Remote Control

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “People! People of RoboTown,” he shouted. “Is this the way to show Allah your excellence?! Is this…”

  His strong voice was drowned out by the yelling of those around him. Another stone hit Sankofa in the arm and she stumbled back, dropping Alhaja’s hand. “Stop it!” she shouted. She could feel her light just beneath her skin. It wanted to defend her, to protect her. No, Sankofa thought, squeezing her mouth, flaring her nostrils and frowning. Alhaja is too close, I can’t control it that well … and I won’t hurt these people of RoboTown. Cannot! Never! But they were hurting her.

  Another stone hit her right on the collarbone. “Ah!” she screamed, bending forward in pain. “Please!” In every direction she looked were people shouting. Every direction except Alhaja’s; she met Sankofa’s eyes and Sankofa saw such sorrow there. “I’m sorry,” Sankofa said. “Oh I’m so sorry.”

  “Witch,” a man said, chucking a stone. It hit her in the thigh. Sankofa screeched, turned the other way, and ran headfirst into the belly of a fat man. He shoved her back and threw dirt at her. “Leave this place,” he said.

  “You have to let me!” Sankofa screamed, tears flying from her eyes. “How can I leave if…”

  A flip-flop bounced off her head, then more dirt sprayed into her face. Someone slapped her, but she couldn’t see who’d done it because her eyes were watering so badly. Someone kicked her in the back and she moaned in pain, her chest hitching as she sobbed “Please! I didn’t mean to—” She was punched in the side, and she stumbled the other way, coughing and holding her chest. “See!” someone shouted. “She can be cut down! Get her!”

  At some point she fell, trying to catch her breath. Someone shoved Alhaja out of the way and they were on her. The blows seemed to rain from the sky and still Sankofa fought to hold it in. She would not harm RoboTown. This was the only home she had. Hot painful water splashing onto her body. She curled herself tightly into a ball. No, she thought. I won’t. I can’t. Not again. They only thought of their town’s reputation. Maybe it had been too long since they’d seen violence. Or felt a need to respond with it. Had RoboTown been too content? Sankofa didn’t know. What she knew was that when the green deadly light burst from her, it felt like cool water. It put out the flames. Everything went quiet.

  * * *

  She stayed that way for over a minute. “No, no, no, why,” she whispered, her face pressed to the road. When she looked to the side, first she saw red fur. Movenpick stood up now, but didn’t move from her side. She sat up, seeing beyond the fox. She gasped. She was surrounded by nine or ten dead bodies. She had controlled it. This she knew. She had only allowed a fraction of the light to come. But it was enough to cause several around her to drop dead. There would be bodies left to bury. Those who still stood, alive, stepped back, mouths open, words lost, eyes twitching with terror. Sankofa’s eye fell on the fallen body of Alhaja and she shrieked. Then she ran. People got out of her way.

  * * *

  Sankofa fled up the road, her chest burning and her nose bleeding. One of her eyes was swelling shut. She paused after about a half mile and looked back. No one was following her and from here, she could hear people beginning to wail as they surrounded the dead.

  Then she saw it high in the sky. She was wrong. One person had followed her. The Steel Brother, the robocop. “I also send reports to LifeGen,” it said. Projecting its voice so precisely, even from a distance she could hear its every word clearly.

  “LifeGen?” she said. The shock of this made her stumble over her feet. “You’ve been spying on me for … for them?” Is LifeGen responsible for the seed coming back into my life? she wondered. The world around her swam. What did all this mean? Why?

  “You are confusion,” it said. “LifeGen studies you. Then it will find use for you.” It was so fast that she only managed seven steps before the burst of lightning from the drone’s wireless Taser travelled from her head all the way down to her toes. Her last thought was I thought drones could only do that in the movies.

  Then Sankofa remembered nothing.

  CHAPTER 9

  DEATH

  Whimpering. Someone was whimpering. And tapping her shoulder.

  Soil. Rich fragrant soil. She pursed her lips and pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, smearing it with a coat of the soil. She worked her jaw and flexed her legs and the muscles of her thighs locked with cramps. The pain of it shot through her body. And someone was still tapping at her shoulder, moving up to her neck. A warm wet roughness rubbed at her cheek.

  She cracked open her eyes to a shadow hovering over her. The shadow whimpered, moving back as she sat up. “Mo … pick?” she muttered, her mouth too gummy to fully pronounce the name. It took her eyes a few moments to adjust to the sunlight and immediately, she noticed another black shape close to her on her right. Something bigger than Movenpick. It bounced before her, making a papery sound as it did. It smelled of decay. The shape slowly bounced back, but did not go away. “Awk!” it said. Sankofa’s eyes focused and she found herself looking at an enormous vulture, its wings casually spread. It stared back at her as if to say, “What are you going to do now?” To her right, now feet away, Movenpick yipped and paced back and forth, keeping his distance from both Sankofa and the vulture.

  “I am The Adopted Daughter of Death,” Sankofa told the vulture. “You are just a bird of death. Fly away. Or walk if you prefer. Just leave me.” She got up and more dirt tumbled from her skin and her dress. Her satchel of things was gone. She brushed off the dirt from her arms, rubbed it from her face, spat it from her mouth. She coughed loudly, hacked mud from her throat and spat. She blew it from both her nostrils. She dug it from the sides of her eyes. When she looked up, the vulture was gone. For all its noise when it had moved away from her, it had taken to the air silent as an owl.

  Sankofa stopped and stared at the area around her. She was in the bush, though she could hear vehicles on a road nearby. And she was standing in a shallow hole the length and width of her body. A shallow grave. Had they thought she was dead when they put her here? Or maybe they’d thought they were burying her alive. Or maybe the people of RoboTown weren’t even the ones to bury her and some stranger had seen her lying in the road and put her here. But who would bury a child, especially one who was not dead? LifeGen might. If only to see what would happen next. She glanced around cautiously.

  Deciding she was as alone as she could get, she took a silent inventory of her entire body, flexing muscles and lifting her dirty dress off her legs to see if there were scratches or bruises … or stab wounds. She touched her ears and was glad to find she still wore her mother’s earrings. She felt no pains or more than minor stings, but pain was a tricky beast, as she knew. Sometimes it took its time to officially arrive. But aside from a headache and a dull soreness in her forehead, which was most likely where the drone’s Taser had hit her, she was ok. She was alive.

  She closed her eyes and tried bringing it forth. Would she still be able to? She could. Her world glowed green and the effortlessness of it was surprising. She tried shining even brighter. Then brighter. Then brighter. She lit up the road. And pulled it in. “I can do it so easily now,” she whispered, looking at her hands. She glowed again, controlling the light so well that she could make it shine a foot from her and then pull it right back in. “What am I?” she said. But she didn’t really care about that question. No. She was what she was and now after nearly dying, waking up in her own grave, and emerging from the soil, she was better.

  She hugged herself and looked at Movenpick, wishing she could hug him, too. Movenpick yipped and trotted into the bush. Sankofa coughed again, hacked and spit out more mud and looked around her at the tall and robust forest. There were no plants around the spot where she’d lain. Barren, almost. No plants grew in the spot they’d chosen to bury her. Or maybe it had all died?

  “I wonder…” she whispered, remembering. She simultaneously hoped in two directions as she reached into her right pocket. She wasn’t surprised to find h
er wad of paper money. She held her breath as she reached into her left. “Dammit,” she said when she touched the wood of the box. She spat out more dirty spit, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Dammit.”

  She heard a soft snort and turned around. Movenpick stood there, still waiting. “Thank you,” she said. Movenpick fidgeted his paws and licked his chops. “Yes. Let’s go.”

  Sankofa ran for the cover of dense trees, Movenpick trotting behind her. She wanted to get away from “her resting place.” For an hour, she walked through forest. Still, as she walked, she kept an eye on the sky that she glimpsed between the leaves and branches, watching for Steel Brother’s drones.

  When she found the beautiful stream beside the large tree with several low growing branches thick enough to easily carry her weight, she knew she’d found a place to rest her tired lonely head. Even better, the area was bright with sunlight due to a large tree felled by a lightning strike. It was such a huge tree that its descent had taken down three other trees with it.

  “I like this place,” she said. Movenpick was already in the tree when she sat on the lower branch. She smiled for a moment, then she dropped the smile from her face and got up. She looked around until she spotted a smooth grey stone lodged beside the rotting mass of a fallen tree. She placed the seed on the hardest part of the tree’s bark and then looked down her nose at it. Oval like a palm tree seed and etched as if its surface were trying to evolve into a circuit board. Always so so intriguing. She brought the stone down on it with all her strength. Then again. And again.

  “Die!” she screamed each time she smashed at it. She laughed wildly and she cried, too. “DIE!”

  Finally, she stopped. She looked down. The seed was in pieces like a giant cracked kernel of maize. She blinked. No, it wasn’t. It was still whole, not even a dent. Not even her imagination could destroy it. She stood there staring at it for a long long time. She put it back in the box. Her hands felt heavy as she did so. The pull. As if it was telling her by sensation that it would never leave her again. Never. She returned to the giant tree she’d found, her face itchy with dried and fresh tears.

  She sang a song with no words to herself as she dug a hole. She used a stick and then her hands and she dug it a foot deep. The she dropped the box into the hole. She buried it and patted the dirt down smooth. She stood back, looking down at the spot, half expecting a root to push it right back up. To even place it right back in her pocket. Nothing happened.

  * * *

  Sankofa stayed in this place for seven months. There were a few interesting things about this small patch of undisturbed forest. It was not near any villages or towns, so she didn’t have to worry much about encountering any human beings. There was a road about a quarter of a mile away, but it was the type of road dominated by self-driving trucks and drivers who drove as if they expected spirits or witches to leap from the trees. There were three farms nearby, each run by old men who’d been working the land for decades. These old men had a farmer’s code, for they had grown their vast farms on their own, and that code was one of secrecy.

  One early evening, Sankofa had been out exploring further than usual and she’d smelled smoke. She followed the scent and this was how she found the three old men sitting around a fire smoking pipes and sharing stories. It was dark and she stayed in the shadows listening for a bit. They were talking about one of the old men’s oldest granddaughters who’d come home pregnant and with a master’s degree in engineering and how they didn’t know whether to rejoice or die. They’d just decided to rejoice when Sankofa had boldly stepped into the firelight.

  “Hello,” she said. When none of the men had screamed or run off, she added, “May I join you?” It was the first time she’d spoken to another human being in months, and her voice came through loud and clear. They knew exactly who she was and they knew of what had gone down in RoboTown. “But we’re on the farm, so secret stay here,” was all one of the old men had said. And then one of the others made room for her and she sat down.

  That night, Sankofa didn’t join in in their discussion about the granddaughter who also didn’t have a husband and didn’t want one. She was happy to just listen. However, the next time she came across the old men in this same spot where the ashes of many fires remained, she talked to them about the way the land was exhaling. The farmers told her that it was great for their crops and that it would certainly be a good year. And one of the men brought her a sack of rice, a cooking pot, salt, some boiled eggs, and a jar of palm oil. They did not know that Sankofa could take care of herself, remembering how to live in the bush from her early days of being on her own. But the supplies were good and she was entitled to them being who she was, she knew it and she was glad the old men did, too.

  “We respect the spirits,” one of them said as she took the sack of goods. The next time she saw the men two weeks later, they had each brought her seeds and a plastic watering can. They called them “the basics,” tomatoes, onions and cucumbers. And the next time, they gave her three yam cuttings.

  Around the fallen trees, she cultivated a garden and the yam vines snaked over the lightning tree as if to embrace it. She ate well, slept well, laughed at Movenpick’s habit of playing wildly in the grasses with dried palm fronds, and she enjoyed her time with the old farmers who seemed to genuinely enjoy her presence, too. In these days, she watched the things she planted grow and let the worst of her misadventures go. She mourned and then honored Alhaja by carving her name in the fallen lightning tree and speaking words of love to the birds, lizards, grasshoppers and spiders who were certainly listening.

  She thought about her parents and brother as she always did and wondered what they’d think of all that had happened. She carved their names into the lightning tree, too. Not once during her time in the forest did she use her glow for more than killing off mosquitoes attacking her skin at night. The farmers were probably curious, but she never showed them her glow, except on that first night when they’d asked to see with their own old old wise eyes. Only on that day had they seemed to fear her.

  Nevertheless, two hundred fifteen days after stepping out of her own shallow grave and making one for the seed in the box, she looked into the eyes of death … again. She was just coming from one of the evenings of chatting with the old men. She’d told them about how her garden was going and they’d all been impressed, saying that for someone who was fitted with the talent of taking life, she was also good at cultivating it. They’d all laughed. And she was still softly laughing to herself as she walked back to her home in the forest, Movenpick close behind. Movenpick went with her everywhere, even to visit the old men, but he never showed himself to them, so they only knew of him in legend.

  She had a slight bellyache and she was wondering if she should eat a few mint leaves and call it an early night when Movenpick stopped and whined. He ran up a tree not far from their home. Then Sankofa noticed it, too. Every single creature in the forest had gone silent. It was dark so she saw nothing around her. Her night eyes and ears were sharp, so she usually felt safe in this forest. Until now. She froze, suddenly anxious, looking around, listening. She saw nothing. She moved faster, unsure of what she’d do when whatever, whomever it was revealed itself. What difference did it make if it was at her home or right here?

  She made it to her garden and paused at her growing yam farm. She felt something creeping down her inner thigh. When she looked, she saw what might have been a line stretching toward her ankle. She squinted. She couldn’t quite see it in the dark … but she could smell it. Blood. She gasped. If she’d scratched herself badly enough for blood to run down her leg, she certainly didn’t feel it.

  She was stepping up to the tree she and Movenpick had been sleeping in for months and she was about to remove her wrapper when the leopard dropped in front of her. Its arrival was heavy yet perfect. A soft thoom and then swipe just missing Sankofa’s chest. She fell back, somersaulted and was on her feet in less than a second. She ran. She knew this part of the forest so well
that moving through it in the darkness was her advantage as the leopard came after her silent as a spirit. She slipped under a low branch, leapt over another. Leapt over the brook. Faster, faster, faster, she could hear it pursuing her like water flooding a creek. Focused and relentless.

  Her mouth hung open as she fought to catch her breath; her mind was both clouded and sharp with adrenaline. She stumbled into the nearby road, the hardness of the concrete so unfamiliar after all these months that it hurt her feet. And that was when she finally remembered. What in Allah’s name had she been running for? She turned to the forest and pushed for it to come. And for over a minute, it didn’t.

  The leopard burst into the road without making a sound. It came from directly in front of her. And because it happened to be a full moon and a clear night, she saw the great beast part the bushes and stride into view. Its head was low, its ears turned back and pressed close to its large spotted head. Its loose skin rolled and rippled over its muscular flesh.

  Right there in the middle of the street, for the second time in her life, she faced death. However, she’d changed and grown since she left Wulugu; she had power now. It was just a matter of remembering, truly remembering and accepting. She stumbled back and her feet tangled. Down she went, sitting hard in the middle of the road. And still, she faced the leopard creeping so swiftly, so smoothly toward her. It had been months since she’d awoken in a shallow grave with complete control of her light. Months since she’d used her light for anything big.

  However, time doesn’t change the essence of what you are and Sankofa’s essence had been forged and fused back home at the foot of that tree when the seed had fallen from the sky and she’d picked it up. She exhaled, letting it all go and letting it all in … what was in her killed her family, Alhaja, all those people who’d begged to be released from the shackle of life, insects, bats, drones, it protected her, it terrified others, it was from somewhere else, this seed … “All of it,” she said, her face wet with tears. It hurt because so much of it was terrible and still it was hers. Regardless. “All of it.”