Page 50 of Death of the Author

50 So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Ten.

Nine.

Zelu was staring at the thin blue-and-white Ankara bracelet on her right wrist. She was glad they’d allowed her to wear it.

Ankara cloth made her feel powerful and safe. Few things did that for her. The roar of the starship shook through her like

a dragon, except for her legs and the bottom part of her torso, her womb. There, everything felt quiet, muffled, not calm

but unbothered. The bundle of cells that grew there would have to hold on for dear life. Zelu wanted to shut her eyes, but

she held them open. And she smiled.

“We’re going!” she said aloud. But no one around her heard. Everyone’s focus was elsewhere. “We’re going,” she said again,

this time mouthing it. She laughed. She’d made so many choices to get here. She’d made one of the biggest an hour after she

took the pregnancy test.

“There is one other option,” Jack had said. Zelu had immediately called and told him everything. She’d fallen apart, weeping and sobbing and lamenting. How stupid she was. How sorry she was. What a fuckup she was. How she wasn’t ready. How much she was letting everyone down. How she was tired of letting everyone down. She screamed, shouted, poured poison she didn’t even know had gathered inside her into the phone, into Jack’s ears. And he had listened.

When she was finished, he’d asked, “You wanna do this launch?”

“What does it matter? I can’t.”

“You can, if you choose.”

She said nothing.

“Cosmic radiation, the press of g’s, the stress on the body...” He trailed off.

“I could lose my baby,” she said.

“I can help with that,” he said.

Twelve hours later, in a doctor’s office located in the Sears Tower, Jack met her in person to explain. Zelu had listened

so hard to every detail that her temples throbbed. The benefits, the possible side effects, the risks, how soon it would work,

the fact that it would alter her DNA and her child’s forever. And why she should take it.

He called the highly experimental injection an “organic augmentation.” He had an entire team of researchers working to perfect

the technology. “I’m not interested in colonizing Mars,” he said. “Wherever humanity decides to call home, they’ll learn to

be unhappy all over again. I’m more interested in exploring. But, the fact is, you can’t explore the cosmos without tweaking

your DNA a bit.”

They’d injected several human test subjects already, but he hadn’t offered the augmentation to the other crew members because

he didn’t want to deal with the legal factors. But Jack said he’d received an injection himself. “There’s no way I’m going

up without it,” he’d said. “The trials have been stellar. This thing works.”

Tardigrades, microscopic beings colloquially called water bears, were the only known animals who could survive in open space. One of the reasons was that their DNA had developed a natural protection from radiation. This injection would grant Zelu their superpower, too. In addition, it would give her an extra chromosome that could prepare her for subsequent genes carrying additional capabilities—like the ability to create essential amino acids herself rather than needing to acquire them by eating certain foods. “That’s for later,” Jack said. “For now, protection from radiation will help you and your baby.”

The choice she made would be for her child, too. Her child could be born ready to travel the stars... if they wanted to.

Jack and the accompanying physician stepped out to give Zelu a chance to mull things over.

She didn’t mull, though. She didn’t consider any of the consequences they had so carefully explained.

Was it selfish? Probably. Would she be judged when the world found out? Certainly. But it was done. Another step away from

humanity, even as her child formed in her belly.

Three.

Two.

One.

All engines activated. Lift off!

She felt the press of the g-force on her chest. Squeeze , she thought. Breathe . And she did. Eyes still open. She was aware. She could carry the weight. She could see through it. Then she felt a lift

and a gentle but firm tear. The pain was sweet and sharp. And then it seemed that a glowing line tore through the space before

her eyes; it hovered feet in the air, searing white and a bit jagged. It cracked and elongated slowly. Extending right in

front of her, then down, down, down the length of her body.

It stopped, and she tried to turn her head, but the g-force was too strong. She tried to speak, but she needed the little air she could take in to breathe. All she could do was watch as the line widened. And widened. And grew closer. It was millimeters from her face now, and she stared at it, fascinated. She was helpless before it. Her legs were strapped down, and the g-force was at its full power. And so the tear in what looked like reality descended on her, and as it did, she let out a soft breath, deciding to meet it. Submit to it. Now Zelu shut her eyes. She could see the light. And she knew the light was shining on her belly, on the new and growing bundle of cells inside her.

So be it.

The fan that circulated the air. The new-car smell of the ship. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She didn’t look

to her crewmates. Not yet. For the moment, she stayed with herself. The g-force was decreasing, and any moment, everyone would

snap back into normalcy, checking meters, gauges, location, instructions. But not yet.

She wished she had a mirror. Not to prove what she’d always known, but just to see it. That line she’d seen, the crack in

reality. Real. If she looked at herself, she’d see Space Zelu. Same but not the same. She was the One Who’d Left Earth now.

She could feel it. It felt goooood. This was the truest type of out-of-body experience. She turned to the window. Outside

was vastness.

“I’m here,” she whispered, watching the silver dolphin necklace Msizi had given her float up from around her neck and hover

between her eyes. “I’m here, Dad. I’m here, Mom.” She thought of her siblings. “I’m here, you guys.” We’re both here, Ngozi , she thought. She loved this name. It was her middle name, and it meant “blessing,” and it was the perfect name for their

baby. If Msizi likes it , she thought. Yeah, he’ll like it . The thought of him, so far away now, on a planet she was not on, made her heart ache.

She closed her eyes, just like she used to back on Earth when things got to be too much, though she didn’t feel that now.

She was actually going to space now, so she wasn’t sure what to call the black void full of stars she went to in her head

anymore. She gasped at what she saw behind her eyes—bursts of vibrant color, networks of contours and shapes and figures,

ever more complex, yet so direct, imposing. It was Ijele.

“The masquerade of all masquerades,” her father always said. One of his most prized videos was of him stepping aside to let the great Ijele masquerade pass during a New Yam Festival. When the spirit known as Ijele came along, everyone else knew to get out of its way. This was an honor. A privilege. The arrival of Ijele meant things could truly begin.

Behind her eyes, Ijele shook and danced in space, big as a house, like a great ship in its heft, the powerful python slithering

around its top. Its upper level was decorated with brown feathers, nsibidi symbols, shells, beads, and colorful cloth, and

it was occupied by its many iconic individuals—the mermaid, special women, chiefs, horses, trees. All were busy with motion,

waving, laughing, neighing, dancing, whirling, posing, spinning. Its colorful cloths, quilted with stars, mirrors, loops,

circles, and squiggles, floated away from its body toward the ground. Ijele was a spectacle. Ijele was hard to grasp. Ijele

was who Ijele was.

It slowly rotated, comfortable even in space, because it was a spirit and spirits were comfortable anywhere. The spirits could

follow you no matter how far away you went. Time and space were nothing to them.

Zelu had needed to come out here, let it all go, leave it all behind, to arrive at this understanding. This was not some impulsive,

selfish mistake. It was a milestone.

“Glorious,” Zelu whispered. Slowly, she opened her eyes and let out a long, calm breath.

She was looking through a huge window, down at Earth. Beneath her, billions of people were tethered to the planet by gravity.

What would it be like to be untethered forever? To cut that thread and never need exos or any other type of mobility assistance

again?

She looked down at herself. Her legs lifted, bobbed, and softly bent of their own accord, weightless. She was alive. She was

made for this.

Suddenly it hit her: a lightning bolt of inspiration. The entire novel. All she had to do was sit down and write it. No, she

couldn’t see the whole story from beginning to end yet, but it was there, like a compressed file. If she started writing,

she could extract it.

She chuckled, looking down at the planet. Down there, people had begged and bargained and demanded for years that she give them another story.

And what a story this would be. Dramatic, gut-wrenching, shocking, and, if not conclusive, then satisfying.

But she wouldn’t give them this one. She would keep it to herself.