“Mmuo!” I wailed. This gentle, powerful man who’d understood matter so profoundly that it allowed him to pass through it. How could they kill him? Why? What could he and those children possibly have done to them? He was my brother. I whimpered and then keened loudly, straining every part of my body, my being, willing my spirit to flee. It didn’t, I lived. I quieted, looking at him. I calmed. But I did not cool. Let the Big Eye find me. What could they do that they had not already done? See what I will do to you all, I thought.
I jumped up and flew off to find Saeed. I never looked back. If I looked back, I knew Mmuo would have been even less substantial. His body had felt soft. The ocean was taking him back.
And the Big Eye were taking my Saeed. There they were, on the road. He was surrounded by ten of them, two were shoving him into one of their trucks. All armed. He was bleeding. He was looking down. Defeated.
“Saeed!” I screamed, hovering high up. Phoom! My body caught fire, my wings became flames. I felt beautiful.
I saw him look up and then terror crossed his face. “Phoenix! No!” He reached his hand out to me and then made a fist and clasped it to his chest. “Not you! Don’t let them take you! Slip! Slip away! Oof!” One of the Big Eye kicked him hard in the belly, sending him into the truck.
They pointed their guns at me. I don’t know why they always pointed guns at me. I was beyond their guns. Numb pathetic evil people.
I could kill them all.
Make them all ash.
But Saeed. My Saeed. “I survive,” he always said.
I slipped.
CHAPTER 24
Who Fears the Reaper
Seven.
Seven.
Seven.
Seven deadly sinners. None of them would die. They were like me. Long staying. But they were not like me. I wanted to be free and free the imprisoned, they wanted to be free to enslave the world. I could hunt them down, one by one. Or I could do something worse. I was beginning to see that I was meant for something deeper and bigger.
I streaked across the sky. I thought of the alien creature I’d set free that set the others free in Tower 1. Then it had streaked into the sky, off the earth, into space. It could fly like me. But it wasn’t like me. I would never leave this earth, not like that.
In warfare, there is a military strategy called “scorched earth.” It is when you destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy as you move through or pull out of their territory. Scorched earth is heartless, it’s violent, it’s merciless, and it usually involves fire. One of its methods, the strategy of destroying the civilian food supplies in an area of conflict has been banned under Article 54 of Protocol I of the 1977 Geneva Conventions. But this is only enforceable by countries who have ratified this protocol. Only the United States and Israel have not. In this way, I am very American.
• • •
New York
I remember it well, as an old man remembers the deepest folktales that pleased him most as a child. As the brother of a Yoruba king remembers the burdensome responsibilities that he narrowly escaped. My memory is clear as the waters of the Caribbean’s most virgin beaches. My memory is so unpolluted that I can see it happening now. It is happening now. In the bright sky of New York. I burn. Wings of flame. But it is too bright for the people below to really notice me. I burn without needing fuel. My body is like a sun. I give off no smoke.
First the buildings that stand in the risen waters like rotten mangrove trees. I fly low and the water around me boils. The water-logged spoiled skyscrapers that still stand ignite as I pass. I catch glimpses of people who step out on roofs, up to open windows and up from boats. They look down, across, up at me as I pass. Then they burst into ash.
The waters below the buildings boil and steam. Water is life. I am only doing what I am made to do. Taking life. I will take it all. I am a hurricane of death and destruction. I am villain.
I fly past the drowning buildings. Swamps. The grasslands. Networked with roads and trees. I am flying faster now. This is not where I want to be. I see cars and trucks run off the road as they overheat. Some people burn. The tops of trees burst into flame. By now, there are news drones flying with me. I can see them. They remain three miles away. A safe distance from my corona of heat. I am on the side of skyscrapers, the screens of portables, computers, jelli tellis. Those who do not see me in real life, see me in hyper life. What are they saying about me on the newsfeeds? Are people downtown smart enough to flee? Or will they sit there watching me on their small and giant screens, mesmerized as if I am just a character in an action film? But then again, how can I blame them? They created me.
I cannot think straight.
Kofi’s parents and siblings were taken to Tower 1. His father had the ability to feel through metal. He was a “goldsmith,” a glorified name in Ghana for blacksmith, and this ability made him good at his job. He passed it on to Kofi’s sister and brother. They all died in Tower 1 of lead poisoning when the Big Eye tried to fuse their nerves with cybernetic limbs. That Kofi’s mother was taken to Tower 1 was all the records said about her, other than Deceased. I read about them in the Library of Congress.
The Big Eye surrounded us. I am a terrorist.
Berihun and his Ethiopian restaurant. Surviving in a strange soulless land. What would they become? What was his and his wife’s point of existing when all they were to this world was dust? Ash. Filth.
Mmuo’s nanomites should have been in me, but I’d burned them away. Would I have still been able to hear him if I hadn’t burned them away? Mmuo, my brother, I do not care what the genetics say. Mmuo is dead.
Saeed. He had died. Then he had lived. Then they took him from me. They are always taking from me. The Big Eye. This country. The superpowers. The seven men who drank HeLa’s blood and now will never die.
I slip.
All things come from the land, Ani. This was why the alien seed fell and burrowed into it. It’s best to start at the beginning. So not Allah. Not Krishna. Not God. Not Nature. Ani. Mmuo spoke of her to me. Ani is the spirit of the earth. The spirit of flesh. When I look deep into my DNA, I see that I know her story. I simply have to speak it from my heart and soul. Weave it like a spider weaves a web on a warm humid evening when the night is about to fall upon it.
Here’s how the story goes:
Thousands of years ago, when the world was nothing but sand and dry trees, Ani looked over her lands. She rubbed her dry throat. Then she made the oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds. Her lands breathed and then danced. Water is life. And from the oceans, she took a deep drink and was refreshed. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘I’ll produce sunshine. Right now, I’m not in the mood.’ She turned over and slept. Behind her back, as she rested, human beings sprang from the sweetest parts of the rivers and the shallow portions of the lakes. Some of them walked out of the ocean onto the beaches.
Human beings were aggressive like the rushing rivers, forever wanting to move forward, cutting, carving, changing the lands. As much time passed, they created and used and changed and altered and spread and consumed and multiplied. They were everywhere. At the apex of their genius, one group of humans built seven mighty towers. Within these towers they performed impossible feats, and as time expanded, the towers grew to impossible heights in reputation, invention, and experience.
The exclusive human beings of this group who ran the towers had the permission of civilian human beings to do whatever it took. They all hoped their towers would be high and amazing enough to prick Ani and get her attention. They built juju-working machines. They fought and invented amongst themselves. They bent and twisted Ani’s sand, water, sky, and air. They took her creatures and changed them. They sought to make themselves just like Ani: immortal, all powerful manipulators of earth’s lands.
When Ani was rested enough to produce sunshine, she turned over and was horrified by what she saw. She reared up, tall and impos
sible, furious. Then she reached into the stars and pulled a sun to the land. I am that sun. I am Ani’s soldier. I do her will. Ani has asked me to wipe the slate clean.
I reappear in the middle of Times Square. I stand on the flat portion of a jagged splintered surface. The air smells of flowers and smoke, but mostly flowers. The surface below me is damp beneath my bare feet. Beside me is a small forest of wooden splinters. I kneel down and touch the flat surface, the wood.
And that’s when I feel it. Deep in my chest. It’s a small ball, hot, like the sun. It spreads out. Near my heart, shoulder, breast. I kneel there, with my eyes shut. I am on the stump of The Backbone, its fallen cleaved carcass beside me, its width reaching thirty feet above me.
I see red. Yellow. Orange. Fire.
I open my eyes in time to see the small camp of Big Eye a few hundred feet away. They had expected me, but they didn’t expect this. Except one. The woman who comes out of a small tent set up right beside the tree’s massive stump. She is short and dark-skinned, born and raised in Nigeria, craving American agency. She is beautiful and wears the black uniform of the Big Eye because she is one of their most dedicated officials. She has pursued me across the globe, found me, lost me and has now found me again. Miserable woman, she walks toward me, her gait sure; she no longer limps. Maybe both of her legs are cybernetic. She holds up a hand that is made of wires, metal, reinforced plastic. She has more in common with the Ledussee than the Big Eye. Misguided woman.
Before the other Big Eye turn around and before the woman named Bumi can reach me, all of them are engulfed in a corona. From wet living sin, bone, flesh to ash. And metal and plastic, also to ash. All things in the city are in chaos, people staring at screens, crashing cars, cowering, praying, cursing, fleeing.
I am the sun. Ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Ani has pulled me to the earth. To wipe the slate clean. This is how it happens. New York’s prodigal daughter returns home.
• • •
Not just New York. I scorch the earth. Yes, I can do that. I am that. Phoenix Okore blew across the earth. She burned the cities. Turned the oceans to steam. She was the reaper come to reap what was sown. Wherever those seven men lived. Let them die. Let everything die.
Let that which had been written all be rewritten.
CHAPTER 25
Saeed
They had this technology for a long time. It is smaller than a shoebox and just as light as an empty one. The instructions are simple, too, the touch screen guides you in voice commands and with pictures. It is not made for scientists. It is truly a recorder. It is made to pull and store information, not to offer its services only to the elite educated. I cannot read very well, so this was good.
The memory extractor was in the remains of Tower 2. It was not a tower that we ever researched, so I do not know what they specialized in. Phoenix would have known. It was in the place that used to be Miami. I travelled there on foot, a year later, after I had decided to leave the dead lands of the United States and find my way back to Africa. I found it in the ruins by chance. If you believe in chance.
Do you wonder how I got there when there were no more airplanes and the only people alive were dying or living in seclusion, stunned that they had somehow survived what looked like the sun exploding. How did I get to Africa? I walked. The oceans had dried up.
I was fine. I was made to survive this, remember? I ate the sweetest sand I’d ever tasted as I crossed the grave that used to be the sea. I reached what used to be Senegal four months later. In that time, I didn’t see a soul. Not one person, not one bird, not one insect, and certainly not one fish. Phoenix was serious. It was about halfway through that I sat down and brought the memory extractor from my backpack.
I let it pull Phoenix’s memory from the one thing of hers that I still had. Her golden red feather. It still glowed softly in the dark. All I had to do was press the device to it. The red light on the screen went on, along with a word that I could not read. Then it grew warm and in a soft woman’s voice said, “Extracting The Phoenix Okore, SpeciMen, Beacon, Slave, Rogue, Fugitive, Rebel, Saeed’s Love, Mmuo’s Sister, Villain.”
These were how she saw herself. Her various incarnations. All right there. How did this device know? Mmuo was always talking about this stuff in his skin called DNA. He said this stuff was what carried all that we would be. Did DNA carry memory, too? Was it reading her DNA? I don’t know. I will never know.
The device beeped and then said, “Extract sent to database 80255.” It beeped. “Protocol 7 is now in place. Extract bypassed from 80255 to protocol 7, The Great Book. May God help your soul.”
I laughed. I could not listen to the extract because it had been sent somewhere else. I laughed again as I thought, Maybe it was sent somewhere in Ghana. They had contact there, who’s to say they did not have some computers placed somewhere underground or even on a satellite? Just in case the world went to shit as it had, thanks to the woman I will love forever. And ever. Maybe they placed it there knowing that the shit would start elsewhere. Yes, this feels right. Regardless, Phoenix’s words were out there somewhere. Alive.
I put the memory extractor to my flesh. The red light goes on. Words that I cannot read flash on the screen. It grows warm. Then the woman’s voice said, “Extracting . . .”
CHAPTER 26
This Was Woman, Herself
Sunuteel was squinting. Saeed’s brief extract had been a footnote at the end of The Book of Phoenix. It was in Arabic, a language that was like a stripped down version of Sunuteel’s native tongue, Nuru. Listening to it gave him a headache, but that wasn’t what was making him squint. The sun was rising in the distance, chasing away the cool air. He’d been listening to Phoenix tell her story all night, finishing with the part where Saeed spoke. But listening all night wasn’t what was making him squint either.
His head pounded, his jaw ached and there was a tinny sound deep in his head. He squinted more deeply, staring ahead. Beyond his stretched achy legs. Past his sand encrusted feet. Past where the red virtual words had flashed before his eyes, as Phoenix spoke the memories she’d have never spoken to anyone. Through the opening of the cave. And out into the desert. About thirty feet away.
“Ani protect me,” he whispered. “She is here.”
Not only could he feel her heat, he could smell smoke, though nothing burned. Not now. Not anymore. The burning was all done. Now she danced before him, a bird woman or orange red yellow light. Just like his wife’s vision. Phoenix had appeared to his wife first, but Phoenix decided to give him her story. He was the chosen one. She had danced there throughout the reading of the last portion of her story—when she’d spoken of how she scorched the earth.
Sunuteel had wanted to look away. He’d wanted to clap his hands over his ears. Phoenix was tearing his world apart with her words. Everything he’d thought he knew was wrong. Ani had not pulled a star to the earth when the Okeke people, his people, had crossed the lines of morality. That story had been made up. Made up by this Phoenix.
Sunuteel whimpered. How could this be? So who were his people? The Okeke? According to Phoenix, the Okeke weren’t only the people of the land, the dark-skinned wooly haired people on the sun. The Okeke were everyone, Nuru, Okeke, and even these whiter skinned limper haired people he’d never heard of. His people weren’t born to suffer for the sins of those Okeke who came before him. Stories, all stories.
Saeed.
He bent his legs. Slowly. The joints popped, but he was quickly able to bring them to his chest. She was gone. She’d stayed to hear her story then she’d flown off to wherever spirits flew when they were no longer interested. He got up and walked outside, into a world that was no different to him. He was not cursed. He’d been raised to believe he was, that all his people were. He felt lightheaded. He felt light.
“Saeed,” he said aloud. “The Seed.”
He’d been taught by the very man who had loved the wo
man who ended the world as it was known. Women brought life but the most important origin stories spoke the real truth, which was that women more often brought death. The Book of Phoenix was full of this truth. If she had been a male, she’d have controlled her anger, channeled it into righting the world’s wrongs, and probably not sprouted troublesome wings. Woman, Sunuteel thought, recalling a poem or a bit of literature he’d once heard and always thought described the other sex so well. “This was woman herself, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive worries, her impetuous boldness, her fussings, and her delicious sensibility”.
This woman’s story was real. It was close to Sunuteel in ways that astonished him. The existence of his teacher of English, The Seed, once known as Saeed, brought Phoenix’s tale directly into his life. He frowned, unable to resolve this fact. Unable to reject it or find a way to smooth things over so that he was comfortable with the information and his world didn’t feel so backward. A refreshing idea popped into his head.
He’d read it in reading class and even had a copy of the essay still on his portable. Yes. An essay from over a hundred years ago, translator and author unknown. He pulled it up on his portable and the passage in the second paragraph instantly caught his eye.
“As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.”
The Book of Phoenix Page 23