Beeping jars you out of new mistakes you’re thinking about making. The displays begin to fritz, the way an outside signal might interfere, overriding all communication channels and transmissions. The image of Commander Fela Buhari fills your monitors, her face in close-up. The defiant purse of her lips in close-up while an offscreen voice recites charges. You sit at rigid attention. Your mind doesn’t register what it’s processing. Attenuating the signal for a clearer image, for volume, more out of reflex, the need to do something. You yell at the image. You remember calling Fela’s name, though language sounds strange in your ears over the inchoate noise of your rising fear and rage. Her captors shown briefly. Your thoughts paralyze, at turns angry, grieving, and terrified, racing at how Maulana might respond after the pronouncement of her guilt. The end of their propaganda speech still echoes as blasters erupt and Fela’s body collapses.

You can’t move. Your mouth agape as the image fades. Your belly empties and tightens, your soul in a deep clench. And your heart breaks for Maulana. You run your hand over the controls, not sure you’re ready to replay the broadcast. But you know all of Muungano has begun parsing the footage to begin studying it for information. Because you need to provide answers to Maulana, facts for him to move on. All hands on deck because the drumbeats of war rise in a chorus.

But none of your instruments respond.

Your flight pattern veers horribly off course, your Saqqara caught up in the gravity of Mars. Its red surface rises on your horizon, looming through your window. You try to adjust the pressure from the sails to your thrusters. Nothing responds to your commands. The Saqqara plunges through the planet’s atmosphere. Turbulence buffets the ship. The power flickers, intermittent lifelessness. The controls overload, the navigation system freezes. You attempt to reboot the entire system.

The Saqqara careens madly through the sky. You lose any sense of equilibrium or direction. The ship barely clears a ridge of mountains. A tract of desert plains stretches out before you.

You brace as best you can as the ground rushes toward you.

23 MAULANA BUHARI
The Dreaming City

“My name is Fela Buhari. I am now and forever will be a member of Muungano.”

The broadcast cut across all signal and linkage channels, almost as if it circumvented, or utilized, Maya to hijack my systems. Wanting me to see Fela’s last words. Her execution. The universe will remember her name.