The Book of Phoenix

by Nnedi Okorafor

  • • •

  My name is Phoenix. I was mixed, grown and finally birthed here on the 28th floor. One of my doctors said my name came from the birthplace of my egg’s donor. I’ve looked that up; Phoenix, Arizona is the full name of the place. There’s no tower there, so that’s good.

  However, from what I’ve read about the way they did things there, even the scientists who forced my existence don’t know the names of donors. So, I doubt this. I think they named me Phoenix because of something else.

  I was an “accelerated organism,” born two years ago. Yet I looked and physically felt like a forty-year-old woman. My doctors said the acceleration had stopped now that I was “matured.” They said I would always look about forty, even if I lived to be five hundred. To them, I was like a plant they grew for the sake of harvesting.

  Who do I mean by “them,” you must wonder. All of THEM, the “Big Eye”— the Tower 7 scientists, lab assistants, lab technicians, doctors, administrative workers, guards, and police. We speciMen of the tower called them “Big Eye” because they watched us. All the time, they watched us, though not closely enough to realize their great error and not closely enough to prevent the inevitable.

  I could read a 500-page book in two minutes. My brain absorbed the information and stories like a sponge. Up until two weeks ago, aside from mealtimes, gazing out the window, running on my treadmill, and meetings with doctors, I spent my days with my e-reader. I’d sit in my room for hours consuming words upon words that became images upon images in my head. Now they gave me paper-made books, removing the books when I finished them. I liked the e-reader more. It took up less space, I could reread things when I wanted, there was a lot more to read and the e-pages didn’t smell so old and moldy.

  I stared out the window watching the cars and trucks below and the other skyscrapers across from me as I touched a leaf of my hoya plant. They’d given the plant to me five days ago and already it was growing so wildly that it was creeping across my windowsill and had wrapped around the chair I’d put there. It had grown two feet overnight. I didn’t think they’d noticed. No one ever said anything about it. I was so naïve then. Of course, they’d noticed. The plant was not a gesture of kindness; it was just part of the research. They’d never cared about me. But Saeed cared about me.

  Saeed is dead, Saeed is dead, Saeed is dead, I thought over and over, as I caressed one of my plant’s leaves. I yanked, breaking the leaf off. Saeed, my love, my only friend. I crumpled the leaf in my restless hand; its green earthy smell might as well have been blood.

  Yesterday, Saeed had seen something terrible. Not long afterwards, he’d sat across from me during dinner-hour with eyes wide like boiled eggs, unable to eat. He couldn’t give me any details. He said no words could describe it. He’d only held my hand, pulling at his short dark brown beard with his other.

  “What does your heart tell you about this place?” he’d earnestly asked.

  I’d only shrugged, frustrated with him for not telling me what he’d seen that was so awful.

  “Behiima hamagi. Xara,” he muttered, glaring at one of the Big Eye. He always spoke Arabic when he was angry. He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “You read all those books . . . why don’t you feel rebellion in your heart? Don’t you ever dream of getting out of here? Away from all the Big Eye?”

  “Rebellion against whom?” I whispered, confused.

  “I’d even settle for being a mild speciMen,” he muttered. “They are fucked up, but not that fucked up. At least the Big Eye let them go out and live normal lives like normal people.”

  “Mild speciMen aren’t special,” I said. “That’s why the Big Eye release them out there. I’d never want that, I like who I am.”

  He laughed bitterly, touched my cheek and lightly kissed me, looking deep into my eyes. Then he sat back and said, “Eat your jollof rice, Phoenix.”

  I tried to get him to eat his crushed glass. This was his favorite meal and it bothered me to see him push his plate away. But he wouldn’t touch it.

  “I can live without it,” he said.

  Before we returned to our separate quarters, he asked for my apple. I assumed he wanted to paint it; he always painted when he was depressed. I’d given it to him without a thought, and he’d slipped it into his pocket. The Big Eye allowed it, though they frowned upon taking food from the dining hall, even if you didn’t plan to eat it.

  His words didn’t touch me until nighttime when I lay in my bed. Yes, somewhere deep deep in my psyche I did wish to get out of the tower and see the world, be away from the Big Eye. I did want to see those things that I saw in all the books I read. “Rebellion,” I whispered to myself. And the word bloomed from my lips like a flower.

  • • •

  They told me the news in the morning, during breakfast-hour. I’d been sitting alone looking around for Saeed. The others, the woman with the twisted spine who could turn her head around like an owl, the man with long-eyelashed expressive eyes who never spoke with his mouth but always had people speaking to him, the three women who all looked and sounded alike, the green-eyed idiok baboons who spoke using complex sign language, the woman whose sweater did not hide her four large breasts, the two men joined at the hip who were always randomly laughing, the woman with the lion claws and teeth, these people spoke to each other and never to me. Only Saeed, the one who was not of African descent (aside from the lion lady, who was Caucasian), spoke to me. Well, even the lion lady was part-African because her genes had been combined with those of a lion.

  One of my doctors slid into the seat facing me. The African-looking one who wore the shiny black wig made of synthetic hair, Bumi. They always had her deal with me when I had to experience physical pain, so I guess it made sense for them to send her to break upsetting news to me, too. My entire body tightened. She touched my hand, and I pulled it away. Then she smiled sympathetically and told me a terrible thing. Saeed hadn’t drawn the apple. He’d eaten it. And it killed him. My mind went to one of my books. The Bible. I was Eve and he was Adam.

  I could not eat. I could not drink. I would not cry. Not in the dining hall.

  • • •

  Hours later, I was in my room lying on my bed, eyes wet, mind reeling. Saeed was dead. I had skipped lunch and dinner, but I still wasn’t hungry. I was hot. The scanner on my wall would start to beep soon. Then they would come get me. For tests. I shut my eyes, squeezing out tears. They evaporated as they rolled down my hot cheeks, leaving the skin itchy with salt. “Oh God,” I moaned. The pain of losing him burned in my chest. “Saeed. What did you see?”

  • • •

  Saeed was human. More human than I. I’d met him the first day they allowed me into the dining hall with the others. I was one year old; I must have looked twenty. He was sitting alone and about to do something insane. There were many others in the room who caught my eye. The two conjoined men were laughing hard at the sight of me. The idiok baboons were jumping up and down while rapidly signing to the woman with lion claws and teeth. However, Saeed had a spoon in his hand and a bowl full of broken glass before him. I stood there staring at him as others stared at me. He dug the spoon into the chunks of glass, scooped out a spoonful and put it in his mouth. I could hear him crunching from where I stood. He smiled to himself, obviously enjoying it.

  Driven by sheer curiosity, I walked over and sat across from him with my plate of spicy doro wat. He eyed me with suspicion, but he didn’t seem angry or mean, at least not to the best of my limited social knowledge. I leaned forward and asked what was on my mind, “What’s it like to eat that?”

  He blinked, surprised. “‘What’, she asks. Not ‘Why’.” He grinned. His teeth were perfect—white, shiny, and shaped like the teeth in drawings and doctored pictures in magazines. Had they removed his original teeth and replaced them with ones made of a more durable stuff? “The taste is soft and delicate as the texture is crunchy
. I’m not in pain, only pleasure,” he said in a voice accented in a way that I’d never heard. But then again, the only accents I’d ever heard were from the Big Eye doctors and guards.

  “Tell me more,” I said. “I like your voice.”

  He’d looked at me for a long time, then he smiled and said, “Sit.”

  After that, Saeed and I became close. I loved words, and he needed to spill them. He could not read, so I would tell him about what I read, at least in the hours of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sometimes, he grumbled with annoyance when the current series of books I was reading were romance novels or what he called “woman tales,” but he couldn’t have disliked them that much because he always demanded to hear these stories from beginning to end as well. “I like the sound of your voice,” he said, when I asked him why. He may have, but I believe he liked the stories, too.

  Saeed was from Cairo, Egypt, where he had been an orphan who never went hungry because he could always find something to eat. He ate rotten rice, date pits, even the wooden skewer sticks of kebabs; he had a stomach like a goat. They brought him to the tower when he was thirteen, six years ago. He never told me exactly how or why they made him the way he was. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that we were who we were, and we were there.

  Saeed told me of places I had never seen with my own eyes. He used the words of a poet who used his tongue to see. Saeed was an artist with his hands, too. He had the skill of the great painters I read about in my books. He most loved to draw those foods he could no longer eat. Human food. Portraits of loaves of bread. Bowls of thick egusi soup and balls of fufu. Bouquets of smoked lamb and beef kebabs. Oniony fried eggs with white cheese. Plates of chickpeas. Pitchers of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Piles of roasted yellow corn. They allowed him to bring the paintings to mealtime for everyone to view. I guess even we deserved the pleasures of art.

  Saeed could survive on glass, metal shavings, crumbles of rust, sand, dirt, those things that would be left behind if human beings finally blew themselves up. They tasted delicious to him. Nevertheless, eating a piece of bread would kill him as eating a giant bowl filled with sharp pieces of glass would kill the average human being.

  The first time he kissed me, we were sitting together at dinnertime. I’d just finished my own meal of fried chicken curried rice. I was telling him the chemical makeup of the flakes of rust he was eating and speculating on how green rust would probably taste different to him. “I think you will find green rust tastier because it’s more variable and complex.” We were sitting close, a habit we’d gotten into when we’d realized that my natural body temperature was usually warm and his was cool.

  He took a deep gulp of water from his full glass, turned to me, cupped my chin and kissed me. All thought of iron oxide and corrosion fled my mind, replacing it with nothing but amazed shock and the soft coolness of his lips.

  “No affected behavior,” we heard one of the nearby Big Eye bark and immediately we pulled away from each other. I couldn’t help the smile on my face. I had read and watched many stories where people kissed, this was nothing like what I imagined. And I’d never thought it would happen to me. Saeed took my hand under the table and my smile grew bigger. I heard him snicker beside me. And I snickered, too.

  Everyone in the dining hall stared at us. I remember specially the idiok baboons pointing at Saeed and me, and then signing energetically to each other. “They’re just jealous,” Saeed whispered, squeezing my hand. I grinned, my stomach full of unusual flutters, and my lips felt hot. Even if it were from within, it was the first time that I had ever laughed at the Big Eye.

  Now, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. He took my apple and he ate it. He took my apple and he ate it. He took my apple and he ate it. The Big Eye explained that then his stomach and intestines hemorrhaged and Saeed was dead before morning. I couldn’t stop stressing about the fact that I never got to tell him what was happening to me. I was sure that it would have given him hope; it would have reminded him that things would change. I wiped a tear. I loved Saeed.

  • • •

  As grief overwhelmed me for the first time in my life, I pressed a hand against the thick glass of my window and longingly looked down at the green roof of the much shorter building right beside Tower 7; one of the trees growing there was in full bloom with red flowers. I’d never been outside. I wanted to go outside. Saeed had escaped by dying. I wanted to escape, too. If he wasn’t happy here, then neither was I.

  I wiped hot sweat from my brow. My room’s scanner began to beep as my body’s temperature soared. The doctors would be here soon.

  • • •

  When it first started to happen two weeks ago, only I noticed it. My hair started to fall out. I am an African by genetics, I had the facial features, my skin was very dark and my hair was very coily. They kept my hair shaved low because neither they nor I knew what to do with it when it grew out. I could never find anything in my books to help. They didn’t care for style in Tower 7, anyway, although the lion lady down the hall had very long, silky, white hair and Big Eye lab assistants came by every two days to help her brush and braid it. And they did this despite the fact that the woman had the teeth and claws of a lion.

  I was sitting on my bed, looking out the window, when I suddenly grew very hot. For the last few days, my skin had been dry and chapped no matter how much super-hydrated water they gave me to drink. Doctor Bumi brought me a large jar of shea butter, and applying it soothed my skin to no end. However, this day, hot and feverish, my skin seemed to dry as if I were in a desert.

  I felt beads of sweat on my head and when I rubbed my short short hair, it wiped right off, hair and sweat alike. I ran to my bathroom, quickly showered, washing my head thoroughly, toweled off and stood before the large mirror. I’d lost my eyebrows, too. But this wasn’t the worst of it. I rubbed the shea butter into my skin to give myself something to do. If I stopped moving, I’d start crying with panic.

  I don’t know why they gave me such a large mirror in my bathroom. High and round, it stretched from wall to wall. Therefore, I saw myself in full glory. As I slathered the thick, yellow, nutty smelling cream onto my drying skin, it was as if I was harboring a sun deep within my body and that sun wanted to come out. Under the dark brown of my flesh, I was glowing. I was light.

  I pulsed, feeling a wave of heat and slight vibration within me. “What is this?” I whispered, scurrying back to my bed where my e-reader lay. I wanted to look up the phenomena. In all my reading, I had never read a thing about a human being, accelerated or normal, heating up and glowing like a firefly’s behind. The moment I picked up the e-reader, it made a soft pinging sound. Then the screen went black and began to smoke. I threw it on the floor and the screen cracked, as it gently burned. My room’s smoke alarm went off.

  Psss! The hissing sound was soft and accompanied by a pain in my left thumbnail. It felt as if someone had just stuck a pin into it. “Ah!” I cried, instinctively pressing on my thumb. As I held my hand up to my eyes, I felt myself pulse again.

  There was a splotch of black in the center of my thumbnail like old blood, but blacker. Burned flesh. Every speciMen, creature, creation in the building had a diagnostics chip implanted beneath his, her, or its fingernail, claw, talon, or horn. I’d just gone off the grid. I gasped.

  Not twenty seconds passed before they came bursting into my room with guns and syringes, all aimed at me as if I were a rabid beast destroying all that they had built. Bumi looked insane with stress, but only she knew to not get too close.

  “Get down! DOWN!” she shouted, her voice quivering. She held a portable in her hand and her other hand was in the pocket of her lab coat.

  When I just stood there confused, one of the male Big Eye guards grabbed my arm, probably with the intent of throwing me on the bed so he could cuff me. He screamed, staring at his burned, still-smoking hand. The room suddenly smelled like cooked meat. �
�You’re not going anywhere,” Bumi muttered, pulling a gun from her pocket. Without hesitation, she shot me right in the leg. It felt as if someone kicked me with a metal foot and I grunted. I sunk to the floor, pain washing over me like a second layer of more intense heat. I would have been done for if someone else had not shouted for the others to hold their fire.

  Thankfully, I healed fast and the bullet had gone straight through my leg. Bumi said she’d shot me there knowing the bullet would do that; I believed her. If the bullet hadn’t gone straight through and remained in my flesh, I don’t know what would have happened with my extreme body temperature. Bumi knew this more than anyone.

  One minute I was staring with shock at the blood oozing from my leg. Then the next, I blacked out. I woke in a bed, my body cool, my leg bandaged. When they returned me to my room, the scanner was in place to monitor me, since I could not hold an implant. They replaced my bed sheets with heavy heat-resistant ones similar in material to my new clothes. The carpet was gone, too. For the first time, I saw that the floor beneath the carpet was solid whitish marble.

  Bumi took me to one of the labs soon after that. This would be my first but not last encounter with the cubed room with walls that looked like glass. Maybe they were thick clear plastic. Maybe they were made of crystal. Or maybe they were made of some alien substance that they were keeping top secret. I knew nothing. I didn’t even know what the machine was called. They simply put me in it, and it heated up like a furnace. I felt as if I were on fire and when I started screaming, Bumi’s voice filtered in, smooth like okra soup, sweet like mango juice, but distant like the outside world.

  “Phoenix, hold still,” she said. “We are just getting information about you.”

  I believed her. Even through the pain. I always believed everything they told me. The space was just large enough for me to sit with my long legs stretched before me, my back straight, my palms flat to the surface. The smooth transparent walls warmed to red and orange and yellow, so it was like being inside the evening sun I watched set every day.