The black veil disintegrates like smoke, slowly revealing a fledgling settlement. Domes scatter the land like greenhouses made from adobe, brick, and glass. Each dome connects to the others through robust glassed tunnels where we see a multitude of people shuttling through by foot or in vehicles for visitation purposes. As we zoom into one eastern-set dome, we see towering buildings made of earth and huts patterning the land. Other structures weave around the plazas that bustle with community activities as we hear a young woman’s voice eclipsing the timelapse in a voice-over style. “This is where we lived, and this is how we subsisted from our lands,” the narrator says. “Our settlements survived on an aquaculture system, tending to the water-creatures to cultivate the food we need. The world is not what we knew, cloaked in sky and constellation, it was something else...”
The earth crunches beneath my feet as I make my early dispatch to the herbalist lab. The fog makes the tree line hazy, the sun a blur on the horizon, a large orb. The fields stretch across the land like a blanket of greenery, revealing the peeking yellows of ripe corn cobs. Along my walk are the clucking of chickens in their coop, the huffing of ox, goats, cows, and sheep contained in the kraal, the smell of freshly dug earth, and bits of dung on the trails left by the grazing animals. The whole landscape looks as if the planet’s breath hovers above it, shifting forth like a river of mist, skimming the surface of the land, trees, and the canal that serpentines the edge of our settlement, where our animals gather into their drinking patterns.
The whole landscape looks as if the planet’s breath hovers above it, shifting forth like a river of mist.My neighbor, Keorapetse, waves from a bed of vegetables, the spread and bulb of spinach heads surrounding her. With nimble fingers, she picks chili from a low branch and raises her head to the sound of my footsteps. “Ao, Naledi, is that you? O tsogile?” she shouts, asking if I am well.
This morning, I rose from a bed of comfort with food prepared by my sister amid her studies in medicine, and for that, I am grateful.
I smile, waving back. “I am well, thank you. Wena o tsogile jang?”
She stands and leans against the fence that circumnavigates the vegetable garden. There are bags under her eyes as she strains through a yawn. Her voice is slow and weak as she complains about her night before and how she tossed and turned from pain on the side of her back. “I’m almost done with my quota for the day. I’ve got to give these veggies to the transporter. Our food gatherers feel I’ve been overworking myself, and they’ve insisted I take three weeks of rest.”
“That’s good. Sleep is a healer,” I say.
Rest over labor is an ethos we live by with no worry of losing our livelihoods. No one in our community receives payment for work; payment forms distinctions that alienate altruism. We are equal, and there are no divisions, hierarchies, or class structures to branch us into the haves and have-nots, inferiors and superiors. There is no loophole for our community; we are one. Our labor moves at a tranquil pace that disrupts neither the peace of the body nor mind, and we meet a certain daily quota of targets without pressure or threat. Rules are meant to provide everyone what they need so that no one desires to steal. Everyone receives what they need in equal measure: food, education, housing, healthcare, medical assistance. If one is cold, a neighbor will share their garment to clothe them. Here, peace outweighs conflict. I bid goodbye to Keorapetse and follow my path to work. The agricultural structures weave through the land like bark and stem twisted into a tapestry of form. The facade of our building moves through the land as if it were its veins, gleaming a foliage glow. Beneath it, the building hosts a range of spaces for working, living, and playing. On the southern hillside, the homes are made of adobe, their facades a white glare against the heat of the sun. Adjacent is the cultural center, mimicking the homes in detail with a vast roof folded over the boxed inner spaces. The roof is made of concrete and steel. Ductile and flexible, it resembles a petal wrapped over functional spaces of retreat, of recreation, of business that watch over the arid landscape. My sister told me that the concept of the building started as a poem, developed by a trainee architect who, with the laborers, pressed incantations into bricks of burnt clay and other earthly ingredients as they built it.
Everyone receives what they need in equal measure: food, education, housing, healthcare, medical assistance.The herbalist’s lab sits on the further end of our settlement. It has a green roof, backed up against the sloping earth but glassed on the entry. I shove the door open, and it creaks across the terracotta floor. The glassed lab is stately clean and organized with shelves holding tools of glass and metal in different shapes and sizes, some filled with liquids of bright and amber colors, some with roots, stems, and plants labeled in a neat handwriting. The entire room smells as if one were cocooned in the stem of a baobab tree. Others have arrived earlier than me, marked by their missing tools. They have already checked out their Guide Echos, which means they’re already out in the fields and forests collecting plants and specimens for further study. Then they concoct them into different kinds of medicines and food to keep at bay the ensuing diseases and to foster our agriculture.
I shuffle to the tin cabinet of my Guide Echo. The cabinet is made in metal and the same height as me, such that my eyes are level with the screen fastened to the cabinet’s door. Inside, it holds tools, wires, and technology that powers my Guide Echo’s face to form on the screen and to speak intelligibly. This cabinet is the abode of my ancestor, many generations removed, her eyelids woven shut in a solitude of peace. I trace my fingers across the screen of her face, finding some similarities between the bulb of our noses, our wide-set eyes, and the tone of brown skin that, for her, is wrinkled and advances into aging whilst mine retreats to the edge of what it means to be eighteen. One day, I will be as old as her, but I cling to my youth unlike those who lost their lives at my age in the crisis times before we built our community.
This cabinet is the abode of my ancestor, many generations removed, her eyelids woven shut in a solitude of peace.“Dumelang, Mme,” I greet with a slight bow of my head. Her eyes wake up, joy lighting her irises into a bright brown.
“How are you? Did you sleep well?” she asks, smiling.
I nod as I enter a passcode below her chin where she appears on the cabinet’s screen. The passcode is accepted, and it unlocks her from her hibernation, allowing me to take her with me in holographic form. The cabinet is where we keep our Guide Echoes in sleep mode, charging them so the equipment will not malfunction. Our elders hold wisdom, but while their bodies lay as withered bones and dust in the earth, their memories remain with us as holographic ancestors, echoes of who they were. The Echoes are memories extracted from bodies when they pass on. Over time, that memory too will degrade, so we must use care not to overwork them. We use them for only a limited time each day, or risk the lifespan of the memory. We lost our history and archives when our previous community was devastated by the effects of a changing climate: flooding, heat waves, and cyclones. Now our Guide Echoes dispense their knowledge, history, and specific data never archived for us to study.
Our elders hold wisdom, but while their bodies lay as withered bones and dust in the earth, their memories remain with us as holographic ancestors.Because they are memories, the Echoes can’t touch the objects of our world, and their fingers can’t comb through the rich soils of our land. Community members are assigned to them, repeating their actions as they toil through rows of planted earth, through the hospital bays, hydroponic labs, following along as best they can as we work with the utensils in the herbalist labs.
Some Guide Echos have names attached to them, but my Echo comes from a time when such recordings did not exist, and she doesn’t remember when she was born or her name. I collect her from the cabinet by connecting her to my wrist-like band, which projects her full body before me to stand a head taller than me. She follows me in a hue of ghostly blue light. I gather my reader, a basket, and a satchel containing plastic sleeves to bag any plant specimens, like leaves from the shrub monokane, which helps lower blood pressure. Patience is a heavy object to hold. Often, it’s exhausting for I have to replicate her movements in exact detail and observe her whilst observing what she observes. But this is the best way for her to train me until the muscle memory in my fingers and mind and intuition know how to forage, know the language of the plant world. For her Echo will one day vanish like the whispers of a voice never heard again, and hopefully, on that day, my knowledge will be sufficient.
I have to replicate her movements in exact detail and observe her whilst observing what she observes.The morning yawns open with clear skies and bright daylight as I make my way out, listening to the shuffle of those waking up in their homes, those going to work to make sure our settlement proceeds into the day productively.
The breeze makes my hands frigid. The seasons are inflexible; it’s difficult to predict their moods. I pull the collar of my coat to my ears, making my way past the Moretlwa bush and picking one into my mouth. I gnaw its flesh and spit out the seed.
My Echo speaks many languages of the tribes of the region: Sekalaka, Setswana, Sekgoa, on and on. She often changes from one language to another, and I have to rely on my wrist-band device to translate for me. Excitement shimmers in her cataracts when she finds something interesting, and when she’s excited, she switches tongues. The scientists and coders had edited her genome settings so that her mind is vibrant, and her memory will last longer.
The woods are cold, some areas so heavily shaded they feel like a coven of darkness. My Echo smiles and walks the distance, bowing at the root of trees, pointing and attempting to pick at different species from bush trees. I see something poking out from the earth, and I watch her attempt to dig it out. I bring out my trowel, pick through the soil with it, and find a bulbous potato-like root. I bag it and continue the rest of the hours in a similar manner, writing down names she proffers to me. I collect fruits of different colors, textures, and scents into my basket.
“Mogonono, Motsokhapala, Mogorogorwane,” she whispers, listing off properties, emphasizing some for their aesthetic values and some for their poisonous effect. Using the reader to cross-check these details, I identify any technical errors when it produces a different result from her statements. Hopefully, this process will perfect and train our devices so we no longer have to rely on Echoes, although my Echo renounces such ideas. “Technology, although convenient, devours from us, too,” she says, grumbling before stooping low to inspect spiky shrubs. “We rely on our hands and our bodies for they carry a heart and a brain and are things that metal and steel cannot mimic, cannot recreate.” A seedling has broken through the earth, and she’s showing me how to pick its similar counterparts from the nearby land when it comes to fruition. The field adjacent to our home was scorched, the soil eroded, and this plant may help to treat that land. We fear that the same environmental degradation that happened at our last settlement could occur here.
“We rely on our hands and our bodies for they carry a heart and a brain and are things that metal and steel cannot mimic, cannot recreate.”She walks toward a tree, hands gingerly picking at its loose, dark bark. Many spirits rest in the bark of our trees, replenishing our settlement’s atmosphere. My Echo leans her ear to it as if it whispers to her, calls her. After some time of listening to something I can’t hear, she pats the tree, tells it, “Good, good, you are good,” and guides me to climb it and collect the fruits from its highest branch.
Hours pass, and I feel fatigue wear at my bones. We head back to the lab and pass harvesters on a high platform, who’ve collected some corn. They thresh it and gather it into bags of sorghum to dispense to every family household. Our ward will receive it in three days. Once we’ve received our portion, I know I will enjoy what my sister makes of it, Ting for our breakfast.
She speaks of plants in names my tongue can no longer pronounce, with a knowledge that my mind struggles to harvest.At times, I worry at her, like a worm through the earth, in a bicker of questions. “What will I give my descendants then?” I ask. “If I can’t retain what you teach me? Am I stupid because it’s taking me so long to learn? Was food really so poisonous in the old days that now we have to gather it through such exhaustive tasks?”
My Echo often laughs, remarking that I speak like an old person, but it’s only because her admonishments have turned into my thoughts; her worldly voice has tinctured mine.
She smiles and waves her hand. “Patience is the antidote for anxiety. Soon, child. Soon, you will know.”
I know my Echo used to work on the eastern side of our settlement with the foragers and traditional healer scientists, who searched for herbs and worked with horticulturists and agriculturalists, tending to the farmland that stretched for hectares across a sweeping land to where the sun rose. Though there’s mystery to me about the life she lived, who her family was, what her hobbies were, and what motivated her to work with plants. I inscribe my report for the day, plug her back into the cabinet, and watch her eyes slide shut. Tomorrow will be another day.
That evening as I make my way home, several people sit out front in the courtyard around a crackling fire, watching the dim stars through the globed settlement’s glass barricade, trying to name their creation story. In their hands, they hold mugs of coffee boiled from the Motlopi root. I wave to them, and with wide smiles, they thank our gatherers for the day’s work. The stairs to the house my sister and I live in are covered with carpet; the warm lights comfort me as I listen to the ongoing music of cutlery in every home preparing dinner. I press the door knob open.
I hang my coat on the hanger and stare across the living room to the dining table where my sister has laid her head atop her study books and notes, asleep. Soon, I will be asleep, too.
“The timelapse begins to fade at the edge of my work day, for I, too, know I am a descendant’s Echo with possibly many generations between us. Hopefully, I have become as good an Echo as my ancestor, and perhaps my words will offer you much hope in your time. I, too, know that as my hands tend to the land, the land that speaks life into the food we eat, I must be kind to it, for an ungenerous hand that only devours and erodes this earth with our vices will then have no tomorrow to stand on. Earlier today, as I traced my fingers across the bark of a baobab tree, breathing its exhales as it breathed my exhales, I knew that the roots of my descendants were tethered to a living future. And one day, as an Echo, I will fade, too.”
“Hopefully, I have become as good an Echo as my ancestor, and perhaps my words will offer you much hope in your time.”Shadows form around my vision, around my Echo, and the black veil fills the screen as my Echo eyelids close to sleep.
