It took me basically since I started this story to come up with an edit of the final vision that fit. I rewrote it so many times!
Begin Recording
See You Standing
Recording by Scribe Ellison
One thing my fellow scribes have asked about is Mama Murphy and her 'sight.' Miss Moira Brown has also expressed great curiosity. I will try to ask, when I find her.
The children are winnowing grain today, tossing it in shallow baskets in front of a large bellows that blows away the chaff leaving the grains. The four bigger kids trade off between tossing the grain and working the bellows, keeping a rhythm with the help of Diamond City Radio blasting from a set at their feet. Shiloh points me at where she thinks Mama Murphy is today.
Mama Murphy is out behind the yellow house, under a shade with Baby Boomer and Maya in a little pen next to her, chattering away as they play with blocks and baseballs. Mama Murphy is reading to them from a prewar adventure story, but I'm not sure the little kids are paying much attention.
She looks up when I approach and smiles, her whole face wrinkling up in a way that reminds me of my own grandmother. "Good morning, Scribe. Did you come to ask about your future?"
"Well—not really but… do you know my future?" I sputter.
"Not yet, but I could look. The doc and the General worry too much but they do let me have chems from time to time." she reaches into a pocket and pulls out a dose of jet.
"Are you sure it's ok to take chems around the babies?"
"You're here to watch them."
I am, and they aren't exactly trying to escape. Baby Boomer has dozed off and Maya is building a tower of blocks with great determination. I can certainly watch them for a few minutes while Mama Murphy enjoys her jet. I've tried jet a few times; some of my friends at the Citadel swear by it for sniping. The feeling of time slowing does help, but then later when the fight is over my sense of time gets strange again and once it felt like I'd spent six hours cleaning my teeth, though my fellow initiates assured me it was only a few minutes.
Mama Murphy huffs her jet and stares into the distance, smiling beatifically. Her eyes flick back and forth like she's seeing something. After a few minutes she says, "I see you just as you are, traveling the world and learning from it. You aren't fated for great deeds but the things you learn may sway the destiny of your people. The Brotherhood of Steel is split from within and what sort of tree will grow from that crack no one yet knows."
I immediately want to ask more about the Brotherhood, then skepticism catches up with me. Everything she just said feels deep and true, but anyone could see that I enjoy my mission in the Commonwealth and it's no secret that Elder Maxson brought the people who agree with him on the Prydwen and left the people who don't at the Citadel. Not a strategy calculated to keep our order all on the same page.
So, brother and sister scribes, I did not find irrefutable evidence that Mama Murphy can see the future. It feels like she can. There is an element that cannot be conveyed merely by recording her words. But feelings are not scientific evidence.
I need more data. So I ask around at dinner when everybody is gathered by the firepit where a molerat is turning on a spit.
Sturges says, "She knew about this place, and I swear she knew which of us would survive the trek from Quincy. Just a feeling I had, that she knew most of us wouldn't make it and didn't tell because it broke her heart and she didn't want to break ours too. Mama Murphy uses all her powers whatever they may be, to help people."
Across the picnic table the General says, "She's told me things… you felt it too didn't you? It feels like she sees things but maybe it's just because she believes it."
I ask, "What's the best prediction she ever gave you?"
"Back at the time we were about to drag everybody to a peace conference, I forget exactly when, Mama Murphy came and told me she'd filched some mentats to tell me my future and did I want to hear it. I said yes because you kind of have to and she told me… what was it… I see you standing… on the edge of a knife. Surrounded by people with outstretched hands, everyone wants to take something and everyone's afraid something will be taken from them. You're the keystone that keeps it all from collapsing.
"Then she was quiet for a minute, looking into space the way she does like she's watching something in the distance. Then she said, And I see you standing with… the people. All the people, who don't have to be afraid anymore because of you. Because of that, they're yours. But you don't hold them, so they're free to build their own futures. Then she squished up her eyes and seemed to be straining to see more. I started to tell her that was enough but she had one more prophecy: It's going to feel like you couldn't save him, but you did. And the hair on my neck stood up but I made some joke about how I'd rather have a tall dark stranger in my future."
A little stunned I say, "That is so spooky!"
"It really was. But other than the flowery language it's nothing she couldn't have guessed. But it all came true."
