On one side of the paper is binary code, and on its reverse is mIRC scripting. Gibberish to most people Ify knows, even much of the medical staff, but for Ify, her first language. She can see in a sequence of coding a computer’s attempt to describe a moment. A series of hashtags and backslashes attempting, like a camera figuring out how it works, to describe the angle of sunlight on a small field filled with dancing schoolchildren, or the taste of fried plantains mixed with a mouthful of jollof rice, or the feeling of something smooth and feathery and small held in the cup made of two hands joined together. This was what Xifeng’s hard drives held.

It would be easy enough to look at these markings on a pair of screens. But this way makes it easier to see the coding. If she’s given image after image, sensation after sensation, immersive memory after immersive memory, she knows what will happen. It nearly happened just now.

She will abandon everything else to look for Onyii.

From time to time, she looks up from the printouts and into the room in which Uzo sits, and she wonders just how much of Onyii is there for the finding. What parts are there of her sister’s life that Ify had no idea about? Did she ever love anyone? What was she like as a child? What were her moments of grace? Of happiness? Were there smells that transported her? Food? The odor that hangs over certain cities? The sea?

She lives, Xifeng had told her before plummeting to her death.

Ify wishes she could download the memories onto an external drive and tinker with them from there, rummage through them looking for signs of Onyii, chase her sister through these acts of remembering. But as soon as the data leaves Uzo’s head, it will begin to deteriorate, perhaps falling prey to the same virus that is plaguing the children filling the ward.

When Ify gets back to her office, a box of printouts in her arms, Céline is waiting for her.

For a moment, they stand there, frozen, Ify with the box in her hands and Céline pitched nervously against the wall, trying to affect a pose of nonchalance. But an apology swims behind her lips. Ify can feel it.

The whole journey through Centrafrique’s transport station, haggard and exhausted, she had looked for Céline, waited anxiously for her to show up and hold her, reassure her, bring her back to the life, the security, she’d felt in space. But Céline had never shown her face, and now here she stands.

“Don’t you have a Colony to administrate?” Ify asks, the venom thick in her voice.