Summary: Deslea's rec: "This short piece rocks! A brilliantly characterised glimpse into the mind of Amina Ngebe, the scientist who worked alongside Scully in Sixth Extinction. MV draws us into her world with deceptive simplicity, and dovetails her story into the XF world we know. Very, very nice work!"

Title: Transposable Elements
Author: Malograntum Vitiorum
Archive: Anywhere, just ask
Disclaimer: Amina Ngebe, Dr. Barnes, and those other, more "popular"
characters are property of Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox.
Spoilers: Pretty much everything.
Notes: Response to the "obscure Other Woman" challenge. Feedback much
appreciated at malograntum@morosophy.com.
(And, um, hi. Was going to delurk in the discussion before posting
fiction, but I guess this works too. Maybe it'll start up some
discussion of Amina, who I always thought was pretty interesting, and
who, unlike most people in the Sixth Extinction two-parter, managed
not to get killed. ;) )

------------------------

It has been three years, now, since the American doctor arrived.
Three years since she and I burst open the dark boxes of God and
science, spilling terrible living secrets, finding such strange
answers that in the end there were only more questions. Three years
since the angry visions frightened her away and she left as suddenly
as she had come. Three years since the... artifact... disappeared
along with her, leaving a dead man and me to remember.

I know the dead can speak sometimes, but Dr. Barnes will not be
talking anytime soon.

I went back to the University. The superstitious woman in me told me
to let this matter alone, that I was being given a chance to walk
away and live, or stay and share Barnes's fate. The police asked me
questions and I told them all I'd seen--all that I could explain.
They took everything from the tent as evidence. I went to class,
wrote the same words on the blackboard as I always had. Adenine,
guanine, thymine, cytosine. Rules, formulas, experiments, results.

I once saw the elegance of science as an expression of the Creator's
perfect design. After the artifact, I tried to see as I had before,
but I could never banish those symbols from my mind--the word of God
on a spaceship beside the beautiful genome that brought tears to Dr.
Scully's eyes. Each time I touched chalk to the board, some part of
me thought of that ship and of what it could all mean.

In these years, I have seen my country turned over and inside out. I
have been afraid to leave Abidjan to visit my family. I ask them
often to come and live here. People cling to their homes, even when
the streets bleed outside their door.

Two nights ago, I saw my sister in a dream. She was dressed
traditionally, I in the modern style that we both wear in waking
life. We stood together on a rocky beach. She put her hands on my
face and spoke English in a man's deep voice. "Not everything dies,
Amina."

Yesterday morning my older brother called to tell me that our sister
had disappeared from her bed in the night.

Knowing and not knowing what I was doing, I found the FBI's phone
number online. I waited four hours until it was morning there. I
asked to speak to Dana Scully. The secretary who answered was quiet
for a long time.

"Agent Scully no longer works for the Bureau," he said, as one who is
not telling even half of half of the story.

"Agent...Mulder, then."

A sigh. "Agents Scully and Mulder are missing. I can connect you with
the agents assigned to their case..."

I hung up.

How can I explain aloud what I know only in my bones? Something is
beginning that my science cannot explain, and the best I can do for
my sister is seek the real answers where I know they lie.

As I board the plane, I hope my family will someday understand why,
when they most needed me at home, I flew across the ocean to chase
strangers and ghosts.

-end-