Fic: Enigma (2/?)

[buffythebushkangaroo@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Okay, there's no sex in this part. But there will be scenes as the 
occassions merit. This fic's quite a big one, for me, my source 
material is over 15MB and its going to take me awhile to get it all 
sorted. I can only ask you to bear with, and I hope you like it. 
Because I'm using a lot reference material (as well as travelling 
like crazy to see the places I'm writing about), I've collated the 
sources into a Bibliography, which I'll post as an OT.

--

Willow took the rock-like object over to the coffee station and 
washed away some of the dirt in the sink. It was crystal, and picked 
up the light so effectively that it appeared to be glowing pale blue. 
Almost clear. She frowned, staring at it.
"What is it?" Buffy asked. "Ooh, a piece of rock."
Willow turned it over in her palm, thoughtfully. "It looks kinda 
like diamond."
"I thought..." Buffy broke off. "Isn't diamond kinda white?" She 
grinned. "This is one of those times I should keep my mouth shut, 
right?"
Willow smiled and gave Buffy a deep kiss. "It's not diamond 
anyway," she said when their lips parted. "Its too light to be 
diamond. I'll know more in the morn... oh, that's odd."
"Hmm?" Buffy asked, too happy to speak.
"Its got writing on it." She looked closer at the diamond. Glinting 
in the soft illumination were finely etched, perfectly formed glyphs -
ancient looking symbols whose meanings were lost on Buffy. Willow 
concentrated. The glyphs were so clear; it was as if the diamond 
itself had incorporated the writing into its natural structure.
"We need Anya," she said.
"We do?" Buffy still didn't like Anya, even though she was now a 
lecturer in anthropology, Egyptology and theology at the American 
University in Cairo. She'd grown tired of the constant violence that 
had marked her formative years with the scoobs, and when Xander 
showed inclinations of joining WAIT, they'd had the mother of all 
rows and she'd left to go back to school. She'd studied linguistics 
and cultural anthropology, and specialised in epigraphy. Living 
through the ages most historians had to study arduously gave her 
unique insights that made Anya almost a celebrity on the lecturing 
circuit. Buffy thought about Xander and Anya bumping into each other 
again. "I guess that'll give Xander a happy. He's still Jonesing for 
her."
"Yeah," Willow murmured, lost in thought as she stared at the 
crystal and what it could mean.

*

"In the beginning was the Word," Anya told her capacity crowd in 
Lecture Theatre A1. "Now, I wasn't there personally, but I have it on 
good authority that the Word was probably something that meant, 'Oh 
shit!'."
The audience, comprised of wide-eyed students and a few equally 
wide-eyed academics, tittered. Anya's lectures always bordered on the 
fringes of genius and madness. They loved them.
She thumbed up a slide that showed a fragment of papyrus. "This was 
found in 1920 in Nag Hammadi. Anyone been there?" She looked around 
hopefully at the blank stares. "No? It's not really that far away and 
they sell great coffee. Anyway, what this papyrus tells us is that 
John's Gospel was written at least fifty years after the death of 
Christ. Its been dated by clever little bald guys in the physics lab, 
so they're probably right in as far as that goes. Anyway, the current 
belief in the non-Christian theological circles is that this is the 
thin end of the wedge. Its very existence begins to prove the non-
existence of Jesus Christ."
Murmurs from around the room.
"Which, I'm pleased to inform you, is completely rubbish. I met the 
guy. He was no great shakes, I mean he wore battered sandals and 
smelled slightly of fish... but he always had plenty to drink." An 
uncertain laugh came from somewhere in the crowd. "Great days," Anya 
sighed. 
Her mobile chirped, and she answered it. "Oh? Oh. Well, okay. One 
moment." She looked up at the watching students. "It's my cookie-
face," she told them. "Feel free to nudge each other suggestively and 
giggle amongst yourselves." She gave them all a wide smile, turned on 
her heel, and listened closely to what Xander had to say.

*

"It's kind of like a diamond," Willow told the WAIT focus 
group. "Except, it isn't natural. This was man-made. Its molecular 
structure's a bucky-ball. You know what a bucky-ball is?"
Blank gazes from around the room.
"I do," said a bespectacled nobody from the science forum.
Willow nodded. "It's a theoretical molecular arrangement of carbon 
atoms. There are three in nature; basic carbon, which gives us coal 
and, well, us. And there's graphite and diamond. Buckminster Fuller's 
Buckminsterfullerine... bucky-ball... shouldn't exist." She tossed 
the small chunk of Carbon 60 to Xander, who caught it deftly and 
turned it over in his hand.
"Yet here it is," he mused.
Willow stared at the WAIT group leader. "I take it you didn't make 
this," she said. "Or we wouldn't be here. And there's what looks like 
Egyptian hieroglyphics on one side of it. What's going on?"
"We found it," Richard Stern, the WAIT group leader replied. "Or 
rather, an American oil mining concern found it drilling under the 
ice pack 30 miles West of here."
"Oil?" Willow raised an eyebrow. "I thought it was illegal to mine 
Antarctica under international agreement?"
Stern sneered. "It's only illegal if you get caught," he replied.
A tense silence was broken by Xander's sudden scream. "Help me!"

*

"He's fine," The WAIT medic pronounces as she packed away her 
things. "No burns, no abrasions. Blood pressure's high, but no 
respiratory problems. He's in perfect health." She threw Xander a 
seductive smile as she whisked out through the door.
"Okay," Xander said. "What the hell happened?"
Willow gave him a soulful look. "Did it hurt?" she asked.
"No... I just couldn't... move my arm."
Willow nodded as if she expected the answer. "Then why'd you 
scream?"
"Hey!" Xander said. "Scary moment, you know? Its not like being 
paralysed is top of my 'to do' list for the day."
Tom Sargeant, a WAIT engineer interrupted them. "We've found out 
what happened," he said. "You'll wanna come see this."

*

Willow stared at the ballbearing sitting docilely on top of the 
glass of Pepsi, a steel ball sitting on top of a liquid that had, for 
all intents and purposes, solidified without freezing. A small radio 
playing a Jackie Wilson number hummed away to one side.
"How?" she asked, staring at the ball.
The engineer flicked the radio's power switch to off. The 
ballbearing shot to the bottom of the container with a tink that 
nearly shattered the glass. It rolled lazily around the bottom for a 
moment before coming to a natural halt.
"Sound waves," Sargeant said. "Soundwaves modified by that crazy 
crystal he was holding earlier. Did the same damn thing to his hand. 
Weird as all hell, but very cool."
"Uhuh," Xander said. "Say that after you turn into Sleeping Beauty."
The engineer threw him a slight smile and left.
"Prick," Xander muttered.