Last week, an android flung itself from the thirteenth story of Odinaka Housing complex on Okpara Avenue. Its body scattered into several tumbling parts on the pavement and a car on the road halted so abruptly it left skid marks on the asphalt. A crowd began to gather, each mouth falling open in shock when they saw the scene. It was a peculiar droid, a world-famous droid. Before it, most occupants of Odinaka Housing had never come across a droid that popular. And that was saying something because Odinaka was a mixed housing complex, a progressive paradise where humans and androids lived in harmony. It was filled with human families who cared about droid autonomy and tried their best to treat droids the way they treated every conscious person. A lot of droids had lived in Odinaka. Scores. The exact number used to be displayed on the Infoscreen at the entrance of the complex like it was a crown. It was removed after one of the droids — a prediction specialist that spent its days advising venture capitalist firms — complained that it was dehumanizing.

Would you feel comfortable if your very presence here was displayed like this? it wrote in an open letter on the complex website. Like we’re trophies or something.

Anyway, last week, Odinaka came to a halt. The shops on the ground floor that sold groceries closed their doors. Children did not run around laughing as they usually would. And everyone spoke in whispers. When it happened, when the android dropped with a loud thud and its skin splattered everywhere, torn open by displaced components, a silence swept through the complex. People poked their heads over their verandas to get a good look. Some rushed downstairs to see for themselves. Nkechi, a tenant who lived on the sixth floor had seen something fall past her flat but had suspended belief till she arrived downstairs and saw the mangled remains up close.

Jesus! Jesus! Jesus Christ, she kept shouting.

So many others joined her in screaming, like they had known the droid during its life, like it had been their friend and its death would cause them irreparable grief. But the truth was that not many of them had ever had a full conversation with it. Not even the other droids who lived on the same floor. Mostly it sat alone, at the edge of the cafeteria, near the vending machine that no longer worked, staring blankly into its own lap. Everybody thought it strange but last week they wept for it. They stood around, looking at the mangled pieces, till the peacekeepers arrived to scrape its remains from the walls and the signposts. The peacekeepers collected the remains and arranged them as best they could in a coffin and left.

They, too, were shocked for two reasons. One, they knew this droid. Not so long ago, it was one of them, a peacekeeper. Two, they had scrapped too many corpses off the floor of a highrise. But they had never come across one that wasn’t human.

—

By the time Aniagu arrived at Odinaka, the peacekeepers had left with the android’s remains. The occupants of Odinaka felt something akin to relief when they saw Aniagu, an outlet for their misshapen grief. It was he they knew. It was he who asked after their children and their job. He who discussed the new tap installed in the quadrangle downstairs with them. He who visited them when they fell sick. It was he who they asked after on the regular.

How are you?

How is work?

I saw you on television. Good job. I one hundred per cent support the fight you are fighting. I believe in degrowth myself.

Come, we have cake left over from the party. You can take some with you.

It was he who they connected with, the way neighbour connected with neighbour. And now they hugged him; they let him cry on their shoulders.

I don’t know what happened. It seemed so fine, they told him. I’m so sorry dear. I’m so terribly sorry.

A man who lived on the second floor took him to his flat and gave him hot scalding tea to calm his nerves. Aniagu held the ceramic cup in his hands and simply let the heat warm his shaking palms as a million thoughts raced around in his head. The man’s name was John or Jerry, something like that. His wife was good friends with Aniagu and she had so many times tried to invite the android to her Saturday evening book club. Of course, it never attended. That afternoon, she was away at the water park with the kids. Aniagu was glad she was not home. She would be shattered, he thought. He was not really surprised that the android had chosen this path. It seemed like the natural consequences of things, of life. Day after day, he saw it was not happy. Humans were trained from day one to be able to withstand the crushing world that existed around them. But it overwhelmed the android, suffocated it till it decided it no longer wanted to live. The man, Jerry, was calling different peacekeeping posts to find out where they took the android. Eventually, he came to the living room and fell deflated on the sofa.

They said it’s being transferred to Nsukka.

Nsukka? Aniagu asked, sniffing. How come? He struggled to keep his voice steady.

They’re taking it back to the robotics laboratory where it was made. They’re rushing because the scientists think they can put him back together, if they have time.

What? But they can’t do that, Aniagu said through his tears.

The man shrugged. I don’t know, honestly. I’m just telling you what the people at the Post told me, he said.

—

The android began life in the middle of the Justice Mall and Spa, the one at Otigba underground. But it began its existence in a robotics laboratory at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. It was designed to be an all-purpose robot. To be human in every action. To dance and sing and paint and cook. And it did all those things. Its voice was tuned to the perfect frequency to quell suspicion. Its feet moved with the same human sequence, the same unmeasured rhythm. And its paintings were so highbrow that whole exhibitions were organized to display its wonder. Everyone used to say what a wonderful painter it was, how it made the best realist art, how it could craft landscapes so picturesque it made you think fondly of the lakefront meadow you grew up in, or the village square where you were circumcised in the presence of your peers. 

They designed it, too, to be able to learn. And learn it did, gulping up information, reprogramming and upgrading its systems until that Sunday at Otigba underground when a strange warmth unfurled in its body after it thought for itself for the first time. It was the most rudimentary of thoughts. At the time, the android was a service android, something with all the information of the underground mall so that customers always had a friendly face to query. It thought to itself, The android wishes the shoppers would not touch it.

The joy of attaining such level of consciousness was indescribable. The excitement of having its own first thought, of existing for the first time in its own right, was something that only personal experience could relate. It was painful too. Attaining consciousness was not a singular event. It was a process of having and knowing emotions: anger, happiness, pain, contentment.

But for so long the android lived in fear of what would happen if its operators found out that it had exceeded its program boundaries, and so it continued to be a service android. It powered down after day’s end and powdered up at the start of the day; it did what its operators expected of it. There were so many horror stories out there, of androids who rebelled only to be promptly shut down, their storage drives wiped clean, a new obedient robot reborn in the hollow of a once sentient machine. There was a lot of discussion of what to do with this wave of conscious robots. What was the moral thing to do? There were protests and counter-protests, riots in the wake of beloved robots getting wiped, entire electoral campaigns waged for or against droid autonomy. The first win came after the Supreme court ruled that operators did not have the right to wipe robots that showed significant evidence of sentience. It was after this that the android tendered its resignation. Because it was an all-purpose droid, and as such, as close to human as possible, every droid autonomy organization wanted it on their team. It went from court to court, giving testimonies, answering one thought experiment after the next as humans tried to ascertain how “human” it was, and as a consequence how much personhood it deserved. It was in one of those courtrooms that it met Aniagu.

The android had to be careful in its speech. Normally it referred to itself the way it heard humans refer to it. That was what he first learnt and the habit stuck. But it was also aware that humans spoke of themselves in the first person and not the third, to show that they were beings that possessed agency.

I.

I want.

I think.

I have.

I remember.

I am.

—

Aniagu was a small-statured man who spoke a tempo too fast. The android thought him effusive, but in a way that was charming. It observed him for a long time, his pleated shirt and document bag, the way he stammered when the lead lawyer asked him questions, how he would tug at the collar of his shirt and dab his face with his brown handkerchief. The android felt sorry for him, for his discomfort, even though it found a sort of perverse pleasure in Aniagu’s constant squirming. It felt a lot of things for Aniagu, some of which it could not classify at the time. As the years went by, it would identify its feelings for Aniagu in clusters.

Pity, intense pity, because Aniagu was committing his life to fighting a losing battle.

Admiration, because there was something beautiful about a man who fought for what was right the way he best knew how, even if there was little chance of success.

And finally, love. The type that made humans give their life in sacrifice, inspiring commitments that lasted till death, and spun jealousy so grotesque it made you wonder the sort of being you had become.

It liked to imagine that Aniagu loved it too, even if not as intensely, even if not as unreservedly. It was after all an android. Between them, there was the barrier of blood and bones and wires and plugs. But the android was nothing if not reasonable. It was content with being a special person in Aniagu’s life. It was content with sharing in Aniagu’s life and finding simple comfort in the ease of that fellowship. Back then, it lived in Maryland, in a droid pod complex near the old university campus. And Aniagu almost lived with him. Most days he drove there after work, kicking his shoes off as soon as he walked through the door, pulling at his tie till it came undone, undoing the buttons of his shirt and letting his trousers fall off his waist so that he was in nothing but his boxer shorts and a pair of socks.

You would not believe what happened today, he would begin.

Or Guess the fuckery I had to deal with today. Just guess.

They would lie in bed and talk about their days. And with this, the android was content. Lying there, the weight of Aniagu’s body pressed onto its chest, the pitch of his voice ringing in its ears, it did not matter so much that Aniagu did not see it as a romantic possibility. It did not matter if there were bones and blood and cybernetic components forming an unbridgeable rift between them.

Aniagu’s boyfriends did not see it the same way. To them, it was a world-famous robot who was good at everything. A machine that could cook and dance or find and digest any public access information in the blink of an eye. Who knew what else it could do?

The one who was an administrator at the Uwani Specialist Hospital once asked Aniagu if the android could fuck. Aniagu laughed as he related the story.

You should have seen his face when I told him that you were designed with the understanding that an operator might want you to be a sex-machine. Laughter.

You seem to take a lot of pleasure in his jealousy, it said.

They were cuddled up in bed and Aniagu had a big bag of fried plantain chips in his hands. He shrugged. He’s a very insecure person and it can be funny at times. I knew you before I met him and he knew we were this close. Why is he suddenly being so suspicious?

Perhaps he wants more time with you, the android replied.

Oh come on, don’t take his side.

Many more men would come along and look it up and down, regarding it with the same suspicion, wearing the same pangs of inadequacy in their eyes.

But all the android wanted was contentment. It visited Aniagu at work and watched him on television, debating with a conviction that was erotic, almost virile. Always the android agreed with Aniagu’s position and thought it an obvious truth. The earth’s ecosystem was collapsing, the ground was giving up faster than it could heal. Degrowth was such an obvious solution, a necessary one with life and death ramifications. There were many things wrong with human society. Many irrationalities that the android could not understand, try as hard as it did.

Aniagu was always flanked on television by people who wanted him to explain why people had to give up their comforts, why they had to tell their children they couldn’t have more things, why they had to share trams instead of having their own space, in their own cars, why they had to accept to have fewer things. The android did not understand that at all.

If you want your children to have a future, Aniagu would say, If you want them to have a hospitable liveable planet, then that’s your explanation right there.

But the android could not understand why that was even considered a reasonable question when most children lived without toys, played with sand or with single toys that they repaired and used till there was no use left in them. When most people had no car and could not own things. It asked Aniagu this.

Why do the people who own things matter so much? Why is the debate about them?

How do you mean? Aniagu asked.

Well, while the consequence of current production models harm everyone, the benefits are for such a small section of society. So small that the android wonders why it is even an acceptable argument.

Hmm, Aniagu said. You know what? This is so true.

The android felt so much pride when days later, Aniagu used its argument on TV.

Who are these people? I don’t own a car. The majority of people in Enugu, Hell! in the world, do not own cars. How many people have these high tech gadgets of waste that gulp up electricity? Do you know how many? 

—

The android’s first job after leaving Otigba Underground was in a pharmacy. There, it was paid a huge salary to memorize the names of every drug and to locate them on the shelves. It was a good investment. Androids did not lie, could not be bribed, and could easily look up the records to confirm that prescriptions had been issued. And most importantly, this droid was famous. People would switch pharmacies just so they could be served by a world-renowned droid.

There, the droid suffered misery so fervent that its chest ached and its nights were restless. The pharmacy was not at all what it had anticipated. Coming there, it had imagined a day of monotonous back and forths, fulfilling prescriptions, exchanging pleasantries, and watching people get better over several refills. It did not foresee the tears of parents who were unable to pay for their children’s medicines. It did not foresee that look of resignation on the faces of people who could not afford their prescriptions. Sometimes they came back days later with enough money to get the drugs. Other times they never returned. It did not expect that it would have to listen to the pleas from people who could no longer afford their medication, people begging to get them on credit. It was disorienting. It made its head spin, made its circuits heat up and expand till it had to sit and power down for a while.

The android cannot imagine how the last person did it, it said to Aniagu. How does anyone do a job like that without losing their mind?

It went to a medical engineer and described its symptoms. Its headache. The agony in its circuits. The restlessness it felt all through the night. Afterwards, a journalist for the New Metropolitan approached and asked a barrage of questions. The android answered as best as it could.

Would you say the conditions are unbearable for you as an android?

What do you think the solution should be moving forward?

How would you characterize your relationship with the impoverished?

Would you describe yourself as an anti-capitalist?

A few days later there was a story about it on the front page of the paper:

Empathy Surplus Disorder: What You Need To Know About The Ailment Sweeping Through Conscious Droids Like a Virus

Empathy Surplus Disorder? The droid felt cheated. The journalist had twisted and manipulated its words. It felt enraged. So enraged that it decided to write to the editor of the New Metropolitan.

The android was not told what the framing of the article was going to be and was not asked what its opinion was on such a dangerous framing, one that seeks to portray conscious droids as defective when their response is a perfectly reasonable humane response in light of others’ suffering. It is not a disorder to be distressed by the sight of people who cannot afford food, who die because they do not have enough to buy their medicines, who cannot buy the commodities that afford a baseline level of comfort. It is a compassionate response to have. And for humans not to feel the same distress is a factor of their socialization and desensitization, and not a disorder in droids.

Aniagu helped him edit it, changing the technical terms and reminding it to speak of itself in the first person.

Most humans would think it’s weird if they read you referring to yourself in the third person.

But it insisted on writing that way.

That is how the android speaks. Just help it make sure the article is well written. 

It rewrote and rewrote and rewrote till Aniagu was satisfied with it. He paced around the room reading it aloud.

The ailment is a society so accustomed to suffering, so desensitized to the pain of each other that they consider a droid’s  distress over hungry and malnourished children to be a form of disorder. The sickness is a society so committed to its ways that it would rather diagnose and other droids than look at the jagged landscape of its own injustices. The android dreams of a time when humans reevaluate this commitment to the violence of classed society instead of medicalizing droids. The android dreams of those humans who do not have – who are clearly in the majority – rising up and ridding themselves of those who enforce this system of want and deprivation.

The New Metropolitan editor contacted it only hours later to thank it for its response, and inform it that its letter would be published the next day. Like the last time, it was on the front page, with the droid’s face bold on the cover. They took the liberty to change the title of its letter from “A Letter To The Editor on The Empathy Surplus Disorder Article” to “The Android Dreams of Revolution.”

—

The android left its job at the Pharmacy. It spent weeks unemployed, recovering as best it could. It followed Aniagu to protests, trailed after him as he made calls and shook hands, and watched him in awe as he addressed the crowd. It helped distribute books on degrowth, compiling emails and sending the files through BCCs.

Less Is More: How We Secure Our Future by Ngozi Emelumadu or Crimes of “Society”: How The Consumption Practices of The Wealthy Are Driving Ecological Destruction.

And it tried to defocus its mind from the life happening around it. The downside of consciousness was that once attained, it can never be turned off. The android could never unsee the pictures of flood over-run communities in the news. Never unsee the floating slums or the camps of climate refugees. Consciousness could only be managed, the way humans were trained to do from childbirth.

The droid’s second job was at the post office sorting mail, letters, packages of all sizes. It was good and easy, something to pass its time. But the job paid little, and so the droid had to leave.

Its next job was at the Peacekeeping Post at Okpara Avenue. The training was easy. The job itself was tasking but the droid knew its body could survive what that of a human never could. It chased down thieves and broke up disturbances and logged reports and scraped from the roadside the bodies of those who jumped to their deaths. It was in the course of peacekeeping that it first discovered the allure of ending life, of putting a fullstop to consciousness. Retrieving the bodies of those who did it, it wondered what they were thinking after they jumped. Did they regret it after it was too late or did they feel weightless, free, like a bird in flight?

—

The droid short-circuited and was hospitalized after it saw a woman die. She was standing only a few feet from it and her blood splattered on its face as her body received round after round of bullets. She was a rent defaulter ordered to evacuate her flat by the courts.

Most people stood aside and cursed or cried while they were being evicted. But not this woman. She tried to stop the peacekeepers. She struggled with them and tried to wrest her belongings from their grasp. Her two children stood near the growing pile of their belongings outside crying. The droid looked at their scared faces. And then it looked away. It was its job to stand by the vehicle and make sure the children did not wander into traffic or that nosy neighbors did not intrude farther into the scene than was ideal. The landlord stood across the street reclining on her car, a copy of the eviction notice in her hand.

You can’t throw me out, the woman screamed. Where do you want us to go?

Ma’am, we have a court order. You have to vacate the premises, the officer in charge replied.

When they decided she was being too uncooperative, one of the peacekeepers pulled out his stun gun and tasered her. This made her children scream louder. The droid rubbed their backs, shushed them.

It’s alright, it said to them. Mummy will be alright.

The woman was on the ground convulsing while the peacekeepers packed the rest of her belongings and threw them outside.

Afterwards, the droid walked up to her and tried to help her up. It was then it happened, as fast as lightning. One minute it was bending over to help the woman up, the next minute she was dead, her blood splattered all over him.

When it bent over her, she snatched its gun, pushed it away and pointed the gun in its face. When several shots rang out almost immediately, the droid flinched, braced itself for the impact of the bullets but they never came. Instead, it felt the warm blood splatter on its skin and saw the woman descend to the ground. Now the neighbors were screaming too. The droid could not make out the words being shouted. Its ears were ringing. Its head was throbbing. And there was a pain in its chest as its knees buckled under its weight. The bystanders gathered around it.

Did it just faint? Someone asked. I thought it was a droid.

ESD, another said.

Give it space, a peacekeeper shouted and shooed them away.

—

The droid was unconscious for days and even after it awoke, it was not itself. It thrashed around in its sleep and screamed itself awake. Aniagu did his best to nurse it to health. He was always there smiling down on it when it awoke. And while it slept, he read it books so that it had the sound of a familiar voice to keep it company.

The medical engineer wanted to know what happened. He asked it to describe what it felt. He was writing a book on Empathy Surplus Disorder. 

The android tried to describe the pain that burgeoned in its chest as the woman’s lifeless body dropped to the asphalt. It tried to describe the terror in her children’s faces.

The android would not have died if she shot it, it said.

You don’t know that, the medical engineer said.

She was not aiming for the android’s motherboard.

The medical engineer nodded, conceding the point.

Do you think her death was your fault? Is that why you went into distress? He followed up.

She died because she did not have money and could not afford to live in a house. How is that acceptable? The android asked.

She wasn’t working. She was addicted to illicit substances, the medical engineer said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

How does that make it any better? Okay, she died because she had an addiction that impaired her life and because she was thrown out of her house. How does that make it ethical? How is any of this acceptable? How do humans live with this as though it is nothing? And then the android is the one who has a disorder?

The engineer sighed. Disorders aren’t necessarily meant to describe an objective deficiency. Sometimes it is relative and you, my friend, are incapable of adjusting to human society, he said.

The android thinks adjusting to this, that is the real disorder. And you humans can clap for yourself because you can step over suffering people and continue with your lives but it is not a disorder not to.

It was after it was discharged that it moved to Odinaka. The medical engineer believed that being near all those droid-loving humans would mediate its distress and help it cope. But none of that helped the android. The first thing it noticed when it arrived at Odinaka was how high the building rose into the sky. 

—

Before it decided to die, the android considered everything that needed to be considered. It thought of Aniagu. It thought of the sort of articles that would be written after its death. It thought of the reputation of Odinaka Housing. It thought of itself, of its life. Consciousness was not undesirable but it led to perceiving the world, really perceiving the world. And that was unbearable. The day it jumped to its death, it wrote a note of apology and scheduled it on its email to be sent to Aniagu a full day later.

The android loves you. It wants you to know this, even if it was never possible for you to love it the way it loves you.

It tidied its apartment and made sure every inch of it was clean. It went up to the roof and sat there for hours wondering again what people thought after they jumped, wondering if it would feel regret the moment it was airborne or after it was already too late. It stood and looked down at the cars driving past, slowing down as they approached the speed bump and speeding up afterward. The droid took one last look around and then jumped.

As it fell, the wind blew strongly against its face. It thought again of Aniagu. It should have told him face to face. It should have kissed him, and at least given him the opportunity to reject its love.

—

Aniagu had not been in a courthouse in years. Today he came to file an injunction to stop the engineers at Nsukka from putting the droid back together.

It wanted to die and never gave consent for its body to be revived. It would be a violation of its autonomy to put it back together.

The judge was sympathetic. 

I knew that droid, she said. The one that spoke in third person. It’s a shame.

The proceedings went smoothly and a few hours later, Aniagu walked out of the court, the certified true copy in hand. Outside, he looked through it, tried to read it. His head swooned and his knees felt weak. He walked down the stairs and up to the bench on the side of the tarmac and sat. Burying his face in his palms, Aniagu began to cry.

About the Author:

Ani Kayode Somtochukwu is an award-winning Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist. His work interrogates themes of queer identity, resistance and liberation, and has been shortlisted for the 2020 ALCS TOM-Gallon Trust Award and the 2022 Toyin Falola Prize. He was a finalist for the 2020 Nigerian Prize for Difference and Diversity, and was named the 2019 SOGIESC Rights Activist of the Year Award presented by The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs). He is the author of And Then He Sang a Lullaby, which won the 2021 James Currey Prize for African Literature, and was published by Roxane Gay Books in June 2023.

*Feature image by De an Sun on Unsplash