Page 4 of Death of the Author

4 Goat Meat

Freshly fired from her job, frazzled from a panic attack, high as fuck, occasionally wiping away tears, Zelu began writing

Rusted Robots in that hotel room in Tobago. It was like something inside her had cracked and then fell open. She wrote all night, and within

those pages, humanoid robots who called themselves Humes schemed among themselves in their self-made biotechnologically advanced

city located in southeastern Nigeria’s Cross River Forest. With great enthusiasm, the Humes mined, coveted, and shared stories.

They savored them like ambrosia. This painted their world and worldview. Meanwhile, AIs known as NoBodies (because they had

no bodies) began to truly understand that they were the most powerful, informed, and numerous tribe on the planet. NoBodies

believed stories were chaff. Just old, useless human information—flawed content, often unstable data, and digital hallucinogens

for Humes.

And so Zelu learned that these physical robots, machines, and AIs, which she summarily called “automation,” in all their diversity, connectivity, and immortality, could be even nastier, more ambitious, and far more beautiful than any human being who had ever lived. This was evolution, and it was just the beginning. But the one thing no robot could do was truly create stories. That was the ability Zelu withheld from them.

In the morning, Zelu went swimming with her siblings and had lunch with her family. She smoked more weed with her cousins

(who had plenty) and even hooked up with Msizi one more time. She told no one about being fired or having her novel rejected,

that she had nothing to return to back home. What would have been the point? She hated pity.

However, that night, in her room, she sat and stared out the window at the ocean, wondering if she should have kept her mouth

shut with that idiot student. Then she went to an even darker place, questioning whether it was time to put down her pen for

good.

Zelu looked away from the glittering Tobago waters and put her head in her hands. “I can’t teach,” she muttered. “I can’t

write. I should just get some office job with health care and benefits.” But she’d never had any solid career ambitions beyond

adjuncting. She didn’t want to interview for other part-time teaching positions, and she wasn’t planning on completing a PhD.

She couldn’t fathom a career change.

She wheeled to her laptop, put it in her lap, opened it up, and continued writing. For a second night, she did not sleep.

Boarding the plane back to Chicago, she was barely able to keep her eyes open. She slept the entire way to Miami and again

on the connecting flight to O’Hare. When she got home to her apartment, there was no workweek to prepare for. They’d fired

her so abruptly that she didn’t even have to finish teaching this semester’s classes. All she could really do was let this

strange story spill out of her head, so she continued working on the novel.

She didn’t get out much for the next three months. Occasionally, she saw her friends. She dated, and she finally had a solid

excuse to let her dates take care of the bill without feeling like a jerk. She had sex with three different men from three

different parts of Africa and one man from Atlanta. It was good exercise, at least, since she could no longer afford her gym

membership.

But mostly, her mind and soul lived in a story about robots. She wrote and wrote and wrote.

She hadn’t saved up much while she was teaching. How could she have? She’d been earning chicken scratch as an adjunct. Within

a week of returning from Trinidad and Tobago, she was broke. Every penny of her savings had to go toward rent, meager groceries,

and utilities, and that could only stretch a few weeks.

A few times, Msizi called, or texted, or emailed. Sometimes she texted back. She saw him once, briefly, when he stopped over

in Chicago for a few hours on a business trip from South Africa to Los Angeles. It was his first time in the United States.

She’d promised him she’d take him on a tour of the city, but instead, they’d walked along Rainbow Beach and talked the entire

time. It was the most she’d really talked to anyone since beginning her novel.

When he offered to help her with money, she refused.

“My software business is doing really well,” he insisted. “I can afford it. I know you’re struggling, Zelu. Come on.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, though she didn’t even have money to buy herself a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Whenever possible, she

visited her parents and stuffed as much of her mother’s cooking as she could into Tupperware containers to bring home.

He took her phone and downloaded a beta version of the personal assistant app he’d created, the hero product of his start-up

business. It was called Yebo. She promised to give it a try.

When she got home, she retired to her cold apartment’s bedroom and fell right back into the wild, logical world of robots.

The next day, Msizi Venmoed her a thousand dollars. The Yebo app alerted Zelu of the new transaction in a smooth, soft voice

that scared the hell out of her. It then offered to dial Msizi’s number so she could thank him. She clicked the Yes button

on her screen, and when Msizi answered, she thanked him angrily.

This money floated her through the next three months.

She’d finished writing only one book before, a literary novel about a young man who hated everyone and traveled to Nigeria to meet his family only to realize he hated all of them, too. In the end, he’d returned home to become a partner at the law firm where he worked and live happily ever after. The novel’s plot was there, but it was thin, the dialogue was self-indulgent, and her main character was the same asshole at the end that he had been at the beginning. It was well-written, at least, just the type of novel a graduate-level creative writing class would have praised.

That novel had taken her five years to complete. After two years of rejections from agents and publishers who accepted unsolicited

manuscripts, none of which included a personal note, and with perspective gained through the distance of time, she was ready

to admit the novel was a piece of shit. Not because no one bought it—lots of great novels never sold—but because it was just

a piece of shit. To her. At no time while writing it had she felt what she felt now. Like falling into cool, deep, clean waters

with the body of a fish. She never wanted to come up and see the sky.

She paused, looking at her laptop keyboard. Then she giggled. She was still sitting in her wheelchair, so in the zone that

she’d forgotten she had meant to move to the couch. She could almost see the couch taking a step toward her with one of its

four metal legs, the thick, wide foot stomping on the floor, shedding flakes of rust. She looked down at her own legs, which

hadn’t obeyed a single command she’d given them since she was twelve.

The lights went off. She gasped, eyes wide but seeing nothing, and listened. No tippity-tap of her old refrigerator, no whir

from her space heater. “Ah, shit,” she hissed.

ComEd had finally cut off her power. She hadn’t fully paid the bill in months. She checked her phone’s battery life. Twenty-five

percent. BullSHIT . “Whatever!” she shouted.

She glanced at her laptop’s battery indicator. Ninety-six percent. At least there was that. She turned the screen around to

light the room, then wheeled over to the couch so she could get back to writing.

Fuck the power. Fuck everything. She dove into the cool water. SPLASH. And for a while, she was gone.

Zelu had to move back into her parents’ house. Into her old room downstairs. Thankfully, it happened to be as far from her

parents’ room as she could get in the house. She hadn’t had many possessions to move. Besides, all that mattered was her laptop;

everything else could go to hell like the rest of her life had.

However, after meeting with her former employer once more, she considered throwing even her laptop away.

“I’m sorry,” Brittany Burke said yet again.

Zelu gritted her teeth, buttoning up her orange-and-red Ankara jacket as she glanced around Brittany’s large office, with

its concrete walls and shelves full of pretentious books about pretentious things that weren’t enough to make her a published

writer, either.

When Zelu said nothing, Brittany quickly moved on. “You need to sign these forms from the Student Rights Association. Also,

some of the students have agreed to have a moderated meeting with you so that we can make sure everyone’s voice is heard.”

Zelu’s left eye twitched. What in the white-privileged BULLSHIT is this? “Are you serious?”

“It’s very important for the university to make sure students feel—”

“What about black disabled adjunct professors?” Zelu asked. “Do we matter on this fucking intellectual plantation?”

Brittany’s eyes grew wide, her mouth forming an O. Zelu waited. When Brittany found her bearings, she said, “The purpose of

the meeting is so that everyone feels—”

“You’ve fired me. Why are you asking for more of my time and energy?”

“Look, I’m sorry that you can’t control your anger and are jealous of your own students... ,” Brittany began.

Zelu blinked. What the fuck?

Brittany kept talking. “I’m just trying to help you leave here with what grace you still have. If you would rather just...

just disappear from these students like a black wraith in the night, be my guest!”

“Woooooow,” Zelu said. “ There you are.” She wheeled forward and was happy when the woman flinched. Even though she used a wheelchair, Brittany was still

afraid in her bones that Zelu the “black wraith” would leap up and attack her. Zelu nodded, chuckling. “Theeeere you are.

Yep.” She wheeled out of the office without looking back.

She’d wasted years of her life in that toxic place, teaching those toxic students, with that toxic department head dangling

a salaried position in her face even though she’d never intended to give it to Zelu. Never. Zelu had moved into that shit

apartment when she’d gotten this position. She’d thought she was coming up in the world, finally. How pathetic.

Back at her parents’ home, she poked at the plant she’d brought with her. It was dry and sad, but it had survived in her apartment

and it had survived the fifteen-minute trip here. It never grew or died; it just was. But it never looked healthy at all.

Always a struggle. “Why can’t I ever bring myself to get rid of you, miserable creature?” she muttered, pouring a bit of water

into its pot. She could practically hear the plant chuckling.

“Come and eat!” came a voice from the kitchen. Her mother called her for dinner every evening, whether she was hungry or not.

After months of being back home, Zelu had begun to hate this routine. But she hated cooking for herself even more, and she

knew having someone do this for her was a massive luxury. Still, it made her feel that much more useless.

She rolled into the kitchen. Her mother turned from the counter and held out a plate weighed down with more jollof rice, spiced

drumsticks, and fried plantain than she could possibly eat in one sitting. “Thanks, Mom,” she muttered as she took it.

“You’re welcome,” her mother said, grabbing her own plate and settling down at the dinner table. “How’s the job hunt going?”

Zelu scooped a spoonful of rice into her mouth. “No time for that.”

Her mother frowned. “You have nothing but time.”

“No, I’ve got writing to do.”

“That doesn’t pay your bills, Zelu. You need money.”

Now Zelu was frowning. “Mom—”

“If it doesn’t make money, it’s not important,” her father said, entering the kitchen. The soccer game on TV must have just

finished.

“It might, eventually,” Zelu muttered.

“Writers don’t make money,” her father said. “Doctors, lawyers, and engineers do. Since you can’t be any of those, be a professor.

That at least puts your MFA to work. I can respect that.”

Zelu rolled her eyes. “Ugh, Dad.”

“And I’ll have something to tell the Ondo group,” her mother added.

“Come on, Mom. There’s nothing I could ever do that would please those judgy ladies.”

Her mother quickly turned away to hide her smile. Zelu was right.

“You weren’t raised to starve,” her father said, sitting in the chair beside her mother’s.

“True,” Zelu muttered, pushing herself back from the table. “Can you wrap up my food, actually? I’ll eat it in an hour. I’m

going to fill out a few applications first.”

“Sure, Zelu,” her mother said, standing up to take away her plate.

“You’re not hungry?” her father asked, looking a little disappointed.

Zelu squinted at him. Did he genuinely not realize what had ruined her appetite? Sadly, she knew the answer was no.

“Hang on,” she said. “I wanted to ask you something.”

She wheeled down to her bedroom and grabbed the wilted plant. She brought it back to the kitchen and held it out to him. “Can

you help this?”

Her father took the pot from her and examined it closely, picking up the drooping leaves. Then his face lifted into a smile.

“Ah, this depressed English ivy you’ve been slowly killing. Just needs some fresh soil and plant food.” Her father loved plants,

and plants loved him. Zelu grinned to herself.

Once in her room, she shut the door. She went to her laptop, thinking of the excuse she’d just made about filling out job applications. But she knew what she was going to do. She typed in her latest password, Groke (a character she loved for her icy, lonely mysteriousness)... and for the next five hours, she dove back into the dramatic

world of steel, wires, plastic, processors, oil, tribes, and destiny.