MirrorWorld

53.

“You’re okay,” I say, bicep-deep in water, supporting my wife’s weight. “Just breathe. Take it easy.”

The midwife, Deb Fairhurst, standing on the other side of the birthing tub, stares at me, incredulous. I can see the question in her eyes. How can you be so calm? Despite having aided in hundreds of births, Fairhurst is amped. She’s doing an admirable job of forcing calm into her voice, speaking slow, soothing words into Maya’s ears while monitoring her vitals, which is harder now that Maya decided to get in the tub. But there are subtle cues revealing the tension she’s hiding. She’s sweating. Her forehead is locked in place, wrinkles unmoving. I wonder if, when she’s older, her heavily wrinkled forehead will be a reminder of all the children she helped deliver, or if they’ll just be unwanted lines? Her movements have become sharp and quick when she’s out of eyeshot of Maya.

I flash Fairhurst a calm smile. Her forehead flattens a bit and she grins back, shaking her head. She’ll ask how I stay calm later. It’s the number one question I get asked. For now, there is a baby about to be born.

Maya crushes her nails into my shoulder, drawing the first noncalm expression from my face. If she’s trying to share the pain of childbirth, she’s doing an admirable job, though I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what she’s enduring, so I keep this thought to myself.

“Breathe, baby,” I say. “Move beyond the pain. Control it.”

“And push,” Fairhurst says.

From my position behind Maya, I can’t see what’s happening, but Fairhurst’s attention is suddenly more on the water than on Maya. In a moment, she’ll have two patients to care for.

“Good,” Fairhurst says. She’s grinning now. “Just one more push and we’ll be done.”

As the contraction ends, Maya releases my arm, then taps it several times. I lean down to her.

“Go,” she says.

“You want me to leave?”

“Go.” She waggles a finger toward the tub beyond her basketball belly. “Watch.”

That she’s thinking of me in this moment of pain, not wanting me to miss witnessing the birth of our first child, is a testament to her strength, love, and selflessness. I kiss her wet forehead, slide my arms out from behind her back, and move to the side of the tub, opposite Fairhurst.

“Anything I can do?” I ask.

“Just watch,” the midwife says.

Maya tenses, gripping the sides of the tub. Her forehead furrows, but it’s the only outward sign of pain I can see. She’s doing this drugless, focusing her will and body, letting things happen naturally. I didn’t think it would be possible, but here she is, overcoming pain I can only imagine and fear I will never know.

My jaw drops when a small, naked body appears in the water, flowing up and out of the water, carried aloft by Fairhurst’s skilled hands. And then she says three words that put a permanent chink in my thick armor. “It’s a boy.”

Before this moment, if you had asked me if I wanted kids, I would have shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” I was indifferent. I felt happy when Maya told me she was pregnant, but wasn’t moved by the news. I saw a child as just another one of life’s challenges to overcome. Fairhurst announced the sex because we chose not to find out earlier. But something about those three words: “it’s a boy…”

I weep for the first time since joining the military. It’s just a single tear, but its presence feels like Noah’s rainbow, a promise of something greater than myself, of continuing generations of Shilohs and… a son.

My son.

I reach for him and find only darkness.

I’m out of the memory, which was returned to me by the Dread mole. I can’t see or sense the world around me, but I can feel it in my head. But why would it give that memory back to me? Of all my memories, that poignant moment reminds me of exactly what I lost. What the Dread took from me. And why I hate them. If they were looking for brownie points, they don’t have a very good understanding of what makes people tick.

An image begins to resolve. Another memory.

I’m walking with my son. Just the two of us, out experiencing the world, sloshing through a swamp. He steps up beside me, rubs his head into my side.

“Are you ready?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Your strength and courage honor me,” I tell the boy.

He bristles with pride. “Now… let’s go.”

We move together, pushing through the mire until we reach the other side, where a desert awaits. It’s flat, brown, and barren. But there has been activity here lately, and I’ve been tasked with understanding it. Walking casually, son by my side, we head for a collection of buildings. They’re new but lack all the other things that normally indicate habitation—power lines, paved roads, and other types of infrastructure.

We stop a mile out, watching the activity in and around the small collection of buildings. And then, at once, the people there leave. A parade of vehicles heads north. Curious, I start toward the buildings but notice my son isn’t following.

“What is it?” I ask him.

“I’m afraid,” he confesses.

“No one will see us,” I tell him. Though he is young, he understands this. He just hasn’t experienced it yet. “You will be safe. They cannot harm you.”

“But I don’t like this place.”

“And you shouldn’t. But we have been asked to understand it. To ensure it is not a threat.”

“Could it be?” he asks.

“They have sought us out in the past,” I tell him. “But they cannot see the world as we do. They are limited and lost to emotion, conflict, and primitive thoughts.”

“Like we were.” My son is intelligent for his age, which is why the matriarch requested his training begin early.

“Yes,” I say. “During the dark years, we… tormented these people. Made them afraid of us. And as you know, some of us still choose this path. But not me. And not you. Understanding is more important than control, and making them afraid of us only draws their attention. Our worlds are connected, but our paths must remain separate.”

My son begins his reply but cuts the thought short with a huff. His head snaps up, eyes wide. He’s sensed something I missed. Danger. Intense and close.

Before I can give the command to run, a distant light blazes on the horizon. It locks us in place, blossoming in all directions, full of raw and terrifying energy, the likes of which I have never seen and have no knowledge about. As the distant buildings are enveloped by the explosive light, I feel warmth on my skin.

No…

I take hold of my son and return us both to the swamp. “Run!”

But it’s too late. The energy rips into our world, boiling the swamp. Anguish fills me, not because of my blistering skin. I have been trained to withstand pain. It’s my son’s agonized wail that stabs my soul. He’s dying, painfully, curled up in the flash-dried muck beside me. Before my vision fades, I catch one last look at my son, his sleek and noble domed forehead, his brilliant green eyes, now flickering. I send him on his way with one last push of affection. Then he’s gone. No longer part of me.

Why? I think. Why is this happening? And then, connected to the matriarch, I send one last request: avenge us.

The memory ends as my life fades. But it wasn’t my life. It was a Dread bull and his son. The location was the Jornada del Muerto desert, better known as the White Sands Proving Ground. The explosion, which I recognize from recordings made of the event, is known as the Trinity explosion. It was the United States’ first test of a nuclear weapon. In 1945. That memory is seventy years old but still feels fresh to the mind of the matriarch. And now it’s fresh in mine.

A new surge of memories begins, but, unlike the last, they’re overlapping, snapping into my mind. I’m not just witnessing the events, I’m living them through the minds of the Dread, who are connected to the matriarchs. Sometimes it’s individual Dreads, sometimes entire colonies. Bombs explode. Nuclear fallout poisons both worlds. Species of Dread I haven’t yet seen, living in the oceans and on island colonies, are decimated by more than 2,011 nuclear tests and scads of accidents. I see Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the SL-1 meltdown in Idaho. There are also a number of less famous radioactive accidents in Costa Rica, Zaragoza, Morocco, Mexico City, Thailand, and Mayapuri, India. The stories of these events are well known in my frequency, but the human race is naive to the vast and horrible effects these events have on the Dread world. I experience these events the way every Dread around the world does. I feel the network of minds connected through the matriarchs. They are separate and with free will but connected and unified, though some—mostly immature youths—still act outside the network, following in the old ways of haunting humanity.

The explosion of memories, coupled with the overwhelming emotions of hundreds of thousands of Dread cut down by human ingenuity and warfare, tears me apart.

It’s no wonder the Dread would see us as a threat. We’ve been waging war on them since 1945. While test sites might be empty in our world, in the mirror world we’re wiping out entire colonies.

Like I did.

The deaths I’ve caused, even in the past hour, weigh more heavily now. But they still killed my son and still have Maya, which means I would make the same choices. That Dread bull would have done the same for his son. But would the matriarchs do the same?

The matriarchs… I only have a vague sense of what they are, and I think the word is really just a loose translation enabling me to make sense of an alien memory. I suspect the Dread mole whose tendrils now embrace my still-senseless body is one of them.

Three new memories that belong to me begin to surface. They hit me all at once, snapping back into my mind. And they change everything.