Nnedi Okorafor - Lagoon

The President whimpered.

“I can read the air you breathe,” she said. When he still could not speak, she changed back. Her second transformation was too much for the guarding soldiers, the pilot, even the advisors. As one, they turned and ran. One of the soldiers holding up the President started praying to Allah under his breath; the other continued to sob.

“Does this help?” she asked, watching them run.

When her gaze returned to the President, he licked his lips and took a deep breath. “Y-yes.”

“Would you like me to look more Hausa?”

“It’s… no, you are fine.”

“I did not mean to frighten you.”

“You are evil!” Zena shouted from behind him.

“I am not,” Ayodele said flatly. “I am change.”

“How did you take over all the mobile phones?” the President asked.

“It wasn’t just the mobile phones and it wasn’t just me. They helped,” she said, motioning to Adaora, Anthony and Agu. “So did Adaora’s offspring.” Ayodele continued. “As did my people. As did your people. It is a matter of connecting and communicating.” She grinned. “And your technology is simple, easily manipulated.”

“And yours is not?”

“We are technology, Mr President. And no, we are not easily manipulated.”

“What do you want?”

“We do not want to rule, colonize, conquer or take. We just want a home. What is it you want?”

He paused. “To be alive again.”

“I will make it so.”

The bat is thoroughly shaken.

She has eaten fifty mosquitoes. Fifty-one. Fifty-two. Her belly is full of insects. Her soft brown fur rustles as she flies. She knows where everyone else is; they are there above the gathering humans on the beach. This place teems with mosquitoes and gnats, who are attracted to their lights and body heat and blood. She discovered this earlier in the week and other young bats followed her. Now, they flit about so fast, the humans aren’t even aware of their presence.

She feels great. The moment before it happens, she catches and eats a mosquito and then does a barrel roll, pushing high into the sky, loving the humidity and the cool air. It makes her feel light and powerful. She drifts on the warm breeze. As she does, she sends a series of ultrasonic squeaks that show all the other bats the beauty of the evening.

Then the thick soupy haze lights up the horizon where it meets the ocean. Like the rotten inside of a crushed fruit. The haze rolls, folds and expands. It is heading right toward her.

BoOm!

Visceral, thick, but not quite substantial. She sees it perfectly because, for her, sound is as near solid as a sound can be. Deep and ample and spreading. Fast. Then it washes over her as the waves wash over the sand below.

She feels it like she felt the first breath of life when she was born. She remembers the moment of her birth clearly. She had opened her eyes and seen little. But then she chirped, and the sound found her mother. Then the others. Then the cave. And a few weeks later, when she echolocated the night, she thought she’d die from the beauty of the trees and the land.

Now she is in the middle of… of red, pink, green, yellow, blue, periwinkle. She has no words for color because she is a bat and bats do not see colors. But she sees them now. She sees a thousand of them. She can taste them. They are meaty like mosquitoes, leafy like palm fronds, fruity like mangos. She tumbles in the air and then falls to the sand. She struggles to stay conscious, stretching her wings and twisting her head. She looks into the sky and sees… lights. At this moment, she is the only bat on earth seeing the stars in the sky. But she doesn’t know what those are either. Her echolocation will never reach that far. The stars become many. They seem to grow closer, too. It is overwhelming.

Then everything is dead quiet. No air. No sound. No earth. She is in space. Farther, deeper. She sees a planet of stone. Red oily stone and liquid air. Then an aqueous world of blue, blue waters. Then a yellow fast-spinning sphere lit by three suns. World after world. She wakes in a tiny warm cave of darkness, but there is energy here, too. She is being jolted by sound, by rhythm. What kind of higher echolocation is this?

This is what awakens her. Jars her back into her body, back to life. Then the darkness opens into the night and she is hurled into the sky. Grateful to the Supreme Being that she has been given another chance at life, she flies into the night, her mind buzzing, her perspective changed.

Nevertheless, sound and sight – now she has both. She looks up and sees the stars. She echolocates for miles. Her world is suddenly huge.

She does not eat a thing. She only wants to fly and see with her new senses. She has grown an eye in the middle of her forehead but she doesn’t know this. And if she could, she would not know what to make of it. She flies higher than she’s ever flown before. Maybe she is trying to leave the earth. She isn’t sure. She isn’t thinking about it.

She’s far in her mind, deep in her own thoughts. The air on her wings feels amazing. She is swimming, rolling through the air as if it’s water. She lifts her head as she flies and lets out a series of loud chirps. And that’s when she sees it. The largest bird ever. Flying faster than any hawk or eagle or owl. Roaring like some sort of monster. She doesn’t know the human word “dragon”, otherwise she would call it that.

There is no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And no pain. It is like being thrown into the stars.

The pilot of the Nigerian president’s plane has no clue that the plane he is flying has just killed the most enlightened bat on earth. After obliterating this bat as it passes, the plane flies on toward the airport on the strangest night in the city of Lagos’s history.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Adaora pressed her head to the car seat and shut her eyes. For the first time in years, she prayed. She prayed to her father, who’d been crushed to death by a speeding truck on the Lagos–Benin Expressway, she prayed to all those spirits she knew lived deep in the polluted soil of Lagos, she even prayed to the Christian god she didn’t believe in and the Muslim god she’d never learned about. Lastly, she prayed she was doing the right thing by getting in the car with Agu, Anthony, the President’s wives and the two security guards, and leaving the President of Nigeria out there with Ayodele the alien.

“GAAAAAAAH!” the President continued to scream.

Agu was holding down Zena and one of the soldiers was holding Hawra.

“LET ME OUT!” Zena screeched, tears streaming from her eyes.

“Ah-ah, what is she doing to him?” one of the soldiers moaned.

The screaming stopped. Adaora listened with all her being, but there was no sound to indicate whether the man had died or run off or fainted or ceased to exist. Moments passed. Adaora opened her eyes to find Anthony staring at her, sweat pouring down his face. The minute Agu let go of Zena, she leaped out of the car.

Adaora went after her. Hawra ran a few steps, her thick legs carrying her as fast as they could, and then slowed down. The President and Ayodele were seated face to face on the tarmac in front of the plane. Zena had stopped, standing over them.

“My love, are you OK?” Zena asked.

Adaora stepped up behind her, staring at the President. Even in the darkness, she could see that his eyes were clear, no longer rheumy. The lines on his face were still there but his skin had cleared up. He was sitting with his back straight, unbent. He was smiling.