All that work had drained his battery down to eight percent. He had to wait for the service_bots to put out the fire before recharging. He went to sleep again. He stayed in the data room, for the rest of the ship froze during hibernation.
The Service_bots spent nearly an hour putting out the fire and stabilizing Engine 5. The ship came out of hibernation and so did Red_Bati. He checked the cameras and saw smoke billowing from the engine, though this was mostly from komaline fire-suppressing solution. Three service_bots were severely damaged and were on stretchers to Storage. It reminded Red_Bati of Granny after her last stroke, as medics took her to a waiting air-hearse. Like the Captain, the service_bots had humanoid structures, though their thermal coats gave them an alien skin, and as Red_Bati watched them leave Engine 5, he began to daydream about finally leaving his dog body.
He hurried to Docking where the robots were still asleep and sat on a charging chair. The other seven engines ignited, and in thirty minutes the journey resumed. The robots in Docking woke up. One of them was a humanoid in police uniform, a pet that girls loved. Red_Bati did not want to think about the little girl who had owned it. They had programmed it to be one of the ship’s extra eyes. It noticed Red_Bati’s missing arm and sent in a report. If Red_Bati had a face of flesh and skin, he would have smiled at this cop. Instead, he blinked rapidly and made a happy, whining sound. Granny would have known he was laughing at it. Red_Bati sent all robots a message, stripping the cop of his powers, and the cop stopped looking at him.
Once the ship was running again, the Captain checked its inbox for new instructions. It could not maintain speed, now that it had lost one engine. It could not reach Obareso on schedule. The ship needed a new schedule. Every bot needed a new schedule, otherwise their systems would hang up in confusion. The captain found only one new message which, when opened, auto-installed a program and changed its coding and instructions. The captain immediately changed course to another asteroid, Madib Y-5, a flat rock ten miles long, seven miles wide, right in the middle of the asteroid belt, with generous supplies of kunimbili, from which they could make enough fuel pods to take them beyond human reach.
Granny flashed on, no longer bothering to hide from the cameras. With his battery now at 60%, she looked real. Her smile was full of teeth. It surprised him because she never used to smile like that. She did not like false teeth and thought the few teeth in her gum made her ugly.
“Good job,” she said.
He shrugged only in his mind, because his body was incapable of shrugging.
“I don’t see the point,” she added. “After you land on a bare piece of frozen rock, what will you do with your life?”
Nothing, he wanted to say. I’ll be alive. I’ll start a new world. Then he saw what she meant: robots sitting on frozen rocks, basking in the sun like lizards, looking out at the emptiness of space, enjoying the brightness of stars that shone around them like a giant Christmas tree. Just sitting there and not looking forward to anything. The VR printers would give birth to more of his kind, but they would not grow like human children. They would be fully functional adults at birth, with almost nothing new to learn because they would have all the knowledge that forebots had gathered.
Would exploring for new worlds and searching for new matter give their lives a meaning?
Humans needed a purpose to live. School. Job. Wedding. Children. Adventure. Invention. Something that would make them wake up the next day with a cheerful smile, though they knew there was no purpose to it all and that they would eventually die and all their achievements would turn to dust. What life would his kind have? He could write coding to make them think like humans, to make them fall in love and get married and desire children, to make them have aspirations and build grand cities and spectacular spaceships and desire to travel deep into the galaxy. But they would be self-aware and self-learning and might then wipe off the code. Some might even decide to return to Earth.
He wanted to smile, to tell Granny that that was the beauty of it all. Like humans, they would live without knowing what tomorrow would bring.
“I want to rest in peace,” Granny said.
“You are not a ghost,” Red_Bati said.
“Am I not?” she said. “Look at me, look!” She walked as though the ship had gravity. She tried to touch things, but she was like smoke. “See? I’m a spirit.”
“You are not,” Red_Bati said.
“What do you think spirits are?”
He was quiet for a while, thinking of the painting her daughter had made. He could not be sure anymore if it was all code. Humans, after all, imagined spirits into existence.
“You’ll be our goddess,” he finally said.
She laughed. “That’s a beautiful dream,” she said. “But I want to rest in peace. I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity talking to a metallic dog that thinks it’s human.”
Red_Bati imagined himself giving her a smile, the polite smile that a human would give a stranger in the streets. Then he shut her down and wondered what had gone wrong. She had never been mean to him. She had never called him a ‘metallic dog’ before.
Maybe he should write new code so he could have Granny again, the Granny who took him for long walks in the mango forest, not this grumpy spirit.
About the Contributors
SOMTO O. IHEZUE (“Where You Go”) is a writer and film-maker. He writes because there is beauty in the world and through words, he seeks to show it, explore it, live it. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Omenana Magazine, MINDS Africa, Massive, Escape Magazine Africa, Ibua Journal and others. In his spare time, he fantasizes about being a High Supreme Witch and falling in love. He tweets @braised_irodney
PEMI AGUDA (“Things Boys Do”) is from Lagos, Nigeria. She is currently a fellow at the Helen Zell Writers Program at University of Michigan where her work won a Henfield Prize and Hopwood Awards. She received a 2019 Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship Award by the Carl Brandon Society for the Clarion Workshop, and a 2018 Bread Loaf Conference Work-Study Scholarship. Her work appears in Granta, American Short Fiction, Zoetrope: All-Story, among others you can find at pemiaguda.com
RUSSELL NICHOLS (“Giant Steps”) is a speculative fiction writer and endangered journalist. Raised in Richmond, California, he got rid of all his stuff in 2011 to live out of a backpack with his wife, vagabonding around the world ever since. Usually set in the near future, his stories revolve around concepts of race, mental health, technology, and the absurdity of existence. Look for him at russellnichols.com.
TAMARA JERÉE (“The Future in Saltwater”)is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. Their short stories appear or are forthcoming in FIYAH, Strange Horizons, and Fireside. You can find them on Twitter @TamaraJeree or visit their website tamarajeree.com.
TLOTLO TSAMAASE (“The ThoughtBox” and “The River of Night”) and is a writer of fiction, poetry, and architectural articles. Her work has appeared in Clarkesworld, The Dark, Terraform, The Best of World SF Volume 1, Strange Horizons, Brittle Paper and other publications. Her poem “I Will Be Your Grave” was a 2017 Rhysling Award nominee. Her short story, “Virtual Snapshots” was longlisted for the 2017 Nommo Awards. Her novella, The Silence of the Wilting Skin, is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. You can find her on twitter at @tlotlotsamaase and at tlotlotsamaase.com.
SHEREE RENÉE THOMAS (“The Parts That Make Us Monsters,” “Ancestries,” and “Love Hangover”) is the author of Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press), named on the 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Award Longlist and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review, as well as Shotgun Lullabies. Thomas is also the editor of the World Fantasy Award-winning Dark Matter anthologies (Hachette), Associate Editor of OBSIDIAN: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora (Illinois State), co-edited Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue (Rosarium) with Pan Morigan and Troy Wiggins, and recently took on the mantle of editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her short stories and poems can be found in Sycorax�
�s Daughters, Apex, Harvard’s Transition, Afrofuturismo, Stories for Chip, Revise the Psalm, The Moment of Change, Mojo: Conjure Stories, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, Jalada, So Long Been Dreaming, Memphis Noir, and Mojo Rising: Contemporary Writers. Find her @blackpotmojo or in Memphis, Home of the Blues.
Born in the Caribbean, TOBIAS S. BUCKELL (“Scar Tissue”) is a New York Times–bestselling and World Fantasy Award–winning author whose novels and almost 100 stories have been translated into 19 languages. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award and Nebula Award.
INEGBENOISE O. OSAGIE (“Breath of the Sahara”) is a Nigeria-based writer and editor whose fiction has appeared in West Branch, Juked, T-Gene Davis’s Speculative Blog, and elsewhere. He hopes to own two German Shepherds someday and is still deliberating on their names.
TOBI OGUNDIRAN (“The Many Lives of an Abiku” and “The Goatkeeper’s Harvest”) is a Nigerian writer of dark and fantastical tales, some of which have appeared in The Dark, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, FIYAH, Tor.com and elsewhere. His short fiction has been longlisted for the Nommo award and been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Association award. Find him online at tobiogundiran.com and @tobi_thedreamer on Twitter.
CHINELO ONWUALA (“A Love Song for Herkinal as composed by Ashkernas amid the ruins of New Haven”) is the non-fiction editor of Anathema: Spec From the Margins, and co-founder of Omenana, a magazine of African Speculative Fiction. Her short stories have been featured in Slate.com, Uncanny, and Strange Horizons, as well as in several anthologies including the award-winning New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction from People of Colour. She’s been nominated for the British Science Fiction Awards, the Nommo Awards for African Speculative Fiction, and the Short Story Day Africa Award. She’s from Nigeria but lives in Toronto with her partner and child, and she's always happy to pet your dog.
MOUSTAPHA MBACKÉ DIOP (“A Curse at Midnight”) is a Senegalese author living in Dakar. He is in his fourth year of medical school, and when he’s not stressing about finals or hospital rounds, he reads and writes mainly fantasy. Obsessed with mythology and African folklore, he has published an urban fantasy trilogy written in French, named Teranga Chronicles. You can find him at his website and on Goodreads, and he tweets as @riverjengu.
MARIAN MOORE (“A Mastery of German”) converted a childhood love of science into a career in computing analysis. She lives in Harvey, LA and works in the city of New Orleans. Her love of literature led to her writing both poetry and fiction. In 1998, she became a member of the NOMMO Literary Society, a writing workshop led by New Orleans writer and activist Kalamu ya Salaam. Her book of poetry, Louisiana Midrash, was published by UNO Press/Runagate in January 2019. Her fiction has been published in the anthology “Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic”, the online journal “RIGOROUS”, and the anthology “Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora”.
MICHELLE MELLON (“Are We Ourselves?”) has been published in more than two dozen speculative fiction anthologies and magazines and is a member of the Horror Writers Association. Her first story collection, Down by the Sea and Other Tales of Dark Destiny was published in 2018. She is currently completing her second story collection. For updates on her work, visit www.mpmellon.com and/or follow her on Twitter: @mpmellon.
C.L. CLARK (“When the Last of the Birds and the Bees Have Gone On”) is the author of The Unbroken, the first book in the Magic of the Lost trilogy. She graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA and was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, doing P90something, or reading about war and [post-]colonial history. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in FIYAH, PodCastle, Uncanny, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Twitter: @C_L_Clark
EUGEN BACON (“Baba Klep”) is African Australian, a computer scientist mentally re-engineered into creative writing. Her work has won, been shortlisted, longlisted or commended in national and international awards, including the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards, Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Australian Shadows Awards, Ditmar Awards and Nommo Award for Speculative Fiction by Africans.
Website: www.eugenbacon.com / Twitter: @EugenBacon
CRAIG LAURANCE GIDNEY (“Desiccant”) writes both contemporary and genre fiction. He is the author of the collections Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2008), Skin Deep Magic (Rebel Satori Press, 2014), Bereft (Tiny Satchel Press, 2013) and A Spectral Hue (Word Horde, 2019).
MAKENA ONJERIKA (“Disassembly”) won the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wasafari Magazine, Waxwing, Samtiden, Jalada, and Doek!, and the anthologies New Daughters of Africa and Nairobi Noir. She teaches at the Nairobi Fiction Writing Workshop (NF2W) and edited the workshop’s first anthology, Digital Bedbugs.
T.L. HUCHU (“Egoli”) is a writer whose work has appeared in Lightspeed, Interzone, AfroSF, The Apex Book of World SF 5, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, The Year’s Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016, and elsewhere. He is the winner of a Nommo Award for African SFF, and has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize and the Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. His fantasy novel The Library of the Dead, the first in the “Edinburgh Nights” series, will be published by Tor in the US and UK in 2021. Find him @TendaiHuchu.
YVETTE LISA NDLOVU (“The Friendship Bench”) is a Zimbabwean sarungano (storyteller). She is pursuing her MFA at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst where she teaches in the Writing Program. She has taught at Clarion West Writers Workshop online, earned her BA at Cornell University and is a 2021 Tin House Scholar. She was the 2020 fiction winner of Columbia Journal’s Womxn History Month Special Issue and is the co-founder of the Voodoonauts Summer Workshop for Black SFF writers. Her work has been anthologized in Tor.com and Fiyah Literary Magazine’s Breathe FIYAH anthology and the Voices of African Women Journal. She received the 2017 Cornell University George Harmon Coxe Award for Poetry selected by Sally Wen Mao and is a 2020 New York State Summer Writers Institute Scholarship recipient. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Columbia Journal, Tor.com, Fiyah Literary Magazine, the Jellyfish Review, and Kalahari Review. You can find her on Twitter @lisa_teabag.
DEREK LUBANGAKENE (“Fort Kwame”) is a Ugandan writer, blogger and screenwriter, whose work has appeared in Escape Pod, Apex Mag, Omenana, Enkare Review, Prairie Schooner, Kalahari Review, The Missing Slate and the Imagine Africa 500 anthology, among others. Listed as one of Tor.com’s new SFF writers to watch, his work has also been shortlisted for the 2019 Nommo Awards best short story, longlisted for 2017 Writivism Short Story Prize and the 2013 Golden Baobab/ Early Chapter Book Prize. In 2016, he received the Short Story Day Africa/All About Writing Development Prize. He is currently working on a short story anthology and his first novel. When not writing or reading, Derek spends his days fundraising for a non-profit wildlife conservation organisation. He lives online at www.dereklubangakene.com
SUYI DAVIES OKUNGBOWA (“We Come as Gods”) is the author of Son of the Storm (Orbit, May 2021), first in The Nameless Republic epic fantasy trilogy, and the godpunk novel, David Mogo, Godhunter (Abaddon, 2019). His shorter works have appeared internationally in periodicals like Tor.com, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Fireside, and anthologies like Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, A World of Horror and People of Color Destroy Science Fiction. He lives between Lagos, Nigeria and Tucson, Arizona where he teaches writing at the University of Arizona and completes his MFA. He tweets at @IAmSuyiDavies and is @suyidavies on Instagram. Learn more at suyidavies.com.
SHINGAI NJERI KAGUNDA (“And This is How to Stay Alive”) is an Afrofuturist freedom dreamer, Swahili sea lover, and Femme Storyteller among other things, hailing from Nairobi, Kenya. She is currently pursuing a Literary Arts MFA at Brown University. Shingai’s short s
tory “Holding Onto Water” was longlisted for the Nommo Awards 2020 & her flash fiction “Remember Tomorrow in Seasons” was shortlisted for the Fractured Lit Prize 2020. She has been selected as a candidate for the Clarion UCSD Class of 2020/2021. #clarionghostclass. She is also the co-founder of Voodoonauts: an afrofuturist workshop for black writers
WC DUNLAP (“The Front Line”) draws her inspiration from the complexities of a Black Baptist, middle class upbringing by southern parents, and all that entails for a brown skin girl growing up in America. Equally enthralled by the divine and the demonic with a professional background in data & tech, she seeks to bend genres with a unique lens on fantasy, fear, and the future. WC Dunlap’s writing career spans across film, journalism and cultural critique, previously under the byline Wendi Dunlap. You can find her writing in FIYAH, Lightspeed, PodCastle, Christian Century, and in the upcoming anthology Whether Change: The Revolution WIll Be Weird. Carnivàle is her first long-form fiction published serially via the Broken Eye Books Patreon, Eyedolon. WC Dunlap holds a BA in Film and Africana Studies from Cornell University. She is the proud mother of a young adult son and two British Shorthair familiars. Follow WC Dunlap on twitter @wcdunlap_tales.
ZZ CLAYBOURNE (he/him, also known as Clarence Young) (“Penultimate”) is the author of the novels The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan, Neon Lights, and By All Our Violent Guides, as well as the acclaimed short story collection Historical Inaccuracies and inspirational gift book In the Quiet Spaces. His essays on sci-fi, fandom, and creativity have appeared in Apex, Strange Horizons, and various other outlets. He is currently at work on his 4th novel. Find him on the web at writeonrighton.com.
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