From: thepoohbah@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 08 Dec 2000 21:38:06 -0000
Subject: xfc: NEW: Cosmos (1/1) by The Inimitable Pooh_Bah
Source: xfc

TITLE: Cosmos
AUTHOR: The Inimitable Pooh_Bah
E-MAIL: scarboroughfair@excite.com

DATE: December 7, 2000
RATING: G
CATEGORY: V
SPOILERS: The whole whoppin' mytharc--"Requiem" in particular.
Season 8 in general.
SUMMARY: Scully contemplates the sky.

DISTRIBUTION: Archive at Xemplary and Gossamer, forward to ATXC;
for other distribution/archiving, please ask.
DISCLAIMER: "The X-Files" belongs to Chris Carter, 1013, and/or FOX.

AUTHOR WEBSITE: http://members.dencity.com/Pooh_Bah/
HTML VERSION: http://members.dencity.com/Pooh_Bah/fic/cosmos.htm



There's nothing beyond my car, just vast, endless desert as far as I
can see.  It's so empty out here.  I feel exposed and vulnerable--I
pull my jacket closer around me, even though it's not cold, and
finger my weapon in its holster.  It's lonely here.

Past the horizon, there's more land--mountains, valleys, plains--and
beyond that, there's the sea, covering seventy percent of the
earth's surface.  It would take a lifetime of swimming to cross it.
Even in a ship, it takes days, maybe weeks.

Up above me, there's the sky.  Miles and miles of atmosphere, and
then miles are too tiny to measure distance, and we use the
Astronomical Unit.  There's one AU between us and the sun; over
twenty to the farthest planet in our solar system.  I heard once
that if the sun was a beach ball, the Earth would be a plum pit and
they'd be a soccer field apart.

There's even longer distances beyond that, so long that even the AU
is impractical.  So people have taken light, the fastest thing in
the universe, and used it as a reference point.  Light years--the
distance light will travel in a year, when it covers the distance
between New York and San Francisco in just over a second.  Even at
the speed of light, it takes over four years to reach the nearest
star to the sun.  It's so vast out in space--our galaxy is seventy-
five thousand light years across and it's three or four times that
distance to the next galaxy.  Most of the universe is just empty
space.  There's hardly anything out there at all, and that
nothingness stretches on into infinity . . .

And then there's us.  Puny things, hardly ever more than about six
feet tall, usually less.  Worrying about our petty little problems.
What's for dinner?  Do I need to get gas yet?  Which reports are
due this week?  Should I buy blue or pink baby shirts?

Even the big things in our lives seem so small in the face of light
years and galaxies.  Will Agent Doggett quit being so boneheadedly
skeptical?  Will my baby be alright?  Will the aliens colonize, and
what happens to us then? . . . Will I ever find you?

We're a tiny planet, orbiting around a small star, in the middle of
a universe so much more vast than we can get our tiny human heads
around.  And what of it?  What does it matter if one planet is
colonized, or if one woman bears a child alone, or if one man is
taken away?  In the grand scheme of things, it *doesn't* matter,
and it never will.

But our tiny lives are all we have . . . and it matters so much.




[ END ]