The short story from the blogger ibikunle Abraham laniyan is interesting to read.
The rain didn’t fall in drops anymore; it fell in sheets of static, a rhythmic humming that vibrated through the floorboards of Babajide’s workshop. In December 2025, the weather patterns had become as erratic as the technology he fixed.
Babajide held a copper soldering iron to a derelict "Memory Core" salvaged from a junk heap in the Flooded District. Most people used digital clouds for their pasts, but those clouds were prone to evaporating during solar flares. Babajide dealt in the physical—heavy, rusted cubes that smelled of ozone and old salt.
"Is it done?" a voice whispered from the doorway.
It was Morenike, an elderly woman wrapped in a threadbare aso-oke shawl. She had been coming to his shop for three days, clutching a small box of pre-war brass coins as payment.
“Almost,” Babajide grunted. He clicked the final circuit into place. “You understand this might not be what you think, Mama? Most of these cores just hold tax receipts or old grocery lists.”
“It belonged to my Tunde,” she said, her voice steady. “He said the day the sky turned green, he hid the ayo—the joy—in here.”
Babajide sighed, expecting the usual disappointment. He tapped the activation sequence. A holographic flicker sputtered to life above the workbench. It wasn't a bank statement.
The air in the room suddenly smelled of roasted maize and rain-dampened earth. A man’s hearty chuckle—clear and undistorted by the static outside—filled the workshop. The projection showed a wide porch under a flame tree, a place that hadn't existed for decades. Tunde was there, his eyes crinkling with a warmth that felt alien in the harsh light of 2025.
“Look, my Morenike,” the holographic man said, looking directly at her. “Even if the world gets loud, this is how quiet our love used to be. Remember the sound.”
The projection died as the core finally gave out, crumbling into a fine, grey powder.
The workshop returned to the hum of the static rain. Babajide waited for Morenike to cry, to demand more, to mourn the loss of the physical object. Instead, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and smiled.
“E se, Babajide,” she whispered. "Thank you."
She turned to leave, leaving the brass coins on his table. Babajide watched her walk out into the grey morning. For the first time in years, he didn't pick up his soldering iron. He just sat in the silence she had left behind, wondering if he had enough copper left to build a receiver for the quiet
Babajide didn’t touch the brass coins for a long time. He watched the door where Morenike had vanished into the haze of 2025's perpetual "Grey Season." Usually, he was a man of logic—circuits, solder, and survival—but the echo of Tunde’s voice remained in the corners of the room like a physical presence.
He stood up, his joints popping, and walked to the back of the shop. Behind a stack of rusted satellite dishes sat a crate he hadn’t opened since the Great Blackout of ‘23. Inside was his own "Core," a sleek, obsidian-colored orb he’d found in the ruins of a university library. He had never dared to power it up; in this era, hope was often more expensive than hunger.
He placed the obsidian orb on the workbench. As he reached for his tools, a shadow crossed the threshold again.
"Babajide," a younger man said, stepping in. It was Ayodeji, the local courier who usually brought news of high-water marks and fuel shortages. He looked pale. "The scanners at the sea wall are picking up a frequency. It’s not static, and it’s not the government."
Babajide didn't look up from the orb. "I’m busy, Deji."
"It’s a song," Ayodeji insisted, his voice trembling. "A choral song. My grandmother says it’s an old Ijala—a hunter's chant. It’s coming from the deep water, vibrating through the old fiber-optic cables."
Babajide froze. He looked at the dust of Morenike’s husband's memory still coating his fingertips, then at the silent orb in front of him.
"The world is trying to remember itself," Babajide whispered.
He didn't pick up the soldering iron this time. Instead, he grabbed a pair of high-gain headphones and plugged them directly into the workbench’s bypass. He handed one muff to Ayodeji and kept the other for himself.
"Listen," Babajide commanded.
Through the static of the 2025 rain, a faint, rhythmic pulse began to emerge. It wasn't a glitch. It was a heartbeat—the collective memory of a city refusing to stay buried under the rising tide.
"Is that... us?" Ayodeji asked.
"No," Babajide said, a slow, rare smile breaking across his face. "That’s the future. We’re just finally tuning in."
The heartbeat in the headphones grew louder, a steady thump-thump that seemed to sync with the flickering overhead lights. Ayodeji pulled the headphone away from his ear, his eyes wide. "If the Ministry hears that, they’ll call it a security breach. They’ll shut down the grid."
"Let them try," Babajide muttered. He wasn't looking at the sensors anymore. He was looking at the obsidian orb. As the frequency from the sea wall intensified, the orb began to glow—a soft, pulsing indigo that bled through its dark shell.
This wasn't just a recording. It was a beacon.
"Deji, go to the market square," Babajide ordered, his voice suddenly sharp with the authority of an elder. "Find Kikelomo. Tell her the 'Deep Song' is active. She’ll know what it means for the irrigation lines."
"The water?" Ayodeji blinked. "What does a song have to do with the water?"
"Everything in this land is built on rhythm," Babajide said, his hands moving with a frantic, newfound precision over his console. "The old ones didn't just sing for fun; they sang to keep the earth in place. We forgot the tune, so the tides rose. Now, the earth is singing back."
Ayodeji didn't wait for a second explanation. He vanished into the rain, his boots splashing through the neon-slicked puddles of 2025 Lagos.
Babajide turned back to the indigo orb. He realized now that the "Memory Cores" he had been fixing for years weren't just archives of the past—they were keys. Morenike’s husband hadn't just left her a memory; he had left her a piece of a map.
He pressed his thumb against the glowing surface of the orb. The Indigo light flared, illuminating the workshop, turning the rusted tools into silver. A map projected itself onto the ceiling, weaving through the ceiling fans. It showed the coastline, but not as it was—drowned and gray—but as it could be. It showed hidden filtration hubs, ancient underground channels, and pressure valves buried beneath the silt.
A sharp knock at the door made him jump. It wasn't Ayodeji.
Standing in the doorway was a man in the crisp, synthetic uniform of the Coastal Authority. He held a scanner that was already chirping aggressively at Babajide’s workbench.
"Citizen Olowu," the officer said, his voice cold. "You are drawing an unauthorized amount of power from the district node. And you are receiving a signal that does not exist. Step away from the workbench."
Babajide looked at the map on the ceiling, then at the officer. He felt the weight of the brass coins Morenike had left behind. They weren't just currency; they were a debt to the future.
"It doesn't exist yet," Babajide said, his hand sliding toward a heavy wrench. "But I'm about to turn the volume up."
The officer stepped into the workshop, the hum of his scanner rising to a piercing whine as it locked onto the obsidian orb. “I won’t tell you again, Babajide. Power it down. This frequency is disrupting the Ministry’s drone corridors.”
Babajide didn't move. He felt the vibration of the Ijala—the hunter’s chant—pulsing through the floorboards, matching the rhythm of the indigo light. “The drones can wait,” Babajide said softly. “The land has been silent for too long. Can’t you feel it, Olukayode? Or did they replace your heart with a battery when you joined the Authority?”
The officer, Olukayode, flinched at the use of his name. He looked at the map dancing on the ceiling—the veins of a living city pulsing beneath the digital rot of 2025. For a second, the cold professionalism in his eyes flickered. He remembered his own father talking about the "Hidden Arteries" of the city, the old ways the water used to flow before the concrete and the greed took over.
“It’s a ghost, Baba,” Olukayode whispered, his voice losing its edge. “You’re chasing ghosts.”
“No,” Babajide countered, stepping toward the console. “I’m waking the ancestors. And they’re angry that we let the wells go dry.”
Suddenly, the workshop shook. A deep, mechanical groan echoed from the street—the sound of long-dormant hydraulic valves beneath the Flooded District beginning to turn. Outside, the stagnant, oily water in the gutters began to swirl, then drain.
Ayodeji burst back through the door, breathless. “Kikelomo is at the sea wall! She says the pressure is shifting! The old pumps... they’re breathing, Babajide!”
The officer’s radio erupted with panicked chatter. “Unit 4, status! We have a localized seismic event near the old market. The water levels are dropping—we’re losing the perimeter!”
Olukayode looked at his radio, then at the glowing orb, then at the old man who held a wrench like a scepter. He knew that if he reported this, the Ministry would level the block. But he also saw the map on the ceiling—a blueprint for a Lagos that didn't have to drown.
With a slow, deliberate motion, Olukayode reached down and switched off his scanner. He unclipped his radio and set it on the workbench.
“The signal is lost,” Olukayode said into the air, his eyes fixed on the map. “Interference from the storm. I’m proceeding on foot to investigate.”
Babajide nodded, a silent pact formed between the old world and the new. He turned back to the orb and increased the gain. The indigo light intensified, turning the static rain outside into a shimmering curtain of violet.
“Deji, get the tools,” Babajide commanded. “We have a city to exhume.”
As the three men stood in the glowing workshop, the Ijala chant grew into a roar, drowning out the 2025 rain. The quiet that Morenike had sought was gone, replaced by the thunderous sound of a world finally deciding to save itself.
The roar of the ancient pumps beneath the floorboards became a physical force, shaking the dust of decades from the rafters. Outside, the transformation was even more violent. The oily, stagnant water of the Flooded District wasn't just draining; it was being reclaimed.
Babajide stepped to the window. Through the violet-tinted rain, he saw the neighborhood waking up. Doors creaked open. People—neighbors like Eniola the seamstress and Taiwo the street-food vendor—emerged onto their balconies with lanterns. They weren't looking at the sky; they were looking at the ground, where the dark silt was retreating to reveal the original cobblestones of the old market square.
"It’s working," Ayodeji breathed, clutching a heavy wrench. "The water is going back to the lagoon."
"Not just the lagoon," Babajide said, his eyes fixed on the obsidian orb. "The song is opening the deep aquifers. The earth is thirsty, Deji. It’s drinking."
Olukayode, the officer, stood by the door, his hand resting on the hilt of his baton, though his stance was no longer aggressive. He was watching the Ministry’s patrol drones overhead. They were circling erratically, their sensors confused by the massive electromagnetic surge coming from the workshop.
"They’ll send a tactical team within ten minutes," Olukayode warned. "Once they realize the water levels are dropping, they’ll see it as a loss of control. The Ministry thrives on the flood; it keeps people dependent on their tankers."
"Then we have ten minutes to finish the bridge," Babajide said. He turned to a secondary console, his fingers flying across keys he hadn't touched in years. "The indigo signal is a handshake. We’ve woken the pumps, but we haven't locked the valves. If the Ministry shuts us down now, the back pressure will blow the pipes and drown the district for good."
"What do you need?" Olukayode asked.
Babajide looked at the officer’s Authority-issued belt. "Your bypass key. The one that accesses the city’s master grid. I need a clean burst of high-voltage power to fuse the digital handshake into the physical hardware."
Olukayode hesitated. Giving up the key was treason. It would erase his identity in the Ministry’s database, turning him into a ghost in the very system he had served.
He looked out the window again. He saw Morenike standing in the middle of the street, her feet finally touching dry land for the first time in years. She was holding a small wooden bird—the same one from the hologram—and she was singing along to the rhythm of the ground.
Without a word, Olukayode unclipped the silver bypass key and slid it across the workbench.
Babajide slammed the key into the port. The workshop erupted in a blinding flash of white and indigo. The obsidian orb cracked, a spiderweb of light spreading across its surface. For a heartbeat, the entire district went silent—the rain stopped, the pumps froze, and even the drones went dark.
Then, a low, melodic hum started. It wasn't the static of the rain. It was the sound of clear, filtered water rushing through clean pipes.
A single streetlamp in the center of the square flickered to life, casting a warm, steady glow that wasn't dependent on the Ministry’s grid. Then another. And another.
"We did it," Ayodeji whispered.
Babajide slumped into his chair, the glow of the orb fading into a soft, permanent amber. He looked at his hands, stained with the grease of the past and the light of the future.
"We didn't do anything, Deji," Babajide said, his voice thick with exhaustion and pride. "We just remembered how to listen."
In the distance, the sirens of the Ministry’s tactical teams began to wail, but for the first time in 2025, the people of the district didn't hide. They stood on the dry ground of their ancestors waiting for the dawn.
The soldier behind the cockpit glass—a young man named Folarin—stared at Morenike’s outstretched hand. His breathing was shallow, amplified by the speakers of his locked helmet. He looked at the water, then at the silent, powerless rifle gripped in his robotic glove. With a hiss of depressurization, he manually cranked the hatch open.
He took the cup. The water was sweet, cold, and tasted of the deep earth, a far cry from the metallic, recycled rations of the Ministry.
“The sensors said this area was a dead zone,” Folarin whispered, his voice cracking as he pulled off his helmet. He was barely twenty. “They said nothing grew here but rot.”
“The rot was only on the surface, son,” Morenike replied gently.
In the workshop, Babajide watched the interaction through the window. The obsidian shards on his table were now cold, their glow spent, but the air felt charged with a different kind of energy—a collective realization. Ayodeji was already at the door, his pockets stuffed with basic hand tools.
"Where are you going?" Babajide asked.
"To the next block," Ayodeji said, his eyes bright. "The signal didn't just stop here. If the Ministry's grid is down across the district, the other pumps will be stuck in a feedback loop. They’ll need someone who knows how to 'listen' to the valves."
Babajide nodded, handing the young man his own heavy wrench. "Go. Take Bisi the welder with you. She’s three doors down. She’s been waiting for a reason to use her torch."
Olukayode walked back into the shop, his Authority uniform torn and his rank insignias stripped away. He looked at Babajide, his expression unreadable. "The Ministry will send the heavy air-support from the capital. EMPs don't last forever. By dawn, they'll have the satellite uplink restored."
"Let them," Babajide said, walking to the back of his shop where a large, hand-drawn map of the city’s ancient subterranean waterways hung. He began marking the spots where the indigo light had flared brightest. "They can't arrest a river, Olukayode. And they can't reclaim land that has already remembered how to be fertile."
He pointed to a spot on the map—the Old Ikorodu ruins. "There is a primary pressure hub there. If we can jump-start that before the Ministry’s backup generators kick in, we won't just save a district. We’ll turn the entire coastline back into a garden."
Olukayode looked at the map, then at his own scarred hands. "I know the security codes for the Ikorodu perimeter. Or I did, before the world changed ten minutes ago."
"Then you're the navigator," Babajide said.
As the first hint of the December 19, 2025, sunrise began to was a pale, hopeful violet. A convoy of civilian vehicles—mismatched trucks, scooters, and even ox-carts—began to form in the square, led by the very brightly sparkle of the sunrise.
The convoy moved with a purpose that felt ancient, their headlights cutting through the violet mist of the early morning. Babajide sat in the passenger seat of an old flatbed truck, his fingers tracing the grooves of the brass coins in his pocket. Beside him, Olukayode drove in silence, his eyes fixed on the road where the Ministry's tarmac was already beginning to buckle from the pressure of the rising aquifers beneath.
"The Ikorodu hub is guarded by automated turrets," Olukayode said, his voice low. "Even without the Ministry's main grid, they have independent kinetic sensors. They don't need a signal to see a target."
"They see movement," Babajide corrected, looking at the vibrant green vines that were already curling around the abandoned lamp posts they passed. "But they don't see growth. We aren't going in as a fast-moving strike team. We're going in as part of the shift."
When they reached the perimeter of the Old Ikorodu hub, the sight was daunting. A massive, brutalist concrete dome sat like a grey cyst on the landscape, surrounded by high-tension wire and silent, swaying sensor towers. However, the ground around the dome was no longer dry. A shallow, clear pool had formed at its base, reflecting the dawn sky.
Ayodeji jumped from the back of the truck, joined by Bisi the welder and a dozen others. They carried no rifles—only copper rods, mirrors, and jars of the bioluminescent silt from Babajide’s district.
"Bisi, the mirrors," Babajide commanded.
Under the direction of the old tinkerer, the group began to angle mirrors to catch the rising sun, focusing the morning light onto the kinetic sensors of the turrets. The intense glare didn't break them, but it created a heat haze that confused their targeting processors.
Meanwhile, Babajide and Olukayode knelt at the edge of the water. Babajide took the last remaining shard of the obsidian orb and handed it to the former officer.
"The Ministry built this hub to lock the water away," Babajide said. "Your bypass key opened the door, but your intent has to turn the wheel. You have to want the water to be free more than you fear the consequences."
Olukayode took the shard. He waded into the pool, the water rising to his knees. He reached the heavy iron intake valve at the base of the dome—a relic of the 20th century that the Ministry and whispered a name—the name of his father, the one he had finally remembered.
The ground groaned. A deep, subterranean bell-tone rang out vibrating through.
The transition from the "Grey Season" to the "Bloom" happened with a speed that defied the laws of biology, but followed the laws of the Song. By mid-morning, the Ministry’s central command had gone silent. Their satellites were still spinning in the void, but on the ground, the frequency had shifted. The high-pitched whine of the old world had been replaced by a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated in the soles of everyone's feet.
Babajide sat on the tailgate of a repurposed transport truck, watching Olukayode show a group of children how to bypass the electronic locks on the Ministry’s grain silos using nothing but a tuned copper wire and a steady hum.
"They'll send the heavy air-support soon," Olukayode said, wiping sweat from his brow. "The central towers still have their own internal power. They won't let the southern districts go without a fight."
"They can't fight what they can't target," Babajide replied. He looked up. A thick, translucent mist was rising from the newly opened aquifers, a "vocal fog" that scrambled thermal imaging and lidar. To the Ministry’s drones, the district had simply disappeared, replaced by a massive, pulsing heat signature that looked like a single, giant organism.
Suddenly, a motorcycle screeched into the square. It was Ayodeji, but he wasn't alone. Sitting behind him was Kikelomo, the engineer from the sea wall. She was covered in salt and rust, but her eyes were burning with a fierce light.
"Babajide!" she shouted, jumping off before the bike had fully stopped. "It’s not just Lagos. I got a shortwave signal from Accra and Dakar. They felt the pulse. They saw the water shift. They’re asking for the frequency, Baba. They’re asking how to wake their own land."
Babajide felt a chill that had nothing to do with the morning air. He looked at the obsidian dust on his workbench, then at the shattered remains of the orb. "The orb is gone, Kikelomo. I can't send the signal again."
"You don't need the orb," Morenike said, stepping forward. she was holding the hand of the young soldier, Folarin, who had defected. "The orb was just a tuning fork. We are the choir now."
She turned to the crowd gathering in the square—hundreds of people, former soldiers and lifelong scavengers alike. "If we sing together, the earth hears us. If we work together, the water follows us."
Babajide stood up. He realized that the technology of 2025 had failed not because it was too advanced, but because it was too lonely. It tried to command the world instead of conversing with it.
"Kikelomo, get the radio relays," Babajide commanded, his voice regaining its strength. "Olukayode, use your codes to broadcast on the emergency frequencies. Don't send orders. Don't send warnings."
"What do I send?" Olukayode asked.
Babajide picked up his grandfather’s wooden flute one last time. He played a single, clear note—the opening of the Ijala.
"Send them the key," Babajide said. "Tell them to listen to the silence, and then tell them to start humming."
As the sun reached its zenith on this late December day, a sound began to rise from the coast of West Africa. It started as a murmur in a workshop in Lagos, but it grew into a roar that crossed borders and oceans. The "Grey Season" was over.The era of the listeners had begun.
The rain didn’t fall in drops anymore; it fell in sheets of static, a rhythmic humming that vibrated through the floorboards of Babajide’s workshop. In December 2025, the weather patterns had become as erratic as the technology he fixed.
Babajide held a copper soldering iron to a derelict "Memory Core" salvaged from a junk heap in the Flooded District. Most people used digital clouds for their pasts, but those clouds were prone to evaporating during solar flares. Babajide dealt in the physical—heavy, rusted cubes that smelled of ozone and old salt.
"Is it done?" a voice whispered from the doorway.
It was Morenike, an elderly woman wrapped in a threadbare aso-oke shawl. She had been coming to his shop for three days, clutching a small box of pre-war brass coins as payment.
“Almost,” Babajide grunted. He clicked the final circuit into place. “You understand this might not be what you think, Mama? Most of these cores just hold tax receipts or old grocery lists.”
“It belonged to my Tunde,” she said, her voice steady. “He said the day the sky turned green, he hid the ayo—the joy—in here.”
Babajide sighed, expecting the usual disappointment. He tapped the activation sequence. A holographic flicker sputtered to life above the workbench. It wasn't a bank statement.
The air in the room suddenly smelled of roasted maize and rain-dampened earth. A man’s hearty chuckle—clear and undistorted by the static outside—filled the workshop. The projection showed a wide porch under a flame tree, a place that hadn't existed for decades. Tunde was there, his eyes crinkling with a warmth that felt alien in the harsh light of 2025.
“Look, my Morenike,” the holographic man said, looking directly at her. “Even if the world gets loud, this is how quiet our love used to be. Remember the sound.”
The projection died as the core finally gave out, crumbling into a fine, grey powder.
The workshop returned to the hum of the static rain. Babajide waited for Morenike to cry, to demand more, to mourn the loss of the physical object. Instead, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and smiled.
“E se, Babajide,” she whispered. "Thank you."
She turned to leave, leaving the brass coins on his table. Babajide watched her walk out into the grey morning. For the first time in years, he didn't pick up his soldering iron. He just sat in the silence she had left behind, wondering if he had enough copper left to build a receiver for the quiet.
Babajide didn’t touch the brass coins for a long time. He watched the door where Morenike had vanished into the haze of 2025's perpetual "Grey Season." Usually, he was a man of logic—circuits, solder, and survival—but the echo of Tunde’s voice remained in the corners of the room like a physical presence.
He stood up, his joints popping, and walked to the back of the shop. Behind a stack of rusted satellite dishes sat a crate he hadn’t opened since the Great Blackout of ‘23. Inside was his own "Core," a sleek, obsidian-colored orb he’d found in the ruins of a university library. He had never dared to power it up; in this era, hope was often more expensive than hunger.
He placed the obsidian orb on the workbench. As he reached for his tools, a shadow crossed the threshold again.
"Babajide," a younger man said, stepping in. It was Ayodeji, the local courier who usually brought news of high-water marks and fuel shortages. He looked pale. "The scanners at the sea wall are picking up a frequency. It’s not static, and it’s not the government."
Babajide didn't look up from the orb. "I’m busy, Deji."
"It’s a song," Ayodeji insisted, his voice trembling. "A choral song. My grandmother says it’s an old Ijala—a hunter's chant. It’s coming from the deep water, vibrating through the old fiber-optic cables."
Babajide froze. He looked at the dust of Morenike’s husband's memory still coating his fingertips, then at the silent orb in front of him.
"The world is trying to remember itself," Babajide whispered.
He didn't pick up the soldering iron this time. Instead, he grabbed a pair of high-gain headphones and plugged them directly into the workbench’s bypass. He handed one muff to Ayodeji and kept the other for himself.
"Listen," Babajide commanded.
Through the static of the 2025 rain, a faint, rhythmic pulse began to emerge. It wasn't a glitch. It was a heartbeat—the collective memory of a city refusing to stay buried under the rising tide.
"Is that... us?" Ayodeji asked.
"No," Babajide said, a slow, rare smile breaking across his face. "That’s the future. We’re just finally tuning in."
The heartbeat in the headphones grew louder, a steady thump-thump that seemed to sync with the flickering overhead lights. Ayodeji pulled the headphone away from his ear, his eyes wide. "If the Ministry hears that, they’ll call it a security breach. They’ll shut down the grid."
"Let them try," Babajide muttered. He wasn't looking at the sensors anymore. He was looking at the obsidian orb. As the frequency from the sea wall intensified, the orb began to glow—a soft, pulsing indigo that bled through its dark shell.
This wasn't just a recording. It was a beacon.
"Deji, go to the market square," Babajide ordered, his voice suddenly sharp with the authority of an elder. "Find Kikelomo. Tell her the 'Deep Song' is active. She’ll know what it means for the irrigation lines."
"The water?" Ayodeji blinked. "What does a song have to do with the water?"
"Everything in this land is built on rhythm," Babajide said, his hands moving with a frantic, newfound precision over his console. "The old ones didn't just sing for fun; they sang to keep the earth in place. We forgot the tune, so the tides rose. Now, the earth is singing back."
Ayodeji didn't wait for a second explanation. He vanished into the rain, his boots splashing through the neon-slicked puddles of 2025 Lagos.
Babajide turned back to the indigo orb. He realized now that the "Memory Cores" he had been fixing for years weren't just archives of the past—they were keys. Morenike’s husband hadn't just left her a memory; he had left her a piece of a map.
He pressed his thumb against the glowing surface of the orb. The Indigo light flared, illuminating the workshop, turning the rusted tools into silver. A map projected itself onto the ceiling, weaving through the ceiling fans. It showed the coastline, but not as it was—drowned and gray—but as it could be. It showed hidden filtration hubs, ancient underground channels, and pressure valves buried beneath the silt.
A sharp knock at the door made him jump. It wasn't Ayodeji.
Standing in the doorway was a man in the crisp, synthetic uniform of the Coastal Authority. He held a scanner that was already chirping aggressively at Babajide’s workbench.
"Citizen Olowu," the officer said, his voice cold. "You are drawing an unauthorized amount of power from the district node. And you are receiving a signal that does not exist. Step away from the workbench."
Babajide looked at the map on the ceiling, then at the officer. He felt the weight of the brass coins Morenike had left behind. They weren't just currency; they were a debt to the future.
"It doesn't exist yet," Babajide said, his hand sliding toward a heavy wrench. "But I'm about to turn the volume up."
The officer stepped into the workshop, the hum of his scanner rising to a piercing whine as it locked onto the obsidian orb. “I won’t tell you again, Babajide. Power it down. This frequency is disrupting the Ministry’s drone corridors.”
Babajide didn't move. He felt the vibration of the Ijala—the hunter’s chant—pulsing through the floorboards, matching the rhythm of the indigo light. “The drones can wait,” Babajide said softly. “The land has been silent for too long. Can’t you feel it, Olukayode? Or did they replace your heart with a battery when you joined the Authority?”
The officer, Olukayode, flinched at the use of his name. He looked at the map dancing on the ceiling—the veins of a living city pulsing beneath the digital rot of 2025. For a second, the cold professionalism in his eyes flickered. He remembered his own father talking about the "Hidden Arteries" of the city, the old ways the water used to flow before the concrete and the greed took over.
“It’s a ghost, Baba,” Olukayode whispered, his voice losing its edge. “You’re chasing ghosts.”
“No,” Babajide countered, stepping toward the console. “I’m waking the ancestors. And they’re angry that we let the wells go dry.”
Suddenly, the workshop shook. A deep, mechanical groan echoed from the street—the sound of long-dormant hydraulic valves beneath the Flooded District beginning to turn. Outside, the stagnant, oily water in the gutters began to swirl, then drain.
Ayodeji burst back through the door, breathless. “Kikelomo is at the sea wall! She says the pressure is shifting! The old pumps... they’re breathing, Babajide!”
The officer’s radio erupted with panicked chatter. “Unit 4, status! We have a localized seismic event near the old market. The water levels are dropping—we’re losing the perimeter!”
Olukayode looked at his radio, then at the glowing orb, then at the old man who held a wrench like a scepter. He knew that if he reported this, the Ministry would level the block. But he also saw the map on the ceiling—a blueprint for a Lagos that didn't have to drown.
With a slow, deliberate motion, Olukayode reached down and switched off his scanner. He unclipped his radio and set it on the workbench.
“The signal is lost,” Olukayode said into the air, his eyes fixed on the map. “Interference from the storm. I’m proceeding on foot to investigate.”
Babajide nodded, a silent pact formed between the old world and the new. He turned back to the orb and increased the gain. The indigo light intensified, turning the static rain outside into a shimmering curtain of violet.
“Deji, get the tools,” Babajide commanded. “We have a city to exhume.”
As the three men stood in the glowing workshop, the Ijala chant grew into a roar, drowning out the 2025 rain. The quiet that Morenike had sought was gone, replaced by the thunderous sound of a world finally deciding to save itself.
The roar of the ancient pumps beneath the floorboards became a physical force, shaking the dust of decades from the rafters. Outside, the transformation was even more violent. The oily, stagnant water of the Flooded District wasn't just draining; it was being reclaimed.
Babajide stepped to the window. Through the violet-tinted rain, he saw the neighborhood waking up. Doors creaked open. People—neighbors like Eniola the seamstress and Taiwo the street-food vendor—emerged onto their balconies with lanterns. They weren't looking at the sky; they were looking at the ground, where the dark silt was retreating to reveal the original cobblestones of the old market square.
"It’s working," Ayodeji breathed, clutching a heavy wrench. "The water is going back to the lagoon."
"Not just the lagoon," Babajide said,
