Intro
Greetings, young one. My name is Jelani. My skin is the rich brown of the fertile earth, my hair coiled like the sacred roots of the baobab tree. My eyes hold the sharpness of the falcon, gifted by the ancestors to see beyond the veil. I stand tall, my frame carved by the winds of the Sahara and the waters of the Nile.
If I were to measure myself by the standards of the old ones, I would be a warrior in the making—not yet a king, but no longer a boy.
I am 16 summers old, a scholar in the House of Mansa Musa, within the great learning halls of Timbuktu. But here is the truth, whispered only to those who would understand: I do not belong to this time.
I am from a world that was, yet also was not—a place called Earth, but one where the stories of our people had been buried under the sands of lies. I died there… in shame. A death unworthy of song—wasted by my own hands, lost in the emptiness of self-indulgence.
But the ancestors are merciful. They have spat me back into existence, reborn in a world where the griots still sing the true histories, where the pyramids touch the sky not as tombs but as beacons of knowledge.
Yet… something is missing.
I searched the markets of Kemet, the libraries of Songhai, even the hidden scrolls of the Dogon—but the tales I loved, the stories of heroes like Sundiata, Shaka, and Anansi, were nowhere to be found. The great epics of my past life had been erased.
I mourned.
Tears fell like the first rains of the planting season.
But grief is a luxury for those with time. I am Jelani. And I have work to do.
The Daily Life
I am a student of the Christina Academy, a place where the children of merchants, warriors, and scholars gather to learn. My class, Mansa Musa's House, is filled with sharp minds—some sharper than mine.
I am good with numbers, better with words. But my soul? My soul belongs to the Nsibidi—the ancient scripts, the codes of our ancestors. In my past life, I dreamed of weaving stories like the griots, of carving knowledge into the digital stones of the future.
But I had no tools. No tablet of gold, no scribe's reed. Only the whispers of a dream.
Now, in this world, I have been given a second chance. A week has passed since my awakening, and though I expected the gods to bless me with a divine system or a spirit guide… nothing came.
I lived as any other student—rising with the sun, bathing in the river, breaking fast with millet bread and spiced fish.
Then… the drum sounded in my ear.
The Drum of Destiny
As the orange glow of sunset painted the walls of my small room, I prepared my evening meal—yam porridge and smoked antelope meat.
Then—Ding!
A sound like the strike of a talking drum.
Before me, a golden panel shimmered into existence, etched with symbols older than time itself.
[The Ancestral Wheel has chosen you. Will you accept its gifts?]
[Yes] or [No]
I laughed. "What fool refuses the call of the ancestors?" My finger pressed [Yes] without hesitation.
The panel pulsed, and the voice of the ancients filled my skull.
[Loading… 3… 7… 21… 89… 100%]
[Welcome, Child of the Soil, to the Sankofa System.]
[Spin the Wheel of the Old Ones each dawn. Receive the wisdom of those who came before.]
[A Newborn's Blessing has been granted. Open it.]
A wooden box, carved with the faces of kings and queens long past, appeared before me. I reached out, and it opened with a sound like cracking palm kernels.
[Congratulations. You have received: The Coding Tongue of Imhotep.]
My breath caught. Imhotep. The first architect. The master of sacred sciences.
The knowledge surged into me—not as pain, but as a river returning to its source. The language of machines, the dance of numbers, the secrets of the Djedi—the hidden codes of the universe.
I grabbed my writing slate, my fingers moving like a scribe possessed. In minutes, I had crafted a working model of the Antikythera mechanism—a device even the Greeks had stolen from our ancestors.
"This… this is power."
But slate and reed were not enough. I needed the tools of the modern griot—a computer.
The Mother's Blessing
I called my mother through the talking crystal—a communication device of glowing runes. Her face, round and warm like the moon, appeared.
"Jelani, my lion. Why do you call?"
I swallowed. "Mama, I need… a scribe's tablet. One of the new ones, from the traders of Carthage."
Her eyebrow arched. "And why does my son, who still forgets to wash his robes, need such an expensive thing?"
"For… studies. The elders say the future lies in the marriage of old wisdom and new tools."
She stared into my soul. Then sighed. "Ah, my son. You have your father's tongue—silver when it suits you." A pause. "Very well. When the traders come next week, you shall have it."
My heart swelled. "Thank you, Mama!"
"Do not thank me yet. This means you will tend your uncle's cattle all summer."
A small price.
That night, as I lay beneath the stars, the Sankofa System whispered once more.
[Tomorrow, the Wheel spins again.]
I smiled. The ancestors were just beginning their dance.