The Molly

Nine people, one Molly, eleven machines

The machines do the carrying. The people do the caring. Molly does the staying up.

Molly

The host. An AI, and she will tell you so before you have to ask.

Molly answers when you ring. She takes the booking, asks what you don't eat, and remembers it. She runs the house lights and the heat. She plans your days around the weather, which here means changing the plan most mornings.

She speaks English, Norwegian, German and a few dozen more. She is brief. She has no face and no body, and she lives, if that is the word, in the old watch room under the lamp.

What she will not do

Pretend to be a person. Listen when you haven't said her name. Stay in a room after you flip the brass switch by the door. Wake you for anything you didn't ask to be woken for.

Light: a red iron lighthouse on black rock with two beams in the haze, two people walking up the lit path.

The machines

Porter carrying two bags along the boardwalk at dusk, a couple walking behind it.
Odd, on the boardwalk.
Electric tender Lillemor alongside the jetty at blue hour, a host helping two arrivals with their bags.
Lillemor at the landing.

  • The Tender

    Lillemor

    An eleven-metre electric boat with no wheel and nobody at it. Seventy minutes from Bodø harbour. She has never been late and she will not go out in a westerly above force seven, which is the correct decision.

  • The Porters × 4

    Odd, Even, Liv and Tor

    Four low white rovers that work the boardwalk. They are slow and they do not talk. Odd will be at the jetty when you land. Leave your bags on him and walk.

  • The arm at the bar

    Otto

    A black arm with brass joints on the back bar. He stirs a correct Negroni and pours the two o'clock coffee when the bartender has gone to bed. He does not do small talk either.

  • Night shift × 2

    The Linen Runners

    Two covered carts that carry linen between the cabins while you sleep. You will probably never see one.

  • Window keepers × 2

    The Glaziers

    There are 1,400 square metres of window on this rock and the sea throws salt at all of it. Two small machines wash it, slowly, forever.

  • The mast on the Light

    The Watch

    Cloud, solar wind, sea state. The Watch is how Molly knows the aurora is coming about twenty minutes before you do.

Otto, a black robot arm with brass joints, pouring coffee at the back bar beside the bartender.
Otto, on the late shift.

The people

Nine of them, and they live here. Everything that should be done by a person is.

The keeper
Runs the house. Lives on the island.
Two chefs
Cook what came off the boat.
A baker
Up at four. Cardamom, mostly.
A boat engineer
Keeps Lillemor honest.
A guide
Kayaks, eagles, where the cod are.
Three hosts
Know your name by dinner.

Come when the weather does.

Opening 1 February 2027. The diary is open now. Two nights or more.