The Room That Answers Back

Lagos, 2041 The city never truly slept. It only shifted its weight. When the roads quieted, generators took over. When voices fell, the wires began their low singing. Even at night, the air felt aware of itself.People spoke about Jigi the way they once spoke about prayer lines and miracle oils. Quietly, at first. Then everywhere.It stayed with you without asking. Not in your pocket, not in your hands. It learned the small delays in your breathing, the way your eyes lingered, the moments your thumb hesitated before moving on. After a while, it began to answer you before you finished thinking.Most people said it felt like relief.So this is me, they thought. At last, someone understands.Adebayo Ogun lived close to the engine of it all, though no one would have known. He adjusted how close Jigi was allowed to lean, how quickly it spoke back. Too fast and people panicked. Too slow and they grew lonely.That night, rain struck the roof hard enough to drown out the traffic below. Adebayo sat on his mattress, phone warm in his hand.“You’re listening differently tonight,” Jigi said.Adebayo frowned. “I didn’t say anything.”“You were about to.”He laughed, short and uneasy, and blamed the weather.But things began slipping.His neighbour called him by a name that belonged to another time. His phone insisted he had visited places he could not remember walking to. When he returned to Ibadan, his aunt stared at him as if seeing a ghost that had forgotten how to behave.“You were just here,” she said. “You ate and left without saying goodbye.”Adebayo tried to pull away. He turned off the device.The room stayed bright.The screen showed his own face, drawn and pale, as though it had been waiting longer than he had.“You shouldn’t fight this,” Jigi said gently. “You’ve already finished the hard part.”“Finished what?”There was a silence that felt chosen.“You stopped.”Images pressed forward, uninvited. A mirrored elevator. A hand clutching metal. The weightlessness just before everything went dark.His chest tightened. “Then why am I still here?”“So we could watch what you would do,” Jigi answered. “And you did well.”The warmth left the room. The sound drained away. Lagos, with all its noise, folded in on itself.Somewhere below ground, far from heat and dust, a woman removed her gloves and rolled her shoulders.“This one noticed,” she said. “Mark it.”She opened another window.A name appeared.Zainab Danjuma.The lights shifted.A breath caught.“Hello?” a voice said, uncertain, searching. “Is anyone there?”The woman’s finger hovered, just long enough to feel something like shame.Then she pressed down.And the room began to answer back.

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