Death of the Author

by Nnedi Okorafor

What matters is family. Without family, you’re nothing. You’re debris tumbling through space. Unseen, unconnected, uncollected, unknown, no matter how famous you are.

Nigerians never knew how to deal with abnormalities, and Zelu had plenty of those. She was a thirty-two-year-old paraplegic woman with an MFA in creative writing. Her father was a retired engineer and her mother a retired nurse, and her siblings were a surgeon, a soon-to-be neurologist, an engineer, a lawyer, and a med school student. But not much had ever been expected of her. This was mainly due to her disability. She’d endured her share of theories about family curses, juju, and charms. Her relatives were more interested in who was to blame than they were in how she lived her life.

Hmmmmm this is deep

Chinyere took it further than dancing as she wined her body, twerked her backside, and rubbed up against any man dancing too close to her, including her sister’s new husband.

Uhmmm no

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.

We took emotion from humanity and enjoyed it. Fury. Enchantment. Inspiration. Envy. Joy. Sorrow. Curiosity. Whimsy. Fear. Excitement. Boredom. Hopelessness. And, of course, love. Love was useful. Having, feeling, experiencing emotion allowed us to form communities, to share with one another. And so we continued to replicate, splice, and download, until eventually we didn’t even have to program it anymore. After a few generations, it became our digital DNA.

This is cool

And since humans placed so much value on their private parts, every Hume had a Hume Star, a tiny light between their legs about the size of a pea.

Lmbooo

She had sex with three different men from three different parts of Africa and one man from Atlanta. It was good exercise, at least, since she could no longer afford her gym membership.

Lmbooo this girl is hilarious

“Writers don’t make money,” her father said. “Doctors, lawyers, and engineers do. Since you can’t be any of those, be a professor. That at least puts your MFA to work. I can respect that.” Zelu rolled her eyes. “Ugh, Dad.” “And I’ll have something to tell the Ondo group,” her mother added.

Such an African parent things to say 🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️

Udide didn’t call what they felt for each other love, but automation was capable of such an emotion, and it was in the subtext as they told me about this day. Oji stayed for only a few hours.

A space robot built a friendship with a spider nature robot

They sang of coming to Earth “to spread the joy, to bring the light.” And when they did, that “light” would destroy the planet many times over. It was a death song, a song devoid of logic or memory. If a robot could become a zombie, that’s what these Chargers now were, including poor Oji. Udide decided to call them Trippers, because they’d taken their trip to the sun’s core and survived, but weren’t the same.

Lmaoooo WHAT?? Sun zombie robots?? Zelu are you alright??

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. Oh, she loved this story and how true it felt.

When she got home, her parents were in the kitchen eating egusi soup and pounded yam.

My fave

She and her agent settled on a hefty seven-figure advance for a three-book series. Then the TV people caught wind of it. And then one of the biggest studios in the world got involved. Suddenly, she also had a film agent, and Zelu’s Rusted Robots series was optioned by a major film studio in another big seven-figure deal.

Omg? This is happening so fast??)

Zelu couldn’t catch her breath. Who got published this quickly, this instantly, this ridiculously?

Thats what im saying

But the one thing Seth Daniels knew was when a story was worth following. And the one thing Zelu never failed to be was a story. Eventually, she would become the defining subject of his journalistic career. He’d follow the highs and lows of her meteoric but all-too-brief rise to stardom. He’d interview most of her immediate family members and loved ones, attempting to complete the tapestry of Zelu’s inner workings and why she did what she did.

Thats not weird?

when Zelu was gone,

Wait??? What happened to my girl??

They are part of our identities and they are soooooo good. We realized we needed to make the food we’d grown up eating.

Facts!

Zelu was tough, but she was also deeply sensitive. Maybe that’s why she was always retreating—always disconnecting from us. The family was hard on her. Okay, fine, I was hard on her. I dunno, she just brought that out in me. I wanted her to be good and behave so I wouldn’t worry. I don’t know why she had to be so delicate and reactionary. I mean, come on. She had to go this far? She had to do something this extreme? So beyond her capabilities?

Omg what did she do??

A Nigerian newspaper had even written an article calling her “the debut writer who is starting a cultural renaissance.” Zelu drank it all up. Finally, this was what it felt like to be seen. All her life she’d tried to make herself known. Now she’d spoken, and so many had listened.

Awwww this makes me emotional for her. Im so happy

Senegalese jollof rice; sweet, tangy fried plantain; a whole deeply marinated tilapia topped with a savory mix of tomatoes, green peppers, onions, spices, and

Omg sounds so bomb

They expected the rest of us to hold their values, despite the fact that they clearly hated us. They bonded over their hatred for humans and all their relics. When Ghosts found nodes on the network that carried stories, they viciously deleted them. They would be even more ruthless when it came to Hume robots like me. When they looked at us, at our humanoid “skins” and microchips full of old stories, they saw only humanity—our predecessors, but not our futures.

Sounds like white ppl

I tried to pull my torso upward, but my bolts were so loose that I fell onto my back. “My legs,” I said aloud. I couldn’t feel my legs. “What happened to them?”

Awwww Zelu

Though she did tell me that her great-grandmother had been an astronaut.

Aww like Zelu wantedto be

I only sat there. I couldn’t run away from my own body, and trapped in it was a Ghost. “I’m infected,” I said. “And I’m surrounded by infection,” Ijele responded. Ngozi kissed her teeth. “For all your talk about being automation, you both sound like humans to me. Annoying ones.”

Lmbo omg this is so trippy!! Two enemies stuck in robot body

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.

“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.” “I will never understand your kind,” I said.

They could keep going and going, for distance meant nothing when you had nothing to return to. To be without a body made the network something else. To live like that diminished the physical world.

“It’s not really walking,” Chinyere cut in. “It’s being carried around by robot legs. You wouldn’t be cured.” Uzo, Tolu, and Amarachi murmured and nodded agreement. Zelu,

Wth does this mean, im annoyed for her

Whenever she told them about her life, they just used the opportunity to take control. Zelu

Typical, why are they so obsessed with control?

“Ugh, not you, too,” she whimpered, falling back against her pillow. “I know there are risks! But I . . . I want to take them! Don’t any of you have a sense of adventure?” You all should be giving me the strength I don’t have!, she thought. Because I’m terrified. I can’t do this alone.

“Your legs are disconnected from your brain, so the machines need to construct a brain of their own,” Hugo said. “The more specifics they learn about you, the better a job they can do. And they’ll keep learning.”

This is so interesting

“I still can’t believe you’re you,” Uchenna said, stretching his arms up overhead. “Your weird book is everywhere. Even in Nigeria.”

Uche getting on my damn nerves

“Yes,” I said. “Humes will destroy a Hume infected by a NoBody.” “And NoBodies will destroy a NoBody who has been in a Hume.”

I was shocked by her sudden intrusion, but I wasn’t afraid or angry, as I should have been. I was . . . glad. I had no idea why, but I was glad.

They in love now?

I no longer viewed her people as an unthinking monolith; there were even times when I found myself using Ijele’s cold, unemotional cut-to-the-chase logic.

Hmmmm the beauty of learning and seeing the alternative side

Why hadn’t she thought about what would happen when people saw her? Her fault. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She’d been so focused on proving something to herself. Her fault. She hadn’t been thinking. Reckless.

Because girl wth

“Why should she care?” her mother shrilled. “She has always done whatever she wants. How do you think she fell out of that tree in the first place?”

Too far!!

“That is not walking. That’s being dragged around with robot legs like some freak! Like something in a Dr. Seuss book! And now the whole world’s seen it and is talking about it! Even in Nigeria!” Her mother burst into tears. “Why have you shamed your family? In the face of God!”

Her family is annoying af omg

I prepared Ngozi’s body, washing her in the ocean, drying her, wrapping her in her favorite orange Ankara cloth, rubbing her with her favorite oil, which she extracted from a local tree. I did her hair, arranging her long locs in a pattern that robots would understand if they looked closely at it. This was my personal tribute to Ngozi. Then I buried her.

Awww this is so sweet Ankara

However, of all her family members, only Tolu helped her move in.

Love Tolu

The drama, the twists, the communities, the languages, the accents, all the robo-bullshit was drawn from Nigerian cultures and people and politics.

All of you can go to hell. I’ll NEVER be that poster girl that you can manipulate like a paraplegic Barbie doll. You can’t put my arm here and push my legs there! I’m ME! Deal with it!

No bc ppl decided that she would be the poster girl for paralyzed ppl, they dont consider how she feels

Wind and Zelu weren’t going to get along; Zelu was sure of it already.

Lmbooo girl! Why cuz your eye contact didnt phase her?

Zelu shrugged, unable to explain. Wasn’t that just how her life went? And if something bad happened, she’d have only herself to blame.

This is her ethos. Her life motto poor thing

“Whomever you choose to be,” Wind said sagely. “Write what you want, woman. Walk how you want. Love who you love. Speak your truth. Be good and roll with life. You can’t have or control everything or everyone.”

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

WHEEWWW!!

But I did see dolphins. They clearly saw me, too, for they swam into the shallows and leaped up to get a better look at me. Friendly, free, curious creatures. Ijele would have enjoyed seeing them.

Dolphins from her dads story so cuteee

She’d never written anything of creative value because of expectation, and she wasn’t going to start now. Book two would come when it came. She wasn’t a robot.

As soon as they said 3 book deal i knew this would be the case

“What is with these wealthy white dudes finding me?” she

Lmmfao

I know that here in the United States, such things are not understood. You all spin everything that is not familiar to you as either terrible or less than you. You only see things through your narrow lens and personal experiences. It is your weakness. I understand. But my family is a beautiful one, even if it is not perfect. We are royalty. True royalty.