The Rosewater Insurrection

by Tade Thompson

  Alyssa does indeed have a MyFace page. Her implant logs her in, so she doesn’t have to remember any passwords. Mark wants to hang about, but she banishes him from the bedroom. The shimmering plasma display sharpens and she sees the avatars of her “friends” turning in 3D in a digital antechamber.

  Alyssa Sutcliffe has three hundred and fifteen friends. She sees her own avatar, smiling, frivolous, not caring about memories or husbands that she does not recognise.

  A lot of inane updates scroll over the screen continuously. What kind of society is it that causes people to be so isolated that they need the approval of strangers?

  My child, pretending to be disembowelled!

  My holiday snaps!!!!

  This rapist met his accuser and you won’t believe what happens next.

  This is weird.

  Who is really running Aso Rock?

  Rosewater should become an independent city state like the Vatican City—“like” if you support.

  Nigeria’s best dressed strippers.

  Alyssa scrolls through her friends. Nothing. Not even déjà vu. She looks at her private messages. The first one that catches her attention is a borderline flirty exchange with someone called Eni Afeni. She scrolls to the beginning of the chat. It has been going on for over a year.

  Eni: what’s important is what you think about it.

  Alyssa: I know that’s what it’s supposed to be but he’s my husband. Why would I spend so much time and money on my hair if he doesn’t notice?

  Eni: I would notice.

  Alyssa: I know you would.

  And:

  Alyssa: it’s really about fit. As long as you can feel it going in, and the fella knows what he’s doing, it’s usually all right.

  Eni: boys don’t believe that. It’s all about size. Stop me if this gets too personal.

  Alyssa: lol! No, itz all right. Now you have me curious.

  Eni: me too. My curiosity is visible.

  Alyssa: er…

  Alyssa cringes at this and most of the rest of it. There is a lot of whingeing about Mark, although the conversation never stays on him. Reading it, she feels discomfort at the cheesiness of some of the messages, but no matrimonial guilt at all, and she does not recognise this Alyssa person who is chatting.

  Alyssa: I don’t care so much for political feminism. I fight my own corner. I work hard and go home to my family. I don’t need to prove I am a Woman ™. Why would I even have to?

  Status update: I love my husband!!! (Shrill desperation in the declaration. Warning to keep competitors off? Reminder to Mark if he’s listening? Weak.)

  Status update: New phone firmware update. I heart the new interface!

  Status update: Sorry, I can’t be bothered to vote if Aso Rock is only concerned about the well-being of black citizens. I count too! I pay tax.

  Status update…

  Alyssa massages her temple.

  There are no private messages with Mark. What did he mean, I’m not going anywhere? Were they having problems?

  That feeling of nausea overwhelms her and she crosses to the bathroom, but nothing comes up. It is a nausea of the soul, rather than the gut. She is trying to purge something spiritual. She feels a wave of sadness, of grief. She sees Alyssa in the mirror and this is not who she is.

  “Fuck you,” she says.

  The reflection mocks her by being Alyssa.

  She looks at her hands, examines each one, each line, the ridges on her fingertips, the lines. She twists her rings and sees the tan line and damaged skin underneath. She scratches at it, but it’s too tough.

  Nausea.

  This isn’t real. This is not real at all. None of it.

  She snatches a bottle of perfume and throws it at the mirror, shattering her reflection. She picks a large shard and draws it along her forearm skin, shocked by the pain, but waiting for the blood to well up.

  Not real.

  The blood seems red enough. She holds the wound open, allowing it to pool and spill over the sides of her forearm on to the floor. It is not too deep, though it still hurts. There is no pulsating fountain of blood, just a stream. She can’t hear the drops on the floor, but she is aware of them. The nausea is gone, though.

  She rolls up a wad of tissue and staunches the wound, then ties some fabric around her forearm to keep it in place. She rummages and finds a better dressing, then she cleans her bloody fingerprints and the blood on the floor. The wound stings, protesting each movement, but Alyssa doesn’t mind. She puts on a long-sleeved pullover.

  She is at least sure of one thing: she is not this Alyssa Sutcliffe person.

  This gives her distance, and makes it easier to read the MyFace page. The conversations with Eni are jejune, and teach her nothing. Some friends talk about various get-togethers over the years. Alyssa laments to a friend called Ester about Pat’s accent. Apparently the little girl speaks like a Nigerian, with a local accent, while Alyssa’s people are from Dorset, England.

  Ester: But she IS Nigerian, Ali. How else do you expect her to speak?

  Alyssa: I don’t know. I expected my words to rub off on her.

  Ester: You’re outnumbered. Mark speaks like that too. Besides, what’s wrong with speaking like a Nigerian?

  Alyssa: Nothing. I don’t know. I just… you want your child to sound like you.

  Later she hears light laughter from downstairs and she tiptoes to the top of the stairs to listen. Mark’s low-pitched voice says something and Pat giggles in a higher pitch. She descends one stair and sits on it, watching father and daughter. Pat is on his lap and Mark has his arms around her and is whispering into her ear. They look immeasurably happy and Alyssa feels warm for a minute.

  She could… stay. Live with this family, pretend to be Mrs. Alyssa Sutcliffe, wife, mother, admin manager. It is a good family, a good life. Their badinage shows it.

  She shrugs the impulse off. That would be a lie, and whoever she is favours the truth. She will get to the reality of the matter, no matter what it takes.

  The blood has seeped through her makeshift bandage, and she goes to change it without alerting the Sutcliffes below.

  Chapter Nine

  Aminat

  Sunday morning finds Aminat up early, trying to remember training drills from her competitive sports years. The sun is not shining, but there is enough reflected light from the dome to give everything an orange hue.

  The road in front of the house is empty. Aminat stretches, lunges, cranes her neck, then sets off on a jog. After two minutes she sprints for fifty metres, then slows again for another two minutes, then repeats the sequence. Track and field required the ability for explosive bursts of speed and Aminat still hears the voice of her coach telling her that jogging was shit as training for a jumper. Aminat is a hybrid athlete who does well in long jump, triple jump and high jump. No use in pole vault. Her body is her instrument. Any introduction of a foreign object like a pole or a relay baton and she freezes up. Not in combat, though. Aminat does surprisingly well in fire teams, or on her own, which is odd for a person who is almost a pacifist. Working for S45 makes her realise that she is capable of killing a person, and she is not quite comfortable with that, but since she now works in a lab, it’s unlikely to happen.

  Back in Queen’s College in Lagos Aminat is a legend, still holding the school records in several events. Some national attention, but life and her brother Layi got in the way of Olympic glory.

  She runs past a few constables who wave at her. Sometimes she thinks Rosewater has the most polite police force in the world. Of course, she lives in Atewo, which is relatively affluent with regular and wide roads, clean streets, good houses, no overcrowding. It is a far cry from the slums of Ona-oko or Kehinde. Aminat does not suppose the police are polite over there.

  She stops and stretches. She has been going for half an hour. The sun is out, cocks crow and church bells ring. The big boss bell comes from the cathedral. It is the newest cathedral in Nigeria and modelled after the Lagos cathedral. It is
interesting to have a Norman Gothic building in what is sometimes called The City of the Future.

  Aminat tries not to think of space. The coming journey frightens her, but that won’t stop her from doing it. She has never studied the Nautilus too closely, but she plans to. She is about to start running again when her phone rings. It’s the lab.

  “Yes?” She has a frisson of fear, knowing nobody would call her on Sunday if it were not important.

  “Boss,” says Olalekan, “you have to come in, like right now. Priority one.”

  Aminat hangs up and summons her car. She sends a text to Kaaro in code so that he will know that she is safe, but at work. She jogs on the spot, picturing the car starting, the garage door opening, tracking initiation locked on her ID and counting down the metres. She can hear the whine of the engine.

  The car stops in front of her and she gets in. “Path lab,” she says, and the car leaps forward. She allows auto-drive to take her north-west, on the outskirts of the city, where buildings are flatter and the dome looks like a massive deformed soap bubble rising out of a child’s toy brick city. Aminat spends the time wiping sweat and secure-texting Femi, priming her for something urgent.

  The lab is in a non-descript two-storey building, petesi in Yoruba, which is standard for most S45 outposts. There’s a Goodhead store next door. Aminat takes manual control and parks a few houses down, then jogs. She knocks, is allowed in by a dozy guard, then descends to a sublevel.

  Olalekan is crouched over a workstation, clad in his ever-present Yankees cap. A hulk of a man, Olalekan is a gentle giant of prodigious intelligence who is somewhere on the queer spectrum, although he has never been clear about it to Aminat. His eyes are soft, like the rest of him. He lacks angles of any kind, and bent over like this makes him look like an oversized pastry.

  “I am underdressed and sweaty, Lekan. Tell me you have a very good reason for this.”

  “I do,” says Olalekan, in his infinitely patient voice. “Seventy-nine per cent.”

  “What?”

  “There is a human being, a female, walking about in Rosewater, with a xenoform count of seventy-nine per cent. It came in two minutes before I called you.”

  “Make room.” Aminat takes over the terminal and examines.

  For eighteen months Aminat’s team has been using samples from routine blood tests to get xenoform count estimates. This way they can not only observe the effects and pace of the slow take-over, they can map the progression in individuals and cross-reference it geographically. Before today the highest Aminat has ever seen is forty-three. There has never been a subject with more xenoform than human cells. This level, seventy-nine, is unheard of.

  “It’s a mistake,” she says. “An artefact.”

  “No mistake. I had them run it again a few minutes ago.”

  “Why are you calm?”

  “I’m not calm. This is me excited.”

  “It would help if you spoke a little faster, or you were fidgety.” Aminat phones Femi Alaagomeji.

  Before Aminat can say anything, Femi asks: “Who the fuck is Alyssa Sutcliffe?”

  Aminat has no time to change. The car auto-drives to the address Olalekan fishes out of the hospital database. Trust Femi to know about the subject before Aminat.

  “Who the fuck is Alyssa Sutcliffe?” Aminat sucks her teeth. “Who. Is. Alyssa. Sutcliffe? Fuck should I know?” She counts off pages that Olalekan hashed together for her.

  Alyssa Briony Sutcliffe, née Matlock. Born in London, England. Age, thirty-seven. Husband, Mark Anthony, thirty-two, artist, late of Pretoria. One child, Patience Adeola.

  Alyssa Sutcliffe is a naturalised Nigerian. Health émigré to Rosewater. Multiple sclerosis. Works as admin manager for Integrity Insurance.

  Mark Sutcliffe’s xenoform levels are twelve. Patience’s levels are not detectable as she hasn’t had blood tests on the system. Whatever caused the spike in Alyssa is not environmental at first glance.

  Aminat stares at her picture. Pretty brunette white woman. The car takes a sharp turn and Aminat drops the photo. She takes the opportunity to look out of the window. Suburbs. Identical streets, identical rows of houses. Identical decorative palms every one metre of road. How do these people tell themselves apart?

  The area is mostly an expat enclave, and in a place as multicultural as Rosewater, that is saying something. Some white children playing on their yards stop and stare at the black woman driving by.

  “Arriving at destination in three, two, one… mark,” says the auto-drive.

  “Manual,” says Aminat, and drives past the address, makes a U-turn and parks. No activity in the house. “Scan security nearby.”

  “Pending… pending… done.”

  “Report.”

  “Standard measures in all domiciles.”

  “Indwelling?”

  “No indwelling. No vehicle signature.”

  Nothing unusual, then. They’re out. It’s Sunday. Might have gone to church like good little Anglicans.

  Who the fuck is Alyssa Sutcliffe and why is she fucking up my space trip?

  Femi would not be sending her to the Nautilus until this is sorted out.

  There’s no point going off into parts unknown if we’ve got this mystery woman who is mostly alien running about. How do we know what exactly she is? Is she a human becoming an alien or an alien becoming a human?

  I don’t know, ma’am.

  Neither do I, but I’d like to know. I don’t like not knowing and I don’t like mysteries. Do you like mysteries, Aminat?

  No, ma’am.

  Then find out who this person is and bring her in for testing. Don’t worry, aburo, the Nautilus will still be there when we have Alyssa Sutcliffe.

  By which she means when Aminat has Alyssa. The inside of the car starts to smell of dried sweat. No corner shops in this suburban hell, no spare clothes in the car, no deodorant.

  Aminat starts to itch.

  The absolute wrong attire for a stake-out.

  Time passes.

  The radio tells her about a boot print found on a road in the banking district in Alaba. It has crushed the asphalt to make its impression. The boot print appeared overnight and has caused a panic. People worry about the size of it. They interview some people. What giant made the print? Is this a new alien invasion like the doomsayers predict?

  Aminat changes the channel. It’s a hoax. Like a crop circle. That’s why they picked the banking district on a Saturday night. No witnesses.

  Something occurs to her and she calls Olalekan.

  “Boss?”

  “Lekan, I’m on Nkrumah Street. Do a search for me. Any blood tests done in this area. Check the xenoform levels, see if any are particularly high.”

  “We’d have picked them up,” says Lekan. He sounds like he is eating.

  “I’m thinking relatively high. Close to the forties. It wouldn’t have triggered an alarm on an individual level. I want to see if there is a cluster of high percentages in this area.”

  Lekan takes half an hour.

  “Negative.”

  “No high levels?”

  “No high levels. In fact, there are low levels and many undetectables.”

  Odd. But at least this means Aminat does not need to cordon off the area.

  On the old classic channel she listens to the Drifters, “Under the Boardwalk.”

  She tries not to fall asleep.

  Chapter Ten

  Bewon

  Bewon cannot believe his eyes. He actually rubs them to be sure, and he is aware of how ridiculous that gesture is.

  He is standing in the doorway to the kitchen after a restful night’s sleep. He is looking at the plant, lush growth projecting from his sink to a height of about six or seven feet, with a thick trunk—too large to be called a stem—and spines that look like crossbow quarrels. It even has a flower, pale pink, shooting off to the left of the main structure.

  “Jesu…”

  How did it grow so big so fast? What is it roote
d in? Bewon has no science, but a part of his brain knows that plants need sunlight. How did it thrive in the dark?

  He steps in and hears a splash. There is water on the floor of the kitchen. He can hear a faint hiss from underneath the sink and he knows it is a leak.

  “Olodumare, ki ni mo se?” Lord, what is my sin?

  Bewon leaves his apartment barefoot and walks to the end of the corridor. He peeps out of the window at the garbage cans, half expecting a new growth of the cuttings from last night, but there is no such thing.

  He returns to his flat and takes his grandfather’s cutlass from the closet. He stomps into the kitchen and swings at the trunk. The reaction is instantaneous, like a Touch-me-not, only more violent. Even as the laceration in the trunk oozes sap, the leaves shudder, and a dust rises into the air. Bewon sneezes, inhales, sneezes again, drops the cutlass.

  He feels dizzy. A shimmering light coats every object in his field of vision, changing their tones into primary colours, like a cartoon. He places a hand on the wall for support, then slides into the water, not minding the wetness. His hands glow with a celestial light.

  “Uh.”

  He lies down, facing the ceiling. There is a pattern up there, like a map of a country. It is fascinating, even though Bewon knows it is the result of a leak from upstairs. It glows too, like everything else.

  He feels like he is going to be sick. Bitter bile seeps out of his empty belly.

  He drifts for a time, then a sharp pain causes him to cry out. The angle of the shadows has changed and Bewon knows hours have passed. The pain was in his foot.

  He sits up and screams. The entire kitchen is filled with foliage. The pain was an adventitious root probing his left toe. It oozes blood, but without conviction, like an afterthought. The root shrivels back, out of sight. His right foot has… he is not sure what he sees. His right foot is gone, replaced by a complex root system. There is no pain, but Bewon feels something liquid and cold coursing through his body. He cannot feel his right leg, and the numbness is advancing.

  He tries to scramble away, to drag his body by the hands and his one good leg. This triggers excruciating pain in his hip joint and a kinetic reaction in the plant. More of that… pollen fills the air, and as he breathes it, he knows peace again. The glow returns.