Badu, the dark lord’s right hand, bows in apology. Eshu had a long habit of cleaving his right hand and growing one anew. Badu had only been on the job a thousand years. He was just getting to know his way around the aiye called Earth. “Sire, we’ve been over this. If you kill him, he will be born again elsewhere, and it will take us many moons to find him once more.”
“But killing him feels good,” Eshu says. His knuckles crackle as he makes a fist, the sound of logs in a hot fire. The two lords stand facing the cube of obsidian in which noble Olodumare, the damned bringer of light, sits entombed.
“Yes, m’lord. I know how it feels. But death will set him free.”
Eshu exhales tendrils of smoke from his nostrils. “He will be free anyway. My bastard nephew always finds a way. This light, it slips through the slimmest of cracks. And my minions never cease to fail me.”
Badu waits to be smote to oblivion. Every muscle and tendon tenses in anticipation. Badu spends much of his time waiting to be smote. One day, he knows he will be right.
“We have him now, m’lord,” he says. “These messages he sends will not get far, and the people of this aiye do not know the power in their hearts.”
Badu has thought many centuries on this. The cell of obsidian, with its thousand and one facets, is itself like a black heart in the center of the aiye. Inside that solid case of stone sits Olodumare, a god of pure light. Olodumare in his cage is very much like the speck of hope that lies in men’s hearts. The way the world was going, there was no way it was getting out.
Eshu turns and spits a wad of flame in Badu’s direction. “Light leaks like water through the tightest of fists,” he growls. “Darkness reigns a generation, perhaps, and then goodness takes most of what we fight for. There must be an end to this cycle, to hope, to—”
“Sire—”
Eshu silences Badu with a claw. A leaf of parchment flutters through the air, summoned out of nothingness by Olodumare, the son of the divine creator, imprisoned in black obsidian. Words like ants crawl across the parchment, a plea to anyone who might listen. Eshu turns the note to ash. Across the great cavern, more fluttering notes can be seen, moving like lazy moths. They too burst into flame. So many…
“I have killed the boy more times than I can count,” Eshu says, as he watches the summoned notes succumb to his dark magic. “But he is born anew. I have put him in stone again and again, but one of you will get too close and hear his words and be in thrall like fools, freeing him. And now these missives, fluttering like insects across the aiye called Earth. They will release him. Some will get infected with the light. So I might as well kill him. Enjoy these years like days before he comes of age and realizes what he is again—”
“Sire, if I may—”
Eshu turns, his hand lifted as if to smite. He hesitates when he sees Badu holding one of the notes between his black claws.
“I have an idea,” Badu says. “One that might keep the lightness hidden away for good.”
In Kogi state there is a river long cursed. Fish from this river remain raw, however long you cook them. If you are injured by the bones of these fish, the wound will never heal. Badu grew up along the banks of this river in Kogi state. In his throat there is a cut from a fish he caught as a child. It fills him with pain every time he swallows. It will do so until the end of time.
But time is a funny thing, and it can be bent to the will of the great god of darkness Eshu. Bent, but not broken. Very little can slip through. Meaningless trifles. No more than words, like the words that pass through solid obsidian and the darkest of hearts.
Badu swallows, painfully, and writes another letter. In years hence, he will come to type the same words on little machines. Time is bent, Eshu straining under the weight of such a burden, and these words are passed back in time—black insects to flutter in the aiye called Earth, but the Earth of old, the Earth of superstition, the Earth that learns not to listen.
In the heart of foul obsidian, the good god Olodumare brings thoughts together like callused palms. He forces them out into the aiye, the real world, and pleads with the good people there. He sends them to all the people, for all are good. All are light inside of darkness. All are like him.
The years wear on, and Olodumare realizes he is not reaching the people. No one believes in gods anymore. The riches of knowledge no longer hold sway. Only the yellow glint of gold. Perhaps because the light is everywhere else fading upon the aiye called Earth.
So the words change. The story changes. Pleading. Begging. Notes for years, sealed in envelopes, and later just words made of phosphors of light, sent to everyone, for all are that shard of light encased in darkness.
Deer sir or madam,
I am Olawale, a prince from Nigeria, and youre help is most seeked. My evel uncle has keeping me locked away. All the riches of my countrey will belong you, but you needs only paye me a small favor. For this, I will paye you back a millionfold—
In a chamber deep in the bowels of the aiye called Earth, the iron-mule Badu swallows and writes, swallows and writes. He has been doing this for generations, his words sent everywhere that words can go. Because flames can only consume so much; and words can only drown in more of the same. Words everywhere, until they can’t be trusted.
I spent the better part of a year in Africa prior to setting off on my journey around the world. While my sailboat was being built, I had time to drive around this new-to-me continent and try to understand its history. One of the things I discovered was a rich mythology of gods I’d never been exposed to before.
There is no one Africa. There are thousands of them, many overlapping and in conflict and cooperation with each other. Religion and family are powerful forces here, and there are religions aplenty.
One thing I couldn’t help but notice were the unanswered prayers. The economic disparity between the haves and have-nots in South Africa is vast and disheartening. The wealthy exist alongside townships that are little more than plywood, corrugated tin, and strewn refuse. Inhabitants of these townships walk hours each way to clean the houses of the wealthy for a pittance. Where prayers are said the most, it becomes obvious how little they are answered.
Time spent in Africa got me thinking about the prayers we ignore: the people we drive by on the side of the road without picking them up; the charities we don’t support; the time we don’t volunteer. There are so many people asking that we begin to treat it all like spam. And how many frivolous things are prayed for every day? How much time would a god spend blessing those who’ve sneezed with little time for anything else?
All these ideas went into a story about a god who subsists on hope and is today starving for lack of it. His pleas to us are drowned out by the clever requests of evil gods that our spam filters delete. How are we to know the difference? Are we not gods to many with the cruel power to ignore?
Algorithms of Love and Hate
The Automated Ones
Melanie entered the foyer of Beaufort’s, leaving the reek of wet pavement behind and replacing it with a fog of fine-cuisine smells. Rain shimmered on her floor-length coat; she stripped the garment off and folded it over her forearm, looking back for her fiancé.
Daniel was still outside, fiddling with the umbrella. One of his shiny loafers was half-buried in a puddle, propping the door open. A cascade of water from the striped awning, a perfect line of downpour in the drizzle, was pattering across the back of his blazer.