TITLE: Mobius 
AUTHOR: L.A. Ward
EMAIL ADDRESS: LAWard@aol.com 
URL: www.hometown.aol.com/laward/eclectic.html
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Sure, just let me know.
SPOILER WARNING: Anything through Season 7
including Requiem
RATING: R (for language)
CLASSIFICATION: X/MSR/A

X-file casefile with Mytharc
MSR
Scully Angst/Mulder Angst 

SUMMARY: While investigating the disappearance of
a physicist, Scully finds someone she didn't 
expect--Mulder.

DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Never mine. Wish they were, 
but they belong to Chris. Have no money so don't
bother to sue.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I cannot say enough nice things for 
the wonderful people who undertook the task of beta 
reading. Thanks to all of them, but special thanks to
Shari, Rosemary, and Fran.



****************************************************
"All we communicate to others is an orientation
towards what is secret. . ."
Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space
****************************************************

PROLOGUE


Georgetown Memorial Hospital
Washington, D.C. 
4:15 am 

The dark was comforting. It was uniform, unchanging and 
peaceful with only the dull murmur of sound somewhere in 
the distance. No one sound was distinct. They all rolled 
together in a low, muted hum--white noise in a black 
room--and she listened to it intently as if by listening 
hard enough she could immerse herself in it. 

Someone shoved open the door and light blinded her.

"Doctor!" the nurse said. "We need you."

Grabbing her lab coat, she followed the nurse from the 
on-call room into the green tiled hallway. "What have 
we got?" she asked as a paramedic crashed through the 
E.R.'s double doors leading a gurney.

"Male. Mid to late thirties," the medic answered. "B.P. 
ninety over sixty. Pulse one-ten and irregular. Appears 
to be in psychogenic shock."

"Transportation time?" she asked as they entered the 
trauma room.

"Twenty minutes. Four liters oxygen. One I.V. 
normal saline." 

She nodded and crossed to the other side of the gurney 
ready to transfer the patient to the examining table. 
"On my count. One, two, now." After the transfer she 
took out a penlight and shone it into the man's eyes. 

"Pupils sluggish." She glanced at the nurse and 
instructed, "We need a chem 20. Type and cross. Two 
units."

"He's tachy," an intern called. 

She nodded and looked at the cardiac monitor
registering a pulse rate of 120 and rising. 
A heart couldn't sustain that rhythm long 
without failing. She called for digoxin even
as the monitor hit 130 then 135. Her gut
clenched when his pulse spiked to 150.

"Is he going to crash?" the intern asked. 

Before she could answer the patient flatlined. 
Frown lines creased her brow as the high pitched 
whine filled the room. She hated that sound. She 
hated to admit defeat, and when she looked into her 
patient's face she refused to accept it.

"Crash cart," she called.

She grabbed the defibrillator paddles and rubbed 
conductive fluid over them. "Charge. 200 joules."

Everyone stepped back. She shocked the patient. He 
arched from the bed and her eyes rose to look at the 
monitor. Grimacing she ordered, "300. And . . 
..clear!" Again the man arched from the bed.

The intern shook his head.

"Charge 360," she ordered and laid the paddles against 
the unknown man's bare skin. Again electricity rushed 
violently through him, but this time it was different. 
His heart took on a normal rhythm. She nodded and 
systematically began looking for any sign of 
injury. There was nothing obvious. 

The patient suddenly, miraculously became conscious. He 
grabbed her arm and looked her straight in the eyes. Her 
breath caught. It was as if all motion in the room 
receded to some silent distance, and her entire being 
focused on this one glance. She read recognition in his 
hazel eyes. 

"Scully," he whispered, then lost his battle for 
consciousness.











***************************************************
"God does not play dice." - Albert Einstein

"But all evidence indicates that God is an inveterate
gambler, and he throws the dice on every possible
occasion." 
Stephen Hawking, "Black Holes and Baby Universes"
****************************************************

CHAPTER ONE

Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 
9:12am 

Special Agent Dana Scully parked the gray rental car in 
the administrative parking lot of Clark Hall. She felt 
tired and cranky after yet another sleepless night, and 
if she was honest she also felt somewhat resentful of 
this assignment. 

Yesterday she had sat in Mulder's office reviewing old 
case files--and she still thought of it as Mulder's 
office. Others had begun calling it hers, but not 
Scully. She had been on the verge of completing a stack 
of papers nearly as tall as herself when a stranger 
coughed to catch her attention. 

After nearly eight years of working in the basement, 
building maintenance had arrived to install her name on 
the office door. She had scowled, then waved the man 
away, saying that she was busy and didn't want to be 
disturbed. The truth was she didn't want anything in 
the office disturbed. Something, even if it was just 
this dingy, cluttered room, had to remain the same.

"Are you sure?" he asked in a quiet southern drawl. 
"Don't know when I'll be by here again. 

"I'm sure," she said firmly. "The door stays the way it 
is." 

Scully's actions had obviously been reported to Skinner 
because an hour later he stood almost, but not quite, 
hidden beyond the doorway. She could see him shifting 
awkwardly from foot to foot looking reluctant to be 
there. Scully had become used to that look. Lately every 
person had it before crossing the threshold. She could 
almost hear them debate, "Should I offer condolences? Or 
behave as if nothing has happened?" 

Of course, Skinner's choices were more limited. He 
couldn't behave as if nothing had happened. He knew the 
truth--or most of it anyway--and perhaps because of that 
he was more awkward than anyone else. Scully saw the 
moment of decision cross his face and straighten his 
spine before he manufactured a businesslike attitude 
and approached her. He walked briskly into the room 
and placed a file on the desk.

"An X-File?" she asked.

"Not exactly."

Scully lifted her eyes and gave him a calm, questioning 
stare. Seconds ticked by then Skinner explained, "It's 
a missing person."

"Then why bring it to me?"

"Open the file."

She glanced down at the pages contained inside the 
manila folder. A name jumped out at her. She lifted a 
surprised gaze. "Steven Doerstling?"

Skinner nodded. "He disappeared Tuesday, but the local 
authorities have kept this below the media radar."

Steven Doerstling was a brilliant mathematician and 
physicist whose name was frequently used in the same 
breath as Einstein's. Always brilliant, after a spinal 
injury in his teens left him a quadriplegic, he had 
turned his focus inward and in the last thirty years 
had produced breathtakingly inspired leaps in 
theoretical physics. His disappearance would spark 
a media feeding frenzy. 

"He's famous," Scully said, "but what does this have 
to do with me?"

"His research is funded by the U.S. Government through 
the National Science Foundation."

"So strings were pulled and the case was brought to the 
FBI," she concluded.

"Yes, strings were pulled."

"This isn't an X-File." And the implication hung in the 
air that she was still committed to the X-Files. She 
was more committed than ever. As long as Mulder was 
missing she would follow any thread for even the most 
tenuous link to him. As if to prove that fact, she had 
spent the last month in a futile search of Bellefleur, 
Oregon--the place where she had first come to trust 
Mulder and where ultimately she had lost him. In the 
end all she found was the orange X he had painted on the 
road nearly eight years earlier. 

Slowly Scully realized the office had been quiet for 
too long. Skinner stood staring at the poster behind 
the desk. "I Want to Believe" hung over her head, and 
she knew they were both aware of the irony in the words. 
She had never wanted to believe. She resisted at 
every turn and used science as a shield.

"I realize that technically this isn't an X-File," 
Skinner told her. "But there's no agent as suited to 
this case as you. There aren't many of us with degrees 
in physics."

She should have known this was an offer she wasn't 
allowed to refuse when he had arrived in the basement 
instead of summoning her to his office as protocol 
demanded. Seeing no alternative, Scully had accepted 
the assignment and boarded a plane bound for Ithaca, 
New York at eight a.m. this morning. 

Even as she drove through the picturesque city Scully 
was aware of the underlying reason she had been given 
the assignment. Skinner had thought, "Take her out of 
the basement. Give her something to do other than 
bury herself in silence and memories." He was being 
thoughtful, kind, solicitous...and she hated it. 

She wasn't some porcelain doll that had been broken 
then pieced together. She wasn't on the verge of
falling apart. Scully was a professional, a doctor, 
and an agent who knew how to keep the unbearable at 
a distance. Brick by emotional brick she built a wall 
between her functional state and her dysfunctional 
baggage. Of course by now the wall approached the size 
of the Hoover Dam, but Scully would deal with that 
later. The point Scully kept stressing was that she 
was in control. She could handle herself. There 
was no reason for Skinner to look concerned. She 
was fine. She was just fine. 

Once she found a parking space, Scully glanced out 
the car window. Unlike most of Cornell which tended 
toward Gothic Revival architecture, this building was 
stark and dated, looking like some uninspired 
regurgitation of textbook Modernism. She stepped out 
of the car then stopped to fight a sudden wave of 
nausea. Laying her hand on the hood, she took a deep 
breath and waited for the world to stop spinning. 
When it did, Scully continued forward as if nothing 
had happened. 

X X X

Mike Stilgoe sat playing air guitar in his five by eight 
foot office on the third floor of Clark Hall--though 
calling it an office seemed like absurd exaggeration. It 
was a closet with a desk. With his eyes closed he 
belted out the lyrics, "Black hole sun won't you come 
and wash away the rain--" 

He stopped abruptly and reached to turn down the volume. 
Shit, someone was in the hall. He hurriedly exited the 
program. All he needed was Professor Blackwood on his 
ass about using department computers to download MP3s. 
"File Transfer Error!" popped up on screen. Well, of 
course there was an error. He was trying to exit for 
Christ's sake. The computer locked. Damn. It crashed. 
Shit. And whoever it was out in the hall was closer. He 
could hear. . . 

He closed his eyes and called himself an idiot. That 
wasn't Professor Blackwood out there. It was a woman 
and from the staccato clicks of her heels against the 
linoleum he'd guess it was a woman on a mission. 

Leaning back, Stilgoe opened the door a crack and 
revised his opinion. Make that a very striking woman 
on a mission. She was dressed almost completely in 
black which around here usually meant a chain smoking 
art student spouting existentialist bullshit, but this 
one was dressed way too formally for that. And she 
didn't look like an escapee from the architecture 
department either. Stilgoe frowned. She was too old 
to be a student, and too businesslike to be a 
professor. Maybe administration, but he doubted it. 
She looked out of place. Around here, her crisply 
tailored appearance was almost exotic. 

She saw him, and as purposefully as she had searched the 
hall she now walked toward him. "Excuse me," she said in 
a low, mellifluous voice that suddenly made him glad 
that he was stuck logging statistics on a Saturday 
morning. "Would you know where I might find Professor 
Blackwood?" 

"In his office?"

She shook her head. "I knocked. There was no answer."

"Must be out with CLEO then." 

"Is there a way that I could reach them?"

Stilgoe frowned. "Them?" Enlightenment dawned. "Oh, 
you mean Professor Blackwood and CLEO. CLEO isn't a 
person, Ms...?"

"Scully." She produced a badge. "I'm with the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation. I was hoping to speak with 
Professor Blackwood about a current case."

"Doerstling's disappearance, I bet." At her mildly 
surprised look he explained, "Nothing escapes the 
physics department grapevine."

Scully nodded. "You were saying about Professor 
Blackwood?"

"Oh yeah, well, CLEO isn't a person. CLEO is part of 
the CESR--that's the Cornell Electron Storage Ring."

"He would be there now?"

"Well if he isn't in his office going over the results 
of last week's test, he'll be down there preparing for 
Monday's."

"How would I find my way there?" she asked.

Belatedly he jumped to his feet and extended his hand. 
"Oh, um, I'm Mike Stilgoe. I'm a grad student and sort 
of Professor Blackwood's assistant. If you want, I'll 
take you down there."

"Thank you."

That's all she said. He shook his head. A beautiful 
woman who didn't talk much. When did creatures like 
that start to exist? As Mike gathered his books he 
glanced over his shoulder. "So what's it like being 
an FBI agent?" 

"Interesting," Scully answered in a way that made him 
think a million words could have been said but hadn't. 
She was a sphinx. Beautiful, enigmatic, and remote.

X X X

Scully waited patiently for the grad student to shove 
his books into his backpack. He was a gangly kid with 
a two day growth of beard and a bad hair day. She 
remembered the type from her own days in the physics 
department, but that had been a lifetime ago. Idly 
she wondered if he thought her answers had been abrupt. 
If he did, he was probably right. But how could she 
describe her work when she couldn't make sense of it 
herself?

At some mysterious, indefinable point the X-Files had 
ceased to be a job and had become her life. If Scully 
walked away from the FBI tomorrow, the X-Files would 
still consume her. There was no escape. There was 
nothing else. Everything Scully had ever loved or 
believed had been stripped from her with agonizing 
precision, and yet...And yet everything that gave her 
life meaning was also bound to this search for answers, 
for truth...for Mulder. All Scully knew was she couldn't 
stop. She couldn't rest, and there was nowhere to go 
but forward because looking back wasn't an option.

They stepped into the hall and Stilgoe locked his 
office door. Scully asked, "Has the physics department 
grapevine said anything about Dr. Doerstling's 
disappearance?"

He shrugged, "Oh it's said a lot, but not anything 
that means much. I mean there's been a lot of 
speculation. How exactly does a guy who has almost no 
use of his arms and requires a constant caregiver just 
disappear without a trace? It's creepy, you know. It's 
not like he would go anywhere else. This is where his 
work is, and his work is all he has."

Scully empathized. "Did anything unusual happen the 
night he disappeared?"

"No, not really. Well, there was this party. The 
results of Tuesday's test came back and there was some 
bitching b quark data."

Scully searched through her somewhat dim memory of her 
time as a physics undergrad for some reference to what 
Stilgoe was talking about. A vague answer surfaced, and 
it struck Scully that if you asked what the universe 
was made of, your answer would depend on who you asked. 
If she asked Mulder, no doubt he would recite a list of 
creation myths as long as her arm. If you asked a 
biologist, there would be talk of cells, and a chemist 
would begin a discussion of molecules and atoms. 
However, theoretical physicists looked for something 
more fundamental. Their grail was the indivisible 
building block of all things. Atoms had once been 
considered these structures, then protons, neutrons, 
and electrons. Now, like peeling away the layers 
of an onion, they had discovered something more 
elusive--quarks.

The problem with quarks was that though it was theorized 
that absolutely everything was made of them, they 
couldn't be seen. Studying them was a bit like looking 
at a murder scene and theorizing who the killer had 
been. You couldn't see him, only the evidence he left 
behind. 

They stepped into the elevator and Scully imagined the 
discussion she would have had if Mulder had been there. 

"So these scientists, these men of logic, believe in 
something they can't prove exists." Mulder would have 
been gleeful at the contradiction.

"Don't equate quantum physics with Mexican goat 
suckers."

His hazel eyes would have filled with a teasing light. 
"I wouldn't dare. They've been 'theorizing' goat 
suckers long before anyone thought up a quark."

"It's not the same thing."

"Why?"

"Because goat suckers don't exist." 

"But these little whatchamacalits that no one can see 
do? Why is that, Dr. Scully?"

"Because their existence can be predicted by 
mathematical equations--" 

Mulder would interrupt, "Math? You mean a system 
created by man to explain to themselves observable 
and non-observable phenomena? Sounds a lot like the 
reason ancient Egyptians invented Isis, Osiris, and 
Horus. That was their way to find order in the 
universe just as modern scientists point to 
invisible strings--" 

"Mathematics is not the same thing as a dog headed 
pseudo-god."

"You didn't meet my ninth grade geometry teacher." 

Scully heard the dinging sound signaling the elevator's
arrival at the first floor, and she became aware of the
physics student watching her with a little too much 
interest. Was her distraction obvious? Something 
about his expression made her think so, and Scully 
worried that her inner turmoil was so close to the 
surface that even a stranger could see it. She 
schooled her features into an impassive mask. Her 
sadness and her memories were her own. They 
were private.

As they exited Clark Hall Stilgoe explained that the 
CESR/CLEO was located fifteen meters below the alumni 
field. It was a rather unglamorous concrete tunnel 
filled with magnets. Billions of electrons and their 
exact opposite--positrons--were circulated in the tunnel 
at something close to the speed of light in the hopes 
that a few of them would collide and annihilate each 
other. If they were lucky, they would catch evidence 
that a b quark existed. Of course usually nothing much 
happened, and even when it did, you couldn't see the b 
quark you produced. In the end the best you could do was 
study the aftermath of their decay in CLEO.

They entered the control booth. "Dr. Blackwood," 
Stilgoe said grabbing the older man's attention. "This 
is Agent Scully with the FBI. She's here to investigate 
Doerstling's disappearance." 

Dr. Arnold Blackwood was in his late fifties with 
grayish blonde hair in a surprisingly long, bowl-like 
cut. He was rather beige in appearance. Not just 
because of the hair, but the skin, and the sort of 
colorless off-white shirt he wore with wrinkled khaki 
trousers. 

"Have you found anything?" he asked in a somewhat 
impatient tone. 

"Not yet. I was hoping I could see Dr. Doerstling's 
office," Scully answered. "I understand that was the 
last place he was seen." 

Blackwood took off his glasses and cleaned them on his 
shirt. "It was?" 

Scully frowned. "According to the police report, Dr. 
Doerstling's assistant Lauren Rice left him in his 
office when she left for dinner. When she returned, 
he was gone." 

"Saw Lauren this morning," Stilgoe added. "She's really 
blown away by this. Blames herself."

Blackwood shook his head, and Scully detected a note of 
aggravation in his voice. "If Doerstling disappeared 
it's because he wanted to." 

"I would think his physical limitations would make that 
difficult," Scully pointed out.

The professor sniffed. "Don't bet on it. In someone 
else--hell, in anyone else--what happened to Doerstling 
as a kid would have been a tragedy." 

"But not in his case?"

Somewhat defiantly Blackwood said, "It was a gift."

Scully eyes widened then narrowed as a frown creased
her forehead.

He began shuffling through papers as he explained, 
"I've known Steven since we were both freshmen in 
college. He was only fifteen years old. He was an
intellectual prodigy but in every other way he was
just a reckless kid." Blackwood pushed the papers 
aside and looked up at Scully. "Before the accident 
I don't think Steven ever sat still for five minutes 
straight, but paralysis didn't give him a choice. He 
couldn't use his body so he had to use his mind." The 
professor removed his glasses and cleaned them on his 
shirt. "Steven had an extraordinary mind." 

She caught the fact that he referred to Doerstling in 
the past tense but didn't press the issue as yet. "So 
you think whatever happened to the doctor was by his own 
design?"

Blackwood laughed but it was a hollow, tinny sound. "For 
Doerstling everything was by design. The whole fucking 
universe was built to exact proportions."

"I've read a little of his work," Scully told him. 

Blackwood looked surprised and perhaps even a little 
displeased. "Hardly normal reading material for an FBI 
agent. I'd think you'd stick to Clancy novels."

"What was the doctor working on before he disappeared?"

"You really want to know?" 

Scully took a deep breath and reminded herself that
saying what was on the tip of her tongue wasn't an 
option. Being cranky with someone other than Mulder 
usually didn't take her far. Come to think of it, it 
didn't accomplish much with Mulder so she resorted to 
simply looking at the man with silent expectation. That 
usually met with some results.

Blackwood crossed his arms. "How much do you know about 
M theory? Kaluza-Klein theory? Calabi-Yau space?"

"Very little, I'm afraid." 

"That's what I thought. Agent Scully, I'm a busy man. 
I don't have time to teach remedial physics." He tossed 
Stilgoe a set of keys. "Explain to her what she wants to 
know and let her into Doerstling's office. I've got 
work to do."

As Blackwood walked away, Scully followed Stilgoe up the 
stairs into blinding white sunlight. Shading her eyes 
with one hand she asked, "What was Dr. Doerstling's 
current project?" 

Stilgoe glanced away quickly. "He was sort of 'out 
there' if you know what I mean."

She arched a brow, "'Out there?' Could you be more 
specific?" 

After all 'out there' could mean anything from seeing 
shadow conspiracies to anticipating an alien invasion, 
finding a five hundred year old genie with a sick sense 
of humor, or chasing a Mexican goat sucker across 
southern California. Scully needed specifics.

"Ever heard of the anthropic principle?" 

She cocked her head to one side. "Isn't it the 
cosmological equivalent of 'if a tree falls in the 
forest...?'" 

Stilgoe laughed. "Yeah. Sort of. Basically it says the 
universe looks the way that it does, because if it 
didn't we wouldn't be here to see it." 

"I suppose that makes sense. We evolved under a 
specific set of conditions so we're intrinsically 
linked to those conditions."

"But you see Doerstling isn't interested in our 
evolution. He's interested in the evolution of the 
universe. Think about it. If the big bang was an 
accident, then any set of parameters could happen--most 
of which wouldn't produce life. Hell, they couldn't 
produce anything, not stars, planets, or even atoms. 
So why did this particular bang produce all those 
things in abundance?" 

Scully frowned and thought about that. Her first 
thought was to remember Colleen Azar saying, "There 
is a greater intelligence in all things." But what 
Scully said aloud was, "So Doerstling postulated that 
the universe we know is the result of an unimaginable 
game of trial and error?"

"The exact opposite, actually. Maybe what we think of 
as 'the' universe is just one of many. A string of them 
all tied together. Each almost, but not exactly, 
identical to the ones tied to it."

Lines creased her brow, "Given the sheer number of 
possible results from a big bang, how could different 
universes be nearly identical?"

"Here we are," Stilgoe announced as he unlocked the door 
to Doerstling's office. She looked back at the grad 
student, wanting to pursue the line of their 
conversation, but that could wait. 

The office wasn't all that different from any number of 
faculty offices she had seen before. It was small, had 
only one window and was cluttered with papers and books. 
The police had already dusted the room for prints and 
had found few matches. The only two matches they did 
find were physics students who had been arrested for 
drunk and disorderly conduct during their freshman year. 
Hardly a surprising event on a college campus. 

Scully walked into the room and wished she had some of 
Mulder's eerie intuition, some way to look at her 
surroundings and formulate answers out of thin air. She 
wasn't that lucky. Instead she plodded along looking 
for evidence and clues that could lead her to a rational 
answer.

She paused and looked at a pair of greenish tinted 
etchings hung over the desk. Scully vaguely recognized 
the prints as being by Escher. Both were plays on 
perspective and dimension showing stairs that ascended 
and descended at the same improbable time. One print 
showed stairs and arches turning back on themselves. 
Not one world, but many intersecting and interacting. 
Each had a different orientation. They were disparate 
realms existing in the same plane. After her discussion 
with Stilgoe, Scully could see why Doerstling had chosen 
these prints. And suddenly she was assailed by the 
memory of Albert Hosteen standing in her apartment 
saying, "There are more worlds than the one you can 
hold in your hand." 















***************************************************
Is everything determined? The answer is yes, it is.
But it might as well not be, because we can never 
know what is determined.
Stephen Hawking
"Black Holes and Baby Universes"
***************************************************


CHAPTER TWO

Georgetown Memorial Hospital
Washington, D.C.
10:12 am

Dr. Dana Waterston stared at the C.T. scan on her
computer in a state of shock. What was in front of 
her was impossible. It made no sense. It was beyond 
belief. It had been beyond belief from the moment the 
paramedics had rolled a stranger into the E.R., and 
he had known her. 

Normally, Dana didn't work in the E.R. She had been a
last minute fill-in. It had been pure chance that she 
was on-call last night. So how had he known her? 

Dana couldn't ask. The man had lapsed into a catatonic 
state, his single moment of lucidity spent gazing at 
her. As a doctor Dana had looked into the eyes of a 
thousand patients and seen pain or need or gratitude, 
but when this man looked at her it was different. He 
saw her. He saw into her. It was as if he had reached 
through all of her defenses and touched something 
inside of her that she had forgotten existed.

"Dana?"

She turned and saw her husband Daniel at her office 
door. 

"You haven't slept," Daniel observed. "You haven't 
left the hospital in days. People are talking."

"I don't care what people say."

He clenched his jaw. "You should care." 

"Appearances don't matter, Daniel."

He gently touched her cheek. "No, SHE doesn't matter."

Dana stepped back and massaged her neck with her left 
hand. "Is that what you said to Barbara about me?" 

"No. Never. I left her for you. You know that."

Yes, Dana did know that, and looking back perhaps that 
was why she had stayed with Daniel for as long as she 
had. Dana wasn't particularly good at facing up to 
mistakes, and Daniel had been a mistake. 

As a third year med student Dana had been fascinated 
as she watched Daniel save a patient. He had held 
the power of life and death in his hands and hadn't 
appeared overwhelmed by the consequences of his every 
word or action. He had acted coolly and with great 
precision. Daniel was in control, and Dana had envied 
him.

When she had met him again as an intern, Dana had been 
surprised by his interest in her. She had also been 
reluctant to become involved. It wasn't professional 
to have a personal relationship with the chief resident, 
and yet on some level the forbidden nature of the 
relationship had been its most potent lure. The night 
her first patient had died, Daniel had been there to 
pick up the pieces and offer temptation, and Dana had 
surrendered and crossed the line. When Daniel had 
announced that he was leaving his wife, Dana had been 
stunned. And when that abandoned wife had committed 
suicide, mixed in with Dana's darkly confused emotions 
had been the single selfish thought, "Now I'm stuck." 

A woman's despair and death could not be over nothing, 
certainly not anything as petty as a man's ego or a 
younger woman's confusion. It had to be love or fate. 
Something--anything--of real importance. Surely for 
Dana to make this kind of mistake, to have caused this 
much havoc in this many people's lives Daniel had to 
be more than forbidden fruit. She had to love 
him . . . didn't she? 

Looking back Dana could see that when she had decided 
on a course of action, or the penance or duty or 
whatever she had believed her choice to be, she had 
locked away some part of herself. Her idealism and 
faith had been casualties of an indiscretion that 
had not only altered her life but her self perception. 

She became Mrs. Daniel Waterston wearing a beige linen 
suit in a courthouse wedding performed by a bored 
bureaucrat anxious to beat Friday afternoon traffic. 
That summer Daniel had accepted a position in the 
cardiology department of Georgetown Memorial Hospital 
where ultimately he was appointed chief. They had left 
behind the city of his first wife's death and the laser 
like glares of his bitterly resentful college age 
daughter. 

"She doesn't need me," Daniel had once told Dana. 
"She doesn't want me."

Dana didn't believe it, but she didn't say that out 
loud, just as she didn't explain the way she resented 
having to pick up her own career and move simply 
because Daniel had accepted a position in Virginia. 
The move hadn't damaged her career as much as Dana 
had feared or as much as she secretly believed she 
deserved. Her path had simply changed, and she had 
earned a residency in the neurology department then 
specialized in neurobiology.

Earlier this week Dana had discovered Daniel having an 
affair with a young, rather brilliant intern. What had 
shocked Dana wasn't that Daniel was having an affair. 
Somewhere inside she admitted to herself that she had 
always expected that. What had shocked her to the 
core--had horrified her in fact--was that she didn't 
care. It didn't touch her. She wasn't in denial. It 
simply didn't matter. If Dana was brutally honest she 
had to admit that when she discovered the truth her 
primary emotion had been relief. 

A nurse knocked politely on the door. "Doctor, 
someone is here about the John Doe."

Dana nodded. Daniel caught her arm. "We need to 
talk."

"Not now. I have to see to a patient." Leaving 
her office Dana walked down the hall to the 
waiting room of the M.I.C.U. 

The nurse handed her the patient's chart. "They've 
identified him as Fox Mulder. He's an agent with 
the FBI." 

Dana arched a surprised brow then thanked the nurse. 
She turned and entered the waiting room. Two men 
faced her. The younger man was bald with glasses 
and dressed as a bureaucrat but there was something 
about the set of his jaw and his muscular build that 
defied that simple description. The other man was 
older with a lined, weathered face. He didn't 
acknowledge her but stared out the window. 

She introduced herself to the younger man, "I'm Dr. 
Waterston."

He shook her hand. "Skinner." He didn't introduce 
the man who stood in the shadows. "How is Agent 
Mulder?" 

She answered directly, "I'm afraid Mr. Mulder is 
gravely ill." 

"What's wrong with him? I asked the nurse but she 
didn't seem to know." 

Dana grimaced. "It's difficult to say exactly what 
is wrong with Mr. Mulder. I know of no precedent 
for this case." 

The older man glanced at her as if she had suddenly 
caught his interest. Her gaze met his levelly and 
didn't waver. It felt like a contest of wills and 
Dana wasn't sure why she felt so determined not lose. 
Finally, the older man walked toward her. 

"What exactly is the nature of the problem that you 
have no precedent for?" he asked.

"I've run C.T. scans and high resolution EEGs to map 
the neuroelectrical outputs of his brain," Dana 
explained. "There is extreme hyperactivity localized 
in a specific area of his temporal lobe. It's a 
peculiar area of the brain that we are just now 
beginning to map and understand. Neurophysicists 
have begun calling it the 'god module.'" 

Something flickered in the older man's eyes and for 
a moment Dana thought she saw a look of satisfaction 
cross his face. 

She frowned. "This hyperactivity won't allow his 
brain to rest. It disrupts R.E.M. sleep. If he 
weren't catatonic he would be on the verge of a 
psychotic break."

"Mulder has gone insane?" Skinner looked aghast.

"No. But his brain can't sustain this level of 
activity. The more active this area becomes, the 
more the other functions of the brain are shutting 
down. To put it bluntly, Mr. Mulder is so alive that 
it's killing him."

Skinner grimaced. "Can we see him?" 

"Visitation is limited to immediate family only."

"Mulder has no family."

Sadness pierced her. "I suppose there's no reason 
you can't see him. However, he may not know you're 
there."

The older man's eyes never left her face, "Just show 
us the way, doctor." 

When they entered the room, Skinner looked surprised. 
"His eyes are open." 

"That's not unusual in some catatonic states," Dana
explained as she crossed the room.

X X X

The world was dark but he was filled with blinding 
white pain. A deafening, roaring wave of sound 
enveloped him, drowning him. He couldn't even hear 
himself scream. . . and he was screaming. He was 
calling for help that never came. His only response 
was the shouts and whispers of a thousand indistinct, 
indistinguishable, and irrelevant voices.

However, beneath the uniform roar and separate from 
the melded screams were two distinct voices. They 
filtered into his mind and into his consciousness. 
In some ways they were a comfort. He was not alone 
in this hell, this world of sound and despair. He 
was adrift but not completely lost, because there 
were still those who could reach him. Even here. 
Even now.

The first voice separated from the crowd hissed like 
a snake--low, dark, malevolent and in some horrifying 
way, omnipresent. The second was softer. Clear and 
calm. The eye of the hurricane. He clung to her as 
the single safe harbor in a mental storm. Within her 
he felt uncertainty but strength. Confusion but clear 
direction. And overriding everything was compassion 
and concern.

Mulder fell into her like immersing himself in warm 
water, letting her wash away the dark night terrors 
and hold him in an unending embrace. Here was 
sanctuary. Peace.

Somewhere in the distance Mulder thought he heard
Skinner ask, "What can you do for Mulder?"

The other voice--the softer voice--answered,
"I've arranged for a PET scan."

"PET?"

"Positron Emission Tomography. It maps brain cell 
function."

"And this will help him?"

"No, but it may help us understand what's happening
to him." Her voice receded as Mulder became aware of 
the Smoking Man now standing at his bedside. 

"I know you can hear me." The Smoking Man's 
thoughts echoed in Mulder's head. 

Mulder wanted to turn away from the old man's dark 
thoughts. He wanted to lose himself in the gentle 
female presence that whispered to him softly. But 
there was no way to turn off the voices, and there 
was no way to turn away from the malevolence of this 
one. 

"We are reaching the crucial moment," CSM silently 
told him. "We are close to the ultimate destination. 
Are you curious to know what it is? Ah, you moved. 
You are not as lost to us as the doctor believes."

Doctor? What doctor? Mulder wondered. 

CSM came closer. "Should I take this moment to 
explain all? Like some villain in a 'B' movie, 
should I explain why you are doomed to this fate and 
what the ultimate goal truly is? That would be a kind 
thing to do would it not? That would be compassion. 
If you are to be a martyr to a cause, you should at 
least know why." 

Mulder was cold now. He had been pulled from his 
sanctuary into brutal, frigid isolation. He was 
alone. Bereft. 

"I am not kind," the voice hissed then went away.

Mercifully the softer presence returned. She was
bothered by the Smoking Man's silence, because 
although Mulder had heard the bastard's every word, 
not one of them had been said aloud. Now frustration
bubbled inside her because she thought something was 
happening that she didn't understand. She hated that. 
Intellectual curiosity was a passion for her. Mulder 
could feel it push her, prod her, urging her into 
action even as another part of herself fought to 
keep it within acceptable boundaries.

Mulder didn't know why this woman's thoughts and 
feelings were so clear to him. He couldn't explain the 
link they shared that made her stand in stark relief
to chaos inside him. But now he knew that he was 
wrong to consider her a peaceful sanctuary. As Mulder
touched her mind he saw that beneath her calm faççade 
was a raging sea of emotion. She simply kept it under 
control by sheer force of will.

She started to move. In a few moments she would leave, 
and he would alone in the abyss of his own private
hell. "Don't go," Mulder thought with such intensity that 
he almost believed he had said it out loud. He saw her
eyes widen and her lips part with a surprised gasp. 

"Stay," he silently called through the cacophony of 
voices echoing in his head.

She gripped his hand with surprising strength and gave 
a small, almost embarrassed laugh. "I can't leave this 
room," she murmured to herself. "I've left my husband 
of nearly ten years without a backward glance, but I 
can't leave this room. Why is that?"

Mulder was shocked. Had she heard him? Could he reach
her the same way that she reached him?

"Rest," she said softly. "I'll stay. For some reason I 
need to." 

And surrounded by her warmth and compassion he could 
rest. His demons withdrew to a bearable distance, and 
in that moment he loved her. More than life, more than 
breath, more than sanity--he loved her. 












**************************************************
"The universe seems. . .to have been determined
and ordered in accordance with number, by the
forethought and the mind of the creator of all
things; for the pattern was fixed, like a 
preliminary sketch, by the domination of number 
preexistent in the mind of the world-creating God.
Nicomachus of Gerasa
Arithmetic 1, 6 (ca A.D. 100)
***************************************************

CHAPTER THREE

Ithaca, New York
8:13pm

Scully pushed open the door to the pub. The hardwood 
floors shook with the low thrum of the music playing 
beneath the happy chatter of students. A male student 
signaled the bartender for another beer, and a young 
woman approached the stage to flirt with the band's 
lead guitarist.

Scully frowned and became acutely aware of her isolation. 
She was an island of stillness in the midst of motion.
She didn't belong here. This wasn't her world, and 
no one here shared hers. 

She rubbed her neck and wished she could return to her 
motel room. She felt exhausted after spending the day 
with the local police searching Cascadilla Gorge. Despite
the fact that she had never had much hope of finding 
Doerstling's remains, Scully had agreed to the search
because it was logical to investigate areas where a body 
might be dumped. Scully sighed and reminded herself to
be grateful she had spent the day hiking instead of 
plumbing the frigid depths of Cayuga Lake. 

At sunset she had returned to her car to find a message 
blinking on her cell phone. After reviewing it Scully 
dumped her blue FBI windbreaker in the back seat and 
walked to the pub.

"Hey, Agent Scully!" Mike Stilgoe called from across the 
room. "Out here!" 

She made her way through the crowd and out to a patio 
that overlooked the waterfall cascades of Beebe Lake. It 
was an attractive view at twilight. 

"I said I'd track Lauren down," he told her as he led 
Scully to a table at the far corner of the patio where a 
young, thin blonde sat. "Lauren," he introduced, "this 
is Agent Scully."

Strands escaped the clip Lauren Rice used to pull her 
hair away from her narrow face. There was an unhappy 
cast to her features as she stared into a glass of white 
wine.

"Ms. Rice," Scully began as she took a seat opposite the 
younger woman. "I'm glad you agreed to speak with me." 

Lauren shrugged. "No reason not to, but I have to tell 
you I don't think I'll be much help."

"Agent Scully," Mike interrupted. "Would you like a 
drink? I'm heading to the bar."

"Water would be nice."

"That's all?"

"Yes."

He arched a brow but said good naturedly, "Okay. I'll 
be back in a minute."

Scully watched Lauren nervously tug her hair behind 
her ear, then fidget silently. Scully asked, "Ms. Rice, 
can you give me any idea of Dr. Doerstling's state of 
mind before he disappeared? I understand from Mr. 
Stilgoe that some promising data had been collected that 
day."

Lauren rubbed her finger around the rim of her glass. 
"He usually didn't pay attention to test data. He was 
more interested in theory than research."

"He didn't care if his work was proven?"

"Most of his stuff can't be proven," Lauren explained. 
"There can be circumstantial evidence, but there's no 
way to see or test most of his theories. It's beyond 
our technology."

"That must be frustrating." Scully knew it was 
maddening to be a scientist and have the answers you 
sought always beyond your reach. "You said that Dr. 
Doerstling usually didn't pay attention to test data, 
was that day different?"

Lauren lifted troubled gray eyes. "I think he's dead." 

"Why?" 

Lauren shrugged. "He was an unhappy man. In the 
department you run across people who can't imagine 
life outside of physics. That wasn't Doerstling. 
The first time I met him, he showed me clippings 
about the people who tried to climb Everest. You 
know, the ones who got trapped in the blizzard. He 
wanted to do that sort of thing. Push the limits. 
Live on the edge. He didn't want to be trapped 
in a chair."

Scully nodded thoughtfully. "Was he depressed?" 

"I'm not a doctor or anything," Lauren told her. 
"But I kind of think he was bi-polar. He could be 
really up sometimes. He would go for days working 
on some equation that no one else could possibly 
understand, and he would be so wrapped up in it 
that it was like the rest of the world didn't 
matter. Then there were the down times. Those 
could get bad. Really bad."

"Was he suicidal?"

Lauren bit her lip then nodded. "Yeah. Sometimes 
he was suicidal."

"Is there a way that Dr. Doerstling could have 
left his office without your knowing?"

"I've thought about that," she answered. "Truth 
is, I'm not sure. I guess so. I mean, his chair 
was electric and he had ways of controlling it. 
There were these sensor things--" She stopped and 
waved her hand in the air as if saying that there 
was no point in going into detail. "He couldn't 
go far though. Not without help."

"Do you think he had help?"

"I can't imagine who."

Scully leaned forward. "Is there anyone who would 
want to hurt the doctor?"

Lauren looked shocked. "No!"

"Okay," Scully said softly, then more deliberately, 
"Is there anyone who might have helped him--"

Lauren stopped her. "If you're thinking some Kavorkian 
euthanasia thing, no way. I mean the doctor might be 
depressed from time to time, but he was amazing. He 
wasn't just brilliant. He was a genius--a bona fide, 
make your head spin genius. No way would anyone help 
him cut his career short. He can't be replaced."

Lauren climbed to her feet. "Look, like I said, I 
don't think I can help you. I don't know anything. 
One minute he was there and the next he was gone. I 
can't...I don't...I...I'm sorry." She left Scully 
sitting alone at the table.

Scully turned and looked at the water rushing down the 
cascades. One minute he was there, and the next he was 
gone. It was that simple and that devastating. She 
shivered and suddenly felt cold.

"Lauren take off?" Stilgoe asked as he handed Scully 
her water.

"She told me what she could."

Stilgoe turned in the direction of the door as if it
was still possible to watch Lauren Rice's exit. "She's 
taking this hard. She puts on this act like she's 
okay--like she's got everything under control--but 
it's just an act."

Scully's gaze fell to the floor. He could just 
as easily be describing her. Then again, she and 
Lauren Rice lived in a similar limbo. They weren't 
allowed the luxury of grief.

Scully flinched. It felt alien to think of grief as a 
luxury, especially when she remembered the pain of 
losing her father and her sister. Grief was a soul deep
ache, but in some ways it was easier than unexplained
loss.

Death had finality. Scully didn't wonder if her
father or Melissa was in pain. She didn't wake up
in the dead of night afraid that they needed her. They
were gone, and she could grieve. She could allow 
memories to comfort her. But memories were things of 
the past. Uncertainty was always in the present, and 
Scully didn't know what had happened to Mulder. She 
didn't know what might be happening to him now. 

Melissa and her father didn't need her, but what if 
Mulder did? What if every moment she wasn't searching 
for him, she was failing him? It was that thought that 
drove Scully through sleepless nights. It wouldn't 
allow her rest. Every tick of the clock might be 
the moment that changed the course of her life 
because it might decide whether Mulder lived at all.

Scully rested her hand on the patio's handrail and 
watched water crash against the rocks below. Inside
the bar the band sang, "Out of sorrow entire worlds 
have been built. Out of longing great wonders have 
been willed." 

If only longing could produce miracles. If it could, 
she wouldn't be sitting here alone. 

Vaguely, Scully noticed Mike Stilgoe watching her and 
had to admit to herself that technically she wasn't 
alone. It only felt that way.

Aware that the silence had grown awkward, Scully said 
briskly, "Yesterday you mentioned Doerstling's research. 
I did a little reading on his theory of multiple 
universes."

"Oh yeah." Stilgoe nodded. "Doerstling may not have 
been the first to come up with the idea, but his take on 
it was certainly unique."

"You mean his theory that if the circumstances for one 
'big bang' occurred then it's likely to have happened 
more than once?"

"Yeah. Really, why couldn't it? Why couldn't it happen 
a lot?"

Scully mused, "Didn't Andre Linde write a paper on 
multiple inflationary expansions?"

"That was sort of Doerstling's jumping off point," 
Stilgoe explained. "If Linde was right, there could 
be a whole maze of universes tied together."

"That still doesn't explain why Doerstling would 
believe those universes would be nearly identical."

"I can't explain it very well. I don't know that anyone 
but Doerstling really could, but it has something to do 
with the fact that universes may be tied together... 
related. The 'big bang' came from the inflationary 
expansion of a singularity. That singularity could be 
anything from a black hole to a quark. What if the quark 
that sparked a bang came from our universe? The next 
universe would share the properties of this one. Or to 
be even weirder, what if we're the second universe? 
What if we're the millionth universe? What if there are 
billions of them linked together like chain mail?" 

Stilgoe crossed his arms and leaned forward against the 
table. "He had this theory that if one universe sprang 
from another for generation after generation, then maybe 
it's not just humans who evolve but the entire cosmos. 
That would mean that somewhere out there could be a 
universe or even many universes so tied to ours that 
they're almost identical."

X X X

Georgetown Memorial Hospital
Washington, D.C.
10:18 pm

Dr. Dana Waterston stood at the nurses' station of the 
M.I.C.U. looking at a stack of phone messages left by 
her husband. She really had no desire to answer them. 
Then out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. 
"Hey," she called. "What are you doing?"

The man hit the pad on the wall that opened the 
automated egress doors.

"Stop," Dana ordered as she hurried down the hall. "Who 
are you? What were you doing in that room?"

The man never looked back but walked steadily away from 
her. She had the urge to run after him but he had 
already reached the emergency stair. Dana glanced toward 
the nurses' station. "Call security," she demanded. But 
when she reached the stairwell, Dana knew that it was 
too late. The man had disappeared. "Damn," she muttered 
under her breath.

She asked the nurse, "Who let that man in here? The 
I.C.U. has restricted access."

"No one," the nurse answered. "Honest."

Dana frowned. It was entirely likely the nurse was 
belatedly covering up a mistake, but it was also 
possible the mystery man had entered the I.C.U. 
through the back emergency stair. The stair was a 
security nightmare, but it couldn't be removed. Dana 
knew that because the facility's administrator had 
once introduced her to the hospital's architect. The
architect had explained that several years ago a hospital 
expansion had taken out a stairwell at the other end of 
the corridor. Because that stairwell had been removed, 
fire codes demanded that this one stay even though it
violated the spirit of the I.C.U.'s restricted access
policy.

When Dana entered Fox Mulder's room, she glanced at the 
EEG monitor and gasped. She reached for Mulder's 
hand and took his pulse as she studied the EEG. It 
had changed. The hyperactivity remained, but somehow 
he had entered R.E.M. sleep. He dreamed.

X X X

Mulder had seen the boy before. He had dreamed 
this dream before. . .at least Mulder thought it 
was a dream. It had to be a dream. This couldn't be 
real. . .could it?

The boy played in the sand on the beach. Once the 
child had approached Mulder and said, "The child is 
the father of the man." Mulder had thought the 
statement to be about as profound as your average 
fortune cookie, but if that was true, why did it 
continue to haunt him? He kept thinking that if 
he understood it, he would understand all things.

Of course it wasn't that easy. Nothing was ever 
that easy. How could he discover some deeply 
hidden message in a child's words when he couldn't 
discover whether this place, this beach, was even 
real? This was probably nothing more than a drug 
induced dream.

The child was angry with him. The boy looked at 
Mulder with an expression of disappointment and 
disgust. "You were supposed to help me," he said 
petulantly, then threw a handful of sand at Mulder 
and ran away.

That was when Mulder sensed her. She wasn't far 
away--ten maybe twenty yards down the beach--and yet 
she felt impossibly distant. She felt beyond his 
reach. But she was there, and he knew her. He 
could almost call her by name. . .except he couldn't. 
It was the sensation of knowing something, but feeling 
it slip beyond your grasp. Her name was on the tip of 
his tongue and yet for the life of him, he could not 
produce it.

She didn't look at him. She simply stared at the 
out at the horizon. She was searching. He knew it. 
He could sense it. She was searching for something or 
someone out there. He called to her but somehow his 
words were drowned by the sound of the surf. He started 
forward. He had to reach her. He had to go to her side. 
He had to take her hand so that they could turn to 
search the horizon together. He had to.













****************************************************
"We shall not all sleep, 
but we shall all be changed."
I Corinthians 15:51
****************************************************

CHAPTER FOUR

Grayhaven Inn
Ithaca, New York
11:15pm

Scully was exhausted when she entered her motel room. 
Her back hurt. Her feet hurt. And, if asked to state
her general condition, Scully would have to say 
miserable. To top everything off, she didn't have a 
clue how Doerstling had disappeared. 

Scully thought about simply collapsing in bed and going 
to sleep but, as tired as she was, she couldn't 
contemplate sleep without first finding her toothbrush.

The phone rang. 

"Scully," she answered out of habit.

"Agent Scully, this is Mike Stilgoe. I...uh...I'm 
sorry to be calling you this late, but after you left 
the pub I came back to Clark Hall."

"Has something happened?"

"No. Nothing's happened. Actually, this place is 
pretty dead, but I was reviewing last Tuesday's CLEO 
data and ran across something I thought you might like 
to know." She could hear him shuffling papers in the 
background. "There was an unscheduled test the night 
of Doerstling's disappearance."

"What time?"

"Oh, um..." Again Scully heard him shuffling papers. 
"Looks like sometime just before nine."

"Do you know who ran the test?"

"No. There's no official record. I only noticed that 
there were results that didn't fit with the rest of 
the data. It wasn't on my earlier readout so I did 
some cross checking. This was something different."

"Any idea what?"

"No. But I can check first thing in the morning if you 
want."

She glanced at the red digital readout on the clock. 
"Would eight be too early?"

"Usually," he admitted. "But with Blackwood scheduling a 
test first thing tomorrow that shouldn't be a problem."

Scully thanked him for calling then reached for the 
remote control to turn on the TV. As she stood Scully 
noticed the flickering images on screen. Some cable 
channel was replaying the movie "Gattaca." Not a bad 
movie, she thought as she fished her toothbrush out of 
her suitcase. Glancing up Scully saw Ethan Hawke 
challenge his on-screen brother to a swimming 
endurance contest. Men, she thought as she rolled 
her eyes. How did a suicidal race prove manhood?

In the bathroom Scully washed away any traces of 
make-up left after a day of trampling through the 
woods. When she entered the bedroom patting her 
face dry, she noticed that the movie had reached 
its climax. Ethan Hawke's character had finally 
achieved his life's ambition of boarding a rocket 
bound for the moon Titan. 

Scully's brow creased as she considered the story. 
She remembered once telling Mulder that she believed 
in fate. Actually what she had said was that a 
person's character determined their fate. However, 
in Gattaca a person was not judged by their character 
but by their genetic potential. 

Hawke played the hero, a man who exceeded expectations 
and proved that a man's soul was more than the sum of 
his parts. On the other hand Jude Law played a man of 
unlimited potential. Nothing was deemed beyond his 
grasp. Law could do or become anything. However, without 
boundaries he was doomed to failure. No one could be 
everything, and faced with that knowledge, Law's 
character had self-destructed. When an accident 
robbed him of the use of his legs he saw no purpose 
in living, and as Hawke triumphantly blasted into 
space, Law climbed into an incinerator and committed 
suicide.

Scully gasped. 

She dropped her towel and blinked. She thought about 
her line of reasoning, about the parallels between Law's 
character and Dr. Doerstling. It seemed like such a 
Mulder-like quantum leap of logic, but somehow the
theory forming in her head just felt. . .right.

Grabbing her wind breaker, Scully headed to the door 
then down the steps to her rental car. She had to 
look at CLEO. Stilgoe had said there was a test 
scheduled for first thing in the morning, and another
test could destroy any evidence that might be inside
the CESR. She had to look at it tonight. 

Traffic was light as Scully drove to the Alumni Field 
which was now deserted and pitch dark. There were 
lights in the distance but not enough to penetrate 
the inky blackness here. After finding her flashlight, 
Scully stepped out of the car then flipped the switch 
so that a single beam of white light cut the darkness. 

The flashlight showed her the path to the door of the 
Electron Storage Ring. Too late Scully realized that 
she should have called Stilgoe so that he could let 
her into the facility. It was probably locked. But 
when she tried the door Scully was surprised to find 
that it was open. 

Feeling clumsily along the wall she searched for the 
light switch but one wasn't there. Finally pointing
her flashlight's narrow beam into the darkness, Scully
cautiously made her way down the stairs. When she 
reached the bottom Scully thought about going to the 
control room, but having seen it the other day she 
decided there was little evidence to be found there. 
Instead she turned to enter the curving, bunkerlike 
corridor of the CESR itself. 

The ceiling was low and curved like the walls of a 
tunnel. There were surface mounted lights running 
along a track overhead but she had no idea where the 
switch for those lights might be. Next to the lights 
ran a bundled black cable, and along the wall was a 
bulky contraption made of metal. This structure didn't 
reflect the elegant aesthetics of sci-fi movies but the 
clumsy, inexact mechanics of experimental research. 

As her flashlight moved along the wall highlighting 
a red painted horizontal track with heavy blue supports, 
Scully noticed that fire extinguishers were located 
every few yards. To her right stood another awkward 
structure, but she couldn't make out what it was and 
had no idea what it did.

Then she heard something.

Scully stopped and strained to listen for any movement 
or sound, but the silence was oppressive. Flashing a 
beam of light behind her she searched the darkness, but 
the curvature of the tunnel made it impossible to see 
more than a few yards. Scully switched off her 
flashlight and waited...but no sound. Nothing. Seconds 
ticked by before Scully decided she must have imagined 
it and turned on her flashlight.

She walked down the hallway. The sound of her 
footsteps echoed around her. To her right Scully 
noticed a stencil on the wall announcing, 
"Synchronotron" then further down the line she found 
the words, "West Transfer." Apart from the stencils, 
her surroundings remained unchanged. The red painted 
structure still stood to her left as a bulky mechanical 
device ran down the wall on her right. She stopped 
when she found a large, stainless steel structure 
labeled "CHESS West." 

Again Scully heard something. Movement. Her light 
arced in the darkness as she turned only to find 
nothing changed. She heard it again. Her wobbly 
light darted from side to side. Now the sound was 
constant . . . and it was close. It was a small, 
desperate, scratching sound.

Without warning the overhead lights blinded Scully 
as they flooded the tunnel. She squinted against 
the glare but just as suddenly as they had come on, 
they were gone. Then a strobe light flashed causing 
an eerie, disconnected effect that made her flashlight 
useless. A deafening horn blasted and echoed down the 
concrete tunnel. Scully could no longer hear the 
scratching, but she didn't think it had stopped.

She pushed beyond the CHESS West and came to CLEO. 
When Scully placed her hand on it she could feel 
vibration. The scratching came from inside CLEO. 

Laying her flashlight on the floor Scully felt for the 
latch. There was no longer a scratching sound. Now she 
heard moaning. Someone was trapped inside. 

Sirens blared. Once. Twice. Three times. Then a low 
hum began to rise as if some huge electrical device was 
charging. Scully felt the hairs on her arm stand on end. 
That couldn't be a good sign. She found CLEO's latch 
next to an orange fluorescent "Danger" sign. Ignoring 
the warning, she turned the lever.

Somewhere there was a loud click and the electrical hum 
changed to an ear splitting whine. 

She pulled the lever. The iron door was heavy. It 
almost didn't move. Using all of her weight Scully 
pulled harder. Slowly the hatch opened and she 
reached blindly into the darkness. She felt flesh. 

Pulling back Scully retrieved her flashlight and shone 
it into the drift chamber just as the sirens stopped. 
The strobe light stopped. It was still and dark and 
quiet. 

Scully's breathing quickened. Instinctual fear raced 
down her spine but she ignored it to look inside the 
chamber. 

Terrified brown eyes stared back at her.

"Dr. Doerstling!" 

"Pull me out," he demanded. "Now!"

A loud, ominous sound echoed down the corridor and the 
high pitched whine returned. Only now it became 
steadily louder until it reached an excruciating pitch. 
Sound vibrated through her. 

"We're going to die," Doerstling announced.

"We aren't going to die," Scully countered as she 
strained to pull him from the chamber.

"The hell we aren't. Can't you hear it?"

"I can hear it."

"We're going to die!"

"No." Using her body as leverage Scully pulled harder. 
She was determined dislodge him.

Then she saw it. At first it was a vague, bluish-purple 
light, but it grew steadily brighter as it moved 
ceaselessly forward. It became a menacing glare that
blinded her. 

Scully flinched and closed her eyes, but the white hot 
light pierced her eyelids and seared her brain. Sound 
and light exploded around her as her skin sizzled in 
effervescent agony. 

He's right, Scully thought numbly. We're going to die. 

Light rushed through her. 

It was mind blowing. Mind altering. Unimaginable. 

Pain and power rolled together in a devastating, 
omnipresent wave that crushed her. . .and became her. 

Scully clutched her abdomen and a single thought 
pierced her confusion. "My baby."

Then energy exploded out of her, taking her breath and 
strength with it. Scully fell to the floor. It was 
everywhere. It was everything...and she was nothing. 

Darkness fell.

X X X

Something happened. Something shifted. Mulder felt it. 
He couldn't explain it, but he knew it. 

The woman on the beach turned and saw him, and he was 
captured by a pair of shadowed blue eyes.

"Mulder." It was just his name, but somehow she infused 
it with meaning. 

She knew him. She had called to him, and suddenly Mulder 
found an answer. "Scully." He knew her name as well 
as he knew his own.

Scully blinked. "What is this place?"

"I was hoping that you would know."

"A dream?"

Mulder shook his head. "No. If I was dreaming there 
would be more hot babes in bikinis--not that you aren't 
a hot babe, but you aren't exactly wearing a thong...are 
you? Scully, does the G-woman own a G-string?"

Scully arched a brow and gave him a supremely feminine 
stare that said she had heard every word he had said, 
but was doing him a favor by ignoring it.

"So much for that theory," he drawled.

A thought or emotion darkened her eyes, and Scully 
turned away from him to stand at the water's edge. 
The silence bothered Mulder, and he approached her. 
He touched her shoulder.

"Mulder, this has to be MY dream," Scully said softly.

But that couldn't be true. He had been here before 
her. Mulder asked, "Why do you believe it's your dream?
Is it impossible that this is real?"

"Yes. It's impossible for many reasons, none of 
them good." Unshed tears filled her eyes.

Mulder drew her to him, enveloping her in his 
embrace. Scully felt so small that he was surprised 
by the strength of her arms as they wrapped around him.

"It's okay, Scully." Mulder had no idea where those 
words came from and was not at all sure he believed
them, but still he reassured, "Everything will be 
okay."

A single tear dampened her lashes, but Scully gave a
small, enigmatic smile. It transformed her face,
and Mulder couldn't breathe. He touched her. He 
had to. It was a compulsion he couldn't resist
as his fingertips gently grazed her temple then
followed the curve of her cheek. Scully's lips 
trembled as his thumb traced the curve of her mouth.

She framed his face between her hands and rose to 
kiss him even as Mulder lowered his mouth toward hers. 
Five inches separated them, then three, then only
two. She was a breath away. . .and then she 
was gone. As quickly as Scully had appeared, she 
was gone.

"Scully!" he called but his voice was drowned by the 
sound of the ocean.

X X X

Georgetown Memorial Hospital
Washington, D.C.
6:50am

Scully gasped, dragging air into her oxygen deprived 
lungs. She reeled with confusion and blinked at the 
brightness of the room.

"Doctor, are you alright?"

Scully turned and looked at the nurse then glanced over 
her shoulder to find the doctor the nurse spoke to. 

Then she saw... "Mulder?"

In disbelief Scully approached him. Shock and confusion 
ricocheted through her. How was this possible? What 
was going on? But every question was second to the fact 
that Mulder was here. He was alive. 

Scully laid her hand across his brow. A hidden ache 
eased inside her as she felt the moist heat of his 
skin, the scrape of his stubble against her palm, 
and witnessed the even rise and fall of his breathing. 

An astonished smile curved her mouth. 

"You're back," Scully said in a low, choked voice and 
combed her fingers through his crisp hair. "You 
came back."

"Dana?"

Scully looked to the doorway in disbelief. "Daniel? 
What are you doing here?"

Daniel crossed his arms and looked impatient. "Since 
you haven't answered any of about two dozen messages 
and haven't left the M.I.C.U. in two days, I decided 
it was time for the mountain to come to Muhammad."

Messages? M.I.C.U.? What sort of bizarre dream or 
delusion was this? The last thing Scully remembered 
was being caught in an electron accelerator with Dr. 
Steven Doerstling. Scully frowned. No, that wasn't 
true. She remembered something else. She remembered 
standing on a beach with Mulder. He had called her 
name and touched her. For one timeless moment they 
had stood together, and Mulder had reassured her 
that everything would be okay.

Now Scully looked at Mulder's pale, tortured features 
and wondered what was real and what wasn't. Which 
memory was true and which was only a dream born of 
too many sleepless nights and too much desperation? 

"I don't understand," Scully murmured.

Daniel's face set in angry lines. "What's there to 
understand? I'm your husband and I want to talk to 
you."

Her jaw fell. "Husband?"

"Don't tell me you've already filed for divorce. You 
haven't left the hospital since you walked out."

"Walked out? What are you talking about? I walked out 
ten years ago."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It doesn't mean--"

Daniel interrupted. "Dana, please, give me a chance." 
His voice became soft and cajoling. "Have you filed 
for a divorce?"

"No!" Scully looked around her in confusion. 
"No...I...why would I file for a divorce?"

"Dr. Waterston," the nurse said.

Scully waited for Daniel to answer her.

The nurse tugged at Scully's sleeve and repeated, "Dr. 
Waterston."

With a sudden sense of understanding Scully looked down 
at her hands and saw a gold wedding ring: SHE was the 
Dr. Waterston that the nurse addressed.

The nurse finished, "There's someone wanting to speak 
with you about Mr. Mulder." 

Scully heard the nurse but couldn't move. Her mind 
was spinning. What the hell was going on?






















******************************************************
"We hover between awareness of being and loss of being.
And the entire reality of memory becomes spectral."
Gaston Bachelard 
"The Poetics of Space"
******************************************************



CHAPTER FIVE

Cayuga Medical Center
Ithaca, New York
7:12am

The world felt fuzzy and vague. She knew it was there, 
but she couldn't hold onto it. It kept slipping 
through her fingers. . .her aching fingers. 

Dana Waterston hurt all over.

"Doctor, I think she's coming around," she heard someone
announce.

Dana tried to push herself to a sitting position. She 
was the doctor, and there was a patient who needed her
if only she could make her muscles work. 

"No," a kind voice said. "You just lay back. You've 
been through quite enough, young woman." 

She managed to lift one eyelid to see a gray haired 
man leaning over her. "What. . .?" Dana croaked.

"From what I know, you walked into a rather unusual
situation. Heroics are all well and good, but if 
you aren't careful, you might get yourself killed."

"Heroics?" 

"Here," the doctor offered. "Take a drink of water. 
That should help."

Cool liquid slid down Dana's throat, and she was 
finally capable of opening both of her eyes. "What 
happened?" she asked.

"You don't remember throwing yourself into an 
electron accelerator to rescue Steven Doerstling?"

Dana blinked. Rescue THE Steven Doerstling? Someone 
on the staff had to be making some sort of sick joke.

"No really, what happened?" Dana asked.

The doctor frowned. "What day is it?"

"Monday."

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Three."

"What's your name?"

"Dana Scully Water--"

He refilled her glass. "You sound lucid," he announced 
and made a note in her chart. "Don't worry about 
forgetting the accident. It's relatively common to 
lose the memory of a traumatic event leading to a 
blackout. Then again after looking at your 
rather...shall we say 'eventful' medical history, I 
assume you know that."

He returned to her bedside. "I want to reassure you 
that all indications are that your baby is fine."

Dana choked on her water. "What?"

"When your medical charts were forwarded to us, I
noticed the tests you had run in Washington. I assumed 
this was a high risk pregnancy. I ran an ultrasound, 
and, as I said, all indications are that the fetus is
fine."

She was pregnant. Now how in the hell had that 
happened? Daniel had had a vasectomy before he had even 
met her. He said that he didn't want more children, 
and, after witnessing the father he had been, Dana 
had decided his decision was a good one. She never 
wanted Daniel's child. 

So how was she pregnant? For that matter how had she 
climbed into an electron accelerator? This was nuts. 
Out of this world nuts.

Then Dana remembered the doctor saying her medical 
records had been forwarded from Washington.

"Where am I?" she asked.

"Cayuga Medical Center. We're in Ithaca."

New York. Dana felt hysteria rise inside her. This 
had to be a dream or nightmare or. . .something. It 
had to be anything but what it appeared to be. Short 
of starring in an episode of Star Trek, no one 
disappeared from one location to miraculously appear 
in another. It defied the laws of physics. 

A young man stuck his head through the door opening, 
"Agent Scully, you awake?"

Dana frowned. He looked to be somewhere around the 
age of twenty-four, two days overdue for a shave and 
in desperate need of a comb. He was also a complete 
stranger.

"When I called you with the b quark data I didn't 
think that you'd run out in the middle of the night 
to check out CLEO." Then he grinned. "Good thing 
you did though. Gotta hand it to the FBI. You pulled 
it off. I never thought to see Dr. Doerstling alive 
again. Do you get a medal or something for pulling 
that off?"

He could as easily have been speaking Greek. Dana had
absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

"Hey, doc," the kid called just before her doctor left 
the room. "Can she go down the hall to see Doerstling?"

The doctor frowned a moment then looked at her, "You 
think you're up to it?"

Dana tested her limbs, and they felt sound. "What 
were my injuries?" she asked.

"Almost none. Like I said, you're a lucky woman, 
Agent Scully. You seem to have come through 
without a scratch."

Agent? She reviewed the last few minutes and 
remembered the younger man mentioning the FBI. Was 
this some bizarre dream brought on by several nights 
without sleep and at least one night sitting vigil 
over FBI Agent Fox Mulder?

The young man handed her a white terry robe. "It was 
in the bathroom," he told her.

While slipping it on, Dana tried to find her center 
of gravity as a wave of dizziness washed over her.

"You okay?" the kid asked.

Dana took a deep breath. "I'm fine."

He grinned. "Well then, let's go see Doc Doerstling."

She moved slowly down the hall because her muscles 
still ached, but the young stranger assured her they 
weren't going far.

"Here we are," he announced as he pushed open the 
wide patient room door.

There was an older man with salt and pepper hair and
intelligent brown eyes sitting on a bed with a young 
blonde woman attending his every need. "I'm okay, 
Lauren," he reassured. Then he raised his head, 
and Dana thought he saw her. 

"Ah," he said, "the conquering hero."

Dana swallowed her confusion and stepped tentatively 
into the room.

The man's eyes narrowed. "Why do I have the feeling 
I have the pleasure of greeting Alice just after she 
fell down the rabbit hole?"

X X X

Georgetown Memorial Hospital
Washington, D.C.
7:12am

"Sir," Scully said with vast relief as she pushed 
open the door to the M.I.C.U. waiting room to find
Assistant Director Walter Skinner standing there. 
"I'm glad you're here."

Skinner looked surprised then gratified by 
her statement. "I'm sorry I couldn't arrive sooner, 
doctor."

Doctor? 

Skinner continued, "Since you called saying there was 
an intruder in Agent Mulder's room, I've arranged for 
a guard."

Scully eyes narrowed. "Mulder is in danger? From 
whom?"

Skinner's gaze darted away from her, and he adjusted his 
glasses. "I'm not sure." He paused, then took a breath. 
"Dr. Waterston, has there been any change in Mulder's 
condition?"

Scully ducked her head. How was she supposed to answer 
that? She heard someone push open the waiting room door 
and looked to see who it was. Then her spine stiffened, 
and her chin rose defiantly. So the old bastard wasn't 
dead. Why wasn't she surprised?

"Yes, doctor," the Smoking Man said in a quiet rumble. 
"Has Mulder's condition improved?" He casually reached 
into his pocket, removed a cigarette, and started to 
light it.

Scully snatched it out of his hand. "There's no smoking 
in the hospital."

She thought she saw amusement in the old man's rheumy 
eyes. "Yes, doctor."

Scully glared at Skinner, but he only looked away. 
She frowned. What was going on? Skinner was acting
strangely. He was compromised. Scully knew that. He 
had confessed it, but she still trusted him. Skinner 
had saved hers and Mulder's butts too many times for 
her not to trust him. But since he was compromised 
Scully had also learned not to depend on him.

She examined the Smoking Man. He wasn't dead, and that 
was the only revelation of the last few minutes that 
didn't shock her. In fact, the only thing about him 
that surprised her was the state of his health. The 
last time she had seen him he had been pasty skinned 
and had announced that he was dying. Later both 
Krycek and Marita Covarrubias described him as being 
wheelchair bound and having a trache. . .and that 
had been before he was murdered. All in all he 
looked miraculously healthy.

Putting on her best poker face, Scully decided to 
bluff her way out of this situation. "I'm not 
prepared to make any diagnosis at the moment." 
She looked at Skinner. "Am I to expect a guard 
in the M.I.C.U.?"

Skinner nodded.

When Scully moved to exit, CSM stopped her with 
a brush of his hand. "Will you have a prognosis 
later today?" 

Her eyes glinted with rebellion. "I don't know. 
Ask me later today." 

Once she left the room Scully took a deep breath. 
The world had gone insane. Everything was upside 
down and inside out. It was as if she had fallen 
into one of those parallel universes that Steven 
Doerstling had theorized.

Scully stopped walking and began shaking her head. 
No, that was impossible. Things like that didn't 
happen. It was the kind of stuff Mulder liked to 
talk about but. . .

Mulder.

With renewed purpose Scully walked down the hall. 
At the nurses' station she demanded Mulder's 
medical chart before returning to his room.

Daniel stood waiting for her. "I read the chart," 
hesaid. "It's a fascinating case, but you're 
spending too much time on it. You're making it 
personal."

"It is personal."

She saw a muscle jump in Daniel's jaw. Over the 
years Scully had forgotten that quirk. Then 
again she had forgotten many things about Daniel.

"What is this man to you?" he asked.

She refused to answer. "Why are you still here?" 

"I wanted to speak with my wife."

"She isn't here."

Daniel crossed the room. "Dana, I know you're 
angry."

"That's where you're wrong. I'm not angry. I 
have no reason to be angry, it's just that my 
life has nothing to do with yours."

"How can you say that?"

"Because it happens to be true." She wanted him to 
go away. Scully didn't know why Daniel thought she 
was his wife, and she didn't want to know. She only 
wanted him leave. Mulder needed her. "I'm sorry, 
Daniel. Whoever it is you're looking for, I'm not 
her."

"That's not true."

"It is true." Scully faced him squarely. "You 
don't want me. You want an admirer. An admirer with
enough knowledge to be suitably impressed by your 
brilliance. I can't do that. I can't be that. 
I've never been much of a yes woman. I need a 
partner, not an idol."

Daniel's gaze narrowed. "It's him." 

She ducked her head. "My relationship with Mulder 
has nothing to do with this."

"Your 'relationship'?"

"You aren't listening to me." Scully sighed. "You 
never listened to me."

"You're having an affair." Daniel laughed and looked 
at her with what Scully thought was disbelief. "All 
the time I was feeling guilty, you were fucking 
another man."

"Daniel, please--"

He interrupted. "Are you in love with him?"

"Excuse me?"

"It's a simple question." Daniel crossed his arms. 
"At least for most people it's simple. Though in your 
case perhaps I should rephrase it." He paused. "Do 
you allow yourself to love him? I know you always 
secretly hated the idea of loving me."

"I don't know what you're talking about." 

"It's always about control with you. Everything 
has to fit your little rules, your unbending ethics." 
Daniel walked around Mulder's bed but his gaze never 
left Scully. "This won't work, you know. You won't 
allow it to work. If your self-righteous morality 
hasn't killed it, your need for control will. You 
won't allow yourself to need anyone, or at least 
you won't allow yourself to BELIEVE that you do. 
Deep down you don't trust a soul."

Scully blinked. She wasn't that woman. She wasn't
deluding herself. She simply wasn't the person Daniel
described, and Scully didn't mean that in the sense 
that he called her Dana and thought that she was his
wife. It went deeper than that. 

It was true that she had used excuses to explain 
her distance from her parents. Scully had blamed a 
fear of disappointing her father. She had pointed to 
the differences between Melissa's mystical nature and 
her own more scientific one. She and Bill disagreed, 
period, and of course Charlie was better at creating 
emotional distance than she was. But that had been a 
lifetime ago.

Scully looked at Mulder. Daniel's analysis had some 
foundation in truth, but he was wrong in one vital 
respect. She trusted Mulder absolutely.

"Do you allow yourself to love him?" Daniel asked.

Scully didn't look in Daniel's direction. "I won't 
discuss this with you."

"Typical."

Scully closed her eyes. This was turning into a bad 
soap opera. "Could you please go?"

"Yes, I think I will. But one day you'll regret 
this."

"I don't think so," she murmured. 

After Daniel left Scully looked at Mulder. "And I 
don't care if you are catatonic, you're smiling 
aren't you?"

Scully reached to pull her hand through her hair 
and was surprised to discover it pulled back with 
a clip. It wasn't her style. "Mulder, I think 
your disappearing act has finally pushed me over 
the edge." She sank into the chair next to his
bed. "I've lost my mind."

Scully opened his chart and began reading. It was 
ominously familiar. She swallowed convulsively 
and reached for his hand. "Mulder," she rasped. 
"I hate to tell you this, but you're in big trouble."

Threading her fingers through his she repeated 
in an inexpressibly sad voice, "Big trouble."

X X X

Cayuga Medical Center
Ithaca, New York
7:43am

In an almost dreamlike state Dana stepped cautiously 
into Steven Doerstling's room.

"Tell me, Agent Scully," Doerstling said, "am I cast in 
the role of the Cheshire Cat?"

"I wouldn't know. It's been a very long time since I 
read Alice in Wonderland. What exactly does the 
Cheshire Cat do?"

He laughed, though Dana wasn't at all sure anything 
she had said was amusing. Doerstling looked at Lauren 
Rice. "Why don't you and Mike go and have breakfast? 
I would like to speak with Agent Scully alone."

"But Doctor," Lauren began to protest.

"Give over, Lauren," Mike said impatiently. "There's 
no point in arguing with the man. We'll find an Egg
McMuffin or something." Stilgoe escorted Lauren from 
the room.

"Agent Scully, don't hover by the door," Doerstling
admonished. "Come in."

Dana took a single step forward. "Why do you call me 
Agent Scully?"

"Aren't you Agent Scully?"

She took a shaky breath. "My maiden name is Scully."

"But you aren't with the FBI?"

"No."

"So you are Alice."

Dana gathered her courage and took two more steps into 
the room. "Exactly what rabbit hole do you think I 
fell through?"

"You better sit down Ms. . .?"

"Waterston. But Scully will do just as well."

He looked concerned. "You have no idea what has
happened, do you? What am I saying? Of course you 
don't." His gaze met hers. "Ms. Waterston, you are 
a living breathing example of something that is 
completely impossible. And you are a very long way 
from home."

"Is this where you tell me to click my heels three 
times and say there's no place like home?"

"Wrong story."

"Or the wrong dream?" she asked. "Weren't Alice and 
Dorothy only dreaming?"

"This place is real, Ms. Waterston, and so is the place 
you were before. They are interdependent worlds."

Dana arched a brow in disbelief. "Worlds? As in the 
plural? That's impossible."

He smiled. "So I said."

She shook her head. "No, I mean it's really 
impossible. There's no such thing. Alternate 
universes? That's the stuff of science fiction, 
not real science."

"Most science fiction is based on real science."

"Based and then extrapolated out of all proportion. 
Alternate universes do not exist."

"But physics--science--theorizes that they do."

Dana shook her head. "That's theory. It's supposition.
It's not something that actually happens." She 
swallowed and was far less certain than she sounded. 
"It didn't happen to me."

"But it did."

"I have no proof of that." But even as she said it, 
Dana knew it was a lie. She was pregnant, wasn't she? 
Pregnant with a child that she didn't remember 
conceiving. Dana frowned. "How. . ." She paused and 
took a deep breath. "How is what you're proposing 
possible?"

"I don't know. And though I don't want to sound 
conceited, if I don't know then no one does. Please 
sit, Ms. Waterston, we have a great deal to discuss."









****************************************************
"When in dreams I still remember..."
Arthur L. Gilliom
****************************************************


CHAPTER SIX

Georgetown Memorial Hospital
Washington, D.C.
7:43am

Scully's hands shook, but she ignored the tremor. She
walked around the nurses' station, past the charting 
kiosk, and into the med prep room. No one stopped her. 
No one questioned her right to be there. They didn't 
so much as look twice in her direction. 

It disturbed her.

In medical school Scully had realized that if you 
behaved as though you belonged in staff areas of the 
hospital the personnel usually accepted you. But this 
was different. These strangers knew her. She should 
examine that, but she wouldn't. Not now. Some things 
couldn't bear scrutiny, and as far as Scully was 
concerned, this was one of them.

Scully didn't plan to ignore what was going on around
her. It was just that her surroundings had no bearing 
on the problem at hand. Her first priority was Mulder. 
He had a specific medical problem and that had to be
addressed first. She couldn't allow confusion about 
her surroundings to distract her. Mulder needed her. 

In medicine and in the FBI indecision could prove fatal.
Scully lived with that knowledge every day, and the only 
way to deal with it was to have a clear and simple set 
of priorities. A person's life came first. In a crisis 
situation anything else was superfluous, so Scully 
silenced the inner voice that warned her extraordinary 
things were happening if only she would stop and notice. 

Of course, Mulder would claim inexplicably bizarre 
circumstances weren't superfluous.

That was the difference between them--not that Mulder
would ever turn his back on a person in need. It was
just that Mulder started with the idea of proving the
impossible. Scully couldn't do that. She clung to some
semblance of objectivity, and she knew that tendency 
frequently drove Mulder up a wall. 

Scully had tried to explain it to him. As a scientist 
she had to rely on the scientific method--objective 
observation, coherent hypotheses, and quantifiable 
results. She couldn't allow was her own needs or bias 
to influence her choices. Scully wasn't allowed to 
predetermine the answer she wanted. Science demanded 
that she focus solely on the facts, and because of that 
there were questions Scully simply couldn't ask.

Maybe that was why she had found her niche in the 
X-Files. Mulder asked those questions for her. 
He kept alive that part of herself that science 
demanded that she ignore. 

But Mulder wasn't here...or at least he hadn't been 
here. Now he was, and that in itself was a question 
she should reflect upon. Instead--as always--Scully 
took action. 

She punched a code she had found in Dana Waterston's
pocket PDR into the Pyxis machine, the pharmaceutical 
equivalent of a vending machine, and retrieved a 
sedative. If Scully claimed what she was about to do 
didn't bother her, she would be lying. However after 
reading Mulder's chart, Scully had made a decision, and
in good conscience she could not make that decision 
alone.

She left the med room and nodded to the nurse. Then
she walked down the hall to Mulder's room. Once 
inside Scully took a hypodermic from her pocket. Her
hands still shook as she inserted the needle the 
into the small glass vial and drew down the stopper.

Scully had performed this procedure a thousand times,
but this was different. This was Mulder, and Scully 
hated what she was about to do. She was about to 
inject Mulder with a near fatal dose of a drug for 
nothing more than a few moments of lucidity. It was 
necessary, but it felt wrong.

Scully looked at him. His face appeared impassive,
yet she knew he was in pain. She remembered 
Mulder describing his mental anguish during his 
hospitalization last fall. He had been in hell, and 
now it was happening again. 

Scully's most vivid memory of that period was Mulder 
standing in a padded cell screaming her name. Diana 
Fowley had barred her from seeing him. Even Diana's 
later sacrifices couldn't expunge the bitterness Scully 
felt at being denied the chance to help Mulder. He had 
needed her.

Now it was happening again, and Diana Fowley was 
nowhere to be found. And nothing on earth--or anywhere 
else for that matter-- would keep Scully from reaching 
Mulder. 

She glanced at the EEG, reading the abnormal results 
on screen. Something had been removed from Mulder's 
brain last year, and now it was back. It was killing 
him. Scully could ignore every other horrifyingly 
bizarre aspect of her situation. She could place 
in some controlled corner of her mind that Daniel 
thought she was his wife, that the supposedly deceased 
Smoking Man was alive and more well than the last time 
she had seen him. Scully could even manage to deal 
with both Skinner and the hospital staff believing 
she was a neurologist. The thing she could not 
ignore, could not deny was that Mulder was dying.

She would not allow that to happen.

Scully tapped the hypodermic needle and approached 
the bed. 

X X X

There was a flash, a blinding moment of pain, then
a prickling sensation not unlike the phantom pins and 
needles felt when a limb that had gone to sleep 
suddenly had circulation restored...only this was 
a thousand times worse. Agony pierced Mulder's mind and 
impaled his consciousness. Then it slowly dissipated, 
fizzling like fireworks after a burst of light. 

He was free.

Mulder blinked and found himself staring up at two 
foot by two foot acoustical ceiling tiles. There 
was movement at his side. He turned and saw her.

"Scully," he croaked.

Scully smiled, and it softened the lines and curves 
of her face. It gave her a muted glow that seemed 
to emanate from somewhere deep within, and when her 
smile reached the shadowed depths of her eyes they 
turned a pure, crystalline blue.

"You know me?" she asked.

Yes? No? Maybe? Mulder wasn't sure. He didn't know. 
He had no memory of her, and yet...

"You were in my dream--on the beach," he rasped.

Something flickered in Scully's eyes. Some complex, 
multi-layered emotion that passed over her then 
coalesced into a singular sadness. 

Mulder reached to comfort her. "Scully..."

She gripped his hand with surprising strength. "We 
don't have much time," she told him. "Nowhere near 
enough time. You're dying."

He gave a grim smile. "Don't waste time with tact. 
Give it to me straight. I can take it."

"I'm sorry--"

"Don't be." Mulder squeezed her hand.

"I didn't tell you this so you could act insanely
brave," Scully snapped. "I'm telling you because I 
think there is someone who can save you."

"Does she have red hair?" 

"It's the Smoking Man."

He tensed. "No."

"Listen to me--"

"No. You can't trust that black lunged bastard."

"I know that."

"Do you?" Mulder's gaze narrowed. "How? Who are you?"

"Your friend," she vowed. "Always your friend." 

He looked down at their clasped hands. 

"Mulder..." On her lips his name was little more
than a breath, a sigh. "I know something about what's 
wrong with you. I know you can hear what I'm thinking."

He attempted to sit up. 

"No," Scully protested and gently pushed him back 
against the pillows. "I want you to look at me. I 
know you have no reason to trust the Smoking Man. 
I'm not asking that you do. I'm asking you to 
trust me."

Mulder shook his head.

"Please, Mulder. There are things I can't say. Things 
that I don't have time to explain, and even if I 
had the time, I don't know that I COULD." Her grip
tightened painfully. "But I need you to understand, 
and I need your trust before it's too late." 

Mulder gazed at her, and images tumbled through his 
head. Her memories? His memories? Mulder wasn't sure. 
He couldn't know...No. They couldn't be his memories. 
He lived his life alone. Mulder was suspicious of his 
superiors and mocked by his co-workers. His sister had 
been abducted, his father murdered, and his mother dead 
by her own hand. There was no one with whom he shared 
a connection or bond. 

He had a few friends--Frohike, Langly, Byers--but there 
was no confidante. No one who knew his secrets or his 
terrible truths. No one who shared his path. 

He was alone. 

What an incredibly depressing thought. It was true, 
but it was still depressing. If he fell off the earth 
tomorrow, no one would notice except the FBI payroll 
accountant, and no one would care except his fish when 
the automatic feeder ran out. Hell, now that Mulder 
thought about it, if it wasn't for survival instinct 
he had no reason to fight what was happening to him. 

So why did he matter to her? And how did he know her? 
How could he possibly remember Scully holding out her 
hand saying she had been assigned to work on the 
X-Files? 

Mulder also remembered responding snidely, "I was 
under the impression you were sent to spy on me."

Then the memory faded and another took its place. 

Wind howled in a low minor chord that resonated with 
despair as a blizzard raged in beyond a door. It was 
the Arctic Ice Core Project, and Mulder saw himself 
holding a gun on a man, a woman...and Scully. "I 
don't trust you," Mulder yelled. "I wouldn't turn 
my back on any of you."

Again his memory shifted, and Scully alone dared 
enter the room where he stood.

"I don't trust them," he had confessed. "But I 
WANT to trust you." 

Months passed. Or was it seconds? Years? He 
didn't know and couldn't tell. Mulder had no 
reference point as images sped by. Images so 
vivid they seemed real...or were they real? Had 
they happened?

Scully lay ill in a hospital bed. Her translucent 
skin had lost its glow, and her eyes looked tired 
and pained. She was dying. Dying because she had 
joined him in peering into the dark corners. Dying 
because of him, and yet Scully was willing to 
sacrifice more.

"You have to say I'm the one who killed that man," 
Scully urged.

"I can't do that."

"Yes, you can. If I can save you, let me." 

Let her sacrifice herself for him? It defied 
Mulder's imagination. 

Then a miracle happened and Scully recovered. She 
hadn't left him, and something inside him that had 
come perilously close to breaking remained intact.

Somewhere in the recesses of Mulder's mind he heard 
Scully say, "When I met you, you told me that your 
sister had been abducted by aliens, and that event 
marked you so deeply that nothing else mattered."

YOU matter, Mulder thought.

"I didn't believe you," Scully confessed. "But I 
believed in you. I followed you on nothing more 
than your faith that the truth was out there. Based 
not on fact, not on science, but on your memories. 
Memories were all that you had."

Just as memories were all Scully had now. Memories 
that came to Mulder in an inexplicable rush. Small 
ones. Inconsequential ones. Happy ones.

Scully stood on a chair in his office raising her 
face to the sunlight spilling through a skylight as 
she relished a creamy white confection.

"Did you bring enough to share with the rest of the 
class?" Mulder drawled.

"It's not ice cream," Scully warned. "It's a non-fat 
tofutti rice dreamsicle."

Mulder made a face. "I bet the air in my mouth tastes 
better than that." He leaned back in his chair, 
bracing his feet against the top edge of his desk. 
"Scully, you really know how to live it up."

"Oh yeah, and you're mister 'let's squeeze every last 
drop out of this sweet life,' aren't you?"

He arched one eyebrow.

Scully shook her head. "Here we are on a beautiful 
Saturday morning, and you've got us grabbing life 
by the testes."

Mulder almost laughed, and there was a look in Scully's 
eyes that said she was onto him. "Let sleeping dogs lie,"
she admonished.

He crossed his arms. "I'm not going to sit idly by as 
you hurl clichéés at me. Preparation is the father of 
inspiration." 

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

"The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

"Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we may die."

"I scream, you scream, we all scream for non-fat 
tofutti rice dreamsicles!" And he pounced, wrestling 
her for the ice cream as her crystal clear laughter 
echoed in his ears.

Later, at a baseball field Scully crossed the distance 
between them. Mulder handed her the bat and wrapped 
his arms around her saying the most outrageous things 
he could think of. 

"You've got to remember," he murmured. "Hips before 
hands." Then he touched her and demonstrated what he 
meant.

Scully moved in rhythm with him. 

"We're going to make contact," Mulder whispered in her 
ear. "We aren't going to think. We're just going to 
let it fly."

Together they hit the baseball out of the park. 

With his arms wrapped around her, Mulder found 
himself talking and talking. Nothing he said made 
much sense, but somehow it meant everything when 
Scully gave a rare, wonderful smile. 

"Shut up, Mulder." Her soft voice washed over him. 
"I'm playing baseball."

And something fell into place. His jagged edges and 
asymmetrical outcroppings found their niche. This
was it. This was where he fit in that inexplicable 
jigsaw puzzle of life. Mulder belonged beside her.

Another memory surfaced. 

"I never made the world a happier place," he murmured.

Scully took his hand and replied, "Oh, I don't know, 
I'm relatively happy."

But happiness slipped from Mulder's grasp as shadows 
lengthened and fell across his pathway. The sun
dipped below the horizon, and they stood in the night
darkened halls outside of A.D. Skinner's office. "I 
won't lose you," he vowed to Scully, but somehow he 
knew that he had.

Scully's gaze filled with an emotion Mulder could not 
define but understood completely as he saw himself 
through her eyes. Mulder was stunned. He saw his 
arrogance and his obsessions. He saw the futility 
of his anger and witnessed his carelessness and self 
destruction. But--through her--Mulder also saw more. 

Scully saw strength in him. She found honor and 
compassion. She believed in his integrity, and 
valued his quest for truth. Scully saw more in Mulder 
than he had ever seen in himself. And though she 
knew all of his weaknesses and mistakes, Scully saw 
something he had never seen. She saw a man worth 
saving... 

And there was something more. Something Scully 
would not or could not say. Something awful and 
terrible and final--something exhilarating, and 
miraculous, and true. It was beyond Mulder's reach 
and becoming more so by the moment as sanity slipped 
from his grasp. 

Mulder gripped her hand as the tide of the mental 
storm overtook him. Wave after wave of thought 
battered him, choked him, and dragged him to murky 
depths. 

No, Mulder thought. Not yet. Wait! There was something 
he had to say.

"Scully," he whispered.

"I'm here."

"I trust you." 

And the tide pulled him under.

X X X

A tear slipped down Scully's cheek as she stared at 
Mulder and knew without being told that he was no longer 
with her. Scully looked at their entwined fingers. Even
now they held one another fiercely, and she didn't want 
to let go. Walking away wasn't a choice, but she 
couldn't stand still and do nothing. Scully had to 
fight for both of them, so she brushed her fingertips 
across his lips and said a silent good-bye. 

Scully gasped when she opened the door to find a guard 
standing in the hall. She nodded to him then made 
her way to the nurses' station.

Scully asked the nurse, "Do you remember the man 
who was here earlier? The older one with the 
cigarettes and the dark suit?"

"Yes."

"Good. When he arrives, I want you to page me. 
I don't care what time it is. Page me." Scully 
started to walk away.

"Doctor," the nurse called. "What name should I 
use when I page you? I mean, who is he?"

"Spender. Just call him Mr. Spender." Scully pushed 
through the security doors prepared to make a deal 
with the devil.















******************************************************
"I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir," said Alice,
"because I'm not myself, you see."
Lewis Carroll
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
******************************************************

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cayuga Medical Center
Ithaca, New York
8:12 am

Dana Waterston stared at her face in the mirror. Only 
it wasn't her face...not exactly. She looked thinner. 
Her features were slightly more defined, and her hair 
was a darker, more fiery red. Dana glanced over her 
shoulder. "How?" she asked Dr. Doerstling.

Doerstling was silent for a moment then said, "Grab 
the legal pad on the table."

Dana walked across the room.

"Rip out a page," he told her. "Then fold it in half 
lengthways. Now fold it again. Make it about an inch 
wide." Once she had followed his instructions Doerstling 
added, "Now twist one side and bring the two ends 
together. What do you have?"

Dana straightened the edges of the paper. "It's a 
mobius strip." 

"You asked 'how?' That's my best answer." Doerstling 
held out his hand, and she placed the strip in it. He 
examined it. "A few minutes ago this sheet of paper was 
easily defined. It had clear dimensions--a top and a 
bottom." 

"But a mobius strip only has one side."

"Exactly. A twist erased boundaries. Where once there 
was a top and bottom, now there's neither...and both." 
He handed her the mobius strip. "A simple action 
changed everything."

Dana shook her head as the implications of his statement 
struck her and made an unhappy muddle in her head. She 
frowned. "Sort of an incomplete explanation, isn't it?"

"A very incomplete explanation, but the best I can do
on short notice."

Dana felt herself questioning whether she had actually 
heard what she thought she had. "A simple action
erasing boundaries between dimensions?" Even to her 
own ears Dana sounded doubtful...which was good because 
that was the way she felt.

"That's it in a nutshell," Doerstling told her.

"I don't believe it."

"You may not believe it, but you're living it." 

She WAS living it. Dana wanted to deny it, but she 
couldn't. She could look out the window and see trees 
and sunlight. She could feel the mobius strip in her 
hand. There was nothing vague or indistinct about her 
surroundings. This was real.

Doerstling continued, "I also have to confess that I'm 
the one who started this mess. It's my fault that you're 
here." 

Dana approached his bed. "Care to explain how?"

"I would rather not, but I owe you an explanation." 
His gaze lifted to hers. "I'm a difficult, arrogant, 
and self absorbed man."

"That's quite a confession."

"But a true one." He paused then added, "Arrogance and 
self absorption can lead a man to make foolish choices."

Dana wasn't sure how to respond to that.

He looked at the closed door. "You met my assistant
Lauren. She's a very attractive young woman. It 
probably shouldn't surprise me that she walked into 
my office last week, and I felt desire." Doerstling's 
gaze lifted to Dana's. "But it did surprise me--and not 
because she's half my age or because in normal 
circumstances I would be more attracted to Mike Stilgoe." 

Dana looked toward the wheelchair in the corner.

"No," he said softly. "Not even because of the 
monster in the corner." 

She took a seat next to his bed as Doerstling confessed,
"It didn't take long for me to realize that what I felt 
had nothing to do with Lauren and everything to do with 
youth. Tell me, Ms. Waterston, do you remember what it 
was like to be that age? Do you remember the days 
before your path was set? A time when the world was 
full of possibilities, and you could do or become 
anything?"

Dana almost nodded, but Doerstling didn't seem to need
a reply. With his gaze fixed on some invisible point
in space he said, "Year by year our options become fewer 
and change becomes less likely. At some point we realize 
that the path we're on is the path we must stay 
on. It's too late to change. There isn't enough 
time to start over." He looked at her. "Of 
course, you haven't reached that point yet. You're 
still relatively young."

While that might be true, Dana secretly admitted that
it didn't always feel that way.

"To make a long story short," Doerstling told her. "I 
looked at Lauren and it was like looking at all of 
the roads I didn't take. What if I had zigged left 
instead of zigging right in that motorcycle accident? 
What if after the accident I hadn't locked myself in the 
physics department?"

He looked at the wheelchair. "I allowed myself to 
become a slave to that contraption. Without my
choice, my path was set and there was no going back." 

As if he felt her eyes on him, Doerstling snapped, "Don't 
look at me with sympathy. It's easy enough for me to 
wallow in self pity without your help. That was what I 
was doing when I chose the most outrageous form of self 
destruction I could imagine."

"The accelerator," Dana realized. 

"Yes. The accelerator. You see, I remembered who I had 
been before the accident. I was a kid who wanted to push 
the boundaries, to attempt the impossible. Explore. I 
betrayed that kid, and I owe him."

"To push the limits?"

"It's what I did, isn't it? Who else--other than 
yourself--has been insane enough to jump into an 
electron accelerator?"

"I didn't jump into an accelerator," Dana insisted.

"Your counterpart did."

"To save you."

Doestling grimaced. "I'm sorry about that. I dragged 
both of you into a mess. I ran an unscheduled test 
of the CESR and climbed inside it not caring if it 
killed me. I simply wanted to do something that had 
never been done." He smiled. "You have to admit I 
accomplished that quite spectacularly." 

"I thought I--" Dana stopped. "That is, I thought
Agent Scully stopped you."

"No, this was the week before. I ran an experiment, 
and, like yourself, I became...someone else. Or to be
more precise, I became a version of myself who had 
lived a different life. I could walk again, and I 
was no longer THE Steven Doerstling." He looked at 
the wheelchair. "I had never been introduced to the 
monster."

Dana looked at the mobius strip she still held in 
her hand. A simple twist had changed everything.

Doerstling looked somewhat amused. "I have to admit 
that as soon as I became used to anonymity, I hated 
it. Without the monster, my other self never 
stopped moving long enough to become 'the' Steven 
Doerstling...and I missed the feeling of being THE 
Steven Doerstling." He smiled self mockingly. "I 
said I was egocentric."

"So what happened?" Dana pressed. "How did I become 
involved?" 

"While leading another life, I never stopped to think 
about what happened to my other self in this one. 
Thankfully some men have more conscience than I do." 
Doerstling cleared his throat. "From what I've been 
told Arnold found my counterpart in the accelerator. 
My other half was disoriented and understandably 
perturbed with suddenly becoming a quadriplegic."

Dana frowned. "Arnold?"

"Arnold Blackwood. A rather pedantic colleague of 
mine. I don't know. Perhaps I should give Arnold more 
credit. He seems to have a fair grasp of the situation 
and kept it secret until he had a chance to run another 
round of tests." The professor smiled wanly. "It seems 
that Arnold missed 'the' Steven Doerstling and wanted 
him back. You have to understand, to Arnold, physics 
is everything."

"So you were reported missing while Blackwood hid the 
other Doerstling. Meanwhile, Agent Scully was brought 
in to investigate."

Doerstling nodded. "She must have discovered some clue 
because she was caught in the accelerator trying to 
rescue my other self."

Dana shook her head in disbelief. "This is fantastic--and 
I don't mean that in a 'gee whiz' kind of way. This is 
beyond belief."

"I have to protest. It makes a certain amount of 
scientific sense."

"Only in theory," Dana argued.

"You're here, aren't you? How theoretical is that?"

"So how do I get back? Another trip through the 
accelerator?"

"I wouldn't advise that. We don't know what would 
happen."

"It worked before."

"We think," Doestling stressed. "Who knows what happened 
to that other me. Did HE make it home successfully? 
There are too many unknowns, too many unforeseen 
consequences. What if things don't go back to the way 
they were before? What if you ended up somewhere else? 
Somewhere worse? And then there are the physical dangers. 
Jumping into an electron accelerator isn't a reasonable 
course of action."

"You did it."

"I was also borderline suicidal, and before you mention 
the other version of yourself, she was trying to rescue 
me. I wasn't joking when I said it was an act of 
heroism." Doerstling looked at Dana intently. "If you 
go back into the accelerator it isn't just your own life 
you're risking."

Dana's breath caught. How true. She knew Doestling 
referred to the alternate version of herself, but Dana's 
first thought was of the life growing inside of her. 
There was a baby to consider. Could she willingly risk 
a child's life? Would her other self wish her to? 
Somehow Dana knew Agent Scully would be dead set against 
it. Scully would protect her baby above all things. The 
child could not be risked in a desperate attempt to 
climb out of a rabbit hole.

So now what, Dana thought with dismay. Assume another
woman's life? And do what? Be what? Who was 
Dana Scully? Who was the father of this child? And
how would he feel about a stranger taking Dana Scully's
place?

X X X

Washington D.C.
10:58am

Scully sat alone in Dana Waterston's car in a dangerous 
neighborhood, but she hardly noticed. She was too 
distracted by everything that had happened in the last 
few hours. How could she think about anything as 
mundane as where she was parked?

When she had exited the hospital and walked into the 
physician's parking lot, Scully had realized that 
she had no idea what car she was looking for. Luckily 
the key chain in her pocket had a remote locking 
device so Scully had slowly walked through the 
parking lot clicking the button until there was a 
beep and a flash of headlights.

Once behind the steering wheel of a black Lexus, 
Scully had driven directly to a pharmacy and bought 
a pregnancy test. As a general rule, Scully didn't 
put much stock in intuition, but she couldn't deny 
that even before she took the test she had known 
what the result would be. 

No baby. 

Scully had stared at the pink stick as a dark 
emotion washed over her. It was as if that pink 
spot embodied every unjust and unfair thing she had 
ever experienced--which was ridiculous. It was 
nothing more than a simple medical test. It wasn't 
the universe saying, "You can have Mulder or the 
baby. You can't have both." 

Scully shook her head and forced herself into motion. 
She didn't like the direction of her thoughts or the 
sadness snaking through her. If everything was 
spinning out of control, Scully had to do something 
to set it right.

She opened the car door, and walked across the street 
to enter a small, cluttered pawn shop. A bell rang 
as the door closed behind her, and a painfully thin 
young man came out of a back room.

"What can I do for you?" he asked distractedly, 
glancing over his shoulder to watch the opening 
credits of "All My Children" on the television set 
in the back room.

"I was looking for a gun."

He pulled his attention from Erica Kane. "Gun?" 
He looked at Scully, but his eyes were too vacant 
and distracted to look surprised. He walked around 
a glass case. "Shotgun or handgun?" he asked.

"Handgun."

"Okay...um...you like any of these?"

He's not familiar with weapons, Scully quickly 
concluded. She was virtually certain he knew 
little or nothing about guns. She inspected the 
weapons in the case. "These two."

He gingerly removed a Beretta 9mm and a Sig Sauer. 
Scully took the one he dangled from his fingertips. 
Did he think it was going to bite him?

Scully examined the Sig, then reached for the Beretta. 
She inspected the safety catch and tested the weapon's 
weight in her hand. 

"These will do," she said quietly then looked at the 
man who once again had his eye on the television in 
the back room. "Ammunition?" Scully asked.

His gaze swiveled around. "Huh?"

"Ammunition."

"Oh...uh... Dick keeps that stuff under the counter. 
I don't know much about it though." The man pulled 
out the drawer. "Um...uh...whaddya want?"

Scully walked around the counter to where the man 
crouched and examined the boxes. She pushed one or 
two boxes aside before finding what she needed. 
Scully handed the boxes to the clerk. "I'll take 
these."

He frowned. "Am I...uh...allowed to just sell 
these to you? I mean isn't there a waiting period 
or something? Forms you've got to fill out?"

Scully had anticipated this. After leaving the 
pharmacy she had rummaged through Dana's pocketbook 
and found a checkbook with the insignia of a bank 
on the checks. Scully had then driven to the bank 
and removed a relatively substantial amount of cash 
from the Waterston account.

"How much for the guns and the ammunition?" Scully 
asked briskly.

He frowned in confusion, then looked at the guns and 
the boxes. "Maybe I should call Dick."

Scully starting counting out cash, laying bill after
bill on the glass counter. "I think Dick would be
satisfied with this amount, don't you?" 

The clerk's eyes were huge. "Uh...yeah, guess so. 
But there's still those forms--"

She laid a hundred dollar bill on top of the stack. 
"That should cover it, I think." She paused then 
lifted her eyes to his. "Don't you?"

He glanced anxiously toward the back room as if 
looking for the aforementioned 'Dick.' When the
man didn't appear, the clerk seemed to come to a 
conclusion and picked the money up from the 
counter. He folded the cash in half then shoved it 
into his back pocket. "What Dick don't know 
won't bother him much."

Scully frowned but silently picked up the gun 
and the box.

"You know how to shoot that thing?" the clerk asked.

Scully was actually surprised by the question. For
her, carrying a gun was more familiar than carrying 
a purse. "I know what I'm doing." Scully nodded to 
him and left the pawn shop.

One more law broken in the space of a couple of 
hours, Scully thought with mild disgust. Quite a 
record for a law officer. She should be ashamed of 
herself, but she wasn't--not when Mulder's life hung 
in the balance.

After driving for about fifteen minutes Scully turned 
the corner at a familiar intersection and found 
herself in an area of crumbling warehouses. There 
had been an effort for gentrification of the area in 
the eighties, but at some point the developers had 
cried surrender and allowed the district to sink to 
its natural equilibrium--urban grunge.

Scully stopped in front of a non-descript grayish 
building of indeterminate age. Nothing distinguished 
the building from its neighbors. Everything indicated 
that the it was deserted. Scully prayed it wasn't.

X X X

Melvin Frohike sat in front of the security monitor
watching a woman park a Lexus. She was conspicuously 
out of place in this neighborhood of seedy shops and 
abandoned warehouses.

"Twenty minutes and that car will be stolen," Langly
predicted.

"Fifteen," Frohike countered. "Tops." 

Byers asked, "Why is she sitting there without moving?"

Langly stopped chewing his nacho chips long enough to
mumble, "She's probably pulling a map out of the glove 
compartment. No way did she mean to end up here." 
Salsa fell on his Def Leppard t-shirt. "Damn. I'll
be right back."

Frohike glanced at Byers. 

"I did laundry yesterday." Byers assured and screwed
the lid on the jar of salsa. He looked at the monitor
and frowned. "She's staying."

Frohike watched the woman step out of the car and 
whistled softly. "A looker."

"What is she doing?"

"Crossing the road." 

The woman stopped below their camera and looked up.

"It's almost like she knows we're here," Byers said
breathlessly.

Frohike frowned. "I think she does."

"How?"

"How should I know?" Frohike headed toward the door. 
"But a woman in a Lexus does not drive to this part 
of town, park her car, walk to the door of what looks 
like an abandoned building, and look directly into a 
hidden camera without a reason."

"Do we let her in?"

Frohike straightened his slightly faded black t-shirt 
and glanced into the mirror. He brushed back his hair
--or rather what was left of his hair--and adjusted his 
glasses. "A gentleman does not leave a lady standing 
on the doorstep. I thought your mother taught you 
manners."

Byers bristled at the insult. 

"Just kidding," Frohike added but he wondered why his 
buddy wasn't as giddy over this chickadee as he had been 
over Susanne Modeski. Then Frohike glanced back at the 
monitor and understood. This woman was different. There 
was nothing soft or wispy about her. Gravitas. Yeah, 
that was the word. She had presence and authority. 

Frohike waited, but she didn't fidget or give any 
indication that she was the least bit uncomfortable as 
she waited for the door to be answered. In fact her face 
was almost unreadable, yet somehow she still managed to 
communicate impatience...or maybe it was urgency.

Byers unlocked the last of the seven locks on the door.

"Well, hello pretty lady," Frohike drawled.

She stepped over the threshold. 

"Is there something we could do for you?" Byers asked.

She looked Frohike dead in the eye. "Yes, you can help 
me save Mulder's life."








********************************************************
"The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends."
Cicero
De Amicitia XVII
********************************************************

CHAPTER EIGHT

Langly entered the room pulling a "Napster rules and 
Metallica Sucks!" t-shirt over his head.

Frohike shook his head. "I never thought I'd see the 
day."

"What?"

"The shirt." 

Langly shrugged. "Screw the RIAA and Ulrich. Music to 
the people. Besides, I can to listen Limp Bizkit 
instead."

Scully cleared her throat and the Lone Gunmen looked at 
her. Having caught their attention she wondered 
what she should do next. How could she convince them to 
help her when as far as they were concerned she was a 
stranger? For one slightly insane moment Scully 
considered telling them the truth. Only there was no 
rational explanation for what was happening, and she 
refused to make an irrational one. The Lone Gunmen 
might be paranoid, but they weren't crazy. 

"Who are you?" Langly asked.

"Scully."

"Is that like Madonna?"

"What?"

"No first name. No last name, just Scully?"

"My name is Dana Scully," she supplied.

Byers approached her. "Okay, Ms. Scully, who are you, 
and why do you think Mulder needs our help?"

Scully paused and thought about what she needed to say. 
"I'm Mulder's friend and for the moment I'm also 
his doctor."

Frohike frowned. "Doctor?"

Scully nodded. "Mulder is in the M.I.C.U. at Georgetown 
Memorial."

"What's wrong with him?"

"Anomalous brain activity." She glanced away. "It's 
killing him."

"Shit."

Exactly.

Langly looked confused. "You said we could help him. 
How? We're not exactly brain surgeons."

The moment had arrived to convince them to trust her,
but Scully wasn't sure how. She knew a great deal 
about them because when stuck on boring stakeouts 
Mulder liked to tell stories and the Lone Gunmen could 
be depended upon for an amusing anecdote. However 
blurting out that she knew private details about their 
lives would hardly inspire trust in three conspiracy 
nuts. It would scare the crap out of them. So what 
was she going to do? What did she have to offer?

"I'm the only chance Mulder has," Scully told them.

The three men looked at one another, and as if by 
silent agreement Frohike asked, "Could you excuse 
us for a moment?"

Scully nodded and the three men stepped away.

X X X

As soon as they stepped into the back room Byers
asked, "So?"

"So what?" Langley countered. "She didn't say 
anything."

"Yes, she did. She said she needed our help."

"Don't go mushy, white collar knight on me," Langly
snapped. "Remember your little Matahari."

Frohike rolled his eyes. "Don't throw Susanne in his 
face."

"Fine. Sorry I mentioned her." Langly didn't look too
apologetic. "But what do we know about this woman? 
Nothing. We have no idea what she's really up to."

"She said she's Mulder's friend," Byers insisted.

"Are you listening to yourself? Mulder? Friends?"

Byers dropped his gaze to the floor and began
shifting his weight. "You have a point."

"I believe her," Frohike told them.

Langly looked understandably confused. "Why?"

"I don't know." Frohike glanced into the next room and 
saw Scully clasp her hands together so tightly that her 
knuckles turned white. "I just have this feeling that 
she cares about the big guy. A lot."

"A feeling? You're willing to bet your life on a 
feeling?" Langly looked shocked.

Frohike didn't answer but walked into the other room. 
"I have a few questions," he told her. 

Scully squared her shoulders. "Shoot." 

"How did you know to come here?"

"Mulder mentioned you." She said it without any 
elaboration then looked away. 

Frohike's eyes narrowed as he tried to decipher her 
body language. "Mulder sent you here?" 

"No."

"You just made the decision on your own?"

"Mulder isn't in any condition to send me anywhere.
Besides, I make my own decisions."

Fair enough. "You said Mulder was dying. Exactly how 
bad off is he?"

The change in her expression was subtle. If he wasn't 
watching her closely, Frohike would have missed it 
entirely. It was almost as if a shadow crossed her 
face and darkened her eyes. "Mulder slipped into a 
coma just before I left the hospital." Scully took a 
deep breath. "At his present rate of deterioration 
I estimate he has between forty-eight and seventy-two 
hours to live."

Scully's gaze locked with his and Frohike thought he 
read desperation in her eyes.

He came to a decision. "How can we help?"

Scully reached into her jacket.

"Whoa!" Frohike raised his hands and backed away when
she pulled out a gun.

Scully smiled grimly and offered the firearm butt first.
"For a start, take this."

X X X

Cayuga Medical Center
Ithaca, New York
2:18pm

Dana Waterston sat fully dressed on the hospital bed. 
She had been discharged from the hospital, but what she 
was supposed to do now? 

She had spent the last couple of hours speaking with 
the local sheriff convincing him to drop charges against 
Arnold Blackwood. She had conceded to Dr. Doerstling's 
request to say that Blackwood hadn't known she was in 
the accelerator at the time of the experiment. That part
of the statement was true enough. Dana Waterston hadn't
been in the CESR, but Blackwood had known that a--if not 
'the'--Steven Doerstling was trapped inside. However, 
Blackwood had only been trying to set things right. 
He hadn't intended to harm anyone, and despite the 
upheaval his actions had caused in her life, Dana 
could see no purpose in condemning him.

So now what? Dana looked around the empty hospital room. 
Where was she supposed to go? What was she supposed to 
do now that she was Special Agent Dana Scully?

The phone rang. Dana reached for the phone on the 
bedside table only to realize that wasn't the phone that 
was ringing. She stood and searched through the 
belongings that a deputy had thoughtfully shipped
from Agent Scully's motel room.

Finding a cell phone Dana tentatively said, "Hello?"

"Scully? Is that you?"

What a loaded question.. "Um, yeah, it's me."

"You're in the hospital again. Are you okay?"

"Yes." Who was this? 

"Is anything seriously wrong?"

"No."

"So EVERYTHING--" he emphasized the word "--is okay?

Dana blinked. He's asking about the baby, she 
realized. For some reason he wasn't saying it out 
loud. Dana didn't know why, but she was sure 
that was what he was asking. 

"Everything is okay."

She heard the man sigh on the other end of the 
phone and wondered if this was the baby's father.

"When will you be released?" he asked.

"I am now. I...uh...I was discharged a few minutes 
ago. I was about to leave the hospital." Just as 
soon as she figured out where the hell she was 
supposed to go.

His voice turned stern and authoritative. "Scully, 
I'm used to this shit when you and Mulder work on 
a X-File, but I sent you on a missing person case, 
an ordinary missing person case. How did you 
almost get yourself killed--No. Don't answer that. 
Just be standing in front of my desk with a full 
report ready at 8am tomorrow morning. Is that 
understood?"

"Yes. . .sir," she belatedly added.

"Fine. I'll have my secretary arrange a plane 
ticket to be waiting for you at the Tompkins 
County Airport."

As the man hung up, Dana finally matched a face 
with the voice. Walter Skinner. When he had 
mentioned Agent Mulder's name she had made the 
association. It seemed impossible that only 
yesterday she had stood in the M.I.C.U. 
explaining Fox Mulder's dire prognosis to 
Mr. Skinner. 

Did Scully know Mulder? Was that why Mulder had 
seemed eerily familiar when he had been brought 
into the E.R.? Was that how he had known her name? 

Dana gave a bufuddled shake of her head. She was
overdosing on unexplained phenomena. Dana was a 
logical person and everything around her kept 
defying logic. For her own peace of mind, she 
needed to find answers. But where was she 
supposed to start?

Dana pressed her hand against her abdomen and, 
not for the first time, noticed that she didn't 
wear a ring. Given the fact that everyone 
referred to her as Scully, Dana felt she could 
safely assume that in this reality she was not 
married. Nice. She was sure her father would have 
been thrilled. Bill would raise hell about it 
and would be on the war path against the father
....whoever the baby's father might be.

Pushing aside the mental image of her brother's
outrage, Dana wondered again how this baby's father 
would react to a Dana Scully who wasn't Dana Scully 
aat all. That thought alone was enough to bring on 
a wave of nausea. Dear God, how was Dana supposed 
to make it through this mess? 

Dana still pondered that question as she exited 
the hospital and ran into the student she had met in 
Steven Doerstling's room. 

"Agent Scully," Stilgoe called. "Dr. Doerstling asked 
me to give you a message."

Dana gave him a questioning look. 

Stilgoe looked a little confused. "Doerstling said not 
to give up. He's looking for another way out of the 
rabbit hole." He frowned. "Does that make any 
sense to you?"

"Yes," she answered. "It makes sense. Thank you for 
the message."

"Okay then. Um...It's been nice meeting you."

Dana watched the young man walk away then 
straightened her shoulders as a taxi stopped by 
the curb. As she down in the car, she tried to 
prepare herself for what she might find in 
Washington, D.C.

X X X

Washington, D.C.
2:20pm

Langly asked, "Who do you want to be?"

Scully lifted her head. "Excuse me?"

"On the credit card, what name do you want? 

"I don't think it really matters."

He typed in L-A-R-A C-R-O-F-T. Frohike smacked 
him on the head and snapped, "Don't be a butt 
munch. Someone will notice that. Put something 
inconspicuous on it."

"Mary Smith?"

"Not THAT inconspicuous. Something normal." 

Byers announced to the room at large, "I've opened a 
bank account in the Caymans." He looked at Scully. 
"How much money do you want transferred into it?"

Scully frowned. This felt suspiciously li