Future Tense Fiction

by Kirsten Berg

  He walked closer and stood in the center of town square in the grassy roundabout, smart cars and electric scooters driving round him. At his back stood the statue of Nigeria’s president standing beside a giant peri flower. “The post-oil city New Delta is now the greenest place in the world, thanks to the innovative air-scrubbing superplant known as periwinkle grass, a GMO grass created in Chinese labs by Nigerian scientist Nneka Mgbaramuko.

  “Carpeting New Delta, Periwinkle’s signature tough flowers are a thing of beauty and innovation. A genetic hybrid drawn from a variety of plants including sunflowers, zoysia grass, rice, and jasmine flowers, we can thank periwinkle grass for giving us the perfect replacement for rice just after its extinction. The grass produces periwinkle seed, more commonly just called ‘peri,’ which is delicious, easy to cook, quick to grow. And it can grow only here in New Delta, because of the special mineral makeup from its past as a swamp. What a resource!” He held up a hand, and the point of view zoomed in to the soft light-purple–blue flower in it. The man looked down at Anwuli as he grinned somewhat insanely. “One week a year, the harvester trucks come out to—”

  “Ugh, skip,” she said, waving a hand. “Just go to ‘New Delta Allergies.’”

  The man froze and then reappeared in what looked like someone’s nasal cavity, the world around him red and smooth.

  “Allergies,” he said, looking right at Anwuli with a smirk. He winked mischievously. “Humans have had them since humans were humans, and maybe before that. One of the earliest recorded incidents was sometime between 3640 and 3300 BC when King Menses of Egypt died from a wasp sting.

  “In New Delta, pollen allergies are commonplace. Milder symptoms include skin rash, hives, runny nose, itchy eyes, nausea, and stomach cramps. Severe symptoms are more extreme. Swelling caused by the allergic reaction can spread to the throat and lungs, causing allergenic asthma or a serious condition known as anaphylaxis.

  “New Delta is a wonderful place of spotless greenery where one can walk about with no shoes on the soft grass, breathe air so clear it smells perfumed, and drive down Nigeria’s cleanest streets.”

  At this Anwuli laughed.

  “But in the last five years, due to an unexpected shift in the climate, pollination season has become quite an event. This means more copious harvests of peri. But because peri grass is a wind pollinator, it also means what scientists have called ‘pollen tsunamis.’” The weather around the man grew dark as storm clouds moved in and the room vibrated with the sound of thunder. Anwuli glanced toward the side of the room that was all window. Outside was still sunny, but it wouldn’t be for long.

  “Skip to Izeuzere,” she said.

  The man froze and then was sitting behind a doctor’s desk, wearing a lab coat. He still wore his Igbo chief cap. “…a few New Delta citizens were diagnosed with an allergy called Izeuzere. The name, which means ‘sneeze’ in Igbo, was given to the condition by a non-English-speaking Igbo virologist who liked to keep things simple. If someone with Izeuzere is caught in a pollen tsunami, there will first be severe runny eyes, sneezing fits, and then an escalation to convulsions, ‘rapid rash,’ and then suffocation. Most who have it experience a preliminary sneezing fit and then the full spectrum of symptoms the moment a pollen tsunami saturates the area. Deadly exposure to the pollen when a tsunami hits takes minutes, even when indoors, and is instant when outside. Treatment is to leave New Delta and go to an arid environment before the next pollen tsunami. Once there, one must be given a battery of anti-allergen injections for five months.”

  “What if I lose everything if I leave?” Anwuli asked the virtual man. “What if moving out of this house allows the father of my child to get rid of me without lifting a damn finger? Do you have answers for that in your database?” The man’s eyebrows went up, but before the man could respond, she screamed, “Shut up!” She punched the couch cushion. “Off! Turn off!” The image disappeared, replaced by her favorite soothing scene of an American cottage covered in snow. The sound of the wind was muffled by the blanket of snow, and smoke was rising from the cottage’s chimney. She knew what would happen if she couldn’t leave the area. “Dammit,” she hissed. “I refuse! I refuse!”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to buy a ticket for you to Abuja?” Obi 3 asked. “There is a flight leaving in two hours. Your auntie will—”

  “No!” Anwuli sat back and shut her eyes, feeling her frustrated tears roll down both sides of her face. “I’m not leaving. I don’t care.” She paused. “They probably all hope I’ll die. Like I deserve it.”

  “What kind of dessert would you like? There is caramel crème and honeyed peri bread.”

  “Deserve,” Anwuli snapped. “I said deserve, not dessert!”

  “You deserve happiness, Anwuli.”

  Anwuli closed her eyes and sighed, muttering, “Left me alone here for nine months; their message is clear. Well, so is mine. I’m not going. This is his baby. He can’t deny that forever.” She paused. “Now this stupid storm rolls in out of nowhere when I could have this child at any moment. This is God’s work. Maybe he wants all my trouble over with fast.”

  “Would you like some jollof peri and stew?” Obi 3 asked as Anwuli slowly got up. “You haven’t eaten since before you went to your appointment.”

  “Why would I want to eat when I am about to die alone?” she shouted.

  She got up. She stared around Obi 3. Not spotless, because Anwuli didn’t like spotless, but tidy. Her space since he had left her to fully return to his marital home. One of Obi 3’s interior drones zipped into the bedroom with a set of freshly washed and folded clothes.

  “What do I do?” Anwuli whispered. And, as if to answer, the sound of thunder rumbled from outside, this time louder. “I don’t want to die.”

  She’d always had allergies. Her father had even playfully nicknamed her ogbanje when she was little because she was always the one sniffling, sneezy, and sent to bed any time the peri flowers bloomed. Goodness knew that when her allergies flared, she did feel like a spirit who’d prefer to die and return to her spirit friends than keep living with the discomfort. But never did she imagine she’d eventually come down with the rare illness everyone had been talking about. And her doctor, also a local to her community, had been so cold about it.

  “I don’t know why you haven’t left yet, but don’t worry. You’ll give birth any day now,” he’d said at her earlier appointment, clearly avoiding her eyes by looking at his tablet. “Then you take your baby, fly to Abuja immediately and get treatment there. No storms are due in the next week, so you will be fine.”

  Anwuli had nodded agreement. What she didn’t say in that room was that she had no intention of leaving. Obi 3 was her home as long as she lived in it. Bayo was an asshole, but he could never throw her out of the house, no matter how much he wanted the situation to go away. She was sure he still loved her, and above everything, this was his baby. However, his wife certainly would love for her and his “bastard” baby to simply leave the area. But none of it mattered now because here was the thunder.

  Anwuli went to her room and curled up in her bed and for several minutes, minutes she knew would be her last, she cried and cried. For herself, for her situation, her choice, for everything. When she couldn’t cry anymore, the thunder was closer. She got up. Her belly felt hard as a rock, and the pain drove even her fear of death away. At the same time, Obi 3 brightened the lights, which seemed to amplify the pain.

  “Blood of Jesus!” she screamed, crumbling to the floor in front of the couch.

  She was 29 years old and she’d watched all her friends settle into marriage and have child after child, yet this was her first. And there had been so much chaos around the fact of her pregnancy that although she went to regular checkups, she hadn’t really thought much about the birth or what she’d do afterward. Shame, desperation, embarrassment, and abandonment burned hotter and shined brighter than her future. So Anwuli wasn’t ready.

  Now her pain had begun to s
peak, and it told vibrant stories of flesh-consuming fire that burned the body to hard, hot stone. It was as if her midsection was trying to squeeze itself bloody. She rolled on the floor, more tears tumbling from her eyes. And then…it passed. Her belly melted from hot stone back to flesh, her mind cleared, and a light patter of rain began tapping at the windows.

  “Better?” Obi 3 asked.

  “Yes,” Anwuli said, grasping the side of the couch to pull herself up. Beside her hovered one of Obi 3’s drones. “I’m OK. I can do it myself.”

  “That was a contraction,” Obi 3 said. “The variations in electromagnetic noise my sensory lights are picking up tell me that you’ll be entering labor soon.”

  Anwuli groaned, glancing at the window. Of course, she thought.

  “Not yet but very soon,” Obi 3 said. It beeped softly, and the lights flashed a gentle pink orange. “You have a phone call. Bayo.”

  Anwuli frowned. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “OK, answer.”

  There was another beep, and Bayo’s face appeared before her. He looked sweaty, and his shaven brown head shined in the light of the room he was in. He squinted. “Anwuli, turn your visuals on,” he said.

  “No,” she snapped, propping herself against the couch. “What do you want?”

  He sighed. “Your doctor just called me.”

  “What did he say?” she asked, gnashing her teeth.

  “That you’re sick. That you have…Izeuzere. How can this be? Is it the pregnancy?”

  “Is it legal for him to discuss confidential patient information with strangers?” she snapped. “Doubtful.”

  “I’m not a stranger.”

  “The last time you spoke to me was nine months ago.”

  His shifty eyes shifted. There was a shadow beside him; someone else was there. Probably his wife. Anwuli felt a wave of wooziness pass over her. “I…I think I’m in labor,” she said.

  He looked surprised but then shocked her by saying nothing.

  “No ambulance will drive through this storm,” she said. “Can you…?”

  His wife’s face suddenly filled the virtual screen. “No, he will not,” she said. “He has a family and cannot afford to go driving into pollen storms. Clean up your own mess. And get out of our house!” Bayo’s wife continued to block Bayo’s face, and if Bayo said anything, Anwuli could not hear him.

  “Whose house?” Anwuli shouted at her. “Did you design it? Build it? Pay for it? Does this house even know your name?”

  “Go and die!” his wife roared. The image disappeared.

  Anwuli flared her nostrils, but no effort could stop the tears and hurt from washing over her like its own contraction. She hadn’t known a thing about that woman. Bayo had. Yet who did his family and the rest of the community embrace? Who still had his own body to himself? Well, Anwuli thought, maybe I did know about her. Maybe. Let me not lie when I am so close to my death. I knew. I just chose not to see.

  “Call parents,” she breathed.

  Their phone rang and rang. No response. Not surprising. They’d stopped picking up her calls months ago. She sent a text explaining it all, then went to the kitchen.

  The strain of throwing up and having a contraction nearly caused her to pass out. One of Obi 3’s drones pushed itself beside her to keep her from tumbling to the floor.

  “The variations in electromagnetic noise my sensory lights pick up alert me that—”

  “Shut up!” Anwuli screamed.

  “—you are now in labor,” Obi 3 finished.

  Boom! the thunder outside responded. Sheets of rain began to pelt Obi 3. The lights flickered, and then Anwuli heard her backup solar generator kick in.

  “What do I do?” she grunted, using a napkin to wipe her mouth. “What am I going to do?”

  “Shuffling songs by MC Do Dat,” Obi 3 cheerily said. Bass-heavy rap music shook the entire house, making Anwuli even more nauseous.

  “Ladies do dat / Bitches do dat! / Get down low and / Do dat, do dat!” MC Do Dat rapped over the beats in his low raspy voice.

  “Music off!” she screamed, tears squeezing from her eyes. She clenched her fists with rage. “No music! Ooh, I hate this song!”

  The music stopped in time for the sound of thunder to shake the house. Anwuli slowly dragged herself up as the contraction subsided.

  “I’ll help you to the couch,” Obi 3 said.

  She nodded and leaned against the drone that floated to her side. As she did, reality descended on Anwuli. Obi 3 was only an extension of herself. She was only talking to herself, being helped by herself. She was alone. “The storm…pollen…I don’t want to…” As she stumbled to the couch, the drone holding her under her armpit, she started to cry again. She cried more as she fell onto the couch and rolled onto her back, her clothes now drenched in sweat. She cried as she stared at the spotless sky-blue ceiling, which she had used Obi 3’s drones to paint when Bayo left her. She cried as lightning flashed and the thunder roared outside, the unpredicted storm’s winds blowing.

  She’d been crying for nine months, and she cried for yet another 10 minutes, and then another contraction hit, and she forgot everything. As the minutes passed, and the contractions came faster and faster, she didn’t remember where the pillow came from that propped her up or how her legs held themselves apart. What she did recall was the window across from her shattering as a palm tree fell through it. She remembered the wind and rain blowing into Obi 3, filling it with the heat and humidity from outside. Tree leaves, new and dry, slapped against the couch, onto the floor, but no peri flowers were blown in. Those were strong like men; they didn’t even lose petals in the worst wind. Built to survive and reproduce, not to keep from killing us, she vaguely thought. She couldn’t help but note the irony: Plant fertilizer was going to kill her as she was giving birth.

  Her face grew damp with sweat and rain. As she gave the great push that thrust her first child into the world, the storm outside exhausted itself to a hard rain. The coming of her child felt like her body submitting after a battle. The sharp pain peaked and then retreated. And that is how the first to carry her squirming daughter was not a human being but a drone, using a plastic scooper as its long sharp knife cut the cord. When the drone placed the child in Anwuli’s hands, she looked down at her daughter’s squashed, agitated face. For several moments, she stared, unmoving.

  “Don’t you want to cry?” she asked the snuffling infant.

  “Mmmyah,” the baby said, turning her head this way and that. Anwuli found herself smiling. She poked her daughter’s little cheek. The moment she felt the baby’s softness, Anwuli began to weep. She touched the baby again, running a finger delicately across the baby’s cheek to touch her lips. Immediately, her child began to suck on her finger.

  “She’s breathing strongly already,” Obi 3 said. “Maybe she does not need to cry.”

  “Mmiri,” Anwuli said, holding the child to her. “I’ll name you Mmiri. What do you think, Obi 3?”

  “Mmiri means ‘water’ in the Igbo language,” Obi 3 said.

  Anwuli laughed. “OK. But do you approve?”

  “You do not need my approval to name your child.”

  “But I would like it, if you think to give it.”

  There was a pause. Then Obi 3 said, “How about giving her the middle name Storm? Storm was the American Kenyan superheroine from Marvel comics. She could control the weather and fly.”

  Anwuli’s eyebrows rose. “Hmm, wow,” she said. “Mmiri Storm Okwuokenye, then. I approve.” The house glowed a soft lavender color that turned the ceiling a deeper sky blue as Anwuli stared up at it. “Mmiri Storm Okwuokenye,” Anwuli breathed again, looking at her new daughter, who smelled like the earth. Bloody, coppery, yeasty. Hers. She held on to this beautiful thought and the sound of her daughter snuffling as the pains of expelling the afterbirth came. When this was over, she slumped on the couch, watching the drone take away the bloody mass.

  She already felt much better. Then she sneezed, and he
r eyes grew itchy. “No,” she whispered. Baby Mmiri decided it was time to start wailing. The rain had stopped, and the sun was already peeking through the retreating clouds. She sneezed again, and the house drone flew to her, a clean orange towel now draped over its scooper. Anwuli put her daughter into it and was wracked by a sneeze again. She sat up, surprised by how OK she felt. The second drone flew up beside her carrying a glass of water and her bottle of antihistamine tablets. “Hurry, take three,” Obi 3 said. “Maybe—”

  “There is nothing to be helped now,” Anwuli blurted, looking at the shattered window. Already, what looked like smoke was wafting into the house. Soon visibility outside would be zero, and it would last for the next 24 hours. “I’m a dead woman.”

  No one had predicted weather patterns shifting. This is why scientists were calling the occasional spontaneous variation in weather patterns “climate chaos” instead of “climate change.” That’s what they’d recently been saying on the news, anyway. The pollinating grass was genetically staggered to release pollen at three separate times during the year, with one-third of the grass pollinating in each period. However, over the last 20 years, an unexpected shift in the length of the dry, cool Harmattan season had scrambled that timing, causing the pollination periods of all three groups to align.

  The immense wealth made from peri production went directly to the Nigerian government and to the Chinese corporations who’d invested so deeply in Nigeria for decades, and next to nothing went to New Delta, much in the same way it had when the greatest resource had been oil. For this reason, the initially lovely city that was New Delta began to deteriorate, and the Chinese and Nigerian governments paid less attention to the pollination misalignment. News of pollen allergies had become nationally known only when Izeuzere set in during the last two years. But only because the way it killed was so spectacular. And this year, rainy season had been particularly wet.