The Rosewater Insurrection

by Tade Thompson

  Lua spends over an hour talking about the technical details of such an operation, but Anthony tunes out and speeds through the memory.

  “We lost contact within nanoseconds of the transfer. Most likely the human form is unable to tolerate the Homian mind, too primitive. Perhaps we should have just had the xenoforms build bodies identical to our own anatomy.”

  Anthony knows why. The indigenes’ bodies have adapted to the planet. It makes sense to use anatomy that suits the environment they are trying to conquer. He also knows there was fierce debate among Homian philosophers about this. The transferred individuals would be Homian res cogitans but not res extensa, a concept still faulty in itself. The xenoforms are classified as biological machines, thus a body built of them would be a machine. A Homian mind inside a machine was… unclassifiable. Worse, the machine would be built on a human template, alien, unhomian. Some said this was the price of interstellar survival, that this is what assisted evolution looks like.

  Lua said, “Before we transfer billions of Homians to Earth we must be absolutely sure the process works. We cannot continue until we know what happened to the first one. Footholder, you must find the body, analyse it, and send all the data back to me.”

  Anthony comes out of the trance. There is more technical stuff about the hows and whys and what to do when presented with the body, but it is all tucked away in his memory, retrievable.

  It is the first time he has been called a footholder. He feels the vastness of Wormwood stirring underground, unhappy because Lua declined to use a specific noun. Anthony, Wormwood, Wormwood, Anthony. One? The same? Human? Homian?

  Anthony opens his eyes and his lover is standing over him, concerned. She smiles; he does not.

  “I must go now,” says Anthony. “Goodbye.”

  He dies.

  Excerpt from Kudi, a novel by Walter Tanmola

  Before Emeka could say anything, Christopher strode in with a grin and turbulent light in his eyes. Lord save us, he had an idea.

  “Get the car,” he said. “We are off to pay the corrupt and corrupt the gullible.”

  He didn’t have to tell Emeka where to point the automobile. The eruption of the dome was on all feeds all the time. Self-drive wouldn’t work because people were barred from going to that destination. It was the first thing authorities would disable in a crisis.

  Normally a two-hour trip, the roads were clogged with people like them who wanted to see what an alien looked like. Christopher spent the trip cutting blue typing sheets into small rectangles. Then he wrote numbers on each one with a biro he found in the trunk. When the car could no longer move, Christopher said to abandon the car and continue on motorbike taxis. Emeka resented leaving his mother’s car, but did not complain. A mile out, there was no movement, not even the two-wheel kind. The sky darkened with more drones than either of them had ever seen.

  On foot, Christopher insinuated himself and sucked Emeka along with his gravitational field. At the cordon, he negotiated with the security man and they both saw the alien structure close-up. It was like Satan reverse-fucked the Earth and left his penis poking out, pulsating with eldritch engorgement. The thing had veins, skin and warmth. Christopher smacked Emeka on his back.

  “We’re not here to sight-see. Start selling tickets.”

  He handed Emeka a batch of the blue rectangles and they started the work. They gave a cut to the Civil Defence guys, but still made a tidy sum over the next few weeks.

  Then Emeka met Kudi.

  Chapter Four

  Alyssa

  Alyssa repeats herself. “I need to see a doctor.”

  “Still feeling poorly? I’ll book an appointment for Monday.” Mark drops the car keys on a cabinet.

  “No, not an appointment. I need to see a doctor today. Now.”

  He moves to kiss her but she turns her face to the side. She regrets it, but the action is involuntary. She feels no affection for him.

  “Okay. Why? I mean, I’ll take you to the hospital, Alyssa, but you don’t look sick. What’s wrong.”

  “Isn’t that between me and the doctor?”

  “I’m your husband.” Mark sounds offended, hurt.

  Alyssa sighs. “I don’t know that.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know that you’re my husband.”

  Mark laughs, but it is interleaved with nervousness. “Stop playing, Al.”

  “I’m not. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you.”

  “Al—”

  “Just listen. I don’t remember you, Pat or this house. I know we’re Sutcliffes because I read documents. I see pictures of you and me together, but I don’t remember when we took them.”

  “Alyssa, stop this right now. It isn’t funny.”

  “No shit, it isn’t funny. I’ve lost my memory.”

  Mark is a lanky sort with shaggy blond hair. His eyes are small but expressive, and he looks stricken. “Do you remember last night?”

  Alyssa shakes her head.

  “You got back from work—”

  “What kind of work? What do I do?”

  Mark falters. “You work in an office, for Integrity Corp. You’re some admin, logistics bigwig. Everybody depends on you.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Mark exhales. “Okay, you don’t. You got back from work—”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m an artist.” He sits down in a lounge chair opposite her and run his hands over the arms. “You know, you chose the fabric for the furniture. I fucking hate it.”

  Alyssa glances at the armrest, but does nothing.

  “You got into a fight with Pat about her room and homework.”

  “Mark, are you trying to get me to snap out of this? Think maybe if you tell me things it will shock me into remembering? Because I’ve tried all that. Take me to a hospital, pretty please.”

  He leaps up, and she flinches when he touches her arm.

  “Hey!” Mark says.

  “I’m sorry. I just… I’m anxious and all my feelings are jumbled up.” She looks from her wedding ring to his, back to hers.

  “I’ll bring the car round.”

  The doctor does not make eye contact. He types on a keyboard and watches the screen. “And nothing like this has ever happened before now?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember, remember?” says Alyssa.

  “The question was directed at your husband, Mrs. Sutcliffe.” He does not sound offended or even amused at the weak joke.

  “No, she’s been fine until now,” says Mark. He slouches in the chair, but that may be his height and the average-sized furniture in the room.

  “Drugs?”

  “No. Some wine, some beer.” Mark tries to hold her hand, but Alyssa removes hers from the armrests and folds them in her lap. A part of her feels the gesture is for his own comfort more than hers.

  The doctor is black, paunchy, with the beginnings of male pattern baldness, and seems coldly efficient or efficiently cold. He retrieves her medical history from her implant. He examines her, checking her pupils, her eye movements, her swallowing, the symmetry of her smile, the centrality of her tongue, her body sensation, her gait, her ability to perform a number of silly-looking alternating hand gestures.

  Afterwards he exhales just like Mark did before.

  “Mrs. Sutcliffe, I can’t find any evidence of a neurological disorder and you seem in good general health. I’m going to take blood, urine and stool samples from you, and send you for a brain scan, but I do this to be thorough. I do not expect anything to be abnormal.”

  “Something is abnormal, Doctor,” says Alyssa.

  “I know.” His body language has become dismissive. He wants them to leave. “But the abnormality isn’t in your body.”

  Alyssa leans her forehead against the car window and watches the world outside.

  This is Rosewater; this is where they live. It is a rowdy conurbation slapped against the periphery of a two-hundred-feet-high dome. It
does not look planned. The streets are tight, with a tendency to break off or bend at awkward angles without warning. The houses slapdash, of varying ages and design, the entire city an afterthought. It teems with people, most of them black Nigerians, but there is a healthy mottling of Arabs, South Asians, Russians and a myriad other nationalities. Road signs struggle to control and make sense of the movements of the population and the central auto-drive system. The air is constantly criss-crossed by the path of drones like birds who do not fly in tandem. The real birds seem shy, upstaged, lurking on rooftops and shitting everywhere.

  The dome is a blue beacon with a tortuous pattern on its surface and spikes growing out in every direction. Drones and birds and other uncertain flying organisms have impaled themselves on these extrusions, their corpses hanging like kebabs for the vultures who keep it clean.

  Alyssa sees all this and knows it, recognises the information. She sees the alterations of the reconstructed, the sluggish movements of the occasional reanimate, and she does not feel disturbed.

  Mark keeps a running commentary about whatever they pass. He is nervy and cannot look her in the eye. Alyssa has been quiet.

  “I think we should keep this from Pat,” Mark says.

  “All right.”

  “I just don’t think we should worry her.”

  “I said, all right.”

  “How are you feeling, Al?”

  “How do you think? I feel confused. That doctor was basically saying it’s all in my mind.”

  “Hey, he was an asshole,” says Mark. “What a bedside manner.”

  “True, but his attitude is not my problem. My problem is me. What’s wrong with my head?”

  Mark takes his hand off the wheel and tries to stroke Alyssa’s arm, but she shies away.

  “You’re not making this easy for me,” says Mark. “I’m trying to be supportive here, but you act like I’m some sex offender.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Alyssa. But she is not. She has no feelings for this man, this concerned, beautiful man. She does not feel attracted to him; she does not wish to be kissed by him. She does not wish him to touch her. Even the idea of making contact makes her skin crawl. How can she be married to him?

  “Are you angry with me?” asks Mark.

  “No.”

  “Then what?” An edge creeps into his voice.

  Am I under any obligation to love this man? To be nice to him?

  Something lands on the passenger-side window. It seems to be made entirely of two flat wings attached to a thin spine. It looks like a living kite, about a foot wide. Alyssa can see delicate ribs supporting the wings from one side to the other, and blood coursing through thin vessels. On one end of the spine there is a small enlargement with two purple blobs that might be eyes.

  “What’s this?” Alyssa asks.

  “It’s an aeolian. You don’t remember aeolians?”

  It does seem familiar in some way, but not in and of itself. Alyssa traces the spine, which is aligned diagonally across the glass. She sees tiny vestigial legs moving about uselessly and the occasional ripple of the wings.

  And.

  And another insect in another place and another time. Alloy metals and polymers articulated into the metallic body, a purely functional design with no attention to aesthetics. Too many limbs attached. Curiously silent. Dark surrounding. Light projected from eyes that run all along the body and at the tips of many of the antennae. Like fibre-optic cables.

  And.

  It’s gone. The aeolian peels off the window and Alyssa watches it rise on air currents, flapping maybe twice, light and free. It leaves a thin film of mucus on the window, warping the edges of the city viewed through it.

  With the lull in the traffic a street hawker brings roasted corn towards Alyssa, but thinks better of it when the cars begin to move.

  “You seem far away, Al,” says Mark.

  “I am far away, in more ways than one,” says Alyssa.

  “Well, come back. We’re about to pick up our girl.”

  Mark pulls into a driveway and Pat bounds out of the house, leaden with colourful gifts and buoyed by childhood. The vehicle recognises her and opens the driver’s side back door. Alyssa doesn’t quite know how to deal with the child, but smiles. Pat does not look at her, but immediately begins to speak on the phone. Alyssa glances at Mark.

  “This is normal,” he mouths.

  Alyssa pulls down the visor mirror and surreptitiously examines the child. Her hair is short, her eyebrows bushy, but she looks like a smaller version of the face Alyssa sees in the mirror, except more animated, more alive, more confident. Pat has the absolute certainty of the loved child that she is the centre of the universe, and that she will be safe for all time. Alyssa wonders how long it will be before the girl is disappointed.

  This does not feel like my child.

  When they arrive Pat rushes inside the house, still deep in conversation. Mark picks up the debris of her party. “Anything?” He taps his temple with an index finger.

  “Nothing,” says Alyssa. “I got a flash of a science fiction film, I think. I don’t remember you or Pat.”

  Down the street of identical houses Alyssa sees a woman staring. She is black and stands so still that Alyssa is not sure if the woman is alive or a statue. Then the woman spins and walks away in the opposite direction. Does she know Alyssa? It makes her feel dizzy.

  “I have to lie down,” says Alyssa.

  Alyssa goes over everything that has happened since she rose in the morning. She remembers all of it, waking up, seeing Mark beside her, panicking on hearing Pat, fleeing to the bathroom, going to the doctor, the sting of the needle when they took blood samples, the hum of air conditioning, the pimples on the face of the scanner technician, the almost sexual nature of her lying supine on a slab entering a circular scanner, the drive home, the woman watching her, all of it.

  There is nothing wrong with her memory. She has been testing it by memorising lines of text and serial numbers of devices she finds in the house. She remembers everything she encounters, but nothing before today.

  She feels nausea, but her belly is empty and there is to be no relief from vomiting. It is a strange nausea that she feels not only in the pit of her stomach but throughout her body, down to her fingertips. Even without her memory she knows this is not how nausea feels, but also that there is no word for what she really feels, which is a need to expel not just food, but everything.

  She takes a deep breath and screams.

  Chapter Five

  Aminat

  “Peace be unto this house, bitches!” says Aminat, holding a bottle of vodka in each hand at shoulder height. She shakes her shoulders in a pantomime of the limbo.

  Bea snatches the bottles, gives Aminat a half-hug and immediately resumes the creation of punch. “You took your time, girl. I started to think you got left for dead somewhere.”

  “Aminat!” squeals Efe. She kisses the air and slides off the strap of Aminat’s handbag. “Drop this, and come with me. Fisayo had her boobs done.”

  Bea rolls her eyes. “Let the woman land first, before you start your amebo.”

  Efe links arms and leads Aminat deeper into the room. “She used one of those lab-grown implants, from her own DNA. It feels natural and she says there aren’t any scars.”

  “Isn’t she an identical twin with—”

  “Yes, o. Even her husband can’t tell them apart.”

  Bea snorts. “I’m told her husband hasn’t been telling them apart.”

  They burst into laughter and the evening begins.

  “Where’s Ofor and Little Ofor?” asks Aminat.

  “They went to the village. Mother-in-law,” says Efe.

  “Haba. You no follow?”

  “No, please leave me. I hate the woman. She’s always like, ‘Efe, this is how you should chop ata rodo’ and ‘Is that how long you’re going to fry plantain?’ Abeg.”

  They catch up on their lives as much as possible, and drink. It is Efe’s
house and outside the bay windows the north ganglion is visible. Tonight it flickers and emits the occasional bolt of dry lightning. They stare at it and Aminat sees the blue light reflected on her friends’ faces. Efe has a rounded face and light skin, shorter than the others, garrulous but good natured. Bea is skinny, full of angles and sarcasm. Aminat has known them for ever and loves them. Meeting up every few weeks is the only thing that keeps her sane sometimes. She wishes she could tell them that she is going into space, she needs to tell them, but she cannot. Instead, she just accepts that if she had told them, they would have supported her. She knows this, and is calmed.

  The conversation goes on, but Aminat only superficially engages. She participates, but is removed from it all. She does not drink much, and only half-listens to Efe’s description of all the home security innovations her husband has installed. It’s more like a hobby of Ofor’s, trying to stuff as much new technology into the property as possible. Aminat just enjoys the cherubic smile on her friend’s face when she talks about her husband’s silliness and the joy in her voice when her son comes up in conversation.

  On the way home she fields calls from her mother complaining about her father. She listens like a dutiful daughter and hangs up after what she deems a reasonable time. She drives up to Atewo with the dome glowing bright blue in the night. Closer to street level the darkness is dotted with pinpricks of light, not from houses, but from droppers. This is the reason nobody builds on this stretch of highway. Droppers are xenoflora that try to mimic human form in order to draw prey in. The shapes look ridiculous in the daytime, like cardboard-cut-out people with bio-luminous eyes. They are surprisingly effective at night with either children or people from out of town. A curious person would find themselves bathed in corrosive fluid and slowly consumed. The mayor has been talking about exterminating them for years, though his wife’s charity says the opposite.