Zone of No Signal by Branwell Rating: G Category: V, A, Post-Requiem Spoilers: Maybe for Season 8. "Closure" and "Requiem" for sure Summary: Scully prepares herself for her double mission.

 

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*Destructive Interference*
"Sound moves in waves. A trough is called a rarefaction; a
crest is called a compression. A particular location along
a medium may experience the interference of a compression
and rarefaction from different sources. The two sound waves
cancel each other out, and no sound is heard. Once the two
pulses pass through each other, there is still a crest and
a trough heading in the same direction they were heading
before interference." --"The Physics of Sound for High
School Students"

During her residency, Scully stood unmoved during
postmortems that crumpled her colleagues to the chilly,
concrete floors. "Don't lock your knees next time," she'd
advise them, with a sympathetic, but superior smile. "It
interferes with circulation." Now she felt like a fool. It
was ridiculous for any healthy, pregnant woman to faint,
much less a doctor with her background. She had to devise a
diet and exercise program that would put a stop to this
foolish weakness.

She had still been in the hospital, waiting for the results
of a CAT scan, when Skinner informed her that he'd be
assigning another agent to the X-Files. "Just until we find
him," he hastened to explain. "We'll need all the help we
can get to find him."

Scully agreed, but how would she know help when she saw it?
There was no one she could trust, not even Skinner. There
was no reason to think an agent of his choice would be any
more reliable than Spender, Fowley, or Krycek had been. She
had to be on her guard. Any weakness at all could be fatal
to both her and Mulder. And to their child.

But there was no point in dwelling on what couldn't be
helped. The first step was to stabilize her blood sugar
levels.

Mixed raw nuts for trace elements, protein and
monosaturated fat. Granola for fibre and fortified
vitamins. Yogurt for calcium. Broccoli for folic acid. The
list grew in neat columns on a yellow legal pad. Dried
fruits for iron. But what if green, acidic blood wasn't
based on iron?

She instantly banished the thought to the vacuum bubble of
thoughts that she refused to think about. First things
first. "Grocery shopping," she wrote on the second page of
the pad. "Read Doggett's file," she wrote under it.

Frohike had delivered the grubby folder to her apartment
yesterday. Whoever Agent Doggett really represented, he'd
be amazed at the extensive dossier the Lone Gunmen had
assembled on him from on-line sources.

Tomorrow she would meet Doggett for the first time. Data
was valuable. Knowledge was power. She still believed that.
Mulder had broadened her vision and taught her that
knowledge came in many forms. She hadn't dismissed reason
and science-just learned to supplement them.

This time it was reason that would save them. If she lost
herself in her feelings about Mulder and what might be
happening to him right now . . . . Scully bent over and put
her head down close to her knees.

No. No. No. Grocery shopping. Then read Doggett's file.

She stood up carefully and stretched. A quick exercise
routine restored her circulation to its normal state. She
went to the bedroom to get her purse.

*Boundary Behavior*
"The behavior of a wave when it reaches the end of a medium
is called boundary behavior. If a wave is moving toward a
fixed end boundary, the reflected wave is inverted. When a
wave moves toward a free end, inversion is not observed. A
crest that reaches a free end returns as a crest after
reflection; a trough returns as a trough." --"The Physics
of Sound for High School Students"

As she checked her reflection she felt the sickening jolt
that hit her every time she looked into a mirror. Her gold
cross was gone. She'd given it to Mulder and Mulder was
gone.

There was no limit to the horrors she could visualize
happening to Mulder. Death. Death would be the easy way out
for him. She should have let him die after that inhuman
brain surgery. It would have been kinder.

But then there would have been no child. How her heart had
bounded with the happiness of carrying a child in the midst
of her misery at learning Mulder's fate.

It was too much to absorb. She dreaded the end of the
numbness. Soon there would be hard facts about her
pregnancy that would lead to hard choices.

She knew where to go for early tests on her own blood.
There were methods of isolating miniscule numbers of fetal
cells for DNA analysis that worked as early as eight weeks
into gestation. Clinical trials were still going on, but
the results would prepare her for an unfavorable outcome
from chorionic villi sampling. She would abort if she
carried anything other a fully human child. There would be
no more Emilys, born for short lives of suffering, if she
could help it. There would be no more Cassandras,
monstrously engineered for alien purposes destructive to
the human race.

Scully had steeled herself for the worst possible outcome
of her pregnancy. She couldn't even imagine the worst
possible outcome for Mulder. She wouldn't allow herself to
speculate. Perhaps she'd never know the truth.

He might simply be gone, as Samantha had gone. It had taken
Mulder more than twenty-five years to come to terms with
his sister's disappearance. In the end, he'd fantasized an
acceptable end to Samantha's story. Scully knew she could
never settle for a vision of starshine in an empty field.

While she stared at a face like a mask in the mirror,
Scully's hands had been busy in the drawers of her dresser.
Her fingers moved in automatic sweeps through layers of
clothes and over the smooth paper that lined the drawers.
She'd buried the long, narrow box under scarves and
sweaters that she never wore anymore.

When she left home after high school graduation, Melissa
had taken it with her, but Scully had never seen her wear
it afterwards. The grown-up Missy had always hung crystals
on the ribbons she wore around her neck.

Her mother had proffered the box to Scully after Missy's
funeral. "Here. I thought you should have this," her mother
had said, her wounded eyes full of pain and something else.
Later it occurred to Scully that those eyes held
accusation, as well as pain, and that the presentation had
been intended as a small punishment for her sister's death.

Scully had accepted the chastisement as her due. Until her
cancer diagnosis she'd draped the necklace over Missy's
picture on her bedside table. Then she'd suddenly found she
couldn't bear to see it anymore. She'd returned it to the
box and hidden it from herself among the bright, soft
clothes that no longer fit into her life.

*Constructive Interference*
"When the crest of one wave meets up with the crest of a
second wave at the same location in the medium, the two
waves reinforce each other. The net effect is to add the
amplitude of the two waves. This is called constructive
interference. If two sound waves interfere at a given
location in this way, the result is a very loud sound." --
"The Physics of Sound for High School Students"

As she watched herself fasten Melissa's necklace around her
neck, Scully felt sudden pain on swallowing. It was the
first and only warning of a wave of overwhelming emotion
that engulfed her seconds later. It sank her into despair
so deep she feared she might never surface again.

She dropped to her knees and wailed out loud. Her cry ended
in a harsh intake of breath that forced its way out in a
choked sob. She hunched over, hugging her own body, trying
to comfort herself and stem the uncontrolled weeping. The
effort was futile. Her sobs didn't end until the room had
darkened into twilight. Exhaustion left her limp and quiet.

Scully knew she didn't have the strength to rise from the
floor. She did it anyway. She thought she might be using
strength borrowed from Missy and Mulder, and perhaps even
from her mother. They all knew the secret to going on past
reason and past hope. The secret was love, and Scully had
it in abundance.

This time it was reason and love that would save them. She
would go to the living room and read Doggett's file until
her eyes and nose were fit for the public view. Then she
would go out and shop for nuts, broccoli, granola, yogurt,
and dried fruit.

Scully sat down on the couch and opened the folder labeled
with a tiny, cramped "D" done in black marker. She touched
the little gold cross at her neck and remembered the
impossible moment when she heard her sister's voice on the
phone, two years after her death. Taking the legal pad from
its place on the end table, Scully added to her list of
things to do.

"Consider extreme possibilities," she penned with heavy
pressure. "Leave all channels of communication open, no
matter how unlikely."

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End of "Zone of No Signal"

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