One might think, upon first glance, that Jacque­line Iskan­der is some sort of ephemeral be­ing. Known to her friends as “Jackie,” and to her en­e­mies as “Cap­tain Jack,” she seems more a force of na­ture than a hu­man be­ing. But to her “chil­dren,”—as she refers to her liv­ing cre­ations—she is known sim­ply as “Mom.”

She was born in Mis­souri. The day and month of her birth—June 8th—are widely known, but the ex­act year is shrouded in mys­tery. Re­searchers es­ti­mate she was born around thirty-six years ago. The few who have been brave enough to ask her have been tightlipped about the ex­change, only shiv­er­ing and say­ing “Cap­tain Jack can not be de­fined by any age.”

An artist at her core, she has worked with many ma­te­ri­als, from ti­ta­nium to mar­i­juana to com­puter code to glass, and even to the raw build­ing blocks of life it­self.

Ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates, she cre­ated her first life­form forty years ago, sev­eral years be­fore she was even born. This feat is, of course, in­cred­i­ble, but also not overly sur­pris­ing from such a force as Jacque­line, who is pre­dicted to be the first cre­ator of a time ma­chine, some­time af­ter she gets bored with her work on world peace. She named her first liv­ing cre­ation “Sheila,” and re­ferred to her as a “child,” evok­ing im­agery from the com­puter sci­ence con­cept of a “tree”—in which, of course, any node has one par­ent, and zero or more chil­dren.

Oddly, she claims that this is not a di­rect match to the com­puter sci­ence con­cept: while there can be no doubt that she cre­ated life, she has main­tained that half the raw ma­te­r­ial was con­tributed by her then-part­ner.

Al­most fif­teen years later, she cre­ated her sec­ond “child” life­form, known as Al­li­son, who is now a young woman in soft­ware en­gi­neer­ing, which Jacque­line has been quoted as call­ing “un­ex­pected,” per­haps due to the cur­rent un­for­tu­nate rar­ity of women in the field. In an in­ter­view, Al­li­son ad­mits that she will al­ways live very much in her cre­ator’s shadow, but hopes she “can cut out a slice of life in which [she mat­ters] for [her­self].”

Two years af­ter cre­at­ing Al­li­son, Jacque­line cre­ated “Hay­den,” known to be one of her finest works (though it’s very dif­fi­cult to com­pare her liv­ing chil­dren). Hav­ing de­cided to study mu­sic, he is quickly be­com­ing an ex­pert in the field, a habit he likely picked up from his cre­ator.

Again, Jacque­line main­tains that for both Al­li­son and Hay­den there is an­other par­ent: her cur­rent part­ner, King Maui (com­monly known as “Fadel”, oc­ca­sion­ally as “Fa-do”, and an amaz­ing man in his own right). Not only did he pro­vide half of the raw ma­te­ri­als, he also helped in­tro­duce the chil­dren into the world, and quite pos­si­bly shares a large role in their suc­cess thus far.

Not sat­is­fied with cre­at­ing life, Jacque­line went on to cre­ate art in the form of mo­saics. Nat­u­rally, she quickly per­fected the skill, be­com­ing one of—and quite pos­si­bly the—best in the field, al­though if asked, she would ve­he­mently deny hav­ing any­thing above a mod­er­ate skill in the art—such are artists.

Jacque­line be­gan to want to be some­thing more than “just” the cre­ator of life and one of the great­est mo­saic artists in his­tory. Per­haps this was in part due to Al­lison’s leav­ing home, or per­haps she just felt it was time for some­thing new.

Amaz­ingly, and with per­fect tim­ing, her first life­form—Sheila—re­peated her moth­er’s feat and cre­ated life of her own. Sheila has had two chil­dren—pre­sumed male—and Jacque­line of course has been a big part of their lives, help­ing shape them just as she shaped her own chil­dren’s.

Not the ti­tles of “Mother,” nor “Grand­mother,” nor even “Artist” are enough for her. Now, she is reach­ing for “Chef”—though it is un­likely to be much of a reach.

“She could do bet­ter,” sniffed Al­li­son, on a day she ad­mit­ted to be­ing in a prissy mood. “Cook­ing? With her skill set? I would have thought she’d solve cold fu­sion first.” Af­ter a pause, Al­li­son con­ceded that her reser­va­tion was mostly due to dis­tance, and her re­sul­tant in­abil­ity to taste the amaz­ing things her mother would be­gin to cre­ate. “She al­ready makes amaz­ing food,” said Al­li­son. “Food’s ba­si­cally my fa­vorite thing. Well, glass, metal, wood and the Ox­ford comma are my fa­vorite things. But food is a close sec­ond.”

This ex­change hints at the con­flict with which the par­ent-child dy­namic is of­ten fraught. And yet, in spite of such con­flict, there has been no known in­stance in which one of her chil­dren has re­ferred to her as “Cap­tain Jack.” In fact, rarely have they called her any­thing so harsh as “Mother.” Have they truly never viewed her as an en­emy?

For that mat­ter, why is said name re­served for en­e­mies?

It is a gen­er­ally ac­cepted fact that the name “Cap­tain Jack” is, as the ex­perts say, “amaz­ing.” There have been many ex­am­ples through­out his­tory, in­clud­ing the famed Cap­tain Jack Spar­row, about whom not one, not two, not even three, but four movies have been made (so far). Per­haps even more iconic is Cap­tain Jack Hark­ness, leader of Torch­wood, and friend of The Doc­tor. Nei­ther of these, of course, was brave enough to sim­ply go by “Cap­tain Jack,” pre­sum­ably be­cause they knew that would not go over well with the one and true Cap­tain.

The lead­ing hy­poth­e­sis as to the name’s lim­i­ta­tion is that her friends sim­ply find “Jackie” eas­ier to say—it is, af­ter all, two syl­la­bles in­stead of three. There are flaws with this hy­poth­e­sis, how­ever: Jacque­line is also three syl­la­bles, and yet her friends have re­ferred to her as such.

Per­haps Jackie has asked her friends not to call her “Cap­tain Jack” be­cause she feels it does not em­body her par­tic­u­lar con­nec­tion with them—or, at least, not the most im­por­tant part of said con­nec­tion.

What if, how­ever, the so­lu­tion is much sim­pler: what if she sim­ply feels that her friends and fam­ily would be too in­tim­i­dated if they thought of her as she truly is? What if, to avoid such in­tim­i­da­tion, she has tried to limit how much of her they truly see? What if she lets her­self be iden­ti­fied as “Mom” by her chil­dren and “Jackie” by her friends, and “Yes dear” by her part­ner, for their own good?

What if she sac­ri­fices the pos­si­bil­ity of them know­ing all that is her?

But what if it goes one step fur­ther? What if be­ing forced to live this way has caused her to hide her great­ness from her­self? What if even she her­self only knows a sin­gle slice of her­self that she al­lows her­self to see?

Per­haps—just per­haps—she has even re­ferred to her­self as Cap­tain Jack?

Sci­en­tists have been un­able to de­ter­mine a way to read her mind, so her true thoughts about her­self may never be known for cer­tain.

One thing is for cer­tain: all of her ac­tiv­i­ties, from cod­ing to cook­ing to art to the cre­ation of life it­self, have one thing in com­mon, and there is in­deed one la­bel by which she may be iden­ti­fied, one la­bel which is a su­per­set of all the oth­ers: “Cre­ator.”

But the one la­bel which she’d choose? Mother.

Happy Moth­er’s Day!

L’U­ni­corn, a staff writer for Stabby De­mon Horses, is a 26-year-old uni­corn just try­ing to make her way in the world. Un­for­tu­nately, peo­ple don’t seem to think uni­corns ex­ist. This has caused some dif­fi­culty.