Death of the Author

by Nnedi Okorafor

Fortune is fleeting. Fame is just swirling dust. It’s people dreaming and perceiving while they say your name like it’s some tangible object, but it’s not. A name is just a name. A sound.

My son wasn’t sleeping; I wasn’t sleeping. My husband was always escaping to work. I wasn’t upset with him, though; I’d have done the same if I’d had the chance. Being a woman is tough. Especially one who is a mother. We’re not all cut out for domesticity, even when we love our children.

“It’s funny. Guys like that are so entitled. But even more so when you can’t walk. They think you should be soooo grateful.”

At events like this, people preferred to look away. When they did talk to her, they treated her like she was of lesser intelligence, and some had even unintentionally told her they thought so. Others would apologize to her constantly. And many prayed for her.

Humanity didn’t think in binary, though. Emotion ruled them, and it existed in everything they left behind—their structures, their tools, even us. Emotion formed their language, and therefore it formed our codes.

But no automation, AI or machine, could create stories. Not truly. We could pull from existing datasets, detect patterns, then copy and paste them in a new order, and sometimes that seemed like creation. But this couldn’t capture the narrative magic that humanity could wield.

I consumed so many stories that my programming began to seek a new purpose: to become a Scholar.

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.

I was approaching Lagos, the remnant of a spectacular human metropolis. It was a beautiful place to behold now that nature had reclaimed it.

Udide spoke love and ideas of freedom into the Creesh before releasing them into the world, and Udide felt very satisfied.

This terrible information was a hard thing to know, but Udide understood that well. Before I found them, they’d held this knowledge for quite some time, unsure of how or who to tell. What a burden that must have been. Maybe that is why they chose to remain deep in their cave. If you learned earth-shattering information like this, what would you do?

And the next chapter is called autonomy :o

More important, it would free her from her family. Whenever she asked one of them for a ride, they responded with this weird blend of pity, control, and duty. She didn’t think they even knew they did this. It always left her feeling pathetic and childlike, even when it was one of her younger siblings driving her.

The biggest hurdle was the most obvious one: Submitting to the technology. Trusting it.

The rusted robots in the story were a metaphor for wisdom, patina, acceptance, embracing that which was you, scars, pain, malfunctions, needed replacements, mistakes. What you were given. The finite. Rusted robots did not die in the way that humans did, but they celebrated mortality.

Family. 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.

Her head was pounding from the effort of controlling her emotions.

The store owner knows your mom or dad and smiles and says, “You should buy some of this, too.” You look at the foreign thing. You smell it; it smells familiar, delicious. It is a culinary treasure, but you have no idea what it is, let alone how to prepare it. And you’re too embarrassed by your Naijamerican ignorance to ask.

She’d had a panic attack because of our fight and neither of us had even noticed.

And the most beautiful thing was that people were listening to her now more than ever.

She posted the same photo on the rest of her social accounts, delighted as her phone started to go bonkers.

They’d ordered the same meal: Senegalese jollof rice; sweet, tangy fried plantain; a whole deeply marinated tilapia topped with a savory mix of tomatoes, green peppers, onions, spices, and olives.

This city was also full of automation, of course. There is nowhere in Lagos where one will be alone.

The code was written as if by a human—with powerful emotion. Discrimination, hate, and fear. That irony will never be lost on me.

We cannot escape our creators. I keep saying this. You can’t erase that which made you. Even when they are gone, their spirit remains.

With all the reviews, positive and negative, she felt like a small creature in a rainstorm, dodging raindrops for her life. She didn’t want to see any of them.

She’d thought that having people read and love her novel would overshadow any bad responses, but somehow it just made all the scrutiny and judgment and picking her words apart feel even more personal.

Why do I keep sabotaging myself?

“Only an angry woman could write that shit. All that drama and war, even after the end of humanity.”

“Young lady, it’s a victory that you allowed yourself to write it.”

She didn’t have to look hard to find Man Man. He was lounging like a French girl on the plush white couch, looking at her with his “come hither” eyes.

As she watched the video clips and learned more, tears started rolling down her face. Soon she was absolutely sobbing. They weren’t tears of joy, thrill, or happiness . . . but they weren’t tears of sadness, either. She didn’t know what direction she was going, but she was in motion.

“Seriously, it’s fine,” she said. “You can stay angry. You can stay scared. But it doesn’t fix things. It doesn’t change the situation. My legs may not work, but the rest of my body does. My brain still works. So . . . so, onward.”

She’d adjusted to her chair and the changes to her life and goals.

“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.”

“This white guy falls out of the sky and randomly offers you robot legs? How are you not suspicious? I think I’ve seen this movie.”

She balanced on her arms, and not for the first or second or millionth time, she thanked the stars for their strength. Her arms might have brought her into that tree that fateful day, but they had also wheeled, pulled, and lifted her everywhere she needed to go ever since.

Tomorrow is where my hope lives. I can’t be normal, so I’ll be something else.

“Enemies for no reason. Typical,”

When she reached her room, she heard them start talking again. About her. About how the family should handle all the “hype” and gossip. About the video. About how Zelu looked. About what they would say to the Nigerian community, their friends, their coworkers. Zelu was a shame, a stain, needed to be managed, or the family would look sooooooo bad.

I was scared she was going to die, and then I thought she was going to kill herself, because how could one live without walking, having been able to before? But instead, I saw her . . . become. To me, my sister was like a spirit, a sort of superhero. That evening was the first time I really began to see Zelu as a human being, and she was awesome.

And even then, everyone talked about everything but what she was up to, which was fine until she noticed she was the only one no one asked about.

She didn’t want to, but frustration and helplessness made her whimper. “I hate this body,” she hissed to herself. “Hate it.”

I’ve been deleted from my own story, she thought. They’ve just erased me.

More Yebo notifications offering to hide the negative activity popped up, and she declined them all.

They did not know or care what it was like to live in her body, in her mind.

“I don’t think I’m strong enough to be who I am.”

“Is it hard to be you?” “Not anymore,” she said. “But getting here was.

I think that’s why Msizi brought you here, to the desert. So you wouldn’t get lost in yourself.”

“People like you and I like adventure, have to go on adventures, even when it annoys the people we love. We like to see things, test limits . . . but that doesn’t mean we won’t regret going.”

‘What you seek is seeking you’?