Page 8 of Death of the Author

8 The Beginning

And then...

Zelu was done. She clicked Save, backed up her file to the cloud, and emailed a copy to her third email account. She changed

her laptop password to Bilbo (a character she loved for his willingness to go on an irrational adventure). Then she dumped her laptop on her bed and just

looked at its screen.

She’d finished the first draft of Rusted Robots a year and a half ago, but it had been a mishmash of fragmented sentences, inconsistencies, junk, nonsense, and some buried

brilliance. After letting it breathe for a week, she’d started the editing process, rewriting some sections and polishing

others. For months and months she’d worked at it, encouraging it to come together and make something whole, like magnets finding

one another.

She’d started writing this book when she was both low and high in Trinidad and Tobago. She’d been fired and rejected, and

she’d had nothing. But now she had this; it was a complete thing that lived, exhaled, celebrated. A great big fresh, authentic

story. Written by her.

“I did it,” she whispered. She burst into tears. The ending was breathtaking. It was dramatic and poignant and pacey—everything she’d wanted it to be. She looked at her phone, tears still streaming down her cheeks. The screen displayed a pop-up from Msizi’s Yebo app.

Good morning, Zelu. What can I do for you today?

She swiped it and told it to call Msizi. He answered immediately, and that made her want to cry more.

“Lady,” he said.

“Hey,” she answered. “Where are you?”

“Durban. Just got here. You still living with your parents?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” he said. “I know you. If you weren’t home, you’d be at some idiot guy’s house.”

She laughed and then sniffled loudly.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I finished my novel.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

She let out a huff that was almost a laugh. “I mean, it’s not ‘wrong’... I’m just... oh, I dunno.”

She’d barely finished before he said, “When can I read it?”

“Never.” She laughed. “I’m never letting anyone read it.”

“Okay.”

Silence settled between them, and Zelu reveled in it. She was waiting. She was always waiting with Msizi. Waiting for him

to change into a common, boring asshole. She kept giving him a nice runway to launch into it. Like now.

“You will eventually,” he said.

She let out a breath and smiled. Yet again, he’d passed one of her tests.

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay, I’ll send it tomorrow.”

“I’ll start reading the moment it hits my inbox.” There was a sound in the background, someone saying something in a language she couldn’t understand. Probably Zulu, for Msizi said something back in the same language. “Hey, Zelu, I have to go. Send me the novel... and congratulations on finishing. I knew you’d get there.”

She sent him the manuscript a minute later. If there was one person whose opinion she trusted, it was him. He was the most

honest person she knew, and after knowing him for more than two years, she suspected he actually had her best interests in mind. Maybe. If that was possible

for a human being. She was still figuring that out.

The next morning, at about 4 a.m., her phone began to buzz. At first, she ignored it, pushing it farther away on her nightstand.

The voice of her Yebo app cut through the buzzing to say, “Zelu, this might be important.”

She grabbed the phone. “What the FUCK!” she hissed, her mouth feeling slow and gummy. “What what what?!” She blinked, staring

at the name on the screen. It was Msizi. Clearly he was ignoring the time difference again. And a video call at that? Seriously?

She answered it.

“Good morning,” she said, pushing herself up and holding the phone above her. “You know it’s super early, right? Did I mention

I want to delete your creepy app?!”

He was grinning. She squinted at the bright colors on the screen. He was standing outside in the sunshine. On the beach. He’d

been swimming. Pretty , she thought, despite her annoyance.

“Zeluuuuuuu,” he shouted. He exclaimed something in Zulu or maybe Xhosa, since there were clicks in it and he spoke both languages.

“Hey, turn your light on. I only see black.”

“I’m sleeping and I look like shit.”

“Come on, I need to see your face!”

She groaned and then said, “Lights!” When the voice-activated light came on, she shut her eyes to let them adjust. She slowly

opened them, and he was waiting.

“Zelu!” he shouted. “Don’t delete my app. You know you love it.”

She only grunted, imagining deleting it anyway.

“I read it!” he said.

“What?”

“Your book!”

She blinked. Now she was awake.

“What? The whole thing?”

“The. Whole. Thing.”

She paused, staring hard at his face on the screen now. Trying to read his grin, his aura. Steeling herself. She felt ill.

It was too early for this. She whimpered. She wasn’t ready. “Oh my God.”

The weird shit she’d spent more than two years writing, that had started after that night with Msizi, now existed in someone

else’s head! She hung up the phone and threw it down on her bed. “Ah, shit!” she hissed, pushing herself upright. She reached

for her chair. Her phone was ringing again. “Shit!” she said again. She answered it.

“What the hell!?” he asked. But he was laughing. She could see the waves rolling in and out behind him. She could hear them,

too. Zelu had never been to Durban, but she’d heard the waters there were warm. She focused on that. Warm. Like the body of a calm, kind beast. Her heart was slamming in her chest.

“Zelu, you’ve written something incredible .”

She stared at his face. She knew him well now. Since that first time he’d left Durban, he’d spent two weeks in the United

States with Jackie and Amarachi, and come twice to Chicago specifically to visit her. They’d also talked every month or so

since his return to South Africa. It wasn’t often, but when they did talk, it was for hours. She could read him. But her brain

refused to process what he was saying. “You read all five-hundred-some pages in one night?” she asked.

“Yep. It was that good . I came out here for a swim because I haven’t slept a wink and I needed to process what I’d just read. I don’t read that

kind of shit. I didn’t know you even wrote that kind of shit.”

“I don’t. I don’t even like science fiction, not most of it. Why write about the future when the future is now?” She took a deep breath, frowning. “You really... what’d you like about it?”

“The drama ,” he said. “I couldn’t put it down! It was about fucking robots , some had crazy bodies, some didn’t have bodies at all, others were falling apart! It was ridiculous! Yet I couldn’t put

it down. It was like you’d worked something on me. You wove in this Africanness to them, too. That irrational tribal sensibility,

it was all so familiar to me. I can’t really explain.”

Warmth. She felt it in her chest. Warmth.

“It stays with me,” he said, touching his chest. He paused. “It’s not like your other novel at all.”

She nodded. She’d given it to him to read, and he’d never finished it. He’d even called it “rubbish,” and they hadn’t spoken

for a week because of it. When they’d finally talked again, he’d explained that he couldn’t be anything but honest with her.

What was the point, otherwise? “I’m not a writer or an artist, but I like stuff,” he’d said back then. “I don’t like this.

If you’ve got something better in you, cool. But if you don’t, just stop.” Then he’d laughed at his own words, and she’d told

him off and hung up on him. He’d been the one to call her back, and she’d missed him so much, she’d picked up the phone despite

her desire to stay bitter.

“You really liked it?”

“ Loved it,” he said without hesitation. “Might be the best book I’ve ever read.”

She kissed her teeth, genuinely irritated. Now she didn’t believe him. “Oh, stop exaggerating.”

“Have you ever known me to exaggerate?”

She considered this for a moment, frowning.

“I’m not just gassing you up, Zelu. It’s good .”

After she hung up the phone, she lay there for the next hour staring at the ceiling. Maybe it was just him. A fluke. She and Msizi had always had a weird connection. So of course he’d vibe with the strange book she’d written. But then again, he’d hated her other novel. Zelu shut her eyes and immediately...

I stood there enjoying the wind. Around me were the sad ruins of humanity, now overrun, overgrown, built over, ready for those

who came next. Periwinkle grass sprouted wild and lush over stainless steel and rusting metals. Vines and wires wound together

along the sides of slumping skyscrapers. This place was meant for automation. I passed a public charging node for travelers

who didn’t run on solar. I was solar, but I pressed a foot on one of the charging pads anyway and received a hit of energy.

For a moment, everything around me sparkled like a rogue vision. I felt mighty. I knew where I was going. This was not about

safety; it was my destiny. There was no turning back now that I had begun...

Zelu opened her eyes and smiled. Fifteen minutes had flown by while she reread parts of her novel in her mind. The rusted

robots in the story were a metaphor for wisdom, patina, acceptance, embracing that which was you, scars, pain, malfunctions,

needed replacements, mistakes. What you were given. The finite. Rusted robots did not die in the way that humans did, but

they celebrated mortality. Oh, she loved this story and how true it felt.

In the morning, before she thought too hard about it, she emailed the novel to her agent, Jack Maher. If Jack was lukewarm

about this one, she was done, finished, fuck this shit, she’d take up some hobby and, with any luck, get that damn office

job with benefits. It wouldn’t matter. If she didn’t write stories, then she didn’t know what else there was to her life.

After she hit Send, she sat back, her face feeling hot and her stomach queasy.

“No turning back now.”

As it went, her novel transformed into energy, zipping away through the internet to her agent, she felt... different. She’d just done something. She’d just shared something. Something strange and unexpected. She shivered and then gasped, as if she were standing on that beach in Tobago, dipping a toe into the water only for a giant wave, clear and blue, to rise up before her and sweep her into the deep.

She turned off all text, call, and email notifications on her computer, iPad, and phone. Then she ordered an autonomous vehicle

to pick her up and take her to Navy Pier. For hours, she stared out at the waters of Lake Michigan, trying not to think about

anything at all. When she got home, her parents were in the kitchen eating egusi soup and pounded yam.

“Where have you been?” her mother asked. “We were worried.”

“Out,” she said. She paused and then blurted, “I... finished my novel.” She grinned.

“Oh, you’re still working on that thing?” her mother said.

“What of your job applications?” her father asked, biting into a piece of beef.

It pained her heart, but she kept the smile from slipping. “Doing the best I can,” she said, turning to head to her room.

“Doing the best I can.”

“If you need a letter of recommendation, ask Amarachi to help you,” her father called after her.

Once she’d turned the corner, she heard her mother softly ask, “You think she’s depressed, Secret?”

Her father replied, “Maybe. Glad she’s living here, where we can keep an eye on her. That therapist she sees is no good.”

Zelu wanted to slam her bedroom door, but instead, she gently shut it. She’d finished her novel. Hang on to that feeling , she thought. She took a long, long shower, washing her raggedy braids. She oiled them, put on an old Pink Floyd T-shirt,

and pulled herself into her bed. Only then did she check her phone.

There was still nothing from her agent, not even an email saying he’d received the manuscript. However, there were three texts from Msizi asking questions about Rusted Robots . The guy was obsessed. She smiled, deciding she’d call him again later. Honestly, if he was the only one who liked the novel,

that was more than enough. The rest of the world can hate it. I’ll be fine , she told herself. Won’t be the first time I failed to meet expectations. She went to bed.

In the morning, there were five texts, two emails, and three voicemails, all from her agent. “It’s incredible !” he’d shouted in the first voicemail. “This is going to be an instant bestseller. You’re going to win awards! Call me ASAP!”

She’d peeked into the hallway and listened for a sign that her parents were around. Her mother was in the kitchen washing

dishes and speaking loudly on the phone. Zelu didn’t hear her father; he was most likely not home. She quietly closed her

bedroom door again. She sat on her bed for a while before calling her agent back. He didn’t ask her how she’d written it.

He didn’t ask why she’d written it. He didn’t ask how long it had taken. He didn’t ask how she felt about it. He didn’t care. He did talk a

lot about how many readers were going to love it and how eager booksellers would be to support it. But first, he told her,

he would submit it to all the best editors at the biggest publishing houses. Zelu didn’t need to do anything but wait for

the offers to come in.

Within another twenty-four hours, her agent was in a bidding war to sell the book. He called her and presented her with unbelievable options about escalating royalties and subrights splits and marketing promises, which she had no clue how to handle. She was so overwhelmed, yet she told no one what was happening—not her parents, not any of her friends, not even Msizi. The negotiations went on for a whole week, and Zelu just wanted to hide under her bed. Her agent kept sending her offers of mind-boggling amounts of money. Never had he called so often or sounded so excited; for years, she’d barely heard from him, and she’d had to hector him for even the smallest updates. What a two-faced jerk. But could she really blame him? Theirs was a business relationship, not a friendship. He was good at what he did, and she needed him now more than ever.

She and her agent settled on a hefty seven-figure advance for a three-book series. Then the TV people caught wind of it. And

then one of the biggest studios in the world got involved. Suddenly, she also had a film agent, and Zelu’s Rusted Robots series was optioned by a major film studio in another big seven-figure deal.

Then came the sales of the foreign translation rights. Then came the media requests and offers of paid speaking gigs around

the country. All of this happened within a matter of months. Her publisher moved up the scheduled on-sale date so the book

could be released before the end of the year. Zelu couldn’t catch her breath. Who got published this quickly, this instantly,

this ridiculously?

She never could have imagined something like this—and she’d written a novel about postapocalyptic robots.