Remote Control

by Nnedi Okorafor

  In front, the line was so long that Sankofa couldn’t see the end of it. Beside the line was a crowd of curious onlookers.

  “Is it always like this?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Alhaja said, lighting one of her special cigarettes. She was looking around as if she expected monsters to burst from between the nearby market booths and alleys. Sankofa frowned, and started looking around, too. And that was how she was the first to spot the group of men in red. She blinked for a moment then tapped Alhaja’s shoulder. When Alhaja looked at her, Sankofa pointed.

  “Oh shit,” Alhaja muttered, the cigarette dangling between her lips.

  One of the men in red stepped forward, separating himself from the crowd. He was grinning, his teeth shining brightly in the store’s light. He had wild long hair, dreadlocks. Sankofa had never seen such hair in real life, but she’d seen it plenty in the movies she watched back home when they had public jelli telli nights near the mosque. It looked even more spectacular up close and in real life.

  He didn’t speak, clearly waiting for everyone in the line to see him. Many brought out mobile phones and windows to take pictures of him. He pointed at Alhaja and nodded. “Mrs. Starlit. Chalé, how easy you go make this for yourself?” he said in English.

  “Go home,” Alhaja said in Twi.

  “No hired guns,” he said in English. He switched back to Twi. “Didn’t we tell you we were coming? Maybe you’re as smart as you look, Mrs. Starlit.”

  “I told my gunmen to stay home,” she said. “I don’t need them today.”

  Now others pushed through the crowd of onlookers, standing beside the line of customers, directly in front of Alhaja. There were at least ten of them. They carried guns, machetes, batons, cudgels. Wild haired. And smiling. Sankofa glanced at the people in the line and she knew this was a moment of choice. She’d been at the center of this kind of thing before. The people would flee and Alhaja would lose both her customers and merchandise. And maybe a few people would die, too.

  “You’re just a woman,” the one with the longest dreadlocks said. “So do what women do, step back and let us take.”

  The others laughed and none of them took a step forward or backwards.

  “Maybe you are thinking of your own failed mother,” Alhaja snapped. “If you want something, you’ll have to buy it. My favorite is the upgraded jelli telli. The gel is stretchier, it smells like flowers instead of chemicals, the picture and sound make you feel like you’re right in the movie. And it holds up better in the heat.” Sankofa was looking at Alhaja’s back, but she could tell from her tone that she was smirking, trying so hard to look arrogant and sure.

  “Get off my property,” Alhaja suddenly sneered. “You’re scaring my customers.”

  It happened too fast. Sankofa was standing behind her. Everyone was watching. The cudgel flew like a swooping bird. She saw it in slow motion and as she watched the wooden object sail, she noticed something else. A glint in the sky. A drone. Right above them all. And then the round and hardest part of the cudgel hit Alhaja on the arm and she fell down.

  Sankofa’s eyes locked on the men in red as they started to rush forward, their legs bending, sandaled and shoed feet grinding into the dirt, weight shifting forward. Sankofa stepped over the fallen Alhaja and became the moon.

  Everyone ran.

  Good, she thought, relieved. The fear was what she’d relied on. She couldn’t control her light enough not to kill many in the area, so she wasn’t about to try and target any of the thieves as they ran.

  The people in line, the men in red, everyone fled, except Alhaja. Sankofa smiled in the silence and dust rising from all the scrambling feet. She looked up. The drone was still there. She grunted and helped Alhaja to her feet.

  * * *

  Alhaja’s customers returned the next day. The men in red did not. Alhaja stood outside from sun up to sun down as people came and bought just about every unit of new product she had, a bandage on her arm and Sankofa standing beside her. People came from farther away, flying in, driving in, by bus, kabu kabu, all to buy new tech. And to see Sankofa. The news of what happened spread fast and far within minutes. By the end of the day there was reason for all of Alhaja’s employees and friends to hold an impromptu party. Sankofa retreated to her bed, exhausted.

  She’d done little else all day but stand around looking as menacing as she could muster. However, Sankofa had a lot on her mind. She’d saved Alhaja’s shop from armed robbers, but all she could think of was her father. The smell of that coffee. She wanted everyone to leave her be, including Alhaja. She had done what Alhaja needed done and she didn’t want to celebrate, explain herself, or be stared at. She considered leaving in the dead of night, but instead lay in that comfortable soft blue bed and pushed her face to the sheet and let her tears run. For hours. Because of the scent of coffee she remembered that she wanted her father. And he was dead. Because she’d killed him.

  When she was finally able to drag herself out of bed, it was dark outside and the shop was quiet. She found Alhaja in the kitchen, sitting at the table sipping a cup of tea. She looked up at Sankofa and cocked her head. “Do you want something to eat?”

  That was all. No questions, no demands. It was so nice. She and Alhaja never discussed it. They never planned for it. It just happened. Sankofa moved in to that room, setting her satchel on the dresser and lying on the bed and looking up at the blue ceiling. When the sun came up the second day, the room lit up like the sky. Sankofa shut her eyes, enjoying the warmth of the light on her skin.

  On her third day in RoboTown, Alhaja walked with Sankofa to the local mosque. The walk there took a half hour. “This way, I can also show you much of RoboTown,” she said. “Best way to learn it is on foot.”

  “It’s the only way I can learn it,” Sankofa said.

  “Oh, that’s right, you can’t ride in cars.” She looked at Sankofa, frowning. “Why is that?”

  Sankofa shrugged and asked, “Why do I glow?”

  Alhaja nodded. “True. Mysteries are a mystery. Also, maybe if people see you walking, they’ll stop being afraid.”

  “People are always afraid of me. For good reason.”

  “Maybe if you didn’t go around reminding everyone by glowing in public, that might change,” Alhaja gently said.

  Sankofa smiled. Yesterday morning when she’d gone outside to look at the avocado tree in the backyard, mosquitoes had tried to make a meal of her as they often did. She’d responded in her usual way, by glowing a little bit to kill them off and deter the living ones. A small group of women happened to have been passing by and they saw her do this. By afternoon, an even larger group of women had come to Alhaja’s home and, regardless of the fact that Sankofa was in her room close enough to hear, told Alhaja to get rid of her. Sankofa was glad they didn’t notice Movenpick perched in the branches amongst the unripe avocados.

  So Alhaja is ok with me using my glow to save her shop, but not with me using it to save my own blood, Sankofa thought. Yes, to her, people were strange. Sankofa may have forgotten her name, but she remembered those early days of malaria, when she’d lain in bed shuddering, her body throbbing with the drum beat of deep aches, where it felt as if lightning were shooting through her legs, where she felt as if she were being repeatedly stung all over her body by giant mosquitoes. Over and over, this disease attacked her body … until the day the tree offered her the box. Let the women of RoboTown gossip, let Alhaja feel mildly uncomfortable; Sankofa’s hatred of mosquitoes was purely justified and she would keep zapping them with her light when she so pleased.

  Still, Sankofa was looking forward to going to the mosque. She hadn’t been inside one since the day she’d killed her home. She vividly remembered seeing her father there, dead with all the other men. The silence in a place that had always been filled with the sound of prayer. She’d brought death in there. Always in the back of her mind, though she was still alive and healthy, she’d wondered if Allah was angry with her.

  The mosque was
a small grey building. There were no flourishes on the outside, and there was no Arabic script anywhere, except above the entrance. The place looked nothing like the mosque back home. It’s still a house of Allah, she reminded herself. Waiting at the entrance was a fat woman with smooth dark brown skin. She wore a grey wide dress that probably was making her look even fatter and a black hijab around her head. Her fatness made it difficult to tell how old she was.

  “Sister Kumi,” Alhaja said, giving the woman a hug.

  “Alhaja,” she said. Then she turned to Sankofa with a kind smile. “Sankofa,” she breathed. “It’s an honor to meet a legend. Please come in.”

  When Alhaja pushed her toward Sister Kumi and then did not follow, she looked at her with question. “I’ll be back for you in an hour,” Alhaja said.

  Sister Kumi led Sankofa to a small room in the back of the modest mosque. There were several overlapping oriental rugs covering the floor and a tea set in the corner with hot tea already poured into the tiny cups.

  “Sit,” she said. “This is my meeting room. Make yourself comfortable. I can bring chairs if you like, but something told me you’d prefer the floor.”

  Sankofa wanted to be offended. Did she think she was some kind of animal or bush girl? But the woman was right, Sankofa did prefer the floor, and she had spent a week in the bush once and loved it so much that she yearned to return to it. So she sat down on the floor and crossed her short legs. With far more effort, Sister Kumi did the same, though she simply sat with her thick legs stretched before her.

  They stared at each other, Sister Kumi still breathing heavily from the exertion of sitting down. Sankofa was not afraid to look into people’s eyes, but usually they were afraid to look into hers. Not Sister Kumi, she seemed perfectly fine, gazing into Sankofa’s eyes. They looked into each other’s eyes for so long that Sankofa could see that Sister Kumi’s dark brown eyes curved down at their edges and she had two small discolorations on the white of her right eye.

  “I see it, even when you don’t make it happen,” Sister Kumi said after a while.

  Sankofa nodded. “Most don’t because they’re afraid to look for too long, but it’s always there.”

  “The evil.”

  “I don’t know it to be evil. Not what’s in me.”

  “It brings death.”

  “Only when I want it to. Everything dies, animals, plants, things…” She trailed off because Sister Kumi was just staring at her again.

  “Why’d you come to RoboTown?”

  Sankofa shrugged. “It was in the opposite direction.”

  “From where?”

  “Evil.”

  “I’ve heard the stories about you and quite frankly, I am shocked to be here sitting with you. A part of me wants to deny it’s really you. Alhaja and several others talked about what they saw two nights ago and I see what I see in your eyes but … my heart is still denying.”

  “I could show you if you want.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Dead.”

  “Because of you?”

  Sankofa frowned at her.

  “Do you believe in Allah?”

  “Yes,” Sankofa said.

  Sister Kumi smiled glowingly and breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Because I was about to say that even a djinn can be converted.”

  Sankofa frowned, irritably thinking, I’m not a djinn. She pushed away her annoyance because she had questions. “Why did Allah make me this way? What did I do?” She thought of the seed in the box and how her father had sold it off without a thought, how the politician had died soon after buying it, and how the abilities the seed gave her seemed to have corrupted in its absence. For the millionth time, she wondered if Allah had wanted her to fight harder for it. To stand up to the politician and even her father. But who stood up to one’s father?

  “Sometimes we have evil inside us and only Allah knows why,” Sister Kumi said. She leaned forward. “So to control your … death light last night, you had to push your emotions down deep? Is that how you control it?” Sister Kumi said, pressing the fingers of her right hand to the center of her chest.

  “Maybe,” Sankofa said. “I don’t know if—”

  “Maybe if you press the urge to glow down deep and hard enough, you can smother it, put it out.”

  “I … I can try,” Sankofa said, unsure. A tantalizing idea crossed her mind like a colorful bird … Maybe I can return to normal. She considered just forgetting about the seed in a box and she felt an immense weight lift from her shoulders. And with that weight went the burden of guilt she felt for the deaths of her family and town. She would not just bury those memories, she would leave that entire grave behind. I’ll stay in RoboTown with Alhaja and be normal. She took in a sharp breath and grinned. Sister Kumi reached forward and took her hand.

  “Let us recite the ninety-nine names of Allah,” she said. “Just repeat after me if you don’t know them.”

  Sankofa nodded. She’d never heard of such a thing.

  “And from today forth, you will wear a hijab. You’re young, but you’ve been through things that put you far beyond your years. You must cover up. We will cure you, yet.”

  After naming Allah ninety-nine times, for the next hour, they prayed familiar words that brought Sankofa right back to the mosque in Wulugu. When her parents and her town were still alive. When she and her brother used to fight and play in the house. When she climbed the shea tree and the earth had yet to offer her the box. The more she spoke the words of the Quran, the harder she pushed those memories down within her, imagining them pressing the strange light in her to the ground, smothering it until it went out. When they both looked up, Sankofa hugged Sister Kumi tightly and the woman’s folds of fat were like the embrace of Allah. She’d never forget her family. She loved her family, would always be part of it. But she would be normal; let the seed in the box go. Yes. Here was a chance.

  When Alhaja came for her late that afternoon, Sankofa was wearing a grey hijab over her short-haired wig and a smile on her face.

  CHAPTER 8

  EVERYTHING HAPPENS IN THE MARKET

  Sankofa quickly learned that the citizens of RoboTown cherished their robocop, and this made it one of very few robocops in Ghana to not be vandalized, stolen or hacked into. The people of RoboTown guarded their street robot with such care that it might as well have been one of their most prized citizens. A crew polished it every week, scrubbing every nook and cranny with a special solution made by one of the town’s old women and thus the robot shined immaculately for most of the week when there wasn’t rain. Sankofa learned that on the day she’d arrived, it had rained for two days before. Otherwise, she’d have been greeted that day by a shining robocop that practically glowed in the dark.

  Sankofa went to look at it after the incident at Mr. Starlit. As it had when she first entered RoboTown, it paid special attention to her, turning its head to watch her the entire time that she was there. “Don’t worry,” Alhaja had told her when Sankofa mentioned it to her later. “It’s only because you have nothing on you that it can scan. It’s like a nosy old woman when she’s denied gossip.”

  The robocop’s drone also liked to follow Sankofa around and this was quite annoying. What was even more annoying was the fact that Sankofa couldn’t study the robocop on the internet or in eBooks because tech died at her touch. All she could do was ask questions of whomever had knowledge—old-fashioned research. Alhaja knew much about the robocop, but the youth of RoboTown knew even more. They had time to do research and they were most interested in the information because the more they knew, the more they could get away with mischief, like having flash parties.

  RoboTown was a somewhat strict Islamic town and parties were frowned upon. However, RoboTown youth always found a way. Sankofa’s general reputation and the incident at Mr. Starlit earned her respect from the older teens, so they were more than happy to answer her questions. Thus, she learned from these older kids that the drones were the mobile eyes of th
e robocop.

  “They stay high up because we knock them down when they’re stupid enough to get too close,” one boy told Sankofa. “We leave them, though. They have trackers. Not worth the trouble. They don’t follow you for very long, anyway.”

  Sankofa frowned. One of the robocop’s drones had been following her for months. “What’s the point of them?” she asked. “Are they looking for troublemakers? Who’s collecting all the data? And who repairs the ones you’ve broken?”

  All the boys in the group laughed. Sankofa simply waited.

  “Everything’s collecting data,” one of the boys said. His name was Michael and he was always asking Sankofa to attend the flash parties he liked to organize. “All these devices we use are spies. That’s why you’re like a superhero; they can’t control you. You wearing hijab now must drive the spies crazy because they can’t easily see your face.”

  Several of the boys agreed.

  “The thing has its own agenda,” Michael said, lighting a cigarette. “And it takes care of itself.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “Na artificially intelligent,” Michael said in pidgin English, blowing out a mouthful of smoke. He switched back to Twi, “No man behind the curtain anymore.”

  “It’s a demon. Abomination,” one of the other boys declared, and they all started laughing and slapping hands in agreement.

  Alhaja told Sankofa the robot had been there for decades and that before its arrival that traffic intersection had been rife with death. Car collisions, pedestrians constantly being struck and killed, road rage incidents and even late-night robberies. She didn’t know whose idea the robot was but things changed as soon as it was installed. People were intrigued by the robot and when national newspapers started coming to do stories about it, they grew proud of it. Commerce increased and RoboTown became more affluent. And with this pride came a respect and an affection for the robot.

  “It was interesting,” Alhaja said. “People treat it with more respect than they treat any police officer. Maybe because the robot is polite, helpful and never asks for bribes.” She’d laughed and then leaned in with a conspiratorial smirk. “The thing answers to no one now, but do you know who programmed it initially? Sister Kumi.”