Ndidiamaka stood staring out across the water trying to process all of what she had just learned in her mission briefing. In the past, this spot always brought her comfort whenever her spirit was troubled, but today she waits for the ocean to grant her peace that deep down she knows may never come.
From a young age she, like so many others born to the educated class, had been schooled in world history. In particular the fall of North America and the European Union during the Great Cyber Wars of the late 21st Century. It was the fall of the United States of America to The Asia Alliance that led to several key African nations banding together during the GCW to negotiate a strategic alliance with China (the leading nation of The Asia Alliance) which tipped the balance of power resulting not only in the downfall of the United States of America and its long term European allies, but also solidified the long illusions unification of African nations into one country made up of 54 states.

During the century following the end of the Great War, The United States of Africa rose up as a global force leveraging its 

natural resources such as oil, rare minerals, timber and medicines to grow Africa’s infrastructure which was built on renewable technologies adapting the energy solution by region split between wind, hydro and solar. 

Now over 100 years later, monthly humanitarian relief missions are sent to North America and Europe when the threat of local violence there is deemed minimal. Border controls and immigration policies make it next to impossible for North Americans to flee into the Mexican Confederacy which now includes Texas, The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Louisiana, The Arkansas Timberlands, New Mexico, Arizona and California.  Nor was there escape to be had to the north as Canada had long ago closed its borders and claimed The Alaskan Territories. 

Ndidiamaka had always dreamed of seeing the former United States of America. Up until today she had never had clearance to travel beyond the United States of Africa and The Asia Alliance. A highly skilled scientist and artist fluent in 12 languages and several dialects, Ndidiamaka possesses a special gift of curiosity rare in her time. Choosing to study so many languages despite the fact that the Universal Rhetoric Interpreters (URIs) patented by her grandmother years ago making the study of foreign tongues obsolete was just one of the odd behaviors that often made her feel like a woman out of touch with the people around her.

Becoming an Agent within the Special Operations Division of the African Science Consortium changed everything for Ndidiamaka and now, after five years of hard work, she was finally going to see the world that she’d dreamed of since she was a little girl. 

Reaching into the bag strapped against the side of her body, Ndidiamaka pulls out her dossier and opens the front inside cover. Even in the dimmed light she can clearly see the picture of a man dressed in tattered pants with no shirt or shoes. His facial hair wild and upkept, his surrounding as wild looking as his personal appearance, the stranger stares back at her with piercing brown eyes. His bare chest reminds her of the base of a baobab tree wrapped in mahogany. 

Ndidiamaka returned the folder to her bag and hugs her arms across her chest as she resumes her walk along the beach trying to make sense of the questions in her mind. How could it be that she was now assigned to hunt this man down? A man she had never met, but has seen in her dreams since she was five years old?

~Marta C. Youngblood