Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

features. The stranger turned to him slowly. Bright, blue eyes pierced Mortimor, chilling him more than the removal of his shirt had.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” the man assured him. He spread the thin sheet by his knees and arranged Parsona’s legs, one at a time, sliding the dry cloth between her and the ground. Both hands coordinated every movement with calculated efficiency and gentleness, his long, reedy fingers wrapping around each calf and moving them into place. He told both of them what to do, the confidence in his voice removing the fear and panic from Parsona’s screams—leaving just the pain.

“Push when I say push,” he said. His narrow hands went under her dress, resting on her belly while eyes the color of ice squinted into the black beneath her hem. The slits widened into blue orbs, as if seeing something for the first time.

“Push,” he commanded, a hint of excitement drizzled on top of his calm voice.

Parsona grunted with effort, her head rising off the grass as she contracted muscles in a stomach formerly lean and hard. Her eyes narrowed with the strain, her ears closed off to all noise but her own pounding pulse.

Mortimor brushed the hair off her face with his palm. He cradled her neck as it rose from the effort, and with his other hand he tucked the edge of the sheet close to her body.

“Breathe.”

The voice was so compelling they both heeded it without realizing they’d heard it. Mortimor kept an arm under his wife’s head; he leaned down to press his lips to her cheek, to whisper his love into her ear. Her eyes rolled back in exhaustion as she fought for long pulls on the night air.

“Push.”

The stranger asked the impossible, but his tone demanded satisfaction. Parsona tried to tighten her abdomen again, wrestling against the stabbing pain that threatened to overwhelm her senses. She felt trapped in a nightmare that would never end.

“Breathe.”

Something happened. Something different. A release. Parsona felt a path reveal itself, an opening that would lead her away from the pain.

She forced her energy toward it.

“That’s it. Push.”

She no longer needed to be told.

Mortimor looked across his wife’s body at the stranger; he could tell something had changed. Hope swelled in him as he held his wife, urging her and the child along. He felt otherwise powerless. Guilty. He wanted to absorb her torture, to wick it away like moisture from her brow. The forest wind dove down from the rooftops, peeling away layers of heat from his bare back as he leaned over his wife, professing his love.

Parsona heard Mortimor above the roar of pain—and the words gave her strength. She fought for all three of them. Gnashing her teeth, her eyes flowing with tears of exertion, she pushed so hard the world went silent. All that remained was the distant thunder of discomfort and the weak thrumming of her pulse.

And something marvelous happened. A reward for the agony. A living thing, long sustained by a cord and dwelling in darkness, moved into the universe.

Under a canopy of stars, a baby girl was born.

The stranger cradled her like a precious gift, her small limbs waving in protest of the cold, of the pain that came with breathing.

Parsona reached for the baby. Unable to sit up, she extended her arms, her fingers writhing in a primal display of a mother’s want.

The stranger moved the child to one arm, freeing his other hand. Steel glinted in starlight as a knife materialized from the folds of his shirt.

A cord was severed, the child placed in her mother’s arms. And thus a single life became two, each heading in opposite directions. Both were destined for much suffering and heartache, one over a long and tragic life—the other during a slow and drawn-out death.

But that was all to come. For one moment, during their brief crossroad of post-birth euphoria and perfect naivete, they simply held one another. And over the soft cries from the newly born, a word was whispered. Parsona’s breath became visible in the cold night, ice crystals from her quiet exhalation swirling and coalescing like a nebula in the vacuum.

They gathered, like a star at the center, to form a single name…

Mollie.

Part VI – The Turing Test

“We tend to discover only those things we seek.”

~The Bern Seer~

1

I NEED YOU TO HELP ME RESCUE YOUR FATHER_

The words stood out in green phosphor on the nav screen. They would burn there if left too long, becoming seared as they were in Molly’s retinas. Still, she couldn’t tear her eyes from them. She looked across the simple sentence, left to right and back again, waiting for it to morph into something she could grasp.

Her parents were dead. Her mother passed away during childbirth; her father had left her on Earth six years later and disappeared. And yet this thing—this computer— claimed to be her mother. And it insinuated her father might still be alive.

Sitting in Parsona’s cockpit—the very ship her dad had named after her mom— Molly felt as if someone had keyed open the airlock and sucked every cubic meter of atmosphere right out.

She scanned the sentence once more, waiting for it to change, to grow handles. In her peripheral, she could see Cole, her boyfriend and navigator, glancing from her to the screen. He started to say something, then stopped. He leaned forward and directed a single word toward the dash:

“Hello?”

He said it cautiously, as if it might set off a bomb. It pulled Molly’s attention away from the incredible sentence.

“Hello?” he asked again.

“You have to type something.” She gestured toward his keyboard, as if the proper method for communicating with the deceased through one’s nav computer should be obvious to him by now.

“How do we know it can’t hear us?”

“Because ships don’t have ears—” Molly stopped. She looked at the radio mic on the dash, then glanced over at the intercom system. She turned to Cole; they studied one another, each of their faces reflecting their own confusion right back.

A new message crawled across their nav screens:

HELLO? MOLLIE?_

“What do I say?”

Cole reached toward his own keyboard, stopped, then shrugged. He raised his hands up to his shoulders in quiet defeat.

Molly exhaled. Loudly. She needed more help than that. And she needed more time. There were so many questions—it was impossible to know where to begin. Pulling the keyboard closer, she typed:

I’M HERE. CAN YOU GIVE ME ONE SECOND? THIS IS A LOT TO TAKE IN_

I UNDERSTAND. BUT PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT MY PROCESSING SPEED IS A BIT SWIFTER THAN