Travelling Light by Rain raining_lizards@sympatico.ca ********* "Mulder?" Scully's voice drifts into her cellular phone and is transformed. From sound, it becomes radio waves, rushing over the sleeping city to the nearest base station. There, it becomes, briefly, an oscillating electrical current, millions of electrons, all working together for no other purpose but to be her voice. And then it encounters a laser, and turns into pure light. Her voice is light. Not starlight, but laser light, focused, steady, coherent. Light, held in place by total internal reflection, rushing towards her partner through a thin yellow fiber at one hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second. It is a miracle, she thinks, that humanity has harnessed light in this way. Mulder believes that his sister - not just her voice, but her entire essence, her soul - is starlight. Scully does not, but sometimes she wonders. If humanity, after less than a century of truly understanding light, can harness it, use it to carry voices and emails and terabits of information... what could a million-year old civilization do? Scully smiles, her voice light. "Mulder, it's me." ----------- Author's note: I went slightly over the word limit, but it's been so long since I've finished a story that I felt I deserved some sort of dispensation. And I guess this is my official First X-Files Fanfic. Huh. :)