After the Flare

by Deji Bryce Olukotun

  “Looks like a piece of coal. Or not coal—a rock with lots of folds in it.”

  “You, Kwesi, do not make a convincing geologist.”

  “No, that’s who we need — a geologist. That’s where I’ve held something like this before. A meteorite. I had a buddy at the Lunar Geology Lab back in Houston. He took me into the lab and let me hold a rock like this.”

  She grabbed the artifact from him and peered inside. “If it’s a meteorite, that would certainly make it special. But why would an alien want a meteorite?”

  “I am not willing to call it an alien.”

  “We’ve got to call it something.”

  “His name is Onur.”

  “You’ve named it Onur?” Seeta shook her head and laughed. “This is all too much.”

  “No, not that. Onur’s my friend, he’s a geologist. I will reach out to him.”

  “Then we can know for sure.”

  “Know what?”

  “That we’re not crazy, Kwesi.”

  Seeta peered up at him as she said this, fright shining through her brown-green eyes, and he knew what she was thinking, that they were scientists who thrived on the empirical and tested it through the hypothetical, and whatever had attacked them in the trailer and what they had heard earlier in her acoustic recording had no theory to bind them. They were flailing.

  “We should get the artifact out of here,” Seeta suggested, “or it might come back again for it. I can lock it in the engine-testing lab until you hear back from your friend. No one’s getting in or out of those vaults, not even that alien. The doors are a meter thick.”

  Quickly Bracket snapped images of the new artifact on his Geckofone, and then Seeta put the artifact into her backpack and left. He fired off a note to Onur, knowing the message would be screened before exiting the Loom, but if he was lucky it might slip through the deep packet inspection on the way to the Texarkana Web.

  As he dressed for work, he kept thinking about the blood that had bubbled up from the ground, and that sensation of grabbing the electric flesh on that creature, and then running his fingers between Seeta’s thighs, as if his reckless passion had unleashed phantasmagoric monsters from his subconscious. Monsters that he feared would soon be coming for them again.

  CHAPTER 13

  Operational Security visited once after the break-in—to remind Bracket to lock his door properly—and no one else reported a robbery over the following weeks as the spaceport shifted its focus to the coming test launch. Conditions aboard the International Space Station were deteriorating rapidly for Masha Kornokova. A container of food had been contaminated unexpectedly, and the astronaut was forced to lower her rations to subsistence levels. Mission control’s advice was now for Kornokova to sleep as much as possible. When she wasn’t sleeping, she was encouraged to exercise to preserve her muscle mass—a fragile balance between inactivity and vigorous movement that must have been taxing for her. The only one who spoke to the astronaut directly, to Bracket’s knowledge, was Josephine Gauthier, and she insisted on speaking within her privacy cone in the Nest.

  The trusses of the mock-up of the International Space Station poked through the surface of Naijapool like the roots of white-painted mangroves. The water level had passed three meters, but it was still not enough for them to begin their simulations, which required the filter systems to be active. Bracket had done everything in his power to fill the tank, even forbidding staff from using showers inside the facility, and now all there was left to do was wait.

  He was still haunted by the creature he had seen, the memory of the electric, burning sensation of grabbing the beast, and the feeling that whatever was watching him was intelligent. Seeta had called it an alien, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe that. Physics and biology told him that alien life would look nothing like we expected—and wouldn’t be bipedal or communicate in any recognizable form. It could be a three-kilometer-long slime mold from a 10-G planet or a being of light that oscillated across the higher dimensions. But he’d never seen anything like that creature before either. He had felt a primordial connection in its vibrations, a harkening back. When it decided to leave, it left abruptly. In his mind’s eye he could still see it leaping into the moonlit night with speed and grace.

  A member of his crew poked her head through the door as Bracket considered the possibilities, none of which boded well for the spaceport: “Mr. Bracket, there are some people here to see you.”

  “Who is it?”

  The woman paused. “Lots of big men.”

  Bracket found Josephine waiting with a group very fashionable people, the men in tailored suits and the women in expensive dresses with head wraps. Three Naijanauts were also milling about, awed by whoever these people were. A drone circled the group recording video.

  “What is all this?” he asked.

  “What is all this, indeed!” replied a handsome smiling man with a hunter-green suit and a richly patterned lavender tie. His short pants revealed cherry-red socks, and he had glinting silver Reebok sneakers.

  Looking at the man’s shoes, Bracket realized who he was looking at. He had completely forgotten about the actors.

  “And you must be the dashing man in charge,” intoned a gracious, amber-skinned woman. Her face seemed to have been powdered. Her hair had a thick central braid that trailed down her back, and several tresses crowned her brow like a laurel wreath, fixed in place by some hair product. He had never seen a hairdo like it before, but he also knew not to comment on it.

  “And you are?”

  “Omotola Taiwo, of course.” She held out her hand for Bracket to shake, but when he took it she recoiled her palm, as if he had sullied it. He forced himself to keep his face steady. Of course he knew her. He’d seen her in numerous programs on the Loom, but she had changed her costumes so often that he hadn’t recognized her. So this was Nurudeen Bello’s fiancée, he realized. She must have been thirty years younger than the politician.

  “And I’m Baba George,” said the man in the hunter-green suit.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. George.”

  “Baba.”

  “Oh, let’s get going, Kwesi,” Josephine said. “Our special guests want to see our pool.”

  “We don’t want to see your pool,” Omotola Taiwo intoned. “We want to film inside it, to feel it. We need to be the Naijanauts, to live out their mission exactly like they would. We must feel the fabric of the space suits on our fingertips.”

  “You can feel my space suit,” one of the Naijanauts volunteered.

  Omotola Taiwo moved toward the pool deck, the film crew trailing behind her. Bracket told the drone operator to land the craft and shut off the cameras as they climbed to the pool deck. He heard a deep-throated yell.

  “Whaaaat? But where is the water?”

  He found Baba George looking over the edge of the pool.

  “In three more days,” Bracket said, “the water will be there.”

  “We thought the pool was completed,” Omotola Taiwo whined. “A completed pool includes water.”

  “We just opened the taps two weeks ago,” Bracket tried explaining. “I can’t work miracles here.”

  “What’s the estimate?” Josephine crossed her arms, trying to take charge.

  “We’ve got it down to seventy-two hours. Then we have to run the filter for twelve hours to purify the water.”

  “Three days!” Baba George exclaimed.

  “Yes.”

  “We will all shrivel up and die here in three days without water,” Baba said dramatically. “It’s as dry as a fart.” He somehow made his words sound dry as he said this, the way he allowed his shoulders to droop.

  Omotola Taiwo gave Bracket a winning smile. “Tut, tut. Let’s not dwell on details. You might be aware that I run a profitable cosmetics company.”

  “Is that right?” Bracket asked.

  “It’s called Omotola’s Magical Skin-Whitening Cream.”

  “Skin whitening? In Nigeria?”

&nbs
p; “It’s about discovering your inner beauty.”

  “And your inner beauty is white?”

  “When you toil in the sun, your skin becomes leathery and dark as the night. It’s your body’s defense mechanism against the sun: your melanin protecting you from a life of labor. But this is the modern age, Kwesi.” She draped her fingers over his shoulder. “We ladies no longer toil in the fields. We should restore our visages to their God-given beauty.”

  “Praise the Lord,” a Naijanaut chimed in.

  Josephine pulled Bracket aside by his arm and whispered, “What are you going to do about all this?”

  “I can’t help her with the skin thing.”

  “No, the pool.”

  “I can get more water for the pool if you get me more cowries.”

  “Talk to Bello.”

  “If you approve it now, I can have the pool ready by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You do not realize how difficult it is to deal with Bello.”

  “Oh, I understand very well. That’s why I need you to talk to him.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to him this time, but next time I won’t be around to help you. Get it done.”

  Bracket frowned. “Who’s helping who here, Josephine? Looking after movie stars isn’t part of my job description. One more thing. I can’t put these people in space suits. Baba might squeeze into one, but Ms. Taiwo is not going to fit.”

  “Don’t you dare say that to her face,” Josephine whispered. “She has been a nightmare to deal with. She’s a queen to Bello. Royalty! Do whatever it takes to make them happy. This is part of Bello’s grand propaganda piece. I do not understand it and I do not care to understand it. Find me a solution.”

  Only now did he see a bandage peek out from beneath the sleeve of Josephine’s dress.

  “You injured?”

  She hurriedly pulled the sleeve over the bandage. “I’m all right.”

  “Looks like you hurt your arm.”

  “Just focus on the job,” she snarled, but he caught something—maybe embarassment—cloud her face. “There is a telemetry test in twenty minutes, which we’ll fail. The Indians are complaining about the rice, the Nigerians about not enough fatty meat in the stew. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care…”

  She left with Omotola Taiwo batting her eyelids at him as Baba George stomped about.

  “It’s impossible for me to stay in character,” he was saying to someone, “with so little water. I can’t pretend to be immersed. It’s not right. It’s unprofessional.”

  “Who is in charge here?” Bracket asked.

  One of the men stepped forward wearing enormous wraparound sunglasses. A wonder he didn’t trip into the pool. “My name is Godwin. I produce all of Baba’s films.”

  “Not anymore, you won’t!”

  “Oh, calm down, Baba!”

  “You calm down, Godwin! This is unprofessional.”

  The producer nodded for one of his handlers to look after the actor, while Bracket pulled him aside. “Bello will not like this.”

  “What do you need to happen here?”

  “They are supposed to be filmed in space suits in the pool. Show him, Sylvan.” The man named Sylvan trotted over with two “space suits”: elaborately festooned costumes with green feathers and sparkling sequins.

  “That’s not going to happen today. What were you trying to do?”

  “I told you, film them in their suits in the pool.”

  “I don’t think you get me,” Bracket said. “This is a propaganda piece, right?”

  “No, it’s filmic history we are making here. We’re capturing the courageous and bold risks that the Naijanauts are taking to rescue their suffering comrades. The perseverance of their training, when much greater odds face them. The lived experience. All for their country and the cultural patrimony of mankind. So, no, it’s not a propaganda piece.”

  “All right. Get your photographer to take some establishing shots. I’ll let you shoot wherever you want in here.”

  “But it doesn’t matter if we can’t—”

  “After that, I can take you to a pool where you can get the actors in the water.”

  The producer looked dismayed at Bracket’s suggestion, shifting a nervous glance now and then at Baba, who was now sipping coconut water as a handler mopped his brow with a napkin. “Baba doesn’t like surprises. What are you proposing, exactly?”

  CHAPTER 14

  This time, with the actors, Bracket didn’t try to sneak off the spaceport, and instead he booked a caravan of three SUVs for an escort. The SUVs were powerful trucks, but they were also self-driving, which was one of the main reasons Bracket preferred not to use them. Imported from Germany, the trucks expected a certain order on the roads that the local drivers did not provide. Electric okada motorcycles swarmed past at high speeds, and cars regularly ignored traffic signs. Besides that, pedestrians walked along the sides of the road carrying their loads or swiftly crossed into oncoming traffic. The SUVs, which were programmed to protect human life, constantly stopped and started so that it took a long time to navigate the route to Kano.

  They arrived at Ibrahim Musa’s gate, and the trader warily admitted Bracket into his courtyard, but he made the rest of the caravan wait in their vehicles.

  “Why did you bring so many people?” Musa said. “I do not like to attract attention.”

  “I brought your first load of groundnuts,” Bracket said, pointing back at the trucks. “Twenty kilos fresh from the greenhouse.”

  “It does not take three trucks to transport twenty kilos of groundnuts.”

  One of Ibrahim’s young wives noticed the commotion and peered out through the gate.

  “I wanted to ask you for a favor, Mr. Musa.”

  “I am a trader, not a philanthropist.”

  “You’ll be paid. I need to know if we can use your swimming pool.”

  “My understanding is that you have a very large pool at the facility. Much larger than my own. So big that it is lowering the water pressure throughout the city.”

  “That’s an exaggeration.”

  “It’s not an exaggeration. Your engineers are siphoning off water from the River Kano, the lifeblood of this city.”

  “We negotiated with the emir himself.”

  In fact, Nurudeen Bello had negotiated the deal, but Bracket saw no reason to explain that.

  “Turn off your faucets.”

  Behind them, Musa’s wife began chittering in Hausa, hopping around excitedly. She tore past them without saying a word. Ibrahim called after the young woman, who had collected the other two wives in an equal state of excitement. They ignored their husband as they peered out the front gate.

  “Who did you bring with you?” Musa asked nervously.

  “They are film actors.”

  “I will not have actors in my house!”

  But even as he said this, the youngest wife was opening the gate to the compound and eagerly motioning for the entourage to enter. Baba George immediately recognized he had found an audience and strutted into the facility with a confident swagger, generously offering his hand to the women in greeting. Omotola Taiwo serenely entered as well, adding to the regal affair. Musa grabbed one of his wives by the arm and tried to admonish her, but she shrugged him off and invited the movie stars into their home.

  “Where is the pool?” the producer, Godwin, asked Bracket.

  “It’s in back.”

  “Excellent. But where are you going?”

  “I’ve got some errands to run. How long do you expect the shoot to take?”

  They both looked over at Baba, who was already regaling the household with tales of his grandeur.

  “At least a couple of hours.”

  As promised, Max was waiting outside Musa’s compound in his pickup truck, looking thinner than before, his cheeks sunken and his eyes red. He had an altogether sickly appearance.

  “You feeling all right?” Bracket asked, as Max started up the car.

&nb
sp; “My son isn’t well.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Congestion. I’m worried about our neighbor too. His daughter has polio. I don’t want my son to catch it too.”

  “They’ve still got polio here?”

  “Yes.” Max swerved between a minibus and a bicycle cart overloaded with plastic bottles.

  “You should vaccinate him.”

  “I won’t give that stuff to him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Vaccinations are the poisons of Western corporations. They are made to make money off us. The more we use them, the sicker we get.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  “What about chicken pox? Mumps?”

  “There are many illnesses. Only Allah can protect you from them all.”

  “Didn’t Allah create vaccines too?”

  “No. Those were created by man.”

  “But Allah created the things that allowed men to make vaccines.”

  “I believe there are simply some things men should not do, oyibo.”

  “I’ve got a daughter. I would never want anything to happen to her. I bet you feel the same way.”

  Max nodded. “I am his father.”

  “As his father, you should look after him. When my daughter couldn’t keep up in school, the teachers told me she was just developmentally slow and that she’d always be behind. It turned out to be dyslexia, so I got her special lessons. Now she’s in medical school. You’ve got to do what a father should do—keep your boy healthy. Don’t be silly. Life is hard enough as it is. Take your son to the hospital and get him vaccinated.”

  Max slowed the car down and looked angrily at Bracket, bracing his arms on the steering wheel. “I won’t do it. It is the will of Allah. Look at what happened to your science—all wiped clean by the Flare. That was the will of Allah too. That’s what your arrogance brought you. You big men all think you can tell a father how to raise his son.”

  “Doesn’t the village raise the child?”

  “You aren’t from my village.”

  They drove in silence the rest of the way to Xiao’s, Bracket angry at Max’s ignorance but also angry at himself for indulging it. He knew it was a lost cause, so why had he even bothered? His fixer moved seamlessly across so many cultures and languages and could find Bracket any technology he wanted in Kano, yet he wouldn’t even treat his son to a basic vaccine.