Down another corridor, they stop at a door. Dr. Ezirike puts his hand to the pad. It beeps, and the door slides open, revealing a warmly lit anteroom with a carpet at its center and old-fashioned leather-bound books lining the walls. Instead of a wall at the far end of the room is a window, opening out to a room where children and a few young adolescents play or sit or stare into space. Before some of them sits an easel at which they paint with their styluses, some with their fingers. Others arrange blocks into increasingly complex patterns.
Dr. Ezirike pauses in front of the window before turning and indicating the two hovering armchairs for Ify and Grace. “Don’t worry, it’s a one-way mirror. They cannot see us.”
Grace sits, stylus poised over the tablet she has in her lap, ever the dutiful notetaker.
Ify can’t take her eyes off the children.
On the other side of the glass, adults walk around the room, but they don’t wear any armor. Just robes with green and white stripes at the ends of each sleeve. Here, the kids cluster in groups, some young enough to barely be walking. A few of them rest against the wall; these ones seem older. But through the flexiglass, Ify can see movement. She can see children talking to each other. Some of them are animated, others withdrawn. But they all seem . . . alive.
Once inside the room, she sees the drawings that line the wall. She walks to one of the pictures and sees a compound sketched out, seen at an angle from above with soldiers toward the center of the page around what she realizes is an explosion. The captured moment finds the limbs frozen in mid-flight. A shaheed. A suicide bomber. Someone in a military vest stands at the bottom right corner of the page, looking both at the scene and at Ify.
Then an explosion outside the building, and Ify, held down by the guards protecting her, staring at one of the children, who is giggling and saying “Roses” over and over again, and Ify realizing he means the new blood on the walls outside the compound from the suicide bomber who has just detonated himself.
“Doctor?” Dr. Ezirike’s voice snaps Ify out of her reverie.
Ify closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose, then shakes herself out of her stupor. Her bodysuit tells her where she is, beams into her brain their location, the time of day, the year. We are not at war, she says to herself, turning to smile at Dr. Ezirike, then taking her seat in the hoverchair next to Grace.
“I was just telling your colleague,” the doctor says, “that some of our most important advances have been in the field of child cyberization. It was common wisdom that children should reach a certain age before undergoing any such operations, but with our technology and growing expertise, we are able to push that age further and further back.”
“Machines from the cradle to the grave,” Ify says before she can stop herself.
The doctor frowns at her, then opens his face again for the both of them. “Some will look at these children and see the future best and brightest of Nigeria, able to attend and succeed at the best schools anywhere. Some will see future scientists able to accumulate data at hitherto unknown rates and assimilate them and conduct incredible analyses. And in a way, we are breeding future environmentalists. I’m sure the government is trying to get all the help it can in its efforts to combat climate change. But we are also building people more able to survive in this world. Their organs don’t deteriorate at the same rate. They have automatic immunity from any number of diseases that may have devastated previous populations. Can you believe there was a time when a thing like malaria could kill you?” He chuckles softly.
Grace pauses in her note-taking. “Doctor, you said earlier that the government’s goal was widespread cyberization?”
“Yes. For a number of reasons. The health of the population, but also increased productivity. It opens the space for remote workers. We have high-speed rail from Borno State to Enugu, but for some, the trip is still not feasible. That shouldn’t keep them from having the good job they qualify for.”
“Aren’t there security concerns?” Something is niggling at the back of Ify’s mind, but she can’t quite pin down her worry. “Mass connectivity. The government can watch everything you do.”
Grace stiffens in her seat, as though a thought has just occurred to her.
Dr. Ezirike shrugs. “Would you rather the government carry your data or a private corporation? At least this way, your wallet is safer. The Ministry of Health certainly isn’t trying to bully you into buying that sweater.” He chuckles.
“No, it isn’t,” Ify says quietly to herself.
“After the cataclysm that ended five years ago, the people have been more than eager to protect against such widespread catastrophe.”
Ify’s eyes spring open. “Cataclysm?”
“Yes. The Climate Cataclysm, the Nine-Year Storm that ravaged the country for nearly a decade. It set fire to almost everything, devastated the southeast. The Igbo were hit hardest. It saw the expansion of the Redlands, rising sea levels. Almost every imaginable horror.” He doesn’t speak like someone affected by the calamity. He speaks as though this were a thing that happened somewhere far away, that killed people he can only barely bring himself to care about.
“Is that what happened?” Ify asks, trying to keep the edge out of her voice. Grace has stopped taking notes and now stares intently at the both of them.
“What? Of course that’s what happened.” The doctor laughs. “Millions died and millions more were displaced by the Nine-Year Storm. It wasn’t until 2176 that the worst was over. And that’s when the mass cyberization initiative got under way in earnest.”
“But the war—”
“Tell us more about the regional clinics, Doctor,” Grace interjects.
For less than a second, a dark expression washes over Dr. Ezirike’s face, but he continues, explaining the intake process and the local efforts to combat the worst effects of the Climate Cataclysm while caring for the climate refugees most adversely affected. But, to Ify, his voice has turned into the buzzing of a distant insect. Her gaze returns to the children, some of whom would have been alive in 2176. Some of whom would have been alive before then. Alive to have witnessed the end of the war. A war no one seems to want to talk about.
A war, it seems, that didn’t even happen.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Grace waits until the driver has taken her and Ify some distance from the hospital before speaking.
A wave of relief moved through Ify at the sight of their two new guards. Since the night of Grace’s encounter with the police, Ify has insisted that the two guards, smartly dressed and thankfully taciturn, accompany them on every trip. She was foolish to think that simply having come from here meant that she was safe from whatever dangers lurked in this place. It took Grace’s near-arrest to show her that.