And there were the eyes. Red. So much like the inside of a pomegranate. I don’t know when it happened. I began the process long ago. Maybe it started the day I murdered those men. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. But I knew everything in that moment. And I knew it before them all. I laughed. I had no body but I laughed.
When I opened my eyes, I tasted blood. And blood was running down my nose. I felt it dribbling from my ears. My head was on DNA’s lap and he was using his shirt to dab at my wet ears as he wept and said my name over and over, “AO, AO, AO, AO.” I lay there for a bit listening to him, my eyes itchy with sweat, my head still pounding, my body aching. His voice was bringing me back. “AO, AO, AO, AO.”
We’d stopped because the GPS no longer had a destination. The wind shook the truck and the steer in the back whined with fear, crowding to the front, trying to be as close to DNA as possible.
“I’m okay,” I croaked. I coughed, clearing my throat. “I’m okay.”
“Are you?”
“I know where the Hour Glass is,” I whispered. “Half mile . . .” I paused, reaching out. They answered. “North. There is an entrance. The anti-aejej is like an enormous infinity-shaped dome. It goes pretty high. People have space.” I sat up and my head felt like gravity was trying to pull it to the truck’s floor. When I shook it, the pounding deepened, so I stopped.
“How do . . . ?” DNA asked.
“I can see it,” I said. Can shut it all down, if I want to? I wondered. They will listen to me. I didn’t want to talk about it with DNA or anyone. I wanted to just sit in silence and consider the question of “What am I what am I what am I?” Because WHAT WAS I? I could see it. The Hour Glass existed because an insanely powerful anti-aejej was pushing the storm back so that the hidden desert city of Hour Glass could exist. And on top of that, there was a digital cloaking firewall up that prevented any type of surveillance. Well, unless it was me.
I was seeing, touching, communicating, controlling.
I could CONTROL.
I sniffed and tasted more blood. Was my brain bleeding? What was all this costing me? But I felt so much better. I touched the screen. I didn’t even have to know how to operate it. I told it how to operate and, as I did, I could see that infinite pomegranate of eyes shift to focus more closely on me. A steering wheel template popped up on the touch screen and my seat lowered so that I was eye to eye with it. I put my palms on the screen as the truck began to move again.
“Allah is great,” DNA muttered.
I just shook my head. “I’ll never ever be able to explain,” I said.
We were picking up speed. In the back, GPS mooed loudly as the truck was buffeted by the winds. “I agree,” DNA said. “But it could be worse.”
“There’s going to be an archway,” I said. I’d closed my eyes and I could see it. But only because that archway was threaded with surveillance cameras. “I can see us coming. Hour Glass security can, too.”
The archway was made of heavy red crystal. Digitally, I could touch it, smell it, search its history. This archway was all that was left of a film set for an old Nollywood movie made by a Nigerian billionaire with little creative vision and lots of time. A movie buff, he’d been determined to make a movie that was greater than Star Wars. He’d insisted on writing the script, directing and even acting in it. Then he’d distributed his cinematic creation all over Africa. The film had been so terrible that to this day it was still known throughout the continent as the “Worst African Movie Ever Made.” And this solid rhodochrosite crystal archway that the billionaire had demanded be constructed was all that was left of the film’s elaborate africanfuturist set.
All this I could pull instantly from the Internet right in my mind, as I looked at our truck approaching. “There are people guarding it. It’s the only way in . . . and out because of the anti-aejej. If you try to go out anywhere else, the velocity of the wind repelling from the anti-aejej will tear you apart. It’s actually kind of genius.”
“And dangerous,” he said. “I don’t like places with only one exit.”
“Good point,” I said. I could always shut it off, I thought. I really could. Maybe. And destroy the Hour Glass in the process. And maybe myself, too. “But let’s go in,” I said. “If we have to get out, we’ll get out. We’ll find a way. We just escaped an execution, getting out of the Hour Glass can’t be much harder.”
I slowed us to a stop and as if by my command, white flood lights lit up the darkness, showing the swirling dust storm retreating and lifting. And there was the red crystal archway. This close to it, I could see the famous etchings, from Nsibidi to Vah to Adinkra.
“Allah is here,” DNA whispered.
“Someone definitely was,” I muttered.
All around us was quiet and still. We were in the field of the Hour Glass’s giant anti-aejej, but this part of it was like the entrance. In the back of the jeep, GPS mooed softly and the quiet was so profound, I could hear the worry in his voice.
“We’re here,” I said. “They’re going to send . . .”
Ding. It appeared on the screen in bright yellow words.
“How’d you know they were sending that?” DNA asked. “Just curious.”
“I can even hear them typing the message,” I said. I chuckled.
The message was five words, “Step out of the truck.”
“Can they turn their anti-aejej off?” DNA asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “We’re just past the borders of it. But if they move the border, I’m sure I can move it back.” I really was sure. I just wasn’t sure if I could do it before the Red Eye’s violent winds swept us away or if doing something big like this would hurt me. The thing that had shifted or ruptured in my brain—what if flexing or pushing that something damaged my brain? Maybe I could drop dead at any moment, from a brain aneurism, a heart attack, or stroke if I attempted the wrong thing.
Another message came on the screen. This time it was six words. “Get out of the truck NOW.”
“Or what?” I muttered. But we’d come here for a reason. We wanted in. I turned to DNA, “Come on. Let’s go.”
DNA didn’t wait for me to ask again. I opened my door and got out on my side. I carefully took my mask off. The first thing I noticed was that air was free of dust and it was warm, the anti-aejej removing every speck of sand and dust in the air. The Hour Glass would not have dust problems as most places in the desert did. And the quiet was amazing, despite the storm that roiled and raged about a half mile behind and hundreds of feet above us. Beyond the archway, although it was through a veil of whipping dust, I could see the Hour Glass: buildings of stone, giant tents made of fortified weather-treated polymers, glimpses of outdoor camps, and knots of markets. More lights, so many lights, because the storm kept so much of the sunshine from coming through. A refugee city in the shadows.
I walked in front of the truck where DNA met me, followed by GPS and Carpe Diem. We stood facing the archway.