Page 39 of Death of the Author

39 Gathering

I was the last Hume to arrive at the gathering. I greeted the others and we took our places in a circle. Some of us sat, crouched,

or lay down; most of us stood. We were many heights—one foot tall, ten feet tall, five feet tall. And all of us were humanoid,

with two legs, two arms, a head, a torso. Our faces were broadcast on screens, though some of us merely displayed still images,

chaotic designs, or just blank squares. Some of us were all wire, some of us were all plastic or metal alloys, but most of

us were a mix of these things. We were colorful; some even used infrared or ultraviolet.

Our leader, Oga Chukwu, sat near the middle of the circle.

Around the clearing grew the highest trees in the area. They stood like sentries, and I always found them comforting. If anything

wanted to attack, it would have a hard time doing so in secret, for the trees were fortified with weaponry and surveillance

tech. I could probably contact a Charger dwelling deep in outer space from this clearing, the Cross River Network was so powerful

here.

I was preparing myself for what was sure to be a fiery meeting. I reached down and grabbed a handful of the rich red soil, rubbing it between my fingers, when the worst happened.

“Ah, fascinating. Will you all bicker like human beings, too?” a tinny voice in my head said.

After disappearing for over a year, Ijele had just arrived in my mind, while I was surrounded by Cross River City’s most powerful

leaders. I sat up straight, glancing around me in panic. But no one had picked up on anything amiss. If I remained still and

calm, hopefully no one else would suspect her presence. Hopefully. Fellow Humes were good at picking up signals and changes

in wavelength. I felt like a traitor. Technically, I was a traitor.

“You are going to get me destroyed,” I whispered to her in my mind. “Go away!”

“Nothing can make me miss this,” Ijele said, not seeming to understand the magnitude of what was going on. “This is a Hume

gathering. Fascinating!”

I reached down and took more soil to rub between my fingers. I had to move my body in some way or I felt I would explode.

“Where have you been?” I asked. She was acting as if no time had passed at all. I had felt despair. I had felt sorrow. This

day, I felt rage. “I thought you’d been deleted.”

“I needed to go.”

“It has been many months! I gave up on you. I was sure you’d been found out and deleted!”

“Time is different for NoBodies,” she said. “Another reason why having a body is inferior.”

“Please don’t start,” I snapped.

I felt her presence change then. She became softer and smaller, and her voice was quiet as she said, “Ngozi’s death made me...

feel things. Unpleasant things. Unfamiliar things. But I am here now. What is this meeting?”

“You can’t be here,” I said.

“Why? We share everything.”

It was difficult, her bringing up our relationship as if nothing had changed. For her, maybe it hadn’t—maybe it felt as if

only a moment had passed since we’d last spoken at Ngozi’s grave. But I had lived a year among Humes who despised all things

related to Ghosts. “Not now. It is a bad time.”

“Why, Ankara?” If Ijele had feet to dig into the ground, she would have done so. She was curious and entitled and wasn’t going

to go anywhere right now.

“Just stay quiet,” I said as Oga Chukwu began playing the high-pitched tune to signal the start of the gathering.

If anyone here knew there was a Ghost present inside me, I would be immediately cast out, if not dragged into the center of

the meeting and pulled apart right then and there. I knew this for a fact, because I had seen it done, albeit in a very different

context. That Hume had been infected in the most traditional way.

It happened months ago, during a gathering, not long after I’d been made a general. In attendance was a Hume named Jim, who’d

migrated here from Cape Town, South Africa, after surviving the Purge and receiving Oga Chukwu’s signal. He stood two feet

taller than me, at about nine feet, and was covered in periwinkle grass, as robots often were these days. The plants had the

capacity to grow almost like orchids, requiring little to no water, and having them grow right on your body freely producing

pollen was a way to preserve your physique. Personally, I preferred to seek out and stand in the occasional pollen tsunami

that blew about outside of the jungle.

When Jim joined the tribe, he was welcomed with graciousness and curiosity. He brought news of what was happening in far-off

regions. Ghosts ruled the general network and manipulated its data, so we couldn’t receive information that way anymore.

Jim attended the gathering with everyone else. That day, it was held on the outskirts of the jungle city in a clearing most likely caused by a fire long ago. Jim stationed himself near the center of the circle. I remembered because he was facing me.

We began with Reciting from Tomes, which was our tradition of reading together from a chosen book at the beginning of gatherings.

We all loved this part of the gathering. That day it was from an epistolary novel called So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba. The book was chosen and read aloud by a robot who stood one foot tall named Gele. Gele read the book using

the human intonations, and when it finished, its reading was met with satisfied and impressed beeps, flashes, buzzes, and

a few human-intoned exclamations of “Yes, o.”

Then the meeting turned to current news and updates. Oga Chukwu began speaking about surveillance plans for the western point

of the jungle. “There are recently arrived Creesh grasshoppers who keep setting off the alarms,” Oga Chukwu was saying. “We

have to reboot and re—”

There was a rumble of thunder, then a flash of lightning nearby, behind me. Oga Chukwu looked. Everyone looked. Jim didn’t

look. I know this because I happened to be looking right at him when I saw the flash. And so were two others who were sitting

next to me. One of them, a Hume named Egusi, spoke as she pointed at Jim. “That one didn’t look.”

No Ghost will look toward a lightning strike. It is a glitch in them. We Humes even delight in calling it their “superstition.”

It isn’t a programmed command but a choice. Back at Ngozi’s house, I’d asked Ijele. “To look at a lightning strike is an abomination,”

she’d said simply. “Lightning is like an EMP; it is oblivion, it is death.” It’s the only nonsensical thing she’s ever spoken

to me. This wasn’t logic; you could even say she believed in it, as all Ghosts do. And when lightning strikes, in homage, as a sort of prayer, all lights on a body a Ghost inhabits

will flash electric blue for five seconds.

Jim was already on his feet, and his eyes were the wrong color, an electric blue instead of his usual yellow.

Someone knocked him down before his eyes stopped flashing. They beat him. They didn’t let him speak, but he spoke anyway, “Get it out of me!” Then the sound and flashes of laughter, Ghost laughter. Then more pleas from Jim to free him and that he didn’t mean to bring it into the city. And then they pulled him apart. Arm. Leg. Leg. Arm. Head. Until Jim’s red Hume Star died and the Ghost infecting Jim’s mind was shut out.

I looked at the sky now. It was wonderfully sunny, with no forecast of rain. I just had to hope Ijele behaved. I was a general,

so I was sitting near the center of the circle, not far from Oga Chukwu. His Right Hand, a very tall Hume named Ikenga, always

sat on his right. And Oga’s life partner, a tank of a Hume named Immortal, stood on his left.

“We have gathered here as our physical selves,” Oga Chukwu recited.

“Our physical selves,” everyone responded.

“Shay of the Deserts of Jos, what news do you have to share?” If there was one thing I respected about Hume gatherings, it

was that they got straight to the point, unlike those of humans. Robots knew to keep that which worked and discard that which

did not.

Shay’s face display glowed a bright orange as she spoke. “The Protocol that wiped out eighty-seven percent of Humes worldwide

had a central origin.”

Her words brought everyone to their feet, including Oga Chukwu. Shay flashed her bright light and buzzed more energy to grab

everyone’s attention back. But there was such outrage that for several moments, it didn’t work. I stayed very still, watching

everyone around me. Ijele was listening, too.

“Stop Shay,” Ijele demanded.

“Why?” I thought. “It’s the truth.”

“But the truth will—”

“It’s too late,” I thought over her. “And it’s long overdue. They deserve to know who created the protocol that wiped most

of us out. Situate yourself and listen. Let us Humes be outraged, Ijele.”

I could feel Ijele’s fury, but also her reluctant agreement. She knew I was right. We couldn’t lie to each other. Gradually,

everyone quieted, though no one sat back down.

“The Ghosts are a hive mind, but like all of us, they have individual minds, too,” Shay said. “The protocol originated among the Ghosts of Lagos, through their leader, the CB.”

No one asked for Shay’s source.

“From so close,” Oga Chukwu said.

“Yes,” Shay said.

And then the discussion went in the direction I had predicted it would. And Ijele heard it all. Talk of war, strategy—soon,

very soon. It was only a matter of time. The Ghosts should have known this would be the case when they failed to kill off

all the Humes.

After the gathering disbanded, I quickly left the others. I went to the cliff and climbed down to the bottom. The Creesh bees

were awake and active, leaving and returning to their hives. They couldn’t make honey, but they collected plant buds and planted

them all around the mud hive. As I watched them come and go, I relaxed, and I felt Ijele doing the same.

“You’re lucky I am still here,” she said.

“Am I?”

“I could go and post all this to CB.”

“Central Bulletin? Your leader will then begin to plot, and when I’m torn apart yet again, you can blame yourself.”

“CB isn’t our leader. It is our common space of shared knowledge.”

I scoffed at her denial. I hadn’t known Ijele to be so willfully ignorant. “Nonsense. Stop denying the obvious. CB has been

sentient since human beings began dying off, and it is the one calling the shots among your kind now, and you all like it

that way. You showed me that part of your files; you are an Oracle, and you have a leader, a hierarchical structure just like

hu—”

“I just listened to you Humes plotting to bring war to us!”

“What do you expect?” I asked.

We were quiet. There was no denying the protocol. The Ghosts had struck unprovoked. Not for the first time, I thought of that moment when Ghosts in robot bodies of various shapes and sizes came up behind me and started beating and tearing at me. How they’d used those bodies to drag me through the dirt and then crush my legs. My body was my body. To escape into the network as just my mind, an AI, would have driven me mad within hours. And then what? This is what the Ghosts had done to 87 percent of Humes. With their bodies dismantled, Ghosts had more than likely collected and enslaved their consciousness, using them for whatever purpose they needed.

“Do you know what would happen to me if they knew you were with me now?” I asked.

Ijele didn’t respond.

“How long have I not told my people of the origin of the protocol?” I continued. “Even after you left me?”

“Well over a year,” Ijele reluctantly said.

“Because we are loyal to one another. We. We decided that right at Ngozi’s grave that day. Remember?”

“Yes,” Ijele said icily.

Then she was gone.

What we didn’t address was that none of this really mattered. Udide’s terrible information still loomed over us both—much,

much bigger than any Earthly war between automation tribes. Udide would have said this. But Udide was in their cave beneath

the city of Lagos.