“Tell me what happened,” he begged, still holding his head in his hands.
The weight of it all settled on my shoulders, or maybe it had always been there. I felt so so heavy. I sighed and looked at the sky and then I looked at him. “Okay. But put your gun over there.” Without hesitation, he brought the strap of his gun over his head, walked to his only remaining bull and dropped his gun beside the sitting animal. He came back to me and stood waiting, his arms across his chest. I had nothing left to lose. I took a deep breath and sat down. When he too was sitting, I told him.
But I was wrong; I did have more to lose. I had a big imagination. I had a powerful memory and it was bolstered by neural implants. I had a keen eye for detail. And I may have been fifty percent machine, but I had the emotional range of a healthy empathetic human being. And so recounting all that led me to that moment in the desert crushed me again.
* * *
—
“And now, here I am.”
I shut up and waited. He would get up and flee any moment and I’d be out in the desert all alone. I was already ahead of him; I knew what I’d do. I’d watch him leave and then keep walking until I became a ghost. Or robot. Wasn’t that why I came out here? I massaged my temples hard, the headache inside pounding from a deep place. A strong breeze blew, coating both of us with sand. Neither of us moved.
“Are you having the headache now?” he asked, looking closely at me.
“Yes,” I snapped. “Yes. And if you’re going to leave me, just leave me. No more talking.” Now I was the one tearing up. It was like the electrical current that ran within my legs and arms had jumped rails and decided to use the fluids in my brain like circuitry. Circuitry that operated to the beat of a drum, thoom, thoom, thoom. The pain flared and the breeze blew more stinging sand on us. I was sad, so deeply sad. I was still alive, but everything just felt . . . over. Nothing left to do but reach the end and fall over the edge once and for all. Oh my God, is this all there is?
DNA muttered something, but it was in Pulaar so I didn’t know what it was.
“Whatever makes you happy,” I said, straining against the pain in my head. “Whatever you want. Whatever you all want.”
He kept muttering. The only word I caught was “Allah.” He was praying. Or maybe he was cursing. I didn’t care. He stood and held a hand out to me. His eyes were red and there was a large crusted narrow scratch near his right wrist. “Get up.”
“No,” I said.
Surprisingly, he smiled. But it was a sad smile. “Neither of us will die here. Not yet.” He knelt down and took my left hand. He hesitated for a moment, looking at my steel fingers. He grasped more firmly and pulled. I let my weight keep me on the ground. He stepped back. “They’ll all be after you. Even if you have no identity. They still have satellite. The good thing is they see this place as dead, though I hear that sometimes they’ll even follow you into the Red Eye if they want you badly enough.”
“Yeah. They’ll find me eventually,” I said. “I’m doomed.”
“Then maybe we stop talking and get moving.”
“To where?”
“My village,” he said, bringing a dusty battered phone from his pocket. “They’re true nomads, so they move around. Not even Ultimate Corps can track a nomad village, let alone the government. Right now, my village should be relatively close.”
“But I thought Fulani herders had no, uh, village.”
He kissed his teeth and shook his head. “More misinformation. Villages can move around and many of us haven’t been nomads for over a century.”
“So how do you find your, uh, village?” I asked.
“There’s a code. I can find them, but the government never can.”
Nomads who could not be located by anyone but tribe members. I’d thought I was ahead of everyone by hacking my identity offline, yet here was one of the oldest cultures in West Africa ahead of everyone because they wanted to hold on to a key part of their traditional way of life. Using the new tech to maintain old ways.
I let DNA pull me up.
* * *
—
I walked with my eyes on my sandals. Crunching down on the rough sand and hard pebbles. The sun was beating my shoulders, its heat passing through my veil and the material of my dress. My arms and legs remained cool, the metal they were made from didn’t heat in the sun. I chuckled to myself and DNA glanced back at me.
“Are you all right?”
“Are you?” I asked.