“How’s your father?” Parsona eventually asked.
“He’s good,” Molly lied, unsure of why she would. Maybe to not spoil the world her mom had created? Or perhaps because she sought to gather information, not leave it behind. She tried reminding herself that she sat beside a copy of her mother from sixteen years ago. Her real mother lived within the ship that bore her name.
But . . . Molly could reach out and touch this one, could smell spring in her hair. The other one was just a voice and some green phosphorous font on a nav screen.
Doubt crept up, followed by fondness and familiarity. Filial duty joined them. These internal saboteurs arranged themselves in a phalanx of worry, all armed to force Molly to waver.
She summoned her military training and shouted them down, calling them to attention. She realized she hadn’t come adequately prepared for this. Especially not to handle it all by herself.
“Well, tell your father I’d love it if he stopped by,” her mom said, interrupting her thoughts.
“I will,” Molly promised, but from what Stanley had told her, the fact that her father didn’t already exist in her mind meant her mom was the one lying this time. To herself, perhaps.
“I do enjoy getting visits,” Parsona continued, “and catching up with news from the outside.”
Molly froze.
Visits?
“Who’s been by to visit, Mom?” She tried to ask the question calmly, but wasn’t sure that she succeeded.
“Well, nobody lately. But an old friend used to drop by all the time. He stopped coming years ago—now, what was his name? Come now, you must know him. He and your father were such good friends.”
“Are you talking about Lucin?”
“Wade Lucin? Of course not. How could I forget Wade’s name? No, this was a new friend. We met him on Lok. On the very day you were born, in fact. It happened right out there.”
Parsona pointed beyond the playing children. Molly looked across the commons and noticed the sunlight fade, as if a cloud passed overhead. But then a rainbow popped up in the distance. And out of nowhere, a flock of doves appeared, fluttering above the children who ran after them with little hands spread open, shrieking with delight.
“Now isn’t that lovely,” Parsona said.
Molly turned back to her mother.
“This is Lok?” she whispered, even though she knew it was. Part of her knew this old house, the very porch. But it had been so long ago, and she’d been so young.
Parsona’s eyes didn’t leave the rainbow and the dancing children. Couldn’t, perhaps.
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
“You and Dad were working on something here, weren’t you? What was it? Anything important?”
“Now, sweetheart, why would you want to know about that?”
“It’s important, Mom. To me.”
“It’s dreary stuff, that’s what it is. And it’s all my visitors ever want to talk about for some reason.”
Molly looked at her arms and marveled at the simulated goose bumps. “I’m sorry, Mom. Honest. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.” She rubbed her arms.
“I suppose it can’t hurt. I don’t see how any of that can be considered top secret now, right?”
“Of course not. I just want to hear your side of it—to get to know you better.”
The pace of the swing picked up; Molly couldn’t tell if the motion was making her nauseous, or if it was something else.
Her mother spoke, her brown eyes focusing beyond the horizon, “Our investigation ended up leading us to this very house.” She glanced at Molly before gazing back over the commons, toward the past. “Isn’t that funny? Anyway, it was a routine assignment, my very first undercover operation. I was so excited to get the job. You just wouldn’t believe what I put up with on my way to Special Assignments . . . ”
Her voice trailed off—another cloud passed over.
“Anyway, your father and I posed as a couple—blending with the frontier life on Lok while we looked for an unauthorized source of fusion fuel—”
“Fusion fuel?” Molly asked, diverting the stream of consciousness.
“That’s right.” Parsona studied her intently. “You sound surprised. Anyway, we tracked the source all the way back to this very village. It took us almost a year to work our way into the group.” Parsona frowned. “A bunch of anti-GN radicals and Drenard sympathizers, they were. And we were getting close to their source, the initial supply point, when—”
The porch shimmered, the wooden planks waving as if they were fluid. Parsona planted her feet, jarring the swing to a halt.
Two Mollies dashed up, their feet slapping solid wood. They had trays of goodies with them.
“Tea and cake, Mom? We made them ourselves!” They said it in unison. In harmony.
“Now, isn’t that lovely of you girls. Go ahead, Mollie, take some.” What Molly took in was the scene around her. All four of them in identical dresses. Everything so real and yet so surreal. When she’d first arrived, the girls had looked nothing like her, but now they bore an eerie resemblance.
She managed a meek “thanks” and accepted a cup of tea. She blew the steam into wisps, but didn’t take a sip. She wasn’t even sure what it would mean if she did.
“Mom, I need to know if something important happened here. Something that might mean big trouble for the galaxy—or anything like that. Do ‘two doors’ mean anything to you?”
Parsona seemed to chew on this. She cupped her tea in both hands and nodded to the two Mollies. They ran back to the commons to join the others. “There was one thing,” she said. “My other visitor always wanted to talk about it, I’m not sure why. While we were here, a bunch of settlers started going missing. We were looking into it on the side and reporting back to the Navy, but—”
“Mrs. Fyde?” Molly and her mother both turned; a Stanley walked across the lawn to greet them. He nodded at Molly, “I’m so sorry to interrupt your visit.” Then he turned to Parsona. “You have another visitor, Mrs. Fyde. Normally I wouldn’t intrude, but it’s your account benefactor. He would love to see you at your earliest convenience.”
Parsona smoothed her dress across her thighs with both hands, her cup of tea somehow gone. “Well, isn’t this lovely,” she said. “Two visitors on the same day! Is it my tall friend?”
“I believe so, Mrs. Fyde. It’s the only other visitor you have ever had.”
“Well, this is simply too delightful! Molly, would you like to meet him?” She turned to Stanley before Molly could respond, “Can we do that?”
Stanley smiled. Molly noticed his flesh looked flawless in this place—perfectly natural.
“I will inform Mr. Byrne that you are with your daughter and see what he says.”
“Splendid,” Parsona replied.
Stanley bowed and Molly waved goodbye. Moments later, she felt a sharp prick on her arm—as if she’d been pinched. It hurt so bad, she nearly dropped her tea. Molly looked down at her skin, but it appeared normal. She glanced around the swing, but they were alone.
Probably nothing, she thought, blowing simulated steam from the surface of her tea.
••••
“Problemss.”
Cole looked over at Walter. The boy had his computer out, probably playing that stupid video game of his.
“Did your guy die again?”
Walter clucked his tongue. “No. Real problemss. Molly’ss mom hass a vissitor.”
Cole turned back to the video of a Stanley showing off a terraformed Dakura, all covered with beautiful androids living in harmony. “Yeah she does, it’s your captain—” Cole sat up in the bed. “Wait. Are you hacking into their system? I told you not to—”
Walter hissed, cutting him off. “Another vissitor, dummy. And I think . . . I think they’re moving Molly.”
“What?” Cole got off his bed and walked around Walter to look over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
“Sshe wass in vissitation room twelve. Now sshe iss in ssomething called Long Sstay nine-two-one.”
“What does that even mean?”
“They have a sschematic.”
“Pull it up,” Cole said, reminded again how wicked smart Walter was in some things to be so annoying and juvenile in others.
“Long Sstay nine-two-one,” Walter said, pointing to a small square on a long hallway somewhere.
“Is that on this floor?”
Walter shook his head. “Not the hotel. Thiss iss where the bodiess go,” he told Cole.
“Which bodies?”
Walter looked him in the eye. The boy’s face was a dull sheen, like an old coin.
“The dreaming oness,” he hissed.
••••
“How long has it been since you’ve seen this other friend of yours, Mom?”
“Oh, it’s so hard to keep track of time here.”
Parsona rubbed her belly as if calculating the time in trimesters. “Ten years?” she guessed.
Ten years, Molly thought. This was too much of a coincidence.
“What can you tell me about this friend of yours?”
“Oh, I would love for you to just meet him and see for yourself. I’ll have the girls make some more tea and cake.”
Molly sighed. “It would just be nice to know what sorts of things he enjoys talking about, so we can avoid any awkward moments.”
“Aren’t you thoughtful? Hmmm. I do recall him being into politics.”
“Politics? What kind?”
“Navy stuff. The war with the Drenards. Hey, is that war still going on?”
“Yeah, Mom. It hasn’t let up. Speaking of Drenards, did you and Dad ever go to their planet?”
Parsona gaped at her as if she’d lost her mind. “The Drenard’s planet? Of course not, dear! They were my sworn enemy. Still are, I suppose.”
“So, you don’t speak Drenard?”
“Where in the world—?” Parsona paused. “Although, if I did, the Navy would’ve taken me a bit more seriously, wouldn’t they?” She studied her daughter closely. “Now, where are these questions coming from? What has your father been telling you?”
“Nothing, Mom. I just heard you guys were onto something really important on Lok and that maybe my being born messed some things up. I hoped—”
“You hoped you could make things better by picking up where we left off? Oh, sweetheart, that is such a wonderful gesture. It really is.” She put her arms around Molly’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Thank you, but I don’t have any regrets. I’m perfectly happy here, and I have so many wonderful girls to keep me company.”
“Maybe I need to do this for me, Mom. To make myself happy.”
Parsona’s eyes twinkled, as if something registered. “You know, you mentioned two doors. Well—and it’s probably nothing—but after you were born, I was in pretty bad shape for a while. Your father would hardly leave my side. We were here, inside this very house. Wait, that’s right! The group we were investigating, they took us in that night. Kept us warm. Mr. Byrne didn’t come with us for some reason, just led us to the porch. Carried me, in fact, while I carried you. We didn’t see him again until I got really sick. But I—the last thing I remember is those people we were cracking down on—they tried to do everything they could to help me.”
“What about the doors, Mom?”
Parsona looked at Molly and brushed some of her brown hair off her head. She gazed out over the commons where dark clouds and rainbows battled for supremacy.
“Oh, they took great care of you,” she said. “And your father—he was a wreck. When my fever wasn’t too bad, I can remember them talking. About the Drenards. About a race from another galaxy. No, maybe that was something I dreamt at the time. We haven’t made contact outside of our own galaxy, have we? So hard to remember.”
Parsona shook her head.
“I do recall one of the fellows, an older gentleman with a thick white beard—clever fellow. He went on and on about hyperspace. Very agitated man. I’m sorry, dear, I’m afraid I forgot what I was thinking . . . wait! I do remember. Oh, no. That must’ve been a symptom of my fever.”
“What was it?”
“Oh, nothing. Just a dream I must’ve had. I’m just awful at remembering.”
“Even if it’s weird, Mom, I’d love to hear it.”
“Promise not to laugh? Because this is not the sort of dream I usually have, but I wasn’t in the best of shape at the time.”
“I promise, Mom.”
“One night—like I say, it must’ve been a dream, but vivid as this one that I live in now—the wall of the living room opened up. They had you and me set up on a cot out there, keeping us warm by the fire. I remember—what a crazy dream—that the wall just opened right up, like it’d been zipped open. And—don’t laugh—but people came out of it. Well, not people, aliens! All kinds. Thousands of them.”
“Thousands?”
“You promised not to laugh.”
“I’m not laughing, Mom, I’m flabbergasted. This house doesn’t look big enough for twenty people, much less a hundred.”
“It was a dream. It had to be. But they weren’t all in there at once. They passed from one wall to the other, appeared and disappeared. They marched right through the living room for hours.”
“Sounds like a great dream.”