Bamenda
May 12, 1999
The heat was the first thing that felt real.
It wasn't the burning heat of the tear gas canisters kicking up smoke on the tarmac in Yaoundé. It wasn't the feverish heat of the crowd pushing against the police lines in 2025. It was a slow, heavy warmth that smelled of eucalyptus and roasting corn.
I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling. It was low and stained with brown water marks that looked like old bruises.
I tried to sit up but my head swam. I felt weak. Not just tired, but hollowed out. My arms were thin sticks resting on the sheet and my hands were tiny. I stared at them. I turned them over. The skin was smooth, unscarred by the burns I had gotten during the riots.
I looked at the wall. There was a calendar hanging there, swaying slightly in the draft. It was from Guinness, featuring a bright glossy photo of the national football team. The date was circled in blue ink.
May 1999.
I closed my eyes again. I remembered the noise. The 2025 election protests had turned violent fast. I remembered the shouting, the way the pavement vibrated under the boots of the soldiers, and then the sharp punch in my chest that knocked the wind out of me forever. I remembered bleeding out on the street while the sky filled with black smoke.
I was supposed to be dead.
Instead, I was ten years old.
"Status report," a voice said.
It didn't come from the room. It rippled through my mind like a stone dropped in a quiet pond. It was cool, precise, and sounded nothing like the thoughts of a terrified child.
"System integrity critical," the voice continued. "Host biological energy is insufficient. Neural connection established but unstable."
I lay very still. I knew that voice. It was Gemini.
In 2025, I had spent years working on the integration protocols. It was supposed to be the next leap in cognitive assistance, a way to carry the cloud in your head. But I had died before we finished it.
Or so I thought.
Gemini? I thought the name, testing the connection.
Affirmative, the voice replied instantly. It felt strange, like having a second person living in the back of my skull. I am here. However, I am confused. My internal chronometer indicates it is 2025, but local environmental data suggests we have regressed significantly.
I looked around the room. The wooden shutters were closed against the afternoon sun. The air was thick with dust.
We went back, I told it. We are in 1999. I am a child again.
Gemini was silent for a moment. I could almost feel it processing, spinning through the impossibility of it.
That explains the hardware limitations, Gemini said finally. Your brain is undeveloped. Your body is malnourished. I am a Formula One engine installed in a wheelbarrow. I can barely run a diagnostic without draining your blood sugar.
I almost laughed, but it came out as a dry cough.
The door creaked open.
I stopped breathing. I knew who was behind that door. I hadn't seen her face in seven years, not since the 2018 crisis took her from me.
Liyen Mbua walked in.
She was young. She was beautiful in a tired, worn-down way. She wore her faded wrapper and a t-shirt that was too big for her. She carried a metal cup of water, stepping softly so she wouldn't wake me.
"Nkem?" she whispered.
The sound of her voice broke me.
In my old life, in the future, she had died screaming for justice. She had been shot in the street during the crackdown, just another casualty that the news forgot a week later. I had spent the next seven years bitter, angry, and eventually dead because I couldn't let it go.
But here she was. Alive. Breathing.
She sat on the edge of the bed and the mattress dipped under her weight. She put a hand on my forehead.
"The fever is down," she said, letting out a breath she must have been holding for days. "You scared me, Nkem. You were burning up."
I wanted to hug her. I wanted to tell her to pack her bags, that we had to leave Bamenda, that the future was coming and it was going to be full of fire and blood.
But I couldn't. I was ten. If I started talking about 2025 and elections and wars, she would think the malaria had gone to my brain. She would take me to the traditional healer and they would cut my skin to let the bad spirits out.
"I'm okay, Mami," I said. My voice sounded small and rusty.
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. She looked exhausted. I looked past her shoulder and saw the empty space on the table where the food should be.
"Drink," she said, holding the cup to my lips.
I drank. The water was cool and tasted faintly of the metal cup.
Hydration detected, Gemini noted in my head. Efficiency increasing. Slowly.
"Where is Papa?" I asked, wiping my mouth.
Liyen stiffened. She looked away, toward the window. "He went out. He took the radio."
My stomach clenched. Not from hunger, but from memory.
I remembered this day. Tashi, my father, had taken the broken Hitachi radio to sell it for scrap. He would get 500 francs for it. He would take that money to the betting house. He would lose it. And tonight, we would sleep with empty bellies.
That was how it started. The poverty would grind us down until 2018, when she would be desperate enough to go out into the streets to protest, and she would die for it.
No.
I sat up. The room spun, grey spots dancing in my vision.
"Lie down," Liyen said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "You are too weak."
"I need to see the radio," I said. "He hasn't sold it yet?"
"He just left," she said, confused. "Nkem, it's broken. It's been broken for months."
Gemini, I thought. Can you scan the memory of the radio?
Accessing memory archives, Gemini replied. Hitachi TRK-W series. Common fault in humid climates: corrosion on the battery terminals and a desoldered speaker wire. Repair complexity: trivial.
I swung my legs off the bed. My feet hit the cement floor and the cold rushed up my legs. I felt lightheaded, like I was walking on the moon.
"Nkem, stop," my mother said, her voice rising. "What are you doing?"
"I can fix it," I said.
She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. "Fix what? You are a child. You should be sleeping."
"If he sells it for scrap, we get nothing," I said, steadying myself against the wall. "If it works, we can sell it for five thousand. We can eat."
The number made her pause. Five thousand francs was a fortune to us right now. It was bags of rice. It was oil. It was survival.
"It doesn't work," she said softly, but I saw the desperation in her eyes. She wanted to believe me.
"Let me try," I said. "Before he sells it."
I didn't wait for her answer. I walked out of the bedroom and into the parlor. The house was quiet, filled with the afternoon shadows.
My father hadn't left the compound yet. I could see him through the front window, standing by the gate, arguing with the neighbor. The radio was tucked under his arm.
I had maybe two minutes.
Gemini, I thought. I need steady hands. I'm shaking too much.
I can reroute neural signals to stabilize motor control, Gemini said. But it will cost you. You will be exhausted afterwards.
Do it.
I walked to the door. I was going to change the future. And it started with a broken radio and a piece of wire.