Title: Tellus Mater (03/07)
(Sequel to Pater Familias)

Author: OneMillionAndNine

Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com

http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/

See 01/07 for detailed headers. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


Wanna know how it happened? I'll tell you how it happened. 
It was not through the exercise of our towering intellects 
and intimidating journalistic abilities that Byers and I 
figured out that our esteemed colleague was getting some, 
that's for sure. We screwed up big time on that one. The 
only reason we found out was that we got it on a 
surveillance camera.

Not that we had Langly under surveillance or anything. It 
started with a bad case of gremlins. One of the rear alley 
surveillance cameras kept coming down with problem after 
problem, before I'd taken the damn thing apart and fixed 
one malfunction another would pop up. Frustrated the hell 
out of me. Goldilocks, of course, said he have it working 
fine in twenty-four hours.

He could be my frigging guest.

Two months later I needed a camera for an outside security 
application and I remembered the one the Great Lord 
Manhandler had yet to return. Go figure.

Having lived one room over from the guy for the sixteen 
years, I figured it was probably repaired and sitting under 
the pile of rubble next to his bed.  So I went in and found 
it sandwiched between three books and a pile of clothes. 

The tape was wound to somewhere near the middle. I figured 
I would check the tape to see if the damn thing was finally 
recording right. 

It must have started taping when somebody threw the books 
on to it because if he knew the thing was running, the left 
bottom quadrant of the screen wouldn't have been obscured -  
the whole damn screen would have been painted black. 

It was just Langly, at first, snoring, one arm thrown over 
his head.

Byers looked up from where he was trying to balance our 
monthly accounts probably wondering why I was watching 
footage of He Who Sleeps Loudly. I was just trying to 
figure out how it got turned on. One - two footsteps, and 
another book dropped near the edge of Langly's bed this 
time. The form was apparent now. I knew it was just The 
Kid, so if I had been an unsuspicious soul, I would have 
turned the VCR off.  I guess Santa  was gonna have to put 
me on the naughty list, because I kept watching.

She stood over him for a good long time before she pulled 
back the covers. In about three beats she pulled down his 
shorts and was giving him a blow job. 

"Well, I'll be a son of a bitch."  I whistled long and low. 
"Looks like our boy is growing up."

Byers ran full-tilt over to the machine. "For god's sake, 
Frohike, turn that off!"

"Hold on.  It was just starting to get interesting."  

But he hit eject and threw it in the trash.  "As soon as 
they get back from Delaware tomorrow, we're going to have a 
talk about this. I can't believe. . . I never suspected. . 
. My god, we sent her with him. All the times we've left 
her alone with him. I never once considered. . ."

"Me neither, buddy." I shook my head.

"Should we alert the authorities?" Byers' face had gone 
ashen. 

"Seems like we ought to, huh?  Somehow, though, I doubt 
there's an agency for the protection of 36 year old 
virgins.  Maybe during the Carter Administration. . ."

 "Frohike, I'm serious.  Besides he's 37 "

"So am I."  I sobered, just considering the possibilities.  
"Have you ever known Langly to have a girlfriend, let alone 
date? Have you ever heard of him keeping company with a 
female within her child-bearing years? The boy's a powder 
keg -  one good hummer and all our secrets are history. On 
second thought, we should make sure he didn't spill 
anything on the tape." 

Byers scowled. There was an awkward pause.

"You know what I mean."  I reached down into the trash.

 Byers turned his back to the video screen and began making 
phone calls to the proper authorities. 

Let me start off by saying unstaged sex on video always 
winds up looking very unstaged. This, well, this looked 
even more unstaged than usual. I checked the clock. She had 
been obscuring Langly's crotch with the back of her bobbing 
head for quite awhile. Not nearly as scintillating as I 
might have hoped.

In the mean time, the one man decency league also known as 
John Fitzgerald Byers was suffering aggravations of his 
own.

 It was his fourth call to a fourth government agency. He 
had seen video tape of a friend involved in illicit acts 
with an under-age girl. How old?...17 ish... Oh... No, to 
his knowledge the tape had been made without the consent of 
either his friend or the girl...Oh...Oh... No, the girl 
couldn't fairly be described as mentally incompetent...No, 
there was no reason to suspect any sort of physical abuse 
was taking place...No, he was not the girl's 
father...Hello? Hello? 

Must have been some sort of emergency. They hung up on him. 

Meanwhile, my end was not improving. "Hold on, my bladder's 
full - I don't think I can come," Langly signed at the top 
of Thea's head.

It didn't look like getting laid had made Blondie any 
smoother.

While Casanova was off screen taking a piss, Mata Hari 
picked up a book off the shelf and stuck her free hand down 
the front of her jeans while she read. I recognized the 
cover - The Collected Works of Mary Wollstonecraft.  I 
never figured the Declaration of the Rights of Man were 
exactly jerk-off material but it seemed to be making her 
hot.

He came back and hopped into bed. I tell you this much - 
they looked like they were having fun but I doubt either of 
them had a future in the porn industry. Besides, when it 
came right down to it Langly was just an average white guy. 

The longer I watched them, the more it struck me how 
perfect for him she was. In fact, if I was making a girl 
specifically for Langly, she'd be damn close to the mark - 
if not actually cherry, then young and inexperienced enough 
not to intimidate him. Not perfumy or made-up, which tended 
to make him both nervous and sneezy. A smart, unfrilly kind 
of a girl without a hunch back. 

To tell the truth, she was kind of pretty, in an unmade 
kind of way. Not many curves worth mentioning, but more 
than an A cup might have been too much for Lord Man-
Hammer's delicate constitution. Her obvious resemblance to 
both Mulder and Scully probably put him at ease. 

On second thought, without her clothes, The Kid didn't look 
half bad. Like a young racehorse, all bone and muscle and 
long legged grace. 

Watching her like that, I started to feel dirty. 

I was reaching to turn off the tape when the sheet slipped, 
and when I saw Langly's blindingly white ass pumping away, 
I realized she had to be a plant. 

When she first showed up on our doorstep and I was sure 
they had sent her, I had been right.  No way Langly was 
lucky enough for her to be for real.

Or maybe I was just paranoid. 


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I would have gone out and stopped him, really I would have, 
but it was all I could do to keep the kids from running 
outside.

Sylvie had gotten up when I was brewing coffee and 
proceeded to glue herself to Thea's side. Danny didn't wake 
up until Mulder started pacing in accompaniment to Thea's 
story. They flanked her on the couch, rubbing their little 
hands over her stomach possessively.

She had been grown in a Zeus genetics lab tank from my ova 
and Mulder's sperm and by the age of eleven had already 
spent three years paired by Spender with Gibson Praise. It 
was thought an isolated school for deaf would make an 
excellent environment for bonding.

Only things went terribly wrong. The consortium was 
splintered and for four years Thea found herself on her 
own, trying to care for an increasingly ill Gibson. Before 
the inevitable came and he died, he told her what he knew 
of her origins and sent her to the Lone Gunmen. He said 
they knew where her parents were hiding. He said we would 
protect her. 

The Gunmen. For more than two years she lived with the them 
in a city teetering between chaos and fascism. Somehow, it 
seemed she and Langly... she and Langly... had become she 
and Langly, and were now well on their way to becoming 
parents, as well. When the Byers and Frohike expressed 
their displeasure at the alliance, she decided to fend for 
herself, rather than cause a rift between the friends. 
Although she'd known our location for quite some time 
before she left DC, she had chosen a life of anonymous 
manual labor for as long as she could maintain it. 

As far as Thea was concerned, she had done quite well 
working the harvest. The only difficulty she admitted 
having was with what she described as a 'dog sucking mutant 
toad of a ConAgra crop manager in Arizona,' who didn't keep 
drinking water in the fields. But, she signed,  she was 
getting too big to keep up, she came to us. To me, she 
looked like she could go into labor at any minute.

She had come to us to ask for our help, our protection, our 
spare bed room, our whatever it was pregnant teenagers 
asked their parents for.

She wincingly admitted there was also a possibility Langly 
could be following her.

Mulder, the man who persisted in believing in big foot and 
elves with plans for astronomical observatories, seemed to 
have trouble digesting that part of her tale. He kept 
signing, over and over, "Langly? Richard George Langly? My 
*former* friend Langly? He...You? Blond hair? Keeps fifteen 
pairs of Clark Kent glasses in a desk drawer? You -" He 
looked at Sylvie and Danny on either side of her and bit 
the inside of his cheek "- were 'with' Langly? He did 
this?"

You know what people say, 'Speak of the Devil and He 
appears'?  It works for hapless cyber-geeks, too. 

I was willing to bet Langly had never hit anything in his 
life as hard as he was hitting my front door.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

You know, I never expected Langly to take it as hard as he 
did when the kid cut out. Of course, if you'd asked me 
before I saw the tape, I would have sworn the guy still 
thought girls had cooties.

In retrospect, I realize there were a lot of signs I could 
have read. I mean, I just figured it for a sister-brother 
kind of a thing. Guess I figured wrong.

When Thea took off, she left what few personal possessions 
she had behind . The only thing I knew for sure the little 
minx had with her was Blondie's coat. Didn't matter much to 
him - I don't think he went outside once all winter. He 
just sat glued to the monitor. He quit talking to Byers, 
too.

That first day though, after Byers let Thea know he had 
come to her rescue, Langly and Byers exchanged a few words, 
too. Words like 'Bastard' and 'Son of A Bitch' and I 
believe 'Asshole' was passed back and forth, as well. 

"So she's old enough to break into Lockheed-Martin, but not 
old enough to know when she wants to get laid?

Byers face was calm but his voice was loud. "You know it's
Not the same. She worships you."

"You asshole," Langly answered. "Did you ever think maybe 
she loves me?" 

"What do you know about love, Langly?"

For his piece de resistance, Langly squared his shoulders 
and looked Byers in the eye. "You hypocritical fucking 
cocksucker. 

"No, Ringo; that's what you've turned that girl into." 

Langly faltered for a minute before he came back with what 
we all knew was the worst possible comeback as far as Byers 
was concerned. "That's it, isn't it? You're jealous. You 
wish you were the one fucking her."

Byers punched him in the face.

The little girl in question left at some point during the 
melee.

Both John and Ringo thought the other should have the 
decency to move out. Good thing they weren't speaking. Too 
bad I didn't get the silent treatment, too.

Byers was reasonably recovered after a few weeks. 
Eventually he even managed to admit that Thea was very 
close to being an adult, kind of like our esteemed 
colleague.

Langly continued to sulk.

In the end, the blame was mine. When the three of us met 
Fox Mulder and Susanne Modeski and became, well, focused on 
finding out the truth about the American Government, Langly 
wasn't even old enough to buy his own beer. The guy was two 
years off the family farm in Nebraska. Even Byers was more 
worldly than our farm boy, and that's saying some thing. So 
we treated him like a kid, a smart kid, but a kid all the 
same. Never occurred to any of us to notice when he stopped 
being young. Here he was, not all that far from 40, with 
the first female companionship I ever knew of him having. 
It was just plain pathetic, especially the part about her 
being a spy for the Bad Guys.

Okay, so I was wrong about the spy part. It was an honest 
mistake. Anyone would have drawn that conclusion.

Not that I didn't like her. Truth be known and all question 
of trust aside, I had something of a soft spot for the kid. 
She worked hard, made more than her fair share of witty 
remarks, and if you didn't count the mess that followed her 
like a slug trail, was pretty low-maintenance.

I just knew what she was. She was Theirs. She might have 
been Mulder and Scully's kid, but she had been conceived 
before her parents ever met and grown in a Consortium tank. 
But hey, nobody who likes Leonard Cohen could be all bad. 
Not that she listened to him, being deaf and all, but she 
liked to take my vinyl sleeves so she could read the words. 
It showed taste on her part. Not like that crap Langly 
listened to.

Besides, it was a lot like having Mulder around again. The 
Kid poked her nose into anything and everything. Couldn't 
let a sleeping dog lie. Always had an opinion, and wasn't 
shy about sharing it with anyone in the immediate vicinity. 
She even proved she was willing to risk her life for any 
one of our asses. The longer I thought about it, the less 
likely it seemed that she had an agenda and the more I 
started to suspect all she had was bad taste. 

All things considered, I should have known. Like the time I 
found him face down on the floor in front of the sofa, her 
on top of him, both of them fully dressed. He was laughing 
even though she had his arms jacked up behind his back. If 
it was anyone else I wouldn't have even wondered  -  I'd 
have known. Since it was Langly, the thought didn't even 
cross my mind.

He was different after she came to stay. I chalked it up to 
having someone his own age to play with. I never stopped to 
think she was twenty years younger.

He was different after she left, too. If he was cranky 
before, her departure transformed the guy into a flaming 
asshole .

Five months and I'd about had it with him.

Then one day he got a letter from her and left. Like that. 
A dirty bent envelop covered in her handwriting came in the 
mail. on the top of the stack.  He snatched it up, tore it 
open, read it, and stuffed it in his pocket.

Next, he went to the garage, spent fifteen minutes under 
the hood of that stupid car he fooled with from time to 
time, and started loading it with all the ethanol we had.  
He pulled some clothes out of the dryer and threw them into 
the back seat . Wound up taking a pair of my socks. He went 
into Byers' room and walked out with his Rand-McNally 
Atlas. Next the Boy Wonder pulled the blankets off his bed 
and threw them on top of the clothes. Then, the old safe 
he'd built awhile back and set inside a junked computer, 
that went on top of the blankets. There had to be a lot in 
there. He'd been squirreling away every cent he made for 
years.

The last thing he took was a cardboard box full of tapes 
and an MP3 player.

Then he walked back inside and grabbed a cassette case that 
was setting next to his monitor. Poor fool didn't even 
realize it was empty.

He opened up the garage door to leave just as I managed to 
ask him, "What are you doing?"

"What do you care?" 

He jumped in the car and left.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Martin Levine was having an old time Fox-Mulder-on-the-
Jerry-Springer-Show moment. Instead of bringing him inside 
and having a calm rational discussion, my husband pushed 
Langly out onto the lawn, until the two of them stood chest 
to chest under the corner street light.

"You...you...you-" Mulder stuttered.

"Just let me talk to Thea."

"You're in no fucking position to..."

"I need to talk to Thea."

"I think you've had enough contact with Thea."

"Fuck you. Let me see Thea."

"She came to you for help because she had no place to go 
and you used her. What are you planning to do when you get 
tired of her? Pass her to Frohike?"

House lights flickered on, one by one, all over the 
neighborhood.

"Man, I didn't seduce Thea. It was more like I didn't jump 
out of the way fast enough. Get a grip. You didn't even 
know her this time last week. Now let me see her."

"She asked for my help and I'm giving it to her. Now go-"

Even from inside the house, I could see Langly twitching, 
looking very afraid.

"You want to kick my ass? Then do it. It's not gonna change 
my mind."

My dear, dear spouse seemed to have forgotten that his 
friend Vernon, who happened to live two blocks down, also 
happened to be our Sheriff. The moonlight was shining off 
his bald pate. From behind, it looked exactly like a milk 
dud. 

"What's goin' on, Marty? Looks like you're pretty worked 
up. Things are getting kinda loud out here. You wanna tell 
me what's happenin'?"

I could see Mulder and Langly fall seamlessly into 
stonewall mode, while Mulder tried to concoct a plausible 
explanation. Just like old times.

"Vern, this is my friend, George."

"From New York?"

"Yeah.  And he's been playing around with my daughter."

Vern's entire body went taut. "Sylvie?" He pulled out his 
cuffs, looking like he was about a minute away from beating 
Langly himself. 

"Nooooooooo," Marty dragged the word out, groping for an 
explanation. "When I was - before, when I was married to my 
first wife, Laura and I, we had a daughter." 

"Yeah? And?"

"Laura's older brother adopted her. I haven't seen her 
since she was born. Today, well, she showed up. Pregnant. 
Courtesy of my 'friend' George, here."

Cue Thea to come running from around the side of the house, 
with the dog bounding along behind her. She must have gone 
out the back while Sylvie was trying to force her way out 
between my legs. Wonderful. 

Thea swung her arms wildly, signing to Mulder to keeps his 
hands off Langly.

"Go...back...inside...now!" Mulder signed and bellowed at 
the same time.

One didn't have to be particularly proficient at reading 
sign language to understand her reply. I think "Fuck you, 
Dad," is universal.

The three of them stood at the edge of the yard glaring at 
one another, while Vernon spoke soothingly.

A high-pitched scream lacerated the air. Langly whined, 
"Your dog fucking bit me!"  I was willing to bet fat old 
Melvin didn't even break the skin. It was starting to sound 
like just another episode of Cops, and I could see it was 
going to take Vernon all night to get them inside at the 
rate he was going.  So I swung into action. 

I took Danny and Sylvie by the hands and dragged them next 
door. My friend and neighbor, Kim, was trying to convince 
her own husband not to go outside when she answered her 
front door.

"What's going on out there?" she asked me groggily. 

A wan smile was the best I could do under the 
circumstances.  "It seems Martin and I have a bird coming 
home to roost. Look Kim, I'll tell you all about it in the 
morning. Can you do me a favor?"

"Sure." She pressed the heals of her hands into her eyes.  
"As long as I don't have to get dressed. What do you need?" 

"Take the kids for the night.  Things are a little too... 
dramatic at my house right now."

"Sure, not a problem. I'll send you my kids next time Dre 
asks me for a bass boat." 

I knelt down. "Be good." I pointed at my children as if 
this ever did any good. "Go straight to sleep. I know 
you'll mind Mrs. Collins, don't I, Sylvie?"

Kim folded her arms across her chest and smiled with just 
enough menace to straighten my daughter's spine. "We'll be 
fine. Sylvie and I have an understanding now don't we?"

I smiled and raised an eyebrow back at her. "Good. I love 
you, bunnies." I kissed each of them. "Now let's go see if 
I can get your big sister straightened out."

Kim was shocked, of course. "Sister?" 

"Yes." I gave another thin little smile. "Sister."  

"That's bigger than a bass boat."

"It certainly is. Thanks, Kim. I really appreciate it."

I crossed the lawn and joined the unhappy little group. 

"Martin," I said quietly but very firmly, "you are acting 
like my brother. Get in that house."

I should have thought of it sooner; it worked like a charm.

Back inside, Mulder sat on the couch, hands locked together 
on his lap, scowling. Langly and Thea both had decidedly 
pissed-off expressions on their faces as well. It was as 
though 
they were waiting for me to set foot through the door to 
restart the fighting.

"How could you do this? I thought you were my friend." 
Mulder accused.

"Go home, Ringo. Just go home," Thea signed.

"No," Langly signed back.

"Look," I told them, "let's have this discussion in a 
reasonable and orderly fashion. Mulder, I think we already 
know what your problem - your objection - is. It seems to 
me Thea is the party with the most at stake here, so she 
should go first."

"You know we got married?" Langly interjected.

"No, I didn't know," I replied, giving him a stern look, 
"but I believe Thea has the floor." 

He rolled his eyes. 

Thea began signing agitatedly in Langly's direction. "When 
I married you, I thought we were going home."

"Who said that?" he shot back. "Did I say that?"

"I think it was implied. I don't remember you ever 
mentioning 
Nebraska." She turned toward Mulder and me. "Did I tell you 
he wants to take me to Nebraska?"

I couldn't help myself. "Nebraska?"

"Nebraska?" Apparently, neither could Mulder.

"It has a lot of points in its favor. Like I told Thea, 
it's too cold for EBEs most of the time. It's a long way 
from epidemics, not a lot of bombings or riots in a town 
under a thousand, either. My family farms all over the 
county, so she wouldn't starve."

"What about you?" She sat on the edge of her seat, as if 
preparing to lunge or tip over. "What about the paper?" 

Langly twisted the corner of his mouth. "I haven't worked 
on the paper since you left."

"That's great!" Thea frowned. "You've ditched your duty to 
the American public for a chick."

Mulder worked to suppress a bitter grin.

Langly, however, was not amused. "Things we printed ten 
years ago are common knowledge now, and you know what I 
found out? I found out the American public doesn't give two 
shits about truth or justice or democracy, as long as they 
have an uninterrupted flow of cable TV and consumer goods. 
The American people will support any corporate strong man 
who says he can keep gas under 10 bucks a gallon and won't 
close the malls no matter how bad the contagion is. Screw 
the American Public. You think THEY-" he gestured at Mulder 
and me "-are the only ones who get to play Mommy and 
Daddy?"

"Don't patronize me. If you wanted me to have a baby, what 
were the condoms for? Decoration?" she signed angrily.

"Knocking you up wasn't exactly at the top of my to-do 
list, okay? Does that mean I can't change my mind?  I can 
want normal things, too, you know." 

"I am deaf, not stupid," she began. "Don't tell me what you 
think I want to hear.  I don't want to be your duty, so 
don't stay with me because you think it's the 'right' thing 
to do." She gestured to her belly. "You don't want this." 

"If you think I don't want that," he pointed to her 
distended abdomen, "maybe I overestimated your vast 
intellect. I can want something and be scared of it at the 
same time." 

"And the guys?" She tapped her foot distractedly. "What 
about the guys?" 

"What about them?" He rushed his hands.

"You don't owe them?" she replied, slowly.

Langly looked honestly puzzled. "Owe them what?" 

Thea pressed her clenched right hand firmly between her 
eyes and rubbed. "Look, R.I.C.H.A.R.D." she spelled slowly 
with her free hand in a way that seemed insulting somehow,  
"H.O.W.M.A.N.Y.T.I.M.E.S.H.A.V.E.Y.O.U.T.O.L.D.M.E.H.O.W.M.
U.C.H.Y.O.U.H.AT.E.N.E.B.R.A.S.K.A?" She shook out her 
hands and finished signing properly. "I'm not going to make 
you miserable just so I can be safe." She signed the word 
'SAFE' like it had salmonella. "That's why I came here."

Langly, by this point, was reaching some threshold of his 
inner resources. I had nothing but sympathy for him; Thea 
was reminding me more of Mulder by the minute. "So I guess 
it doesn't matter if I want to be with you?" 

Thea all but huffed as she signed. "Then why won't you do 
me?" 

Do me? Do me?!?! 

My god, I did not want to see this conversation. I could 
have lived happily for the rest of my life without that 
image in my mind.

Langly was staring at her with his mouth open. "How could 
I? You're like a house!"

I stood, signing that they clearly needed their privacy, 
pulling a stunned Mulder after me.

From the kitchen it didn't look good. Thea was sobbing and 
Langly had his face buried in his hands.

My mother always told me not to eavesdrop, I should have 
listened to her. If I had turned around and talked to 
Mulder while he made a sandwich, if I had gotten myself  
glass of water or washed the dishes crying out to me in the 
sink or straightened the dish towels or, or - anything - I 
would have missed Langly's shy and somewhat peevish offer 
and Thea's pouty acceptance.

I stepped backwards into Mulder and his sandwich.

"What did he say?" Mulder whispered..

"I don't know what you me-" I started, but he cut me off 
mid-lie.

"Don't play innocent. What's going on in there?"

"Cunnilingus," I whispered. 

He nearly choked on roast turkey. 

"They're not 'doing' it," I amended. "But they've agreed to 
in the near future."

Mulder swallowed. "It's gonna be tough with Langly sleeping 
on the couch." 

I walked to the sink and counted to five hundreed. Twice. I 
returned to the living room to find the subject of 
contention was Nebraska once again.

"I'm still not going to Nebraska," Thea signed, sniffling.

"I'm not going back to DC," Langly signed, then folded his 
arms across his chest.

Mulder stood beside me, looking from one to the other then 
back again. "Stay here, then."

Thea and Langly raised their eyebrows simultaneously, then   
looked at each other. After a few seconds, they nodded in 
unison.

Thea signed and Langly blurted, "Okay."

"Okay?" Mulder asked, astonished. "Okay? Just like that?"

"Jeez bud, we aren't you two," Langly answered. "I mean, we 
CAN agree without six hours of debate." 

He smiled at Thea, who slid awkwardly next to him on the 
couch, immediately winding a strand of long blonde hair 
around her finger in response.

"It is possible," she signed, still tethered to him.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was eerie and fun in a sort of a deja vu sort of a way. 
Lugging stacks of computers down the darkened hallway into 
my classroom - for a minute, it was just like old times.  
Every time I caught myself wondering where Frohike and 
Byers were, I had to shake my head.

They took all ten of the school's 233 MHz Pentium II 
processors 32megs RAM 1.5 Gig hard drives and wired them 
together. I was surprised they could get in to change 
anything using the school's old computers; I couldn't even 
get mine to run more than one application at a time.

They built a monster and then they made it sing.

They built themselves completely new identities.  George 
and Althea Froyers, born July 1969 and February 1990 
respectively, and married in April of 2007. He granted 
himself the MIT degree he missed on account being fingered 
for a hack he didn't do. Or, at least, I always believed 
him when he said he didn't do it, mostly because I've never 
known him to give away credit for anything. One of them 
gave her open adoption records listing Martin Levine as 
father and Laura Meyers as mother. 

It took them less than ten minutes to get everything hooked 
together and turned on.  Yet they didn't sign.  They didn't 
even seem to look at each other as they worked with a 
fluidity that seemed almost mechanical. 

Langly had always been good but I had never seen him work 
like that before, as though he had been given a shot of 
magic to grease his synapses.  Thea, I didn't know Thea, 
but what was unfolding left me amazed. 

There is a word in ancient Greek, Arete. It's pronounced a-
rah-tay, for those of you in the cheap seats, and it's 
often mistranslated as 'virtue. It's actually the root of 
the English word 'art' and means 'perfection beyond mere 
technical mastery' and 'efficiency glowing with the power 
of the gods.'  That was what I was seeing. 

Langly squatted at the back of my chair, his legs spread 
wide. I had no idea what he was doing until Thea sat down 
between his thighs.  There they hunkered, three hands 
resting together on the keyboard. She moved the mouse. 
Langly's head hung over her shoulder until they were cheek 
to cheek, their limbs tangled.  The only sound was breath 
and the plastic clacking of keys. They looked like the 
cyberian version of a Hindu god.

I heard it when his orange stubble scraped her smooth, 
golden face. Her face that was so much darker than his 
white gold hair that seemed to want to cling to her. Thea's 
stomach rolled two directions at once. She tilted her 
head and oh-so-subtly rubbed it against his, her motions 
catlike.  He met it, rubbed back. I realized she had a thin 
strand of his hair in her mouth. 

I felt enthralled and unsettled.  I had seen less intimate 
acts involving body fluids. I couldn't even consider 
looking away. 

I was not really jealous, but intensely curious. Was this 
what it was like to look from the outside in? Not at love, 
or at least the cheap kind of everyday love, but something 
else. Something I knew no name for.

It wasn't like Scully and me.  For years, circumstances and 
baroque neuroses kept us at arm's length.  Two perhaps more 
than attractive people, we feasted with our eyes while we 
starved to death. There were times when not our trust, or 
our friendship, but our love seemed all surface, desire as 
thin as paper, but folded in on itself indefinitely.  
Origami love.  A love deep in spectacle.  Circus love in 
the old Roman sense of the word. Throw the lions to the 
Jews and see who comes out on top. 

It turned me on to look at Scully because it was Scully I 
was looking at. Would I love her if her image didn't sear 
my brain like a brand? Sure. At least, I think I would. But 
it would be a different kind of love.

Love in black and white and red. 

This was love in pale, humming blue.

Langly was never anything special to look at.  He had no 
lips, a bulbous forehead, and a nose that would more 
appropriately be called a beak. 

On the other hand, I had no doubt a trip to a salon, a 
thousand dollar wardrobe, and three hours in a make-up 
chair could turn Thea into a super model.  As it stood, she 
had a big nose, a bad hair cut, and thick, chapped lips. If 
pretty is as pretty does, she had all the feminine airs 
of John Wayne.

Their fingers glanced and dragged, skin to skin, without 
either of them once darting their eyes at the other. Love 
like that had to be like falling down a well. 

What did he do to her in bed? It was a terrible question, 
but I couldn't stop myself from asking. I mean, she was 
pregnant, so I assumed there had been penetration and 
ejaculation, but what did they do? Did he hold off until he 
thought he was going to die trying to make every time 
perfect? Did he kiss her throat to make her shudder? Did 
they pause and sign or did he do what ever he wanted, 
waiting for her to stop him? Did he ever fuck her ass?

I failed to realize how close I was standing until Langly 
did something I never imagined in my wildest dreams. 

A faint smile on his mouth, he signed small and close to 
her stomach, "Your kung fu is the best, baby."

Thea responded by turning her head just enough to nip the 
outer edge of his ear with her teeth.

Langly blushed and signed small to her again, "Not in front 
of Mulder."

I had to go stand on the other side of my desk until my 
erection went away.

It was just like Betty, and yet, nothing like Betty.  That 
was when I recognized Scully's round eyes in Thea's face 
and resolved never to step within arms reach of her again. 

When we arrived home, I was swimming in guilt and disgust 
and wanting to bang Scully like an old screen door.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
End 03/07