Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

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“Okay, I think I’ve got it.”

“Really?”

Cole wiggled out from underneath the cabinet and turned to the Seer. “Yeah, the flow of water’s stopped, but it took all you had left of this caulk—”

“That’s fine,” she said, “I won’t need any more.”

“You can know things like that? That there won’t be any more leaks?”

The Seer smiled. “Or that the next time, they’ll be too much water to bother.”

Cole crossed the swaying shack and placed the empty tube of caulk in the small trashcan. “Should I empty the pot of water under the leak? It’s almost full.”

“Sure.” The Seer turned, her gaze following and approximating Cole’s location. “Just dump it in the sink if you don’t mind.”

Cole pulled the pot out and sloshed it carefully into the small sink. Ahead of him, the wall of tin rattled with the sound of a billion drops of water thundering to their doom. Other than the direction from which the storm came, the entire scene reminded Cole of home. His original home, not the orphanage or the Academy, just that little shanty crowded by thousands of others in one of the poorest barrios of Portugal.

Standing in front of the sink with the empty pot in his hand, he sank into that recollection. There was nothing he had ever wanted more than to get out of that place. To see the world. To see the galaxy and all its finer things.

And now he had. He’d been to places few ever would. Seen things most people could only dream of. And somehow, standing in a shack that reminded him of his childhood, he felt more at ease, more comfortable, more himself than he had in years. The suddenness of the sensation hit him hard, making him gasp with awareness. No sooner had he felt that sense of peace, some bastard portion of his brain stabbed him with a reminder of where he was, how very far from home, how far from the one he cared so deeply for, and how impossible it may be to ever return.

He put the pot away, hanging it between a skillet and a wide pan. The three jangled together softly, almost as if greeting their returned friend.

“I guess that’s that,” Cole said, trying to force the shakiness out of his voice.

“Thank you,” the Seer said. She folded her thin legs beneath herself and gestured to the edge of the bed once more. Cole checked his hands, wiped a small bit of caulk on the front of his pants, then looked around at the rattling cabin.

“There anything else I can do for you?”

The Seer smiled. “Could I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

Cole took the few steps required to cross the room and plopped back onto the bed.

“Could you have not fixed the leak?” the Seer asked.

Cole glanced over his shoulder, back at the closed cabinet door. “Uh, I guess, but it didn’t seem to be leaking. Should I put the pot back, just in case?”

The Seer smiled and shook her head. “No, what I mean is: do you think you could have refused to fix it? Could you have declined?”

“I—” Cole looked at his fingernails. He scratched at a fine line of dark caulk running along the edge of one. “Could I have refused,” he said to himself.

The Seer sat quietly while he thought about it.

“I think so,” Cole finally said. “If you had asked differently, or if I didn’t feel so at home here, or maybe if I was in a bad mood—”

The Seer waved him off. “Forget what wasn’t. I’m asking you, in the state you were in at that very moment, could you have said ‘No?’ Could you have refused?”

Something about the question irked Cole. It made him want to lie, to be argumentative. He wanted to say: “Yes, I could’ve chosen not to,” but he couldn’t. He couldn’t because he knew, given a billion chances, if every event leading up to that choice was the same, he would’ve always done the favor for the old lady with the familiar eyes. And something about that knowledge made him bristle with anger. It put him in a state in which he probably would refuse if asked again.

“Can you not say?” the Seer asked.

He wondered which way she meant the question. Did she mean that he couldn’t say because he didn’t know? Or that he couldn’t say because he chose not to? It irked him further. And he realized why: this was the same conversation he’d had with Molly a long time ago, back in the cockpit of their simulator. Only then, he had been the provocateur and she the annoyed. But now that Cole knew what the Seer was really talking about, the foam of anger fizzled away to be replaced with curiosity.

“You’re asking about my free will, aren’t you?”

The Seer smiled, but only a little. It was a smile filled with sadness, if such a thing could be. “I’m talking about our free will,” she said. “Everyone’s.”

“Yes, I believe in free will.”

As soon as Cole said it, the smile melted away, the wrinkles returning as the skin over her cheeks sagged back down, exposing that sadness beneath.

“You don’t?” Cole asked.

“I’m not sure,” the Seer said. “Or maybe I am, but I refuse to admit it. Maybe I can’t admit it.” The smile returned, wry and slanted. “I think about it a lot. More than anything else, probably. I see all these things that end up happening, as if they couldn’t have gone otherwise. Some of them—a lot of them are bad things. And I wonder if they might not have happened, somehow.”

“You have visions of the future? Is that why they call you the Seer?” Cole felt idiotic for asking, the answer so obvious, but he had a hard time buying the mystical aspects, even having recently seen so many strange things.

The Seer laughed. “See-er,” she said. “The Bern see-er. I don’t foretell the future, I just watch it.” She waved one hand in a tiny circle. “But people hear it the way they want to, and that’s how legends grow.”

“You see the future? How is that possible?”

The woman shrugged. “Light and water do funny things in this place. Maybe I’m just seeing the reflections of things. Maybe the photons know what they’ll bounce off of before they get there. I have a hundred theories and they all make me sound crazy. Some of them make me feel crazy. I know only enough about quantum mechanics to make it all seem like magic to me. Maybe I only see the things I want to see, or fear I’ll see. Maybe seeing them makes it real.” The Seer turned to the side, her jaw clenching and unclenching. “Maybe it is my fault.”

She shook her head, her eyes remaining unfocused as she turned to the other side. Cole wondered if the looking about was habit, or if she was just diverting her ears from the echo of her admissions.

“I don’t think you can blame yourself for stuff that hasn’t happened yet,” he told her.

“But I’ve said things,” the Seer whispered. “Maybe that was enough. And to be honest, I’ve said things I knew were going to alter events. I’ve wrestled with that, but I don’t see a different outcome. I don’t see anything I could’ve chosen otherwise.”

“Is that why you don’t believe in free will? To protect yourself?”

“No.” The Seer shook her head. “Nothing feels safe about a lack of free will, about being out of control. The reason I don’t believe in free will is because of—because of so many things.” The Seer rubbed the back of her hand, the agitation apparent in the rise of her tone. “Why are people unhappy much of the time? Why would they choose to be miserable if they are truly free? Why do we repeat the same mistakes over and over and wallow in our regret? Why does it feel like my every action is really a reaction, and that I only afterwards rationalize my behavior as having been a conscious decision?”

Cole leaned back, away from the words. They seemed sharp and dangerous, laced with barbs that could wiggle in and never come back out. Not without pain, anyway.

“If there’s no free will,” he said, “then what are we? Automatons? Organisms just responding to environmental cues?” He shook his head. “No thanks. If we aren’t free to choose our paths, we should at the very least pretend.”

The Seer frowned. “We should lie to ourselves. Is that what you’re saying?”

Cole nodded, forgetting for a moment that the woman was blind. “I think that’s what I do. I think I know what you know, but I avoid it.” Cole glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t think I could’ve chosen to not fix that leak. I’m sure of it, actually. The state I was in, what was going on around me, I had already agreed to fix it before you asked. If you could see those things, see inside me, I think you’d know the future.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” the Seer said sadly. She looked away, or at least turned her head. “Religions have long wrestled with this, you know. Their best argument is that we are free to choose, but god already knows how we will. He knows us, knows what actions we will perform, long before we do.”

“I’m familiar with the argument,” said Cole.

“Maybe there’s something good about it.” She turned to face him. “Would you ever want to be the kind of person who would refuse to fix the leak?”

“No.”

“Neither would I. And maybe that determines who believes in free will and who doesn’t. Maybe those of us who are ashamed of our actions like to think it doesn’t exist. And those of you who live without regret like to take the credit for yourselves.”

“I have plenty of regrets,” Cole said softly.

“I know. But perhaps not more than your pride.”

The lady looked down at her hands, or at least appeared to. She flexed her fingers and Cole wondered if she could imagine them there as ghost limbs visible in her awareness of where her body was in space. He closed his own eyes and tried to picture his hands in his lap, and then realized there was nothing rude in the gesture. He could lie back with his eyes closed and continue talking, and she would never know. She probably wouldn’t care even if she did. Something about it, about being invisible and making the rest of the world disappear, felt nice.

When he opened his eyes, hers were back to pointing in his general direction. Cole realized, just then, how very much he liked this old woman, even though he knew nothing of her or her intentions.

“Are you human?” he asked, his mouth blurting it out before his brain could filter it.

“Yes.”

“What’s your real name?”

“I can’t say.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“If I did, I’d be naming myself, so I’ll leave it up to you.” She smiled, as if at some private joke, but there was still some sadness in her face. Each flash of happiness contained some hint that it could be her last, like a creature rare and therefore tragic.

“I need you to pass on something to Mortimor for me.”

“Sure.”

“Tell him to get everyone out.”

“Just say that? He’ll know what that means?”

The Seer nodded.

“Out of hyperspace?”

She shrugged.

“Is there a way out?”

“If there is, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. If you try hard enough. Just tell him to leave no one behind.”

“Okay.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Cole thought the woman looked tired all of a sudden, like she needed to lie down and never get back up.

“Is that it, then?”

The Seer nodded. “You’ve been a tremendous help.”

Cole laughed. “It wasn’t so bad a leak,” he said.

“I meant the other. About lying to ourselves. I think you’re right about that…”

The Seer trailed off and Cole waited in silence.

“If we aren’t free,” she finally said, “I think you’re right to pretend we are. Maybe we have to delude ourselves and not feel bad for doing it. Maybe that’s crucial for our sanity.”

“Lying to ourselves?”

“And each other. If not, if we admit that we aren’t free and in control of our own behavior, we won’t hold ourselves responsible for our actions, and that will surely have an effect on them.” The Seer lifted her hands from her lap, holding them out as if for balance, even though the cabin wasn’t swaying at the moment.

“That’s it,” she whispered. “That’s the answer.”

She said it reverently and to herself, almost as if she’d been expecting it to come. Her hands came together, interlocking. They came up and covered her mouth, her eyes glistening with a film of tears. She looked down at the empty space of bed between herself and Cole. He didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare interrupt whatever was happening.

“Everything we do affects the people around us,” she finally said. “We are a part of each other’s environment. How I ask you to fix the leak has more to do with your decision than you do. Our will isn’t free, but it depends on each other. It—maybe it’s so complex that some kind of randomness is possible. Some emergent quality arises as all the interactions bounce off one another.”

She looked up, her hands returning to her lap, her silence inviting some kind of response.

But Cole was too busy thinking to answer. He saw what she meant, saw the implications. The mass delusion of free will wasn’t just to assuage, the very idea of free will seemed to inject some of it into human behavior. By expecting others to choose the best course—by holding them responsible for their actions afterwards—it made it more likely they would choose best.

“Thank you for coming,” the Bern Seer said. She unfolded her legs from beneath her and swung them over the side of the bed, planting her feet. She held up her arms as if asking for help to stand. Cole scrambled off the bed and reached for her, helping her up.

“It was my pleasure,” he said, honestly meaning it.

The Seer crossed to the door and rested a fragile hand on the knob. “Let me know when you have your goggles on.”

Cole fumbled for them; he pulled them from around his neck and hurriedly wiped the cups with his t-shirt, having learned how important it was to not have to adjust them once outside.

“Will I see you again?” he asked.

“In a way,” she said.

Cole pulled the goggles down over his head, adjusting them until the cups were tight and his world was as black as blindness.

“Thank you again,” the Seer said. “I think you’ve helped me take responsibility for what I’m about to do.”

In the pure darkness, Cole noticed for the first time that her voice didn’t match her appearance. It was young and crisp, not worn out the way her body appeared.

“And what is that?” Cole asked. He stood in an unseeing void, having forgotten she was waiting to hear when his goggles were in place.

“One day, I’ll have to push a button,” she said, “and by pushing it, I’ll change everything about this universe. And I’m afraid I already know how I will choose.”

“Why are you afraid?” Cole asked, growing wary of the blackness.

“Because, a lot of blood will be spilled, and it’ll all be on my hands.”

“Blood?” A shiver ran up Cole’s spine. He felt a sudden and powerful impulse to tear off his goggles. “Whose blood?” he asked.

“Everyone’s,” the Bern Seer said. “The blood of billions.”