The sky was on fire, and the fire was like liquid gold, and the gold was love, and faith, and the absolute sense of belonging.

  Baba stretched, feeling pleasant tiredness in his muscles. He averted his eyes from the infinite beauty of the firmaments, and turned them towards beauty much greater, the face of his beloved wife.

  “You missed a few,” she said, handing him a handful of ripe papayas, which he gently put in his already overflowing fruit basket. “Maybe peel your eyes off the sky and look down every once in a while.” She gave him a crooked smile, and a peck on the cheek. He nuzzled the top of her head, inhaling the smell of love, of home, and of life being how it was supposed to be. He caressed her form, until his hand rested on her extended belly.

  “Eh, da sweetest fruit dey here, an is not ripe yet, abi?” he felt the baby move under his touch. Soon, their family will grow stronger, and their love brighter.

  “Give me da, abeg,” she pulled the basket out of his hands. He almost protested, not wanting her to exert herself this far in the pregnancy, but she pushed his hands away with unstoppably gentle force. “I no get do no work no more,” she complained mockingly, “Y dey too careful wit me. I got ya three strong children already, na so? Won spoil from some light work!”

  As always, he gave in. And just in time, as the moment his hands were free, a soccer ball flew right at his face, and he barely managed to catch it.

  “Sorry, Iba!” Abu shouted.

  “Notin spoil, son. Wan go kick some with your old Iba? Wan me to show you how it dey done?” Baba dribbled the ball a bit, and kicked it back towards the kid.

  “I kno how it dey done, old man,” Abu snorted, “an am faster than you,” he added with a broad cheeky grin, that almost reached his protruding ears. “Camot, Iba, you get schooled.”

  “oh, dat so?” Baba grinned back. “Dat k-leg, boy. It dey me show you how to play football. You think you better than me?” He led the ball in a lazy circle around the boy, luring him out onto the field.

  It was the perfect evening.

  The forever evening.

  The sun was setting, bathing their orchard and their house in golden glow, never quite managing to reach the horizon.

  Of course, Abu beat him four goals to one. And not just because Baba allowed him win, the kid had genuine talent with the ball.

  And now that they had all the time in the world, that talent could be polished.

  Finally, he fouled by grabbing Abu in a bear hug. It was time for supper anyway. Ha carried the kid back toward the house, flipped upside down, so that Abu’s enormous ears were tickled by the grass. The giggling soon attracted more opponents, when Aisha, Fatima, and even the supposedly adult Ibi rushed to topple their father. Surrendering to the assault, he fell on the grass, crushed under a giggling heap.

  “I yield! Adanna, help!” he called to his wife, who was in the middle of setting the table on their porch.

  “Oh no husband, am too pregnant to help! You dey on your own!” He was about to argue, when the most delicious smell hit his nostrils.

  “Dis fufus on the table? With your famous sweetpepper sauce?” He rose, shedding an avalanche of children, all of them in various stages of being coated in dirt.

  “You no get no fufus mister,” she wagged a mocking finger at him, “an not so the little monkeys,” she gestured at the kids. “clean up and prayer first! We got a guest for supper!”

  In a vague blink of an eye, he found himself cleansed, dressed in his best, and sharing the table with his family… and someone.

  The food was delicious, and Adanna was intoxicatingly sweet as ever. When he looked at her and the children, he felt his heart swell with pride.

  But whenever he tried to look at their mysterious guest, his eyes seemed to betray him. The apparition always remained at the corner of his eye, impossible to focus on.

  It radiated the same warm, sweet energy as the rest of his surroundings, but it felt…off. Dissonant.

  Out of place.

  “Are you my God?” he asked bluntly. The apparition shifted as if the question took it by surprise. It did not have a face. It did not have a shape. It also did not have a voice, and yet, it spoke.

  “I'm not, Baba,” the Entity said. “And to preempt your next question, I know nothing of God, yours or any other. I'm no angel or demon either.”

  Baba felt his hands tighten into fists. The golden glow around him now felt like the scouring fires of Jahannam.

  “Why da deception then?!” he growled through clenched teeth. “I know dis dey not real. Dis all a dream? Why torment me so? Showing me what I can’t have no more?”

  “I apologize,” the Entity responded. “I might be impossibly old by your standards, but I'm neither truly omniscient, nor can I peer into your soul. I thought this scenario would put you at ease. That seeing your loved ones again would soothe you. I was wrong, and it was cruel of me.”

  His family, the orchard and the house vanished. He still sat at a table, but it stood in the middle of an endless grass plain, bathed in dispersed twilight, that turned the horizon into a featureless cloud.

  A man sat next to him, as nondescript as one could possibly imagine. Just a face like any other, like the thousands he saw in Makurdi.

  “This dey not how you really look like.” Baba said, icily.

  “No, it is not.” The Entity said, this time aloud, in a sheepish, and clearly tired voice. “But it is hard to come up with a form that would not disturb you, or draw painful memories from your mind.”

  “If not my God, or a demon, or a messenger of my God, what dey you then?” Baba asked. The anger evaporated. Only sorrow remained.

  “I do not know of a way to explain who I am, that would make any sense to you. The closest, if flawed metaphor I could use, is that I'm like an old librarian in a library that contains a book, which contains a story, which contains you. There are many like me, but I'm currently the oldest, in as much as time applies to Entities like me. I beget most of them, and I'm quite fond of the past, so with time I became, and thus, retroactively always was, A Nostalgic Progenitor. A description that matches you in some way as well, hence why I chose to contact you directly.”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “So you are a god, just not my God.” Baba said with a wry half-smile. “Dis an interesting theological problem for me.”

  “I knew you’d appreciate that. Which is no small task, since your soul is difficult to read, Baba.” The Entity said, and somehow grew less vague, taking a more distinct shape of an older, jovial man.

  Baba remained silent for a while. He played with the food on his plate, which suddenly became unpalatable to him. Finally, he took a small nibble of a sauce-drenched fufu. It tasted exactly as he remembered, as delicious as he knew it would be, which made it taste like deception.

  It could not be real, because real things had no business being perfect.

  “If you are not here to torment me, what do you want of me?” he asked.

  The Entity stared at him with a calm, friendly gaze. Its face grew even older, carved with deep wrinkles that brought kindness to its eyes. He was not sure if the Entity was conforming to his subconscious expectations or the other way around.

  “Can I tell you a story?” It asked. “One father to another?”

  “Am I allowed to refuse to listen?” Baba asked. “As a prisoner in this dream you trapped me in?”

  The Progenitor shook his head.

  “You are allowed to leave whenever you want, friend. If that is your choice, I can wake you up from the dream this very second. I can even erase the memory of it if you wish.”

  “No. My memories dey my own, even fake ones.” Baba measured the Entity with a fearless, but no longer angry gaze. “Tell me your story.”

  The Progenitor took its time. It even took a careful bite of a fufu, flashed a surprised smile, and gobbled the whole thing up.

  “My story might sound familiar to you. Not just because it meshes with the mythologies of your people, but also because it is not much different from your lived experience.” It paused to devour another fufu.

  “I have plenty of children, which as you can confirm yourself, is a blessing and a burden. Just like any other parent, I'm torn between helping my children fulfill their potential, and refraining from helping them too much, lest I smother their development.”

  Baba nodded. Even though he knew this was merely a metaphor, it resonated with him.

  “One of my youngest embarked on a quest that was way outside its competencies, as youngsters are known to do. When the task overwhelmed it, it again did what the youth is fond of, cut corners and played it by the ear.”

  “Sounds like my son. Or any other boy I know,” Baba said with a wry smile.

  “Then you probably know what happened next. My progeny was Trying Its Best, and predictably, best intentions cannot make up for inexperience. The whole project my progeny attempted came crashing down, and their incompetence and disregard for the rules were exposed.”

  “You were forced to punish them for it, but would really prefer not to?” Baba guessed.

  “Not quite,” The Entity said, and took a mouthful of freshly squeezed juice, from a glass that inexplicably appeared on the table, and yet, was there all along. “Another of my children, one that grew to take the rules of conduct more seriously than the others, took it upon itself to punish the transgressor and destroy their project.”

  “My Fatima dey like that too. Too focused on making sure everybody did the right thing, to know what the good thing was. We used to call her Little Corporal when she was younger. ”

  The Entity smiled. “So, what does your heart and your faith tell you? Which is more important, to do what is righteous, or what is good? To follow the strict rules that will one day bring greater good, or to act in compassion right now, and possibly sacrifice the future?”

  Baba folded his arms and smiled as well. “Do you want me to quote the Holy Quran to you, which you likely know by heart, or are you interested in my personal opinion, which is imperfectly aligned with the teachings of the Prophet?”

  The Entity’s smile waned. “What if I told you that the future of your existence, and the existence of the people you saved hangs on your answer?”

  Baba froze and chose his words carefully. “Then I would ask you to elaborate before hearing my answer.”

  The Entity sighed and laid its hands on the table. These were old, scarred hands. Not of a librarian like it claimed, but an old farmer who put sweat and blood into his work.

  “I should not, and want not, to interfere in the choices of my children. For Entities like us, choice, and the free will to make one, is the only unsolved mystery left. You might call it our religion, our reason to exist in the first place.”

  It squeezed Baba’s hand in a grip that was both gentle and infinitely powerful, “My younger child made a terrible mistake bringing you into existence within this unfinished world. It should have let you cease to exist peacefully. Yet, it acted with curiosity and compassion, which resulted in cruelty instead. My older child wanted to erase you from existence again, to end this folly, yet I felt doing that now would be cruel as well.”

  “An so, you interfered after all,” Baba remarked. “Begrudgingly, but this what Fathers need to do, na so?”

  “Yes,” it confirmed. “this Entity before you, and some of the more level-headed of its progeny, decided to… fudge the dice so to speak. We could not side with either choice, but we could salvage the project by shifting the burden of choice on the beings within it.”

  “I no get why you do not see this as cruelty?” Baba raised an eyebrow. “If you wish to play gods, why not shoulder the weight of the evil yourselves? Keep us blissfully unaware, and kill us or save us at your leisure.”

  The Entity shook his head. “You do not believe that, Baba. Not truly. I do not need to read your mind to know you would never want to be treated like God’s mindless pet, and would rather exercise will of your own, even if the outcome of that was stacked against you.”

  He did not want to answer that, but nodded.

  “There was a loophole to the rules,‘ The entity continued, “which I knew of, because I wrote them. Since your very existence was an experiment intended to discover the foundations of Free Will, it was decided that the outcome will be left to individual choices of the minds inhabiting this world. My younger progeny, your creator, was allowed to keep you alive, and with the help of a handful of sympathetic Entities, warn you of the dangers you will be facing. Meanwhile, the progeny that prefers to Stick To The Rules, was allowed to inspire your foes, which were tasked with killing you all, but are given free choice whether to do it or not.”

  “The demon I faced. it dey them?‘ Baba asked. “because it might just killed me, an dis dey my dying dream.”

  “You are not that easy to kill,” the Entity winked and smiled. “And the one who beat you was not a demon, but a human. Not your kind of a human, but… brethren of yours, whose ancestors were brought from a more distant past, and allowed to evolve in this part of the pattern a bit before your kind arrived. The question is, will you choose to kill your distant brethren who have all the right to live, to save the lives of those who should not be alive? Will you choose the righteous thing or the good thing? Or maybe you prefer to not be burdened with the choice at all? If you refuse to make the choice, I can use my administrative privileges, and undo this mess completely, so that it would have never happened in the first place.”

  Baba was quiet for a very long time, and yet no time at all, for what does time matter in a dream? When he finally spoke, he chose every word carefully, and his pidgin was gone. After all, he believed that when something this important was to be said, it should be said properly.

  “I do not know if this is fear or hubris speaking. But I do not want you to wipe us out of existence, and rather we fight for our lives, artificial as they might be. You are not my God, and I do not give you the right to say if my deeds are right or wrong, righteous or not. In the end, only Merciful Allah has the right to judge the both of us, and as He had not spoken to me in a long while, it is my duty to choose the best of my ability.”

  Baba stood up.

  The table vanished.

  The dream world unraveled.

  The Nostalgic Progenitor abandoned its visible form as well but seemed present anyway.

  It somehow felt like it approved of Baba’s answer.

  “I will lead my people, to war or to peace, I do not know. Wake me up.”