Title: Meaningless Life Author: Rachel Ehrentreu (FirePhile@aol.com) Spoilers: Movie Rating: PG-13 Keywords: Summary: Mulder POV, conscience talking. Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully, etc...belong to CC&Co, 1013 Production and FOX Television networks. Anything else I use belongs to the proper companies. No copyright infringement is intended. Author's Note: This one is for Anna...for making me think of extreme possibilities :) Please send all feedback to FirePhile@aol.com January 2, 2001 With a kiss I died. Not literally, my heart continued to beat, my mind to twist and turn and I kept living, putting one foot in front of the other. Hoping that maybe someday I might even experience joy again...and I thought I was so world weary. I had no idea how little I knew. When I close my eyes all I can see is you running. At least this last time I was able to show you what you meant to me. Then you ran...and a flash of light and then nothing. What I choose to remember is the moment of contact. Our lips pressed together, my tongue caressing yours. Your arms wrapped around me and my hands gently exploring your body. If I think hard enough I can even remember the soft sound you made as you deepened the kiss. But I view this all at a distance, a movie screen...the emotion isn't there, I can't feel it. I can't believe I thought the truth would save me...you...us. I should have remembered the advice of Deep Throat...truth without justice is a knife to the heart. Worse than meaningless. They took my sister, destroyed my father, ruined my mom, experimented on you...the only person who I ever really let into my walls...but somehow when their plan was revealed. God help me, everything that had happened seemed meaningless. It was at that moment that I felt a shift in my world view. I know you're disappointed. Hell, I'm disappointed in myself...nothing is worth what I've had to do...nothing can stop what is to come...nothing, nothing, nothing. Colonization will happen, people will die in a way that makes the bubonic plague seem like a summer cold...and there's nothing I can do or could do about it. I don't want to know the truth, I want ignorance. I want to be able to look up into the night sky without seeing the inherent dangers. We were wrong...THEY aren't the villains, the aliens are...it's hard to explain. It just makes sense suddenly...our lives are insignificant compared to the apocalypse. Yesterday was New Year's Day, 2001. The second coming didn't come...fire and brimstone didn't rain down from the heavens.... I swear some people seemed disappointed. Where does religion go from here? Where does anything? Remember that huge Y2K thing that happened before? It was fixed, not even a small glitch in the system...the experimentation continued as planned...bodies were disposed of in an orderly fashion. I never told you this, but after our trip to the arctic, Cancer Man spoke to me. He said I was worthless now...my life...our lives were in danger. It wasn't until the first serious murder attempt that I began to believe him. When I woke up in the hospital...he was standing there. Smoking a cigarette. We don't want to kill you, he'd said, your father was a great asset to the project...we'd always hoped that you'd follow in his footsteps. I told him that I'd sooner die than join him...a bit of a rip off from Star Wars, but it worked. He looked at me and said, we can arrange that. Didn't you notice how I was slightly on edge those last few weeks? Loud noises caused me to jump, I became more paranoid than usual. Bought an extra gun, stopped taking nightly runs. Then that case, your lips...love and then nothing. I wished for God to give me strength so that I could kill myself. I wanted to die...but self preservation wouldn't let me. My lack of religious fate wouldn't let me....You have to stop the future a nagging voice in my head said, you can't let them win.... I hear screams every night...each victim is melding together. Today I helped them plan the next phase...it's close, the end is near. Families, persons are meaningless when compared to the project. I see what they meant now. Perhaps this was my destiny. I killed a man today. Put a gun near his head and pulled the trigger. Not a killer, not a kidnapper...just a man who knew something. Had to be silenced they said...had to be silenced. And I followed. He couldn't have been more than 30. His eyes when I pulled out the gun...they haunt me now and have replaced yours. I wish I was cold like the rest of them...unfeeling. I'm getting closer to inhuman every day. You're the gossamer fiber between what I am and what I am becoming. My conscience. I know you don't understand, I know that learning I joined with them killed mom...but I'm doing the right thing. For us, for the future. The vaccine must be successful, people must be inhuman to save a world. It's a war...and my soul is unimportant. I can never see you again...you'll remind me too much of who I used to be.... If you ever return I want you to know that I loved you...I still do. But, I want you to move on with your life...get married, settle down, adopt a child and forget about me. I'm only a shell of what I once was...and my soul is already gone. You kept me honest for so long....then you disappeared. I stepped over the line and kept walking. I've started smoking...it relaxes me. Helps me forget what I do and why. I keep having this recurring dream. Thirty years from now I've taken over Cancer Man's spot and there's two people who keep trying to find me out...take me down. I kill both of them...turn over their bodies and see...us. It's a nightmare more frightening than any I've had over Sam...because it's true. It's so hard to keep telling myself this is the right way...it's for their own good...maybe after I send this letter it will become easier. Goodbye. M. Rachel Ehrentreu - FirePhile@aol.com http://studentweb.tulane.edu/~jstoy/rachel.html "Sure, fine, whatever." - "This is a lighthouse. Your Call." Member of EMXC, SPCDD, XFF, atxc, FT, XF...etc.