The Hero of Numbani

by Nicky Drayden

  “Naade!” Efi said. Her heart was suddenly beating hard in her chest as those images came back to her mind. She shook her head. Orisa shouldn’t have watched that. She was still too young. Too impressionable. She looked back at Joké. Efi didn’t want to let her down, but this was serious.

  “Hey, something’s come up, but I’ll iron those costumes later, I promise,” she said to Joké. Joké threw her hands in the air as a fourth person let her down on the ironing, but she quickly turned back to the tasks at hand.

  Efi initiated a diagnostic, and while she waited for the results, her attention was drawn back to the stage. A commotion had started as Sam made his way up to the top of the Numbani skyline.

  “Hey, look!” Sam said, raising his Doomfist gauntlet up high. Then he started freestyle rapping, badly, about how his fist was going to crush the competition like a recycler crushes soda cans. Joké shook her head.

  “Wow, he’s really awful,” said Efi said to herself. She turned back to Orisa, but instead of seeing the robot’s open diagnostic panel, she was met with the frightening sight of Orisa with her hard-light caster drawn.

  “Enemy detected. Preparing to engage,” Orisa said, then she took off running down the aisle, weapons raised at Sam.

  “Orisa, no! That’s not—”

  Orisa’s fired the hard-light projectiles, and a staccato parade of thumps filled the theater. Her aim was perfect, knocking Sam in the head. The punch from the weapon wasn’t strong enough to cause much more than a bruise, but it was jarring enough for Sam to lose his footing high up at the top of the fabricated Numbani skyline. He fell fifteen feet, colliding hard with the stage floor.

  He screamed out in pain. Efi tried so hard not to look, but when she did, she saw his leg, bent like no leg should ever bend. She looked away, back toward Orisa.

  “Threat neutralized,” Orisa said proudly, looking to Efi for approval.

  “Orisa,” Efi’s voice squeaked. “You’ve hurt someone. You’ve hurt my friend.”

  “Negative, Efi. I have subdued Doomfist. You have taught me that he is our enemy.”

  “That wasn’t Doomfist. You’ve made a mistake.”

  I’ve made a mistake, Efi thought to herself.

  The school nurse ran in, followed by two omnic medics. Efi watched in silence as they stabilized Sam’s leg, then hauled him off on a gurney levitating steadily up the slope of the center aisle, followed by Joké and the rest of the worried drama students.

  Efi was left with Orisa, Dayo, and Naade.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Naade said as he paced back and forth. “I should never have showed her that video. It messed up her head.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s mine,” Efi said. “She’s my creation, and Sam is hurt because of me.”

  “It was a freak accident,” Dayo said. “And Joké warned him not to play around.”

  Efi shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. My—my mother was right. This is too big for me. Every time I try to adjust her programming, I just make things worse. I can’t trust Orisa around anyone. She’s a threat to everyone.” A lump welled up in Efi’s throat. She should have listened to her auntie and shut the robot down before something bad happened. Well, it was too late for that, but Efi could make sure that Orisa didn’t hurt anyone else ever again.

  The king’s palace was burned, and it added beauty to it. It was a saying her grandfather had told her on more than one occasion. He’d lived through the worst of the Omnic Crisis, doing triage on the front lines. Even as bullets whizzed past him, even as behemoth omnic constructs threatened to trample him, he still somehow managed to find beauty in the world that surrounded him. Entire buildings lay in ruins, smoldering, yet somehow he clung to the silver lining no matter how bad things got. He knew what he was fighting for … For you, dear, he’d say to Efi.

  But I wasn’t even born yet, baba nla, Efi would say to him when he told her this.

  You do not yet understand how love works, he’d say to her with a compassionate smile. Once it exists, it has always existed. And it forever and always will.

  Efi thought about what her grandfather had told her. Efi loved her robot. It hadn’t even been a whole month since Orisa first came online, but Efi couldn’t remember a time when her heart had been so full. She couldn’t imagine a time where she wouldn’t love her robot, either. And yet, she knew what she had to do.

  Back in the workshop, Efi surveyed the damage—everything she’d sacrificed only to bring her to this low. Her prized tool set was gone. Her computers were glitching. Her award money was tied up for the next nine months now, paying off all the debts she owed in the wake of Orisa’s well-intended destruction. All that remained besides a few half-assembled Junies was Orisa’s docking bay, and the robot herself.

  “Orisa,” Efi said solemnly as she led her creation to the bay. “I thought I could make a hero to protect Numbani, but maybe that was asking too much.”

  Orisa’s head cocked and her cross-cut eyes went wide. “Your face is leaking again, Efi. Do you require assistance?”

  Efi shook her head. “No, Orisa. I’m okay.”

  She opened the access panel on Orisa’s chassis and keyed in the deactivation code. The tiny screen lit up with green lettering:

  “I am not ready to be deactivated, Efi,” Orisa said. “I have made a mistake, but I am fully capable of learning from my mistakes.”

  “I love you, Orisa. And I’m sorry.”

  “I’m still learning!” Orisa cried out suddenly. “I’m still—”

  Efi pressed YES.

  The robot’s golden eyes went dull gray. She slumped forward as the whine of her processors and motors powered down. Efi had misspoken when she’d said that her robot would never hurt anyone again, because nothing could possibly hurt worse than this.

  “Okay, I’ve only seen Flash Brighton and the Omnic Crusaders: Forty-Four Hours Till Midnight eleven times so far,” Naade said, shoving a handful of popcorn into his mouth, “so I’m sure I’ll pick up some new things. Like I still don’t understand why Flash abandons the werewolf pups to go looking for his brother’s assassin when he could have thrown them into the time machine and taken them with him.”

  “Whoa, spoiler alert!” Efi said, nudging Naade in the side. “And how have you seen this movie eleven times? It’s only been out a week.”

  “It’s so good, Efi. One of Kam Kalu’s best movies ever.”

  “Better than the Darkspire prequels?” asked Hassana.

  “Nothing’s better than the Darkspire prequels,” Naade said. “That’s not a fair comparison. Like sure, they both have great underwater fight scenes, and I’ve heard that the moon race sequences use the exact same footage, but when it comes to Flash’s ability to control his enemies’ minds—”

  Efi shoved her fingers into her ears. “Naade! Can we get through the movie without you giving the whole thing away?”

  “Fine! Not another word from me. But when Flash and Doc Clamfire start speaking in the ancient mer-language of the lost city of Manta, don’t ask me to translate.”

  Efi smiled and leaned back into her theater seat. These were the kinds of annoyances she could get used to: too much salt in the popcorn, a friend chatting too much during a movie that promised to be at least three times worse than the trailers hinted at.

  Efi’s watch hummed, and Naade’s number came up on the screen. “The seahorse’s wife is the killer!” the text said. Efi’s eyes went wide. She threw a piece of popcorn at Naade and it hit him right in the forehead.

  “I’m joking!” he said. “I’m joking. She couldn’t possibly have done it. Not after that scene where she gets captured by Dagger Sect agents and tossed into the particle accelerator.”

  Efi bit her lip and rolled her eyes. The movie finally started. Okay, the Kam Kalu movies in general really weren’t her thing. She found the fight scenes too drawn out and the dialogue too lyrical for her taste. The visuals, on the other hand, were mesmerizing, and it was nice to let her
mind wander and get absorbed into the textures of the world.

  Then her watch rang again. She glanced at the number—UNKNOWN, and it looked international. She silenced it, then fell back to the movie, throwing popcorn at the screen during the ten-minute interlude where Flash Brighton learns to play the harmonica in a graveyard haunted by the ghost of his college professor. Naade whispered to Efi that it would go on for another twelve minutes, and if she had to use the restroom, now would be a good time. Efi declined, but Naade made a hasty exit, which was expected since he’d slurped down two mega-sized cups of orange soda. While Naade was gone, Efi’s watch rang again, same number. Weird. The prefix seemed familiar. Then she remembered that it was the same as that hotel they’d booked in Rio.

  She didn’t think …

  It couldn’t possibly be …

  She answered it anyway, right there in the middle of the theater, her voice a whisper under the heavy rumbling of Flash trying to run the ghost down with a bulldozer. “Hello?”

  “Efi Oladele?” the voice asked.

  “Yes …”

  “Hey! Lúcio, comin’ at you. Had to call to tell you how much I admire your work and activism for your community.”

  “Naade, come on. This isn’t funny,” Efi said into her watch. She was getting tired of his pranks. Not even ten minutes ago, he’d sucked the chocolate off one of his Fuddy Duds before offering it to her. She wished she could say that she hadn’t taken it, but the theater was super dark, and she wasn’t paying attention, and well … she’d rather not think of it. And now he was pretending to be Lúcio on the phone?

  “What isn’t funny?” Naade said, back from the restroom already.

  “Gross! Did you even wash your hands?” Hassana asked.

  Naade wiped his wet hands across Hassana’s arm, and she screamed. The entire audience shushed them. If Naade wasn’t playing a prank on her, then …

  “Lúcio?” she whispered into the watch. “The Lúcio?”

  “In the flesh.”

  Efi wasn’t sure at what point she’d started screaming, but when the ushers came for her, she went willingly, with Hassana and Naade following after them. She was pretty sure someone had said something about them now being permanently banned from this theater, but Efi was too busy transferring the feed from her watch to her tablet so they all could see. Lúcio was in his studio with concert posters tacked all over the walls at odd angles, a platinum record award serving as coaster for a giant drink filled with about a dozen lime wedges, and statues of his lucky tree frog in all shapes and sizes lining an entire bookshelf.

  “Lúcio,” Efi said proudly. “These are my friends Hassana and Naade. I wouldn’t be anywhere without them.”

  “Hi, Hassana. Hey, Naade. Any friend of Efi’s is a friend of mine. Listen, I’ve been following your development of Orisa, and I heard about your Unity Day play fundraiser over there in Numbani. I want to support it.”

  “You want to buy a ticket to the play?” Efi asked. “Because we’ll have a front row seat, just for you! As a matter of fact, you can have the whole front row. You can have the whole theater.”

  “Nah, not a ticket. I was thinking we could boost sales if we move you to a bigger venue. Say, Unity Plaza? I could follow your play with a concert performance, drop some beats on Numbani. Who’s in?”

  Efi blinked. “Unity Plaza. That’s so—”

  “Exciting! Amazing! Perfect!” Naade said enthusiastically.

  “Yeah, that, too,” Efi said as she nodded. “But I was going to say big.” Putting on a play for eight hundred people was one thing. Unity Plaza served as the stage for Numbani’s biggest outdoor festivals. Putting on a play for fifteen thousand people would be something entirely different.

  “I’ll arrange the details. Don’t you worry about that,” Lúcio said. “We’ll throw some posters up around the city, build some hype. Maybe get your face on some, too.”

  “I love you, Lúcio!” Hassana shouted, grabbing the tablet, no longer able to contain her cool. “I’ve got all your albums, a broken buckle off a pair of your old skates, and some of your beard trimmings that I got off Fanzilla Prime!”

  “Ha, your friends are funny,” Lúcio said to Efi. “I’ll have my people contact your people so we can set this up. Okay?”

  “Yeah …” Efi said, still in a daze. Did she even have people? And how had she not fainted already? “That sounds great.”

  Play it cool, play it cool. Efi felt the excitement surge through her, starting at the tips of her toes, to her knees, turning into a bubbling mess in her stomach, and filling her lungs with enough air to make the shrillest scream the world had likely ever witnessed. She just had to keep it bottled up for a few more moments.

  “Lúcio said my name,” Naade murmured to himself. “Yeah, I’m never cleaning my ears again.”

  “There’s one last thing,” Lúcio said, but instead of finishing his sentence, he started bouncing his shoulders, his locs flipping this way and that, as if he were dancing to an inaudible beat. He turned away from the camera, humming and beatboxing, then started scratching at his turntable. “You feel that beat? Must be some of your creativity and invention rubbing off on me. Make sure you to bring that robot of yours to the concert. Orisa, right?”

  “I—I can’t,” Efi said, a sudden pit in her heart. She couldn’t bring Orisa. She was deactivated, and it was better for everyone if she stayed that way. Efi couldn’t bring herself to say no to a request from Lúcio, either. “I can’t wait for you to meet her,” she muttered.

  “Glad we’re on the same wavelength. We need to show everyone that people like you and me can make a difference in the world. Catch ya next week!”

  Finally, Lúcio disconnected, but the joy Efi had felt was replaced by dread. She couldn’t bring Orisa back online. Not after what happened with Sam.

  “His voice was so … so …” Naade said, hugging his giant bag of popcorn to his chest.

  “He’s putting on a concert here! In Numbani!” Hassana squealed. “What am I going to wear?”

  “Oh, you have to let me be there when you tell Dayo,” Naade said to Efi. “He’s going to flip out.”

  “We’re going to raise so much money for those attack victims,” Hassana said. “We’ll be able to rebuild the museum, too! And fix the Adawe statue and add some benches, and flower beds, and—”

  “I can’t do this,” Efi said.

  Hassana and Naade stopped dancing and stared at Efi. “Can’t do what?” Hassana asked. “Lúcio said he’d get everything arranged.”

  “I can’t bring Orisa.”

  “You have to! That’s part of the deal!” Naade said.

  “You don’t understand. She’s not safe, especially not in a huge setting like that. There’re too many variables. What if she gets triggered by the Doomfist costume again? Just wearing a fake gauntlet was enough to make her hurt Sam!”

  “So then you’ll fix her,” Naade said. “You always work out the bugs, Efi.”

  She suddenly recalled her auntie’s words. Bugs are fine when they mean a half-meter-tall robot bumping into a wall. Bugs are not fine when a two-ton robot puts its fist through the grill of a brand-new Steppe Wanderer.

  “We’ll help you,” Hassana said, nudging her.

  “It’s not that easy. Turning off Orisa wasn’t just booting off a machine. I turned off part of myself when I hit that switch. I don’t want to go ever through that again.”

  Efi walked out of the theater without looking back.

  Efi realized she’d been staring at the same calculus problem for ten minutes. She couldn’t concentrate, not with Orisa’s empty eyes staring down at her as she studied. She knew the robot was offline, but she still had the sinking feeling that she was being watched. For the first time in her life, she felt like she had to get out of her workshop. Now.

  She texted her cousin Dayo and asked if he wanted to study at Kọfị Aromo. He agreed, and they met there an hour later, tablets spread out in front of them, and their laptops
and graphing calculators, too. There was barely room on the table for the barista to place their drinks when he came. Efi moved her graphing calculator onto the stool next to her to make room for her coffee. Mostly milk, and more sugar than her parents would be okay with, but she felt like she’d earned it after the week she’d had. She looked up at the barista to say thanks, but her tongue caught in her mouth when she saw his face. He looked so familiar.

  “Thanks,” she finally managed to say, searching her brain for where she must have seen him. He was youngish, so maybe school.

  He smiled a tight smile and set Dayo’s tea on the table as well.

  “I can’t believe Ms. Okorie is giving us a test right before the play,” Dayo said, taking a sip of his tea, then regretting it. “Oooh, too hot.”

  “Doesn’t she realize how big of an event this is?” Efi asked. “I bet she would have canceled the test if it were Torbjörn coming to town instead. She’d stay up all night so she could get front row tickets to listen to him talk about abstract algebra and real analysis, and the dangers of weaponized artificial intelligence. Yeah, I like being a math and science nerd, too, but come on!”

  “I hear you,” Dayo said, commiserating. “Efi, don’t let it get you all worked up. Hey, what did the pirate say when he looked at his empty shoulder?” Dayo wriggled his brow like it was an excited caterpillar.

  “Polygon.” Efi mumbled the punch line. “That was bad.”

  “Okay, how about this? Why should you worry about your math teacher holding up a holographic graphing calculator?”

  “Because,” Efi said with a grin and an exasperated head shake. “You know she’s plotting something. Like we should be doing. This test isn’t going to study for itself.”

  Efi helped Dayo through indefinite integrals, and then Dayo explained inverse trigonometric functions to Efi. They were making good progress together, until Dayo winced slightly.

  “You okay?” Efi asked.

  “Yeah. I just need to run to the restroom. Be right back. Don’t do problem thirty-four b without me!”