Infinite

Chisom Umeh

C hika returns to the same dream every night, deliberately. The one where Olisa becomes an existing boy again. Those moments when she holds him back as he stretches his hand to a passing ice cream truck, wanting to break free from her grasp. The ice cream man notices the little boy itching to run off from his big sister’s arms and waves from the window at him.

Nothing is ever enough to hold this energetic child. He wants to go off, like he tries doing every other morning when the truck passes. But Chika lifts him in the air and spins around, hearing a chuckle escape his lips. This is the moment she keeps going back to in the dream. The moments when they were happy. The moments before.

She wants those precious moments to remain, and often flicks off a tear from her cheek whenever she wakes and finds that they’re no more. She gets down from her bed and lifts an imaginary Olisa off the ground, guarding him in the crook of her arms. She spins around as the bedroom AI detects her soft movements and proceeds to part the curtains to let in sunlight. She tries to remember the contours of his cheeks and the brightness of his smile every morning. Because in those moments he is suddenly there with her in real life. Until he isn’t.

But tonight, Chika no longer wants to hold an imaginary Olisa.

A bus drops her in the heart of town. The air here is gentle against the skin, even at this time of night. Some shop owners are packing up, others already closed. This part of the city is urban, hence the almost quiet street. A car zooms past Chika and she pulls up her hoodie. She knows there’s a security bot ahead, so she turns onto an alleyway.

k nock. Wait. Knock again.

Silence. Shuffling of feet. “Chika?”

“Yes, it’s me, Prof.”

A buzzing sound. The door clicks open. A head peeks out. “Are you sure you’re not being followed?”

“I’m sure.”

Professor Nwokolo lets her in. She walks behind him through a long passageway that seems to steepen as they go. His small frame is probably heavier than it looks, hence his slow movement. The red bulbs on the walls are bright enough that you can see in front of you, but dim enough that you can’t be very sure what’s there.

“I thought you wouldn’t make it,” he says, and his voice carries through the hallway. There’s excitement in his tone, and Chika wonders what is so exciting about what they’re about to do.

They emerge at an open room, and Chika thinks she saw an apotropaic amulet hanging just at the entrance. Professor Nwokolo is a man of science, but he’s well aware of what people like her can do to him. Not exactly people like her, just people from her coven.

There’s a table cluttered with everything from screwdrivers to energy-capturing gloves. There’s a white board at the far end with equations complex enough to pass for advanced magic symbology. The equations extend to pieces of papers strewn around the floor. Nwokolo steps on a few as he crosses the room. Osita Osadebe’s People’s Club is serenading the room. He usually says the soft rhythm of the highlife song reminds him of his father, but it does the opposite for Chika, reminding her of her mother’s old records.

“So what can I offer you?” he asks, his palms open in front of him. “A drink, perhaps?”

“Nothing. Let’s just get on with it.”

A smile spreads across his face. There’s a bright twinkle in his eyes that almost reflects on his glasses. The last time Chika saw him he had facial hair. But now, oddly enough, he looks older without it.

“Okay then,” he says.

Nwokolo goes to one end of the room and pulls a cloth off a cylindrical glass chamber. Inside it are a thousand fireflies. Their yellow glow lights up the cylinder, a flagrant contrast to the lab’s dim-red background. He turns to Chika and smiles. “We’ll use this.”

c hika is an Ihe Conjurer, meaning that she gets her energy from natural light. Her coven’s witches like to channel the sun because it is the most pure and effective energy source, but a consequence of doing so is that they immediately become averse to sunlight, and must avoid it for as long as it would take for the energy to wane. Further exposure could cause them to become combustible, and as little as a vibration of someone’s vocal cords could be like taking a match to dry leaves.

She remembers seeing a witch caught up in the flames in front of her house five years ago. The fire licked the woman’s skin, burning her till she could no longer move. Chika stood transfixed that morning, frightened by how a human being could be reduced to ash in seconds. She will never forget, but not for that reason. She was only released from the sight when she heard the sounds of a vehicle crashing into something, and turned to find that her little brother had run into the main road.

That method of channeling isn’t available to Chika right now, however. Not because it isn’t daytime – she has saved up enough sunlight in her talisman to use at night – or because she’d have to live like a vampire for several days after, but because channeling the sun or any other high energy source will alert her coven, and her chance to do what she came for will be lost. Professor Nwokolo had told her he had found an alternative, and even though she had her doubts, she agreed to try it out.

“Fireflies generate light through a chemical reaction in their bodies, a process called bioluminescence.” Nwokolo often speaks without stopping to catch a breath, stringing words together like he’d lose the ability to speak if he doesn’t say them quickly enough. He seems to be twice as fast now that he is excited, sending the words tumbling over each other. “Light is produced when oxygen combines with calcium, adenosine—”

“Prof, biko, stop,” she says. “Just get on with it. We don’t have all night.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. It’s just that—” Chika glares at him “—okay, okay.” He goes to the side of the cylinder, pulls some cables that are connected to a computer, and moves to attach them to Chika’s arms. “Roll up your sleeves, please.” She does so and he applies the ends of the cables just above her wrists.

Chika clenches and unclenches her fist but doesn’t feel anything. She expects there to be a warm sensation indicative of energy flowing into her, the way her skin reacts when she connects with the sun’s rays. Instead what she gets is like dipping her hand in water; there’s something, but then there’s nothing.

Nwokolo notices and says, “Cold light. Firefly light doesn’t produce heat, which helps them conserve more energy than, say, a lightbulb. And it also keeps them from burning themselves up.” The edges of his lips curl up as he reaches the end of this statement, as if there’s something amusing in what he just said. Chika almost doubts him, because it could be that the reason she isn’t feeling anything is that there’s nothing to feel, but then her talisman lights up, a gentle luminescence the same shade as the fireflies, and she knows he’s right.

“Yes, there it is,” he says, seeing the talisman, and she almost smiles too.

“They won’t be able to pick this up?” she asks.

“They shouldn’t. It’s never been used before, and there’s almost no energy leaking out. You’ll have enough time to do the spell, and—” he looks around the lab “—hopefully, I’ll have enough time to get out of here.”

C hika told her mother about the Higgs field manipulation the night of the day she met the Professor for the first time. How she had overheard his frustrated ideas, seen how his theories were scorned by his peers as outlandish, and then recognised in his grasping for comprehension threads that led not to their science but instead towards her magic.

She told her about how they discussed the intersection of science and the supernatural, that point where figures become symbols, and symbols become language. She told her mother that this could be the chance to see Olisa again, or even bring him back.

“What?” her mother said, almost choking on the morsel of fufu that just went down her throat.

“He says his quantum computer can only get us as far as fluctuating particles or so, then we’d need to cast an—”

“Don’t say another word, Chika!” her mother barked. “Don’t! Going into another dimension! It is forbidden what you are thinking. That’s not what we practice.”

“But it is—”

“I said no! I don’t want to hear of this again. Olisa is dead and gone. Let him be.”

But Chika did speak of it. Many times, even. On the phone, before dinner, after breakfast. Everytime she could. When her mother kept giving her the same reply, Chika bypassed her and took the matter up with the coven. She was told that crossing over would create a dent in the fabric of Ani Mmuo, and the consequences will be grave.

Chika said they were being superstitious.. They warned her that if she ever went on with the crossing she’d be stripped of her powers and banished from the coven, her mother among them.

“But this has nothing to do with ghosts and spirits,” Professor Nwokolo had said when they met again at a restaurant. “These are real humans living in parallel universes, similar to ours in many ways. They exist at this moment, we just need to figure out how to go there. It’d be the biggest breakthrough in science.”

“I tried, prof,” Chika said calmly. “I did. But I’m forbidden from doing anything anymore.”

Nwokolo leaned back in his chair, looking out the window. He took a long drag from his cigarette and let the smoke waft from his mouth in slow, ascending curls. “Both the scientists and witches think me mad,” he said, the beginnings of a laughter tainting his words. “Am I really mad?”

Chika shook her head.

“You know, this project was my father’s. He spent his whole life working on it but died before he could finish it.”

“You wish to see him again too, don’t you?” she asked.

“I only will if you help me. Come on. Let’s see this through.”

“I’m sorry. I already told you. I can’t help.”

Chika didn’t communicate with Professor Nwokolo for the next three years, until she woke on Olisa’s birthday with a fresh wound on her heart and a heaviness in her soul.

Only holding Olisa again could possibly heal her. Even if he was not her Olisa.

C hika starts to feel the effects of the energy. It isn’t much compared to what the sun would have given her. A whisper rather than a roar. But Professor Nwokolo assures her that it’ll be just enough to jump-start the process.

The glow in the cylinder starts to dim. The fireflies start to look more flies and less fire. She’s robbing them of something, she knows, and though that feels wrong, there’s nothing right in losing an innocent child like Olisa to the gaping jaws of death.

“Ready?” Nwokolo asks, a hint of nervousness in his voice now.

“Almost.”

He rushes to the computers and his fingers rattle over the holographic keys. A section of the wall beside him slides apart slowly, revealing a glass door behind. Chika unplugs the cables attached to her and steps towards the door. She sees a cloudy mist inside the compartment.

“Is this it?” she asks.

“Yes. The Higgs Accelerator.”

“Did you get the things I asked for?”

“Yes.”

He goes to one end of the lab, returns with a backpack, and hands it to Chika. She takes out the items one by one, and soon has poured a semi-circle around the HA machine from a pack of salt. She ties together bunches of patchouli, basil, and hyssop then sets it on fire, allowing the incense to burn around the circle. Finally she takes four candles and lights them at each end of the lab, muttering incantations under her breath all the while.

Professor Nwokolo stands with his hands folded watching her the entire time, almost like he can’t wait to get back to doing his own part of the job.

After casting the spell to cleanse the lab, Chika walks up to the glass door and nods at Nwokolo. It opens vertically and the mist escapes. She hesitates, then steps into the compartment. It is just wide enough to take one person, and is quite comfortable if they don’t decide to spread their arms.

Nwokolo pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and says, “If this works, you should arrive in an alternate version of this lab. You have six hours before the window shuts again. Do what you have to do, use the spell again, and you’ll return.”

Chika nods again, and he adds, “Begin at my signal.”

The glass door slides shut and Nwokolo moves out of her line of vision. There’s a low hum omnipresent in the compartment. Chika can’t tell where it’s coming from, but she soon begins to hear it in her thoughts. This makes her uncomfortable and she puts her hands on the glass. She feels itchy and suddenly wants to take off her wig. Where is he? she thinks.

A minute passes. Then another. Then he reappears and gives her a thumbs up, and she reads his lips: Now!

Anyanwu Ututu, she begins. Onwa n’abali! Anam apkoku unu o…

She feels something grow in her with each word she utters. Like a river contained in a tank, cracking the glass inch by inch.

Benmuo na Benmadu, she continues, unu nukwa nu’m o.

She goes on for minutes, the intensity of her voice increasing with each passing second. The energy within her comes loose, and she lets out a scream, unnatural and primeval. She feels the glass within her shatter, and the river pour out, flooding the world.

She lets the water carry her across the planes of the ethereal, into that region where the physical and the metaphysical mean the same thing.

T he ground is warm. Chika sits up and looks around. The glass compartment is gone. This isn’t the lab she knows. The edges are cleaner and the light is brighter. There’s a sharp pain in her head. She puts her hand to her forehead and says a few words to stop the ache, but nothing happens. She checks her talisman and there isn’t the faintest glow. No energy left.

Did it work?

She stands and looks around again. The room isn’t actually as neat as she thought. There’s something viscous like engine oil by the edges of the walls and machine parts piled on each other at another end. There are shelves that rise to the ceiling occupied by devices and hardware Chika can’t identify.

Computer screens hover a few feet from her and she steps forward to look at them. “Professor Nwokolo,” she calls. “I made it into the other side. Where’s your other self?”

The noise of machines startles her, a jarring mix of sounds that feel like TV static combined with water slapping against rocks, and she steps in its direction. The layout of the lab seems the same, even though she isn’t sure it’s the same place. The entrance is different, however, now situated to the right. She walks through the hallway but it is no longer dimly lit, and a few seconds later, she sees something that stops her dead.

It looks like a robot, metallic and shiny. Her eyes bulge as it draws close, and she finds herself backing away.

“Are you a robot?” she asks, heart thumping.

“I… am a… Zonda,” it replies, and she can see that a part of it lights up when it speaks. Its voice is mechanical and toneless, and its body is shaped like a sphere. There’s neon green light glowing from its topmost part, and though the robot is predominantly blue, its lower half is multicolored, like it’s made from a combination of foreign parts.

The strange noises intensify as it approaches, and suddenly Chika’s head is pounding. “What’s that noise?”

“Music,” it says. “Why?”

The room begins to spin and her legs lose balance. She clatters to the ground and a wave of weariness washes over her.

“I can’t… I can’t breathe,” she manages to say, before blacking out.

W hen she wakes the robot is standing over her, or rather, hovering over her. She feels high and drowsy, and thinks she’s dreaming. “They were right,” she says.

“Who?” the robot asks.

“The witches,” Chika says. “My mother. They warned me but I didn’t listen. Now I’ve gotten myself… here. Where’s here? The future? The past?”

“You passed out,” the robot says. “I believed you to be traumatized by my presence, but when you began to breathe irregularly I understood that you were anaerobic. There is not much air in this part of town, so I attached an oxygen tube to your collar.” Chika feels below her chin and touches a metallic necklace.

“Are you a robot?” she asks.

“You asked me that. I think you are the robot. Or a construct. Or whatever. Let us leave semantics for now. The important thing is how you got here.”

The robot turns around and glides to the computer screens. They blink quickly, a series of numbers moving from top to bottom. Soon, a video feed takes up the screen.

“You see right there,” the robot says, an appendage extending from its side and gesturing at a corner of the screen. Chika manages to stand on her feet, comes close to the screen, and squints.

It shows the lab, the one they’re currently in. The robot is there in the video, a pair of the arms extending out the sides of its body and adjusting some component of a machine. The robot departs the scene. Then a flash of light overwhelms the image.

After the flash of light, Chika herself appears, sprawled on the floor. As she starts to rise, the image freezes.

“One minute you are not here,” says the robot, “the next minute you are. Did you use a particle accelerator? Or some kind of ship? Or was it—”

“I came from another universe in something called a Higgs Accelerator, aided by my magic.”

“Oh, so that iis how you did it,” it says, turning to her. The neon light brightens, taking up more space on its body. “Of course. The energy of those who can bend nature. Why did I not think of that?”

Chika swallows hard. Could it be? “Prof… Professor Nwokolo?” Chika was getting weak again, the ache in her head growing exponentially.

“Is that what I am called on your side? Well, I think this professor of yours got a few calculations wrong.” A titter escapes from the robot, even though machines shouldn’t be laughing and there is really nothing funny about what it – or he? – just said. “How are you supposed to get back?”

“I’ll say the words when it’s time,” Chika says, “and I should be pulled from this world.”

The robot snickers again and Chika begins to wonder if she should just say the words now and remove herself from here. But she’s sure her coven’s witches will be at the Professor’s lab by now, and the moment she gets back is the moment she loses her powers.

This is it, the only chance she’ll ever get, and she must see it through.

C hika and the robot – it named itself, but Chika could not recognise the sound as a part of language, and simply called it “the Professor” again – speed through the streets in an unfamiliar kind of vehicle, a two-man hovercraft shaped like a tennis ball.

“If I do not get you away,” he tells her, “they would come for you in minutes. There was a surge of energy around my lab when you showed up and the authorities will want to know where it came from. Well, the authorities, and the ones who can bend nature.”

The witches, in Chika’s parlance. ”Don’t you have a name for them?” she asks.

“Names are a thing of words. We do not have words.”

The absurdity of his statement startles a laugh from her lips. “How can you say that? We are speaking now!”

“My words with you are the first I have ever spoken,” he says. “We do not speak your language, or really even talk. Zonda do not need to be vocal to communicate. I broke down the sounds you make into code I can understand, I intuit meaning from your body language, and mimick your speech patterns.”

“That is not enough!”

“I also sense the complex patterns within the organ in your head. I translate our form of language from code and into signals you can understand.”

She turns away from his gaze, disturbed. The night is brighter in this world, and Chika can see from the vehicle that the moon is a lot bigger and closer. “How is this possible?” she asks.

”Life started out here from the merger of two planets, one much larger than the other. The metallic core of the planets collided, and from this union came a superabundance of the basic element from which most simple life forms here evolved.” The Professor indicates himself. “The remnants of the dead planet collected pretty close to orbit, and this is the moon you now see.”

She looks through the window and there are other robots like the Professor out there. Some are larger, others as small as a football. Some look quite different, like trees with trunks and branches spiraling all around them. Then Chika’s view is obscured as several vehicles pull up beside theirs.

“Oh no,” the Professor says, and accelerates, twisting and turning onto several streets, but there’s little he can do to stop the other vehicles from gaining on them.

A red light passes through their vehicle and splits it in two, forcing Chika and the Professor to fall in opposite directions. Chika’s half bounces through the streets before crashing into a dome on the side of the road.

She’s caught in a mess of wires and grease and sparks and chips and metal. For a moment she thinks she’s no longer breathing, the air gone from her lungs, but then she feels something probing her side. She stirs, and pushes to her feet.

The things poking at her are snake-like appendages connected to robots outside the vehicle. They touch her and withdraw reflexively, as if checking to understand if she responds to stimuli. This goes on for about a minute, the tentacles ruffling her hair and feeling her face. At first they feel soft, like rubber, but seconds later, as if satisfied about what she is, they become denser than vines and curl themselves around her arms and legs.

She’s dragged through the wreckage of the car and into the street. Jagged metal cuts her skin and she leaves a trail of blood on the floor. She’s held upside-down and lifted several feet from the ground, her body dangling in the air.

Chika tells herself she’s dreaming, but the pains in her body and the tightness around her legs disprove that.

She imagines herself dying here, several universes away from her mother, in a world of machines.

Then another intense light leaps past her, and she is dropped and falls to the ground unexpectedly – she feels something break. She sees the Professor advancing and wielding a device in his hand, firing beams of light at the tentacled robots, who are now taking cover.

“Let us go,” he says.

She manages to stand again and limps on one foot towards him. He points to a vehicle like the one they came in and stays there shooting, covering her escape. Just as she’s about to enter the vehicle, she looks back and sees him taking fire. One shot goes into his lower quarters and splinters it into an assortment of parts. Wires, circuitry, screws, and fluid spill onto the ground.

“No!” Chika screams, and rushes from the vehicle, hands outstretched in front of her.

Then she stops.

She tilts her head upward and glances at the moon, disturbingly close and pale and bright. She lifts her arms high, feeling the light pass between her fingers. The sun is light, she thinks, and the moon is a product of that light.

“Onwa n’abali,” she calls, “akpokuo’m gi kita. Nyem ike kitaaa!”

Chika feels the energy course through her veins, her blood, and her spirit. Then she lets it all out, a contiguous light that extends in all directions.

A midst the smoldering robots and burning vehicles around her, Chika kneels and picks up the Professor, or what is left of him. He is almost weightless, wires extending out of his broken parts. She’s staring at his neon lights, now dimmer than she has ever seen it.

“Hello,” he says. “You never told me your name.”

“Chika,” she says. “I’m Chika.”

“Chika, you do not have much time. What you just did now will summon the ones who can bend nature. They are far worse.”

His world’s witches. “I know.”

“Get into that vehicle. I have sent the coordinates to the system. It will take you to the location you seek.”

“What about you, can’t you rebuild or fix yourself?” she asks, fighting back tears, her words distorted by a growing lump in her throat.

“It does not work that way, Chika. I am a living thing too, you know?”

“So?”

“So living things die when they get hurt too much.” Chika looks away now, no longer able to hold back the tears. His voice is getting fainter and fainter by the second, another living thing dying slowly in her arms. Again.

She hears a laugh and returns her gaze to him. “What?”

“Your professor…” He laughs some more. “Infinite possibilities, and he thought you would end up in a universe just like his. He should have known better. But at least… at least, he has helped me realize I accomplished something, somewhere, in another universe.”

This Professor is still laughing when the green light dims, then finally fades, alongside his voice.

All those complex processes just to speak to her, but now he is dead because of her, a fact as simple and straightforward as a witch’s locator spell.

F ive hours have passed since Chika came to this world, ten minutes since she has been in front of this house. She is within the confines of the vehicle the poor Professor gave her. The pre-dawn light rises in the horizon, a yellow band invading the night.

It’s not really a house like she knows it, just a large structure that seems to have been sculpted out of a chunk of metal that juts out of the ground. It has a kind of see-through wall that becomes opaque sometimes, as if a change in the air alters its thickness.

Though strange, the house is somewhat familiar. It is across a road just like hers, and vehicles are speeding past. Vehicles that Olisa, or his alternate self, can run into when his alternate big sister isn’t looking.

She cannot step out of the vehicle or cross the road, however. After her great outburst of energy, that still could not save the Professor, the sun would scald her the moment she put a finger out. So she stays there watching. Looking through the walls at a little robot and two larger others gliding around the house.

She can tell them apart because the smaller one is eager to go outside even though it isn’t time yet – like Olisa always did when he was ready for school.

The slender one, struggling to keep him within her grasp, is a bit erratic, freezing sometimes like someone powered her down, then zapping around the house again as if suddenly on full charge. She knows that robot is one of those that can bend nature. Like Chika can, For it is herself.

The last one moves around quite slowly, as if her machinery needs oiling, as if the world is too quick for her, as though time dilates around her. She’s spherical like the Professor, but more wider and burly, and Chika almost laughs at the thought that her mother is fat both as human and Zonda.

Chika wishes to go to them, to play around like one family again, to snatch the little one in her arms and hold him in the air. But they’d shriek, express their shock in ways she might not be able to understand, and be horrified by her presence in ways only Zonda can.

She thinks not to go to them, lest she be the reason the little one runs into the street in fear, and be knocked down by a vehicle a hundred times his size again. So she basks in the sight she beholds, and keeps it in her mind, because even though this Olisa might now be made of silicon, her love for him is the same across substrates, across universes, and across the vast distances of the infinite.

And then she feels the air change, and reality alters.

C hika is pulled into a space where everything is dark and colorless. The house, Olisa, her mother, the hovercraft – all gone.

She’s afloat, and voices are speaking around her in a strange language. And yet…

“Witch code,” someone says. “If you’re like us you’d be able to understand it.”

“She’s not like us,” another voice says, this one firmer than the first. “She’s a Crosser, like plenty before her in other worlds, and that’s all we need to know.”

There’s a murmur in the background, voices trying to speak over each other.

“Silence!” The firm voice speaks again. “She has indeed come from elsewhere, and we know what we must do.”

“Those instructions were given before we were born,” another voice says. “Do we really have to keep to them?”

“We must, if we hope to maintain balance in our world, and cleanse it of whatever filth she has brought with her. And we must do this here, now, before we lose the chance.”

Chika wants to speak, to tell them she means no harm and just wants to see her brother again, and maybe to hold him once more, but the words remain only in her head, and her head is deep in turbulent waters.

The voices grow around her. They become loud enough to almost split her eardrums. They’re chanting. She’s screaming, but she can’t cover her ears.

S he’s hurled from the mystical plane back into objective reality. She’s no longer within the protection of the hovercraft, and the sun’s rays are eating into her flesh. She’s on all fours, crawling to the house, the hard earth biting into her palms.

Her body’s on fire, but her soul is freezing cold.

She’s saying the words to return home now, but she isn’t sure if she’s doing so with her mouth or her heart. One thing is certain though – she isn’t being transported back. She looks up to the house and sees the robot girl outside, standing there, watching her.

Chika knows that feeling. That fright. That horror.

She hears the sounds of vehicles coming from afar and knows what’s coming next.

Her vision is blurry now, but she can see Olisa in her mind’s eye. The robot boy has run out of the house, his sister too afraid to notice, his mother too slow to react, him too innocent to care.

She sees the chain reaction. The infinite loop. His world will end now the same way it did in hers, because of her, again. This Chika will go off in search of him, causing him to die again.

Chika understands it all.

But she hopes there’s somewhere in the vast, endless universe where the odds would one day be in his favor.

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