Molly - Part 1

Chapter 1

"Tell me again how it happened."

They were feeding tubes into her, tiny switches covering her body. She was covered by two thin strips of cloth. Other than this, she was exposed, to the men and women scouring the room, to the eyes above watching with relentless curiosity.

Doctor Field swiveled in his chair and pressed a switch on the monitor. A ping sounded, and the lights dimmed, various colored-globules hovering above Molly Smith.

Field sighed. "We were close; I remember that much clearly. We had spent a lifetime fighting one another. Finally, it seemed as if we'd had enough. We were tired of the old ways, of the old tricks. We wanted to have communion with one another. To touch one another and not feel ashamed. Cast off the private enterprises. Move into a better world. And then..."

He snapped his fingers. "It was over. The lights went out." He smiled. "You know, I think the worst part was that it didn't actually end with much strife. What we see now is just the next step. No, I thought...but it doesn't matter. Someone assassinates the president, and all the old hates, all the old stupidities mounted until we couldn't handle it anymore. Then, it was over. Lights out."

He seemed sad; Molly could sense this, as he went back to fiddle with the machine.

A glass sphere surrounded her vision. And there: the conscripts. They had been human beings at one point, whittled down to nothing more than middle-men for the next stage of advancement. Their eyes were as dull as those outside developing cataracts from the poison.

She closed her eyes, and listened. There: Doctor Field's breathing. The shuffling of feet, the swish of a lab coat. Searching further, Molly was able to feel the presence of some great disturbance down in the earth. She wasn't sure how far in it might be, or what it was, but it was there and as such she felt as if she should tell someone.

"I--"

"Please, Molly: Lie still. You are still sensitive. I can see it on the machine. Here."

He pushed the monitor so that she could see the fluctuations of her brainwaves, her brain condensed to a series of white wires, the pulsating green representing her far-searching, bounding across and then repeating back to her.

"Amazing," she whispered.

"Yes. So much money and time."

Doctor Field took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"Do you miss your family?"

He put the glasses back on and looked down at her.

"Yes."

She could see them now: the leylines that drove through the world. They came across and then sunk towards that great below. She hoped it was nothing. She hoped that Doctor Field and the others could find a cure for the ills which plagued them, but Molly feared it was too late.

"It could have been gorgeous."

Field frowned. "What?"

"Life."

The lights flashed brilliantly as she was wheeled out of the room and hooked to yet another machine. This one dug into the eyes, providing colors where there were no colors to see. They clothed her as the process continued: a white jumpsuit with a zipper going down the middle.

"It's all fake, isn't it?" she said.

"It is."

"Does that matter?"

Doctor Field looked down the hall, then said, "That entirely depends. Human beings are tricky, and you are the trickiest of all."

She searched her hand. Pale, almost luminescent. "Am I human?"