The Network: Chapter Four

Credit: Gemini

We had all dreamed of the day the Motherland would rise, though few of us dared to dream we would actually live to see it. It started in Nigeria, in the year 2027. In many ways, it started long before that. What was missing all those decades was the right spark, the right hope. The demonstrations persisted through every tyrannical onslaught. The boycotts and mass resignations persisted through the endless propaganda. The Uprising – to the degree it could even be called such a thing – sent seismic ripples across our continent, and then across the world. It watched, mouths agape, as a very different breed of African leader rose from the ashes of the old order, as the floodgates of innovation burst open, and a people shackled for generations finally broke free.

Full disclosure… we may have had a thing or two to do with it. Hi. My name is Abinla. I am a Cheetah. And in this series, I will be sharing some uplifting stories about the Africa my friends and I helped build.

This story… is about a young man named Tebello. 

***

The mountains. The morning Sun. The greenery stretching out for miles around. Her gentle voice, speaking of things to come, drawing Tebello’s attention back to the garden patch. She was carrying a basket in her hands now, filled to brim with the day’s harvest, making for her little cottage. He was trailing behind her, a basket in his own hands. He had nearly forgotten he was holding it.

The busy street. The dazzling lights. The slumberless city with its contented populace. Where was he? In the mountains? On the street? The order of things tended to slip his mind. He was pretty sure he was on the street now, though, walking to a bar, where an unlikely informant sat staring at the bottom of his third glass of whiskey, oblivious to all the world.

His name was Louis. He was a former member of the National Christian Resistance Movement, one of many colonial fan clubs that had been banished to the shadows of history. A nihilistic opportunist at heart, he had not abandoned the movement out of some moral epiphany, but for his own survival. He was smart enough to see the end coming, the unstoppable force sweeping across the Sub-Sahara, and weather the cleansing storm unscathed. Now, in a risen Africa led by its best and brightest, he kept mostly to himself, steering well clear of the mischief his old comrades were still getting up to.

Sabotage for the most part. Nothing too crazy. South Africa had seen a particularly steep decline in terror activity since the Uprising, with only one civilian casualty reported in the whole of last year – panic-induced heart attack in a jammed elevator. Tebello knew from temporal intel of at least two more the year prior, though officially their deaths were ruled as unexplained.

“Set it down over there, thanks,” said Prajna, bringing him back to the mountain, his past, his present, his eternity.

He placed the basket where she had pointed, a wooden shelf just left of the front door, right next to her own basket. She headed in. He followed. She was saying something now, but he couldn’t hear. He was being pulled away again to –

“Can I help you?” said Louis, looking up from his fifth glass to regard the tall, nimble-framed negro looming over him.

“I sincerely hope so,” said Tebello in Zulu, not caring in the least whether the man had the means to understand him, but knowing, of course, that he did.

Louis stared for a while, as a brief spell of confusion became suspicion, and the suspicion, an almost gut-wrenching apprehension. Then he relaxed, and Tebello guessed why. Surely it couldn’t be that. He had gone above and beyond to cover his tracks, burned every bridge that could possibly lead back to his former life and buried the ashes with his own hands. Whatever this was about… it was not that.

Taking a seat beside Louis, Tebello began his introduction, and a few seconds later, saw the gut-wrenching apprehension return in full force.

“… Who…”

“Who I am doesn’t matter,” said Tebello. “Who I work for doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are not who we are after, and you should be very glad that that is the case. But I have it on good authority that you do have information that could help us find who we’re after. Hendrik. Your old commander.”

He didn’t think it was actually possible for Louis’s face to get any whiter than when he had begun talking, but somehow it did now. The man’s lips parted, though it was some time before the words came out.

“… I don’t know –”

“What part of anything you’ve heard me say over the past five minutes has given you the impression that I’m the guy you bullshit? Because I promise you… that was not my intention.”

Silence.

Wide eyes.

And he was back in the cottage, sitting at the dinner table with Prajna, a file hovering open in the virtual space between them.

“So…” she said, her voice growing louder as he settled into the moment. “What do you see?”

Prajna Luyanda. His recruiter. His mentor. His friend. The most elusive and mysterious member of the Network. Not that he found her mysterious in the least, he who had seen his part in the Great Story long before they even met. She helped him understand the gift, the visions, the time drift, taught him, forged him into the asset he was today. They usually met in the metaverse, but this mission required a more intimate briefing, and so he had taken leave from his day job in Soweto, and boarded a hypertrain to the outskirts of Cederberg.

“… Waste of IQ,” he said, as the gist of Louis’s life played across his inner screen. “We meet at a bar in Joburg. He talks when I say please. The rest is… foggy.”

“… Good enough,” said Prajna. “Sense any trouble?”

“Nothing I don’t handle.”

“Good, good,” said Prajna, waving off the file, and looking at Tebello now in that way he had grown all too used to: the look of an affectionate mother sending her only child into the lair of a beast only he in all the universe could slay.

“Nothing is certain,” he said, smirking his empathy.

“Nothing is promised,” she said, smirking in kind. “The story is already written.”

“And we write it regardless.”

“Come on,” said Prajna, rising and beckoning him. He followed, out the back to the foot of her sacred Marula, where she spent most of her days since the Cheetahs went underground in deep meditation. She sat. He sat, and steeled himself for the “intimate briefing”.

“Remember…” said Prajna. “Just let it fall away.”

He nodded, and closed his eyes.

He was back in the bar. He and Louis had been talking now for the past 40 minutes. The latter had since divulged Hendrik’s location, though not without some extra prodding on Tebello’s part. All the while, the shock in the old racist’s eyes, the disbelief, barely waned. Who was this negro seated next to him? How did he know so much? What seemingly omniscient force did he answer to? And what was this all really about? Tebello sensed the burning curiosity behind those eyes, of course, but had made it clear quite early on in the conversation that he was and would remain the one asking the questions.

“It’s December the 16th,” said Louis, in response to the current inquiry. “That’s when they plan to do it. I only know because they wouldn’t stop reaching out, trying to get me to join them again. Why would I? I knew we were fighting a losing battle the day the Nigerians made their big announcement, and well…” He gave Tebello an emphatic glance. “… Here you are, whoever you are. My gut for the win again.”

“Mmm,” said Tebello, with all he could do to keep from rolling his eyes. Some “good fight” this trash fancied he had fought. Anyway, only one question left now, to snap the fragments into place, weaving his story and theirs into a single temporal thread that he would pull towards certain victory… and then this trash could go back to enjoying his well-deserved place in history.

“Will Hendrik be part of the operation?”

“No,” said Louis. “But he’ll be watching closely. That’s all they told me. Do you plan on taking him out?”

Tebello raised an eyebrow.

“Right,” said Louis, turning back to his empty glass. “Couldn’t resist.”

“Do you feel no remorse for your actions?” said Tebello, with only mild curiosity.

“What do you expect me to say?” said Louis, his gaze unwavering. “And what does it matter anyway? The country’s yours now. The whole bloody continent is yours now. Congratulations. You won. You’ll get no remorse from me. And I’ve told you everything I know so if you don’t plan on arresting me… or killing me… then I’d like to get back to my drinking now, thanks.”

“You do that,” said Tebello, rising from the stool without the slightest courtesy, and making his way out of the bar.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

His eyelids parted.

“Woah,” he said, as the new neural pathways began to set.

“How do you feel?” said Prajna.

“… Rooted,” was the closest word that came to mind. “It’s not as bad now. I was there, with him, in the bar. It was more… dreamlike this time. And now…”

He looked around himself, at the sky, the horizon. He could not remember the last time he felt this… present.

“I’m sorry it had to take so long,” said Prajna.

He looked back at her, sighing understanding. “… It is what it is, right?”

She smiled, and held out a hand to him, which he took.

“You?” he said, helping her up.

“I’ll live,” she said, leaning against him as she found her footing, then straightening with a brighter smile. “And it was my absolute pleasure. You’re ready now. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

***

Reconciliation Day…

Because why not?

Just why the hell not?

The attack would happen in Vhembe. There were five assets assigned to Tebello’s team, non-gifted, but quite capable. One was a friend. They were in the town square now, blending in with a swelling crowd. The seriousness of the mission did not, however, make Tebello deaf to the DJ, nor did it keep his head from bobbing when a particularly groovy jam filled the air.

“We’re in position,” came the voice of the friend, Nosipho, who stood nearest the stage, looking as harmlessly oblivious as the civilians around her.

“Thirty minutes,” said Tebello, to all. “I say move… you move. You don’t think.”

“Yes, sir,” came the affirming chorus.

“In the meantime… try to have some fun.”

“Roger that,” said Nosipho.

Fifteen minutes and four tracks later… he was somewhere else… somewhere he didn’t recognize. His breaths were heavy… controlled… but heavy. He felt gassed out, like he had been running for several minutes, running after someone, someone who knew things they should not, someone… like him… but on the wrong side. The dreaminess of it… for something so normal to feel so strange… Now he had to really focus to put the details together. What was this place? Who was he chasing? How could one with such a gift be drawn to –

The timer in his right visual field reached the 42-second mark, snapping him back to the now.

“Eyes left,” he said. “Hoodies. Backpacks.”

“I see them,” said Nosipho, as they all turned East, careful not to meet the gazes of the four NCRM antagonists slowly easing their way through the crowd. “Any idea what they’ve got in those?”

“Bombs,” said Tebello. “Big ones. Stay sharp. With any luck… we won’t have to use force.”

“I’ve got another one,” came Boka, who was nearest the edge of the square. “Wait… two.”

Tebello heaved a sigh. One to one. And the positions were near perfect too. Each antagonist was unwittingly walking right into the kill zone of an asset. He barely had to move a muscle himself to come face to face with his own mark, who was just about to pass him by when a happy, oblivious civilian became a firm hand on the shoulder.

The terrorist froze in his tracks, shock rendering him immobile for several seconds.

No way…

There was no way in hell anyone knew…

There weren’t even any security measures around this event!

This was the last place the Administration would ever suspect they would strike, which was precisely why they had chosen it! This had to be something else, one of those awkward coincidences, most likely, in which case, he’d just play it cool.

But the firmness of the hand on his shoulder seemed to suggest otherwise.

“You have a choice right now…” said Tebello, as in his periphery, he saw the others giving their marks the talk too. “… Walk away. Leave this life behind. Never look back. Or die. Right here. Right now. We are not the police. We are not SSA. We have no obligation to spare your lives. This is your first and final chance.”

He let go of the man’s shoulder. The man turned, bewilderment bare in his eyes, and something else too, a flame of defiance Tebello had really hoped would never rise at all. He sighed again.

“Who the hell are you?” said the man.

“Walk away,” said Tebello. “Or die.”

The strange place. The chase. He was running again, running hard and fast. Did this moment connect to his previous vision? Was this the “trouble” he had sensed? Was he –

The antagonist before Nosipho ripped off his backpack, brandishing it at her in a way that made a point without making a scene. Tebello heard his words through her comms.

“You stay back!” he hissed. “Or I blow this right here!”

“Taking yourself out?” said Nosipho, with an almost amused smirk. “That is so early century. Put that back on and walk away, man. I will not ask again.”

The antagonist in front of Tebello seemed to sense the spike in tension across the square. So far, not a single civilian had appeared to even suspect that anything was amiss. The program was pretty engaging in their defense. The live band was currently playing a banging number, while the mayor was making ready to take to the stage and deliver her keynote address. 12 people, scattered in pairs across a crowd of hundreds, looking each at the moment to be engaged in nothing more remarkable than a casual, if somewhat standoffish conversation, barely begged a second glance.

He drifted again, the third time in as many minutes. Unusual. Clearly, there was something in this moment he needed to learn. He had stopped running now. His breaths were easier, and the place he was in seemed brighter, brightened by… twilight. A facility. A factory. Old. Abandoned. Too abandoned for the times. Was he in Orania? Yes! Yes he was! The location Louis had given him. The Boer Ghost Town.

Hunting down this person… this low-ranking member of the NCRM who was far more dangerous than any of them, pulling the terror group’s strings from the shadows, pulling Hendrik’s strings. The leader’s name seemed to ring in Tebello’s head with less consequence now, as if he were merely a memory, taken out of play some time ago. How far ahead was he? He could see nothing around him to say the date.

He heard a rush of movement nearby, hastening steps, a falling object. Steeling his fatigued limbs, he continued his pursuit.

A guttural croak snapped him back. It was coming from the antagonist in front of him, who had reached into his own bag and made to detonate the miniaturized cluster bomb within it. Each device on its own was capable of blowing up the entire square. They had intended to plant all six, make themselves scarce, and watch from a safe distance as thousands of innocents across several city blocks perished in fire and rubble.

Tebello had acted the second he determined the antagonist’s mind was made up.

A flick of his finger…

A swarm of nanites closing the distance between a compartment in his collar button and the antagonist’s inner ear faster than the untrained eye could detect…

A crescendo of microscopic charges detonated near critical blood vessels, sealing the man’s fate before he even knew what had hit him…

It was a weapon of assassination that would never see the light of day, a weapon the Network would take to its grave.

He saw the man’s eyes redden just as the light went out from behind them, and a solitary stream of blood drip down his nose, staining the pavement below as he collapsed. Nosipho had already sent a masked tip to the local police, and with the rest of the team, was currently backing away from her slain adversary. This time, heads did turn. Six fallen men with eerily similar attire, all unresponsive, all bleeding from their ears, nostrils and gaping eyes, all white. When the first scream cut through the music, startling all, the agents were already gone. Sirens soon followed.

***

“And what do you think it means?”

“I don’t know. I have a suspicion but… it can’t be… Can it?”

He looked up from the table, meeting Prajna’s concerned gaze again. After the operation at the square, he had headed home, and spent the rest of the day sorting through the million thoughts in his head. Then, somewhat calmer, he called Prajna, who immediately sensed his distress.

“Could our intel… what we do… how we do it… is it even possible for it to fall into the wrong hands?”

“Anything is possible,” said Prajna. “But for an asset to turn… and for none of the gifted to have detected it…”

“Or could it not be an asset at all?” said Tebello. “Maybe a seer we haven’t gotten to yet… They wouldn’t understand the science of it. The NCRM would have been subscribing to providence for goodness only knows how long, believing that Hendrik is some kind of prophet. But the real ‘prophet’ is hidden in their ranks. He’s the one I was chasing. And he is not a nice person. I couldn’t pick up a lot, but I got that much.”

“Mmm,” said Prajna, sinking into thought for a long moment. “Yes, that seems more likely. I’ll talk to the others. For obvious reasons, there’s only so much we’ve been told ourselves. I mean… we always suspected something like this was possible, but the way this thing works… it just seemed so unlikely. And to someone so horrible as you say… But if it’s happened…”

“Then there’s a reason for it. Any guesses?”

“A lesson? A next step? Something the Network is meant to become because of this. Did you sense anything at all about bringing him over to our team?”

“No. I can’t get past that factory. It’s always back there, every odd hour since the square. Whatever I’m meant to learn, it happens there. I’ll go deep tonight, before bed.”

“Don’t force it.”

“I know,” said Tebello, and looked to the background of her feed, the dusk descending over the yard. “How’s the garden?”

“Thriving,” said Prajna, with a smile. “And in other, less trippy news, we just welcomed our new class into the incubator in Uganda. Lot of farmers this year.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Tebello, recalling her stories about where that particular passion project started. “But I take it not wonderful enough for you to consider a visit?”

“That time is past,” said Prajna, with a mindful smirk. “They’re in very good hands.”

“I’ll keep you posted,” said Tebello.

“Likewise.”

“See you soon.”

“Goodnight, Tebello.”

“Goodnight, Prajna.”

The call ended. He swiped the interface from his visual and leaned back against the balcony lounger. Above, Venus was just beginning to twinkle along with a few stars. He took a moment to contemplate it all, the infinitude of reality, more infinite than humanity could ever have suspected. He was not separate from this infinity. He was it. And it was him. It was all of them, folded into the atoms of every mind in every world… all those worlds!… like grains of sand in an endless dessert. That was how he was able to see.

He let his mind wander a while more, then closed his eyes, focusing, breathing, as she had taught him, letting every tether fall away, one by one…

He wasn’t sure exactly when it happened. Time perception was the first thing to go whenever he drifted on purpose. But at some point, he was back there again, anchored now by sheer will. He had chosen a moment as close to the end of the chase as possible. There were no other NCRM anywhere near the place, but there was a sense that he had encountered – would encounter – quite a few of them on this day. He had tracked the seer, whose name was Carel, alone here, with a single goal in mind…

Right…

Things were a lot clearer now…

Yes. He would try to win Carel over, and if that failed – as the man’s winning personality seemed all but certain to ensure – terminate him.

He was outside the factory, at the back of the compound, where a starry sky shone in stark contrast over all the ugliness around him. He could feel his mouth moving to speak, and his hand reaching for a pistol holstered at his hip.

“It’s over, Carel!!!” he bellowed across the yard. “I don’t know how you got mixed up with these scumbags, or what exactly you all think you’re accomplishing here, but this thing you can do… It’s not what you think it is!”

“Shut up, you filthy kaffer!” came a hiss from behind him, a second before a crowbar whizzed above his ducked head.

He spun with the crouch, aiming the pistol, firing. The bolt of plasma grazed Carel’s knee, drawing an agonized grunt. He too had foreseen the enemy’s intent, and shuffled out of harm’s way in the nick of time.

This was weird.

This was very weird.

He was clearly not as powerful as Tebello. It would not have taken so little time to find him if he were, and he would certainly have some idea who he was dealing with. Nonetheless, he could see, and was now fully engaging Tebello in what could only be described as a temporal chess match.

The latter rose from his crouch. The former spun the crowbar in his hand.

“So,” said Carel, as they circled each other. “You’re here to kill me, eh?”

“If you can’t be reasoned with, yes,” said Tebello. “Why you of all people would be given a gift like this… I can’t figure. But there has to be a reason, some light in you.”

“Yeah… there is. I’m the one who’s gonna correct the course of human history… so help me God!!!”

With that, he charged, a clean swing with impeccable form that would have cracked Tebello’s skull wide open had he not spin-ducked once again, this time sending a bolt right through Carel’s foot.

“Ah, you fuck!!!” cried Carel, as he stumbled, staying his fall with his free hand. “Fucking knew it!”

“I know you knew it,” said Tebello, looming over the kneeling man and aiming the pistol at his forehead. “So you tell me… what the hell was that for? Where does this end for you? Look past the pain, look past your own ego for once in your life and concentrate… What do you see?”

Carel’s eyes widened with incredulity. “You shot me in the fucking foot you kaffer piece of shit!”

“Call me that word again, and I’ll shoot you in the other,” said Tebello. “Twice! Now… I need you… to concentrate.”

“Urgh!” groaned Carel, understandably enough, but Tebello could see… he was considering it, considering the reasonable option.

“Look past the pain… look past the ego… and concentrate…”

Carel did, though the pain was great, though hatred still burned within him. He tried, egged on by his own curiosity about something he had felt when he swung at Tebello that first time, a flash of understanding too quick to be analyzed that nearly threw him off balance.

The sense of an inexplicable connection between them.

He focused on that connection, and for a moment that could have been seconds or forever, the whole world fell away, with all its pain and hatred, leaving in its place a deeper reality only they and a chosen few could directly perceive.

“… There,” said Tebello, as the man’s expression changed again and the world rematerialized. “I know it’s confusing, so I’ll help… What you just saw is what I am a part of, what I am fighting for, the true course of human history. You are a part of it too, and I can help you understand what that means. I can guide you, teach you to harness this gift, as I was taught.”

“I…” Carel began to say, then groaned as the full awareness of the semi-cauterized hole in his foot resettled into his mind.

“If I help you up… will you try to bash my head in again?”

Carel’s eyes rose, regarding the completely different person who now stood in his enemy’s place. The crowbar, clutched all this while with venom resolve, fell to the pavement with a decisive clank.

“… No,” he said.

And Tebello was back on his balcony, the cool evening breeze kissing his face as a wave of clarity washed over him.

“Interesting,” he thought out loud.

***

The cybertruck coasted through the desolate streets of Orania, passing the odd “local”, who regarded its occupants with an unsurprising mixture of apprehension and scorn. The whites-only “nation state” had certainly seen better days. Cut off by the New Administration in the wake of the Uprising, it died a slow and painful death over the proceeding decades, its carcass left unburied in the dust as a message to posterity. Now only the most irredeemable cases called this place home.

Nosipho was behind the wheel, Tebello in the passenger’s seat, scanning the Continuum. The four other agents from the Vhembe op sat in the back, armed with weapons both conventional and arcane. No doubt, the NCRM was already aware they were coming. It was a matter of who could see the path ahead the clearest… and that… was no matter at all. Tebello could sense them shuffling about in what was once a bustling shopping mall, some preparing for confrontation, others clearing house. The truck halted a few blocks away. The agents disembarked, and split off into the connecting alleyways. They weren’t here for all of them, just one, and Tebello was here for the other one.

The signature squeak of a pistol echoed through the backstreets as they converged on the building’s South wall, drawing their attention West, where a number of antagonists were running off. Ignoring the obvious diversion – a clever play, if only they didn’t have precognition on their side – they proceeded inwards.

The mall was silent, suffused with the smell of abandonment. They split up again, Tebello and Nosipho taking the central escalator steps, the rest finding other means. It didn’t take long after reaching the landing for the air to come alive, and Tebello and Nosipho to dive for cover behind a two-foot-thick and mostly intact ad screen.

“Kaffer pieces of shit!!!” came a voice from behind the hail, Hendrik’s.

“What’s the play, boss?” said Nosipho, as plasma continued to fly around them. Tebello could hear the other agents engaging from their own positions. There were 18 antagonists in total, all raining fire except Hendrik.

“Just a second,” said Tebello, centering himself, breathing slow, and letting the moment come to him. “… Three shots. Five o’ clock. Now!”

Nosipho did as bid, felling two antagonists and ducking back. Tebello sent a series of instructions to the other agents, and heard the thuds as their own marks fell. Then he rolled out of his cover, to Nosipho’s wide eyes, stood tall, and fired seven surgical shots in a 30-degree arc.

Now there were only 4, their fingers quaking at the triggers as the agents exited their covers and closed in.

“If you think I’m letting you fucks take me alive…” said Hendrik, as he and Tebello stood face to face.

“Don’t worry,” said Tebello. “We’re not.”

A chorus of gunfire filled the air for a final time. The agents made their way down, and stepped out of a building more silent than they had met it.

“Mission accomplished,” said Nosipho, as they stood on the sidewalk.

“I have… one more loose end to tie up,” said Tebello.

“Oh?” said Nosipho.

“Need to know.”

“… Right.”

“You guys go on ahead. I’ll find my way.”

“Roger that,” said Nosipho. “Dinner? After? My place?”

“That would be wonderful.”

He bid them farewell, then headed back round, towards the West alleyway, where he had seen a very familiar face among the fleeing antagonists.

“Already written, eh?” he thought out loud, and smirking resolve, gave chase.

The story of the Network continues in Love and Progress in Late 21st Century Africa

© 2024 Barra Hart. All rights reserved.

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