The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021)

by Oghenechovwe Ekpeki

  “What do you think?” she asked, pointing through me to the display on the desk. “I suggested that Lloyd give you this project,” she added before I could answer.

  “There are a lot of empty spaces in this plan,” I said carefully.

  “Yes, I know.” Helene’s eyes seared the surface of my desk pointedly. “There's more in the folder that I gave you. Desmond's not fond of filling out status reports. I have to drag information out of him every week. Maybe he will respond better to you.”

  I felt my back tense, but I retained my casual posture. And why would he respond better to me?

  “When is your last day?” I asked instead. “Lloyd said that you will brief me on the project. Why is it so open-ended? That isn't QND's standard procedure.”

  Helene flipped her wrist over and examined her watch. “My schedule won't allow that,” she said. “Desmond is in the downtown office today. You should introduce yourself. Ask him to brief you.” She flipped an errant strand of blond hair away from her face and I saw the sheen of sweat.

  Leaning over, I thumbed down the heated fan that sat beneath my desk. Immediately, the chill of the air conditioning rushed into my cozy enclave. When I checked the caged thermostat that morning, someone had managed to set the temperature to sixty-five degrees. I wasn't the only one on the floor wearing a sweater, but Helene was not one of us.

  “Tell me about the team lead then,” I said. “You said that his name was Desmond?” I wanted to sit down, but I didn't want to sit in the lower visitor chair. “The team lead isn't a geneticist?”

  Helene looked at her watch again. “Desmond is Dr. Desmond Walker,” she said. “I've known him since –” she shrugged. “Before QND. He and my brother were at Jesuit together. Delahousse was impressed with his research work at Hebei University in Shijiazhuag.” Her tongue stumbled over the Chinese names. “I believe that his medical degree came from MeHarry in Tennessee. Have you heard of MeHarry?”

  Only one of the best medical schools in the HBCU universe, I thought, but I only nodded.

  “I have never heard of it,” Helene said. “Dr. Delahousse was very effusive. I say this only so you understand—Desmond is a favorite. He has had results; I've seen the animal trials. Give me your phone?”

  Helene fiddled with the calendar function and announced finally. “Desmond has an opening in two hours. I will add you to his schedule and you can get your questions answered. This should be easy. Let Desmond continue his research while you fill in the paperwork to appease Lloyd. I would have done more, but –” she patted her burgeoning belly “–this afternoon I have to review the press conference release. And then, there’s the review of the drug insert that we negotiated with the FDA.” She began to rise.

  “You'll come with me for the initial meeting,” I said quickly.

  “You can do this,” she said frowning. “All you have to do—”

  “I would rather if he doesn't know that I'm his new PM immediately,” I said. “You didn't include that in the meeting invitation, I hope?”

  “You should not ambush Dr. Walker.”

  Oh, he's Dr. Walker now, I thought. “I don't plan to,” I said. “I want him to explain the project without the expectation that I know anything. I'll read your notes.” I pulled the slim folder from the desk drawer and slid it over the recessed keyboard. “But I don't want the type of canned rosy explanation that is created for a new boss. I want to really understand.”

  Helene sighed, but I knew that she was conceding. “We'll both be working through lunch in that case,” she said. “Pass by my office in two hours and I'll take you down and introduce you.”

  * * *

  Desmond Walker’s office was a surprising modern emulation of Victorian clutter. Almost every surface was covered with personal effects. An electronic frame displayed a selection of cruise photos of his wife and two young sons at some Caribbean-looking location. There was one tall bookshelf on which some books were neatly arranged, and others lay on their sides, titles obscured and edges stained from use. Framed awards lined the walls, their lettering too small to read from my chair. Instead of focusing on them, I kept my hands in my lap as Helene ran through a brief introduction. Keeping her promise, she informed Dr. Walker that I was being introduced to all of the technical leads in Lloyd’s division.

  And why had that never actually happened? I wondered as I watched Desmond Walker’s gaze shift from Helene to me with some wariness. He was tall, barrel-chested, and– as I had surmised from his choice of college –black. He was darker than I expected and probably in his late forties; but I was constantly fighting my expectation that all elite Black New Orleanians—the ones who could afford private schools like Jesuit—were Creole and the expectation that all Creoles were light-skinned. His hair was cropped as short as my father’s, even though he had grown up in an era when dreadlocks were the cultural standard. But one could hardly carry dreadlocks into one’s forties, I told myself.

  “You’ve been here six months,” Dr. Walker said slowly. “Have you worked in biotech before?”

  Meaning, I thought, ‘you’re young to be in management. What experience do you have?’

  “No,” I said. “I worked four years at BASF in Germany –two years at Exelon in Chicago and two years at Tenet in Dallas. When I interned at BASF, I realized that I was more interested in the process of seeing a project to completion. I found the political juggling for resources exciting; most people find it infuriating.” I gazed firmly into his eyes, silently willing him to be impressed.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Helene frowning at her buzzing wrist. Oh really, I thought. Did you arrange for a phone call just to get out of this meeting? Then my phone rang.

  “Sorry,” I said and turned the sound off without checking the screen.

  Five minutes later, one of the framed paintings on Dr. Walker’s wall faded to grey and lights began to chase around the frame’s edge. Dr. Walker glanced at Helene and tapped the answer button on his desk.

  “Walker!” Lloyd’s voice barked from the pewter surface. “Is Helene there? Her intern thought she was meeting with you. I haven’t been able to catch up with her.”

  “It’s on speaker,” Dr. Walker said sotto voce and nodded to Helene.

  “I’m here,” Helene called out. “Sorry, Lloyd. I was introducing Candace–”

  “Have you seen outside?” Lloyd said. “Walker, turn your screen on. I’m sending you a feed.”

  The leaden display changed to a confused video of figures clad in jeans and pullovers shouting at men and women in business suits. The targets wore lanyards; each was zigzagging around the protesters, badging the lock quickly, and slipping through the office doors. Occasionally a member of the office staff had to throw up an arm to deter some demonstrators from following.

  “That’s right outside,” I blurted.

  “What is this?” Helene asked.

  “They say that they’re here for your press conference,” Lloyd said.

  “The press conference isn’t scheduled until the end of the week,” Helene said. Knowing her habits, I was certain that the notes for the event were probably printed and filed at her desk. “I haven’t announced it yet.”

  “And yet, there they are. To oppose the Nil-facim project, I suppose.”

  “Who the hell protests a cure for malaria?” Helene grumbled, her voice roiling off the walls of Dr. Walker’s office.

  The video feed did not include sound. I watched the protesters organize themselves into a chorale that shouted at the glass doors of our office. I assumed that there must be a news team outside of the view of the cameras. Curious tourists were pausing, folding their arms and listening to the newly organized demonstration.

  “Obviously, some people find it fun to protest a cure for malaria,” Lloyd said, his voice tight. “Do you have someone to send down to them?”

  I felt Helene’s gaze land on me for a minute, but I didn’t turn to meet her face. I kept my eyes on Dr Walker and the camera feed
.

  “No,” Helene said finally. “I’ll go down.”

  “You don’t need that type of stress now,” I interjected without turning. “You might...you might invite some of them up to the office. One of the protesters and one of the newsmen, preferably one with a science background. A meteorologist?”

  Walker snorted behind his desk, but I saw Helene’s initial smirk morph into something more thoughtful.

  “It might be useful to separate the leaders from the followers,” Helen said, rising. “You should stay, Candace. Desmond, could you run through your project parameters with her? It would be better if she got it directly from you. Is Lloyd still on the line?”

  Dr. Walker looked at the indicator on his desk and shook his head. “He must have dropped off after you said that you’d go down.”

  With a curt goodbye, she was gone. Desmond Walker looked at the organized chaos displayed outside for a moment longer and then returned the screen to an indefinite southern landscape of oak trees dressed in Spanish moss.

  He hummed thoughtfully, leaned back in his chair and asked, “What do you want to know about Engram?”

  “All I know is that it is some type of research on memory enhancement or memory retrieval. I looked online but the closest that I could find were some studies done around 2010. Some researchers taught rats how to run a maze and then found that their descendants were able to run the same maze without training.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  I grimaced. “Five years later, some researchers were saying that the experience of American slavery was passed on to the descendants of the enslaved via the same process.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Walker said. “That’s one of the few follow-ups to the research at Emory University.”

  He swung his chair around, pulled a book off the shelf and thumbed through it. “There hasn’t been much research on that angle since 2015.”

  “Does your research indicate that the effects of slavery can be edited out?”

  “The people downstairs are protesting our plan to edit one mosquito genus to remove its ability to carry malaria,” Dr. Walker said wryly. “What do you think they would say if I proposed to edit human genes to remove anything, let alone edit African-American genes? Tuskegee is always at the back of everyone’s mind.”

  He tossed the book back on the shelf and stood, stretching. “At any rate, QND is willing to do diverse hiring, but they are not looking to solve problems unique to African-Americans.”

  “I’m not a diverse hire,” I said.

  “I didn’t say that you were.” He considered me silently for a moment. “You have memories and talents that are unique, no doubt. Your time in Germany, for example. You speak German?”

  “Of course.”

  “Suppose I had a client who needed to transfer to Germany in a month. No time to study the language. Your knowledge would be priceless.”

  “A knowledge of anything? What if I needed to know how to waltz for a Mardi Gras ball?” I countered.

  “No. Dancing is mainly a physical ability. A waltz or a foxtrot has defined steps; physical coordination is critical. Language is a better fit, though I think that it would be difficult to transfer the knowledge of a language like Xhosa to someone accustomed to a romance language like Spanish.” He frowned as if the thought had brought up an avenue for consideration which he had overlooked. Leaning over the desk, he tapped notes into his desk surface.

  “How are you going to get my knowledge of German into someone else’s head?” Candace asked. “Write it on a chip?”

  “Injecting silicone into people has an atrocious history,” Dr. Walker said. “No, I am looking at a biological emulation of a human neural network.” He glanced down at me from his six-foot height. “Despite what I said about editing human genes, I am proposing editing in, not editing out. I would be giving you explicit access to memories you have already inherited.”

  “I could give German to my children, but not to anyone else?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Was that a sufficient explanation of Engram?”

  “Yes.” I looked at my phone and pretended to find something on my schedule. “And I do have another tech lead to meet, even if Helene isn’t around to make formal introductions. Thank you.”

  Dr. Walker nodded, tapping on his desk again. He had already half-forgotten me. I edged out of the office. Get a resolution or kill it, Lloyd had said. Engram with its limited application certainly seemed ripe for killing.

  * * *

  “Hey, baby girl!” a gravely male voice bugled from my phone. I quickly squelched the phone to private mode.

  I had the project plan and a spreadsheet open on my desk trying to find any pathway for Engram to be profitable. I was working on the scantiest of input from either Helene or Dr. Walker. Sooner or later, I would have to contact Walker.

  “Hi, Dad. You know I’m at work, don’t you?”

  “Yeah—but I was wondering if you wanted to do dinner tonight?”

  “Are you in town?” I asked. “You come to New Orleans and didn’t tell me?”

  My computer was insisting that I needed to take a break. I locked the machine and headed for the staircase. I was ten floors from the lobby. The staircase was private and a good way to burn off some of my aggravation.

  “Nah,” my father said. “I’m in San Antonio. I have this wall sized screen in my hotel room. I figured that I’d order in. You order in at home. We share a table virtually.” I could hear the humor in his voice. “You can invite Brad-slash-Juan-slash-Phillipe-slash-Tryone to the meal if you like. Introduce me to your latest beau.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said.

  One floor down, a door opened and someone pushed past me in a hurry to reach the next floor. I moved closer to the cinderblock wall to give the rushing worker room. “Are you still working off Mom’s script?” My mother had died two years earlier after a long illness. I inherited my organization abilities from her, according to my father.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I still have the script with a few changes. Should I ask about a girlfriend? Want to invite Zawadi instead?”

  “Not gay either, Dad.”

  “Not married, either,” he retorted. “We left you all of those great genes, when are you going to spread them?”

  “That was actually on her list?”

  “Yes. First: ask her about work,” he recited. “So, how is work?”

  “Challenging,” I said as I reached the next landing. “They haven’t figured out what to do with me.”

  “Neither have I,” he said. “Second: ask her about her relationship status,” he continued. “And you said none. Surprising. Troubling. But I’ve checked that off. Third: are you happy?”

  “I don’t remember that question,” I said.

  “I usually let you vent about work,” he responded. “That could go on for hours, especially while you were in Chicago. I’m glad you got out of there.”

  “So am I,” I said.

  “So dinner? You can tell me if you’re happy over dinner.”

  “I have piles of data to read, Dad. And a decision to make.”

  “That sounds ominous.” His voice was a pleasant baritone saxophone.

  “As they say, that’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

  “So—no dinner? You’re not taking a break at all?”

  “Dad, why are you in San Antonio? What are you chasing in Texas?”

  “Your great, great,” I imagined him counting out relations on his fingers, “great, great, grandfather. The census says he was a stonemason.”

  “In San Antonio?” I paused on another landing. “Do we have people there?”

  “No,” he said. “Wouldn’t that have been something? I was stationed here for years after we got back to the States. It would have been nice to have family here to show us the ropes.”

  “Dad—why this sudden interest in history? You always taught me that it’s easier to run forward than backwards.”

  “Dinner,”
he said. “That’s a dinner discussion.”

  I sighed.

  “Make your decision tomorrow,” he continued. “Does it need to be today?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Good, we’re in the same time zone for once. So, eight o’clock. Please don’t bring pizza again. I expect to see a real meal on the table in front of you.”

  He broke the connection and I trudged back up to the tenth floor. There was little sense in putting off the revelatory call to Desmond Walker any longer.

  * * *

  “Dr. Walker?”

  There was a burble of voices on the other side of the line. Like most people at QND, Dr. Walker had disabled the built-in camera of his computer—which is why Lloyd had had to ask whether Helene was present earlier. It’s a team meeting, I realized. Of course, there’s an Engram team. If I closed down the project, I would have to consider what to do with the team. QND employees would have to be reassigned. If there were contractors, their agreements might require re-negotiation.

  “Ms. Toil?” I heard Walker’s baritone voice ring over the cacophony. “Did you have additional questions from this afternoon?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I see you’re in a meeting. We can talk tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow I will be in the lab. In fact, I’m leaving for the lab shortly. If there is something quick…”

  “This will take some time. I’m going over Helene’s notes and the project plan. I am trying to reconcile the numbers for Lloyd.”