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Maj. Chris Jarrett, U.S. Army

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Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Screaming. Thwack! again. You sit on your heels, crouched, sticks jam into your ribs as you attempt to shove your body impossibly farther into the bush. You dare not to even raise your eyes above the leaves hiding the glistening sweat on your skin. While you hide from the vicious machetes you hear tearing through your village, you attempt to remain invisible from outside the vegetation. Would they find you?

The Tutsi offensive is swift and brutal.¹ Without warning, Tutsi rebels swarm into your village, followed quickly by more robust support from an organized Rwandan Tutsi force across the border. The local militia has put up a brief fight but is crushed under the onslaught. Now, gunfire recedes into the distance and is replaced by the sickening wet crunch of machetes and resultant screams. Thwack! The militia had hoped to hold out long enough for the FARDC to respond, but now it seems the entire village is abandoned.² Your whole body convulses, and you shudder in the brush through the night as the muffled sounds of violence wane over the next hour. As your immediate survival seems gradually less in question, your mind goes to your brother and your aunt. You attempt to block them out, crushing your palms into your eyes, horrified and ashamed. “Forgive me! Forgive me!” you mutter to yourself, oblivious to the tears coursing down your face—and to the warm stream of blood pooling in the dirt at your feet. At some point, your body collapses backward farther into the brush. As your eyes close, your brain registers something odd. Is that a white man? You’re unsure whether the figure in the distance is the end of your reality or the beginning of your dream.

---

The whine of distant autonomous rotary-wing gunships gnaws at your already frayed nerves. You shove another handful of cassava flour into your bulging backpack, the VR goggles digging uncomfortably into your shoulder. They are a luxury you probably shouldn’t have bothered with, a gift from your cousin who’d migrated to the sprawling megacity of Kinshasa years ago.³ Two minutes, you repeat to yourself. Only two minutes. You were a lot more conservative before you sprinted into your house, intending to grab only a few things and get out. Now that you are inside, you realize this will be your last time in your home—your aunt’s home. It is difficult to resist the temptation to save more. In the background, the TV drones on just as it was when the attack began.

“… citing an imperative to protect ethnic Tutsis in the east Congo. The attack came after a period of rising tensions beginning in 2062 and continuing this year. These reports of small-scale Hutu violence threaten to upend a delicate stability of the region …”

The artificially generated expressions of the anchor’s face are unchanged by the horrors of what he reports. It reports calmly and without feeling, no different than as if reporting traffic. These AI-generated anchors are optimized to keep audiences engaged and feeling congenial toward the broadcast network, after all.⁴ Stirring people to emotion, even in the wake of such a horrific attack, is received less warmly by a public who wants to connect and trust the persona on the TV more than they want to receive harsh and unpleasant news.⁵

Sweat beads on your forehead as you traverse under the dense foliage overhead. You stop once to check the bandage across your ribs, holding in the deep machete wound you suffered in last night’s attack.

Muvandimwe, mbabarira. Brother, forgive me, you mutter, checking to see if the wound still bleeds.

The earlier sprint through your home has reopened the congealed wound. You glance back at the smoldering remains of your village, a stark contrast to the lush green. The VR goggles dangling from your shoulder flicker to life with a glitch, the cheap Chinese interface displaying a pixelated UN official condemning the violence. It is a hollow message, these pronouncements from a world that seemed far removed from the mud and misery of the rural east. The UN has apparently passed a resolution condemning the escalation of violence at the Rwandan-Congolese border. A lot of good that did. You switch the goggles off and tuck them into a side pocket of your bag.

You’d heard news, mostly repeated rumors from your brother, of the Congolese government trying to buy more advanced weaponry from China. The Congolese president had attempted to create closer security ties between the two nations in an effort to counter the attacks emanating from Rwanda.⁶ Your brother also told you that the Americans had been building a larger presence once again on African soil, this time expanding into neighboring Tanzania and even the DRC. The United States had maintained a fluctuating presence in Zambia for the past decade or so to prevent the ethnic conflicts from spilling over and affecting U.S. commercial and mining interests. You aren’t sure what to make of the news that they might be expanding further, but a lot of good it did you or your brother now. “Containing the violence” had done nothing to prevent the brutal death of your aunt, your brother, and so many others of your village. You all live at the epicenter of that violence. You hear another drone buzz overhead, its low hum and sleek lines a stark contrast to the rickety ones the rebels used. You quicken your pace, pushing through the tangled undergrowth.

2

The metallic stench of the Congo River is the first clue you’ve arrived in Kinshasa. Over the past eight days, you manage to travel farther than ever in your life; you are repulsed by the violence that just ended the previous boundaries of your world. Your little village will never recover, and you begin to doubt you ever will, either.

The stench assaults your nostrils the moment you emerge from the dense jungle, transported by an automated state-run Congobus. You board the bus after two days traveling by foot. The Congolese government has all but abandoned the idea of extending the services to the rural east after years of abuse and vandalism of the automated platforms. When you board at Kamituga, the buses are full of refugees like yourself, but the farther east you travel, the fewer displaced persons you encounter. Many are still attempting to salvage their lives by moving farther from the violence. They would connect with extended family or friendly Hutu enclaves to either wait out the current wave of violence or begin anew. Not you. There is nothing for you in the east anymore. You have an uncle in Kinshasa; he is the father of the cousin who gave you the VR goggles you still tote around. He moved his family to the capital a decade ago and might be a sanctuary while you attempt to make sense of the remnants of your life.

The mighty waterway of the Congo is now a sluggish mess, its once-teeming life choked by years of unregulated rare earth mineral mining upstream in the DRC and neighboring Tanzania. Towering metal pylons scrape the sky, stretching from the sprawling megacity and marking the factories that process the minerals. Decades ago, the mining companies promised riches for the Congolese. Now, they were hungry beasts, guzzling water and spewing toxic fumes that painted the sunset an unnatural shade of puce. As your eye spans over the city, you notice who benefits from these belching monsters. Several affluent areas of the city stick out like shining ornaments from the impoverished expanse. You wonder if the companies are solely to blame, or the Congolese leaders who remain too factionalized to ensure a fair deal for your country.

Kinshasa is a suffocating megacity.⁷ Buildings stretch as far as the eye can see, their surfaces a mosaic of grime and peeling paint. The air thrums with the chaotic symphony of a million desperate souls crammed into a space struggling to sustain them. Water is distributed by armed vendors, and the meager rations doled out by aid agencies barely stave off hunger.

As you navigate the city on foot, a wave of despair threatens to engulf you. Your village and your home have been turned to ash by the violence, and here, the future seems equally bleak. But then, amidst the cacophony, you hear a familiar voice call your name. Uncle Nduka! He received your messages after all. He pulls you into a tight embrace, his wiry frame trembling with emotion. He explains how he’d managed to escape the violence and settled here, working as a day laborer on one of the city’s several struggling vertical farms.⁸

Over the next two days, a plan takes shape. Tanzania. Your uncle had heard of a refugee camp there, plus several regions where Hutus were living well, far away from the violence growing at the Rwandan border. Zambia, a tense buffer zone patrolled by American troops, would be the only way through. But how? The border is heavily guarded, and you have next to no resources to carry you through.

“Mwishywa, you need to get out of here,” Uncle Nduka urges yet again in his uncommon mix of Kinyarwanda, Congolese French, and Swahili.

“I know, Uncle,” you respond. You know you are only adding to the burden your uncle carries. He has it hard enough trying to feed himself and a few poorer struggling neighbors.

“No, I mean you need to get out of Kinshasa. There are some who are looking for anyone from the east,” Uncle Nduka explains.

“From the government? Are they looking for victims?” you ask. By now you’re aware there is an intense international outcry in response to the attacks. The Congolese government mobilized forces and there is a continued escalation in fighting. The UN Security Council is considering forming a UN peacekeeping mission, but the Chinese have indicated they strongly oppose such a measure.

“No, Mwishywa, not the government. The Igishinwa—the Chinese.” Uncle Nduka’s face hardens. “There are those who can help,” he says, his voice low. He’s not sure exactly why, but he knows others who have fled to Kinshasa seeking refuge have suddenly disappeared. Only rumors remain. You two spend the rest of the night considering possibilities and creating a plan.

---

Your uncle greets you the next day and you notice a strange glistening substance on his face. It seems to sparkle as he talks, like makeup you once saw on a girl at school years ago. “Here, put this on.” He directs you, handing over a small tube of the clear, sparkling substance. You give him a questioning look. “Don’t be afraid, Mwishywa, it’s just paint.” You streak some across your face, realizing this is one of the tricks you’ve heard of. The glitter fools much of the facial recognition software across the city. Many of the cheaper, older algorithms can’t make sense of the different spectral pixels coming into the camera, even though the entire features of the face would still be obvious to a human.⁹

Your uncle leads you through narrow, trash-strewn alleys, past listless beggars and hawkers peddling dubious wares. Every now and then, you catch a glimpse of Chinese nationals in the crowd. As you and your uncle walk through the streets, you gradually move away from the market areas and toward a residential neighborhood. Beside you, a tall, imposing wall stretches its shadow over the poor littered streets, separating the squalor of this neighborhood from what you’re certain is untold luxury just on the other side. The top of the wall displays an unbroken row of cameras and antennas. You realize you must be close to the site of the riots you heard about a few years ago. The technology is new. You notice each camera conducts a “hand off” with the next, physically turning to track you and your uncle as you walk.¹⁰

“This doesn’t do much good here,” your uncle mutters, referring to the paint on your faces. “But not to worry. They’re not concerned with us.” As you continue navigating the streets, your uncle pauses a couple times. He hesitantly looks back and forth before setting off again, as if attempting to regain his bearings.

The two of you round a corner and are suddenly confronted by two Chinese men. You’re taken aback at the pace at which they’re approaching you, closing a gap of several dozen yards in a moment. You soon recognize why. You and your uncle have stumbled upon a security gate leading to a Sinohydro compound—a Chinese company that secured mining rights in the country decades ago.¹¹ The two Chinese men bar your path, clearly intending to keep you far outside the gate. The first begins shouting at you in Mandarin while you recoil, your heart leaping in your chest. You understand nothing of what he is saying.

“Excuse us, nyakubahwa, excuse us. We made a mistake,” your uncle sputters, interrupting the shouting younger guard.

The younger guard continues his shouting, gesturing upward at the street behind you, then pointing directly at your face. You notice a small, extendable stun baton attached to his hip. You also notice the whitening knuckles tightening around it. The face paint might fool cameras, but it clearly draws unwanted suspicion from humans.

“No, no sir. We didn’t mean anything by it. We are just coming from a celebration,” your uncle responds to the shouting man. Does Uncle Nduka know Chinese? When did that happen? You wonder. You’re increasingly disoriented by the verbal assault now turning into a physical manhandling. The guards pat you and your uncle down. Your breath catches in your throat as they confiscate your phone. They flash it before your face, unlocking the cracked screen. The younger guard pulls out a small device and immediately connects it to yours. Minutes stretch into an eternity before they hand it back, their faces betraying nothing.

After a moment of this, the older Chinese guard chimes in, this time in French.

“You don’t understand anything of this, do you?” he asks directly of you. The mild relief you feel as he hands back your phone is tempered by the tension of the situation.

You understand enough of the national language to get his meaning but you refrain from speaking. You’re a native speaker of both Congolese French and your local Kinyarwanda language, but the formal French most Chinese speak often causes only further confusion. Better to not exacerbate the situation with confusion over the Kituba dialect spoken in most Congolese cities. The older guard gives a slight smile in response to your muteness, but his eye doesn’t leave you.

He says something to the younger guard that quiets him, then seems to offer a brief scolding to your uncle and dismisses you both with a wave. Together, the two Chinese security guards turn their backs on you and walk back to their gate. You see a couple more guards back there, absorbed in the VR headsets that undoubtedly scan through the networked stream of sensors securing the compound.

Suddenly, your stomach turns. You’re taken aback as you realize there’s something small and grey protruding out of the back of the guards’ jet-black hair. It seems to be a small circular object, no bigger than your thumb. It’s clearly … embedded. You don’t hang around to ask questions.

“I’m glad they let us go … How did you understand him?” you ask when you and your uncle are outside the range of the cameras.

“Ah, the translator.” He grins, tapping the back of his jaw, just below the ear. “I got one a few years ago. Your cousin finally convinced me.”¹²

Ah, of course. You heard of these devices. First conceived as a hearing aid, the bone-conduction implants are able to automatically translate speech in real time.¹³ Ironically, such technology would have put Uncle Nduka’s wife out of business as a translator years ago, but she had passed long before the technology had proliferated to the Congo. That didn’t stop her from heated debates on the issue, however. She often argued with her son about new technologies eradicating entire careers in an instant. Your cousin is just a year younger than you but had left his father Nduka for Europe and work three years ago, hoping to capitalize on his refined coding skills in a more hospitable market.¹⁴

Finally, you and your uncle reach a squat, concrete building guarded by men with shaved heads and emotionless stares. Inside the apartment, it looks more like a business than a living space. Desks are set up, and a few noisy fans hum in the background. They seem more for the benefit of a few computers littered around the room than the large, sweating men who operate them. Your uncle does most of the talking, but he eventually secures a way for you out of Congo to Tanzania. The difficulty, of course, is getting through Zambia.

The high-tech border surveillance is permeable but only with proper identification. The men indicate they will handle this, too, but at a price. Your national credentials were last updated in grade school, which means no registry exists of your likeness in the national system, let alone the international paperless passport system. When you first applied your uncle’s recognition-defeating face paint earlier, you thought it might’ve been redundant given that you didn’t exist anywhere within the Kinshasa facial recognition system. Now, you realize it only makes you a bigger target. With no “digital face” in anyone’s software, your face is like a large red flag moving about.¹⁵ When Congolese youth had first attempted to defeat facial-recognition software, it was usually for mundane reasons like vandalism or skipping fees on the city’s transportation infrastructure. They often employed tactics like your uncle’s, using reflective paint or inverted makeup patterns to scatter light and fool AI algorithms.¹⁶ Only the most sophisticated software has the code to defeat these tactics, and you know from your cousin that these are usually reserved by the largest companies or most secure government agencies. The international passport system is a global system with just such requirements.

“Come back in three days and we’ll get you through,” the men indicated. You wonder whether you should be encouraged or worried by their confident but dismissive tone.

Three days later, you return to the apartment. Three new people are there this time, and they have a small plastic container open on one of the desks. Inside the open container is a face, or rather, pieces of a face. The team directs you to sit under a large bluish light where they apply the 3D-printed silicone facial prosthetics.¹⁷ As they carefully glue each piece, you begin to wonder how much your uncle had paid. He would neither divulge the cost nor allow you to wait and save up the funds yourself. There was no time, he explained. You think of the device the Chinese connected to your phone. You hadn’t understood it. Plus, the DRC had just issued a callup for fighters, and men were forcibly enlisted from the streets. You aren’t afraid of fighting, but previous rounds of violence in the east had taught you that these men’s lives were about to be wasted with no hope for a lasting peace. A few riots had broken out in the city as well, fed by conspiracies that the government had acted in coordination with the Tutsi attacks, or that the attacks hadn’t been conducted at all.¹⁸ Similar videos had been faked in the past, and many believe President Goma isn’t above sparking a conflict just to cement his political control. You come to believe your uncle. You’ve got to get out.

An hour later, you step out into the oppressive heat and are led to an automated bus inside a parking garage. You notice several small off-color circles on the walls of the garage where cameras had clearly been removed. The bus departs with you and a dozen others on board. As the city of Kinshasa slowly becomes obscured behind you, you wondered how many others on the automated platform were also wearing disguises like yours. It was clear the point of the prosthetics wasn’t to simply disguise your own face, but to steal someone else’s digital face. How many of the faces worn actually belong to someone else? Are they still living, or are these stolen identities of the deceased? In an odd, dystopian way, it reminds you of the tribal masks used in religious ceremonies.¹⁹ When you pass through border customs, your disguise would match someone else’s digital facial signature, allowing you to pass by on their identity.

More advanced countries require robust disguise-defeating systems that include multifactor authentication like iris and palm scans, but the African Union was either playing catch-up or saw an advantage to allow their populations to migrate more freely within their borders.

You pull out your phone on the bus and notice your provider switch from “ChinaMobile” to back to “Airtel,” the Indian company that had begun a slow war for connectivity several years before by providing service primarily to rural areas.²⁰ ChinaMobile had heavily subsidized their phones, which is why many people in your village were able to afford one.²¹ Their network is spotty, however, and although each service works with the other’s phones, the performance is degraded. You connect your phone to your VR goggle interface, and you navigate through several news streams until you find news of the growing conflict.

“… the resolution was vetoed by China, a standing member of the UN National Security Council and key player in the region. Upon conclusion of the vote, the U.S. indicated it was considering acting unilaterally to prevent an escalation of violence. U.S. President Garcia indicated ‘all options are on the table’ to contain the violence and secure humanitarian aid. Two senators called for an immediate military intervention, citing a ‘duty to protect” lives and a ‘duty to protect the environment.’ The second claim echoes the rationale of the 2052 Panamanian intervention, in which U.S. forces wrested control from local militias and rebel military forces threatening Gatun Lake and the critical waterway …”

3

The stench of body odor and dust swirls around you as the rickety bus lurches across the Zambian border. Almost three days on this stinking, cramped bus is mitigated only by the hourlong charging stops and the slightly cracked windows that allowed thick, hot air to blow in. You now realize the bus was like a typical Congobus in every way, except it had been stolen and reprogrammed for the purposes of smuggling out whoever could pay.²² The bus remains autonomous to blend in with other transportation system busses, but you now realize why you board in a parking garage on the edge of the city. Getting too close to the legitimate bus network would rouse suspicion and likely trigger any number of city-owned automated sensing devices, followed swiftly by the dreaded “public safety” drones—policing bots.²³

On the other hand, the ability to use the hacked bus to travel directly to the border has an unanticipated advantage. You wonder how long it would take to make this trip legitimately, stopping at every major town along the way. As you approach the border, a large man meets the bus and directs everyone to a parking lot with a fleet of smaller vehicles. Several of your better-dressed co-travelers are escorted to their own vehicles, apparently to enjoy the rest of their ride in comfort. The advantage, of course, is that a compromise of one illicit crossing won’t result in a betrayal of them all, and thus it would be more likely that more people would get across the border and to their destinations—and that the smugglers would continue to generate business. You and everyone else are directed to a second, unmarked bus, however. Although not the luxury of an individual AV, you are grateful for the expanded legroom and climate control features of this autonomous coach.

Relief, tinged with paranoia, wars within you. You’d made it out of Kinshasa, the suffocating megacity, and the ever-present threat of violence back home. Your fake face, however, hadn’t been visible to you in three days. You dislike the inability to scratch little itches beneath the silicone but you are impressed with the strength of the adhesive. It is a curse but a blessing too—as long as it works.

The Zambian border crossing is a tense affair. Sweat beads on your forehead despite the dry heat as you shuffle off the bus and through the line, but the encounter is largely contactless.²⁴ You attempt to avoid the eye-level cameras until a blaring voice interrupts the procession.

“All travelers are reminded to walk normally through the customs processing line. When it is your turn at the station, please look directly into the camera. Please remain looking at the camera until you observe the indicator light.” The voice blares too loudly.

When it’s your turn at the customs bot, you look straight into the dark eye, offering a blank but steady stare. A beat of silence stretches into an eternity, then a small red indicator light below the lens turns to green. Thank God. Whoever’s identity you just used still has a valid digital passport. Relief floods you, but you struggle not to show it as you route through the customs maze and reboard the bus, like so many cattle.

Elated, you resume your journey, bound for the Tanzanian border. The journey stretches on, a monotonous crawl through sunbaked plains. But with each mile, hope blooms in your chest. Tanzania, the whispered promise of safety, seems tantalizingly close.

Just a few kilometers shy of Lukasa, however, the bus screeches to a halt. A convoy of military vehicles blocks the road ahead. Sleek shapes emblazoned with the globally recognized stars and stripes blockade the autonomous bus. Your heart hammers a frantic rhythm against your ribs. U.S. soldiers, their faces etched with suspicion, come aboard both the front and rear entrances.

A broad-shouldered officer barks something, his voice leaving no room for argument. You check to make sure your phone and goggles are off and stuffed away. No one seems to move in response to the officer’s orders, and you realize he must’ve directed everyone to stay still. Am I the only one without a translator? you wonder. A moment later, two large, buzzing quadcopters enter the bus. Stacked one above the other, they slowly move down the aisle, carefully examining everyone’s face while simultaneously repeating orders to sit still and look directly at the camera. You feel like this is something from a nightmare. The drones’ sharp eyes scan your face while its soulless partner seems to examine your feet. The whining noise and whir of the blades is unbearable and terrifying. You worry that someone will either flee or lunge at the machine, imperiling you all with an autonomous self-defense response. The machines travel the length of the bus and exit apparently without incident. A few silent moments pass between you and the other passengers.

The game is up. Two loud bangs emanate from the bus. One from the roof above you and one below, from the motor and undercarriage that carried you this far. The soldiers bark at everyone in English, but still, no one moves. The bangs startle everyone on board, but they’re not explosive. You eventually realize the loud “pop” is the soldiers forcefully removing and replacing a GPS receiver from atop the bus, and likely a CPU or some similar unit from the vehicle’s controls down below. Moments later, the soldiers pull a simple-looking block-shaped charging truck alongside the bus, connecting it with thick cables.²⁵ After about an hour, the soldiers remove the foldable orange triangles they’d placed in front of the bus.²⁶ You realize you’ll get to continue your bus ride, but you’re not going to Tanzania anymore.

Hours bleed into each other as the bus and its accompanying military escort rumble through sunbaked plains dotted with scraggly baobab trees. At varying intervals, you notice one of the drones come alongside the windows of the bus. With its dual-facing convex cameras, it is difficult to tell whether it is looking out or in. Hunger gnaws at your belly, and the stale air makes sleep a fitful visitor. Finally, the bus sputters to a halt outside a sprawling complex of tents and 3D-printed buildings. “Chongwe Refugee Camp,” a voice announces over the previously mute bus speakers. There’s an audible gasp from the passengers who had forgotten about them over the previous days. You slowly realize you aren’t to be turned over to the Zambian government after all.

Disappointment gnaws at you. Tanzania, the promised land of safety, seems farther away than ever. But you swallow your dejection. For now, survival is the only goal.

The camp bustles with activity. Children chase each other through the dusty alleys, women cook over crackling fires, and men huddle in hushed conversations. You wait in line and register at a large pavilion near one of the largest 3D-printed buildings. You are surprised to see a Congolese refugee like yourself sitting at the desk.

“Muvandimwe, what are you doing here?” you ask, wincing as you address the younger Congolese man. That was the first time you used the term “brother” in a week. The term brings a flood of pain, reminding you of the dark mass you glimpsed lying outside your hut as you left. Despite your effort to not see it, you can’t shut out the image.

”Same as you, inshuti,” he replies, flashing two rows of bright, white teeth. “You don’t need that anymore,” he says, pointing to your face.

You attempt to peel off the prosthetics. After watching you struggle, the man laughs and turns around, returning to face you with a small medical-looking envelope.

“Here, take this,” he says, chuckling. “It’s a solution that’ll dissolve that glue. It’ll make it a lot easier.” As you reach for the envlope, he suddenly pulls it back.

“You have to give that, though,” he nods, looking at your pocket. Your phone.

“Your goggles, too,” he adds as you hand him the phone. “No doubt they’re compromised.” You don’t know what he means but it’s clear this isn’t actually a trade for glue-dissolving solution. You eye a security tower at the edge of the camp out of the corner of your eye, noticing the menacing drones nested in charging docks within it in neat, black rows.

You thank the man and share your information, though you wonder of what use it’ll do him. In the far east of Congo, you had survived this long without being connected to many government services. After removing your facial prosthetics, the man escorts you into the adjacent building, where he directs you to stand in the middle of a large black circle. He grabs a funny-looking handheld device and begins waving it slowly around you.

“Just a moment,” the man says, nodding his head to another, smaller man you just noticed huddled behind a screen in the corner of the room. You jump as the device begins beeping in high, harsh tones. As the man waves it about, you realize what it is. Body recognition technology.²⁷ Good luck passing anywhere now, you think.

You spend the next twenty minutes in the same room, getting more detailed scans of your eyes, palms, and gait as you walk around the room. When you’re done, the man informs you that you are free to move about the area, seek work, and lodge within the refugee camp. The borders of the camp are open but require two-factor authentication of bodily gait recognition and a palm scan at entry points. If you refuse or attempt to trick the system, you’ll quickly be met with armed U.S. drones and escorted to the nearest security post. You figure it’s best to not antagonize the hand that will hopefully feed you.

“Can I have my phone back?” you ask, already aware of the improbability of this request.

“Ah no, inshuti,” he says. “That is a Chinese piece. It isn’t allowed here. You get a credit toward the purchase of a new phone, however. It won’t help with the goggles, but your palm can be used for payment services.²⁸ We can’t grant you the cost of an entirely new phone but between the credit and some of the subsidies, you should be able to afford one soon.”

You once again fail to see the logic of this. You have no food, no money, no job, and now no connectivity to anyone. You wonder if Uncle Nduka will even find out his money only got you halfway. Probably not, if the smugglers wanted to remain in business.

Days turn into weeks as your fate hangs in the balance. Deportation back to the DRC is a terrifying possibility. Yet, here you are, stuck in limbo within the Chongwe camp. You slowly build relationships in the camp and realize it functions in a way of its own. Food supply is steady, though lopsided toward green vegetables that wreck your digestive system. The hydroponic factory farms you notice on the way into Lukasa are clearly operating much more efficiently than the ones in Congo.²⁹ Heavy investments had been made into hydroponic farming and lab grown proteins about a decade ago, largely on the philanthropic whim of some megacorporation. They came with great promise of easing the food insecurity of the DRC, but with deteriorating access to clean water, these farms quickly failed. It wasn’t long before the DRC was back to relying on foreign assistance to feed its own people. Here in Lukasa, the situation seems better. Though there are no feasts, there is at least enough food to survive. You notice a meat production facility farther out of the city too but have yet to see any of the fruits of that particular growing facility.³⁰

Then comes an unexpected offer.

“Inshuti! How are you settling in?” your receptionist greets you one day.

“I need to get to Tanzania,” you say, half-gesturing at a particularly dilapidated tent nearby.

“Ah no, that is not possible, my friend,” he replies. “Tanzania has fully stopped any border crossings during the current turmoil. War and disease make us all poor neighbors.” You had heard the rumors of a new illness emerging among refugee camps.³¹ Fortunately, yours had been untouched.

“I have a job for you,” the man continues.

The job is your big break. The man takes you about a mile away, toward the region where you know the U.S. military is encamped in a large compound, distributed amongst many small outbuildings and centers. Your spirits lift as you leave the camp, glad that the job isn’t to monitor the refugee camp sewage to preclude an outbreak of disease.³² As you near the U.S. camp, you can tell it used to be a resort of some kind back in its glory days.³³

He takes you to a field just outside the resort and explains that you will be cleaning the field of solar panels outside the military camp. Lukasa has many solar fields and wind farms routing power to the city, but several fields are set up around the U.S. military encampment to guarantee power, especially during the large buildup of forces around the national capital.³⁴ The harsh midday sun beats down as you work through the next week, but the work is honest and generates a modest earning. Working alongside a few others, you learn the U.S. military pays several labor agencies through the city, and informal networks like your refugee acquaintance earn small commissions by delivering labor when needed. You scan your palm daily, understanding that a monetary balance was added to an unseen account you don’t fully understand.

As you scrub the Zambian dust from panel after panel, an odd feeling grows within you. You aren’t in Tanzania, but the brutal pain of the past few weeks slowly abates to a low, dull presence. This is far from the haven you’d dreamt of, but you find an odd contentment in the work.

4

The midday sun beats down on your back as you meticulously clean the solar panel.³⁵ Dust devils dance across the parched earth of the Chongwe Refugee Camp in Zambia, a stark contrast to the lush greenery you once called home. Sweat trickles down your temples, blurring the periphery of your vision as you ignore the ever-present streams. You feel a slight sting behind your jaw when the salty sweat beads atop your recent incisions, but it’s well worth the music you now get to listen to while you work. You used to hate the old Soukous music, but now your brother’s favorite album has become yours.

Your new hearing implants and accompanying phone had largely been paid for by a combination of aid funds and subsidies from the Indian company that manufactured them. Evidently, you had a “right to connect” that you were previously unaware of.³⁶ Not fulfilling this right, you learned, was apparently a common charge levelled at underdeveloped countries like the DRC and its neighbors. Your reestablished connectivity had only added to your concerns, however. After several days, you still haven’t been able to reestablish contact with Uncle Nduka. You think of him as you wipe the hardened glass, sweat beading on your brow.

A shadow falls across the panel, momentarily blocking the relentless sun. You straighten, squinting against the glare to see a large American soldier standing over you. He wasn’t much older than you, his face clean, a stark contrast to the weathered visages of the camp. A nervous knot forms in your stomach.

“Hey there,” he greets you. French, his accent immediately recognizable. Your implants don’t even translate. “Mind if I chat for a bit?” You shrug, unsure of what to expect. He leads you to a shaded area beneath a makeshift tent, offering you an oblong sealed pouch of cool water.³⁷

“I’m Sergeant Kabuya,” he says, extending a hand. Hesitantly, you shake it. “But you can call me Joseph. My family, they came from the DRC, years ago. They fled the violence too, back in the fifties.”

Surprise flickers across your face. An American soldier who is a Congolese refugee? Now you realize why he approached you. The “Virunga National Park” emblazoned across the back of your sweat-drenched shirt was an obvious sign of where you were from. Joseph chuckled, a hint of bitterness in the sound. “Life takes you strange places,” he said. “I joined the army, got my citizenship that way. Now I find myself back here, watching things unfold all over again.”³⁸

He leans closer, his voice dropping to a low murmur. “You know what’s happening in the east, right? The fighting between the Hutus and the Tutsis? It’s not just some old tribal conflict.” Joseph gestured toward the distant horizon. “The Chinese, the PLA, they’re stirring the pot. Flooding both sides with weapons, spreading lies through those cheap phones everyone carries.”³⁹

A cold dread seeps into you. Joseph’s words mirror some of your uncle’s strange language you’d heard back in Kinshasa, stories of shadowy figures manipulating the conflict from afar. You remember the white man from that night. Had you really seen him?

“They want chaos,” Joseph continues, his voice tight. “Enough that they can step in, claim they’re peacekeeping. And then, bingo, they gain control of those newly discovered mineral deposits in Rwanda and the DRC. Rare earth metals, coltan, all the good stuff.”⁴⁰

Your mind reels. The endless war, the displacement, the suffering—a cynical ploy for resources. Joseph’s words fill the empty spaces in the narrative you’d been piecing together, a narrative of manipulation and greed veiled as peacekeeping.

Joseph places a hand on your shoulder, his gaze meeting yours. “You seem like a good person,” he says. “Just keep your head down, alright? This isn’t your fight. But maybe,” he adds, a flicker of hope in his eyes, “maybe someday, we’ll find a way to get you and I both back home.” You’re not sure whether he means the United States or the DRC, but for the first time, you consider the possibility.

Joseph stands up, indicating the conversation is over. As he turns, you notice a small circle protruding slightly from the back of his head. If it hadn’t reflected the overhead light, you wouldn’t even have seen it. It looked only slightly different from the ones you saw on the Chinese guards.

Joseph chuckled. “Ah, this fella?” he says, tapping the spot. “This is my little helper. Neuralink. Heard of it?”⁴¹ You vaguely recall rumors of demons from your village by that name. Your local healers warned of umudayimoni, demons that blurred the lines between human and machine. You had no idea this is what was meant. You’re not sure if they knew, either.

“Most of us had them back in the States,” Joseph explains, reading the confusion in your eyes. “Just another consumer gadget. Games, immersive experiences, hands-free control of your smart home. Neat and helpful stuff, but mostly a novelty. They started years ago as a biomedical device, but it only took one Supreme Court college admissions case to open the floodgates for elective access to the technology.”

He pauses, his gaze turning introspective. “Then I joined the Army. That’s when things changed. Suddenly, it wasn’t about mindless entertainment anymore. This thing became an extension of me.” He taps his temple with a newfound reverence. “Direct connection with HQ, instant access to intel, real-time battlefield awareness. We’re almost like a hive mind, you know? Sharing information, strategizing on the fly.”

He leans closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I can’t tell you everything, of course. But if you ever get the chance, man, get yourself one. It opens doors, even for someone like you.”

The idea sends shivers down your spine. A device stitched into your brain, granting access to an unknown network? Joseph’s enthusiasm couldn’t erase the unsettling feeling. Back home, they used to call such things “sorcery.” Technology had come a long way, but the human desire for control, it seemed, remained unchanged.

“I ... I don’t know,” you stammer, staring down at the dusty ground. The thought of surrendering a piece of yourself, even for a chance at a better life, fills you with a profound unease.

Joseph’s smile softens. “Hey, no pressure,” he says, patting your shoulder. “Just something to think about. There are options available to you if you want them.”

You return and continue your work, the glint of the solar panels reflecting the setting sun. Freedom, connection, knowledge—all dangle before you with a hefty price tag attached. You are fleeing one conflict and now feel uncomfortably close to another. Is this the next step on your journey, or a path toward a different kind of war? As the last rays of the sun dip below the horizon, casting long shadows across your path back to the camp, you know you haven’t found your answer yet. The choice, it seems, lies on the road ahead.

5

Sweat drips from your brow as you wrestle with the heavy solar panel, its smooth surface an unwelcome reflection of the unforgiving sun. You’d been given the opportunity to join a small crew installing panels around the perimeter of the U.S. camp, a chance to earn a few extra bucks to help the United States meet its insatiable thirst for power.⁴² The job means more grueling and more technical work. It also means more interaction with Joseph, the American soldier with the unsettling Neuralink device beneath his shaved head. He would often come out and find you, knowing your work wasn’t far from his own living quarters.

“Hey there, inshuti!” Your implants seamlessly translate Joseph’s greeting in a mix of English and Kinyarwanda. Joseph sports a familiar grin. “Making the desert a little brighter, one panel at a time?”

You wipe the sweat from your eyes with a grimy sleeve and manage a smile in return. “Doing my part,” you reply, wondering if he hears you in French or English. “This work is harder than it looks.”

Joseph chuckles. “Tell me about it. But hey, at least you’re getting paid, right?”

The conversation turns serious as you secure the panel onto the mounting frame. “Joseph,” you start cautiously, “have you heard anything about ... what’s happening out there?” You gesture vaguely toward the north horizon, just to the right of where the relentless sun bled into the dusty haze.

Joseph’s smile vanishes. “Yeah,” he says, his voice low. “Things just took a nasty turn. There was a shipment of PLA weapons and tech headed for Rwanda. The Tanzanians intercepted it, with a little help from some U.S. special forces embedded with their militia.”

Your breath catches in your throat. The murmurs you’d heard of American involvement in the conflict suddenly feel very real, but this would also mark the first time PLA and American troops have come into direct contact.

“Things went south,” Joseph continues. “The PLA fired on the Tanzanian militia. We lost two special forces members in the firefight.” Anger flickers across his face. “But here’s the kicker. Their Neuralink devices,” he taps his temple, “blew the PLA’s story wide open. Turns out the PLA started the whole thing, not the other way around.”

You are stunned. Joseph is talking about technology you barely understand, but you appreciate the gravity of exposing lies on a global stage.

“And that’s not all,” Joseph presses on, a spark of excitement replacing the anger. “U.S. quantum computing has cracked the PLA’s disinformation campaign. Those slick videos they were circulating? Turns out their top-grade AI video generators couldn’t fool our computing power. We’ve decisively proven that not only are the videos of the firefight fake, but that a whole trove of PLA videos coming out of Tanzania are. The whole world can see it now.”

A sliver of hope flickers in your chest. Maybe, just maybe, there is a chance for things to change. The hope is quickly extinguished as Joseph explains your Tanzanian goal was never even a chance. The Hutu enclaves, the stable Tanzanian state, it was all AI propaganda to mask the devastation years of mining had wrecked on the countryside. For years, you had blamed the Tanzanians for poisoning the critical Congo river basin with the waste from their rare earth mineral mining. Now you realize they are just as much victims as you are, stuck under the thumb of others sucking the value right out of the country.

Joseph lowers his voice again. “The UN condemned the PLA attack, despite China’s best efforts. They vetoed a resolution authorizing force, but the U.S. isn’t waiting. It looks like some Indian big tech firms plan to cut China’s data access to the region. And did you hear about Gwadar?⁴³ Looks like someone shut down their port with a well-timed terrorist attack. Some finger-pointing toward India on that one, but nothing confirmed. I’ve always said they’ve been far too reliant on that line ever since they lost the fight for Indonesia.” You vaguely remember something about the Sino-Indian war resulting in an Indian-controlled southwest Pacific. It was a brief conflict that came shortly after the Chinese mainland integrated Taiwan.

Joseph claps you on the shoulder. “The world’s watching, inshuti,” he says with a steely glint in his eyes. “And this time, everyone knows who the bad actors are.”

Later that night, as you lay on your thin cot in the crowded tent, a faint buzzing inside your face startles you from your fitful sleep. It is your phone, ringing through your implants indicating an incoming call. The number was unfamiliar, but a jolt of adrenaline shot through you. It was Joseph.

6

You squint into the thick, green plastic of the Indian-made VR goggles, “Airtel” emblazoned across your eyes in a cool, futuristic font. You take a moment to readjust, wiping away the dust blurring the digital images projected within. Joseph’s words echo in your mind: “Duty to Protect.” Never in your wildest dreams did you think you’d be glued to virtual news feeds, witnessing a war unfold in real-time from a refugee camp cot.

The U.S. offensive unfolds with a digital ballet. Swarms of unmanned drones, sleek and deadly, carve through the African sky. News reports crackle about a “Duty to Protect” mission, not just for people but for the ravaged environment. Years of rare earth mining have choked the rivers with toxic waste, poisoning the land and fueling instability.

The initial phase is a symphony of chaos. Cyberattacks launched by the United States neutralize Chinese satellite communication, but the Chinese retaliate with crippling hacks of their own. Familiar blue loading circles plague your screen, obscuring vital information feeds. The U.S. forces, you learn, deploy giant, helium-filled balloons to act as deployable communication towers, a sophisticated effort to restore a complex communications network.⁴⁴ The balloons have a dual purpose. They reestablish the vital military mesh communications network, communicating with still-operable military satellites far outside the theater beyond the horizon. The balloons also reestablish the civilian network, however, retransmitting the civilian bands of the electromagnetic spectrum to reconnect civil telecommunications networks on the ground and re-link these networks with civilian telecom satellites still operable in the sky. The result enables the U.S. military to continue to “hide” within the electromagnetic spectrum on military and civilian-banded channels. You also notice it enables local and international news networks that now helpfully receive their information about the conflict through a U.S.-enabled lens.

Then come the first reports of ground forces clashing. You find yourself glued to the news, listening to a constant stream of updates as you work to maintain the power infrastructure fueling the fight. Before, you felt like a victim amidst the conflict. Now, you feel a new urgency in your work. You know that in some small way, you’re helping to contribute to an effort to stop this cycle of violence and end the fighting. The United States, partnering with Tanzania and the DRC, pushes north, only to meet a fierce Chinese defense. But something isn’t right. Whispers of “quantum breach” snake across the news feeds. The Chinese, it seems, have their own depth of quantum computing power, cracking the supposedly unbreakable U.S. encryption.⁴⁵

Your stomach churns. Joseph’s words about the United States having the upper hand seems a distant memory. The battlefield transforms into a digital and physical clash. Drone swarms engage in a relentless dance of destruction, while off the Tanzanian coast, a different kind of war emerges. Here, low-tech fastboats, launched from autonomous motherships deployed by India and Australia, swarm and overwhelm the heavily armed PLA drone navy—a victory for ingenuity over brute force.

But the battle lines remain fluid. The Chinese, with their newfound quantum advantage, isolate and disintegrate entire swarms of U.S. drones. Enabled by the unfathomable speed of quantum computing, the PLA target a string of key nodes, severing key data links and disaggregating the strength of formations before destroying them piecemeal with their improved scattershot autonomous weapons. Entire swarms are gone, leaving the human formations behind them blind and deaf reliant on defensive systems to preserve their positions. Yet, within the chaos, a glimmer of hope emerges. The cyberattacks reveal a vulnerability. The degraded communications links to Asia mean the processing power behind the Chinese advantage can’t be working from the Chinese mainland. It has to be within Tanzania itself.

A day later, a daring special operations mission flashes across your screen—a raid on the Tanzanian city of Dodoma to cripple the PLA’s quantum computing facility. This, you realize, could be the turning point. Computing power itself is a combat capability. Your heart pounds against your ribs as news feeds depict generated images of U.S. soldiers, cloaked in darkness, infiltrating the heart of the city. The outcome? Still unknown.

You close the VR goggles, the plastic cool against your clammy forehead. The sun is setting, painting the sky in fiery hues. Outside the tent, the camp bustles with hushed excitement. Everyone, it seems, is glued to their phones, VR wear, or any device capable of pulling in news.

7

Dust swirls in the afternoon light as you navigate the mix of prefab and resort structures that serve as living quarters for the U.S. soldiers. By now, several of the guard soldiers know you personally and allow you to enter the camp. You’ve grown accustomed to the cameras above, knowing they’re matching your appearance and gait with the data collected when you first in-processed at the Changwe Refugee Camp.⁴⁶

Joseph had given you vague directions to his billet in Lukasa, but the camp seems to sprawl endlessly under the relentless sun. Finally, you spot him hustling into a hut with a makeshift sign a hundred meters away. Taking a deep breath, you approach and knock tentatively.

A muffled groan emanates from within. Hesitantly, you push open the door. Inside, Joseph lay sprawled on a cot, his eyes obscured by a VR mask that clearly isn’t on. Next to him, a copy of The Story of My Life by someone named Helen Keller. John’s body twitches slightly, like a man caught in the throes of a restless sleep. An unsettling premonition gnaws at you. This isn’t Joseph, not the Joseph you know.

You approach cautiously, about to call his name, when his hand twitches, hovering over a button on a device strapped to his chest. Panic seizes you. Joseph is unconscious, connected to some unknown machine, and here you are, intruding where you shouldn’t be.

Just as you are about to back away, Joseph makes an immense sigh, sitting up as he does so. Relief washes over you, so intense it almost makes you dizzy. “Joseph?” your voice cracks. “Are you all right?”

He rips off the mask with a tired sigh. “Inshuti! Just what I needed,” he says, his voice slightly slurred. “Come in, come in.”

He gestures vaguely to the cluttered desk beside his cot. “Just a long … planning conference with HQ,” he explains, rubbing his temples. You frown, confused. You just saw him enter the tent not five minutes ago.

Joseph chuckles, his usual spark returning to his eyes. “Neuralink time, my friend,” he says, noticing your bewilderment. “We operate a bit faster in there, you see.”

Confused yet again. “Neuralink? The thing in your head?” You point to the bare disc at the back of his skull.

John nods. “Think of it as a direct line to HQ. Not just spoken words, you understand? With practice, we can communicate on a deeper level. Feel each other’s intentions, understand the plan completely even without spoken explanation. There’s no need for sleep in there, and we’ve got any number of computing tools at our disposal. We call it ‘the sink’ because—well I guess I don’t know. It just feels down.”

His words open a door to a reality you can’t quite grasp. A network that didn’t rely on clumsy words, but on the pure transfer of thought. “It just transmits ... feelings?”

Joseph grins. “Not just feelings,” he corrects. “Thoughts, ideas, complex plans. All compressed into a single neural stream. It’s a different kind of communication that’s difficult to relate without experiencing it.

“Probably the biggest advantage comes from the system monitoring all that communication, though. If I wanted to, I could recall the entire battle plan we just discussed and write it down for you, right here, right now. But I don’t need to. There’s an autonomous system in there with us, or maybe it’s better to say over us. Not that it’s in charge, but it’s monitoring all our shared communications and synthesizing the product into coherent plans, intelligence preparation, targeting, and assessments. On the outside—er, I mean here, this reality—we gain up-to-date information on the environment and the progress of this campaign. Every time we enter the sink, all that updates knowledge gets incorporated into the autonomous mind.

“Think of it as a virtual room. You’ve met people miles away in VR, right? You’ve seen how the room can adapt and incorporate aspects of your conversation in the way it changes colors, the décor, or even places it takes you to? Well, the sink is kind of like that, except it’s doing more. It participates in the conversation with us, simultaneously adding to the conversation and learning from it.”

A shiver runs down your spine. This isn’t just communication, it’s a level of interconnectedness that defies understanding. Yet, Joseph’s smile remains warm, reassuring.

“At first, it’s pretty wild, my friend,” he adds with a wink. “But the real advantage isn’t just communication, it’s speed.” He gestures to the device on his chest. “Inside this deeper virtual reality, we’re limited only by the number of connections and the computing power, which we’ve been working relentlessly to increase daily.

“I admit, it’s weird and difficult when you first go into the sink. Getting the Neuralink was one thing, but that felt … cool. Back in the states, it’s really just an evolution in connectivity devices. Controlling things with your mind, flipping lights around the house, even sending texts with just thoughts. The sink is a whole other experience. I’ve been told your mind is actually existing in a computer processor somewhere, but I don’t think that’s true. It’s more like a space has been created for multiple minds to come together, like I said—a mutual virtual room. Of course, without words, sight, or even touch, you have to learn how to communicate all over again. That book was an immense help to me.” He says, nodding to the Helen Keller book you noticed earlier.⁴⁷ You figure you’ll take his word for it.

Joseph’s voice turns serious. “This war—any war—it’s about outmaneuvering the PLA cognitively. Thinking at a faster tempo, planning faster, reacting faster. That’s the key. The PLA have their own version of Neuralink too, but as far as we know, they don’t have the sink. I think it’s because you can’t control how people connect and communicate in there. You can sever or throttle phones, data links, cyber networks, any number of things, but in there, there’s nowhere to even interject.

“You know, we used to think in this old idea of humans versus machines. Old media portrayed AI as this monster that would rise up and destroy the human race time and again. What all those narratives left out was the way in which humans were evolving alongside the technologies they were creating. While old movies portrayed evil cyborgs, no one seemed to realize we were already tethered to thousands of technologies in ways we didn’t even realize. Just because a gap of air exists between your mind and a system doesn’t mean you’re any less reliant on it.”

He stands up, stretching his arms above his head. “Get ready, my friend,” he says, a somber note creeping into his voice. “We’re expecting a lot more refugees coming across the border. The engineers are printing buildings as fast as they can, and the UN is ramping up aid. This is a turning point. And you, inshuti, you’re right in the middle of it.”

The weight of Joseph’s words settles on your shoulders. You were a refugee, a nobody, yet somehow, you were also a part of something bigger. A war fought not just on battlefields, but in the hidden realms of interconnected minds. As you left Joseph’s quarters, you knew one thing for sure—the future of your homeland, and perhaps the fate of the entire region, hung in the balance of this strange, unseen war.

8

Joseph’s words continue to sit with you as you work relentlessly in the camp over the next several days. The once calm space was now a beehive of activity, with tents and buildings hastily erected to accommodate the influx of refugees fleeing the fighting across the border. Here you are, once confused and scared as you were processed, now you’re processing others. The irony is not lost on you as you register and biometrically scan family after family, their faces etched with fear and exhaustion—a reflection of your own journey not so long ago.

News crackles through the camp, painting a picture far more complex than the initial “Duty to Protect” narrative. The United States is deploying two more brigades to Zambia, a sign of a willingness to escalate. You understand now. It isn’t just the people the PLA fears, but the swarm of flying drones, the relentless UGVs, the unbreakable network connectivity, and the terrifying speed with which the U.S. forces seem to operate. It might not be possible for the PLA to match two more brigades’ worth of such capability.

Behind the scenes, a frantic dance of diplomacy plays out. High-level talks aim to contain the conflict, a war neither the United States nor China truly desired. China had retaliated in the early days with crippling cyberattacks on the U.S. mainland, causing widespread economic damage and loss of life. Ironically, these attacks solidified U.S. public support for the war and spurred a vengeful industrial buildup.

On the strategic back foot, the United States had turned to its sprawling technological conglomerates for a response. Relying on an antiquated law—or perhaps the ancient Constitution itself—the U.S. congress had authorized limited reprisal by two of the largest U.S. technology companies.⁴⁸ These multinational corporations possess quantum technology far surpassing anything known to either the United States or the Chinese government and quickly breaches the Great Firewall of China. Unlike the Chinese attack on the United States, they didn’t dismantle infrastructure. Instead, they increased capability, adding information and connectivity across previously segmented and controlled sections of China’s population. Videos of the PLA’s exploitative violence in Africa and blatant involvement in the initial Tutsi attacks suddenly stream across every Chinese citizen’s screen, enabled by blockchain-verified recorded footage. These current realities stream right alongside previously suppressed stories from China’s own history. Suddenly, the hidden horrors of the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, brutal coronavirus lockdowns, and the Uyghur genocide were before everyone’s eyes.⁴⁹ Each is even more compelling due to the hyper-realistic AI videos that accompany them.

The Chinese, disadvantaged by their inability to bolster their African forces through Pakistan or anywhere else, find themselves facing growing unrest at home. The specter of another “century of humiliation” looms. A sigh of relief sweeps through the camp as news arrives of China’s willingness to negotiate.

India, who had proven a valuable partner to the United States, emerges from the conflict a dominant power. Indian megacorporations launch a new batch of communication satellites into the equatorial sky, offering to clear out the now-defunct United States and Chinese orbital infrastructure. Many suspect the Indians of using their advanced maneuverable spacecraft to collect more than a couple of the defunct satellites for exploitation upon return. Airtel, the Indian telecom giant, is promising to expand its services across the African Great Lakes region. You suspect they would squeeze the Chinese out of the region entirely within the decade.

As the dust settles, questions linger in your mind. Even with the PLA exposed, why do the Hutu and Tutsi continue fighting? Reports continued to come in of the localized attacks still occurring at the Rwandan border. You would never go back. Your new, wider world was no simpler, however. Quantum computing has unveiled a new reality, blurring the lines between the virtual and the real, the secure and the broadcast. And what was the true power of networks? You see firsthand how connectivity in communications, projection, and allies has amplified the United States’ power, and how China’s isolation proved its undoing.

You consume just a bit more news of the world before you drift off to sleep. You think of the silent solar-powered batteries you once used to maintain routing wires all the way to the wireless charger you set your phone on for the night. Of course, Joseph never carried a phone. There was no need. You smile to yourself as you lean back on your cot.

You remember a news story you didn’t fully understand earlier in the day. Something about U.S. companies pursuing a new ability to “unfold” protons, opening unseen dimensions.⁵⁰ It’s beyond your comprehension. But so was all of this at the beginning. You admit you’re intrigued. Maybe, you think, staring out at the vast African sky, maybe it’s time to consider that U.S. foreign legion program Joseph mentioned. The Neuralink surgery, once unsettling, now seems like a ticket to a future where the lines between soldier and strategist are dissolving. It’s a future you want to be a part of, a future where you can use your experience and newfound knowledge to forge a better path for your war-torn homeland.

---

Notes

1. All images in this story were generated by the Microsoft Copilot Image Designer, a publicly available artificial intelligence image generator, available at https://copilot.microsoft.com/images/create.
2. Land Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
3. Text generated with assistance by Gemini, Google, 23 April 2024, https://gemini.google.com. Generated text was edited by the author. The plotline, characters, thematic elements, future concepts, prose, and majority of the text are created by the author.
4. Matthew Loh, “Meet China’s Latest News Anchor, A Young Woman Who Runs Virtual Q&A Sessions to Teach People Propaganda,” Business Insider, 16 March 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/china-ai-anchor-teach-propaganda-questions-answers-2023-3.
5. AI is able to condition itself to the specific preferences of individual users’ personalities. For more, see Byunggu Yu and Junwhan Kim, “Personality of AI,” arXiv, 3 December 2023, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.02998.
6. Robert Bociaga, “Minerals and China’s Military Assistance in the DR Congo,” The Diplomat (website), 31 October 2022, https://thediplomat.com/2022/10/minerals-and-chinas-military-assistance-in-the-dr-congo/.
7. John Vidal, “The 100 Million City: Is 21st Century Urbanisation Out of Control?,” The Guardian (website), 13 April 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/19/urban-explosion-kinshasa-el-alto-growth-mexico-city-bangalore-lagos.
8. “Can Indoor Farms Reach Skyscraper Height?,” Bloomberg, 13 December 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-12-13/farmscraper-design-takes-vertical-farms-to-new-heights?embedded-checkout=true.
9. Jessie Li, “Fooling Facial Recognition with Fashion,” Axios, 7 September 2019, https://www.axios.com/2019/09/07/fooling-facial-recognition-fashion.
10. John R. Delaney, “Eufy SoloCam S340 Wireless Outdoor Security Camera Review,” PC Magazine, 29 January 2024, https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/eufy-solocam-s340-wireless-outdoor-security-camera.
11. “Chinese Companies to Invest Up to $7 Billion in Congo Mining Infrastructure,” Reuters, 27 January 2024, https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinese-invest-up-7-bln-congo-mining-infrastructure-statement-2024-01-27/.
12. Timekettle, accessed 11 September 2024, https://www.timekettle.co/.
13. “Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid,” Cleveland Clinic, 21 November 2023, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/14794-bone-anchored-auditory-implant.
14. Strategic Futures Group, “The Future of Migration” (Washington, DC: National Intelligence Council, April 2021), https://www.dni.gov/files/images/globalTrends/GT2040/NIC-2021-02486--Future-of-Migration--Unsourced--14May21.pdf.
15. William Crumpler, “How Accurate are Facial Recognition Systems—and Why Does It Matter?,” Strategic Technologies Program (blog), Center for Strategic and International Studies, 14 April 2020, https://www.csis.org/blogs/strategic-technologies-blog/how-accurate-are-facial-recognition-systems-and-why-does-it.
16. Elise Thomas, “How to Hack Your Face to Dodge the Rise of Facial Recognition Tech,” Wired (website), 1 February 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/avoid-facial-recognition-software/.
17. “Can You 3D Print Silicone? Best Silicone 3D Printers and Alternatives,” Formlabs, accessed 11 September 2024, https://formlabs.com/blog/silicone-3d-printing/.
18. “Deepfake Videos Could ‘Spark’ Violent Social Unrest,” BBC, 13 June 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48621452.
19. “Images of Ancestors,” Archive Today, 15 December 2012, https://archive.today/20121215055527/http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~bcr/African_Mask_Images.html.
20. Airtel, accessed 11 September 2024, https://www.airtel.in/.
21. Oluwanifemi Kolawole, “How Smartphone Subsidies Can Give Millions of Africans Internet Access,” Techpoint Africa, 7 August 2020, https://techpoint.africa/2020/08/07/smartphone-subsidy-internet-africa/.
22. “How to Hack a Self-Driving Car,” Physics World (website), 18 August 2020, https://physicsworld.com/a/how-to-hack-a-self-driving-car/.
23. “How Can Drones Benefit Law Enforcement Agencies?,” DSL Pros, accessed 11 September 2024, https://www.dslrpros.com/police-drones.html.
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