Disclaimer: Characters and stuff belong to Chris Carter, 10-13 and Fox. Quotes and everything like that belong to Darin Morgan. Sometimes I wonder if I can claim my thoughts as my own... This story was inspired by the last few scenes of "War of the Coprophages" which I have watched very very many times. ****************** War by eponine119 eponine119@att.net November 1, 1996 ****************** Mulder felt stupid. It had been one crazy weekend - there were a thousand things he needed to think about, but his mind kept running back to one moment. A few short seconds in his life. How long am I going to be thinking about this? he wondered, but he didn't know. He sighed and blinked in the dim light of his apartment. It was past eleven, he knew, and he had to work the next morning. Better get thinking and write up something in a suitable report for Skinner to read before he sees the Sheriff's report about killer cockroaches, Mulder told himself. His fingertips began to stroke the keys, coaxing words from their cold, hard surface. =The development of our cerebral cortex has been the greatest achievement of the evolutionary processes.= "It's amazing that an intelligence as complex as our ever emanated... " He could once again hear her soft voice in his ear through the phone. Compared to everything else out there, man's intellect was amazing. But did that truely indicate man's superiority to any other creature that walked the earth or moved through the skies? =Big deal.= He doubted it. Man had his own set of problems. Traffic jams, forgetting your PIN number, trying to decide what to watch when there were two really good programs on TV at the same time...if man's brain was the best that nature in all her wisdom had to offer, we might be in a lot more trouble than we think. =While allowing us the thrill of intellect and the pangs of self consciousness,= He tried so hard to impress her, always, with his mind. It rarely failed to work on anyone else. A few two dollar words thrown in here and there were usually enough to awe any woman he cared to. A few more sent people turning away in faint annoyance. He planned it that way. Intellect to cover for self consciousness. Not Scully, though. She was smart. She listened and then she contradicted him. It was more exciting than getting his own way, but frustrating at the same time. He thought back to Bambi, of the wide blue eyes. She hadn't been impressed by his intelligence. He'd sensed that she just wasn't interested, perhaps mildly irked by his posturing. At least she'd seen through that, he thought, to her credit. But not Scully. He could talk to Scully, he could tell her the truth. He'd found himself opening up to her over the phone line in the quiet of the night, telling her inane stories from his childhood that made him who he was, but he never shared with anyone. When he'd realized it, he'd tried to pull back, to protect himself by showing off, trying to sound pedantic again because it never failed. "I had a preying mantis epiphany..." She hadn't been fooled. She knew what she was doing. Goosebumps rose on his flesh now, even thinking about it. He could almost feel her soft, warm breath caressing the sensitive skin of his ear as she murmured in a tone fit for a lover, "Mulder, are you sure it wasn't a girlie scream?" His stomach tightened remembering it. =it is all too often overruled by our inner instinctive brain, the one that tells us to react, not reflect, to run rather than ruminate. = He should have kissed her. He really should have. That was the moment he could not will out of his mind. Standing in the freezing rain, covered in dung, teased by the Sheriff and passed over by Dr. Bambi, the only thing that Mulder could think about as Scully spouted off about the case was how incredibly much he wanted to kiss her. She'd been smarting off to him again, making fun of his ideas and his theories and his beliefs. It ticked him off but at the same time, he loved her for it. She wasn't scared to be who she was. She wasn't scared to tell him that he was...well, full of shit. His self protective instinct kicked in fast though when the words actually materialized in his brain: I ought to kiss her. That'd shut her up. As usual, Mulder was pulled in two different directions: what he wanted [to kiss her] and what he needed [to rescue himself]. And as usual, his big mouth took control first. Verbally, that is. Could he have really said it to her? It was bad enough he'd overruled his instincts and run, that the excitement in his stomach had turned to panic. But he'd told her that she smelled bad! Third grade, Mulder, he thought. Really bright. He reached over to the plate near the keyboard and broke off a piece of the German chocolate cake he'd picked up at the store on his way home from Miller's Grove. His brain told him to stay and follow through with it and he'd even gone so far as to lean in towards her - so ready to finally place his lips on hers and know what it was like - when his instinct screamed at him to run. The look of shocked surprise on her face scared him. Consequences scared him. And he ran. It was a wonder humans ever managed to reproduce at all. Human mating got so damned complicated when animal instinct became secondary to things like thinking. Pride. Self-preservation. =Maybe we have gone as far as we can go and the next advance, whatever that may be, will be made by beings we create ourselves If we can ever manage to get together long enough to create anything.. ... =using our own tech- Damn it! =tech - Damn it! =tech Damn - oh, hey! =nology.= Too bad we can't create machines to do it all for us, Mulder thought, and take all of the fears and horror out of procreating. Enter the genetic data into a computer, it selects the perfect combination, fertilizes the egg itself, nurtures it in a perfect computer environment and - presto! - after a while out a pops a kid just as messed up as any raised by human parents. A wonder of science and psychology. Scully would be impressed. =Life-forms we can program not to be ultimately controlled by the rules of survival In the end we waste too much time worrying about the basics of living - what to eat and when and where and with whom and if it'll make us fat and who to sleep with and how to get her and impress her without looking to weak or caring or losing ourselves... He grabbed more cake. Man had too many problems to get anywhere on his own. Bambi had been right when she said that bugs were honest, much as he hated them. Eat, sleep, defecate, procreate, she'd said. That's all they do. That's all we do. But we lie about it and make it into something more. =Or perhaps that step forward has already been achieved on another planet by organisms that had a billion years' head start on us.= Bugs don't care what other bugs think about them. Neither do robots. In that way they are superior to humans. Maybe on some other planet, way the hell out there, bugs invented robots to explore the galaxy. Because they'd had the time to figure out that love and being cool and worrying what other people think maybe wasn't worth the time and energy. =If these beings ever visited us, would we recognize what we were seeing? Being too caught up in the semblance of appearance, could man ever realize the worth of an intelligence superior to his own? Damn it, why does even that make me think of Scully? Mulder wondered. =Upon catching sight of us would they react in anything but horror at seeing such mindless, primitive, hideous creatures?= What does she see when she looks at me? A stupid, clumsy man with a big nose and weird lips, he thought, certain again. And that was why he hadn't kissed her. He hadn't wanted to see her recoil in distaste. He reached for another piece of cake and did a double take when he saw the nasty big bug sitting there. Good thing I looked, he thought, reaching quickly for the nearest thing at hand with which to smash the disgusting creature into oblivion - the Miller's Grove X File. He stopped a moment looking at the bug as it crawled off the plate towards him. Its coloring was not unlike that of an alien - white with big dark spots, like an alien's oversized eyes. Did it possess a knowledge that he didn't? Did it come from a galaxy far far away, and was he facing a creature that had mastered the problems of society to live in peace with itself and its world? he wondered. It was still the ugliest damn bug he'd ever seen and it made his skin crawl. In a matter of seconds it was going to walk right up to him. So Mulder did the only thing he could do. Smashed it into bits with the file. -The End- Comments would be highly appreciated! Go ahead, make my day!!! :) eponine119 eponine119@att.net