They are sleeping at night. Or, rather, they are not moving and I am thinking that they are sleeping. And when it is daytime, they are making chawp-chawp with the grass and moving and sometime sleeping and they are forming gaggle and they are making like family, and some geese are slow and behind the rest. And when they are leaving person’s yard and I am feeding them, they are chasing away gosling and making gosling to be sadding, and I am holding gosling and feeling its feathers and it is soft like nothing I have ever felt and I am even rubbing gosling against my cheek and it is making soft thrum against my face.
Then one day gosling is coming back to me and it is walking like it is liking one leg more than the other. I am knowing that it is fighting with gander but I am never seeing it wounded like this. So I am bathing it and feeding it alone. Then I am seeing that it is going to bathroom and making strange color. Green but not like grass. Green like acid. And I am wishing to speak to it but there is no metal in it, and I hear humans talking about their yard and how they like it now when it is trim and how they are using chemical to keep it that way, and I am sadding because gosling is maybe eating grass with poison on it.
It is moving slow and sometime not moving. It is not eating, then one morning I am finding it on its side and it is beating its wings trying to be standing right but it is not being able to stand. And it is trying and trying but nothing is working. And then I am picking up gosling in my arm and its head is making wild movement, then it is staring at me, then it is staring at nothing and I am knowing it is dead.
I am digging grave for it and I am sadding and then I am walking away. Because it is paining me to be remembering him.
It is paining me a lot.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
One day, I am climbing tree in the forest to be able to see better where I am, and I am climbing branch and branch and setting my foot, and I am moving fast and I am almost at the top when I am smelling metal and sulfur, then I am not seeing anything and I am waking up in the grass and face is staring at me.
It is boy crouching over me. Before, I am wanting to be fighting person who is sneaking up on me, but I am not having the same feeling now. I am not wanting to be fighting and hurting this person. He is looking like me. He is having skin like mine, and I am knowing there is metal inside of him. And my brain is scanning him and seeing that he is made of different pieces. He is having one arm that is different from other arm, and he is having legs but they are not coming from same place as his arms, and he is having face but that is coming from somewhere else too. He is looking like regular boy but I am telling to myself that he is having seams like someone is sewing him together and making him.
“Who are you?” I am asking him.
He is not saying anything for a long time. Then I am scanning him again and I am looking for his story. His history. I am trying to find out where he is coming from and if he is needing help. Is he needing to eat? Is he trying to be eating me?
Then he is looking up at tree, and I am thinking that he is wondering how I am opening up my eye after I am falling from big big tree. And I am wanting to tell him but I am coughing once twice, and black thing is coming out from my mouth.
He is turning and he is seeing this, then he is touching me and he is feeling my face and my hair that I am keeping to cut because when it is big things are hiding in it. And then he is feeling my neck and then he is touching my outlet. Cord is coming from his neck, and he is taking it in his hand and he is putting it in back of my neck.
He is not saying anything while he is doing this, but suddenly I am feeling thing swimming inside me. I am feeling it humming in my blood and I am feeling it crawling on my inside organ, and suddenly my heart is feeling faster. Stronger. And I am wondering what he is doing, but then I am feeling lighter and suddenly pain is leaving me and I am startling because I am not knowing until now that I am being in pain constantly. I am thinking how I am feeling is being normal and I am not knowing that I am hurting even though I am having bandage wrapped around my wrists and chemical from leaves inside the scars on my back and I am pulling my shoulder after arm is hanging loose when police and drone and juggernaut are chasing me and Xifeng through Lagos. But now all of that is just memory and my body is no longer paining me and I am starting to know that this is what nanobot is doing to me and then I am starting to know that boy is giving me nanobot.
His cord is leaving me, and I am sitting up in leaves and grass. “What are they calling you?” I am asking him.
“They are calling me Uzodinma,” he is saying in little boy voice.
“Who is calling you that?”
He looks to the forest, and many many boy and girl come out, and even though they are looking different and having different arm and leg and face and some are having scar on their face and some are having metal showing in their arm and some are not I am starting to know that they are same like him.
They are same like me.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
As we are walking, I am wondering why Xifeng is giving me name like boy if I am girl, and Uzodinma is telling me that my name is Uzoamaka. Even though we are both being Uzo, we are different. And I am thinking that he is telling me this about our name but I am thinking he is also telling me this about something bigger. About who we are being.
About what we are being.
We are walking and I am finding myself asking why we are walking.
One of the boys looks at me, even though I am not saying my question out loud. “We are walking because it is what we are doing.”
“But why?”
Then boy is shrugging.
A girl next to him who is having scar on her face running from forehead to the opposite side of her mouth is saying, “In all of my rememberings, I am walking. Sometime, I am doing other thing, but mostly I am walking.”
None of this is answer to my question.
We are never eating or drinking or needing to bathe or make bathroom, but sometime one of us is sitting down and staring into space and I am wondering if this is how I am looking when I am dreaming. And I am wondering if dreaming is the word for this thing. I am thinking that they are remembering and maybe they are wondering if their remembering is belonging to them or if it is coming from someone else. I am thinking that all of us is searching for clue. We are being like puzzle or mystery. We are being question, and we are looking for the answer to ourself.
I am missing Enyemaka because when I am thinking on me being question and not knowing who I am being, Enyemaka is telling me thing to make me feel peace. Enyemaka is telling me about purpose and about machine and what machine can do, and Enyemaka is making me not to feel strange in my body. Enyemaka is making me not to feel strange for being child of war.
Boy who is being named Oluwale is sitting and looking at nothing, and no part of his face is moving. He is just sitting and crossing his leg like his body is being here but his brain is being elsewhere.