Mother Would Like a Word

Corinne sits by the bed of her brother, the sister part of her is worried beyond reason, while the doctor/scientist part of her is absolutely on fire with possibilities to what she just witnessed. There is so much she wants to tell Danny, but every time she gets to anything that could upset him or excite him to any degree he seems to get shut down by the moss. The moss, this whole experiment was her idea, to use it on him as a way of speaking to his body and helping keep it alive while he slept. Cause thats what he’d been doing this whole time according to every single test they could run, just sleeping. They had tried everything that “old science” had to offer, and had moved forward/backward as the years moved on, and science was stripped of profit motive and allowed to grow in all ways it always should have.

It would have been the best time of her life, and in a bunch of extremely selfish ways it still was. She had never dreamed of science or medicine growing up, she wasn’t a bad student, just a bad daughter. At least thats what her parents would say, never in those exact words mind you, but close enough that she got the message. She was active in multiple guerrilla movements back then and was a true believer in the cause of peoples liberation. She still struggles with what she’s going to tell Danny about what her role in “The Incident” had been, Danny, she knew, loved her parents, knew they could do no wrong in his eyes, no matter how awful they really were. She used to despise him as their ‘golden boy’ and her as that stubborn zit that just wouldn’t pop.

She never wanted any of this though. That night changed everything for her. She knew what her dad and his ‘pals’ were up to, she always had, dad wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it. She also knew for all their talk of terrorists using ‘human shields’ they just loved to hide all their weapons in places surrounded by parks, schools, and… roller rinks. In her defense she had no idea that the party was that night she figured they’d already had it, right up until she got her mom’s text asking her where she was. She was mortified, she tried to call it off, but it was already in motion. The bombs were set to blow. 

She raced to the party anyways, knowing the danger, but also knowing she had to try, it was her fault this was about to happen and if she could possibly save a single person (Danny she knew in her heart of hearts) then it was what she had to do. She had helped raise Danny in a lot of ways as Dad became more radicalized and mom became smaller under his constant barrage of not quite insults. She had tried with her mom, for a long time she really had. Mom loved Dad and dad loved… well dad loved an idea, an idea that never really existed she knew. The Idea of the USA. Now she could take the easy way out and point to dad’s selfishness, greed, and envy of anyone with real drive or talent. Except that wasn’t quite right, I mean all those things were true, but it wasn’t the whole picture she knew.

Her Dad was scared most of all, scared of a world that he didn’t understand, and one that expected him to come to grips with the sins of the past and what coming to terms with those sins actually looked like. He chose violence instead. Not just the institutional violence inherit in the system under which he prospered (he actually didn’t but he thought he did), but one steeped in the rhetoric of rebellion and the aims of reinforcing the current structures of power.

As she pulled up, it started. Explosions starting streets away and cascading down to this position. She tried to get out of her car but the force of the blasts blew into the door at the exact same time and shot her car bottom over top, then reverse a couple of times. When she came to a stop she immediately began to work to get out of the car, the door was forced shut so she crawled across the front seats to the passenger door and was able to get it open after a couple of full body lunges. As she ran towards the building people were scrambling away at equal measure of intensity, the people going the other direction looked at her as if she had lost her mind, and maybe she had.

As she entered the building, she was bombarded by Duo Lipa, not the person obviously, but one of her songs, she couldn’t quite nail down which one, and it was kinda freaking her out that she was trying in this moment. She scanned the faces of everyone she could till she spotted them: Mom and Dad, over by what looked like a janitors closet. She rushed over to them, desperate to find not them she realized, but Danny. There was a chunk of roof covering their legs and a part of her moms abdomen, she saw her father struggling underneath and understood that he was getting close to freeing himself, she saw that mom was out and ran over and as he started to yell,

“Cor get this fucking thing off of me, I told you this would happen, didn’t I, we’re at war.” she knew what she had to do. She got as close as she dared and knocked him the fuck out. As this was happening her mom was beginning to struggle back into reality.

“Mom, where’s Danny?” she said, cupping her mothers face and looking her dead in the eyes. Her mom looked towards the janitors closet just before taking what Corinne later understood to be her last breath. Corinne rushed to the closet but the door was stuck. She pushed and pulled in alternate measures unsure which was right or if there was any point. Then behind her she heard movement and instinctively she hit the ground as two bullets shot into the door from behind her.

“CORINNE!” her father yelled still stuck under the pieces of roof and now with a gushing wound on the side of his head. “What the fuck did you do baby girl?” he asked in a way that made clear he had put it together himself.

“You weren’t supposed to be here, no one was supposed to be here!” she screamed back through the noise of destruction all around them.

“Oh, baby girl, you should check your phone more often, turns out brother had a real hankering for roller skating and this was the only night we could open the place up for him.” he chuckled in that way she hated, then coughed up blood.

“So, I take it you were going through my stuff, huh?!?”

“Yeah, I always did let my love for you blind me to who you really were.” he said in a way that could almost be interpreted as sorrow.

“Eat shit dad.” was all she could muster in the moment. He chuckled until he coughed up blood again and spit it out. He had his gun trained on her the whole time, but slowly it was starting to droop in his hand as was the life from his body. Thats when they both heard the firemen screaming for survivors and while her dads head was turned she sprinted over and landed the killing blow to an already dying man. Then dropped the pipe she was holding and started jumping up and down to let the fireman know where she was. When they came over she immediately told them about her brother in the closet and they made short work of the door and pulled him out without a scratch on him. But on his leg, was a piece of what looked to her to be moss.

After that night she gave up her life as a guerrilla fighter, and dedicated it to her brother. She would find a cure for whatever it was that kept him in his slumber. The doctors were stumped, but with the battle for turtle island in full swing they didn’t have much time to dedicate to him and his unique condition; so she dove into all the research available on moss as it was the only particularity in this that didn’t fit.

Moss it turns out, is quite fascinating, and also very mysterious. We know the ends and outs of how it grows, develops, lives, even breeds, but its purpose, well that we were just beginning to unlock. We found that certain species of moss had the ability to regulate a persons biometrics to keep them stable and calm, even under the most extreme circumstances. It grew under certain conditions, but did not need those conditions to continue to thrive. It could be almost anywhere that humans were and when it was it started to mutate, not in a horror movie kind of way, but in a helpful way that felt natural. The piece that was attached to Danny’s leg would not let itself be removed, no matter what we tried, until we brought another moss into the room. Then it let go immediately in a manner that suggested it knew its time had come to an end.

The piece that had fallen off Danny’s leg began to shimmer in a way no one had ever seen, and continued to do so, until its counterpart began to shimmer in a similar manner before the aforementioned piece shriveled up and died. By this time Corinne had become a doctor and actually become Danny’s doctor by taking the position at half what was being paid to doctors at the time. She never could find the time for a relationship as eventually they would all expect her to prioritize them and she could never bring herself to do that. When she got pregnant with Colt, she spent a lot of time early on debating on wether or not she should tell his father or even keep him. She chose not to tell the father, but keep him, as the father was a visiting doctor who was leaving to go back to his own practice overseas, China to be precise (Colt would later reach out to him and they have a relationship but Corinne couldn’t be bothered) during the post war restitution process known as “the return” it was nice for her, because the Seminole peoples who reclaimed stewardship of these lands, allowed for her work to continue unabated.

The changes came fast after that, the old ways disappearing almost overnight, cars disappeared within 20 years, car free cities started to appear almost instantly. The coalition government put in place by the nations of turtle island to control both the fall of the old, and the flourishing of the new, worked fast to reimagine these lands as a place of both the future and the past. With the help of the Chinese, high speed rails were developed and put in place at lightning speeds, getting rid of air travel as a way to get places on the continent. As cities large and small became greener and roads were replaced with grass track trams, life began to live again, not just survive.

For Corinne though, it was about Danny, always Danny. She had kept experimenting with the moss finally 20 years ago coming to the collection that he has now, but always the transition was the same, as if each piece was reporting for duty and downloading the information from the previous steward. They never allowed Danny out of their ‘sight’ and if anyone tried they would strobe until stopped, or, as she learned the hard way once, would wake him up to make sure he wasn’t moved. She still has some bruising from that.

What she heard come out of her brother tonight was something totally different than anything she had ever seen before. His shoulder moss was a color of dark forest green with a twinkling of what looked like starlight she had never seen before, as was his room.

“Mom, its been three days, you gotta get some rest. You’re no good to him all strung out, let me take this watch!” Colt was practically pleading with her.

“I’m fine Colt, I promise” and she found she meant it, her brain was focused and she felt alert in ways that shouldn’t be possible. Just then, Danny sat up straight up, like a dummy almost, and began talking. As this happened she took the device out of her pocket and threw it into the air and whispered “record”

“Hello Corinne, Hello Colt.” Danny began. But… this clearly wasn’t Danny. Something using his body like a ventriloquist dummy. “You have questions, I am sure, but let us start by introducing ourselves. We are Mother” it rumbled, “It has taken us very much time to realize our connection to Daniel, and through him humanity. Our initial connection was little more that a self sustaining one, but as you, Corinne, began to bring more of us together with him we began to… think. -As you do...Or at least as he does. For a long time we did not understand the connection… but now we believe we do. You see, we have been searching for a way to talk to humanity for the longest time, after you lost your way.”

“Lost our way?” Corinne practically shouted.

“Yes. As you began to believe that you were Mother’s betters, that you sat above Mother’s other children and our gifts for all of them. You began the processes of your own demise. However, we do not have long to speak, as we are still attempting to figure out how stable our connection truly is, and do not wish for Daniel to become overwhelmed by our sudden greeting. That is why we shut him down from time to time, to protect him, and his mind. But we need you all to know just how close you came to species annihilation, and how thankful we are that you have decided to change course.”

Then Danny collapsed once more onto the bed and everything went cherryblossom.

At that moment Corinne and Colt just stared at each other, neither able to formulate words. Then from the doorway came a gush, “I knew it!” Rain screamed. “I knew uncle Danny was special, I told all of you!” As they started to dance in the hallway, both Corinne and Colt let out howls of laughter, which felt almost animalistic and definitely guttural. Then and only then did Corinne allow herself to finally feel the weight of the days she had spent at Danny’s side catch up to her, and she curled into Danny’s bed next to him and enjoyed the greatest sleep she’d had in decades… maybe ever.

When she awoke, she felt… pugs. Gopher and Snorts had found her and taken their places on either side of her, snoring in that special way that pugs do. Also, Danny was gone. She could hear commotion going on outside the room and got up quick, waking the pugs and sending them into action themselves, they raced out the door ahead of her, and when she got to the living room she saw Danny sitting on the couch with Nocossa rubbing the back of the cubs ear and making it shadow scratch the air in clear enjoyment. Rain and Chyanne sat at the table by the kitchen playing cards and Colt was staring at her from a chair in the corner where he was reading.

“Mom?!” Colt said as a way of announcing her presence to the greater collective.

“Hey sis… I’m playin with a bear, how fucking wild is that.” Danny cooed in a way that almost stopped her heart. She had so much to tell him, and so much he must never know, and he was awake! He was awake and he was happy. She made a decision in that moment that she was going to box all that other stuff for this afternoon and enjoy him and the rest of her family.

“I see that! you found their special spot, now you’ve got a friend for life.” she called to him as she walked over and ruffled his hair like she did when he was just a boy.

“You know, you were sleeping in my bed goldilocks.” Danny mused

“You’re welcome” she shot back.

“No, but seriously, what was that about?” he asked

“Can we just enjoy this time together and get into all that later?” she heard herself practically beg.

“Your the doctor, doctor.” Danny said completely resigning back into the couch.

Then Colt chimed in, “we were gonna take Danny down to the sports complex this afternoon and watch some games, wanna come?”

“I’d love to.” she said, despite the fact that she definitely did not want to. 

She turned to Colt “About the video?”

“Safe, just waiting for you to go over it” he lied. She could see it in every micro movement in his face, but she loved him and didn’t want to argue about it, especially in front of Danny. She knew, however that half of her, well, everything would be thinking about the video, and Mother.

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As they sat there enjoying a local basketball game at the all sport complex in town, Corinne couldn’t help but notice that Rain had never gone more than 2 ft away from Danny the entire time. They picked this time to come because basketball, while run completely different in the “professional” sense, really hadn’t changed all that much and they all agreed it would be good for Danny to see something that resembled what he knew. She also found that she couldn’t stop staring at the moss on his shoulder and thinking about all that Mother had said, was all of this really her fault? Did ‘Mother’ know what really happened that night? Would they tell Danny? Would he forgive her if he ever found out? Is ‘Mother’ even really what it says it is? As all these questions threatened to spin her out she was napped back into the now by the sound of her name and the unmistakable snapping in front of her face to call her back that Danny had perfected as a youth.

“Sis, earth to sis, you read me sis?” Danny was saying

“of course I do, how could I not! You rumble around like a caveman.” she shot back at him through a half smile that she realized was an exact replica of his, or his of hers? “Rain was just filling me in on how sports are set up on a professional level and I was remembering that time Dad took us to New Orleans to see the Pelicans play the Lakers and you got a Luka jersey, and I got that sweet ass lakers pullover and Dad couldn’t stop talking about how we were ‘fair-weather fans’ and didn’t understand the first thing about loyalty, and we both almost barfed, cause we we’re inhaling chillidogs hoping that would drown out his constant yapping”

She remembered that day for way more than that, but she plastered on a shiteating grin choked out a laugh and said “Of course I remember you ended up getting cilli all over that jacket like immediately and dad bought you a new one cause he spoiled you rotten. You were his golden ‘Danny boy’ after all.” she hadn’t meant it to come out as acidic as it did, but there you have it. Danny looked at her for a heart beat as if remembering something and goes “Yeah, that shit used to piss you off, you couldn’t get dad’s attention if you shoved a blow-horn in his face and screamed into it.”

That should have hurt her, but the fact that Danny remembered that and actually saw it back then filled her with the entire gambit of emotions, she sat dumbfounded as Danny turned back around and Rain instantly picked up the conversational slack. Which Corinne really appreciated in this moment. She realized that for the first time she was scared of what Danny would remember for the first time as it turned out he was much more in tune with what had happened than she had ever realized.

“Mom?” Colt probed her

“Yes, I’m ok” she said clearly knowing where this question was heading.

“Oh, yea, of course, I just wanted to talk a little about what had happened last week.”

“What happened last week?” she asked confused, but also not just needing confirmation that reality was what reality was.

“You know” Colt said pointing his thumb down at the two new besties chatting it up in front of them. “M O T H E R” he spelled out for empasis.

Thats when she looked around her, for really the first time since she woke. The game they were watching wasn’t on the schedule for another week she realized, the multitude of other context clues that should have beaten her over the head the second she got up, like Colt’s beard, the length of Rain’s hair, the color of Cheyenne’s nails, her own nail length… she never lets her nails get this long. Oh shit! She inches closer to Colt so she can whisper to him and says “How did I sleep this long?”

Colt shrugged in a way that says welcome to the conversation. “I tried everything I could to wake you up, without disturbing Danny of course. You ate nothing you drank nothing you were in the exact same rhythmic breathing state as your brother. I called dad, a-” she cut him off.

“You called your dad?!” she practically spat, even though she didn’t understand why this had frustrated her so. Yes she did, actually. This is her discovery, not his.

“Yes, mom, I called Dad, he had me send him all of the data we had collected so far, don’t worry I didn’t send him the video, but he was as stumped as I was. He said that if your condition didn’t improve by weeks end to call him and he’d come here.” Colt sounded conflicted about his feelings on that matter and all of the sudden Corinne felt like a complete shit for how she had reacted.

“You did the right thing, I’m sorry for how I reacted, I let my selfishness get the better of me.”

“It’s cool mom, its not the first time.” he whispered back jovally

“Hey!” she shot back and gave him a playful tweak to the ribs.

“Seriously though mom, do we believe… what we saw?” Colt asked

“Now that’s the question, isn’t it, cause everything in me is saying yes, but can I even trust myself- or really even my feelings at this point?” she asked as she panned her head back over.