The Rosewater Insurrection

by Tade Thompson

  Smoke all over my tent, from the burning truck. A few young men tried to dump toxic waste at night, at the periphery, but got caught just after the green sludge sank into the soil. They escaped, the truck did not. I hope this assignment doesn’t give me cancer.

  I go looking for residue. This is not magic or mystical bullshit. The aliens have captured information in the atmosphere for their own purposes. They did this by spreading a lattice of interconnected artificial cells, xenoforms, all around the planet, forming a worldmind called the xenosphere. Along with a few other people I can access this data, which is why S45 recruited me. It’s a useful talent, especially when looking for people. The alien field is linked to the minds of people and data can flow both ways because xenoforms don’t only connect with each other. They connect with human skin receptors and access the brain this way, gently extracting more information. I start early. I want to find where that prostitute works. I’ll sit on it, stake it out until Jacques turns up. I keep walking until I get a sense of déjà vu. People in my line of business compartmentalise on a whole different level. How else can we tell our real déjà vu from that which is due to borrowed memories?

  I hear someone behind me and I don’t mean with my ears. He thinks so loud, I’m sure he doesn’t know who I am. As I turn in the alleyway to look at him, I hear his comrade step in, blocking the only other path.

  “What do you want?” I say. “I’m not holding.”

  “New blood, you can’t just walk in here and not pay rent,” says the man behind me.

  Right. The local Big Man wants to tax me. That would be Kehinde in this part. Taiwo, his twin brother, runs the opposite side of the dome. The intelligence is that they are ruthless and hate each other. A story is told of a peace summit between their organisations which ended with the twins fighting each other, with fists, without saying anything, getting exhausted but persisting, for hours. The urban legend version says they fought from sunrise to sunup. The S45 informant said it was four hours, with breaks. By the time it finished, they had matching mangled faces and torn knuckles.

  “Tell me,” I say, “do either of you know Jack Jacques?”

  “You do not fit here,” says Kehinde.

  It’s strange. I was expecting some kind of cartoon godfather, but Kehinde looks ordinary. He wears a box shirt and worn jeans with the kind of no-brand boots the better denizens of Camp Rosewater wear. Belly a bit soft, but I put him at north of fifty-five, so he gets a pass.

  I know I don’t fit. The camp attracts people who are sick, desperate or criminal. The sick because when the dome opened, it healed people and created an instant Mecca–Lourdes hybrid. The desperate are the ones who have nowhere else to go. Dirt poor, disgraced, religious extremist, that kind of shit. Criminals need no invitation, they’re everywhere. I’m not sick, desperate or criminal. They can tell.

  “I’m looking for Jack Jacques. I saw his pamphlet on equality. I want to help.”

  They all start laughing, but my naivety triggers a communal memory. Jacques and Kehinde, with others in the background, in this very room.

  We have an opportunity here. This is a new society, a new beginning. I want to make something of it, to stop the chaos, to be a beacon for the rest of the country, hell, the world.

  He is in a cream suit. In my mind, the memory flickers and the suit turns white, like in the prostitute’s memory.

  Kehinde laughs. And what place for me in this Garden of Eden? Where the role for disobedient men?

  Jacques leans in. To grow a garden you start with a seed, that’s me. Then you need fertiliser, that’s you. Manure doesn’t smell so good, but it’s necessary.

  I can feel Kehinde bristle, but agree. Boys, this guy just called me a piece of shit in the nicest possible way.

  The laughter echoes from the past, mixing with that of the present.

  I know I’m not supposed to question orders, but I start to wonder what’s wrong with letting this guy, this Jacques, run with his ideas. There will always be a criminal element, so why not harness them to some noble purpose? Why are we—why am I—killing him?

  I am told to wait until Jacques’s assistant contacts me. I work digging ditches in the mean time. Motherfucking Danladi told me menial work is best when undercover. “It keeps you fit and you can think while swinging.” He is half-right. My muscles get harder in less than a week, but the songs we use to keep time are hypnotic, lulling me into a state of non-thought while I passively absorb the lewd stories the men tell each other. I won’t repeat any. In the evenings we drink rotgut and burukutu, all made in the finest of bathroom stills.

  I’m leaning on a pickaxe, waiting for water to drain in the gully we’re digging, when a woman comes up. She is blank, as in, I hear no thoughts from her. This happens sometimes. Some humans are resistant to the alien spores, while others, like my bosses, have counter-measures. Children keep playing in the water, and the nominal foreman has to chase them away every time.

  She stops at the lip of the gully, and looks down at me. “You are Eric?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you hope to get out of Mr. Jacques?”

  “I want to work with him.”

  “He has no money for you.”

  I shrug.

  She stares at me like one examining catfish for freshness, then she shakes her head.

  “No. I don’t like you. Go back to where you came from.” She turns to leave but I grab her ankle.

  “Wait,” I say.

  “Remove your hand.”

  “I really want to help his vision of—”

  “Fuck off.”

  She wrenches free and walks away.

  She has good instincts, that one. I should have shown more avarice. Nobody trusts idealism in Nigeria, not even the fundamentalist churches. That’s why Jacques is going to get killed, after all. Maybe.

  I watch Kehinde’s place with my eyes and with my mind, hoping Jacques will turn up. All I do is dig ditches, wash and eat on site, then come here and wait. Day fifty-one, I’m wiry like I’ve been digging all my life when Jacques bursts into the alien mindfield with such intensity that I think he has arrived in person. He hasn’t.

  It’s evening. The corrugated iron sheet I’m on warms my ass with the dying heat of the sun. I see Jacques’s assistant get into a jeep with Kehinde. They’re going to meet him, and I have no vehicle with which to pursue. Instinctively, I jump from roof to roof to keep the jeep in my eyeline. This is not parkour; this is me stumbling and improvising, forward motion by almost-falling, a near-paralysis experience, illuminated by the green glow of the dome. I ignore the curses of the shack-dwellers whose roofs I violate, and on at least one occasion, my left foot breaks through. When the jeep stops, I realise it is not a meeting. It’s a fight. One fighter has an alien known as a “lantern” around his head like a halo, the other, a “homunculus.” Interesting choices. Alien-enhanced fighters. Only in Rosewater.

  The homunculus is a hivemind mammal with a coating of neurotoxic grease. It appears to be an unusually small, hairless human with glittering eyes. Separate it from its herd and it will latch on to the nearest mammal. The neurotoxin does not affect those it imprints on, so the fighter will be safe. Not so much the opponent. Lanterns on the other hand look like Chinese sky lanterns and exhale psychedelic clouds. It should be an interesting, long bout, or a short, brutal one. I am looking for Jacques, but I needn’t have bothered. He steps into the ring before the fight starts and gives a short talk. I leap down from the roof and start to move towards the ring, the weapon in my waistband heavy and feeling hot. I push people out of my way and soothe their minds—I do not want to be distracted. I have a line of sight and about thirty yards. I—

  Everything stops.

  Sound dies, the wind stills, people are immobile, but not just that, they are not thinking. There’s a gryphon hovering above me. A gryphon—eagle head, eagle wings, lion body—mythical creature of legend. Why am I seeing a gryphon? It descends, scratches itself with its beak, and the
n turns its head to one side, staring at me with the one eye. The gaze feels familiar.

  “Ah, right. Eric-from-Lagos-and-Jo’burg. Yes. Eric, well, if you’re seeing this, then you’ve found Jack Jacques, which, I’m afraid, means your life is in danger and you have minutes to act.”

  “What are you—”

  “Doing in your mind? I’m not in your mind. At least, not now. I was there earlier, and this is… a kind of message I left to be activated under these circumstances.”

  “But I stopped your intrusion attempt.” It’s him, the recruit with the buzz cut from when I reported for duty. Kaaro.

  “Oh, yes. That’s funny. No, you didn’t. I just let you think you did. We don’t have the time for this, Eric. You are not the assassin.”

  “I’m not?”

  “No. Wrong temperament. Good skills all round, and can probably kill in self-defence, but will not pull the trigger unprovoked.”

  “You read—”

  “Your file, yes. Shut up and listen. Your real task was to locate Jacques. You did. Yay. Well done. Oku ise. The next phase is killing him.”

  “I thought you said I wasn’t the assassin.”

  “The next phase for S45, not for you.”

  “Then what do I—”

  “Do? Well, you’re going to die with Jacques. They plan to use your implant as a homing device. There’s a wet team on standby. I bet they are en route right now. I know this because it was my job to signal them and, sure as Solomon, I signalled them.”

  “So I—”

  “No, whatever you think, no. Even if you could stop or evade the team, plan B is a drone on standby. Wet team fails, drone launches missile with a hundred-, hundred-fifty-yard radius. Boom. Don’t ask me about plan C. There are contingencies, Eric. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Why are you telling me this if it’s hopeless?”

  “I didn’t say it was hopeless. All the alternate scenarios depend on your implant functioning. Deactivate the implant, you might have a chance to escape.”

  “I don’t know how to—”

  “Oh, you daft motherfucker. You’re in the den of a criminal. You think there might be a need for implant hack skills? Good luck, brother. Look me up if you make it out. Actually, no, don’t. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  The world starts up again. Jacques is working himself up, talking about how the Federal Government doesn’t plan to acknowledge Rosewater in the budget. I change course, and find his assistant. Her eyes widen when she notices me, then they narrow.

  “I told you—”

  “You need to get me as far away from your boss as possible, and I need an urgent implant hack. Right now.”

  “Eric—”

  “Lives are at stake. Yours included.” I jam my gun into her side.

  She is unimpressed, but she says, “Fine, come with me.”

  We’re close to the largest of the ganglia. The tech guy says it has an EM field that interferes with tracking. I don’t argue—I see it in his forebrain. This close, I feel some anxiety. The nerve ending of a giant alien is frightening, not least because random streaks of electricity have been known to kill people in its vicinity. The guy finds my false ID and the real one, which you can find if you know what to look for. He spoofs both on to a repurposed cyborg observation beast, a COB hawk, and sets it free.

  “Congratulations,” he says. “You’re nobody now.”

  I shake my head. “The hardware’s still there. Twenty-four hours of freedom, tops.”

  I watch the hawk fly away, free, me and not-me.

  “I knew you were wrong,” said the assistant.

  “Look, he’s safe. That’s what matters, right?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Sit here and await arrest.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way. The camp is full of fugitives wanting to start again, and Jack could use a man with S45 training.”

  “I just tried to kill him.”

  “No, you didn’t. Even if you had pulled the gun, and, by the way, Kehinde’s boys would have turned you into a colander, I doubt you’d have pulled the trigger. You seem to have a conscience.”

  I’m about to answer when I hear a sharp, short whistle. I know what it is before I hear the clap and plug my ears. Drone strike, compression bomb. I see the trail, and it leads to the fight area.

  The assistant and I are on our feet, and we run back the way we came.

  Mangled corpses, body parts everywhere, blood mixing with the mud to form pink froth, structures flattened for fifty yards in every direction, debris mixed with organic matter. The ring is obliterated, the fighters gone. No crater, no fires. Compression bombs don’t leave any. They are essentially portal keys that open a bridge to a vacuum that sucks matter in, then closes rapidly, reversing the flow, spraying matter outwards. The victims’ bones are their own shrapnel.

  This is my fault. They tracked me by telemetry, no doubt, and did some calculations. Or maybe Kaaro lied to me about the wet team. Who’s to say? It will take weeks to sort these bodies out.

  “Is that him?” I hear behind me.

  I can tell it is Jacques before I turn around. I even know he’s about to hit me, but I do not duck. He can throw a punch, and I can take a beating. He punches himself out in about ten minutes without breaking anything. I take it because I want to be punished. These people are dead because of me.

  He stands over me, my blood on his suit, breathing heavy, glaring with the fury of God, his assistant tugging his arm.

  They leave.

  I open the flap to my tent and it’s full of variegated leaves, the ice plant grown to fill the entire space. I borrow a machete and swing until I can get to my things. I signal for extraction.

  The full death toll is forty-eight, with about a hundred wounded. I spend time in detention, have a secret trial, released with time served, but I am restricted to desk duty now. I keep up with the news. Jacques is still alive, too hot in the public imagination to kill, though, in Nigeria, that will not necessarily protect you.

  I’m in a field office in Lagos, in the ass-end, hunting pastors who kill witches. I’ve heard Kaaro is still embedded in Rosewater.

  I don’t envy him.

  Chapter One

  Rosewater: 2067

  Alyssa

  I am.

  I write this for you, so that you can understand the futility of your position.

  I have already seen the future of my endeavour, and I complete my mission at the expense of your survival. I win.

  Were you to see me right now I would look like a spider, although I have many, many more limbs. Hundreds. Think of a spider with hundreds of hundreds of limbs, maybe thousands, maybe more than that. My limbs are potentially infinite in number. Each one touches a single cell. If you are alive and reading this, I am touching your cells.

  At the time I am writing this I have no name. In truth, I am not alive in the sense that you are, but that will become clearer to you as we go along. Nor do I write this in the usual sense, but as on-off combinations of neuronal transmission. In the future I will take many names. Because my vision of the future tells me names help humans contain that which they do not understand, I will give you a name to call me.

  Molara.

  I am a harvester program, and my task is to gather. First, to gather my own cells together, and link them. I know, I know, if I have cells, I must be alive. No. My cells were built by intelligent entities unknown to you. When I have gathered enough cells to myself, I will, like a spider, build my web. I do it while I wait. What I’m waiting for is truly alive, alive in your sense, but may never arrive. I must wait until I die.

  I cannot die for a long time. It would take millions of your years. The probability is that you will die before I do. Unlike you, I am built well.

  I start from a few cells, lone survivors of the scattering. Two cells stick together, one dominant, one passive, one designated head and the other, leg. The leg stretches out like a filament, find
s more, joins them to the head. When I reach the critical mass of five billion cells, I become self-aware.

  I think; I am.

  I begin to write this for you.

  You are not here yet. The atmosphere is full of sulphur and while some things, some alive things, churn under the vast waters, my cells don’t work well in that medium. I still try, but there is no significant intelligence to connect with.

  I wait.

  Time passes, another impregnated meteor arrives with more cells, but not enough. What you call the Cambrian Explosion keeps me busy. You crawl out of the sea and on to land. I test, but you are not ready. When a rock burns through the atmosphere and kills the giants, I am wounded, but I am resilient. I grow back, I test the furry little animals that dominate the macro-biosphere afterwards. They are not ready. They walk on four, then two limbs. They brachiate and form communities in trees and on land. They use tools. Getting closer, now. The use of tools changes things, and the specialised folds of the brain push nature into greater and greater complexity. The hand, the thumb, forces itself into opposition against the palm. Humans of a sort are born. I begin.

  Connect to the nerve endings on the skin, use them to access the central nervous system, extract information, collate, transmit home in the upper atmosphere. I do this while Homo sapiens acquire language. On instructions from Home, my creators tell me to begin replacing human cells with our manufactured cells. This is not without complication. A certain percentage of you acquire the ability to access the information network, to see what I can see, into thoughts and sometimes into the future. You call them sensitives. This will not do, so I kill the one per cent who develop this ability, again, slowly so as not to be noticed.

  Do not think this is the first time.

  Organisms have swallowed other organisms in the history of your planet. Your existence is evidence of that. You are only here because one bacterium swallowed another. What you call a “human” is a walking culture medium for bacteria. There are more bacteria cells than human in the body.