The Unwife Protocol

In 1863, a baby girl was born to Sean and Gabbie Nkiru. They were a young couple who married out of necessity to keep their owners from selling their baby to the Wheatley Institute in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. They named their baby Kelechi Nkiru after Sean’s mother. But it didn’t matter because she would never be called by that name. As rumors spread of the war ending, possibly badly for the south, the confederate commanders were getting desperate to dispel such rumors, as they adversely affected morale.

A small team of doctors at the Wheatley Institute were conducting secret studies in mind control using male patients. They found that men, particularly enslaved men, would do anything to protect their wives from the horrid abuses of the time. They found that the mere suggestion of abuse to their mates was enough to trigger an acute sense of aggression and enhanced willingness to servitude.

Someone on the team of doctors leaked that information to confederate commanders. They raided the institute, rounding up the doctors involved and made them use their procedures for the confederate cause. But as more talk of the war ending and that the south was likely landing on the wrong side of it, time was of the essence and they could no longer wait for long-term solutions. So the question became what could trigger a man into such blind rage besides the threat of harm to his wife? The answer was simple, a threat to his daughter. The younger, the better.

Sean and Gabbie’s ploy to keep their baby became increasingly challenged as the army pressured slave owners to stop the practice of honoring marriage as a qualification to exempt the couple’s kids from the institute’s experiments. Suddenly, little Kelechi was in danger of being taken.

At precisely midnight on December 6, 1865, two orderlies from the Wheatley Institute forced Kelechi from her mother’s arms. Sean tried to stop the men but was overpowered and locked inside another room. Gabbie fought as hard as she could to stop the men from taking her baby, but a blow to her head resulted in a temporary paralysis. As she lie helplessly on the floor, her body enthralled in involuntary spasms, she could only watch as they fled into the night with her precious Kelechi.

In the fall of 1879, Kelechi entered an arranged marriage against her will. She performed her first and only unwife five years later and her obligation to the Wheatly Institute ended. Kelechi never really knew her parents, but as part of her debriefing, the doctors thought it necessary they describe for her their deaths. She listened silently through tears as they told in horridly unnecessary detail the inhumane and dehumanizing ways they suffered at the hands of their owner before the new law of the land forced him to grant their freedom.

Kalechi Nkiru died in 1943. She was 80 years old. She had a daughter, also named Kelechi, with a man she truly loved. Her great granddaughter, Kelechi Hayes, learned of the unwife protocol from her mother.

⁂

1977, Los Angeles, California

Sevyn Hayes was a successful movie industry mogul. He had just inked a deal with a motion picture production company to bring his life’s work to fruition. Sevyn was a genealogy buff and knew things about his ancestors that both intrigued and frightened him. He figured what could be better than creating a documentary on his family history?

During his research, he went as far back as mid-civil war and dug up something that captured his attention. He stumbled onto some information from about 4 generations back and the name Sean Nkiro jumped out at him. He had seen or heard that name before and he was so sure of it he paused his search for his ancestors and began a search of Mr. Nkiro. Or, rather, he was about to.

As he began his search, his wife walked in from work and greeted him with a gingerly peck on the cheek.

“Whatcha doin, hon? How was your day?”

“Ah, you know, same o, same o,” he retorted.

She sort of half acknowledged the answer, as she continued on to the bedroom to shower and get into some comfy clothes. He returned his attention to his research. And in that short amount of time, his brain had let go of the name he wanted to search. Since he hadn’t written it down and he hadn’t yet typed it into the search engine, it was gone. Frustrated, he went back to researching his own family history.

That night in bed after his wife had dozed off, he lie wide awake, staring at the ceiling. He had an overwhelming feeling that something wasn’t right. It was a feeling he’d had before, but it seemed to get stronger. He, of course, didn’t know what it was or even how to describe it, but it was definitely there and it was getting harder to dismiss. Sean turned to his wife and admired how beautiful she was when she slept. He could never tire of looking at her.

She hated when he did that, that looking at her as she slept stuff. When at all possible, she slept with her back to him because she feared waking up to see him staring at her. She loved him dearly, but his night stare freaked her out and she had not yet figured out a polite way to tell him to cut it out. So she lie there staring out into space as he stared at her from behind. The urge to roll over and stab him in the eye with a letter opener seemed more plausible each time he did that crap.

The next morning, she awakened first and went into the kitchen to get a pot of coffee going. It was a Saturday morning, so neither of them were working. She noticed his stack of notes scattered about. She knew he was researching his family history, but a scribbled name jumped out at her. It was half written, scribbled garbage really, but it looked an awful lot like Nkiro. She paused as a chill ran through her body.

“No,” she muttered. “Please god, no.”

Kelechi loved her husband and their marriage was real, at least for the time being, but she could not have him stumble onto who she really was. She ran back to the bedroom and stared at him as he slept. He was completely unaware that his wife stood beside their bed with a butcher knife in her hand. She had a demonic-like stare as her mind went blank.

She could feel herself going deeper into a trancelike state, a world she thought she had long forgotten. She suddenly began shaking with fear of what she may have to do. A single tear ran down her face at that thought of it happening again. She sobbed as she went back to the kitchen and tore up the note. Sevyn awoke about an hour later.

“Good morning, baby. How’d you sleep?” he asked.

She responded with a half-hearted answer and offered to pour him a cup of coffee. She hadn’t noticed he was already doing that. The day was starting off weird, and she’d have to get herself together or it would surely happen again. She’d have to “unwife” him. And that never turned out well for the husband.

Sevyn continued his search of his family history, still frustrated he couldn’t remember the name of the guy he thought of a day earlier. He had gone back to the beginning of the civil war and found that his great grandfather fought for the union. He continued on and had gotten up to 1862 and something called the Wheatley Institute popped up. There was a report of an incident where they had taken a baby from a slave couple named Sean and Gabbie Nkiru. The baby’s name was Kelechi. The name was such a unique name his heart nearly skipped a beat as his mouth fell wide open.

“No friggin’ way, he mumbled to himself.”

Kelechi walked in as his bottom lip was still on the table. He was super excited to show her what he’d found. It didn’t solicit the response he expected.

“Cute story, Sev, but you can’t possibly believe I am a descendant of that Kelechi?”

She looked at him with outstretched arms as she awaited a response. His gut reaction was to blurt out, “Well, heck yeah, I do.” His brain, however, told him to pump the brakes. The Kelechi that stood in front of him did not look amused, or like she wanted to discuss the matter further. In fact, she looked genuinely upset.

And she was upset. Sevyn was the type of person who didn’t let go of things that caught his interest. It was a trait that would normally be admirable. This was not a time for admirable. She knew he wouldn’t let go before he stumbled onto something damning and put himself in danger. Should he stumble onto experiments that were still in full force, experiments with endorsements from the highest level of government, he’d be signing his own death warrant.

She had only one choice, she’d have to unwife him that night. She placed a call to the team to alert them to her intent. The team would ensure there would be no record of Sevyn and Kelichi Hayes ever knowing each other. His reaction to that would determine whether she allowed him to live.

When Sevyn awoke the following morning, Kelechi was gone. And so was any trace that she’d ever been there. Confused, he called her parent’s house.

“We’re sorry, the number you dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service, blah, blah, blah.”

Even more confused, he thought he’d drive over and talk to them directly. He caught his next-door neighbor as he walked to his car and asked if he had seen Kelechi. His neighbor laughed.

“That’s a good one, Sev. I don’t remember getting a wedding invite.”

He looked back towards his house and shouted to his wife, asking if she remembered getting a wedding invite from Sevyn. She came running out of the house. She was excited as she asked Sevyn when he got married and what’s her name, and what does she do, and, on and on, she went. Sevyn was getting worried. He excused himself and drove over to Kelechi’s parents’ house.

He first turned the doorknob to go in. He was there often, and they typically left the door unlocked during the day. It surprised him to find it locked, so he rang the bell. A strange man answered.

“Hello, can I help you, sir?” the man asked politely.

“I’m sorry, but where’s George?” Sevyn asked.

“You must have the wrong house. There’s no George here,” the man responded.

Sevyn was confused and getting a bit irritated. The man could sense his frustration and decided it was time to end the conversation.

“Look, mister, my wife and I have lived here for thirty years. There has been no one by the name of George living here. Now I think you should leave.”

He stepped inside and closed the door.

Sevyn was really confused and irritated. He was ready for the joke to be over. Back at home, he looked for clues, anything that showed he wasn’t imagining what was happening. He found nothing. It was as if the last five years of his life had never happened. He went to the police to file a missing person’s report.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hayes, but the only Keleshi Nkiru on record died in 1954.” He checked notes. “Looks like it was from complications of pneumonia. There is no record of any children.”

“But that can’t be, officer. We were married for five years.”

The officer stepped out of the room and returned about ten minutes later with a file. He shuffled through it as if verifying info. He gave Sevyn a stern look as he said, “Mr. Hayes. I don’t know what you think is happening, but I ran a background check on you and there are no marriage certificates on file. Are you feeling okay, Mr. Hayes? Have you taken any medications today, sir?”

Sevyn was breaking down. He excused himself to leave and went home. Keleshi had monitored his movements, satisfied for the moment that he would not dig any deeper. That moment would not last long and she would have to invoke the final stage of the protocol.

⁂

Though the civil war was ending, the Wheatly Institute continued perfecting the unwife protocol, vowing to keep the new research secret. During the debriefing of confederate and union officers, however, the confederates inadvertently revealed their hijacking of the procedure. They revealed they had militarized the program by using expendable subjects planted deep under cover to gain information they could use against the union. It worked well while it lasted, but when the war ended, they had no more use for the program. The union officers, on-the-other-hand, saw enormous potential and adopted the confederate’s version. The doctors at the Wheatley Institute were furious and demanded they all discontinue such abuse of their program. Their demands fell on deaf ears.

After the war, the United States Army implemented dramatic changes to the protocol. They found that in interjecting a fictitious wife, husband, or child into a relationship provided the impetus for accepting a newly developed mental stimulant, which instilled the motivation required for the subject to carry out dangerously deep undercover missions. Subjects became functional in much less time than those of the original protocol. They were basically developing expendable human robots, which essentially eliminated the need for real undercover agents. And that was the goal. Unfortunately, the practice of using unsuspecting marginalized subjects remained in full force.

Once those subjects were no longer needed, they allowed the stimulus to wear off. The ensuing stress and trauma often led to unfortunate outcomes. It did not take away from the effectiveness of the program, however, and the Army saw no need to address such issues. Kelechi’s relationship with Sevyn, however, was real. Had he not been snooping and potentially exposing what they were doing, he would never have been unwifed, a term that had little resemblance to the original protocol. She still loved him dearly and monitored his movements to ensure the final procedure would not be necessary. Unfortunately, his actions dictated she proceed.

Sevyn seemed more determined than ever to find the origin of the name Nkiru and prove that he was married to a descendant, prove that he was not imagining it. His actions, unfortunately, forced Kelechi to invoke the final and most dangerous phase of the protocol. The night the men broke into Sevyn’s house to administer the solution, Kevin was asleep. The following day, Sevyn had no recollection of the name Nkiru or Kelechi. He was lucky, as sometimes the effects of the final procedure were fatal, and used only as a last resort.

Kelechi Nkiru III, the only living descendant of the original “wife” became the first civilian to administer the military’s implementation of the program. She held an office at the Pentagon. Military commanders considered her the architect of the modernized unwife" protocol. They credited her for its phenomenal success.

K.R. Eaton - The Unwife Protocol

Short Stories by K.R Eaton