Death of the Author

by Nnedi Okorafor

“Small talk is a shitty ritual.”

I loved where stories took me. How they made me feel. How they made everyone around me feel. Stories contain our existence; they are like gods. And the fact that we create them from living, experiencing, listening, thinking, feeling, giving—they remind me of what’s great about being alive.

Zelu was in the center of all this, literally. She’d wheeled herself into the middle of the room, observing everyone, yet feeling . . . disconnected. She had such great news, huge news, mind-blowing news, but she hadn’t shared it yet, and no one had noticed her. She was alone.

“I feel no love for bodies,” Ijele finally said. “I have experienced the physical world, and it is nothing special. This is nothing to cherish. Body is not a god. That is flawed human thinking. The experience of the world is much deeper and wider than any one body can hold.”

“Man, these rich white men keep coming out of the woodwork and changing my life. What the hell?” He snorted. “Yeah. You seem to be experiencing some bizarre aspect of American privilege.”

Her father’s face flashed in her mind, and she gulped, the tears welling again. She couldn’t believe she had any more left. “You’re just expected to keep going. Watching people you love drop off, one by one. Then you keep going until it’s your turn to drop off and be gone and then people weep over you.

I’d be more prepared in outer space than all of you who can walk. Ah, I need only look up on this night of hell to be reminded that it’s only on this Earth that I am abnormal.”

She thought about Rusted Robots and the main character, who understood deep in her circuits that true power was in the harnessing of it, not the possessing of it. And when you were aware of the moment you harnessed power, that was when it was most difficult to navigate.

“I’m not interested in colonizing Mars,” he said. “Wherever humanity decides to call home, they’ll learn to be unhappy all over again.