by Justin Glasser
As far as we can determine, only one planet in our solar system is currently capable of supporting carbon-based life. Other planets, such as Mars, may have been inhabited at one time or another, but at this point, barring my own desperate and unproved hopes, we are alone in the universe.
Nor is life assured on Earth. More than once in the history of our planet, life has come perilously close to disappearing. Scientists assert that at the end of the Paleolithic period it was the impact of a meteor that changed the Earth's climate from tropical to frigid, eradicating the dinosaurs and paving the way for humanity's domination of the planet. At any moment we are being bombarded by hundreds, thousands of meteors, most of which burn up in the earth's atmosphere or come to ground as curiosities, scientific baubles, but it is only a matter of time before one comes along which does not burn up, one which lands with all the force of that pre- historic meteor and puts an end to us all.
This is what I thought after I burst into Phillip Padgett's apartment and find my partner in his bedroom.
Scully and I are a universe of two, two stars in orbit around each other, surrounded but not altered by the less significant orbits of family, colleagues, friends. We circle endlessly, linked together by our respective gravities, our tides ebbing and flowing in perfect synchronization, both knowing that if we drift too far apart or slip too close together our mutual destruction is assured. At least, that's what I thought we knew.
I can't explain what happened to her on the floor of my apartment while I was in the basement. I came running back and found her on the floor, bloody and still. I thought she was dead. She lay there, absolutely quiet, the blood on her shirt already beginning to dry, and I knelt beside her. Then, in a blur of events she was awake and grabbing for me and crying, strange braying sobs that I have never heard from her before, not in all the years of our partnership, not after everything we've been through together.
I remembered, as I squeezed her to my chest, how small Scully really is. I forget when she talks. This reminded me, my arms around the slim column of her ribcage, and I felt myself rocking, just a little, tipping back and forth on my knees. I forget, because her pull on me is so large, her face fills up the night sky of my mind. Everything I do I see in terms of its impact on her, only sometimes I forget to look before I leap.
A priori. That's what I called Padgett's assumptions about her. Before the fact. I read his book, read about Special Agent Dana Scully and her attraction for the stranger, and I wanted to laugh, but the laugh lodged in my throat. It wasn't so impossible, was it, not when I had seen he standing shoulder to shoulder with this mousy little man, defending him against me? No, it wasn't. Because Phillip Padgett, for all his overblown prose and his desperate gaze, always thought about my partner first.
And she liked that.
If I wanted to continue the metaphor I would say that Padgett was a comet, a ball of gas disguised as a brilliant blaze of light, intersecting and interrupting our path. But truthfully, he was more like a meteor, crashing into Scully, altering her fundamentally in ways I have yet to map.
I held her for a while there on the floor, until her hands loosened and she patted me. I lowered her to the floor. She refused to look at me at first. She always does when she's about to say something I won't like, or when she's done something she doesn't approve of.
"Scully," I said.
"I'm sorry, Mulder," she said. Her face was turned toward the kitchen, her eyes open but unseeing.
Sorry. She had said that earlier, while announcing the insignificance of the milagro charm. "I owe you an apology, Mulder," she'd said, and now she was apologizing again, not for being wrong but for being weak, for allowing someone to get to her, for what she considered letting me down. I wanted to laugh, but I was afraid.
"Are you okay?" I asked, brushing her hair away from her forehead. She nodded, and I could see the muscles in her throat working. "You sure?"
"I'm sure, Mulder," she said. She sounded a little annoyed with me, a reassuring sound coming from Scully.
I stood and held out my hand. She came up easily, but before she could get away from me to the bathroom, before she could wash away the stench of her heart's blood and all memory of Phillip Padgett, I pulled her to me. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pressed my cheek against her hand, and I held her so close that I could feel her heart beating against my rib cage. She hesitated for a moment, then her arms came up beneath mine and I felt her hands at the base of my spine.
I closed my eyes again, the way I had when we were on the floor, imagining us as a single bright spot in a field of endless black, no space between us. Just Scully and me, and the thudding of her heart, and not a comet in sight.
"Mulder," she murmured, her cheek against my chest. "What are you doing?"
"Restoring balance to the universe," I said. "Humor me."
She did. Her hands flattened against my back and she squeezed.
There are no guarantees, not of life on this planet, not even for those who are most dear to us. Within that uncertainty, there are the even less predictable whims of circumstance that make up our relations to others, our social structures, even our selections from the lunch menu. The universe is a large and chaotic place, predictable only in its complete unpredictability, filled with random chance and coincidence and sudden wanton destruction. Chaos theorists posit the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings in Borneo and changing the fate of the world: if that is true, then what has Phillip Padgett done to my partner, and, by extension, to me?
*****The End*****
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