Ннеди Окорафор - Remote Control

“The seller’s auntie told me,” Sankofa lied, smiling to hold back her frustration. She’d have been here sooner if it weren’t for the torrential rains that had turned the roads into shallow rivers of mud. Then she’d been a day late finding whoever had it again two towns away. Then a week later, learning that whoever had it took it towns away. And so on. She tracked it and followed, tracked it and followed. It was almost as if the seed had a will of its own and was playing with her. But she refused to believe it could be so malicious. One day, she would catch it.

In media outlets, word about the town of Wulugu did spread quickly, though. The government speculated that some sort of disease had wiped out the entire population. There was talk of a new virus and fear of this resulting in a pandemic faster and more lethal than the one in 2020. However, those news stories and their curious journalists were quickly silenced. There were stranger speculations, but those did not leave conference rooms. Wulugu was discreetly quarantined, and systematically forgotten. To make things more mysterious, Wulugu disappeared from GPS systems. This made things easier for the already perplexed Ghanaian government, and officials looked the other way. No investigations into what happened were ever done. That’s all the peoples of Ghana could do.

Sankofa sometimes wished that people knew she was a Wulugu survivor, but she didn’t want the questions. Safer for people to focus their stories on just her. In this way, she was free to continue her search for the seed. And because people gave Sankofa power, she started to believe she was powerful. When she left home, she was seven years old. A baby. So this was even truer for her. She walked straight and made demands in the way she’d seen her mother do at the market. She raised her small voice, she flared her small nostrils, she scowled, she asked for the best of all things. And whenever people gave her trouble, she gave them her light. She couldn’t make it happen on purpose, not yet. But when she needed it, it was always there. And so she searched, following the seed as best she could. As the years passed, her feelings and suspicions about the seed darkened, too. If it was hers, why did it keep moving? Just far enough to be infuriating, never close enough to touch.

Sankofa always smelled of shea butter, a smell that reminded her of home. It was easy to find in markets and the women selling it gave it to her for free. She carried a jar of it at all times and rubbed it into her skin whenever she felt the need, which was often. Her light dried out her skin when she flared and the shea butter kept her skin supple and smooth. However, her mind was often clouded and those parts that were clear were populated with dark corners.

Sankofa lived this way for five years.

She pursued the seed around Northern rural Ghana, never telling anyone why she went where she went, moving about with earned and justified entitlement, listening for word of the seed in a box and allowing others to wrap her in the mythology of a spirit. People whispered things like, “She’s the adopted child of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own.” There was truth in every single one of the stories.

Sankofa took shelter when she wanted shelter. She ate well because she demanded good food. And then, starting when she was about eleven years old, there were those who sought her out. There was the mother who came to Sankofa crying about her son who was in a vegetative state and had been on life support for eight years. There was the husband, daughter and mother of the woman suffering constant extreme pain from terminal stomach cancer. By this time, with effort, she could purposely call forth her light at very close proximity, enough to take a life. As long as everyone left the building. And in this way, Sankofa was able to give people what they needed and then moved on while they wept and pretended she wasn’t there.

Her story travelled like an ancestor, always ahead of, beside and behind her. She made no friends, except for Movenpick the fox who continued to follow her at a distance.… and Selah the white tailless fastidious stray cat who travelled with her for three of those five years.

One terrible night, three men attacked Sankofa and Selah the cat as they slept in an empty market. They’d killed Selah, a man crushing the cat’s head beneath a boot, kicked Movenpick when the normally evasive fox tried to intervene, and then Sankofa had killed them all. Afterwards, Sankofa stared at the bones of the dead men left behind, three jawbones and two long bones that could have been from arms or legs. Then she looked at Movenpick, who stood feet away, bruised but alive, despite the fact that Sankofa’s light had washed over the creature like toxic water. She buried her beloved cat and continued on.

Sankofa survived. A seven-year-old on the road alone, then an eight-year-old, then nine, ten, eleven. By the time she was twelve, most knew not to attack her and they gave her what she wanted and needed, instead. However, she spoke to no one about what drove her. What she was searching for. Who would understand? Who would care? She pursued the seed, which she eventually learned meant pursuing the man with the one eye across northwestern Ghana. The man who’d gone into her bedroom, taken the seed and then given it to the politician. The man who’d then stolen it from him, along with his money and golden shoes.

She was always ten steps behind the one-eyed man, as a girl on foot could only be when chasing someone moving around in a car or truck. She followed what it was that she saw behind her eyes when she closed them. The tiny green oblong moon that she could almost touch, so sure she was of its whereabouts. The problem was that it kept moving. The one-eyed man didn’t rest anywhere long enough for her to catch up and so neither did the seed.

Sankofa followed it this way and that. Arriving in the exact spot where the seed had been in a car, in a suitcase, in a pocket, in a backpack, days or even weeks prior. Then she would be off again. On foot. For five years, she persisted with this slow pursuit. Striking fear, awe and stories into hearts, getting those items she believed she was owed, and mercifully taking lives from those who requested it along the way. Until the day in Tepa.

Malaria. Some part of Sankofa that she’d locked tightly away remembered it well. She knew it slowed a person down enough for anything one was running from to catch up. As she walked, she smacked her lips, but the dry taste still remained in her mouth. She frowned and flared her nostrils. For so many years.

She held her light in as she walked through the town. Today she wore a blue and white wrapper and top, the colors of water. She wore the big gold hoop earrings that had been her mother’s and she now thought of as hers, despite the fact that she was still years too young to wear such earrings. She’d recently moisturized her skin with shea butter. Today would be a day of cleansing. She arrived at his home at sunset. It was a nice beige house with two Mercedes parked in front. Sankofa touched both of them as she made her way to the front door. She stepped up to the door and hadn’t stood there for even ten seconds before it opened.

He had a red patch over his eye, he had a large gold watch weighing down his wrist, a thick gold chain around his neck, he wore a bloodred dress shirt and those stylish jeans that spoke more of wealth than actual fashion sense in Sankofa’s opinion. “You, again. Come in,” he said, stepping back and taking a sip of the brown liquid in the glass he carried. In his other hand he carried a burning cigarette.