Page 29 of Death of the Author
29 Pollinated
I left Lagos. The megacity was so sprawling that it took more than a day for me to get out of it. Instead of the roads, I
followed the beaches. Ijele still hadn’t returned. Ijele loved the sight of those giant RoBoats so much, I’d thought that
maybe she’d sense where I was and join me. She didn’t. And though I knew how to call her, I didn’t. I walked those beaches
alone. I saw no RoBoats breach the water’s surface in the distance.
But I did see dolphins. They clearly saw me, too, for they swam into the shallows and leaped up to get a better look at me.
Friendly, free, curious creatures. Ijele would have enjoyed seeing them.
I moved inland, where I found wide, empty roads. Robots keep the roads clear because that is what we’ve always done. I had
the road to myself for several hours before I came across someone else—a vaguely aware, sleek electric car. It came speeding
up the road at over 150 miles per hour. It slowed as it approached me and then eventually came to a stop right in front of
me. Up close, I saw that it was a scratchy silver; it had used something to scrape all its paint away. Its roof was one big
solar panel.
A camera popped up through its hood with a soft whirrrr and I heard it scan me. “You are a Scholar Hume,” it told me in a flat male voice. “I’m going to Lagos.”
“I’m just coming from there,” I responded, stepping up to it. I touched its side door and looked inside. Bundled wires, several
large boxes that probably contained motherboards, power supplies, processors... This car had really built itself up.
“Why are your legs lacking rust?” it asked.
“It’s a long story.”
It began rolling past me, its shallow curiosity satisfied. “I’m glad to see a functioning Hume,” it said. “I cannot explain
why I did it, but I ran over several Humes some weeks ago. I don’t feel good about this, and I haven’t seen any Humes since...
until you.”
“Ghosts broadcast a protocol,” I explained as I mulled over its words. No Humes since? Could it be true that I was really
the last of my kind? Was my journey to Cross River City just moving from a small grave to a bigger one? These possibilities
were too great to process. I decided not to dwell on them until I had to.
It was a few feet away from me now, and it paused. After a moment, it said, “Ghosts should be stopped.”
“Then why are you going to Lagos? The servers there are favored by Ghosts.”
“The roads are wide, and I now maintain a VPN. They cannot infect me.”
It drove away before I could say more. I continued down the empty road.
One day, I came across an old shrine. This place pulled me back to myself, for it was a place no Scholar could ignore. “Gods
and robots,” I said to myself as I walked through it. This place was old and new.
Everything was arranged around a large wooden building that looked like a house from another world. It was encrusted with cowry shells and carved with winding, intricate designs. Stationed on each side of the entrance was a tall, skinny, humanoid figure that stood six feet tall. They both had stunned faces, like they couldn’t believe the humans who’d made them were all dead. The periwinkle grass that covered so much of the land, including many of the roads, seemed to want nothing to do with this place. Bushes, vines, and trees grew freely here, yet there was also a sense that someone was pruning them, preventing them from taking over.
That someone turned out to be a durable service robot that maintained the place. It walked out of the central building as
I moved past. It paused, extended its narrow metal legs so that it became my height, and greeted me in Yoruba. I greeted it
back.
“Welcome to the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove,” it announced, holding out its stick-thin steel arms. “I’m an old custodian robot
who has obtained the ultimate boon of my journey; you, on the other hand, seem to be at the beginning of yours.”
I had no idea what it was talking about, but I let it show me around. It didn’t allow anyone to touch, record, or photograph
anything here. “Not even if you are a Scholar Hume,” it added.
I was fascinated by this place. So many of the idols, gods, goddesses, and deities were made of wood. And among them were
the unmoving, unanimated bodies of robots, some old, some new, some tall, some short. The only Humes bodies were those who
had not rusted much. The custodian walked through the grove slowly, with great care, as it showed me around.
Why the Ghosts had not destroyed this place was beyond me. Maybe they didn’t know about it. Whatever the reason, I had to believe this was another strong sign that Ghosts hadn’t conquered all. When I left the shrine, my senses were refreshed, and the world around me felt more focused—the trees, birds, remnants of human life, the occasional waves of periwinkle grass pollen. But as I continued along the road, I couldn’t forget that in a couple of years, all this might be destroyed by crazed space robots singing songs of destruction as they gifted Earth with pieces of the sun.
Ijele and Ngozi had replaced my broken legs with new ones. Rust-free, light, stronger metal. I’d accepted their smooth functionality
and could walk very well, but I hadn’t yet tested their full capabilities. On that road, I practiced. These legs could run,
jump, grip smooth surfaces. At first, I was a little afraid. I was afraid of falling, and a few times I did. But I picked
myself up and was okay. And I was better for it, because I learned what I had done wrong and what I could do better. How I
must have looked to any robot watching, I don’t know. But I was determined.
Ijele would have been proud of the way I embraced my new features. But she still hadn’t returned to me. Was it grief, or something
worse? Had the Ghosts discovered her connection to me and deleted her? I wanted to call to her through our bond, but if Ijele
had indeed rejoined the Ghosts’ hive mind, doing so might only reveal her deception.
I was obsessing over this possibility one day when the wind picked up, causing ripples as it blew over the periwinkle grass
like waves on the ocean. Then I saw it in the distance—a purple-blue pollen tsunami. It flew over me, saturating the air,
coating my skin. It was glorious. I wished Ijele could have been with me, because she might have finally come to understand
what it is to love a body. Slowly, I turned myself counterclockwise, letting every part of me experience the pollen tsunami’s
full force. What a joy.
“Ngozi,” I said aloud into the periwinkle waves. I let the wind take the word, her name. I flashed Ngozi’s image on my face
screen, and it lit my world for a while.
When the pollen tsunami began to lift, I stopped turning and looked down at myself. I looked like a Hume-shaped flower. I bent each of my joints: neck, shoulders, torso, arms, wrists, fingers, hips, and of course every part of my new legs. Smooth. Perfect. Easy. Periwinkle flower pol len is like magic to robots. It got into my gears, between my panels, into my crevices; it helped loose rust flakes shed.
“Ah,” I said. “It is good. Onward.”
My journey lasted a month. I saw many robots, but none of them were Humes. They looked at me like I was a spirit, some creature
meant to be gone forever. But I held on to my faith that Cross River City was still occupied by fellow Humes, that I wasn’t
the last.
And finally, on a rainy day, my new legs drenched in mud and my face panel so coated with rivulets of water that I could barely
see, I arrived.
cross river city , a towering billboard of a sign announced in red neon. Spanning the path was a great rusted gate.
The road didn’t look recently used, but the rain could have washed away tracks. I heard no robotic chatter, no churning of
bolts or wheels. I sent out an experimental ping. Nothing returned.
It was likely, very likely that I had traveled all this way to an abandoned place, the site of yet another massacre of Humes.
I feared what I would find beyond this gate. Ngozi’s death had scrambled my processors. If I learned I had failed in my mission,
that I was truly alone, the last, just as Ngozi had been... I didn’t think I could handle it.
I had arrived. Time to find out. I had promised Ngozi’s spirit. Ijele had told me to go.
I opened the gate.