A dream. For the both of us.
* * *
—
We returned to the Mosquito Hut. It was Force’s idea. “The computer and software here can handle whatever you’re going to do.”
I felt foolish. Using my ability to connect to the Bukkaru on an iPad would have been silly. Yes, I could communicate and control the software, but the hardware still had its limits. I didn’t blame myself, though. I had a lot on my mind. With the three herdsmen, DNA, me, Force, and Dolapo, it was a tight fit in the small upstairs room. However, with the room-surrounding screens, it didn’t feel so bad. According to the wind up clock Dolapo brought, it was seven AM, not long after the sun had come up. The time in the Hour Glass was 10:55.
“I’ll do it right after the reset. At 12:11,” I said. “I don’t want anything to interfere with the connection.”
“Where are the cameras?” DNA asked.
“All over,” Force said. “There, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there and there.” He pointed all around us, at the ceiling, and twice at the floor.
“You all should stand there,” I said, pointing to the area that faced the virtual street in front of the building. “There are three cameras in the screen and above. They’ll be able to see you as if you were standing right in front of them. I’m turning the other cameras off. Better we control the perspective. I’ll only let them see you from the waist up, like on the news.”
The four of them wore blue kaftans, tan pants, the traditional conical fiber hats the Fulani were known to wear in the old days. Where Force got them, I didn’t know, but judging from how new they looked, they were probably just fashion accessories as opposed to the real thing. Still, they added a nice effect.
DNA was pacing the other side of the room, muttering to himself. They’d all agreed that he’d do the talking. Their message would be clearest if only one of them spoke, and DNA was the “fugitive,” the wronged, the brother of the woman they wanted freed. Plus, he had the most to say. Force was speaking to him. Dolapo was laughing and chatting with Idris, Lubega, and Tasiri. I turned to the virtual street and looked up at the virtual sky. The shining sun peeked through occasionally as the blasting and blowing winds of the Red Eye thinned and thickened.
We’d brought washcloths, tissues, ice packs. Force even brought a heart defibrillator. All for me. I didn’t think any of it would help, but I kept these thoughts to myself. What I thought about most in that hour were my parents. How they’d looked during that interview. My mother’s freshly done braids, her make-up, my father’s trimmed beard and the suit I’d never seen him wear. And how relaxed they looked, despite their supposed outrage. My parents loved me, but they’d never liked me. My brother couldn’t be found for questioning. He couldn’t be there just to put in a good word for me. He loved me too. He’d seen me through all the pain and healing and breaking and re-healing; and my choices. But he’d always been a coward. Fuck them, I thought, as I followed everyone up the spiral stairs.
I imagined that with each step I took, more of what was mine fell away from me. My childhood. My apartment in Abuja. My joys. My bank accounts. My created online identity. My birth record. My memories. My pain. By the time I stepped into that room, and was surrounded by the screens, I was exactly me in that moment, and I was so much more because the place was buzzing with connections, power, and cameras.
Force had had four folding chairs and a black leather armchair brought up. None of us had to guess who the reclining chair was for. “It spins, too,” Force said, sitting in it, reclining and spinning himself around. “You’ll have a 360 degree view of what you see,” he said. “You’ll be able to zoom in anywhere.”
I nodded. The Bukkaru were being smart. They weren’t using mobile phones or tablets or anything that gave off a digital signal. Not for now. They’d gone completely analogue. But this was the desert and someone in the desert always had a drone. If not in the council camp, somewhere nearby. With a drone, I could see and hear everything in another way. I sat down on the arm chair. “Where did you get this?” I asked.
“It’s Hour Glass made,” Dolapo said, setting a metal folding chair beside me. She reached into a box beside the chair. “And I brought you snacks, cigarettes, tea, and refreshing mint-scented hemp lotion, all also Hour Glassmade.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Good,” she said, dropping the pack back in the box.