“You’re going to have a heart attack!” he whispered. Dolapo was beside him, weeping quietly. DNA and the others were focused on the part of the screen before them. I was still holding the connection. One of the Bukkaru elders was standing now. He seemed to be shouting at them through the drone camera. DNA’s sister Wuro stood beside him, looking angry. Her hands were tied together.
I let my body go limp. Closed my eyes. Inhaled, exhaled. Force was still whispering angrily at me. My ears felt wet. My left shoulder was burning. I zipped off, again. If this was my death, let me finish what I was doing first. Ultimate Corp had it coming. At the moment I sent it, the Bukkaru Elder was still shouting. It was the perfect time for the footage to cut in.
The Ultimate Corp symbol was in the top left corner. Along with the date of twenty years ago, days after June 15th, the Day of the Four Herdsmen, the incident in which four so-called Fulani herdsman entered a village and killed and robbed everyone in it and then set it aflame. The Day of The Four Herdsmen put all Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria back on the global radar as terrorists.
“Who’s going to stick up for them?” a thin-lipped man in a sharp suit said, sitting back on a plush leather chair that creaked under his ample weight. “These guys are off the grid, born off the grid. No citizenship, no identity, thus no digital trail. They’re solitary, always covered in dust, Africans are afraid of Africans already. Plus, these herders have been viewed for decades as terrorists. So let’s take this new incident and up the ante. We pay off a couple hundred more of them to give up herding cows and instead shoot up towns. POOF! Threat to Ultimate Corp’s commerce in the north gone, and we can continue building. Hell, imagine all the beef we can sell there.”
“Maybe. But those people really aren’t a threat, per se. They just . . .”
The thin-lipped man leaned in, his cheeks flushing with excitement. He pointed a finger at the other man who didn’t seem remotely intimidated. “You want an environment where there’s control and order and not chaos, you get rid of past problems and arguments, all the history nonsense. Replace it with creature comfort, convenience. Trust me, this’ll work. Even the wildest people relax when they’re content. Everyone wins.”
The slimmer man was smiling and nodding now. “These are certainly some wild people.”
Chuckles.
They’d planned it. Amplified it. Manipulated it. The last few true Fulani herdsmen with their old simple ways, fresh milk and meat and nomadic lifestyle, had suffered for it. And Ultimate Corp had been arrogant enough to record and store this conversation where someone could hack into, steal, and broadcast it. Ultimate Corp was powerful and wicked, but it didn’t worry enough. The recording froze on the face of a smirking executive. I put his first sentence on repeat, “Who’s going to stick up for them?”
I could hear shouts of shock and outrage in the Bukkaru camp. DNA and the others were all standing, staring at me.
“Where’d you find that?” DNA was shouting.
“Just found it,” I said. I was fading. “Accident. Coincidence. Karma.” I coughed and my lips were wet with what? Blood? Who knew. Who cared. I was done. The drone was still hovering. Everyone was shouting outrage. Everyone was listening. Good. A glass of cosmic milk from the great cosmic cow.
For me, all went black.
* * *
—
I awoke to the spicy smell of pepper soup. I had a strong feeling of deja-vu and, my eyes still closed, I tried to grasp at it. But it slid, slithered, and then slipped away. I found myself looking into the millions of eyes of the pomegranate. I opened my eyes. I was sitting on my recliner, the screens around me showing the Hour Glass again. From the darkening of the sky I could glimpse through the storm’s dust, the sun was setting. DNA was sitting on a low chair slouched beside me eating from a bowl of what had to be pepper soup. He didn’t seem surprised to see me awake.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. He picked up a piece of goat meat from his bowl and bit into it. “No idea who made this but Dolapo gave it to me and it’s delicious.”
When I spoke, my mouth felt as if it had been shot with Novocain and I slurred my words. “Wha’happened?”
“You mean after you basically called for war?” But he was grinning. He bit into more of his meat. He was ravenous and enjoying the fact that he had an appetite.
“Eh? Where’s everyone?”
“Here and there. It’s been a few hours,” he said with a shrug. “How do you feel?”