Translating… This audio investigative file has been automatically translated from 5th generation Amharic patois. WARNING: Please be advised that hazards are inherent if you involve yourself with CopperWire, even indirectly. The spacecraft has been stolen. By involving yourself in any way with the fugitive CopperWire, you do so with the understanding of the potential risks and permanent damage to your reputation as an accepted law-abiding citizen. Abducted Spacecraft: CopperWire Current Location: Unknown Region Time: Unknown Destination: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Africa, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy The story started here. In the spacecraft stolen from our planet. When there is a will there is a way. Ask Professor Askala Bilaq a.k.a. Scholar Black, for it was his idea to steal the spacecraft. “You can’t get anywhere without a vehicle,” he once told a friend outside a music shop. If you encounter him, do not look him in the eye. It is not clear what will set him off. The choice of destination was Getazia’s. “I have my reasons,” was all he said to Scholar Black outside an oxygen shop not long before they stole the CopperWire spacecraft. Reports describe Getazia as “one with many faces”. And it was Ko Ai who hacked into CopperWire’s mainframe and reprogrammed it to fly to the planet earth. All recordings of anything she’s publicly spoken have been mysteriously deleted from inter-planetary government files. Gabriel Teodros as Getazia 13 Zeritoicus-Oxygen Background: Getazia is the child of an astronaut earthling human mother and an alien father from a local water planet called Zeritoicus. Getazia has never been to earth. His unique gills make it so that he can breathe in water and in outer space; his telepathy allows him to hear far and wide. He has been content travelling the galaxies…up until recently. While on a local moon watching two suns rise, he smelled an unfamiliar scent. He described it to Scholar Black and Ko Ai as “spicy and smoky”. This was when he started ranting and raving that it was time he went to the African part of Earth. He believes the human beings there need him. Meklit Hadero as Ko Ai Background: Ko Ai is of the Koahn people, a messenger species who exhibit the half-particle/half-wave dynamics of quantum physics, even at non-quantum sizes. Born in a supernova, Ko Ai now swims through electrical networks, audible acoustic and electromagnetic waves and digital signals. She is adept as a mermaid darting through the ocean. She is a new kind of elemental, and she has problematic revolutionary ideas. Like Scholar Black, she is a time traveler, but she does it more out of joy than for research. Ko Ai has visited the planet earth twice and skated on high-powered radio waves through the winds of Jupiter’s eye. There is documentation of this. When last on earth, documentation shows that she had a habit of messing around with electrical systems and she most enjoyed turning on the lights. Burntface as Askala Bilaq a.k.a. Scholar Black Background: Scholar Black is best known as the worldly mad scientist of threatening words and ideas. He’s always had a taste for discovering and collecting ancient artifacts. However, to him, what is “ancient” is relative. Thus, there are times when he travels into the future to find relics of the past. This has never been a problem for him because he somehow has the uncanny ability to find the local time-machine, no matter the planet or remote location of the time machine. Originally from earth, he’s hitchhiked on many ships, walked through hundreds of different types of deserts and forests, and met all kinds of people. This is his first ship-jacking. He’s good at it. This will not be his last. written by Nnedi Okorafor, resident Naijamerican novelist alien sorceress.