The Rosewater Insurrection

by Tade Thompson

What if she malfunctions and kills you while you sleep?

  What if something inside her, her power source or some chemical, gives you cancer?

  What will your friends say?

  Can a robot really be a person?

  Speak, Walter, the silence has gone too long.

  But no words come, so I place my hands on her cheeks, and I kiss her on the lips.

  Religion is a problem here. The African Traditional Religion folks break curfew all the time, particularly the masquerades, especially oro. The Abrahamic ones, especially the more tradition-bound, just go the way they’ve always gone, ritual keeping them safe. Some of the evangelicals try to run retreats and those mass prayer meetings where they Jedi-push each other down en masse. They point-blank refuse the curfew at first, but one particular bombardment gives them a bloody demonstration of what God’s will in the matter is. Since that time, evangelicals are more manageable.

  The Machinery—are they even a religion?—can’t make up their mind if they are Nigerians or from Rosewater, because each identity would require different duties. Their debates go on for weeks on end, and because their services are open to the public, I attend one.

  In case you’re not from here, the Machinery are people who seek tranquillity by removing emotion from their lives. I’ll attempt an explanation, but I think they have to speak for themselves and don’t deserve this slapdash explanation from an old reprobate like me. They posit that all of humankind’s problems stem from emotion. People of the Machinery act predictably, suppress any expression of emotion, act like machines as much as possible. They have meetings where they share “programming” and “re-synchronise” with each other. They are only found in Rosewater and sociologists have not been able to explain what it is about our microenvironment that breeds them.

  They have names, but refer to each other by number. If someone not of the Machinery speaks to them, they answer to their names, not numbers. They make excellent employees, hardworking, loyal, dependable. All of them, male, female, trans and cis, sport the same short hairdo.

  Hold your amateur psychology 101 bullshit about this section being due to Lora Asiko. Just shut the fuck up about that. I was always going to do this part.

  A woman speaking—her name, 1638853—says, “Transformation. When Rosewater was part of Nigeria, we were Nigerian citizens, bound to obey the laws of that country. The very moment Rosewater became a breakaway state, we became citizens of that city state. Our responsibility is to our new country. We build this country up. We fight at the front, those of us who are able-bodied. Those less able or less inclined to combat look after the vulnerable. This much is clear.”

  152381 says, “I disagree. Rosewater is neither country nor city state. Right now, it is in a state of rebellion. This is an insurrection. There is no real government, and the legitimate government of our country, Nigeria, is reasserting itself. We are Nigerians until the fate of this city is known. We have to go with the last or current passport.”

  It is a strange meeting for me, although Dahun notes down the people who insist on being Nigerians. There is none of that murmuring of dissent or assent. No hecklers. It’s the most orderly gathering of humans I’ve ever seen.

  Humans want to be machines; machines want to be human.

  I can’t help that thought. Unlike these motherfuckers, I have actual emotions.

  Rough day.

  The prototype replacement inverter is about to be tested when a high-altitude bomb obliterates it, causing electricity feedback. Forty dead, a hundred bystanders injured, and the idea of turning on the lights takes a massive setback. Jacques is superhuman and just says something like, “Let’s get back to work reprinting the components.” He gives solo applause to his people. “Well done, well done. You can do this. Go.”

  The engineers want a break, but it isn’t going to happen. They lose a lot of good workers, but they go back to the grindstone.

  Scant rumours of rats swarming like locusts, eating everything in their paths, including small children, although I doubt the last part.

  I try to read an old copy of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart but I can’t get into it, can’t get past the title, which is part of the Yeats poem “The Second Coming,” a work that always freaks me the fuck out, especially the last line.

  What slouches towards Rosewater?

  I don’t know which is more frightening, living in Rosewater without knowing what the leadership is thinking or living in the bosom of the mayor’s team and knowing that we face the abyss here, propped up with a brutal detail of mercenaries and the charisma of the leader. Jacques takes setback after setback in his stride. He is a true leader in that sense, although if you ask me, his declaration of independence was a bit premature.

  I get to spend some hours with him towards the end of my trial week, shadowing as it’s called, which is what it says on the tin: I follow him everywhere. I don’t know if it’s for my benefit, but Jacques takes a lot of risks. He goes out of his safe bunker to speak to stitched-together crowds in a form of rally. The cheering is lacklustre, but he persists in that upbeat way he has about him. He spouts Yoruba proverbs. He promises a swift rebuild as soon as he can come to an accommodation with Nigeria. He says investors are lining up to work in Rosewater, that his phone is constantly ringing.

  His beard is Castro lite, and he is not as dapper as he could be, but Jacques is canny. The bunker has ample opportunity and resource for him to groom. If he looks scruffy it is deliberate. He may even wish to channel revolutionaries dead and gone. Most people cannot fathom how Machiavellian Jacques can be because… well, you feel at ease in his presence. He’s handsome, everyone knows that, and he knows people. A bit weak on economics, but, as America once proved, that needn’t stand in the way of becoming chief executive.

  After the speech he steps off the podium, takes off his shoes and socks, rolls up his gabardine, and joins the street crews in repairing the craters. They like this more than all the words he throws at them, and it’s on the internet within minutes.

  Oh, and, yes, internet. So, before Nimbus, internet is how the world used to connect. I can’t tell you much about it, except that it was slow, not much removed from tin cans and wire according to some historians. Well, Nigeria cut us off, didn’t it? Some folks found out that the internet infrastructure wasn’t taken down, it was abandoned. Well, abandoned by the mainstream. Unregulated, it’s become the nesting place of extreme porn, paedophilia, alien trades and terrorist cells. Into this morass Rosewater carved out a space for its citizens. Because subdermal phones are powered by our own bodies, they still work in a local peer-to-peer cloud formation, as they are designed to, but signal problems abide. Lots of local solutions of which I’m proud. The spirit of Jugaad, alive and well in Rosewater.

  Jacques takes off his shirt and I swear I hear a gasp go through the crowd. His body is sculpted, and with his lighter complexion he easily holds all the eyes. A detonation at this time would immortalise him for ever. He works, I sweat.

  Later, back at the bunker, he takes a quick shower. I meet Hannah. I met her before at an event, but she doesn’t remember, and I don’t push the matter. If these two decided to have children, their offspring would be magical demi-gods of perfection. And yet, it’s all a construction, part of the Jacques plan, the machine. Perfection meets perfection and presents itself to the world. This is a man destined to be a head of state, and I don’t mean destined in a mystical “all hail, Macbeth and Banquo” way. He just has all the qualities and has studied the right philosophers. It makes me want to light a joint and take him apart one hair at a time.

  I don’t know if I can bring myself to tell Jacques that most people on the street see him as a tyrant. I don’t know how to tell him. I don’t even know how to tell Lora.

  When he emerges I ask him if what he said about investors is true.

  “It will be,” he says. “Stop. I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “Among the calamities
of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth. You’re thinking that or a variant thereof.”

  I am not.

  “Who said that?”

  “Samuel Johnson. But I have a different saying for you. Truth is a tool of war. It must be treated as a scarce resource.”

  “You mean you’re justifying lying to your public.”

  “As generations of radioactive Fukushima pigs will tell you, that means fuck all in the grand scheme of things.”

  What is he talking about? Is this an advanced form of verbal misdirection where I’ll keep quiet because I don’t understand his obscure allusion?

  “Jack, what is your endgame here?”

  But Lora comes in and urges us out because the sky is about to fall.

  Later that day Jacques inspects the new farms. We’re in a convoy of three cars, Dahun driving the front one with a mounted machine gun and a guy standing looking tense, Jack and I in the middle, his bodyguards behind. I forget what Jack is saying but a plasma bolt comes out of our left and slices off the upper torso of the gunner. A sonic weapon goes off and the jeep behind us tips over on to its side. Fucks up my middle ear. Shit. Shit. Shit. Dahun does a U-turn and comes alongside us, protecting us from the field of fire. He launches micro-drones, robotic insects, which fly off in a cloud towards the direction the attack originates from. The car is sprayed with conventional bullets, which Dahun’s jeep can take. I think this is a good sign until Jack says that their plasma weapon is probably recharging. The insects mark several targets with red lines of laser and Dahun fires a rifle through the open window. Charges fly towards the targets which are still beyond view and there are six individual explosions. I’d like to say I was carefully noting everything down, but I concentrate on maintaining sphincter integrity. There is nothing glorious about facing death. I hear a sound, maybe, because memory is a funny thing. I push fucking Jacques down just as plasma cuts a superheated path through Dahun’s jeep and crosses where the mayor used to be. There’s a crack as air rushes back and my hearing finally goes. The car splits open, dropping both of us on the asphalt. I smell burning flesh. I see smoke rising and fluid leaking from the bodyguards’ car.

  “The fuel is dripping out,” I say.

  “Don’t panic. That’s not fuel,” says Jacques. “That’s the body fat of the… yes. Body fat. The guards.”

  I try to think of an exit, but it’s not to be because I lose consciousness. I wake on a stretcher in one of the ambulances. Jack is lying parallel.

  “Good job, scribe!” says a cheerful Jacques. He is making a thumbs-up sign. “You probably saved my life.”

  I feel a “but.” It doesn’t come, but hangs in the air swirling between us, only me. I say nothing and I don’t try to get up because I’m still woozy.

  “We rounded them all up, you’ll be glad to know. Paid by the president, no doubt.”

  “Motherfucker, give it a rest,” I say, before I can stop myself. “I can tell when you’re lying now. You haven’t rounded up shit and that wasn’t the president. That was your own people crowdsourcing weapons to kill you hard.”

  “The president—”

  “No, no, no. Not the president. The people of Rosewater rising up against a tyrant. They hate you, Jacques. You’d know this if you read the graffiti that your mercenaries clean up before you come round. You’re beautiful and perfect and fucking patronising and paternalistic and my God, do they hate you.”

  He is silent and I’m breathing hard. I’ve gone way too far, but I’ve decided against the gig anyway.

  “Thank you for your candour,” he says. “Memento homo.” He is, for the first time, subdued and withdrawn. His screen is down.

  “Mr. Mayor—”

  The ambulance stops and the doors open. Dahun is there, bearing enough arms to kit out a whole ocean of octopuses.

  “You’re not my paramedic,” says Jacques. “Help me up.”

  They help him up and the sheet slips, revealing air where there should be a left leg. He looks back at me. “Not so perfect any more, eh, scribe?”

  He winks and is gone.

  Lora purses her lips, which is a thing she does when she’s thinking, although I don’t know exactly how constructs think. “Memento homo,” she says. “Remember you are human. It’s a call to humility in a successful person.”

  I know this, but I don’t interrupt, although like many things we think we know about the Roman Empire, it has probably been exaggerated over time because it is striking.

  “He showed you his amputated leg on purpose,” she says. “You had attacked him, and he had to counter-attack, make you feel bad.”

  “The sheet fell.”

  “No. The mayor does not make mistakes, especially when it comes to impressions of him. How do you feel?”

  “Guilty. Ashamed. A bit angry with myself.”

  “Exactly. And how do you think he felt when you told him Rosewater hates him?”

  “I wonder what he’ll think if he finds out about us.”

  “Oh, he already knows.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “I’m an employee of the Office of the Mayor. So are you, even if it’s temporary. There are policies. We have to disclose any fraternisation. I told him the day after we first became intimate.”

  “I’m not sure I’m okay with that.”

  “This is real life, Walter, not sitting at home all day, living off royalties and being whatever it is you were. In real life there are protocols to avoid conflicts of interest.”

  My boxers are bunched around my ankles. I start to pull them up at the same time as I rise from the bed. Lora sweats. Do you know how freaky it is that robots sweat?

  “Why are you getting dressed?”

  “This,” I say, doing up the buttons on my trousers, “this is a big milestone. This is us having a quarrel.”

  The bombing stops and people start to stir. It’s my last day and I’m mentally prepared to return to my cubbyhole, outside the protection of the bunker. I’ve been sweating since after sex with Lora.

  I hear footfalls stop in front of me and I look up. A woman stands there with an eight-, nine-year-old girl. The girl has a perm; the woman has afro-puffs. The child tugs at her arm, and she bends down to listen to a whisper. The movement exposes some of her belly skin and I swear, the child has tattoos that move.

  The woman straightens up and tells me, “I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, your work lives for ever. Or whatever passes for for ever in this part of spacetime.”

  “What do you mean? Who are you?”

  They seem to fade, and I reach for where they are, but… but my hand is burning. Both of my hands, arms, torso… I’m cooking from the inside. I may be screaming, but I don’t know, my head feels hot. I think that

  Interlude: 2067

  Eric

  Holy fucking shit.

  Nuru catches all six of the arthrobots with his tentacles, and coils one around my torso to push me out of harm’s way, but the explosive fire that comes after rips him apart.

  I am not sorry to see Nuru die.

  The shockwave flings me through the plywood barrier we set up all the way to the next street. Armour absorbs most of the kinetic energy and stops shrapnel, but I’m winded. When my hearing returns I can hear shouting and the roar of flames. And footfalls.

  Up. Nuru’s tentacle is still wrapped around me, pulsating.

  I check my sidearm on the run. I do not know if I succeeded in killing Jacques, but I know I hit his jeep, the part he sat in, full on. I heard a scream, so I hit someone. But then those insects, the explosions… I hate not knowing, but I have no time. Small-arms fire, shots zinging past me. I look behind and see freemen irregulars, closer than I would like. I do not fear their marksmanship, but there is the element of luck, bad luck in my case. They might accidentally hit me, and while the armour can take your regular .45 round, it might have been weakened by the explosion. I stop, turn and calmly shoot the nearest in the chest. He goes down.


  There are three others dressed and armed variously. I try to aim, but the tentacle starts to shift. It moves like it is still alive and unwraps itself from my chest. I grab hold of it to discard it, but the tip shoots out and stings one of my assailants. I can’t stop it; even if I wanted to, I don’t know how. It kills another with a whiplash action, and I shoot the last pursuer.

  I keep the tentacle and I can finally understand why Nuru spent almost a decade cutting himself and perfecting the exact reconstruction he wanted.

  I’m running towards the marshes, but someone in a robe stops me. The tentacle does not respond, so I’m guessing it does not sense danger, but I’m still careful and unholster my sidearm.

  “I know where you think you’re going: the house on Ronbi Street. Don’t go there. They’re rounding people up.”

  I look closer and I see her face tattoo in the dying light. She is one of the women of the rape camp. Taking her lead, I turn away and head north, the tentacle rhythmically peeling itself off, then slapping back across my shoulders.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Jacques

  Jacques says, “Add to the sins of my administration the killing of Walter Tanmola. He was a good guy.”

  “He had an infection, Mr. Mayor. You didn’t kill him,” says Femi. “Either that or your powers extend a considerable amount further than I gave you credit for.”

  “Oh, you give me credit?”

  Femi waves her hands dismissively. “What do you want done with the document he wrote and the voice recordings?”

  “Is it out of our network?”

  “It was never on it. He worked offline. Nobody else has it.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Notes on the Insurrection.” Femi says this with fake fanfare.

  Jack rubs his temples. “That’s terrible. Store it in a vault somewhere. If we win this war we’ll get back to it. Where’s Lora?”

  “In her room. She said she is in mourning.”

  “For how long?”