Noor(42)

Anything but me being a living wireless connection, simultaneously human and machine; the result of an abnormal amount of flesh to machine wiring, some random glitch caused by the combination of violence inflicted on my body, and subsequent rage.

“It’s been too much for you,” he said still looking at his tablet. “All of it. Years of it. The surgeries, the artificial parts, what comes with all that. Look at these numbers. Your heart is still flesh, it can die.”

“I don’t CARE.” We were quiet for a moment. I felt better now. I took more deep breaths. Those definitely helped. Steady even breaths. I took a bit more time. Then I went in . . .

Dusty dirt roads . . .

Some paved with fresh black asphalt, but mostly dusty . . .

Few cars, even fewer autonomous vehicles. It was locating the small Ondo state town I still remembered that led me to the building I sought. The mosque didn’t look like a mosque and the church across the street looked like someone’s modest home. There was a small shop down the road from the mosque where you could still buy goods like chewing gum, incense sticks, and cigarettes with actual cash. And Force’s family’s palace was right beside the mosque.

All this I showed Force on the screens around us that were normally used for lectures, surveillance, and programming. Screens that Force had control of and that I, according to him, didn’t. “I still remember the name of your town. That’s why I can show it to you. I tell them the name and they find the satellite images. What I’m showing you is your town a few years ago. When I thought you had committed suicide and your family told me they didn’t want me at your funeral because your death was my fault.”

“They told you that?”

“Yes.” I opened my eyes and glared at him. All around us was Ikare, Ondo State, Nigeria. There was the palace where Force was born, where he had apparently never gone when I thought he had. I made the images move a bit as if we were walking on foot through his home. I watched him as I did this, it was that easy. The Control. “I’m doing all this. I ask and they obey me, indulge me, whatever.”

“Okay,” he said, a blank look of shock on his face. “So who is obeying or indulging you? Who is ‘they’?”

“They’re a sentience, the Internet? No more than that. They’re digital and ubiquitous. In my mind, they look like eyes, fruit, a pomegranate.” I glanced at him and then quickly glanced away, not liking how he was looking at me. I shook my head. “I can’t explain.” I switched the image to my face, as if I were looking at him from all around, five of my faces from the various angles of the cameras in the room, looking at him. I could feel the drums in my temples, and I took a deep breath. “Whether you believe me or not, I can do this,” I said.

“Okay,” he said again. “Stop, for now. Your heart rate is increasing.”

I stopped and sat back, breathing deeply.

“How?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s easy?”

“Minus the risk of heart attack, yes.”

“What about your herdsman friend, DNA? Is he involved?”

“That part is strange coincidence.”

He shook his head. “No.”

I shrugged.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re safe here,” he said.

“I’m not safe anywhere.”

“Yes,” he said. “But if what you tell me is true, if you can do this . . . this thing, they’re going to want you.”

“Who? The government? I’m not . . .”

“No, Ultimate Corp. And you should fear them more than the government.”

“I’ll know when they all are coming.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Even if you can control all AI, all software, you’re still human. You can’t be everywhere at once, talking to everyone at once, preparing for everything at once. When you look one way, they’ll come at you another.”

I frowned. “Maybe.”

“There’s something else,” he said. He sighed. “How’s your mother?”

I chuckled. “Fine. My mom and my dad, well, as fine as they could be knowing all that’s going on.”

“Your mother loved olives,” he said. “I remember that.”

I laughed. “Of course you’d know that. What about it?”

Force and my mother had always had an interesting rapport, which made his leaving all the more profound. They simply enjoyed sitting and talking. Some days, when I was in my worst pain, unable to talk, Force would come over, and he and my mother would sit and just talk. Listening to them made me feel better, though it also made me feel left out.

“I know too much,” he said, looking away. He got up and walked to the edge of the room. When he turned back to me, I felt ill.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“You really don’t know, do you?”

I frowned more deeply. “Know what?”

“Olives.”

“What about olives?” I snapped.

“Ultimate Corp sold almost all the olives in Nigeria, they still do. Some two decades ago, there was a small batch of Beldi olives that they grew in Morocco. I never told you, but I researched this when we were sixteen. Those trees were genetically modified to grow in higher density and with a spicy black-peppery taste. They were wildly popular here, you put them in jollof rice, Indomie, ate them as a snack. Unfortunately, these olives were later proven to cause birth defects if one ate too many of them. They recalled all those Beldi olives, it was big news. For about a day. Then it wasn’t. What never made the news was that five pregnant women in Nigeria ate too many.” He paused, and when I just stared at him, he continued. “There were five born like you. Two died days later, though I’m not really sure if their deaths were natural, if you know what I mean.”