A black box opened in the center of the screen. Inside it, in bright red, was 1:10. Then it began counting upwards. Less than a minute until it was 1:11, the Reset, the time when all data in all clouds and networks going out and coming into the Hour Glass was wiped and everything restarted. Sand began to blow across all the screens and it was so realistic looking and sounding, that I actually started feeling wind! I looked at the floor to make sure there was nothing hitting my feet. It increased and soon the image of outside was awash in sand. Everything but the counting clock.
When it reached 1:11, it all went black. Force sat back down on the couch. “Have a seat for a second.” As I sat beside him, windows began to open up all over the screens. Three-hundred-sixty degrees of current news. It was so overwhelming that I laughed out loud. All the people speaking, all the images, all the motion, all the urgency, all the emotion, from all over Africa. Now now now. It was so similar to what it was like to close my eyes and reach out, except for one thing; I was looking, seeing, hearing, but no one was looking back at me as I did so. And I couldn’t interact.
I was in the middle of one of Africa’s worst disasters worrying about being hunted down by one of the world’s biggest corporations and my own government. Yet, the rest of Africa was going about its business as usual. Elections were being held in Ghana. There were protests for gay rights in Kenya again. The latest Oracle Solar farm, this one in Chad, was now online. There was a new rap group in Algeria taking the world by storm. Drone deliveries in Mali were going so well that this was the fifth month without a single mishap.
We were both quiet as we caught up with the rest of Africa. And that must have been how I saw it. Out of all the hundreds of stories all around me, I saw it. A smaller box. Maybe because the male newscaster was standing in a place so empty, sand dunes behind him. A familiar sight. It caught my eye. “. . . this small nomadic village could never have seen it coming,” the newscaster was saying. Without thinking, I brought it forth and expanded it to a size I could see clearly.
As the anchorperson spoke, I zoomed the focus in on those behind him. As I did it, I held up my hands and parted them as if I were opening up a large map. There. “That’s DNA’s mother,” I said. She looked confused and her hair was in disarray, her skin dirty with soot.
“At approximately 2 AM this morning,” the anchorperson said, “. . . this village was set upon by their own. It is believed that this is the home village of the fugitive herdsman at large, Dangote Nuhu Adamu. In these remote parts of Nigeria, as we saw from yesterday’s failed capture of the herdsman Adamu and the murderess Okwudili, it is difficult for authorities to quell lawlessness. Bukkaru, the United Fulani Tribal Council elders, a godchild of the organization known as Miyetti Allah, authorized this attack. And there were casualties. This small village was razed to the ground. And still, Adamu was not caught . . . .”
Behind the anchorperson, DNA’s mother was being hugged by, yes, DNA’s journalist brother. He too was dirty with soot. Where was DNA’s sister? “DNA will be angry,” I muttered.
“I’m sure,” Force said. “And this makes three groups that are after you two now.”
“Do they ever go after the actual terrorists?”
“If Ultimate Corp can pay people off to stop living the way they’ve been living for hundreds of years to, instead, plant trees in the parts of the north that aren’t engulfed in the Red Eye, they can pay off the Bukkaru to go after one of their own.”
“We barely escaped them,” I said. “My God. What would they have done to us?”
“Necklace you, watch you burn, and then thrown your bones in the Red Eye to fly forever.”
I stared at Force, my mouth hanging open.
“I’ve heard of desert folk doing that to their worst criminals,” he said with a shrug. “At least you can rest easy knowing they won’t come here. Tribals don’t come to the Hour Glass unless they’re outcast.”
I got up. “I have to tell DNA.”
Force raised a hand and all the screens popped away and we were back to being surrounded by the outdoors. “Yeah, let’s get back.” He paused. “I’m sorry, AO. For both of you. Neither of you deserves this shit.”
I looked into his eyes and then turned to the door. “It’s all right,” I said, my voice husky. If I had looked at him a moment longer, I’d have burst into tears. The days when I leaned on Force were long gone. Still, as we headed down the stairs, my chest was tight with grief. No, neither of us deserved this shit. “When’s the last time you saw the sun?” I asked. I needed to change the subject.
“Real or artificial? There are sun dome restaurants and small parks with lights that create sunshine here that looks even more real than the real thing.”
“When’s the last time you saw the real sun?”
“About five years.”
I thought about this conversation well into the night.
CHAPTER 17
Milk
When we got back to Force and Dolapo’s space, Dolapo had a full spread of dinner waiting for us, and DNA was sitting at the table beside the stone hearth, eating from a plate of groundnuts.
“AO,” he said, grinning. “You look much better than you did this morning.”
I laughed sitting beside him. “You, too. Where’d you go?”
“Walking,” he said. “We’re so close to the Hour Glass border; I wanted to see it. People don’t like living near the borders, so the walking there was quiet, peaceful.”
“What’s out there?” I asked.
“Mostly farms,” Force said, sitting across from us. He took a groundnut from DNA’s plate and popped it into his mouth. “Groundnut farms. I assume you found the path that runs right alongside the anti-aejej edge.”
DNA perked up even more. “Yes! I walked it for nearly a mile, and not one person or vehicle passed me. I know why. AO, it’s beautiful and quiet, but the storm! You can see it. Whirling and swirling. And the higher you look, the thinner the dust gets, so the more you see. And you can’t hear it. So you see how violent it is, but you don’t truly know.”
“But all of us do know because we all fought our way through the damn thing to get here,” Force said. “Yep, nothing but human ingenuity is between us and the Great Flying Death.”
“I met a groundnut farmer sitting at a small hut he’d built. He was sitting on a stool watching the storm while he was digitally surveying his crops. He said that every day, he would come out there and converse with the Red Eye. He was a little strange. But he gave me this bag of groundnuts. Said he had a surplus and more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime, and if the Red Eye eventually blew this place away, he was fine going with it.”
“Ah, that had to be Sokoto,” Dolapo said as she put a huge bowl of egusi soup and a plate of pounded yam in front of me. “The man is over 80 years old and one of the few here the day they created the Hour Glass. His younger sister was one of the founders. No one sees much of Sokoto these days. You are blessed.”