bigger.”

“Excuse us,” Msizi said, stepping between Jack and Zelu with a sheepish grin. He looked closely at her eyes; she could feel the right one twitching. “Come on, my love, eh?” She nodded. He took her hand and they continued to walk away.

I’ve been deleted from my own story , she thought. They’ve just erased me.

“Nice to meet you!” Jack Preston called after them.