-------------------------------------------------------------

They slept on a massive but tattered tapestry until dawn, 
when they emerged from tranquility of the chapel into the 
nave of the great old cathedral.  Their steps disturbed a 
flock of gray-white birds, who rose with a sudden flurry of 
wings and creeling out a gaping hole in the cathedral roof.  
The broken west towers were clearly visible through the 
breach, lavender with the dawn light, jagged with 
destruction.

"Come with me, I want to show you something," she said, 
walking down the length of the nave toward the center.  She 
waited, before a darkened window, for the sun to rise and 
reveal the image.  Slowly, the shades of blue emerged, white 
flecks scattered around darker spheres.  A thin white line 
traced a figure eight around two of the spheres.  Most of the 
windows had been destroyed by the explosions which had carved 
up the west end of the cathedral, leaving only a ring of 
brightly colored teeth in the mouths of their frames, but 
this one was nearly intact.

"My mother would have loved this," David mused, watching the 
colors brighten and mature with the rising sun.  He swiveled 
slowly, taking in as much of the vision of the remaining 
windows as possible.  A spill of colored light across the 
floor enticed him toward the crossing in the great old 
building's center.  Turning toward the south he gazed up at 
the huge and intricate rosette, three-fourths complete.  
Toward the east, the walls rose in an immense frieze of 
carved figures, rising several times the height of a tall 
man.  He wandered, fascinated, investigating secluded chapels 
that had seemed ominous last night, by the thin white light 
of their lanterns.  The roof had collapsed in on some, but he 
entered the first that he found whole, surprised to find 
everything within scaled to the size of a small child.  
Everything that was not destroyed was ornate, the detail 
speaking to him of the dedication of the ancient artists.  He 
was solemn when he completed his circuit, returning to the 
blue window.

"I can remember that I didn't see my father as much as I 
wanted to when I was a child," she said when he returned, as 
though continuing an existing conversation.  "He was in the 
Navy, which meant he traveled on long sea voyages, leaving us 
home until he returned.  I always missed him.  He always left 
again too soon."  She pointed to a tiny sliver of white in 
the blue window.  "But on one of his shore leaves, he brought 
my whole family here, to see that.  Do you know what it is?"

David shook his head, unwilling to disturb her expansive mood 
by speaking.

"It's a little bit of the moon.  I was five years old when 
the journey was made.  The window was commissioned to 
commemorate the achievement.  It wasn't about bringing back 
rocks, though, not really."  She finally turned from the view 
and focused on David.  "Everyone felt a connection to the 
journey, a pride in having done something once thought 
impossible.  An optimism about the greater things to come.  
For a while, it unified people in a way that had never 
happened before."  She paused, uncertain how to introduce her 
premonition.    "Something is coming, David.  I don't know 
what, but I think that kind of unity will be needed if we're 
to prevail.  That calls for leadership, charisma, dedication.  
Do you think you're ready?"

"Ready?" he repeated, puzzled.

"To lead," she reiterated.

"I'm just a med student, Dr. Charles," he protested, 
uncertain what he was being asked to do. 

"You're a man of your time, David.  And I -- I am not.  When 
the time comes, it will be your words, not mine, that 
convince people."  She studied his face, searching for an 
indication that he would equal the task, seeing him anew for 
the first time in many months.  "You have his eyes," she 
concluded cryptically.

"Whose?" 

But instead of answering, she inclined her head toward the 
sagging western doors of the cathedral, gesturing that it was 
time to leave.  "We have a trip to take, David.  And then, I 
have a long story to tell you."

-------------------------------------------------------------

Nana greeted the weary travelers in the time honored way of 
grandmothers everywhere.  She parked them at the kitchen 
table, and piled mountains of food in front of them.

They had returned home from Washington only long enough for 
Dr. Charles to prepare properly for an extended absence, and 
were back on the tube west the same day.  She had wanted to 
head directly to Seattle, to the old estate she had kept when 
she was known as Samantha Luder, but in the end, David 
convinced her that the day would be too far spent to get 
anything useful done. Instead, they determined to spend the 
night with David's grandmother.

Now they were sprawled about the rustically furnished living 
room, overstuffed and lethargic.  In spite of the generous 
fire crackling in the stone fireplace that was the heart of 
the room, Scully shivered a little.  "Digesting," she told 
herself, sinking deeper into the massive chair, and wrapping 
her arms tightly around herself.  Something delicate and warm 
brushed against her right arm, and she looked up, surprised 
to find Nana bending over her with a soft woolen throw.  Nana 
smiled at her a little bit shyly, and wrapped the blanket 
around her small form.  

"You shouldn't color your hair, child," she said gently.

David was lying supine in front of the hearth, ankles 
crossed, one arm thrown behind him, bent and pillowing his 
head.  Without opening his weary eyes, he snorted.  "Dr. 
Charles doesn't color her hair, Nana," he asserted.  

"I think I know a little more about fibers and dyes than you, 
sprout," she corrected.  Turning back, she commented, "You'd 
have a lovely shade of red, I think, if you didn't cover it 
with the gray.  Is it so important for professors to look 
severe?"

"Something like that," she concurred, cautiously.

David rolled to his side, propping his head on his fist.  
"You color your hair?" he asked, surprised.

"I'd look about 35 if I didn't, David," she said.  "Hardly a 
convincing appearance for someone with my body of work."

"A blessing, to keep a youthful appearance," Nana insisted, 
gently touching the deep lines in her own soft and aged face.

"A curse to keep it too long," Scully murmured.

Nana stilled, sensing anguish behind the casual words.  
Quietly she offered, "Sometimes it helps to talk about it."

Scully was enticed by the compassionate expression on Nana's 
face, but still uncertain whether it would be safe to take 
yet another person, this one a near total stranger, into her 
confidence.  She looked over toward David, who was trying 
hard to maintain his dispassionate expression, but his eyes 
were flicking rapidly between herself and the other woman, 
clearly broadcasting his hope that she would be taken into 
trust.  It had to begin somewhere.  If he was ordained to be 
her ally, she swiftly decided to trust those closest to him.

"I hardly know where to begin," she started.

David sat up, crossing his legs, turning his back to the 
fire, and his full attention to the forthcoming tale.

"I often find the beginning is a good choice," Nana said 
kindly, settling herself into the matching chair across from 
Scully.

"The beginning," Scully repeated, smiling wanly.  Nana 
nodded, encouraging.  "The beginning is February 23, 1964.  
My birthday."

Nana gasped, astonished by the remarkable claim.

"It's true," David said quietly.

Nana nodded, accepting the claim for now.  She trusted her 
grandson.

They sat patiently, silently, waiting while Scully tried to 
collect and organize her thoughts.  It was a long and 
convoluted tale, and would be difficult to tell in a way that 
would come across as relevant to her modern audience.  She 
was unaware how seamlessly she had readopted her old habit of 
worrying the tiny cross between her thumb and forefinger, 
until David pointed and asked, "Why don't you tell us about 
that?"

"The cross?" she asked, dropping her hand to her lap.

"Yeah.  Do you know about that place in the mountains where 
Jerry and I found it?  What was that word we saw," he asked, 
furrowing his brow to remember.  "NORAD?"

She shuddered slightly, remembering the horror of the end 
days of the wars.  It was as good a place to start as any.

"NORAD.  Originally it was a military installation, built 
deep in the mountain to withstand the possibility of a 
nuclear blast.  Built for a time when we were still fighting 
each other."  She shook her head.  "It would have been 
considered ironic, the diversity of the people who took 
shelter there, in the end.  But it was hidden, and 
defensible, and the core of the resistance dwelled there for 
nearly a year."

"Resistance?" David asked.  "The Grays were fighting each 
other, though.  The human loss was incidental, wasn't it?  
What was there to resist?"

Scully sighed deeply.  "That's what you've always been 
taught, I know, but it's just not accurate.  Remember the 
photos I showed you?"  She paused, while David nodded darkly.  
"What do you think killed all those people?"

"Exposure to an alien pathogen," he replied.  "We studied 
similar historical cases in school, where previously isolated 
populations were brought together, and one lacked an immunity 
to the common pathogens of the other."  He paused to recall 
the details of the lesson.  "Native peoples of Central 
America, when the Europeans first came," he concluded.

"It would be comforting to believe that," she conceded.  "No 
one bears culpability, then.  But the pathogen's spread 
wasn't accidental, it was deliberate.  And it wasn't natural, 
it was engineered."  She sighed.  "We tried so hard to 
prevent it."

"I don't understand," David said, puzzled.  "Who would 
engineer something like that.  And why?"

"The aliens were here at least 50 years before the wars 
began," she explained.  "Maybe longer.  Very few people were 
aware of that fact.  In the entire world population, fewer 
than 100 people were fully informed.  Perhaps 1000 were 
peripherally involved in projects relating to the alien 
presence, but with only limited information.  There were 
others who believed that visitors were among us, but any 
proof was zealously protected.  Most of the believers were 
dismissed as benign lunatics.  Except one.  He was a 
believer, and a brilliant investigator, and singularly 
driven.  Anyone else who came as close to the truth as he did 
would surely have been executed, but he was protected in 
deference to his father, who was among the privileged few 
that knew the truth.  And those few had brokered a deal with 
the aliens."  Her face darkened, the betrayal one memory that 
had remained fresh and sharp through the years.  "They would 
aid them in securing the planet for their own use, developing 
a pathogen and a delivery system that would wipe out most of 
the human population.  In exchange, they and their families 
would be allowed to survive.  And in order to ensure that 
survival, they were willing to undergo a radical form of gene 
therapy, essentially being hybridized with the aliens 
sufficiently to become immune to their pathology, their 
biology...  and rendering them defenseless in every other 
way.  Though they would survive, it would be as a slave race, 
servicing the needs of the Grays.  The deal bought them time.  
The hybridization program required years of research.  
Genetic science was in its infancy, then."

A log, nearly consumed by the fire, settled in the hearth 
with a soft thud, throwing up a brief glowing cloud of 
cinders.  It seemed an apt punctuation to the strange tale.  
David turned and kneeled in front of the opening, adding two 
more heavy logs to the bed of glowing coals.  When he turned 
back, Scully continued her story.

"Circles within circles, though.  Among the conspirators, a 
few believed resistance was possible.  Using the same genetic 
material the Grays had provided for the hybridization 
program, a smaller group secretly began work on a vaccine, 
hoping to save themselves, and depending upon their nobility, 
some greater or lesser portion of the population."  She 
paused, pulling the wool blanket more tightly around her.  
"You can't imagine how it was.  Human subjects were needed 
for the experimentation, and they were taken at will, in any 
number of ways.  Some were simply imprisoned.  Others were 
abducted from their homes, either by human doctors performing 
experiments, or by the aliens, reviewing the progress of the 
program.  For some, attempts were made to wipe their memory 
of the experience, a procedure that was rarely entirely 
successful.  The tests were horrifying.  The memories usually 
broke through in bits and pieces, leaving people suffering 
all manner of psychological trauma, which was worsened by the 
fact that they were rarely believed."  Her knuckles whitened 
where they gripped the blanket.  "I was abducted.  Twice.  
Medical procedures were performed on me that gave me cancer, 
and nearly left me barren.  I was implanted with a device 
that mitigated the disease, but left me susceptible to homing 
signals from the aliens.  The calls were impossible to 
resist.  But in the course of events both Mulder and I were 
exposed to both the alien virus, and the vaccine.  And most 
of the people alive today owe their existence to that fact."

"Who was Mulder?" David asked.

"He was the one who believed, years before the knowledge 
became common.  And he was the heart of the resistance.  
There were events that weren't clear to us then, that I still 
don't understand, even now.  As far as we could tell, the 
alien wars weren't between two groups of Grays, as you've 
always been taught.  They were between the Grays and another 
species.  We're not sure who they were, but they had their 
own defense against infection.  They appeared to us with 
mutilated faces, all the orifices fused and closed.  And they 
began systematically destroying everything that had been 
built in conspiracy with the Grays.  Abductees were gathered 
and killed in terrible conflagrations.  Eventually, many of 
the conspirators were destroyed in the same fashion.  We who 
knew of them didn't know their motivation.  They were clearly 
at odds with the Grays, but it wasn't clear if that made them 
our allies, or not.  What gradually did become clear was that 
the threat was not ended with the Consortium's destruction.  
The mechanism of humanity's elimination remained.  And that 
power to use it was now in the hands of renegade Consortium 
survivors.  So we began to engineer a defense.  It required 
every bit as much secrecy and misdirection as the original 
conspirators had practiced.  Mulder was a man dedicated to 
the truth.  I don't think he ever reconciled himself 
completely to the necessity."

"What did you do?"

"I was a Doctor," she stated, shrugging slightly.  "Mulder 
and I carried an immunity to the alien virus because we had 
each been exposed to the vaccine.  I didn't have the luxury 
of studying the alien genetic material that the conspirators 
had enjoyed, but we studied ourselves.  With the Consortium 
in shambles, some of the surviving members switched 
allegiance, and provided us with enough of the original 
research to allow us to make sense of the mechanism of our 
immunity.  And so we began to engineer delivery systems.  
They were crude, at first.  Initially we used simple virus as 
hosts for the genetic components of the vaccine, but 
delivering them was problematic.  We had a few allies in the 
medical community who were willing to inoculate patients 
without their knowledge, but we were reaching too few people.   
Creating a successful bacteriological vector was a huge leap 
forward.  The bacteria were hardier, and more heavily 
engineered.  What was important was that they could contain 
and protect their payload, and survive for an extended period 
of time in a nutrient solution.  We set to work contaminating 
the fluid supply of the country, as much as we were able.  
Milk, juice, sugary drinks.  We needed agents to act on our 
behalf delivering the bacterial solution.  We found them in 
organizations of abductees.  These people came from all walks 
of life, and over the years they had discovered one another, 
forming loose assemblies to share information and support 
each other.  They became our footsoldiers.  The fluid program 
was more successful in reaching a wider population, but it 
was harder to maintain secrecy.  If the contaminated fluid 
wasn't used reasonably quickly, the bacteria eventually 
caused noticeable spoilage.  Back then, the government had 
agencies dedicated to preserving the public safety by 
regulating food and drugs, and their suspicions were aroused.  
It didn't help that the vaccine was itself fatal to about six 
percent of the people exposed."  Scully frowned, her lips 
thinning, and a deep crease bisecting her brow.  "I know we 
saved more than we killed, but I always felt responsible for 
those deaths.  I had a friend, a woman, who was caught 
introducing the vaccine into milk as it left a pasteurizing 
plant.  She kept the secret, even though she was branded a 
sociopath.  She was killed in prison."  Scully sighed, and 
shifted her position before continuing.  "We were collecting 
a distressing amount of blood on our hands, and we were still 
only reaching North America and western Europe in any great 
proportion.  We still needed a more universal vector.  In the 
end, we followed the lead of our enemies.  They had 
engineered bees to carry the pathogen.  Bees were too complex 
for me then."  

David shook his head, unable to comprehend Dr. Charles, or 
the renowned Dr. Luder, confounded by the genetic structure 
of a bee.

"Mosquitoes were simple enough, though.  We engineered 
mosquitoes to carry the antigen.  And we were beginning to 
make real inroads, globally, when everything went to hell."   

"What happened?" David gasped.

"Someone began releasing the bees.  We never knew who, or by 
what timetable they were working, but survival became a race.  
The attacks were intermittent at first, and began in the less 
industrialized countries.  Unfortunately, that was the very 
place we'd had the least impact upon, and the losses were 
huge.  The media reported, and other countries sent aid, and 
at first, no one panicked.  But Mulder and I knew what we 
were seeing, and we knew we were running out of time.  By the 
time the attacks started in the US, there weren't many 
secrets left anymore.  There were those in government and in 
the military who already had some inkling of the alien 
presence, and the growing incidence of unidentified airships 
hovering over the areas of outbreak left them little doubt.  
They also began to notice when some populations survived the 
bee attacks better than others.  It didn't take them long to 
draw the conclusion that someone had a vaccine, and from then 
it was just a matter of time until Mulder and I were captured 
and detained."

"They arrested you for *curing* people?" David asked, aghast.

"It wasn't that so much as that they wanted to ensure their 
own survival.  We were collected and promised protection, if 
we agreed to inoculate the men of power, their families, and 
their armies.  We agreed, on the condition that they continue 
to support our dissemination efforts.  We finally had an ally 
with some power.  Unfortunately, our military were not the 
only observers of the bees' ineffectiveness.  Once the aliens 
began to notice the inconsistencies in the death toll, the 
war transformed from biological to military.  After a swarm 
left a community, the aliens would arrive, and if too many 
people remained alive, they began shooting.  Those who were 
immune became soldiers, to a man, and the military did its 
best to train them and defend them.  But I don't believe 
their valiance alone saved them.  The aliens were regularly 
beset by attacks from the faceless rebels, and in the end I 
think fighting two races at once was a war they couldn't 
win."

She fingered the cross again.  "This was mine.  It always 
comes back to me," she said, holding it out to catch the 
light.  "The first time I was abducted, Mulder kept it, a 
talisman to ensure my return.  He gave it back to me when I 
awoke from my coma."  She dropped her hands and stared deeply 
into the fire.  "Once, we separated while he went to 
investigate a crashed ship.  I gave it to him to wear, as a 
promise to return.  It was months before he came back to me.  
And although I thought myself barren, I gave birth to his 
daughter while he was missing. Emily Samantha Mulder."  Even 
now the recollection was accompanied by a squeezing, leaden 
weight on her chest, and she stared at the ceiling to stave 
off the prickly sting of tears.  She took a rattling, shaky 
breath and pressed onward.  "But he did come back.  Damaged 
and nearly unrecognizable, but wearing this cross.  And at 
the end of a long, slow recovery, he gave it back to me, 
again."  She smiled, a tight, small twist of lips forced 
through painful remembrance.  "The last time I lost this we 
were at NORAD.  The fighting had become grim, and we 
sheltered there with military and government personnel, and 
their families.  Emily was five years old.  She didn't really 
remember any other world.  She played hide and seek with the 
General's granddaughter in the war room."  The memory made 
her smile, more genuinely this time.  "I had a lab, deep in 
the mountain, where we were raising up mosquitoes as fast as 
we could, every generation a heartier strain than the last.  
We'd cleared the baffles from an airway, and we released 
swarms up the shaft, as often as we had a moonless night.  
One night, I heard a commotion inside the mountain.  
Shouting, and gunfire.  The aliens had finally come for the 
stronghold.  Mulder came running in, with Emily under one 
arm, and two soldiers right behind him.  They were evacuating 
the mountain, but my lab was too deep in the mountain to 
reach any of the escape passageways without passing through 
the fighting.  It was still relatively quiet in the lab, but 
the din was getting closer by the minute.  I'd just released 
the latest swarm, and as they buzzed up the shaft, I realized 
that was our only way out.  Emily was screaming for me, so I 
grabbed her, told her to hold on, and started climbing.  
Mulder came right behind me, and then the two soldiers.  We 
were close to the top when I heard one of the soldiers 
yelling.  I looked back down the shaft, and Mulder yelled at 
us to hurry, climb faster, there was a Gray starting up the 
shaft.  Emily panicked, and started squeezing me around the 
neck so tightly I couldn't breathe to climb.  I had to 
forcibly loosen her grip, and when I did, the cross came 
loose in her hands, and fell down the shaft.  I heard a 
gunshot, and the soldier's scream, and then we were out.  
Above us, there was a ferocious air battle going on, the 
first I had seen in person.  Two enormous round ships 
blackened the sky above the mountain, while about 20 smaller, 
triangular ships darted and retreated around them.  They were 
firing energy weapons of some kind at one another.  The sky 
was lit as bright as day, and the air crackled with ozone, 
like during a lightning storm.  It smelled like summer, and 
like death.  We put our heads down and ran into the forest.  
I don't think we knew where we were going, except away from 
the light.  We made feverish plans that night, hunkered down 
in a tight crevice in the rocks, deep in the woods.  Plans 
about where we would hide, and how we would live, now that 
the end seemed to have come.  But the next day, the fighting 
stopped.  And it didn't start up again that night, or the 
next day, or the next week, or the next month.  We didn't 
trust the respite, and felt driven to keep moving, as though 
we were hunted.  We traveled as far north and west as we 
could go, until we finally reached the Pacific Ocean, and 
were forced to stop.  We lived there for years, as discreetly 
and self-sufficiently as we could.  Finally, though, it was 
Emily's need for peers that drew us back into the population.  
The relocation was beginning, and a few small coastal towns 
were actually somewhat livable.    The adults lived in a daze 
of guilt and loss, for the most part, cleaving together in a 
union of mourning.  But hope and optimism thrive in youth, 
whatever the situation, and we took what joy we could in 
watching them build for the future."

"What happened to your daughter?" Nana asked quietly.

Scully shrugged.  "I'm not sure.  Mulder would tell me I 
hadn't aged a day, and I would tell myself how lucky I was to 
have someone who saw me that way.  But it hurt, surviving 
him.  When Emily began to look older than me, I could no 
longer deny that I'd been changed, somehow.  I watched 
Emily's children, my grandchildren, grow to adulthood, and 
bear their first children, and still I looked thirty-five.  
And then one day, I knew Emily would be passing soon.  I 
don't know how I knew, but I was certain.  And I found I 
couldn't be there to watch it.  So I left.  I wandered for 
years, trying to avoid making any new ties to people I would 
outlive.  Trying to find ways to forget those that I missed.  
Trying so very hard to die."

Nana leaned forward, closing the space between them, 
compassionately clasping her knee with a wizened old hand.

"It took me a very long time to decide to live again.  But 
when I couldn't find a way to die, I concluded my life must 
be some sort of miracle.  And those are not meant to be 
squandered."

"Don't you have *any* idea about the mechanics of your 
longevity, though?" asked David.  "Surely you've studied 
yourself."

She felt a tug of fondness for her empiricist pupil.  "It's 
why I came back to science," she concurred.  "But I found 
nothing that science can explain.  And so I've come to 
believe that there are other planes of existence besides this 
one.  I believe our science explains only this world.  And 
while I have no doubt that another science explains the next 
world, we know nothing of it.  Maybe when those worlds 
intersect, that's when a miracle happens."  Her face 
darkened, slightly.  "We're not meant to live this long, 
though.  Our minds don't have the capacity for multiple 
lifetimes of memories.  It's why I've chosen the names I've 
taken, to help me remember people who were dear to me.  
Margaret Williams.  Margaret was my mother.  My father and my 
older brother were both Williams.  Samantha Luder.  Samantha 
was Mulder's sister that he lost as a child.  Luder was a pen 
name he used to write under.  Melissa Charles.  Melissa was 
my sister.  Charles was my baby brother.  Their names are all 
I remember, though.  I can't recall their faces anymore."

"All those papers you have," David protested.  "You don't 
have a picture of any of them?"

"It's hard to explain," she sighed.  "Have you ever said a 
word so many times that it stopped making sense?" she asked.  
David nodded.  "Looking at the photographs became like that.  
I would stare at the image, but it had become abstract, and 
the struggle to make sense of it became torturous.  I 
remember the idea of Mulder, the things he did, and that I 
loved him, but I don't know what that means anymore.  I come 
closest to remembering when I play baseball."

"Thank you for sharing that with me, Dr. Charles" David said 
solemnly, suddenly realizing the depth of the gift she had 
given him.

"I think I'd like you to call me Scully, when we're alone," 
she said thoughtfully.  "I miss my old name.  And you're 
welcome, David," she added, stifling a jaw cracking yawn.

"We can hear the rest of the story in the morning," Nana 
said, as she rose from her chair, and crossed the room to 
bank the fire.  "David, your guest is tired," she scolded 
gently.  "Go get some more bedding to make up the sofa here, 
and let her get some rest.  Jerry, would you mind terribly 
sharing a room with David tonight?" she asked.  "And don't 
the two of you stay up all night talking," she continued her 
matronly bullying.   For just a moment, Scully marveled that 
she could still feel mothered by someone at least 100 years 
her junior.