X-Files
13.5 Years to Yesterday
DISCLAIMER AND DEDICATION:
--------------------------
<with thanks to fellow fanfic writer Tammy
Erickson for the title, David Duchovny and
Gillian Anderson for breathing life into the
characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully...
oh yeah, and to Chris Carter who was smart
enough to create the X-Files and stupid
enough to sell it to the Fox Network. Okay
okay, and I guess I should thank the Fox Network
for actually airing it and not letting it go the
way of so many of their other shows...>
<And thanks for Nothing to Pioneer/AIC who butchered my beloved
Operative. BAD! Pioneer/AIC! GO TO YOUR ROOM! NO TREAT!>
C&C welcomed.
<November 23rd, 1997. 8:55 AM>
The office was a little chilly when Fox Mulder
arrived for work on Monday morning. His desk was
still cluttered with the papers he had strewn across
it on Friday and his half-finished cup of coffee sat
just where he had left it. A radio flicked itself on
as his partner, Dana Scully. walked in.
"Dana!" Fox said, excitedly, though his excitement
was about the obviously possessed radio, not about her.
"Did you see that?"
"It was probably a some kids in a car playing with
their mother's garage door opener." Dana started to
take her jacket off.
"Better leave it on, it's freezing in here." Fox's
excitement waned, but didn't disappear. "But what if it
wasn't, Scully? I mean what are the odds that a garage
door opener could do that?"
"What are the odds that it was an ghost or an alien
lifeform?" Scully replied, matter-of-factly.
"Help me." The radio whined, plaintively.
"There!" Mulder cried out, triumphantly. "Did you
hear that?!"
"Mulder, it's probably a signal from a passing
car-phone."
"Okay," Mulder nodded, "but it was calling for help
and it sounded rather urgent."
"So, what do we do?" Dana pointed out. "We don't
know who it was."
"This is... I can't remember... please help me... "
"If we can trace the signal..." Fox began.
*RING! RING*
Dana picked up the phone. "Hello? Yes, he is.
Hold on."
Fox took the phone. "Hello? Yes, we picked up the
message. Can you trace its origin? I assume its from a
car phone somewhere in the area?"
"It's coming from Tokyo Tower."
"Japan?!" Fox was astonished. "Okay, book us two
tickets to..."
"Mulder," the caller told him, "the message was
transmitted in 1970. I just wanted to tell you before
you went off on one of your wild goose chases."
"How could a signal that originated in 1970 be
received in 1997?" Fox asked as the caller
disconnected.
"It probably bounced off a pulsar thirteen and a
half years ago." Dana suggested.
"With no signal degredation?" Fox wondered.
"Perhaps the signal's power was boosted with power
from whatever star it bounced off of?" Scully suggested.
"Stars give off radio waves, Mulder."
"You could be right, Scully."
<4:47 P.M. That Evening>
Jackie Kendall was sitting in the recliner in her
parents' living room with a pair of large ear-covering
headphones on, listening to the radio. The D.J. had
just finished talking and "Shattered" by the Rolling
Stones was blasting in her ears as she bobbed her head
and mouthed the rapid lyrics. She had been up all night,
cramming for a biology test and was trying to keep herself
awake. Her mother was making clam chowder for dinner and
Jackie loved her mom's chowder. She didn't want to fall
asleep before dinner and miss it, so she'd been trying to
stay awake by listening to loud music. All at once the
room around her vanished, replaced with a scene from a
nightmare. She was in a different room, one that looked
like an explosion had just ripped away at least half of
it. She could feel terrible pain in her abdomen, but she
could not lift her head to see the cause.
"Jackie!"
The vision was suddenly gone and she was back in her
parents' living room.
"Jackie, come on or you'll miss dinner!" her sister
told her, standing above her with the headphones in her
hand, looking down disapprovingly.
"I'll be right there." She replied, bewilderedly.
***
<9:15 that evening>
Scully examined the radio. She wanted to find a flaw
in the wiring, or perhaps a fault in the speaker. Some
kind of mechanical flaw that would explain away the radio
turning itself on that she could present Mulder with. She
hoped to dissuade him of going on a wild goose chase and
finding nothing but disappointment. She tested the radio
to see what kind of signal it would pick up.
"....if it's the last thing I ever do!!!..." The
hoarse declaration of man being strangled. It wasn't
accompanied by the telltale background silence of a phone
conversation, so Scully knew it couldn't be a cell phone
chat that the radio was picking up.
At the same time, Fox Mulder was drinking a glass
of milk and enjoying a chocolate chip cookie. He had had
a nagging feeling that something was wrong the that morning's
investigation, but what had it been? He turned on the tv and
was about to put in one of those video tapes that didn't belong
to him when he noticed that a show on astronomy was currently
on. The program was midway through. What caught his attention
was the partial sentence "...sar approximately 40 light years
away."
Scully prodded the radio some more and was annoyed to
have the phone ring when she was in the middle of her work.
She picked it up. "Hello, Dana here."
'Hello, Dana here?' Mulder had been apprehensive about
Scully's earlier behavior. She'd made too many quick
conclusions, and that mistake about the pulsar. Not like her.
Was something connected with this case affecting Scully?
*There is no Dana. Only Zool.*
He remembered the scene from the movie Ghostbusters, a movie
he'd watched years ago. A part of him wanted to laugh at the
idea of him turning to a fellow agent and saying, re: Scully,
"Okay, so, she's a dog." But he quickly reasserted himself.
This wasn't Ghostbusters, and it wasn't funny. Dana could be
in real trouble.