“Wait,” DNA said, taking his mask off. Then he shut his eyes.
I nodded. We had to wait anyway, but I knew what he was doing, and it was damn important, in my opinion. I hadn’t forgotten what he told me when we first met. How before he and his people had gone into that town, he’d paused. Of all of them, he’d paused. And he’d done what his mother had taught him to do and it had saved his life. Now he was doing it again. Grounding.
I looked down at my metal feet. Was it even possible for me to ground? Could the energy of the Earth, the aura of the Hour Glass, travel through the bottoms of my cybernetic feet, into my flesh, all the way to my brain, centering and informing me? I didn’t think so.
DNA grunted and looked at me.
“Okay?” I asked.
“We’ll see.” DNA muttered. “What now?”
“We wait some more,” I said.
He nodded, looking ahead at the arch. “No problem.”
For over a minute, there was nothing, and the silence was amazing. No wind, no grains of sand tumbling, not even the sound of the city just beyond the archway. We were in a type of sound-proof bubble. Then, “AO and DNA.” The voice was female, loud and strikingly clear, and it spoke in Igbo.
We looked at each other yet again. “Do you speak Igbo?” I asked him.
“No,” he said.
“That is us,” I replied in Igbo. No point in trying to hide who we were. These days, privacy was a myth and there clearly was no secrecy when entering the Hour Glass, anyway. “But DNA doesn’t speak Igbo.”
“You’re on the run, both of you,” the voice continued in Igbo. “AO, you’re responsible for publicly murdering five men in a market.”
“That’s an overly simplified way to put it,” I said in Igbo.
“We’ve all seen the footage. We know it was complicated.” The voice switched to English. “DNA, you were involved in the incident in Matazu that led to the deaths of seven people and seventy six steer.”
DNA shook his head, raising his hands. “I was there. I was involved, but not—”
“We’ve seen the complete footage,” the voice said.
We were both silent. This wasn’t our decision to make.
“You’ve come here to hide,” the voice said. “Most people do.” There was a long pause and GPS mooed loudly. Carpe Diem grunted at him as if to say, “Shush!” DNA patted her side.
“You’re both legends here. We’re proud to have you.”
I saw nothing shift, but I felt it and we both heard it. PHOOOWOOOOOOSH! The veil of dust dissipated and then the sound of vehicles, voices, generators, music, laughter, reached our ears. The sounds of the Hour Glass. The voice spoke again, “Every hour at 1:11, all clocks reset to 12:11, all satellite locations and communication, all passwords reset, as well. We call that The Rotation of the Glass. We live within the chaos. Welcome to the Hour Glass.”
DNA and I herded the steer into the back of the truck again. When we got inside, there was another message on the screen for us. “The Force wants to see you. All remote navigation?”
“The Force?” I asked. “What is that? Some Star Wars reference?”
“Does it matter?” DNA asked.
“I don’t like the idea of . . .”
DNA reached forward and touched the “OK” button. I frowned but that was that. He was starting to know me. We entered the Hour Glass.
CHAPTER 15
The Force
As we passed through the archway, my head began to ache so much that I couldn’t filter it out. Conversations, clicks, flashes of light in my peripheral vision, pinprick feelings in the parts of me that were organic flesh. I didn’t mention any of it to DNA. Why ruin the moment for him. Or for me.
First we passed a group of people standing on the sides of the dirt path we drove on. People wearing things from traditional loose garments of the north, to burkas, to jeans and t-shirts and miniskirts and tube tops. I saw dark brown faces, many ages, all watching with curiosity as we slowly passed. People held up cell phones and were taking photos, most were looking with their own eyes and laughing?
Messages started appearing on the screen in the truck.
“Welcome!”
“Righteous murderers!”
“We’re glad to have you!”
“Save the cows!”
Some sent links to our truck, email addresses, physical addresses, invitations to meetings, parties, and many sent “clean cash,” untrackable 48-hour credits that could be used anywhere without revealing one’s identity or even location.
“This is crazy!” I shouted.
DNA laughed, “We’re famous.”
“Infamous,” I said.
“No, the Hour Glass is the greatest refuge from . . .” He pointed behind us. “All that and beyond. These are the people who fall through or don’t fit. If they’ve seen the un-doctored footage, then they have full context.”
DNA opened his window as we passed. “Thank you all!” he shouted. An old woman in jeans and a colorful Ankara top and giant gold earrings, waved and came forward, “We all know when that time comes,” she said. DNA held out a hand and she took it. She looked in at me and pointed at me with her other hand. “You, don’t feel badly and don’t let insecurity blind you.”
“Okay,” I said, frowning.
Someone banged at the back of our truck.
“Hey!” DNA shouted turning around.
“Open the back door,” another woman said.
DNA got up and went to the back, joining GPS and Carpe Diem.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Uh, yeah, open the backdoor,” he said. “I think it’s okay.”
“You think?” I asked. He was looking outside the back windows, GPS and Carpe Diem crowding and nuzzling him.
“Just open it.”
A giant bale of hay was dumped into the truck a moment after I did and the steer set upon it immediately. “Thank you,” DNA said to two women who stood side by side grinning.
“We’ve been following the chase on the feeds. When we heard you were here, we knew they’d be hungry,” one of the women said.
The other raised a fist and said, “Let the cows live!”
I raised a fist in solidarity, laughing. DNA shut the door and came back to the front and we got moving again, more messages still popping up on the truck’s screen. We drove on the sand path leading into the city, and we were both quiet as we took it all in. On both sides were a series of stone domes, each with thick poles extending so high that one could barely see what was at the top. But you could hear it—large wind turbines, their wide blades slicing the air so fast that they were a blur. They must have extended through the anti-aejej’s field.
The stone domes had hundreds of antennae sticking out, making them look like pin cushions. Even as we passed, we saw a group of laughing teens open a stone door to go inside one of the domes. Each of these buildings made my new senses vibrate with their digital connectivity. Along with being enormous sources of electricity, they were each some kind of communication node.