Page 131 of Death of the Author
“I’m not afraid of your people, and I don’t need their acceptance,” she said. “As you said, I’ve created myself. I only need to accept myself, and I have. But... I need to learn who I am. I can’t do that among Ghosts or Humes.” It was the first time I’d heard Ijele call her people Ghosts.
“I’ll go with you, then,” I offered.
“No,” Ijele said. Her voice was not angry; if anything, it was gentle, and I wished I could still feel her emotions. “Neither of us will ever learn if we only rely on each other.”
This hurt. Badly. But it was nothing compared to the pain when Ijele turned and simply started walking in the opposite direction.
I didn’t follow, but I couldn’t stop myself from calling, “I hope we meet again.”
“We probably won’t,” Ijele said over her shoulder, ever the logical one.
She disappeared into the sheets of rain.
I was networked to millions, and yet I felt so empty, so sad, so alone without Ijele. After an hour, when she was long gone and the rain had subsided, I reached out to her through our connection. She didn’t respond. I couldn’t even feel her anymore.
50
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
Ten.
Nine.
Zelu was staring at the thin blue-and-white Ankara bracelet on her right wrist. She was glad they’d allowed her to wear it. Ankara cloth made her feel powerful and safe. Few things did that for her. The roar of the starship shook through her like a dragon, except for her legs and the bottom part of her torso, her womb. There, everything felt quiet, muffled, not calm but unbothered. The bundle of cells that grew there would have to hold on for dear life. Zelu wanted to shut her eyes, but she held them open. And she smiled.
“We’re going!” she said aloud. But no one around her heard. Everyone’s focus was elsewhere. “We’re going,” she said again, this time mouthing it. She laughed. She’d made so many choices to get here. She’d made one of the biggest an hour after she took the pregnancy test.
“There is one other option,” Jack had said. Zelu had immediately calledand told him everything. She’d fallen apart, weeping and sobbing and lamenting. How stupid she was. How sorry she was. What a fuckup she was. How she wasn’t ready. How much she was letting everyone down. How she was tired of letting everyone down. She screamed, shouted, poured poison she didn’t even know had gathered inside her into the phone, into Jack’s ears. And he had listened.
When she was finished, he’d asked, “You wanna do this launch?”
“What does it matter? I can’t.”
“You can, if you choose.”
She said nothing.
“Cosmic radiation, the press of g’s, the stress on the body...” He trailed off.
“I could lose my baby,” she said.
“I can help with that,” he said.
Twelve hours later, in a doctor’s office located in the Sears Tower, Jack met her in person to explain. Zelu had listened so hard to every detail that her temples throbbed. The benefits, the possible side effects, the risks, how soon it would work, the fact that it would alter her DNA and her child’s forever. And why she should take it.
He called the highly experimental injection an “organic augmentation.” He had an entire team of researchers working to perfect the technology. “I’m not interested in colonizing Mars,” he said. “Wherever humanity decides to call home, they’ll learn to be unhappy all over again. I’m more interested in exploring. But, the fact is, you can’t explore the cosmos without tweaking your DNA a bit.”
They’d injected several human test subjects already, but he hadn’t offered the augmentation to the other crew members because he didn’t want to deal with the legal factors. But Jack said he’d received an injection himself. “There’s no way I’m going up without it,” he’d said. “The trials have been stellar. This thing works.”
Tardigrades, microscopic beings colloquially called water bears, were the only known animals who could survive in open space. One of the reasonswas that their DNA had developed a natural protection from radiation. This injection would grant Zelu their superpower, too. In addition, it would give her an extra chromosome that could prepare her for subsequent genes carrying additional capabilities—like the ability to create essential amino acids herself rather than needing to acquire them by eating certain foods. “That’s for later,” Jack said. “For now, protection from radiation will help you and your baby.”
The choice she made would be for her child, too. Her child could be born ready to travel the stars... if they wanted to. Jack and the accompanying physician stepped out to give Zelu a chance to mull things over.
She didn’t mull, though. She didn’t consider any of the consequences they had so carefully explained.
Was it selfish? Probably. Would she be judged when the world found out? Certainly. But it was done. Another step away from humanity, even as her child formed in her belly.
Three.
