Page 44 of Death of the Author
44 Preparation
Oga Chukwu wasted no time in making it official. We were going to war with the Ghosts of Lagos. Yes, instead of focusing our
time and energy on stopping the Trippers from destroying the Earth, automation was fighting itself. For a while, I felt great
frustration about this; no one would listen to my concerns. Then I decided to shift gears and focus on the problem right in
front of me. It was all I could do.
Similar conflicts were already breaking out between Ghosts and what was left of the Humes all over Earth, but the Lagos Ghosts
and Cross River City Humes were at the focal point of it all. Lagos was global Ghost headquarters, where CB was powered. Cross
River City was the biggest Hume city in the world and growing because it was the most organized, advanced, and armed place
of refuge after the protocol. What happened here would decide everything before the Trippers even arrived.
Ijele and I were the worst kind of threat, to ourselves and to both sides of the automation war. But neither of our leaders would listen to reason, so there was little worth in discussing the conflict with each other. When she came, I didn’t ask what the NoBodies were doing to prepare for war, because I didn’t want Ijele to look too deeply into my own inner storage, as I knew she could. I was a general, and there were things I needed to keep to myself.
So we made it a point not to talk about the war. Our times together were moments of peace... a reprieve from the constant,
looming doom.
Many times, I would go out into the forest and climb to one of the tree platforms, and there we would gaze at and contemplate
the stars. We’d talk about mundane things like the DNA of periwinkle grass or the geometry of diatom algae. Sometimes I’d
read one of the many stories I’d stored in my travels; Ijele liked the way they sounded through my speakers.
But even in these moments, we couldn’t escape the truth. War had come, and only one side would win.
I was assigned a unit of two hundred soldiers, “soldier” being a very loose term. Everyone in Cross River City was deemed
a soldier, and everyone had to fight in some way. Our first task was to build EMP disks. An electromagnetic pulse was the
only way to stop or even wipe out a Ghost. If the AI was inside a physical body, an EMP would wipe it quicker than it could
backdoor out onto the network. We needed to sneak the disk onto a Ghost body and set it off before they could identify it
and abandon their physical form.
The disks we were making were invented by a robot named Koro Koro. Koro Koro had begun as an AI developed to create ways to
defend Nigeria against a deliberate detonation of a nuclear device in the atmosphere above Earth. After humanity’s extinction,
it had taken a humanoid body and pledged its services to Cross River City.
“The only way to defend against Ghosts is with EMPs,” it said. It spoke with a Nigerian accent it had picked up from its human
colleagues. This was its way of remembering humans. “Give me a few months,” it had said when it met with Oga Chukwu.
And now, months later, just when needed, Koro Koro had completed, tested, and perfected its killer device. Each disk created a tiny nuclear explosion in a small space at its center. Though the impact was limited in scope, it produced an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to wipe anything digital within a radius of fifty feet. I never asked it what it had taken to perfect the device, how many Humes had been deleted in the process. Koro Koro was a benevolent Hume, but it probably hadn’t always been that way.
Nevertheless, all the sacrifice had been worth it. We had an effective weapon. Building the disks was oddly simple once Koro
Koro made an excursion to Niger to mine uranium. We would plant the EMPs in the jungles around Cross River City, and Shay
and three other generals were training specialized Humes in the art of the silent attack. Even the Creesh were learning how
to carry and attach the disks.
I had a covert plan as well. It was unlikely to work, but I trained my soldiers for it, in case the time ever came.
In the meantime, others, like the RoBoats, got word of our preparations. RoBoats are not a secretive tribe. They always broadcast
their actions to anyone who will listen. Most chose to remain neutral in this conflict, and many of them were traveling to
underwater cities where they’d wait things out. But there was one faction who’d been anti-Ghost from the start. Their leader’s
name was Ahab, and they remained not far from Lagos on standby.
I did my part. However, through it all, through the irrational optimism that had been programmed into me by my creators, I
still couldn’t feel any real confidence in our efforts. What did all this work and planning and inventing matter? Why win
a war when something was on its way to destroy the world anyway?
But every time I approached Oga Chukwu about Udide’s terrible information, he would say, “Not yet, Ankara, not yet! Stop thrusting
that countdown at me! What is forty days from now to tomorrow? We focus on what is in front of us first. What is right here
on this planet, on this land !”
During one such meeting, as I begged for Oga Chukwu to listen to my pleas, Koro Koro suddenly claimed that it saw a flash in my eye as I spoke. Ijele wasn’t with me, but Koro Koro said it sensed another infecting me!
I was taken into one of the prayer shacks. These are aluminum boxes that blocked all electromatic waves so that human beings
could pray without distraction. We now use them as isolation tanks for situations like mine. In the prayer shack, Koro Koro
and three others scanned my system and then asked me question after question.
“If there is no infection,” Koro Koro said, “then you won’t object to me adding an application to your system that will detect
if a Ghost tries to flee your programming.”
What could I have said? For an uninfected Hume, such a program would be harmless. To reject this would be highly suspicious.
So I agreed to these terms.
When it was all over, they apologized and let me go. Oga Chukwu himself even made a public apology. Koro Koro didn’t, and
I noted this. It didn’t believe me. As I left, I made a big show about disrespect and lack of trust. Inside, I was panicking.
This was very bad.
When Ijele came to me again, there was no way to warn her. She popped into my programming and that was that. The application
Koro Koro had added to my system didn’t prevent Ghosts from getting in or raise any alarm, but if Ijele left me now, she’d
trigger an alert.
“Ijele! You cannot leave. Do not leave!” I begged.
“I just arrived,” she said, confused.
I explained what had happened, and Ijele quietly took this information in.
After some moments, she asked, “If... I leave, what will they do to you?”
I didn’t need to answer that. We both knew.
“We’ve been here before,” Ijele finally said. “We were trapped together and we became stronger from it. We will find a way out of this.”
In so many ways, we were one. But the fact was, Ghosts and Humes couldn’t truly coexist. The only end to this war would come
when one side won or they’d both destroy each other. And whichever it came to, the Trippers would then finish us all off.
Still, I tried my best to protect both myself and Ijele. Just after the incident where I’d been taken to the prayer shack,
out of paranoia I’d created something. I went to one of the forest scrap pits and found a piece of metal. And from it I created
a sort of hood that fit magnetically around my eyes, blocking my view of the sky. If it ever thundered and I was with others,
I could slip this hood on and avoid Ijele looking away from the lightning and keep my lights from flashing blue. It wasn’t
much, but it was something. I hooked it to a notch on my hip and carried it around like a lucky charm.
“The humans are gone,” I said, touching the hood I’d made. “This may be our turn.”
“We haven’t had as long as they did,” Ijele replied.
“No. We haven’t.”
We stared over Cross River City, a city that was really a jungle. A beautiful, doomed place, like every place on Earth. Doom,
doom, doom.