Omega Point 651377X

by KING FELIX

Auld tramp pushing squealing shopping trolley full of X-files reboot novels, thrown into the faces of passers-by, "I MADE THIS!"

Omega Point 651377X

'The faint suspicion of a giant mystery, much deeper than housewives' reports of zigzagging lights: could imagination be a stronger force to shape the actions of men, than its expression in dogmas, in political struggles, in established churches, in armies? They spoke in smooth English. They spoke for justice and right...'

- Jacques Vallee, 'Passport to Magonia, from Folklore to Flying Saucers'.

'If John Doe's head splits open and a UFO should fly out, I want you to have expected it'.

- Detective Somerset, 'Se7en'.

Highly sociable. All friends together. Nonetheless, evidence mounted that El Borracho Dios was actually a speakeasy from Hell. The unchanging white-sand parking lot was never more than a third full, while the inside was hideously crowded with far more good ole boys than could be accounted for by neighbouring farms. In a desert-dry circuit of his mind, 'Commander' Spender wondered if it was all a military trick-of-the-brain: long-embedded in the world of day-long debriefings and barrack lockdowns, there was a fascination that civilians could be so ill-disciplined to waste half the night drinking. Then again, judgemental or non-judgemental, the bar room despondency settled neatly over his shoulders, his skinny arms, there forever.

It was -watching his wife scrunch-up her nose with joy over the bland anecdotes told by pylon-worker Tank Mitchell, or occasionally the sunburnt sidekick Frank Lymer. Mitchell, he was direct and unconceited in his attempts to make Cassie's good-time-girl enthusiasm all his own. But how can a husband be suspicious of his own wife? Where's the logic in distrusting her as she sits not two feet away? It was as if she and Spender weren't even a couple, let alone married. In the biggest booth the saloon had to offer, the seating arrangements had fallen into an icily random formation; six people, positioned according to his worst fears, the fears all humanity should have about usurpers, turn-on-a-dime infidelity. Altogether ugly -the mixture of singles and married couples. His only ally from the air base, Lieutenant Barry, sat awkwardly beside the brown-necked nobody Lymer. Spender was stiff alongside Delia, Lymer's wife, a Jayne Mansfield type incapable of getting drunk but just as blustery. Cassie? Cassie bounced on her hips next to the nonchalant alpha male Mitchell. As if - perhaps as if there was something to him.

"Oh!", Mitchell murmured in the style of sports commentator. He briefly side-fixed his eyes to Spender. "There he goes!"

The pylon man had ID'd the involuntary glower which would sometimes emanate from Spender's eyes. Why did he think it was something to be made fun of? The absence of tact -surreal.

Preferring not to dwell, Spender withdrew the second Morley from a fresh packet and sparked up. Naturally, if you have a wary expression by default, fortify it with a cigarette, make it look studious. Except the nightmare Mitchell seized on this, too. "And out come the Morleys! Highway boys got some b-grade road tar? Get it to the Morleys factory!"

Cassie; "You've got to have a taste for them", neither decrying or defending her husband's chain-smoking. Or -no, to defend him, she'd simply get up and walk away. The acrid tendrils -ironically, he'd grown so massively accustomed to the tang of the Morleys, his own mind no longer defined it at all. His nose filled instead with Cassie's beautiful La Cereza perfume, vivid flashbacks of when they made love. Or tried to.

The queued-up jukebox waltzed the air into a daze. Ballad of the Green Berets. He rued the day he'd first brought her to this place -though, as the only bar within twenty miles of Fort Esqueleto, it'd probably been inevitable. Moreover, only one question remained: other officers and their wives had the same rotation of nights-off. Where did they go? He envisioned them driving out into the desert and setting a pic-nic blanket beneath the long, low sky. Maybe seeing something of note in the cold ionosphere.

"You've got used to it, I guess. Driving in a car with it". Mitchell continued now with a subtle insinuation -that, as either Cassie or Lieutenant Barry were the ones who always took the wheel, Spender was some kind of over-indulged man-child.

The Commander, for a while, elected to phase out, watching the overblown lights of station wagons and Rekords making slow turns in the parking lot. The frontage of El Borracho Dios was a strange affair, corral style windows in dozens of blocky right angles, each one containing a saloon of chortling men and strangely attractive battleaxes. The noise of their busy little conversations was subdued. But neither was the atmosphere intimate. As the over-used jukebox turned to Lightnin' Strikes by Lou Christie, Spender found himself in a reverie that the one-two-two rhythm was so similar to the running frequency of a Zenit satellite.

Delia had eased the conversation to a fussy little debate on the new telegraphs that were being laid along Route 15 -the cables were apparently so thick and low-slung that were disrupting the TV reception in the nearby houses. CBS was wretched. NBC looked like it was underwater.

Said Cassie excitedly, "Of course, now you see, all our TVs at the air base are linked to the monster transmitter they use for military channels. Our reception is crystal clear".

"Your base is weird", said Lymer boldly. "All those fragments of Jap and Russian planes that get brought in strapped to low-loaders. The big red stars painted on the side, as if they're something to be proud of. Why take so much time back-engineering 'em? It's not as if we'll learn anything. Commies can't make planes worth a peso".

Put in Mitchell, "It's probably not the planes they're worrying about but whether the reds can make a moon rocket good for carrying anything other than dogs and monkeys. Has there ever been a bigger waste of our tax dollars? Let them land on the Moon first. Who cares?"

It hurt Spender, somewhere up around his ribs, that Mitchell was so right about the Moon program, that his nothingy point-of-view could be so apposite.

The warning, however, was given by Lieutenant Barry. Smile notwithstanding, he presented his boney face to Mitchell as if it was a levelled weapon. "You men should be careful about looking too closely at our base. The armed sentries are trained to pick off spies, quizlings -no matter what they look like".

The pylon worker shrugged boyishly. He gestured to Spender. "It'll all get put to rights. Why'd the chicken cross the freeway? Your man going to Houston next month to help the man-who-helps-the-man who's building the actual moon rocket".

In fact, the cover story told of Spender liaising with NASA on the high atmosphere weather balloons that would guide any potential launch from Cape Kennedy. Only now did it ring in his ears as the lie it was. It was annihilated, along with everything else -obliterated by one simple truth. While Spender was away, Mitchell would make love to Cassie. And in a way, even that would be incidental to the true horror; before and after they'd be together in this bar. Laughing? Not particularly. Joyful? No. They would belong together, just because she was a beautiful woman and he was a fat-necked football stereotype, a knowing flourish of hateful evolution.

In a 40-watt-illuminated desert bar, here was natural selection in all its blank-minded glory, a bullish magnet for the opposite sex. A man who was catnip, without even resorting to the pervasive hounding used by Pablo Picasso or the Kennedy brothers. It was tempting to think of it as refined evil, and if only the Spenders had been stationed to an airbase in the Bible-belt, where at least the endless howl of human evolution had a slight awareness.

Blunt evil, yes -Mitchell was staring casually at Spender and reading every thought in his mind.

"To the rest room, I think", the Commander announced. "I'll pick up the next round on the return. Everyone, Cassie, will it be more of the same?"

"Ah, how sweet!", said his wife, thinking of anything but him.

As he edged out into the reasonably large floor space, he glimpsed the Lieutenant's tensed shoulders rise to follow him. After visiting the heads, they stood together on the slight promenade with its thin windows observant of gouged desert.

"That man Mitchell has a big mouth", noted the Lieutenant.

"Mmm", said Spender. Of course, Mitchell didn't have a particularly big mouth, it was just Dwight Barry's way of showing empathy. No drunken show-boating or ignorant opinions -that was part of Mitchell's very refined horror. All he had to do was sit there tugging on spider webs.

"There are any number of ways we could get him out of the picture. Car wreck. Or we could just ruin him. Have one of the quad-letters find fault in his work licence".

Spender gave no reply, to all intents lost in the sight of the long troughs of earth which had been cleared by Mexican farmers some time in the nineteen thirties. There were swollen ripples of exhausted earth, heavy stones, artistic. Memories emerged of his escalation from CIA to Majestic and beyond. The psychologists sometimes insisted on a rorschach. And didn't he fail to see anything whatsoever in the ink stains; he always envied those who were creative and confident enough to see faces, straight off -such well-adjusted people deserved a monument somewhere.

"Lieutenant", he said in an easy voice. "You're aware that my rank of Commander is purely honorary. Why have you given me such -loyalty- over the years?"

But Barry was uncomprehending. Friendship was too nebulous a concept, except within a solid military framework, "Lieutenants often become loyal to their commanders".

"We're no ordinary soldiers", pointed out Spender, neither enjoying his cigarette or able to live without it.

They stared at the white-beige desert until the Lieutenant found a way to open up. He fixed his large eyes at the horizon. "I'd been a corporal for a lot of years and I knew just how the whole show went on. I knew every barrack-hall-trick the officers had to pick out platoon men to promote. The maneuvers, the drills; you could be the best damn infantry man the army had to offer, but it all came down to 'yes, sir, no, sir'. People don't realise there's a certain way it has to go.

"Sometimes your CO would order you to fall-in to some management-style office on the base you'd never been in before. And this man -this man you'd grown to respect for being straight-down-the-middle- he'd go ahead and yell at you for some crazy problem you had nothing to do with. You'd feel bad for him that he'd been put in such a position, having to shout and curse at you. And that was the point. Because in the corner of the room there'd be a five-star general, or else someone so damn high up they were in civvies. He'd sit there silently, and the idea was that you wouldn't look at him, even if he was the cause of it all.

"All damn hokum. It was always just a way to see how you stood up to being a fish-out-of-water, trapped in the middle of a hierarchy. That day, I just -I didn't have time for it. I looked at you sitting there in the corner on that big wax sofa. I looked you square in the eye even as my captain was yelling at me. Was that why you took me? Because I could just cut through the military bull?"

Spender looked intently at the tip of his cigarette. "One of the reasons. It wasn't benevolence. There's a new world coming, and men like us have to make a calculation between our lives, the status quo -and everything that might come a thousand years from now".

"I'm a pretty regular man", suggested Barry.

"In a way", Spender thumbed out his cigarette butt. He eyed along to the next dining area where Lieutenant Barry's wife and his sisters were engaged in a mellow mid-week drink. "But you have a family. One must believe that counts for a lot. How is your wife? Your boys?"

Dourly, "Alice -I couldn't ask for a better wife. She wants us to join a bowling team. The boys? Duane is very quiet; he's always thinking. Hawk is what you would call a hellraiser. He gets in trouble at school. He joins a new gang every week; I'm pretty sure they fight".

Spender dipped his eyes. The conversation petered out. Eventually, Barry put in, "I spoke out of turn. I know you've got it all straight. If that man Mitchell is a friend of your wife, it's no one's business if he's disrespectful".

Back at the hell table, Mitchell was now clustered together with Cassie in an inexplicably-effortless conversation about how so many Cadillac and Plymouth owners added vanity fins to their cars. Some weighted them with glass fiber because they believed it made for better handling - then gawped stupidly when the steering rods became warped.

Naturally Spender would have sided with the vanity; at least in ostentation there was some form of striving involved, rather than utterly blank alpha-masculinity prevailing. 'It's no one's business if he's disrespectful'. 'Disrespectful', in a way. To a greater degree, it was one man's attempt to make happiness from his internal life and proving completely incompatible with the type of human society exemplified by men like Tank Mitchell. Lieutenant Barry's suggestion that they kill him appealed greatly. But what would be the point? When he'd first started dating Cassie, her male friends outnumbered her female friends by a ratio of five-to-one. Even that wasn't too bad -people, after all, are allowed to be sociable, and if some of your acquaintances turn out to be sex-hounds, you're de facto wise enough to deal with it. No -it was the unspoken, collective-unconscious milieu that they were units of twenty-something dating-circuit probability, randomly aligned like tins of food product in a church collection. That Cassie Viveash had chosen Spender above all the others suggested genuine love. But was her conscious mind strong enough to fight off all the crass sexuality which human evolution had surrounded her with?

Between his orange, swarthy fingers, Mitchell had taken the straw from Cassie's drink and was toying with it. Now was the time of pure, hyperventilating fear. How Spender dealt with the fear was strange. A regular non-Faustian cuckold would simply have retreated back inside of himself, into a stupor. Spender found himself thinking about work, the Syndicate.

He thought of his fellow conspirators, the way they were intended to be mutually-inclusive heads on a hydra of secrecy -but were actually as self-interested as any layman. It was obvious, for instance, that the Well-Manicured Man cared mostly about appeasing the Bilderbergs and the conventional aristocrats. The Fat Man had a personal interest in sustaining the world's need for fossil fuels, and staving off zero-point technology for as long as possible. The Italian Man, who Spender suspected was some kind of godless Vatican exile, often suggested that the most fearful aspect of The Truth was that it was quantum, implicate, holistic, that it would one day manifest everywhere and in everything simply as a matter of course.

And perhaps he was right. All of a sudden there was a direct parallel in Spender's mind between the reality of zero-point technology and his love for Cassie. The ability to summon unlimited power from a non-dimensional abstract in the quantum realm, the ability to create three-dimensional space from utter void -it was no more inexplicable than his love for Cassie. Why should it be so vulnerable?

They chatted away in hurried, mindless intimacy, Delia, Frank Lymer, Cassie, the easy-going nightmare Mitchell -while Spender and Barry took on dynamic poses. The Lieutenant; innocent tho heavy-shouldered. His superior in a knowing slump as a decision was put solidly in place. Short of him making love to Cassie right there on that inexplicably thick linoleum table, Tank Mitchell and all those like him would be removed from the equation. Let their springy torsos move daintily around the thick table top, the colour of storm ozone, and watch without fear. Inner life and ideal life were set on a solid course.

When the party came to say goodnight, Cassie was deeply aware of the queasy-resolved expression on her husband's face where normally only exhaustion or social apathy would live. He disconcerted her even more when they cleared out onto desert verge highway; the announcement that tonight he'd drive put a deep crease in her lipsticked mouth. Once he'd opened and closed the passenger door for her, vampire-chivalry, he briefly laid his hands on the Sedan roof and was awed. It felt as though he was laying his hands across the side of a whole, smooth planet. The Conspiracy and the wants of the Syndicate were suddenly incidental. Or in any case, as he watched Lieutenant Barry and his wife drive away -let it also be the domain of those of us who aren't absolutely jaded.

In a tyre-thrumming rhythm beside the cacti, Cassie broke off from the desert-gazing to jab at the radio. Some nights she chose classical, some nights ultra-orthodox pop music which Spender would never have listened to of his own accord, but somehow hit the spot whenever she was beside him. Sounding husky beneath the cold desert sky, the announcer forward-introduced Darling I'm Home by The Mandells. It was a mid-tempo song which Spender didn't really mind: the busy sound of bass guitar and jazz piano would juxtapose nicely when they were inevitably swallowed up in silence.

In that little-girl squint of hers, Cassie noted several of the narrow Y-junctions as they looped off towards the smallholdings. Dourly, "We're taking the long way home tonight".

"There's no need to be glum", said Spender confidently. "Do you remember the afternoon we walked in the valley behind your father's house? It was the day you first took me home to meet him".

Cassie lazily moved her head from left to right. "What about it?"

Spender shrugged. "I think about it all the time. The weather was fine. The fields were bright green, everything else was dark. Deep. The weir across the river. You didn't want to venture around the corner because you were worried the next field along might belong to someone else. But really, even if it did, why would they confront us? It was such a wide-open space".

"The next field along belonged to the Van Sciver brothers", announced Cassie. "They owned all the land and a few horses. But they were actually really lazy. They were notorious for just laying in the long grass on their backs, playing with their ham radio, shooting birds. I was worried we'd meet them and you'd think they were lazy. They'd start a conversation with me and I was worried none of us would get along".

Pulling in an icy burst of nicotine, intensely calming, Spender's silence indicated this was probably a justified fear. Rigid, the confidence with which he changed gears was something frighteningly new.

"Those days were strange. I loved you then as I love you now. It's everything. Yet I never made grand proclamations, no intimate promises. We took it for granted that we were the love of our lives. It's perhaps the strangest thing, that I never worried about telling you how I felt. Not like I worried about the Japanese, or my job".

"Your job!", she laughed incredulously, rolling her skull along the steep glass of the passenger door. He saw just what she was blinking at. Tonight it was stark and glaring.

"What do you think of the moon?", he asked.

"Uhts reeel purdy", the imitation-of-an-imitation of a cowgirl. "In a little while 'There's A Moon Out Tonight' will come on the radio".

Said Spender, slowly, "What I meant, what do you think about it in general?"

"You mean, us sending men up there?"

"No -as an idea. Something that's always up there night after night. Do you find it comforting?"

Admitted Cassie, "When I was a little girl, I remember being scared of it, seeing it behind glass, whatever".

"Our cosmologists", Spender said dryly, "estimate that as soon as the primordial Earth reached an optimum distance from the sun to allow human-like creatures to evolve, the moon was introduced into our orbit as a foreign object, the magnetic and bioelectrical waves hitting our world in such a way as to temper our minds".

It was so far the biggest secret he'd ever told Cassie, and she took it well. "Temper how?"

"Evolution is the same everywhere. Muscle-mass and a few tendons not withstanding, any single-cell organism that can evolve into a language-based mammal -will always resemble us. But the process is flawed. Where a creature becomes self-aware, insanity follows. The moon was introduced above Earth just to -counteract this phenomenon for as long as possible. Give us a fighting chance".

"Introduced by who? You're crazy-ing me up! Is this the big secret the government's been keeping from people?"

Qualified Spender, reasonably, mundanely, "It's the least secret we've been keeping from you".

"The moon is a mind-control thing?", she plumped her natural-colour lipstick. "By who? Space-men? You say it's to give us a fighting chance of not going insane, but isn't it just as likely to keep us -submissive?"

"No". Spender's voice was almost bored. "We have nothing they want. Where they've interacted with us in any way it's to help sustain the future of our species".

"Space-men?"

"Space-men is one term".

"Are they still watching Earth now?"

"Only to ensure we don't destroy ourselves".

Cassie bounced on her thighs a little and smiled at her husband. In full effect, her Ava Gardner living-in-the-moment pout. "Are you sure you've got this right? Have you ever actually seen any Space-men with your own eyes?"

He wondered keenly how to answer this. "To see them changes a person, forever, and my current position requires me to be focused entirely on my duties".

Teasingly, "And me!"

So taking refuge in a long drag, long enough to expend the entire last quarter of his cigarette. They were approaching the arena of the Northern landing strip, the far cabins glittering like coastal lights across a moonless bay. Two solitary searchlights criss-crossed in the low atmos, apparently for artistic effect only. Spender pulled them over to an access lane. Leaning clear from the driver's window, just a little, he used his Varta flashlight to signal the distant control tower.

"Cassie. I was due, once, to enter a dialogue with the creatures, to be a go-between of sorts. Back then, I had superiors; they put me on an elaborate mental training plan, so that I could even begin to communicate with the creatures in the first place. Meditation. A systematic suspension of Freudian psychology and conditioning. My training was almost complete. But then I met you".

Tragically, Cassie wasn't listening. She observed, dainty-eyed, the delicate code produced by his flashlight.

"This is real, isn't it?"

Spender said nothing.

"What would happen if you got the code wrong? Just slightly wrong?"

Spender spoke dryly, "A dozen patrol jeeps would converge the moment we entered the base perimeter. There's every chance we'd be shot".

In an eerily soft blending of grit, they pulled away again. Before driving into the darkness of the landing arena, he unstrapped his watch and inverted the face on his wrist. On the underside of the carriage, the moving red figures of the Fidesograph were currently stirring between eighty and eighty-five percent. Quite horrific, the way the point-of-no-return clenched and froze across his body. Even if it was just a stupid, natural reaction to letting slip his secrets.

"And what's that?"

Spender made no attempts to hide the far-futuristic readout. "It's an aid to the mind. Something everyone will have a few hundred years from now. Very much like a Catholic rosary, perhaps amplified to the power of a hundred".

"You're not religious", doured Cassie. He didn't particularly like the way she said that, as if it was a saving grace. "Why are telling me all this?"

Snatching the air into his dry mouth, "Because you deserve to know the truth. And you're my wife".

As the Customline swung away across the thin white sand, ironically so much like the grain the astronauts would supposedly discover on the Moon three months from now, Spender found he was confident again. Psychology and destiny locked firmly into place; referenced, the new-wave study of violent psychopaths at Cook County in 1951, a dozen high-IQ serial killers with worldviews that were absolutely black-and-white. Hypnotised by a medallion made of conventional metal? Nothing. Hypnotised by a medallion forged from the alien Tanzanite? All the men had formed beatific smiles and recanted violence at once.

Spender recalled the vectoring of his own beatific smile, all those years ago, when he'd first bumped into Cassie. He specifically remembered floating at speed down the main thoroughfare of Roanoke, heading for the tiny National Bank with the intention of withdrawing a whole years wages to spend on her slightest whim. The happiness had come from out of nowhere, and it was invincible, inexplicable. Actually, it was all the more inexplicable -there was never any talk of conventional dates, restaurant-going, impressing each other's family. They'd had mutual friends that neither of them resembled, friends that were friends merely by an accident of feeble serendipity. And through it all, Cassie and Spender had towered, filling each other's eyes like huge Egyptian statues in ravines of sand.

The Customline slowed and swerved, slightly-slightly playful. Across the zeta-band radio, long-range radar co-ordinates were being relayed in clipped tones, and how Spender loved the way military excitement sounded like civilian excitement diametrically inverted. At some clustered corners of the mile-long base, power flickered on-and-off, while at others it was maddeningly steady; always the way when the saucers started their descent.

"Jumping Jeez! Is that them?"

At first, the Spenders were witness to a star-shaped object curving lazily into the high atmosphere. Emphatically it was not a star, however, and something in the unshifting glare of the light told them it wasn't a plane, missile or flare. There was nothing on Earth to explain the thickness of the white light, the durability of the glow. Where the mere sight of the object made their breathing pause, the showmanship of what happened next shut them down completely. The object moved many times faster than a shooting star, and turned at a right angle, a sharp left angle, an elaborate and meaningless zig-zag sequence.

"What kind of an engine can do that?", wondered Cassie.

It was a good question, all the more pressing once the object had jabbed its way down to become the same size on the horizon as Spender's fingernails on the steering wheel. Of particular interest, and a question to drive you mad if you let it -the ship was holding directly over the network of farms at the small ridge to the west of Casa de Labranza. One of the very first discoveries made by the authorities, back in the days of Majestic Alpha: the ships could only subdue between five and six human minds at once, which precluded them from visiting anywhere but the most remote country dwellings. The question, then, was why those twenty or so families across the ridge didn't start yelling, and the next day talking, and talking about nothing else for the rest of their lives.

It must be like being visited by a God. The God that ignores you, that merely hangs above you with all the delicacy of a paperclip tied to length of nylon, held mid-air next to a magnet. They witnessed a white light, profound yet aloof to the point of non-existence. And the psychological mechanism that silenced those poor farmers must be some kind of fear no one had ever known before.

His wife simply gasped and smiled selflessly.

"What do you see?", asked Spender.

She glanced at him. "I can't pretend it's not there!"

"That's not what I mean. Just being in their proximity, they effect our perceptions; different people see different things. Farmers see spaceships that vaguely resemble farm machinery. People who spend a lot of time in their cars see spaceships the size and weight of automobiles. What do you see?"

"Just -a flying saucer", she said in wonder.

And somehow this satisfied Spender greatly.

"Do they even think like us?", said Cassie excitedly.

"Like us?", wondered Spender. It had been several minutes since his last Morley, tho his hands and mouth were relaxed. "As closely as it matters in the scheme of things".

A shock of light, a violent pulse many times quicker than lightning, and the ship was symmetrical above them. As a man-of-the-future, Spender was all-but immune to the flooding ocean of white-blue, having seen it all before, having developed a strong stomach for the blazing contrast it gave the world. If a man was short-sighted, the godly light allowed him 50-50 brilliance. If a man was an alcoholic, he now had an alternative between sobriety and dizzy intoxication. Human skin, moreover human expressions; fire-resistant temples on the surface of a non-yellow sun, seared free from all bar the most ingrained facial features. That new, super-defined world wrangled his gaze, particularly -to Cassie's soft hair. Two weeks previously, she'd dyed it black for Halloween and the roots had failed to clear an intricate meshwork of black-on-beige. Similarly high-concept, her eyes were quick, probing, just as they'd been when they were first married. Selfless -her soul was free and floating in the air.

Thinking? We worry and distrust the stark emotions of our lives, fearful that we might be channeling too much energy into this obsession or that romantic love. But to see the light, blazing down from above, presented only one truth: it was never extraneous. God comes to audition in front of us, never the other way around.

"I don't know how I'll be able to un-astonish my brain by next week. Walking around. Wednesday and Thursday, staying over at the Garlin's, going bowling with them, pretending the world is just like it was before. God knows it must be hard for you to keep your mind straight, even when you've got things to distract you, something as exciting as sending men to the Moon. It's nothing compared to this".

Slowly and reluctantly, Spender moved his eyes from the angelic Cassie into the near-blinding centre of the flying saucer. It was not technology, it was a frontier; everything we fear about death is inverted. Something bright, thoughtful, palpably full of hope.

"We're not sending men to the Moon", he said simply, "and you're not staying over at the Garlin's".

xxx

Speaking smoothly into the heavy public phone, "Mr Kordey, this is Special Agent Andrew Gansquig of the FBI. Sir, I need you to listen very carefully to what I'm about to say and please remain calm. I'm in charge of the South Massachusetts Armed Robbery Taskforce -we've been tracking an extremely dangerous gang across your area for several weeks now. I'm afraid your premises on Carter Street have been targeted. Previously, we believed we'd be able to prevent the robbery without your being alerted, but in the last few hours, things have escalated. Mr Kordey, do the names Stud Bronzen or Habe Corpussle mean anything to you?"

From the broad alcove of the streetside pay-phone, laughter quaked, causing Fmonster to repeatedly kick his friends into silence. Not thirty yards away, through the ma-and-pa-polished window of the tiny barber shop, the unsympathetic mouth of John Kordey simpered into his phone. "They don't mean anything to me. Agent -you're saying men are on their way to rob my shop?"

"This is correct, sir. On their way. Men. Right now. However, first, I need you to be calm and do as I say".

"But Agent -"

The boys sniggered quite a bit -though it was hard to say why- as the up-tight barber stroked his shoulder, patted his arm, wagged his head at the floor. Between the horrible faux-European art prints, the weird white walls, there was a surprising lack of fear, only incredulity; this added to the charm massively.

"I think there's been some misinformation. I'm on Carter Street now, but you need to understand that I run a barber shop. We hardly hold enough cash, week-to-week, to justify big-time robbers coming after us".

"We both know that's not the case, Mr Kordey", full of authority, and amazing how sixteen-year-old Fmonster could navigate the nuanced tones of an FBI agent. If anything, he had to remind himself to pepper, 'Sir', a satirical caricature which may or may not be lost on Z-Man and Leon. "Our records here at the Bureau are tied with the IRS master files. We know that your tax receipts have been fabricated for the last three years".

Pouted Kordey, "That's simply not true. My records are- Look, when I end up each month-"

"We don't have time to discuss this right now", the prankster half-covered the mouthpiece, then spoke as if to a fellow task force member, "Agent Dragnetski, is A-Squad in position yet?"

"Sure thing, Chief", said Z-Man, who was a lot less capable of imitating an adult voice, but could muster one in an emergency.

"Does your phone cord extend to the window, sir?"

Gulped the barber, "Yes".

"Look through the window. Do you see a matte blue Dodge, registration 853 OKG?"

"It's there, about fifty paces away". Small panic.

"That's a member of our team in defensive position".

The conceited-eyed man hovered next to the pane and looked slyly. Deep and uncontrollable laughter was mixed with breathless fascination as the boys observed him. Leon in particular arched his skinny spine against the bulbous edge of the anonymous wall in tenterhooks supreme. Fmonster, as per, remained the very image of prank-instigator calm.

"Now you see in your shop Agent Gerard?"

"Agent -?", started an adrenalised Kordey.

"Gerard. He's sitting right there being shaved by your assistant. Now Mr Kordey, I'm afraid that Agent Gerard's likeness has been leaked to the leader of the Bronzen gang. If they arrive to rob you now, they'll be inclined to shoot him first and the robbery will escalate. For that reason, I need you to relay some operational code words to him. Can you do that for me?"

"Shall I pass him the phone?", wondered Kordey.

"No", powered Fmonster. "I just need you to relay to him the operational code for him to stand down and leave the area. 'Code six-five-one-three-five-X. You. Leave. Now'. On hearing the code, he'll ask you to confirm, whereupon you say, 'Confirm: Code six-five-one-three-five-X. Leave. Now'. Sir, can you recite back to me what you need to say?"

Gulping followed. The line crackled and thudded, in magical difference to the way Kordey's barber shop seemed absolutely silent from the boy's position two hundred yards away.

"Code six-five-one-three-"

"Code six-three-five-one-three-five-X", Fmonster purposely confused him.

As if memorising the code for a bank safe, "Code Six. Three. Five. One. Three. Five. X. You leave now".

"Good. Now go to it, Mr Kordey, I don't know how much time we've got".

He went to it. Now Z-Man practically wept with laughter. Leon shook. Fmonster himself almost felt despondent, lost in the detail of the mischief. A god of mischief, who gulped and hushed his breath as Kordey covered the mouthpiece and spoke carefully to the innocent-innocent bystander. Leading both patron and assistant barber to utter incomprehension. The code was spoken once, and there was a godly power in the way he felt compelled to repeat it a second and third time. Mystified, the customer did actually leave.

Which was when the crisis happened. As Kordey ushered him through the all-glass door, his eyes flicked across the street to where the boys were sniggering. Leon and Z-Man's mouths instantly gulped shut. They looked away, but was it nearly quick enough? Fractions-of-seconds were stretched out horribly as the curmudgeonly barber looked fully in their direction. Only the craftiest, at the same time the most naturalistic, maneuver would save them now. Fmonster tilted his head back as if dismissing a ridiculous argument which had been put to him on the other end of the line. He shrugged -then the real acting began. He mouthed words, spontaneously forming real sentences in his mind but making sure they came through his lips completely silently, free from even tongue or jaw sounds. Buzzing. Exhilaration, pride and shame powered through him in equals -his kid sister had a deaf schoolfriend, and she'd learned to annunciate the shape of her mouth to be completely understood by a lip-reader. This situation with the barber was something they'd find weird, stupid.

A slight shift in the air at the other end of the line suggested Kordey had taken a few paces back inside the shop. Like a blindfolded Roman gladiator, Fmonster felt his way forward.

"Mr Kordey? You're doing fine. But you need to dismiss your assistant, we can't risk another person in the line of fire. Tell him you've remembered something important and you have to close the shop".

"Should actually I turn the 'closed' sign?"

"That's a negative, sir. It would alert the gang that they're being monitored. Just dismiss your co-worker and I'll give you further instructions".

They all paused as the crew-cutted assistant wafted free from his apron, stood by like a soccer goalie before finally vacating. Alone, John Kordey cut a tense and highly focused figure now; to Fmonster it was no longer even a prank but a piece of psychological art, something dark which merely had hilarious moments tacked on. The curmudgeon held fingers to mouth and curved his narrow shoulders, henceforth utterly alienated from the white barbershop diorama.

"Sir, according to our records, you have a turn-wheel safe located in the back room there. It's our plan to corral the robbers into the vicinity of the shop rear, but making sure they don't try to torture you for the combination. Mr Kordey, I need you to disguise yourself as a customer. Take your apron off, sit in one of the treatment chairs".

The barber breathed stupidly through his nose. From the creme, leatherite chair, "Won't they know I'm the owner from having cased the place?"

"Absolutely, sir. Which is why I need you to disguise yourself. Take some shaving foam and apply it".

"Shaving foam?"

A little thinking time followed. The particular downturn in Kordey's mouth came like a hammer blow. He quickly blinked away any trepidation -and was starting to realise. Still Fmonster wasn't nearly ready for the finger-jab which cut the line.

"Would you believe the guy hung up?", he explained to Z-Man and Leon.

Leon, urgently, "We have to get clear".

But Fmonster gently-gently sidled his eyes around the street, which offered an infuriatingly vulnerable line-of-sight between the victim and his pranksters. "He's on the alert now. If we move, he'll see us. Just let's carry on being cool, talking into the phone".

On a dime, the prank started to turn in on itself, dry humour now morphing into a tense and hunted feel. Rigidly, Kordey's finger made certain abrupt and easy rotations on the dial -911.

"I'm going to run", said Z-Man, if only he had the courage to move independently from his friends.

"No. We just need to wait for a flurry of traffic. A lorry. Then we can fly".

To the west, the busy freeway sieved down to a tight network of box junctions and raised grill platforms, coincidentally home to several cars making super-ponderous turns in the direction of Carter Street. It was, in painful honesty, far too much to expect them to provide cover by salmoning past the boys' position. Z-Man and Leon weren't exactly correct about it being a good idea to run; still there was little to lose. Now and forever, Fmonster resisted the sudden sense of defeat. Feeling the sinews bulging in his feminine jaw, he replaced the phone, flapped the denim of his jacket and tapped his friends on their shoulders. They retreated, at first in a steady pace, then around the corner in a jog.

Pittsfield had always been a hateful place in terms of being flat. Doing the thinking for his two comrades, Fmonster wondered whether to head for the more rural end of town or slip further into the housing strips, where there was a significant hill that might boggle the minds of any pursuers. Welcome to middle America, taking pride in thin gable-fences, the sketchy borders to hundreds of medium-size houses elbowed lazily into Dodge. The yards, weirdly, were always free of kids, even though statistically most houses were part of blue-white-white collar family expansion. Near the crest of the town's main hill was an old folk's home, the extensive strip of garden zigzagged between claustrophobic hedgerows and thick-trunk cedars. It'd probably be a useful, daring shortcut for the boys, but Fmonster didn't want to be stared at from a patio window by some dreamy old lady. He didn't want an old man in a beige-flannel shirt to look at him and wonder what the hell adventure was going on. There is no adventure, or even much of a reason for living. Old men of their mid-seventies and old women of their eighties should know that. Turning along the plant-free garden patches of Old Town, Fmonster thought of his own parents -these, of course, among hundreds of other dark and whispy thoughts. His mother was sixty, his father seventy-two. Everything was on a strict timetable.

It was Leon who gave voice to their unspoken nerves, "Did he see us?"

"I'm pretty sure he saw us", said Z-Man, who wasn't normally so pensive.

Amazing that it wasn't even lunchtime yet. The boys strolled nervously alongside the private baseball fields near the more regimented streets of Pittsfield North. Here was the lonely arena where straggly, dirty pine branches had started to become detached from the plastic net borders which city planners had so diligently created. What on Earth to do now, to lie-low? The 9th grade would probably be spurning their usual daytime selection of westerns in favour of the school's-out sci-fi matinees. Fmonster could really get to grips with Close Encounters or This Island Earth. He was wise enough, however, to realise that sci-fi watching was a completely solitary affair. Boys plural: boisterous.

"To the Reservoir?", he wondered.

"To the Reservoir", voted Z-Man.

"Unless", said Leon, "Z-Man wants to swing by a store and pick up some new underpants".

"You're the one who was scared", blustered Z-Man.

"D'you see his face when Fmonster made him send his assistant home?"

High cusps of lonely cul-de-sacs led the way, along roads that'd been extensively cut-up by utility companies, left with smooth operation scars, well-fortified in H-Mac. Fmonster felt his oversized limbs loosen up, though he wasn't nearly relaxed. Skirting the wide pull-in that served as unofficial parking lots to a row of dime stores, they all laughed, chatted, thought of nothing. Then a rustle in his friends' shoulders gave Fmonster reason for alarm. A sharp draw of breath from Leon, too, before the solitary warble of a squad car.

"Is that for us?", panicked Z-Man.

The answer was given as two weirdly athletic officers slipped free and approached, prompting the gang to bolt. In the space of a heartbeat, the two friends were gone and Fmonster was being hunted by the proud and powerful figure of a mid-size patrol cop. There was satisfaction in the way his legs acquitted themselves, even if every other motion was a scratchy nightmare. What about those dreams of being chased, and the fevered running was the lesser of two evils, just? Around the corner into the annoyingly short road of Audrey Pauley Crescent. Gulping through the wide chicanery that led to the more cramped end of town, still without slowing down for a second, he opted to race down further cul-de-sacs. Earlier, a bizarrely-proud homeowner had been constructing and deconstructing a garden wall, apparently only as something to do. As Fmonster whizzed past, the terrible tension of what he was doing, or hoping to achieve, was full in his head. With just a few yards clearance, he purposefully skidded down flat and hid beneath an El Camino. Such a bizarre yin-yang of black motor gears and hazed daylight, with himself sandwiched tightly between, accompanied the sight of Mr Policeman's legs making confused circles in the outside world.

So what was the instinct in that cop's head that told him the nogoodnik was still hiding nearby? Very often, Fmonster was fascinated rather than scared. Once or twice, oversized hatchbacks swished by very closely on the open road alongside his shaking shoulders -there was no fear even at that, tho his racing heart screamed at him. The cop's lower legs sidled into the distance and Fmonster elected to slip free on the road-side, as carefully and silently as possible.

Blue-white sunlight blasted intensely. Shakey and vulnerable, he attempted to cross the mouth of the T-junction quite nonchalantly. It would have been better to be scared. With a sudden trot of speed, the second policeman re-appeared as bad luck personified. He cuffed Fmonster, frog-marched him back to the squad car. And after all, the troubles were only just beginning.

He'd been in cop cars before. Back seat tension was everything, though he tried to counterbalance it with just a little fascination; there was no mesh to protect the drivers from prisoners, not like on TV. It suggested a level of civility that phased Fmonster completely. Maybe it was all psychological.

"You're sixteen, right?", said the cop with the dry, pursed face. "Impersonating a law enforcement officer is a capital offence. Impersonating them with a purpose to commit crime carries a set ten-year sentence, even for juveniles".

"Especially for juveniles", put in the second cop, who clearly had an ingrained hatred of kids.

Fmonster suggested, "Come on, guys. We were only kidding around".

"How do you think that works, ya little dips-? You ring in a bomb scare and you all laugh, until some scum walking past sees the commotion and tries to rob the place for real?"

Trouble -real or illusory. The way the cops boldly offered up this information suggested they were invested in giving the maximum panic, milking the greatest sense of fear, while letting him go later. Then again, there was no denying the situation was growing as bad as it could possibly get. As he always did while trying to think of the future, he made a simple calculation -seventy-two; add the neat, square figure of ten. By the time he was let out of juvenile detention, his father would be eighty-two. If it came to pass, time and fate would suck the oxygen out of the room for just about everyone. The strange problem of the world being one big, languid nightmare -maintained.

To keep panic at bay, he decided that he was surely just a stupid sixteen year-old boy, and the cops would probably weigh the whole thing in the balance and let him off.

He angled his head in perfect relaxation, tho his heart still raced. They'd weigh the balance in his favour, unless the balance was already spoiled. In the pocket of his jeans, the bundle of hustled dollar bills burned viciously. They'd been massing for months now. Pick a booth or drugstore that was quiet, but nonetheless had an unsympathetic, harried-looking cashier. One of the boys would purchase something minimal with a twenty dollar bill, which would involve getting lots of change. After an hour or so of surveilling the shop, a different boy would go in, again purchasing something minimal. On getting the change from a five dollar bill, 'This is fine, but, uh, I gave you a twenty?'

About one-in-twenty transactions saw the cashier chewing their lip and giving the extra change straight away. This always made Fmonster feel sordid -there needed to be some kind of finesse or technique, otherwise it was just like begging. Most of the time, 'You did give me a five'.

'Isn't there a twenty in the five drawer?'

'No'.

'Would you mind checking some of your twenties to see if there're any with my initials?'

Whereupon they'd find the twenty that had been given by the first boy, an hour ago, still hopefully on top. Probably the correct action at this point would be to close the shop for ten minutes and run a complete tally of the fives and twenties in the register. But no one ever did this. Even if they did, Fmonster was confident that his mind was a hive of psychological bluffs to undermine and confuse the cashier.

There was also the train ticket refund hustle. The sell-liberate-sell maneuver at the mesh gates of the glass depot. Morally it added up to very profitable mischief. But consolidated into the single bundle of notes in his pockets, about to be discovered by cops, it would look like the spoils of a criminal empire.

"So what do you guys think of the Dodgers this season?"

The cops cringe-glowered at the road ahead. The rear-view mirror was angled in such a way as to observe the entirety of the back seats, from the tip of Fmonster's spikey hair to the leg-space -cancelling his plan to finger the cash inside the cushion joints.

"OK", he straightened out his body; the chains of the cuffs with just enough width to allow him to thrust his hands into pockets in an exaggerated gesture of defeat, "I'm done trying to win you boys over".

God bless that he hadn't bitten his finger nails recently. His mother forcing him to bite sunflower seeds as an alternative had really worked. Using his thumb against the pad of his index, he rended the stitching in his pocket a good two inches, easily enough to poke the money through. With just minimal luck, some would remain in the creases of his trousers. But even if it all splayed free in the police station yard, at least he'd be clean. With a gentle, internal shrug, he figured he'd just have to get used to the minimal allowance his father could spare from his NSA pension.

The station was a flat, single-story affair, with a deep sense of economy that made Fmonster wince and squint. Nothing was said as the door was held open for him, nothing was said as they edged forward from the diminutive motor pool. The world was a thoughtless place, and Fmonster felt confident, though he would have liked to have been able to put his hands on his hips. He felt the disintegrating bundle of cash break up across his thigh, then disappear from his senses somewhere near the fold of his knee. For one thing, the way every single window in the station office block had downturned blinds indicated a place that was vulnerable for wanting to keep everything secret.

The desk sergeant seemed edgy without being out-of-control. He typed the rap sheet awkwardly. "Name?"

Fmonster briefly considered trying to pass himself off as someone else, possibly one of the bad-boys-dun-good who had summer jobs up at the Reilly Sawmills. It was a dying campaign, however. Play the roles. Switch from being a popular high school anarchist to be being an errant son.

"Fox Mulder. M-U-L-D-E-R".

"Age?"

"Sixteen".

He recited his address in a tone that was probably far more cheerful than was wise. Weirdly, his cheerfulness stayed buoyant even when a seen-it-all-before, haggard-looking cop presented his colleagues with the swirl of bank notes which had trailed from the youngster's trousers.

"Stolen", said one of the arresting officers, leaving it unclear whether he was delivering a statement or a question -or warning the others about giving the benefit of the doubt to a boy who was so clearly wrong-side-of-the-tracks.

"Pittsfield is a small town, fellas", croaked Fox. "It's got a tiny rotation of money changing hands, stolen or not. If I had a lawyer, he could probably jive you up some figures on the subject on a dime".

Casting his oversized spectacles at the huge pile of tear-off arrest sheets, the desk sergeant said, "Lawyers can only do so much. I suggest you face the truth, Mr Mulder".

While moving bluntly through all the problems that lay ahead, the boy also became obsessed with the crystal-cleanliness of those huge spectacles. The truth of what they were going to do with him was fine; he guessed the quickest way to snoop through the B S was to play intelligent little mind-games. Noticing the cherry-metal Hamilton which one of his arresting officers wore on his sallow wrist, "That's a neat-looking watch, officer. How long you owned that? A day or two?"

It was a wrist-watch on the ostentatious end of style -something that may or may not be approved by the official uniform code, or even just the unspoken consensus that officers should always wear the most basic watches they could. In a similar fashion, Fox noticed how the bigger of the policemen had a recently-cut hairstyle -a shortback that tried its best to look conservative, even if it bore a resemblance, shape-wise, to the space helmets from 2001 A Space Odyssey. It had been scissor-cut all over, but short, to the same effect as a barber's No.3 or 4 clipper, the sort of thing that no doubt happened when a husband went to his wife's hair salon. At the weekend. Because their son or daughter had left the home a handful of years ago, leaving mom and dad with lots of time on their hands. And to spend so much time being scissor-clipped in a hair salon? The cop must have done a good job raising his kids, because otherwise he'd hate the world too much to be so patient. "I've got to wonder. What do you say about this, officer? You've raised a kid or two. Surely they must've got into scrapes and come out the other side?"

They passed the limits of where a non-prisoner civilian might venture, and the novelty of being in a real-life police station didn't let up for a second. At a detective's booth, Fox was drawn to the photo-fit 'WANTED' fax of beautiful girl. In lower point beneath the banner, 'Soviet Political Espionage'. A spy, in Pittsfield ? For the few seconds he was in range, he was fascinated by her steep eyebrows and unusually V-shaped jaw. She had a beyond-average size nose, which he could relate to, but here off-set with eyes that were the patron saint of good-luck in wartime.

As he was slid into a stereotype cell, open-plan, the officer acknowledged him with an expression that was blank, harmless. Then, quite succinctly, everyone departed. He craned his eyes down the corridor to try and glimpse the reception area, though now the angle was far too tight. Possibly he could recruit the drunk who was fizzing away in the far-side cell, get him to describe what was going on.

"Hey, mac. What about the Cubs this season?"

But nonsensed the drunk, "What'd you come up to me as if you know about sinkin' planes!"

"More of a Dodgers man, eh?"

"Raa!", shouted the drunk.

"Raa-aaa!", returned Fox, amazed that the blue-murder didn't bring back any of the jailers.

The boy grinned to himself, soon to become a shallow grin, a chaste grin, henceforth a dull simper. For the first time, he noticed the deep metal bulwark sunk an optimum distance between the cells, all reinforced rungs and heavy gouge marks. Was it there to arrange a whole rank of prisoners before they were marched away, or merely to store an overflow of midnight ne'er-do-wells that wouldn't fit behind the bars? Depressed and fascinated, Fox lounged and tried to relax. He'd never before been a boy given to self-reflection. Perhaps only now. He couldn't imagine himself as the kind of un-sardonic achiever society wanted to him to be. On the other hand, he couldn't imagine himself in a juvenile prison. Did Clyde Barrow know what was happening that day in 1926 when he was pulled up after exceeding his car rental? At that point, had there even been an alternative?

As a man of leisure, more or less, it likely wouldn't take Mulder's father long to arrive at the police house. The time-scale didn't matter one bit to the boy, until, that is, it became weirdly elongated, the tone-of-buzz in the electric light starting to imitate the ambience of a summer evening. He angled his head, almost tempted to lay it on the ground like Tonto in order to detect whether William Mulder was somewhere in the vicinity. He was, he must be, leaning on an office desk, gently using subtle body language to engineer the minds of the American proletariat.

After an age, an officer he hadn't seen before perfunctorily slid open the bars. "You're going to be leaving", he said gravely. "I know you're going to be annoyed, whether you choose to play it safe or whether you carry on the criminal way. All I'd suggest is that you get to know Jesus".

Eye-contact was prudently denied the boy as they calmly moved along to the lounge. When the big face-off finally happened, it was as though Fox Mulder was seeing his father for the first time. Not that either of them connected much. The small, everyman frame of the geriatric was suitably unaffected by the cluster of cops. What also helped his case, made him seem less of a masculine threat, was the sky-blue woolen cardigan slung weirdly across his shoulders.

Said the desk sergeant, "For now, we're releasing you into the custody of your father. Last warning. If you're involved in any more criminal activities, even in passing, you'll be signing your life away to us and we will put you in chains forever".

Whether remorseful or not, it was hard to know what was showing in his face, since Fox was geared purely to his father's reaction. Blinking. Wholesome-gulping like a new-wave politician. None of the cops watched them leave the building, and their shoulders were now set more to a median of work-a-day concentration than genuine ire. You couldn't fake body language like that. The Mulders were home free.

Just as it had been like seeing his father for the first time, so the two-tone Buick GN felt as though it was fresh from the show room. Fox eased back in the passenger seat.

"Those police men were keen that you and your gang not cause more trouble around town".

"They're hardly a gang. They're just some guys from high school".

"I know", said William Mulder in a relaxed voice. "That boy Leon. I believe his father is an Emergency Room doctor, isn't he?"

Fox looked across. "I didn't realise you knew him".

"I don't. Just small town knowledge. People are easy. That other boy, Zack, what does his father do?"

Fox shrugged and answered. At once, he figured that Z-Man's father being unemployed and burning out state-assisted living was probably balanced by the noble profession of Leon's father. As a band of brothers, they were a disparate social match. Surely that was a good thing? That Fox didn't know quite where his own father fitted in the spectrum, as a retired government psychologist: it was a small intrigue.

Moving steadily onto the main road. "I talked to those policemen for a while and told them that I was already planning to send you to a military academy".

Fox's eyes raced from the murky roadside, across the dash, panicking in the direction of his father. "You're planning to send me to military academy?"

"No", croaked the elder. "That would be a fate worse than death. You're a headstrong sixteen year old. In lots of ways, you've got qualities that are to be admired. You're practical. You know about sports. You could probably run rings around me in an IQ test. All this petty hustling -I know you'll stop being drawn to it. Besides, it never works to force responsibility on people. I think what would go down well with you is a bit more freedom, and so I've decided to set you up with your own apartment in Chicopee. The rent, utilities, food -I'll cover it all for as long as you need".

In the boy, there was hardly any reaction to this strangest, most unpredictable outcome. Friday night football nights with kegs of beer. Up-town girls grasped at in a Hefner-esque dating grab -and won, delivered back to his own private bachelor pad. Presently it was all he could do to rest his elbow on the window ledge, chew his knuckle, try not to smile. In a flash, he jerked his head about, "Can you even afford that?"

"We've got more money than you know. Your mother and I just try to spend it wisely".

Fox's ribs started to ache, a strange sort of gnaw similar to his minor peanut allergy. He imagined not being around Samantha, sitting with his legs slung over the easy chair, or rolling a tennis ball to Manners the Dog, all along burning with impatience for her to finish her homework so they could interview each other on everything and nothing. A deeper concern rose up, also; one day, probably frighteningly soon, one of their parents would have a stroke, or go senile, or succumb to one of the dozen other deteriorations that are natural to old age. He always imagined that he and Samantha would work through it together, in the same house.

Not really pressed when he saw they were less than two blocks from home, Fox went ahead and probed for answers, "Why Chicopee? Why not here?"

His father said, without the need to draw breath, "I want you to have a sense of economy even if I am footing the bill. The food stores are all cheaper in Chicopee. The gas stations are a few cents lower because it's so far off the main freeway. There're white collar jobs, blue-collar jobs -in small companies, companies you could easily make your own if you were of a mind".

"This is one hell of a reverse-psychology thing", suggested the boy.

Said William Mulder, flatly, "No. You're my son, and you're growing to be worldly man. I'm proud of that. I can't keep you from the world".

Fox Mulder blinked, simply unable to understand. He stared into the grey sky, an unending void clinging senselessly to the houses, the dense trees, the electricity yards.

Xx.

The remainder of the day ran much as usual; the feeling of each domestic event as ever it was. The Mulders ate supper. Samantha and her father took Manners for a snuffle around the block. The early evening news bulletin was discussed in middling detail. Only a squirming of his usually laid-back twilight mood kept Fox from relaxing, bringing forth a plan to sneak out and see April, or Necca, or Alicia -but even this slight cowboy pleasure was fading. The thought of getting down with the prettiest girls in school was overshadowed by the strange, more adult hedonism he was cruising into. What would he be doing a month from now? Sitting in a deck chair on his apartment roof, joined by every debutant the frat department had to offer, sucking bottles of beer while pellet-gunning distant street-lights. Or maybe teamed with guys he'd never met before in the late night hoop court behind the Chicopee Circle K, forever on edge with each other while all the same becoming street brothers as the night got crazy. By that time, he'd probably be smiling from ear to ear as much as thinking on anything.

Throwing darts at the board affixed to the ceiling, he considered how weird it was that, for all the density of his nose, his breathing was always eerily silent. Underwater-style. Then he thought of nothing, merely staring at the heavy black circle so symmetrical above. Enter his sister.

"When you go, he says I can have this room, if I want", Samantha husked, 'he' being their father.

Warned Fox, "There're razor-teeth rats in the crawlspace of the ceiling".

"No there aren't. I remember seeing the inside of the ceiling when the work men came. There's cotton wool stuff; if there were rats up there, they wouldn't be able to get through it".

The eight year old then poked her head around the dull shelves. She'd combed out her hair ready for bed so that it was a single silk-brown wave. "Are you going to take these magazines with you when you go?"

"No. Use 'em for a yard sale. Get some money and buy me a Firebird for my birthday".

Samantha leafed through a random back issue of Sports Illustrated, and he noted the blush when she came upon the full-page spread of Kathy Ireland and Mike Schmidt inclining their bodies together as if making love. Feigning disinterest, she picked out one of his True Crime magazines, scrutinising the badly-printed black and white pictures. She saw Donald Eugene Webb. She saw Billy Milligan being ducked inside a police car like the most sorrowful sight in all the world.

"Cavemen lived tough lives. How come when you look at our faces, we don't all look unhappy like we're still being chased by dinosaurs?"

Fox spoke easily, barely lifting his head from the pillow, "Cavemen didn't exist at the same time as dinosaurs".

"You know what I mean!"

"I guess", the teenager limply shrugged, "evolution weighs things in the balance. Do we live our lives afraid and nervous nowadays? A little. But we're also happy. Just like when you think about wearing that puff-shouldered bridesmaids dress to Aunty Angelina's wedding".

"I am not wearing that dress", pouted Samantha.

"I told mom and dad you secretly wanted to".

"You're a liar, Fox. It's weird, also, it's easier to tell what's going on in the head of someone who has a face that's all blank, than someone who's smiling in a big crowd of their friends. It's weird".

To which Fox could only think, 'You reckon so?' In time however, he cleared his face of all strain and asked Samantha, "So what am I thinking?'

"I don't know. About the future? Are you taking your record player with you?"

The elder Mulder glanced briefly at the suitcase-shaped Magnavox, the speakers that looked like they'd come from the lair of a Russian mad scientist. "No. I figure I'll buy a Panasonic".

Samantha skipped into her adjoining room and came back with the seven inch Laughing Elvis. Loading the turntable - confusion, giving Fox a deeply satisfied buzz when he got to explain the difference between the seven and twelve lever. Once The King started wavering, it was hard not to feel infected by the fun, each Southern chuckle bubbling up as he sang, and 'all the world's a stage', as if he'd invented that phrase all by himself.

Regardless, when the single came to an end, no other record was deemed necessary to fill the silence. Picking up her train of thought from before, with a fluid intellectualism most adults would have died for, "You're with some people, and in your head you always know what's it's like when those people get together. Like they're people in a TV show. You've been watching it and really concentrating. You know exactly what it's like. But then you think, 'I'm in that group'. You're the only person you can't see in your head".

Fox tried his hardest to understand what his sister was talking about. "You mean, because it's like you're the one holding the TV camera?"

"No", she said in a steady voice. "It's just everything. Everyone else is meant to be there, and it's perfect, except for you. And the more you think about it, it feels strange".

"Everyone feels that way".

Insisted Samantha. "No they don't".

"Come on! Look, back in the eighth grade, I started dating Sheryl Laurepa. Most beautiful girl in the school. The trouble is, pretty soon, I realised she had a personality, too. Could I get a handle on it? Not by the hairs of my chinny chin chin. And if that's the trouble the most beautiful girl in the school has, you've gotta go nuts at how hard it must be for the rest of us".

"But Sheryl Whatever-her-name never stopped to think about it", said Samantha.

Growing up was a strange, implacable thing, though the truth of it was that Samantha had always been fearsomely thoughtful. He dimly remembered hearing somewhere that the first words spoken by Graham Greene, the heavyweight novelist so beloved of his English teachers, was 'poor doggy', on seeing a dead dog in the street. Samantha, aged three, had wept bitterly when their neighbour's dog had run away. His father had explained that they'd scour the town until they found him, though Samantha's response had been a profound shake of the head, a strange wisdom that they should accept the grief and cut their emotional losses as early as possible. The dog was never found.

At a complete loss, Fox shrugged his mouth and decided he should return the conversation to some sort of nonsense. Indulging in nonsense with your kid sister is what life's all about. He thumbed at the Wolfman poster that sat over his bed. "So you figure we're like Lon Chaney up there, if he suddenly came alive, jumped out of the poster and had to make his way in the world?"

"I wanna be Bride of Frankenstein!"

"Well I heard you could get hair like that just by drinking too much Leed", (Samantha's afternoon soda of choice).

"Do you still have any double-ups?"

The 'double-up'; an idea devised by Fox and his father to teach Samantha how to read, way back when. At the news stand, instead of buying a single comic book, they'd buy two of each. Fox would read aloud the text, leaving the six year-old to enjoy the illustrations while subliminally picking up on the shape of the words, their meaning, the syntax. From the point of view of the elder sibling, it was strangely enjoyable, too. Samantha, in no way a tomboy, had vetoed Marvel and DC, but had a real thing for Tin-tin and Blueberry.

Unfortunately, when Fox mentally searched his room -

"I don't have any of mine".

Samantha grinned and kitty-walked to her book shelves, returning with two identical copies of Thorgal by Jean Van Hamme, evidently a favourite. Fox started to read. Tho it didn't distract him too much from the characterisation, he was tantalized by the thought of his sister's eyes engrossed in the same epic landscapes, the medieval kitsch, the bizarrely accurate lithograph-shading, as if Grzegorz Rosinski had somehow managed to draw Vikings-versus-cenobites from first-hand experience. Lingering in the background was a strong suspicion that nowadays Samantha could probably read better than him, and so Fox put extra effort into putting on a good show. He gave each character a sideways personality. Laughter came as he gave Thorgal's wife the voice of Cindi Lauper. Laughter and delight came with the suggestion that the leader of the black magicians might be a slight variant of Nixon, and the all haggard villagers Jimmy Stewart.

It was strange; in his mind, he continued to read the story. There was no point at which he and Samantha weren't lost in the beautiful foothills of The Forgotten Realm, absorbed in every kind of occult warlocking. This notwithstanding, he gave a jump, and realised he'd been asleep for hours. There were similarities with having drunk too much -namely, passing from stupor to sleep, then waking in the middle of the night to wonder, 'did that really happen?'

Had he really been apprehended by the police for serial-hustling? Had his father really offered to get him into a private downtown apartment? And what of Samantha? Had she really been in the thrall of such elaborate existential dread? Laughing Elvis was vivid enough; the rest could be illusion.

Acting as a Samantha-surrogate to say goodnight, the cuddly toy of Tony Colonial was staring at his face. It was a nice touch. It didn't make him feel any more secure, however. He arced his gangly limbs into a sitting position, then, tingly to the ends of the Earth, made his way to the door that adjoined their bedrooms. His sister had taken a stiff and unwieldy pose beneath the bed clothes, made odder still by the tiny rabbit-breaths she took while in deep sleep. There was little enough definition in the grey haze, but Fox was sure he discerned rapid eye movement. The eyes of anyone, when dreaming, look like they're co-ordinating a sword-fight with a musketeer. The difference with his kid sister was that her closed lids would periodically sway in an exact beat, a raft-dwelling shipwreck survivor asking questions of the Lord Above.

The elder Mulder trudged back to his tiny bed and was asleep from the first second his shin hit the cusp and he fell forward.

An unknown period of time passed. Then something, a blue void of light, blasted everything, including his mind-like-a-cave -and any reasonable debate about whether the light might be something non-supernatural was pathetically short-lived. A helicopter directly alongside the house? Close but not at all. This -was-the arrival of a mind-bending gnostic angel. This -was- something from the netherworld.

Above all, and furthered by the way his arms and legs were fighting a strange paralysis, the light was not in the least bit accommodating to him. It was steady, constant, like something no one had ever seen before. Easily, it was mounting up a dozen supernatural tendencies, this all-pervading power -for the first time ever, the vinyl on his turntable was skipping. Elvis' backing singers were not only holding their own against his laughing foolishness, they took on a metronomic strength like gusts in a tornado.

He lost consciousness a couple of times, though it wasn't a battle, it was just something that happened. Looking back, if it had been so hard to believe getting caught by the police had really happened, what was he to make of this? He rushed through the bedazzling light to the threshold of Samantha's room. On glaring open his eyes a penultimate time, he saw her floating unsupported in mid-air. Maybe held on the fingers of an invisible King Kong. Hell-creature. Tendril from eternity. He lost consciousness. His brain surged. On regaining his mind, he saw her again, strangeness upon strangeness, floating upwards outside thebedroom window.

Come five minutes, come twenty minutes. All too late. Fox winced open his eyes to see his mother darting from side to side, uttering, 'No!'

He saw his Father blinking in shock. The room had become as normal. As per a nursery schoolyard beating, or WWI shellshock, the sixteen year old continued to feel the blows long after normality resumed. In his mouth, the juddery breaths felt particularly strange. In the traumatic silence, he took a moment to analyse, eventually realising he was shouting -a word? A name. Unable to stop.

'Samantha!'

xxx

The crowd moved their bodies stiffly and slowly in the sharp atmosphere, just as a Biblical scene mocked by some nihilist demon, post-industrial. The sudden announcement that their workhouse was being closed down had led to a bizarre consensus that everyone should gather in the courtyard outside the main stores. Ben Davis was very close to weeping; from above, the man seemed like a tearful bipedal dinosaur. The tabard ladies looked venomous and echo-thoughtful, a slight-tho-telling variance from the usual. In all, Kyle Parks' fellow factory workers were distraught and heart-wrenched, though from his point of view, there was none of it remotely interesting. Middle-managers' faces creased and showed rubbery mid-life determination. Young bucks and evangelicals flared their eyes, otherwise absolutely still. Certainly those guys were tense; but the shifts in their body language were insanely brittle, like animals encased in ice or amber, given the illusion of movement merely by a tilt of their blocky prison. And who's the only one with a complete picture? The snide little demon himself.

The demon and Bob Janko -he looked down from the huge slat window as some kind of voyeur ghost. Kyle played darts across the way, kicked-back lithe relaxation and proud of it.

"Not going down there?", asked Bob in genuine fascination.

"What's the point?"

From Kyle's undersized mouth came a rich smile, a 'what's the point?' -utterly succinct and contemptful of everyone, everything. Even if Thoru Rivets was just being commercially savvy in moving their manufacturing overseas to Cinabalu Kender, when you weighed it with the snide machinations of fate, dog crap human nature, the worst thing of all would be to display any interest, let alone worry. There was a vague interest in seeing what the five-year-service bonus might look like in the final wage cheque -but it wouldn't really matter.

"Maybe I'll be like you and retire".

Bob gave a laugh at that, the conception that a twenty-seven year old steady-eddie could afford to retire with the economy in its current mire. Perhaps, though, if anyone could find a way of flourishing, it was Kyle, his immaculate-gelled hair, shirt-that-never-got-dirty, demeanor that was easy-going survival-and-cunning.

As Bob returned to looking through the window, Kyle approached the bench where the old man had left his wallet. His back turned, Kyle calmly fingered out the two twenty dollar bills and placed them in the pocket on his black jeans. Then, with a smile that confounded evil utterly, "Look at 'em down there".

"Some of those guys have worked here for twenty years plus", stated Bob. "It's a terrible thing to happen".

But still nothing new. Kyle's mother, when last he'd seen her, had been an avid watcher of TV movies, even when their family had cable installed, even when they'd gotten a VHS player and could dine on Hollywood. All afternoon she'd watch shows that'd opted to have high production values for stories that used the cheapest of suburban backdrops. Usually they told of a housewife's struggle, occasionally about the housewife's bluecollar husband, at the very best about a doomed union leader at an industrial plant.

Kyle placed his hands on his hips and narrowly managed to hide his sneer, albeit beneath a dangerously-wavering grin; he realised he was living in one of his mother's terrible films.

At the edge of the crowd, listening grimly to the news of doom, the only person Kyle could remotely identify with. Or listen to, or tolerate -twenty-nine year old Fredericks Chartis. But even Fredericks looked pathetically pensive, chewing his lip and blinking his eyes at the grimey concrete. The guy thought of himself as a communist. Misappropriation. It put a sneer bang in the middle of Kyle's mind, though he'd never let anyone see -anyone who'd ever become a communist had a vested interest in being a communist, and it was wildly pathetic that none of them ever realised this. There was strength in numbers, strength in being the underdog, but that was nothing compared to the strength of being alone and believing in nothing. As Kyle left the club house, not once turning to say goodbye to old Bob, the sharp midday atmosphere made strange whisps of grey shadow on his body. Never had the white-painted stairwell seemed so tight.

What with everyone outside in the 70's Buck Rogers courtyard, he considered edging his way into some of the offices to seek valuables to steal. From previous scrapes, the place had proved one-hundred percent free of security cams. Or -he wondered whether to go to sleep at his desk in the Adjunct Room, so impressing Claire and Tasha and Roseanne with his disinterest. Rounding the corner, however, tip-tapping the plastic rail with his long fingernails, he heard a striking sound wafting in through the open-air binds. Peeking, he saw Johnny Menso angrily trying to confront the company man, though his tone belonged to some overly-polite politician. At the same time, Bella Swanson was crying. Kyle idly wondered, is there any sound in the world more satisfying than a crying girl, even, say, a girl in the throes of ecstasy?

He moved mid-way into the crowd.

"Have I missed the trapeze?"

The friend of Kyle Parks scowled. "Look at Mr Nysor. He's tailored himself in the media to be some enlightened modern factory boss, and he's got such a pained look on his face as he talks about the economics of the move abroad. It's like everyone's an animal. We've got no right to get angry because it doesn't even -occur- to us to lynch him. He's got no pressure on him to feel guilty because he just doesn't understand".

"Lynch him?", the very straight-faced talk of extreme violence titillated Kyle, just a little. All the same, talk was all it was. "Come on, let's get out of here. I'll buy you some shots".

But for Fredericks the communist, this circus was one of the highlights of his life. Kyle himself didn't listen to Nysor, finding it to be less of a projected speech and more of a conversational apology, only coincidentally projected before the crowd of victims.

"There's something dark about this, man", started Fredericks.

"It's the way businesses run. National companies propped up on multinational resources, and the trade unions don't do jack".

Fredericks wagged his head. "It's all that and more. Think about Sam Ross".

Sam Ross was a fat, high-level plant worker who'd vanished from the area two months ago. The search by the local Sheriff's Department was ongoing, though for most townsfolk, the mystery was so impenetrable it had eventually turned dry and mundane. For one thing, the countryside between the plant workshops and the town, the town and the rest of the state, was so rocky and overgrown, it was probable the guy was just in a hedge somewhere, drunk, hypothermia'd -Occam's razor.

"I don't see the connection with Sam Ross", Kyle's voice was light.

"There's every connection", and Fredericks launched straight into his red gossip. "He was a nobody. But he'd spent thirty years working here. He knew every type of rivet, every kind of crimp-weld. Give him long enough and he could single-handedly decommission a Stratofortress into a couple of suitcases. My point is, he knew every job. They've obviously paid him off, sent him to Cinabalu Kender to show the buck-tooths how to do what we do".

Kyle smiled. "Or he came in to work one morning, walked into the wrong office and Scoobi-Doo'd the state governor shaking hands with ching-chong Chinaman, and they killed him".

It was obviously this idea that appealed most to Fredericks' 'us and them' ethos, his mouth getting numb, steadfast. Even so, he wasn't the type of guy to start shouting the odds at Nysor. None of them were. All Kyle could do was summon mockery, "Of course, we all know what really happened to Sam Ross. He was taken by Moonskin".

During the plant's redevelopment in the early eighties, new workblocks had been added to all sides of the existing warehouse -though weirdly, surreally, the sides were uneven, meaning you could look out of the window of one of the new workshops and directly into bottom few inches of another window. It was just like lift doors opening between floors. Through this tantalising glimpse into a dark, vacant world, the rivet workers had entertained themselves by pretending they could see a lithe monster dart by. 'Moonskin'. If Kyle remembered rightly, he'd tacitly invented the creature himself, just to scare the headscarf-wearing girls.

But that memory fell away now. Whether the terse panic about losing their jobs manifested in folded arms or a creasing-up of hitherto manageable crows feet, there wasn't a lot to be said for the reaction of the crowd. Kyle pictured it as step-parents at a PTA meeting. Sometimes he pictured it as something worse. Plenty of people still wore their company caps and boilersuits, and was that a decision to try and make Nysor feel guilty? Or the last symbol of a work house community? Was it out of habit? Was there any thought at all?

Around one of the more lonely corners of the complex someone had left running an echoey radio, though it was hard to say whether the noise was enthusiastic speech or dad-rock -only that it gave an impression the building was joyfully haunted. The crowd stood shoulder-heavy between the trendy, low benches, and for sure it was one of the most unnatural situations to find yourself in during life. Come together in a church, or at a ball game, but this? What was it? Kyle idly flicked his eyes across the Popeye-armed old men and the women who'd only narrowly escaped becoming monastic farmer's wives. Joining them, muscular teens who were physically interchangeable with hip-hop street hoods, but here were as useful as old style dock workers. Former bikers. Gentleman Indians, gentleman Muslims. Men who'd got their mid-life crisis out of the way by buying a house-priced sports car in their twenties, but now were entirely happy to sit on a factory stool 9-5. Clearly, most people would be depressed to think of this disparate group of workers disbanding; ideas of doomed and outdated social integration would be conjured. Not how Kyle thought of it -it was just too good to be true. It was too good to ever have existed -as a liberal idea, as a remote concept. Here was that famous, snarky quotation, alive, 'Mark the Devil as someone who simply enjoyed the sunshine too much on crucifixion day'. And so. Kyle Parks. staring ahead through the bodies -a dark smirk with nothing at all behind it.

"My team of financial planners have been focused on how to keep Thoru rivets alive and solvent through the course of its life, ever since we set the company up, in fact, so I wouldn't like anyone here to think that this is something we've decided on without long and hard thought. One of the reasons I chose Creagerstown is because it's such a unique and industrial little county. But increasingly, the road haulage costs, the state infrastructure -simply isn't geared towards the survival of our company. You'll appreciate the amount of core business capital we've recently invested into the multiple plate-laying bays, the new air-driver system, and so I hope you'll all understand that we were trying to find a way forward right up until the end".

The round shoulders of the heavy-sets remained steady, with only trace stress; the antelope frames of the middle-aged women were tight, undaunted. Slowly, the implication that this wasn't the terrible, sour event that most people envisaged took over everything. In the sky, heavy clouds were tinged with Atlantic-blue edges, though rain was masochistically absent. The atmos between was bright and all the mouth-chewing heads beneath, just an oil painting from an old book.

Memories of the early nineties seeped in, completely frictionless. That slice of ancient history where citizens of Ellicott City slowly discovered that their private pensions had been viciously embezzled over the course of decades by an unscrupulous broker. Even at the fickle-thoughtless age of nine, Kyle wasn't particularly affected that the perpetrator of such terrible crimes had been his father. He'd been fond of him; they'd gone hunting together. But people are always fundamentally distant from each other; he'd known that even then.

His mother, however, had completely frozen the day the state police made the arrest. How they'd burst into their semi-detached homestead and manhandled Miguel Parks in the style of a serial killer fugitive. It was a novelty of the news story that quite so many people had been effected by the crime -the TV network could have done nightly human interest interviews with each of the victims and still not been done for years. The scale of the scam had been so large in fact, plus the response of the state prosecutors so zealous, they'd commandeered the Meadowbrook Arena so they could address the victims en masse.

A deck of trump cards being shuffled, always with preternatural cutting skills. The memory of sitting with his spine against the base of their sofa, eyes glued to a show about shark fishing, only to be interrupted by his mother's numb face. She'd stood there, uncharacteristically stiff, and explained to Kyle the exact nature of cunning. Had he ever heard the grown-up expression, 'The best place to hide something is in plain sight?'

Kyle was to get on his bike and cycle to the sports arena where the scam victims were being addressed en masse. He would go inside and look for a man in a red neck tie and gentry hat -just like the one Kojak wore. This man would seem to look at his watch; they'd go outside to the man's car, where he'd retrieve a football for them to throw to each other on the pitch. After five or ten minutes of doing so, the man would depart, but leaving his football in the boy's possession. Sewn inside the football -seventy thousand dollars in cash.

Even now, the memories were like joyous spikes in his soul. Kyle remembered the way his contact, evidently his father's crime partner, had smiled rapturously -to the point of drawing attention, endangering their cover? He remembered the exhilarated ache in his skinny little gut as he'd walked through the crowd of toad-faced victims. They'd each had hundreds of dollars taken from them, in some cases their life-savings. But still they would never be poor. Their chieftain jackets and their fat asses, their glassed eyes looking inward at nothing -they'd already made a decision to live thoughtlessly cheap lives; that spirit of cheapness was a Faustian deal which would sustain them through thick and thin. Kyle remembered breezing among them, standing tall, feeling justified.

He guessed he'd turned into a man that day. It'd been chaotic, too. Sadness came that his father's plan had worked -if anything- a little too easily, and the goddamn G-men would never even have a hint they'd been bested. So came Kyle's sense of resolve. Towing his bike under one arm, football held loosely beneath the other, he'd crossed to the outer edge of the semi-circular parking lot, where a lonely police cruiser was locked and alone just like a regular car. Kneeling, pretending to tie his shoe lace, he'd taken his pocket knife and punctured the rear tyre, then gouged his initials into the metal.

Walking away, his heartrate curiously calm, feeling wondrously exhilarated -Kyle now wondered if that sensation had ever truly left him during the intervening years. What a chicken-soul choirboy might think of as evil triumphant kept him cool as a cucumber. And still the crowd of so-called victims glared their grievances at the sun.

"We've tried to meet a more-than-national-average redundancy package which your booklets will tell you about in detail. And the job-hunting meetings in E-block are something we've specially set-up. Above all, we want to make this as smooth a transition as possible".

There was no polite jumping-in point, and so Den Pitcher boomed out with horrible abruptness. His flowing speech was almost impressive. "You say that you've tried -but you're just avoiding that you could take all these extra costs on the chin, and carry on in America, and personally, to you, all it would mean it is that you were a multi-millionaire over a multi-multi-millionaire. It's choosing greed over your home".

No one clapped; that would be uncouth. One better, they waited patiently -a sense of their cheeks burning with anticipation for Nysor to reply. Which he did, reasonable-from-hell. "You've every right to be upset, and we'll work through the changeover to get you the best deal possible" -all the while stealing glances at his executive-faced, nylon-shirt-wearing advisor.

Den Pitcher was now let down and hanging around. And the meeting was heading for its end. Kyle chose to focus on Pitcher's girlfriend, an insanely pretty black girl who was in a void between cheerleader, teen boutique and effortless bluecollar. Probably it was easy for men to become lost in the curves of her thick woolen jumper, her thighs and hips, though Kyle was more interested in the utterly lost look that had fallen across her huge brown eyes. As she observed the company boss, it seemed like the expression was there to stay. The need, unknown in her conscious mind, for a man of action.

For what Kyle did next, he used very little deliberation. He left the crowd and went back into the workshops. When Thoru had first been founded, there'd been an unspoken impetus that the factory would carry on expanding forever through the Catoctin woods, and for that reason the framework for dozens more thirty foot racks had been stowed in every spare nook of the plant. In the dusty crevice beside a huge crimp-press, Kyle withdrew a four foot metal cross beam, with a prominent T-junction at one end, pleasingly the exact size and weight of medieval war hammer. It was probably easiest to walk with it draped across one shoulder, though for Kyle there was a neat, subconscious knowledge that this would look far too swaggering, too melodramatic. He chose to drag the head along the ground, sensing at once the chiseling white gouge he left in the foundations. On crossing the boundary back into the courtyard, the hammer-end knocked free the kickplate of the warehouse door -and this was the first time that everyone looked at him and gaped.

Eyes darted up and down as he edged past the crowd. Headlong out towards the parking lot, he sought to make no connection with the crowd of puppets, relay no sense of character beyond the gentle urge to destroy. So people murmured. A sharp flickering sound indicated that industrial-flared trousers were rushing to follow him from a safe distance. Stalking among the tightly parked cars, he was able to avoid giving any gouges to the bluecollar runabouts, finding that his speed and determination did something magical to steady his reflexes even while carrying the monster. Kyle's target was clear. Nysor's Tiguan looked brand new, only because it was fawned over weekly by a specialist valet, the shade of non-American green waxed to a point of pride that was surely autistic.

He mounted the front bumper, climbed the bonnet, loafed his way fairly easily over the windshield and onto the roof. The car didn't sense the terrible mutilation that was coming -no alarm went off. Kyle's first swing was leisurely, too, and he was coolly proud of the way it struck at an exact join between the glass and the metal canopy, delivering such horrible silver flays. His deep breath, as he drew the makeshift war-hammer to a median arc, felt like surfacing after diving far too deep in the ocean. Swing two, swing three -started to suggest damage that would be a write-off for the whole car, with each successive blow a breathless little wonder that it was happening. Kyle Parks versus the universe.

The front grill now a ragged maw, several of the wheel-arches and deflated tyres utterly wrecked, he threw down his weapon and stood back. As he predicted, there was no sound of approaching police cars. Nysor looked shocked, sheepish, then rumble-jaw neurotic, always with a good measure of guilt thrown in. But when no one said anything, Kyle smirked. He'd planned to say, to get a laugh, 'Don't be late with my redundancy cheque' -now that seemed far too glib.

Instead, in the place of words, he darted his eyes sardonically, fingers luxuriating on gelled hair. He walked clear into the grey daylight. Importantly, to prove to himself he wasn't some noble industrial hero, he went straight to the cathouse on Route 20 and exhausted himself with a girl he found completely unattractive.

xxx

All at once, the huge, flat computer screen in the corner of Scully's apartment started to become an insidious mind-control device. She neither properly sat down and concentrated or went away to do something else -though always the grey glow was there, snatching her attention. The latest assignment, back-engineering the acids and active components of a Mexican street drug was surely the FBI Chemical Science equivalent of scanning ambient noise in a hostage phone call, with just as little to latch on to. She stared at the curiously monotone blow-up of the modified hydrargyrum molecule and scoured her mind to figure out what might've been added to it. The search bar on the left-hand side had been dropped down for over half an hour, frozen with a dozen possibilities to complete her word. Polyethinol Lanolin, Polydimethyl Formamide, Polynaphthic adrenocorticine. The internet offered as many designer beauty drugs as spurious Hollywood photos of Matthew McConaughey.

She stared. She drifted to the kitchenette, quite dispossessed, to make herbal tea. A microscopic cheese sandwich was fixed, too. Eleven at night and it was still going nowhere, with absolutely no leads, no inspiration on where to look. Even as the kettle boiled, she'd edged back to the computer and randomly brought up police cordon footage of some of the drugs victims. The officer's shoulder-cam video spoke of a weird melodrama -Mexican drug dealers having heartlessly preyed on glitzy college graduates and minor yuppie twenty-somethings. It was all so new. Scully would have understood a fresh new narcotic spreading through society so quickly, but a purely cosmetic thing?

Three drops from a disposable pipette and the irises of your eyes could become the most brilliant, ethereal blue. Nightclubbers could make themselves the talk of the scene with luminous eyes, not to mention goths using obsidian black. At first, the victims must have taken the chemical to be a revolutionary alternative to coloured contact lenses. Even if they could have imagined carcinogenic or addictive effects, how easily risks like that are dismissed by the young.

For what happened to some users when the chemical was fully absorbed into the eye was horrible and surreal simultaneously. Not just the iris became discoloured but the whole of the eyeball, from the bulbar sheath to the lid, beneath which -a constantly shifting rorschach of black-and-white oil. It was an unearthly look, but one suspected not the unearthly look which the user had desired -as the oculocutaneous-like pathogen seeped into their blood with all the ferocity of cyanide or polonium. Scully looked for answers in the muscular spasms. She noted the order in which the victims' organs shut down. Said the Chief Pathologist of the State of New York, 'a striking feature is the users' lack of appetite, weight loss and an uncanny ability to subsist on barely trace amounts of nutrition for months on end'.

The same old struggle. She was fat. From the computer desk, she could see through to her bedroom and the Salter scales arranged neatly beneath the duvet overhang. To step onto the plate would feel like drowning, but it was something she forced herself to confront just the same. Coldness and hostility, all hell's worth, oozed neatly around her shoulders. It was a devilish trick that she'd managed to acquire her Bachelor of Science, then survive training at Quantico. Ugliness was fine. But her ugliness being used as such a twisting, horrible torture -it was too much. With the barest inclination that she was fighting back, she made her way to bathroom and tied back her hair. She knelt beside the toilet bowl and, whereas in her teens she'd had to rely on a small make-up case containing expired tuna, her gag-response recognised the scenario and she vomited easily.

Dour and aching, she stood tall and returned to her small lounge. She thought of that peculiar phrase, 'the functioning alcoholic'. It implied a stigma that the dizziness and addiction had a negative effect on the user's life, if only tacit. But could there ever be any negative effects for a functioning anorexic? To counteract any malnourishment issues while she was in public, she carried a good supply of energy sweets, nutritional supplements, caffeine pills. Thereafter, she knew on a practical level that her weight didn't affect her performance as an FBI officer at all, that the fear of hell-conspiracy accumulations of fat on her hips and thighs was just a private nightmare. It was no less pressing than her need to be a good Catholic, and there were few lay people who could understand that, either. Evil -she stared at the oil-eyed victims on her computer- versus psychological coping mechanisms.

On randomly toying, adding and subtracting letters from the chemical compounds in the Goolge bar, the search was forever going nowhere. Scully leant forward, stared, felt the light from the screen spread starkly on her reading glasses. It wouldn't be nearly so bad if they knew whether the drug was being produced in America or smuggled in. The vast circulation and the diminishing number of cases towards the outlying states suggested it was home-grown in some central, metropolitan city. Any kind of nitrosamine cultivation would require a full acidic integration tanks, and possibly the Trail Office could acquire a warrant to analyse the sales of such machinery -hopefully narrowing them down to a cover operation. This was good but it was still an indirect route. In the preparation of arginine enzymes, full cytosylic test chambers were required, with levels of coolant and amno agreed by the ACC. Perhaps they could they measure out -

She looked away. Something strange caught her attention on the horizon beyond her window. A white-blue light, the steadiness of which initially suggested a diamond of baseball floodlights. Certain jerky movements, however, combined with a closer look at the well-contrasted shape, indicated only one thing. She stared and stared.

No more than twenty kilometers away above the abandoned orchards, the mythical device of sci-fi space-aliens -and that she immediately acknowledged it as a flying saucer was strange, since the brightness gave no indication of width, plus it made no revolutions. It could equally be cigar-shaped or a lozenge. It was as if she just knew it was a disc. When a revolution seemed to have been made, away from her, the mysterious lack of shape remained, possibly because there was so little for the eye to latch on to. The surface; seamless, glowing, a fading corona without any light filament or even the mottled texture of something radioactive. In the meantime, Scully's senses tried to attune to any vibrations that might be stirred in the air, the ground, the machine itself. There was nothing obvious, except again, an intuition -that it was idling, in all likelihood ponderous above the agricultural recesses.

Inexplicably, Agent Scully found herself in tune with the situation. She fingered up her car keys from the phone table and rushed outside. The saucer pulled forward as an anchored river boat in high tide, no faster than that. An impression came that it had been crawling over the black countryside like this for some minutes, though how it had remained unobserved by porchside dogs or midnight commuters was a mystery. In a surge of exhilaration, maybe intimacy, Scully reasoned she shouldn't wait, swung inside the Camry and headed off along the out-of-town lane which would take her within a hair's breadth of the saucer. To the black hedgerows she was almost unconscious. The world was shades of black, leaving a neat little window for her to stare up, twinkle-eyed, awe-mouthed. Her socks against the clutch and the accelerator was one of the strangest feelings she'd ever known, conspiring with the nervousness in her shoulders -where there was a midnight chill, she supposed the excitement prevented her from caring.

Overhead, the saucer's movements were neither tame or excited. It had started to pick up speed just slightly; Scully was confident that with a little luck she could still maintain some kind of pursuit. Certainly, the motions to the right were awkward, but reflexes and local knowledge allowed her to approximate a nearside route. Attention 20-80 between road and saucer, she almost over-shot a Y-junction and whirred in a huge turn, tho luckily the escape-space was broad. Taking the darkened crest in fits-and-spurts, she rounded a corner and was in full favour once more, luck-of-luck, despite the fact that the thing was inexorably picking up speed. She arced her neck in wonder. A field of beef cattle also arced their necks in wonder. It was the spring in her heel which allowed her to power onwards, all along her mind juggling ideas of speed-to-distance, trigonometry, windspeed. Past well-ordered beech trees, the road ahead was relatively open, but an obstacle was thrown-up -at an angle in the road, a two-tone Cruze hatchback had stopped dead.

Scully ponderously edged around it, getting a good look and judging the vehicle to be empty. Possibly, the occupants had been excited by the saucer and bounded across the field in a pursuit-by-foot. The Wyoming plates and luggage rack suggested holiday-makers. What a story. As she drove on, Scully winced across the silver fields and saw no one, only a solitary horse glaring stonily at the bizarre object.

A dab-hand now at controlling the car while tracing the object, she wondered whether there was anything else she could do. Her phone had a camera facility, but the sequence of menus was long-winded. It just might be worth the struggle. Presently only one road served the cuspy fields, and it was perilous since both Scully and the object were starting to meander away from each other. A sequence of farm gate laybys might be an option. She mounted the dirt and got out, fingers fumbling the phone. The camera, of course, high-tech or not, would only capture an approximation of what the saucer was like. It wouldn't indicate the unearthly magnetic crawling, the strangeness of the light.

Finally, her Samsung ticked over onto the home screen, and Scully the Good Detective made a note of the time, when she'd left the house, how long the pursuit had taken. She also picked out the fact that it was far gone midnight, later than she stayed up even while working a fiercely difficult case, that usually she'd prayed by now, tossed-and-turned, fallen fast asleep.

Her prayers. How could she possibly reconcile her nightly entreaties to God with the thought of this? Becoming lost in the white-light shell, she decided it couldn't fail to be an example of His magnificence. Already she sensed that the flying saucer had been neatly filed in her emotions. It was magnificent-if-inexplicable, no harder to think about really than the great, central mystery of why the daughter of an non-denominational Navy commander and a sixties new-ager had spontaneously decided to become Catholic.

Visions of a primordial seventies living room in an interchangeably-cosy billet house. Her father occasionally had to work late into the afternoon even at weekends. Scully remembered being cross-legged in front of the great, rounded Magnavox, and the afternoon matinee; War of the Worlds. She supposed she must have watched he whole thing, though there was only a single properly-indelible memory. The survivors, in the church, singing away in a delicate tone even as the world outside was burnt to an apocalyptic wasteland.

The symbolism was enough to incline any dreamy, impressionable girl to go to church. Even Scully herself smiled at the ham psychology of it. As the tomboy daughter of a Sixth Fleet stalwart, it was pretty clear that Catholicism alone had the necessary level of discipline to appeal to her. Possibly there was another layer of War of the Worlds formative psychology, too: 'the tiniest creatures that god in his wisdom' -leading directly to her interest in biology and medicine.

She stared, creasing her cheeks and frowning, resigned to the fact that she wouldn't be able to pursue the saucer very much further across the dark fields. It was picking up speed. It was somehow heaping silence upon silence to form a kind of drama no one had ever known before. Then, quite spontaneously, it disappeared from Point A, being a hundred feet above the grass, reappearing at Point B, well over 500 feet into breathless high atmosphere. To no further sense of drama, it craned to a vanishing point in outer space.

The grass and sand felt clumpy, giddy, as Scully moved back to her car, not for a second looking up to see whether more flying saucers had come or gone. There was a keener mystery. Granted, this area of Oregon state was secluded, but still the law of averages told that people must have seen the saucer. Inevitably, her thoughts turned to Lingua Point, the modest-yet-sturdy Naval fortification formerly the 9-5 home of Captain Scully, his wife, two daughters, two boys. It was barely five miles away. From magical hours spent looking from her bedroom window as a child, Dana knew full well that the perimeter was constantly patrolled by at least four sentries. Presumably they couldn't fail to have seen the saucer? Unless, as the lingering fear in her imagination cried, the saucer-occupants had some hypnotic method of avoiding human consciousness.

She edged the car clear then away back home. Come the 9/11 vision of death-from-the-skies. It was heightened by the idea that, should they want to, these objects could tacitly spread nerve agents, pathogens, plagues. It became business as usual in the mind of Dana Scully; worry and wonder hand-in-hand, overseen by some pretty strained scientific methodology. There was intrigue: on passing the random stretch of road where the abandoned GM Cruze had been -vanished into thin air as if it had all been part of a dream.

It was one-thirty when she set foot through her front door again. From then on just a short sequence of events from praying to settling down, God ensuring that she had the blessed sleep of the exhausted, the forensically-minded. Dreams unremembered except for almighty flickers on a dark landscape.

xxx

The next day came upon Scully with a bubbling sense of urgency. Still she remained cool as she approached Lingua Point, a vision of high-shoulder FBI scowling and no more. The place hadn't changed dramatically. It was one of the smaller Navy inlets with a dozen PT boats and only one corvette in place at the low quayside, hanging around like an early retirement uncle. As a girl, and probably now as well, Scully had been fascinated by the artificial nature of the deep estuary. Her father had often tried to explain to the children how the drydock worked. Dana had understood well enough, though it remained an awesome thing, how such colossal volumes of water could be moved so casually. She'd always wanted someone to acknowledge the drama, that was all.

None of the young sentries at the main gate drew a connection between Dana Scully and the former base commander William Scully. It hardly mattered. She was more interested in the position of the guard huts. Facing east, with only a few squashed-down elm trees to obscure the horizon, there was no way they could have missed the object. In the gatehouse, met by a young female yeoman who in Scully's eyes was Demi Moore in 'A Few Good Men', they whisked and whirled to the heart of the base. The Commander's office was no longer the tall room that William Scully had used, though it was in the same block, just familiar enough to make her head spin with nostalgia.

Commander Scott Wenders. Late forties, chiseled, Navy shirt neither entirely starched or entirely crumpled. When he invited Scully to call him by his nickname 'Wendy', she was drawn to the self-deprecation, weirdly so. First words, a sunny 'Welcome back'.

Gesturing at Captain Scully's officers framed on the wall. "It always makes me feel odd that the Navy didn't recruit a new commander from within your father's men. Makes me feel kind of unworthy. They were some fine guys".

Waver-smiled Scully, "The FBI is no better for managing their people from the centre-out. It's pretty strange that I can still live out here where I grew up; they'd see me commute to the Ends of the Earth if it meant making up the numbers".

They talked for a while about the history of the base and her father. How could they not? Scully felt relaxed, not in the least awkward. No reserve of confidence to call him 'Wendy', though.

"I guess the purpose of my visit is this", her breath coasted now. "I was very near to the base last night and I witnessed what looked to be -a fly-past by a foreign plane. At least this is how I've been framing it in my mind. The parlance would be to call it a flying saucer. Ridiculous, I know, but I thought if there's the slightest danger of a National Security breach-"

"I don't think it's ridiculous at all", off-handedly.

"I remember, in my father's day, the radio room had an automatic uplink to the radar tracking station at USAF Kingsley. It screened and dismissed civilian aircraft, anything between single-seaters and commercial jets, but if anything anomalous was picked up, there'd be stages of alert. I was hoping you could ease my mind".

Wenders nodded, "There was nothing flagged up by radar. And actually, you're right. Since the towers fell, I know billions have been poured into improving the radar network. How do you think jet-liners avoid all those clouds of Chinese lanterns? Civil Defense and the USAF are hugely paranoid about knowing what's going on up there. At the same time, defense aviation is making quantum leaps; it would pay to keep that sort of thing secret. Have you ever seen a gyro-quadcopter moving? I believe some of those have the rotors set within a circular bumper. Could it be one of those you saw?"

As he spoke, Wenders leant back and played around with eye-contact. Scully blinked indulgently. It wasn't that he might be lying that she found stressful, it was her own private fear that such a low-key base commander might even have the ability to lie. The twenty-first century; sophisticated, subtle, ugly.

Now she gulped slightly. "Well, what I saw last night was seamless; it had no component parts visible from the outside".

"You mean, without even any fuselage plating?"

"That is how it looked!"

"So -like a blimp?"

Scully felt she was making a hash of hiding the knot in her stomach. "At first, yes, I guess it crawled like a blimp. But then it accelerated and maneuvered faster than anything I've ever seen".

"Faster than an F-16?"

Scully hated the pause in her judgement. "I believe so".

"It always amazes me", he flicked his limbs, almost Saturday bar-room casual, "the British Harrier -it can hover like a hummingbird, and also, in a scramble, break machs with the most lethal jet you can think of".

"There was no sign of any propulsion. No exhaust trail".

Wenders shuffled the matter coolly. "It does sound amazing, like something from a sci-fi show. And you say it was within eyeshot of the base?"

"For quite a while. It may be worth asking your sentries specifically if they saw something".

No commitment was made. "I guess it's a strange sort of privilege to see one of these things".

Scully leant forward. She felt confident she'd never had a shred of privilege in her life. The opportunity to know God was something else. Currently, dark psychological reasoning promised she'd sufficiently controlled her eating these past few days, though the ripple of shirt against abdomen, the waist of her trousers -they emphasised the fatness, raw, uncontrollable. She maintained eye-contact, unpleasant though it was, while paying fearful attention to what the Commander had to say.

"I think these things, flying saucers, UFOs -this is what it's all about. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw it on one of those documentary channels, y'know one of the ones that are forty percent fact, sixty someone's little conspiracy theory. These stories about fast-moving lights in the sky and aliens. They're made up and proliferated by the government. They always have been -just to give cover to experimental aircraft. Don't want the Russians to know it's you inside that glowing disc? Just make sure everyone everywhere believes in aliens. And if some snooping civvy stumbles across your downed spy-plane, all you have to do is drug him, make him think he's been riding along with little green men".

The size and disposition of her thighs; suddenly a wicked distraction. She tried, also, not to be drawn into any kind of sympathy with the proverbial snooping civvy. Trying to defend -defend what?

"That makes sense, except what I saw was massively advanced. No one's ever seen an intermediary model between an F-16 and the type of -zig-zagging discus that I saw! For the government to have started making folk stories about flying saucers back in the fifties -I can't help thinking it would be like one Cro-Magnon trying to dissuade another that bows-and-arrows exist by inventing a story about a sci-fi raygun!"

Commander Wenders laughed at this, good-natured. "Dana, I don't think you realise how insidious the government is. You should see the way the National Budget auditor tries to work around my requisition forms!"

Scully smiled. She stared, sheepishly, at the tabletop. "Well now I feel foolish coming to you like this".

The Navy man seemed thoughtful. Then, dryly, "No. What you saw does sound amazing. Like I say, a privilege. You've just got to hope that the next time you see one won't be flying over some poor Muslim country, American flag on the side, ready to level it to nothing".

xxx

On saying goodbye, Scully managed to call him 'Wendy', sure enough. She climbed back into the Camry and even found herself smiling at the work-a-day handsome Lieutenant who guarded the parking bays. It was a bright day. How is it that bright sunshine seems to bloom primary colours everywhere you look? She felt confident about getting back to her apartment and making progress on the Black Oil.

Five minutes from the base, along the tiny stretch of 4496 highway she used to leapfrog to the interstate, her mobile phone howled. It was trouble to try and synch-up the hands-free; she simply pulled over to a spot behind a city farm.

The number was withheld, though an intuition told her it wasn't any kind of FBI business. She answered coolly, "Hello".

"Agent Scully", said a husky voice. "You've expressed an interest in the white light in the sky, the flying saucer. It's an intriguing area of study. Did you know that the FBI has its very own department for studying crimes related to the paranormal? UFOs are of particular interest".

Squirming her mouth, "I did not know that, sir".

The voice breathed in a lyrical wheeze, even if the tone was middle-American coldness through-and-through. Scully wondered if he was using some kind of pulmonary tank, though soon enough she intuited that he was simply smoking a cigarette with mechanical enjoyment. "Perhaps it would satisfy your curiosity -if you made a report. The name of the agent in charge of these X-files is Fox Mulder, working out of FBI Central in Washington".

"Are you a member of the Bureau yourself, sir?"

The man finessed his tone just slightly. "Our services overlap. Interlock. For the purposes of this conversation, I'm simply an interested third party".

When he left it at that, fierce storm clouds spread on Scully's brow. "Perhaps you're right, sir. But you said that the FBI's purpose in studying the paranormal was crime-related. What I saw last night contravened no laws, apart perhaps from invading sovereign airspace which is not our jurisdiction. I take it, sir, we must have met just now at the base?"

The Smoking Man ignored this in favour of, "I happen to know that, efficient as you are, Agent Scully, you find your work with FBI Medical to be strained and stressful. I would suggest that last night you discovered something which your scientific skills and your intellectual interest are both equal to. And Agent Mulder's credence would only benefit from your involvement. You would be an ideal match".

Scully -felt strangely insulted. "Well, I appreciate what you're saying. Can I ask which office you're speaking from?"

"This is unimportant", the man said broadly, almost show-boating.

"Sir, you need to understand that I have a doctorate and first-class Bachelor's degree. I've worked almost every hour since leaving high school to distinguish myself in the FBI. I don't believe in the validity of the paranormal. The only reason I spoke to the people at Lingua Point about what I saw was to report a matter of maritime security, as any good citizen would. And apart from that? I believe that science is sure and methodical -and to imagine that our civil defense scientists wouldn't have found the truth about UFOs years ago is complete paranoia".

Tirade finished, Scully stayed irritated by the emotionless silence which filled the line. The abrupt click gave way to nothing. In time, she drove away, though her arms were full of low-blood-sugar tingling. In her ribs, a desire to vomit. Fumbling a glucose sweet, peering like granny, she tried to concentrate on anything; barely succeeding. Now -to have your whole career equated with pie-in-the-sky ufology was life moving in strange ways, certainly -it veered towards the insulting, though. In her computer, the victims of the Black Oil waited, if nothing else a solid scientific problem to be grappled with.

xx

On his first day of freedom -AKA unemployment- there'd been a desire to simply call up Fredericks and have them go out drinking, or maybe trudge across Davis Meadow to fool around on the electricity pylons. Off the busy interstate behind the fields, there was also a large interdenominational church frequented by countryside-retiring yuppies, the collection box usually good for at least thirty dollars. Ironically, it would be the first time Kyle actually needed the money.

He could have guessed, however, that Fredericks would want to call in at the industrial yard diner and check the notice board for vacancies. And yeah, it was entertaining to observe in his eyes the fear of starting all over again, having to once again impress your new boss, find a way of co-existing with your workmates. Either that or the tortured weighing of some sh-eating temp job. Kyle wasn't afraid. He just didn't want to.

When the industrial yard yielded nothing, the day spread out before them in a promise of ghostly time-filling. They headed back to Kyle's apartment to collect his rifle and go hunting. Fredericks said, "Isn't it against state law to keep hunting guns in rented rooms?"

"Like I'm some Travis Bickle chump", grinned Kyle. "All this, with Nysor? It doesn't worry me at all. Blood pressure's getting lower and lower".

"It feels weird not being at work", Fredericks cast his eyes down.

They loafed down the lesser of the four roads which ran out of town, along the green-leafy hard shoulder. Kyle regretted having paid the extra thirty bucks for a custom duffle to fit his rifle. Being stopped by a cop, at this point, would have been just the affirmation he needed. It must be worse for Fredericks; there was a sense of him trailing behind, worrying, glaring into the deceptively sparse woodland. Between the tall trunks, thick flowers licked everywhere, green, almost translucent in the resting sunlight; it was always surprising when the landscape gave way to the boulder-strewn ravines, the quarries, enclosed little prairies.

They kicked stones and fooled around for a while.

"I reckon there's nothing for it but to start work again on the Great American Novel", daydreamed Fredericks.

Jeered Kyle, "Or you could just spend all day throwing sticks at the moon, see if you can get 'em caught up in the gravity".

"I'm not saying I'll ever get anything published. But look at us. We're just 9-5 working class guys, no novelty of being war heroes, or being ill, or being dirt poor. No one writes about the real world any more without some crappy novelty".

What passed for a sad smile entered Kyle's sardonic eyes. "You really think anyone besides you would be interested?"

"I'm pretty sure you'd be interested in reading a book about you. You enjoy this life. You enjoy the rows that break out on the assembly floor. And the way you carry yourself -you pomade your hair, only wear the crispest shirts. You're a black hole. You're a grinning skull. You're the coolest guy I know".

Kyle gestured into the green, "You want to make out behind that tree?"

"Ha!"

"All I'm saying, write about us as spies or CIA men. No one cares about a rivet plant".

"It's good therapy", insisted Fredericks.

Kyle grinned, sickly, sweatily, "Maybe I can read you like a book. There is no god that comes to life when you start writing one of your novels. And if there was, he'd be torturing you. One day we'll be out of this place. We'll have a pile of money. Women on our laps. And we'll get it all by being quick, not giving a damn".

Practically an Alpine ridge, the road took large swings around the seventy foot pines and looked out across the lush woodland valley. They saw the quarry gates, the empty factories, hastily-built electricity yards. The two clasped their sides like hikers and walked quickly, in silence, for about twenty minutes. Out here, even in deepest wilderness, it was hard to escape signs of industry. A higgledy plantation of fur trees had a solitary telegraph pole set inside, arms stuck up like a wrestler, and Kyle was amazed the wires never got straggled up.

Out here, it was one of the only times he saw a 'No Trespassing' sign and didn't feel honour-bound to disobey it, he guessed because there were no visible authority figures to snipe. Sharp hillsides of more or less solid rock became tangled against level grasslands. Creeping between the wide arches of thorn, exciting, into the crazy hydra of woodland tracks. Anything green was luscious, bright. The bark of the trees, paradoxically -forever dying, mildewy.

Kyle always lost count of how many big laybys there were before the main road petered out to nothing. In the penultimate swell of gravel, he was surprised to see a diminutive town car stark beneath the high branches. Something about it was pretty interesting, beyond being so far out in the middle of nowhere. He realised it was a courtesy car, with just one swirling logo across the rear bodywork, strangely pretentious.

Kyle and Fredericks passed by in silence. They heard the door click and glanced around. As ever, his concave face like a Roman senator washed up from Hell - Nysor himself arched out.

"You're from the plant!", he marveled.

The two unemployed men stared at him.

Eventually, "You mean, 'ex-plant'".

"There's so much I want to say to you".

Fredericks continued to be dark, "How come you're all the way out here? To hang yourself?"

"I feel different now, I-"

From the split second Nysor stepped out, Kyle had knelt, insouciantly playing with the zipper of his gun bag. The sheer drama of meeting his former employees on the road meant that the fallen entrepreneur hardly noticed the rifle, or possibly his eyes had scanned it, taken it as a fishing rod or telescope.

"I'm the one got angry, you know. I wrecked your roller skate", said Kyle.

"It doesn't matter about the car".

"How's that? Because you feel guilty?"

"Because there's so much else going on".

Kyle smiled boyishly, then swished out the rifle, levelled it at the magnate. "If you say it doesn't matter, then it straight away goes the other way. We say it does matter. You took our jobs out of greed".

Naturally, Fredericks blanched at the murder that was about to happen. He looked just as landslide-horrified by what Nysor had to say. Volunteered like thriller novel exposition, "Selling the plant - it was a compulsory sale. I had no choice in the matter".

He talked some. Kyle found it hard to listen, interesting revelations or no. Fredericks -crying bullflip, that even if the sale of the plant was compulsory, it still didn't change the fact that Nysor was full of greed. Why couldn't he just buy one of the tri-acre warehouses on Route 90 and start again?

"They won't let me, that's the thing. I'm risking my life by telling you this. They're screening everything, forensically. Taking apart our lives".

" 'They'? ", wondered Kyle.

Nysor simpered apologetically. But don't look for too many facts in a man's paranoid nervous breakdown.

"Why are you telling us? You're not the sort of man that feels guilty". Fredericks the proletariat was far more interested in morality than corporate intrigue.

"There's something going on. I don't understand what's happening and it's really quite frightening. Do you remember last summer, when those animals kept wondering out of the wood, into the work hangers?"

Clearly the man had broken from reality something profound. But a nervous breakdown without guilt is childish. Last summer, a deer had spontaneously wondered into the main plate-welding bay, among the cacophony of air drivers and hick radios. The guys had assumed it must have been responding to some mechanical squealing that sounded like a mother deer's call. It had been the anecdote of a lifetime, heartwarming.

But then it happened again. A month later, a majestic screech owl had flown low under the rollers and perched up among the rivet benches, on top of a seven foot floodlight. It had glanced down at everyone, accusingly. It was strange, Kyle remembered, but it was nothing to base a nervous breakdown on.

Theories abounded that it was just summertime mating season making the animals crazy, that maybe their plant was in the middle of some animal-pheromone flightpath.

The third animal was a fox. Peeking out malevolently from behind a dark tool cabinet.

Continued Nysor's chattering, "Do you remember Ellen Klowe?"

"She was a witch. Ask anyone on the workshop floor and she was hated. How she ever got to a position of authority is beyond me", grinned Kyle.

"She was a hard woman, very harsh, but that helped her to do her job - perhaps. She told me, before she left, that Sam Ross had come into her office one day. He'd gone insane. He told her he'd been recruited by aliens and they'd taught him how to meditate and become one -with the universe, with everything. He told her that it was him who'd taken control of the animals and made them come into the workshop. He'd done it, he said, in order to convince her that he could just as easily take control of her, and he threatened to make her walk up to the roof and throw herself off, by mind control. He'd do this unless she resigned, and left the company, and left everyone in peace".

Fredericks gasped. Kyle smiled, fairly enjoying the Twilight Zone.

"But she did leave. I recall she silently slipped away".

"She was going to take early retirement anyway. She wasn't afraid of Sam Ross' strange behaviour", stated Nysor.

"That woman wouldn't have been afraid of a tank".

Asked Fredericks, "Didn't you discipline him for threatening a manager like that?"

Nysor was dry, airy. At the backdrop of emerald, motionless trees, he fidgeted. "I was nervous for him. He was obviously mentally ill. I mean, I made sure our company health plan was one of the finest available, and it fully covered psychological problems -but how does one even broach the subject of something like that? I believed it would be kinder to let him carry on working on the plant floor for as long as he could function".

Kyle thought back to Sam Ross' presence in Workshop One. He'd been twinkle-eyed. Softly-spoken. He looked a lot like Padre from M.A.S.H, only a little more paunchy. If he hated Ellen Klowe, it was only in the same way that everyone else hated her. And in the meantime, a very boring Ernst Blofeld explaining it all to captured James Bond.

"I put it all out of my mind for a few months. Then one Saturday morning, I needed to go into the plant while it was all shut down to collect some utility files. I was walking between the blocks -and up through one of the stairwells of the old business block.

"Sam Ross was there. At the bottom of the stairwell, he was sitting cross-legged on a sleeping bag. We stared at each other in the strangest way. I asked him what he was doing there. Reasonably, he told me how he'd been thrown out by his sister, who he lived with, because she didn't believe in aliens. It was a strange conversation. We spoke calmly and didn't bare each other any malice. But obviously I told him he couldn't stay. I tried to give him the hundred dollars I had in my wallet, but he wouldn't take it".

Kyle smirked. "Do you have one hundred dollars now? I'll take it".

Looking sheepish, the business chief took out sixty dollars worth of notes and gave them to Kyle, who then looked towards Fredericks with his finest Han Solo grin.

"He went out of my life again, but from then on, he was always there, in my thoughts. I watched him on the close-circuit feed from my office. He seemed to be coasting through his work, but the supervisors told me he was working well. Was he a good worker?"

Said Fredericks angrily, "He was the best of us. The most skilled. He could sleepwalk through the most complicated riveting job. Where is he? What happened to him?"

"I don't know", Nysor was forlorn now. He choked back his upper-class emotions. "When he came to vanish from the town, I know as little as anyone else. I knew that he was mentally ill and I struggled with what to do with this knowledge. And in the end I didn't have any choice. I arrived at the plant for my 5471 certificates. But I wasn't greeted by any of my FLCs -Guy Tanner was down on the workshop floor, simply standing there, with nothing to do -because all of the mezzanine offices had been commandeered by the people investigating Sam Ross".

Fredericks spoke quickly, "I remember that day. I thought they were government auditors. I never would have guessed they were cops. There were too many".

Nysor grew ever-more ambient. "Certainly they weren't police. It was a kind of government agency, I suppose. Like something from a spy film, the last stage of circles-within-circles that no one usually sees".

"Just say 'Men in Black'", scoffed Kyle.

"They were copying all the computer hard drives and inputting our paper records using these very sophisticated scanners. Then -they interrogated me".

The bleakness now grabbed the boy's attention in an mesmeric pull. Or at least, for now, Kyle obeyed the silence.

"They asked me everything about Sam Ross, but they wouldn't tell me why they wanted to know, or what their suspicions were about what had happened to him. I didn't tell them about Ross' exchange with Ellen Klowe, because I didn't want her to be dragged into their interrogations. But I intimated - I suggested that there'd been rumours that he was part of a religious cult, very much like Scientology, which believed in aliens. It seemed the kindest way to describe it, rather than saying he was insane per se, a believer in aliens on a whim. I thought of word getting back to his family that he was insane. I wanted to spare them. Also -it seemed to be what they wanted to hear".

"That first group of investigators went away quietly enough. There was a sense, however -I could feel it at the back of my mind- the full weight of a secret American government washing through my life".

Nysor smiled stupidly as he relived the next big shock. "I was driving into Creagerstown one evening, through the woods. Two black four-by-fours cut me up, stopping me from driving away. A man in his early eighties climbed into my car, very casually. It was almost as if he found the situation tiresome. He explained that there was a thousand ways they could bring me low, from implicating me in fraud, to staging my suicide. The only possible way I could escape with my life was to sell them the plant, abandon my workers. They need the plant to be vacant, with no questions asked".

And so Nysor gabbled on, but there were only hurried assurances of his innocence, not a single bit of new information.

Kyle held the barrel of the rifle low towards the ground. He paced. "So you're saying -you had to sell the plant because of an alien conspiracy?"

More foolish smiling and, "Yes. I suppose I am. I-"

"You realise how sh- stupid that sounds?"

Except a large part of Kyle had accepted the validity of the story. Sick and lurid across his face, his own smile acknowledged as much. On the inside, his emotions were somewhere else completely. A gawky little pubescent being taken to visit his father at Montgomery Penitentiary. The glass partitions, where molls and wives interact with their temporarily-out-of-action men, they were much the same as on TV prison dramas, but maybe a little more tax-dollar flash. He remembered his mother and father arguing, though for some reason he hadn't been able to latch on to any of the words. Together with a swollen eye, a ravaged, river-map scar ran from the top of Miguel Park's cranium to the flux of his brow, clearly a headbutt.

He didn't remember anything specific from the argument except the end. His mother -venomous about the pummeling her husband had somehow acquiesced to, or volunteered for. The last words from Old Man Parks, "I let this happen to me, so I can still be in control".

Spontaneously, Kyle swiveled the rifle around and smashed it hurriedly into Nysor's face. Smash followed smash and the hobby-industrialist fell backwards in a cower. No blood was visible in the excitement. Kyle was interested to see what it'd look like when it finally creamed up through his boney features.

Of course, Fredericks was hauling at him, had been from the start. Kyle felt he could ignore it all and keep going forever. Out of the blue, the stand-down coincided with a gentle slowing of his breath.

The young men stood back and scrutinised the shock-ridden bundle. He was dizzy and uncomprehending, and this didn't bring any sympathy at all. He tried to crawl. As Kyle turned to idle away. Aliens. Space Cults. Men in Black. They might exist, and they might indeed be savage sons-of-whores.

But everything is savage.

Kyle laid the rifle across his shoulder, smirk to end all smirks.

xxx

Tick-ticking from the wall clock, the glow of the bedside travel alarm, the faithful Naim hi-fi -was reassuring only in an abstract way. The creme specks of the bedroom ceiling caught the perfect promise of dawn light, if only it could be applied to something. Scully was in a daze now, neither thinking things over analytically or daydreaming. Her report on the possible chemical production of the Black Oil had been finished at five AM, after a thoroughly ethereal hodgepodge of a night. Waking, sleeping, there was a residual snow-blind static from her mixture of determination and loneliness. God knew she could use someone to talk to, a lover by preference. Only needing someone to talk to was not a good enough exchange for all the tip-toe wrong-footing that came with a boyfriend. Professor Clark, after all, had been a symbol of entropy. Brad had been a symbol of entropy. All men were symbols of transience and superficiality.

When the bedroom window was approached, it highlighted a striking satin void that touched from horizon to heaven. Small consideration was made to going back to bed. Followed by sharp childhood memories of sharing a bedroom with Melissa. Children love the idea of novelty. She recalled very clearly asking her mother if she could turn their bunk bed end-to-end, for no other reason than the psychic sensation of sleeping in suddenly-changed dimensions. She remembered asking if they could drag the bunk bed directly alongside the window. Their mother, wisely, had said no -being so close to the excitement of the outside world was a bad idea for anyone trying to get to sleep.

Through it all, Dana had been the instigator -yet it had been Melissa who'd grown up with an interest in Feng Shui, so how did that work? She felt an insidious guilt that she might be the driving, dominant personality in some psychological model. No one wants to be a leader. In a perfect world, no one would even want the slightest power or influence.

In the kitchen, still unsure how to feel about the new day, she made herself two slices of golden margarined toast. At the narrow oak table, she set the plate down and stared intently. Trouble came when she looked to the side, through her open bedroom door, glimpsing the set of scales beneath the dresser. They were a symbol of her eternal fatness and the desperate struggle. She ate the toast at speed, savoured it, then padded through to the bathroom to reverse the process. Her stomach, animal that it was, had been fooled into thinking there'd been some small nourishment.

At 08.30 there was a landline phone call. Scully looked at the caller ID and recognised the code as the Washington main office. The business-like voice grabbed her attention utterly.

"This is AD Dinkins. Agent Scully? I think you've been working on tracking the suppliers in the Black Oil case, is this correct?"

"Yes, sir" -mostly unphased by this contact with such a high-ranking director.

"As of now, you're temporarily reassigned", he powered. "I'm emailing you the details of an incident which happened in Davis High School yesterday. It's in Obeltsville. You're the nearest FMO-trained agent we have in the area, and I need you to conduct a forensic analysis in parallel with local authorities.

"Elvira Hoek, sixteen, was in her science class. They'd been studying the make-up of bones. The pupils each had troughs of plaster of paris, into which they made casts of animal bones. Miss Hoek, when the teacher was out of the room, thought it would be amusing to place her face in the plaster to see if she could get an impression. Unfortunately, the plaster was still in the early stages of forming, and the girl suffered severe burns. She's lost the flesh from her face, her nose, lips. It's touch-and-go whether her eye-lids can be saved".

Scully analysed her own reaction to this, could not understand why she didn't gasp or exclaim. Now. Did she have a genuine medical detachment, or was she merely trying to impress the director?

"How could such a thing happen?"

"I really don't know. But this is what we need to determine. Federal law states that school science classes should only use statuted low-grade plaster exactly to avoid this kind of thing. I need you to go to Obeltsville. Interview the teacher -Norman Thinnes, I think his name is- and straight off verify the variety of plaster he'd given to his class. Head to the school itself and ID the brand and strength of plaster they were using. The only hope of saving the government a payout of tens of thousands of dollars is to hope that this man was cutting corners, or negligent some other way".

"Is he under arrest?", asked Scully.

"No. Since the accident happened, by all accounts, he's been full of guilt at the girl's bedside. Say nothing to him in an accusatory tone".

It was in a state of dull tension she drove out to the highway slip. Her sat-nav mused the hospital zip code in much the same way her eyes were preoccupied by the sky, the areas the saucer had drifted not forty-eight hours ago. At the Shell garage at Brisville and Easton, she nuzzled the Camry with a square fifty dollars-worth; at the counter, a huge box of oat cookies called to make it fifty-one. She told herself to be disciplined and resist munching through the whole pack automatically. In the final outcome, she ate just one; the 5 millimetre husk like some decadent slab of fairground toffee being churned away.

The ethnic lady at Stanley Hospital reception didn't seem in the least phased at meeting a real-life FBI agent, only amused by the way Scully held up the ID wallet like a TV cliché. Up into the well-built-tho-dated upper floors, it was easy enough to find the 'Integumentary and Intensive' ward. A 360 degree hexagonal reception meant that the duty matron had her back to the entrance, absorbed in tabbing through a DOS computer program -and Scully weirdly reassured that such a high medical drama could be administrated so smoothly.

"I'm afraid the girl isn't conscious. Her body is in acute neuropathic shock", the Matron twirled her ballpoint slightly.

"Has there been any elevation to her cardio readout? Any major blood-pressure changes?"

Only partially surprised that an FBI agent could also be an MD, the matron hunched her shoulders. "At the minute, BP is seventy-over-eighty, conjugation minimal. It could even be the early stages of a coma".

Frowning, "I was told that Norman Thinnes was here, the teacher who was in charge of the class at the time of the accident?"

The receptionist regally pointed through the heavy double doors which followed the contours of some clumpy admin space.

"Early sixties. Creme slacks and check shirt. He's been sitting out there with the family, Mr and Mrs Hoek. So far there's been no accusations, but I wouldn't rule it out".

Elvira Hoek's door was the first in a winding thoroughfare of single-patient rooms, no two alike, all fairly domestic in appearance. Thin blinds and wall-mounted lamps made the best of the grey sunlight. Catching the sharp, teddy-boy face of Elvira's father Joel. Giving a silver edge to the toned and glamorous hips of Katty Hoek, as she paced around frowning mightily. It was a strange situation. Elvira's comatose body wore no breathing ventilator. In all other respects, however, she cut a vulnerable figure that was dramatic -far more eerie than the deepest REM sleep or even a full-blown coma. The irony was noted by Scully, that she wore a Rivers-hydrocolloidic mask partially reinforced with... plaster of paris.

Floating above, the parents held steady, if tense. They seemed like good people, salt-of-the-earth. For now, Scully turned her attention to the rangy figure of Norman Thinnes, stationed on a broad wire chair in the corridor.

"Good Morning. I'm Dana Scully, a medical doctor attached to the FBI. Can I ask, are you the teacher who was with Elvira Hoek at the time of the accident?"

"I am". His brow creased, "I'm not sure the crime needs FBI attention, you know. Especially since I don't dispute my guilt".

"Well, sir, at the moment it's really not a matter of attributing guilt or blame to anyone. I was sent here to confirm the type of plaster the pupils were using, whether it -generally- meets federal guidelines about science class equipment".

"No, no. This situation, I can assure you, needs to have someone to blame. That person is me. It was my class. I was the one that left the pupils alone as I went into the stockroom. I shall take the full blame".

An adjoining stock room -Scully had assumed it'd been the school corridor he'd stepped into, on some lazy or disorganised whim. Now she saw otherwise. It really was an accident which could have happened to anyone, by a confluence of risks. Face to face, Thinnes had a manner that was strikingly responsible.

"Are you yourself in charge of ordering the science equipment, sir?"

"I share the duty with a undergrad lab technician, though in the case of materials that are used more directly in the day-to-day syllabus -it's me".

"Do you know the brand name of the plaster used?"

"I'm not sure it has a brand name", the teacher shrugged. "I've been scouring my mind. It's just not there. I always buy the plaster from a hard-copy catalogue selling medical and scientific equipment. Is it certified safe to be sold to high schools? I have no idea. The company sells teaching equipment, certainly. But then, it also sells materials to be used in commercial practice. I'm sure, legally, it's a grey area. One has to consider that anything can be dangerous. It's people who ensure safety. People who are trusted".

Scully breathed, "Mr Thinnes, why are you so determined to take the blame for this? It's a terrible accident, something the administration has a duty to take responsibility for on a national scale".

Said the grey-faced man, "No. This is the whole problem with our day and age. No one takes responsibility for their actions. The state, actually, is inconsequential".

At a loss for words, the stillness coincided with his eyes running slowly across the collar of Scully's Forever 21 shirt. He saw the Crucifix.

"Are you a Christian?"

"Yes. I'm a Catholic by denomination, though my parents and brothers are all -agnostic, to put it mildly. My sister is extremely spiritual, but she's at loggerheads with any conventional religion. We get along".

The teacher stared absently at the foot of Elvira's bed. "Yes. Forgive me for sounding disingenuous. If you wear the cross, of course you're a Christian. These days you see people with Crucifixes, with rosaries hanging in their cars, and you wonder if they're truly committed. But who am I to mistrust their commitment? Don't you ever get in trouble with your superiors, though, for wearing a religious symbol while on duty?"

"Not so far!", Scully said nervously. In truth, she often wondered why Blevins, or any one at Central Operations, hadn't objected to the Crucifix. It scared her to death to think that she was too imposing a person to berate. Or worse still, that her Christianity was seen as a form of neurosis, and any indictment of the Cross might send her over the edge.

"Are you religious, Mr Thinnes?"

"Methodist", he said dryly.

"I suppose -your faith must be a comfort, in situations like this".

He seemed to lick his lips, just slightly. He'd been without sleep for a while, clearly, though he was holding up well.

"I went home, yesterday, for a few hours. I was looking through my email inbox. I'd received a letter from a young lady from the suburbs, one of the parishioners of St. Emmanuel's. She said that she'd received alms from my church's community outreach program, and she was writing to thank us all. It was a fairly long letter -and there was something about it. She told of her struggles with drugs. Something about her openness, the register of her language. An unconceited awareness of good, and hope. I confess that I thought she was a con-artist".

Scully frowned thoughtfully. He continued in a voice which was sprightly in his throat.

"I thought she was a chancer, a grifter; it seemed a strong possibility. Then I came to realise. It doesn't matter, in our hearts. Islam, for instance, is a mighty religion, Muhammad Peace Be Upon Him, teaching mindfulness in the midst of war. The progenitor, Christianity, is much the same; it is the religion for those with an inner life. It lifts us clear from these strange, unknowable moral distinctions and leaves us free to follow a practical course. My guilt over Elvira dictates that I be punished with all the severity this world has to offer. In my mind, also, I will writhe and wail over what I've done. But Christianity protects us from the type of insanity which is completely mind annihilating. It's a distinct purpose. An important purpose".

He moved a little feebly to the side, and glanced at her. "I'm rambling. But perhaps you appreciate my point".

Scully tensed forward in her chair, drawing a breath and blinking. "You say Christianity is the religion for those with an inner life. I'd have to dispute that because it sounds -elitist! I'm no psychologist, but surely there's no more worthiness, spiritual or otherwise, whether you're an extrovert or an introvert?"

"Perhaps you're right".

Thinnes stared itchily at the Frankenstein-poised toes beneath the pink blanket, for a long time completely without thought. Perhaps the simple shape of the mask gave lie to how serious Elvira's wounds really were. A few days from now, the senior doctors would begin to assess the damage to her muscles and nerves, and from there plan a surgical reconstruction which would be delicate, painstaking. Except psychologically, it was already a dead world. The grey sunlight emerging through the blinds could be twice as strong, three times as strong, but the world would still be barren. All the things a sixteen year old girl bases her life on would have been definitively torn away.

Said Thinnes, "There's a small chapel room on the ground floor. Will you join me there to pray for her?"

"I don't think that would be appropriate, professionally, given that I'm legally investigating everyone".

"Hard to imagine who would make a complaint".

The teacher was boyish, smiling, as if to illicit perfect bonhomie. Scully, the young agent eager to please everyone, could only reassure him, "If you feel the need to go and pray, I'll be right here when you get back".

And so he arose, a vital spark in an average-weight, middle-fitness body, leaving to say grace in God-knew-what kind of strip-lit, single-room chapel. Scully in the meantime approached the bed. The rawness of the cartilage beneath the mask could be sensed somehow. Not to mention the wild tension, nee personality cult, of who this girl might be, what her disposition was like. To stick your face in un-set plaster would suggest she was trying to amuse her friends, or seem vivacious. It probably wasn't that simple.

All this, it was exactly the sort of thing which could have happened at Dana's own high school. It was such a flawed system. The education of young people suggested empty computer drives to be filled with whatever programming and data deemed necessary. But in Scully's case, she felt sure her huge academic achievements were due to the satisfying feeling of friction as she focused her stupidity and distractedness on science and medicine. It was a personal challenge, nothing institutionalised. One couldn't exist without the other, and wasn't it just as likely that personalities were forged in the same way? Where homogenous melting pots exist, one can only ever burn.

Around the bed, the noosed curtains were almost unnoticeable, before the final approach where luminous Grecian checks jumped out. Alongside, the tense figures were strangely colourful. Scully introduced herself and spoke lucidly about the role of the FBI, tenuous though it seemed to her, a bolster to the anxious jaw-grinding of Elvira's mother. In such a clean room, everything and everyone seemed single-minded. As well as legislation and potential state compensation, Scully spoke enthusiastically about the miraculous nature of modern plastic surgery, how it was seamless and naturalistic. The kindness in her voice, it was like flowing water. She thought of the enigmatic Norman Thinnes, down there in the ad-hoc, inter-faith chapel, and whether he'd started praying yet. All the while, as she filled out the case number on her business card, probing the air for a sensation of hope.

Joel Hoek departed to get coffee. Scully left too, not wanting to cloy the situation between mother and daughter. Perhaps she would visit the chapel herself, kneel, catch Thinnes if he was still present.

The uneven layout of tight bedroom doors kept the echo of her squeaking shoes to a minimum. She smoothly activated the robotic door-locks. Several wings of the hospital were passed in this way until she arrived at the furthermost lift. It was there, her body hanging loose, that the commotion started. Two security guards in body armour rushed by, and their gasping expressions told of something truly dramatic. Scully took it upon herself to jog along behind.

On route, surgery-smocked doctors craned from doorways to try and glimpse what the commotion was. Scully wondered whether to flash her ID. Another security guard joined the convergence. Odd that there was such a buzz of code-words and running feet, yet no actual alarm had been sounded. The security doors released automatically, en masse; they shouldered through in a click. An Indian orderly drew in his trolley hurriedly. Finally they were in a ground floor adjunct and all the dramatic clanks grew muted. They saw the stark grey of the outside world and poured out onto the smooth tarmac.

Now the guards dizzily flanked out. But they were at a loss. Scully placed a hand to her hip and braced her holster. All present: breathless. And then there was the arrival of a hysterical woman, yelping and consumed with fear. She grasped at Scully's arms.

"Mrs Hoek?"

"She -came to life!"

Scully winced, "Elvira?"

"She sat up -and tore the wires away, and -took off the mask. And then she ran!"

"It's OK, Mrs Hoek, I promise-"

But the traumatised mother was too busy trying to relay what had happened. Sometimes all you can do is gasp, expel the astonishment.

"Elvira -she took off the mask. She was healed. But it wasn't her! It wasn't her face!"

xxx

The unemployment led to a single thought, almost too frightening to process: we're no better than goddamn jabbering immigrants now, hiding in the back of a container, pathetic and desperate. It hurt Kyle to think this way because the problem had always seemed so clear to him. Your home country is over-run by oppressive warlords? Hell, it should be situation to welcome. Bang, and suddenly you've got something tangible to fight against, even if you die in the process. What kinda coward would run away, or lay down and die?

He tried to think of something easier. Anything. Camping with the older boys when he was a kid. In reality, even the oldest ones were barely pubescent. Lennie Lang had a micro-caliber BB gun that could barely punch a drinks can, though still the boys had a picturesque notion that they could drag branches across the side of their tent and use it as a hide from which to shoot meandering deer. Of course it hadn't worked. The animals would have steered a course away even if the boys had managed to be ten times quieter. And come the morning; dismayed at how their little tent had been mildewed by the foliage.

Kyle was an adult now, having learnt the world had almost no room for maneuver at all, or at least no room for gentle plans. One of the first things he and Fredericks agreed was that it would be a bad idea to set a campfire. Even when the temperature plunged, it'd be too much of a risk to have a plume of smoke rising from their hideout. In the basin below, Thor Rivets was as well-illuminated as ever. The boys watched carefully in absolute and stealthy secrecy, something like Mexican bandidos at the top of a ridge. Professional-looking security guards were at every main entrance now, plus a lot of spots inbetween; Fredericks didn't seem too overawed and so Kyle felt the need to point out, smiling, the way their hands were clasped over their abdomens. It was standard Secret Service training -the readiness to sweep your jacket aside and draw from your holster in a spit second.

Fredericks clumped around the crest of tall trees, always managing to look daunted like an animal. The conversation repeated a couple of times, Kyle grinning away, and mostly in it for kicks. They agreed why they were there; that Sam Ross had been using the plant as a base of operations for a Heaven's Gate-style cult, probably in the disused section of the plant and likely in the company of any number of nationwide missing persons. Still, the over-reaction of the American authorities must be monitored.

But even then there were different intentions. Fredericks, who knew how to file journalism, had visions of highlighting the government's religious intolerance like the Julian Assange nerd he was. Kyle dreamed of taking whatever they saw and jockeying it for blackmail at the highest office he could find.

They chewed their lips. They stared down keenly. The forest wind curved around the trees; Fredericks placed his hands on his hips and nervously put his back to the rippling gale-force. He volunteered to take the first watch while Kyle bunked down and got some sleep -as if they were boyscouts on an adventure. It was adventure enough just trying to light his cigarette in the blustery atmos, and his venom anger almost hissed free. Powerful blasts of wind were near and far, quickly becoming the norm, down through the low recesses of the wood. The dark melodrama -almost a thing.

Except, as Kyle lay back in his sleeping bag and smoked, a sense of geeky tension seeped in and infected the air. He craned his neck to see Fredericks reading a little paperback, listening to an MP3 player -then silently annunciating words. Somehow this was as distracting as hell.

"How's your reading coming on?"

Fredericks continued to be enthralled by the pages. "No matter what happens, I'll always be busy".

Knowing he'd regret it, "What are those?"

"Koranic Arabic. I thought if I write a novel that really gets to grips with the new century, at least one of the characters has to be Muslim".

"But for that", Kyle sneer-smiled, "you actually need to learn Arabic?"

"One of the main draws of Islam is the lyricism of the Koran. You have to imagine all these opposing armies, there in the harshest desert, stopping everything to focus on these beautiful words".

Still indulgent, "So go ahead. Tell me something beautiful".

Fredericks thought for a moment, flipped back a few pages, then delved into his throat, producing a sound that alternated between complex chants and rich R & B harmonies, admittedly pretty sweet on the ear.

"What does that mean?", said the other, after a buzzing moment.

The little book was checked.

"Truly thou will die one day, and truly they too will die one day. In the end will ye all, on the Day of Judgement, settle your disputes in the presence of your lord".

Kyle sighed then. The tiny sound a weird counterpoint to the wind-heaving landscape. "You ever think it's not that special? That it's just like any kind of belief, like politics, or those angry atheists, and it's just a case of who gets to you first?"

"Maybe you're right", Fredericks, as ever, was infuriating. "But there's so much to be said about the overlap between Judaism, Christianity, Islam. I'm interested in any discipline that might moderate us, save the world -the way they always get overridden just by human nature. On paper, it could've been Communism. Then there's the way that Lincoln worked so hard to free the slaves, but what would he have thought about capitalism, the richest -or even just people on a living wage- a thousand points removed from physical production?"

All that passed over Kyle's face was a pitiful, wan smile. 'Save the world'. He told Fredericks that, actually, you know what, he'd take the first watch after all. Loafing down into the deeply uneven recess of hissing pine trees, which were still concealed from the sprawling yard below, he felt calm. Now and then, the gale-force made a particularly strong attack on trees in the far distance, delivering a huge 'boom!' At any rate, in his head, visions of some terrible sci-fi TV movie, which prided itself on creating distant apocalyptic-artillery sounds, since every other part of the production was trash.

Thrusting currents of air were dramatic, forceful at every point of the heaving landscape, tumultuous in a way that wrecked a man's concentration. Glancing high, there was an expectation to see vapourous clouds rolling by, in reality, just a weird void to belie the savage wind as it plucked away, zig-zagging foliage in tag-team mayhem. It was maybe dramatic. Mostly it was a show of strength, the way no leaves or branches were ever torn free. Kyle remembered again the first time he'd been taken to see his Dad in prison. His Mother had warned him that he might look different. She'd obviously been expecting to see him looking malnourished, sleepless, depressed, or at least this is the fear she transmitted into Kyle's mind. Hurrying over the super-dry asphalt on that first day, the fear had gnawed away inside his prepubescent body like full-on fear of God. Actually, yeah, his Dad did look different -the scars from his fights were always deep and bloody. But other than that, he always looked cool, in control. No more worthy of pity than a sixth-round-victorious prize-fighter.

Kyle started to wonder why he was obsessing about these memories now more than ever. An obvious answer would be that there was some parallel between his Dad's jail-time and his own, sudden unemployment. He guessed that might be the case. The introspection he sneered at, though, as the wind stabbed and molested the low bushes either side. The way small wisps fooled with his ankles. He headed back to Frederick's corner of the crest, deciding to drink at least a quart of the voddy flask.

Just off from the Koran-learning lunatic, Kyle with his hands on his hips, the moment was irreverent. Sometimes the wind surged, at odds with the way the heavier branches sounded like breakers on a pebble beach. You always looked upwards, even though there was nothing much to see. Between fifty yards and half a mile away, the abrupt booming continued as the wind made unexpected blasts into the scrub-trees. It sounded so much like artillery fire. It often sounded uncannily like artillery fire.

Suddenly the men jumped. A long time after the initial surprise of such strange movements in the sky, they identified two lynx helicopters holding their positions, very carefully flanking a slow-moving target. It was a third aircraft moving carefully over a darker section of the land. They witnessed a chinook, silver-on-blue but undeniably military issue. The floodlights from the ground and from the two sleeker helicopters whirred around in a spasm, then became more disciplined only after long, ambient minutes. What the chinook was hoisting was bizarre, amazing.

Fredericks gasped. Kyle -was just frozen. It wasn't a case of Thor Rivets being caught up in a flying saucer cult. Before them was a real flying saucer. Though it was inert enough to be carried placidly by the chinook, it was still somehow alive -the unearthly brightness was frightening.

All deliberate yaws, the saucer was dipped in above the main compound, above the huge pile of varnished telegraph poles where Kyle had so often lounged reading biographies of Hitler, and James Dean, and Benedict Arnold. It was something you could just about believe with your own eyes. Maneuvering straight into the biggest loading bay of the plant, the sight of the spaceship couldn't be more breathtaking, even just the skill of the chopper movements. And Fredericks, when you got down to it, had no kind of literary insight; the first thing that came into his head was just what he uttered, "This is something real!"

The weight of the thing -weird. It had a glaring husk that could equally be the glow of a power-source or a simple reflective coating, maybe like highway markings. The water-proofed deckhands waving the object down were clearly awed by the sight of a real alien spaceship, too, though overall their military determination impressed Kyle a lot. When the industrial rollers started to feed the ship into the main workshop, something else was proved: it was relatively light-weight, no more than three thousand kilos in total. How the weight of alien space-technology worked was anyone's guess.

Both of the spies were now dug deep in the grassy ridge. Snaps of yellow played around Frederick's unexpressive face; Kyle released he was taking pictures with his big old Nokia.

"Film it", he instructed him, "don't take still photos".

"Why not?"

"The flash might give us away to the sentries. And film is harder to fake than still photos".

Fredericks dutifully switched the controls of the camera and tilted the heavy lens back down towards the action. Black-ops-clad troopers took strides around the perimeter of the saucer edge. From then, ironically, there was a feeling of uninvolvement. Kyle compared it with being in a dream, but unable to find a satisfying end-point at which to wake. Neurosis is a small thing; action is what we need. How much longer until they had the sense to roll down the big bay doors to screen out joe public?

Thoughts and extrapolations flooded his mind -too quickly, in too great a number, in no kind of order. Had the saucer always been present at the edge of the valley, ready to visit Sam Ross at the plant, prior to being shot down by the military? Had it already crashed in some secluded clump of trees, allowing Ross access to the secrets within? Why was the military so unafraid that there might be dangerous, living aliens inside?

Getting away and delivering their story to a newspaper of congressman; it would be a challenge. Coolly, Kyle decided that the bigger the expose, the better the rewards. And it always beat working for a living.

He breathed deeply and prepared to shift his weight, before a strange icy sensation filled his shoulders. Glancing directly behind revealed four black-clad soldiers with futuristic rifles aimed at all the most fatal points of their bodies. Kyle coolly prepared to die. They hauled the boys up, ruffed them around. One soldier wasted no time in savagely smashing Frederick's camera, as though it was more than a piece of incriminating evidence, actually an abstract concept he profoundly hated. Far more calm was the soldier who reported their find into a shoulder-mounted squawk-box.

The pair were ruffled and prodded along the ravine, towards any number of dells and nooks that would be just right for a summary execution. Except, to Kyle's surprise, their captors continued to push through along the old industrial tracks that meandered the edge of their former workplace. Military statue-men watched them gulpily. The figures were military special ops one-and-all, except for the glimpse of a certain grey-haired executive in insurance-salesman fatigues. He hung back in the crowd of his army subordinates, lost to his wincing and drags from a tiny cigarette.

The guys were slung into a card-bale shed that Kyle had never seen before. Two of the soldiers departed, leaving a single butch bastard to stand face-in across the doorway, glaring.

"People know we're here", said Fredericks confidently. "You have to negotiate. When-"

Their guard stepped forward and butted him across the jaw, enough to shut him up, then twice more for luck.

They were entering the black-spot of reality, cut off from God, cut off from anything that might be God. It was like when Kyle found a DVD he was willing to watch on his tiny, portable fold-up. Funny Games. Irreversible. Eden Lake. He'd get to the scenes with the extreme violence, the weird violence, and it would occur to him to switch the audio onto the commentary to see what the director had to say for himself. Always the guy would either be ignoring it by talking about how good the actors were, how technical the camera work was -or else he'd be totally dry-mouthed. Because no one really knows what violence is. The understanding, a skill.

The guard glared. Kyle glared back. In the space of minutes, soldier-boy was unnerved and drowning far out of his depth.

xx

If things get any stranger. Scully cut a hurried walk to the hospitals main reception with the intention of making it a base of operations. Now was the time of mechanically holding up her ID, the Dragnet power-housing she knew all native detectives laughed at, sometimes, but mainly hated. While one of the first-response beat-cops put out an APB, she phoned through a rallying cry to the FBI station at the state intersection. If her theory about what was going on was correct, 'Elvira' would be attempting to get as far away as possible.

Next up was a difficult conversation. Perhaps, in terms of the professional trust which all doctors should have in each other, the most difficult of all. Elvira's attending physician was a young, skinny man with a swarthy face. The brooding eyes were so intense and unusual, it was necessary to believe that, as a physician, he must be an intensely diligent, unusually devoted. But there was no time for courtesy.

"When you assessed Elvira's condition", Scully tried to be blunt, "is there any danger the extent of her injuries could have been overestimated?"

"No". Doctor Veda's voice was sardonic. "If you're asking whether the girl, or anyone else, could've just -covered her face in gore like Hannibal Lecter passing himself as one of his own victims- no. I saw deep, subdermal burns. I saw raw muscle-mass, which is not something you can mistake. Her nose was at least two-thirds gone".

Scully jerked her eyes down to the security camera print-out of the unknown girl, having risen from the bed, proceeding towards the east-side exit of the hospital. The angle produced an unusually clear picture of her face. For one thing, this new female looked older than Elvira's sixteen. Also it hardly helped Mr and Mrs Hoek's sense of shock that the woman had such a profound, knowing face. At speed, Scully had taken a high-res photo of the print-out and emailed Washington to have it converted into a standard criminal-inquiry mugshot.

While everyone at Stanley Hospital continued to puzzle. Someone had given Kitty Hoek an oversized sport-manager coat. In her disposable cup there was probably spirits, which Scully could hardly object to under the circumstances. She approached in a confident gait.

"We're going to find out what's happened to your daughter. This is a strange case on the surface, which means we'll get to the bottom of it more quickly. In the meantime, Mrs Hoek, take a closer look at the images from the surveillance camera. Do you know this woman at all?"

"No".

Mrs Hoek winced. Well-toned, late-middle-age eyes creased like leather and very close to tears. What a strange emotion -there was nothing to hate, nothing to fear, not per se. Like entering into a religion. For Scully, maybe there was a sense of solidarity, too. No one can attack your emotions, the way they rule everything. You have your mind filled with worry and neurosis, you lose your appetite and your stomach shrinks. You get happy again, your appetite returns, your stomach grows and becomes far more demanding of food. A recompense -your true nature once again gets marked-out through the fatness.

Scully felt the need to vomit, though expertly, she fought it back.

Below a dark, plush alcove was a row of waiting seats, Thinnes the only occupant, tensed, a kind of prisoner.

"Mr Thinnes, I believe the principal of Davis High is Joel Fuente? I'm going to need his home phone number if you have it, plus a full pupil list of everyone at the school".

Obediently, Thinnes wrote the contact details on the back of one of Scully's business cards. "Do you have any idea what's happening?"

"The girls sitting either side of Elvira when the accident took place. Who were they?"

"Hannah Twynnoy. Millicent Viveash. They were with her throughout the accident".

"They were close friends?"

The old teacher shrugged. "They were newly-flowered teenage girls. Who knows what passes for closeness? However, if you want my opinion about whether either of them have information which they haven't already volunteered to the police? I don't think so. Children aren't duplicitous as they were in our day. They aren't criminal or conniving. Capitalist smarm has taken the place of all of that".

"My working theory", Scully breezed her voice, "is that someone has switched places with Elvira, and has done so with the aid of an accomplice or accomplices".

Said Norman Thinnes darkly, "It would have to be with the aid of an accomplice. She hasn't been left alone since the incident took place".

Scully tilted her palms to the world. Terse wishes of good luck were exchanged and they parted ways. Outside in the low sidings of the hospital rear, the coolness made her feel stronger, less self-conscious. Across the roof were bright yellow floodlights, reacting with the midnight gloom to make such a vast purple haze. Low-grade cops and security men were fanned out in a close search for Elvira, the assumption being that maybe the accomplice of the person in the bed had hidden her somewhere obscure in the hospital grounds. With the same determination they lifted trash lids, Scully leant on the hood of the Camry and mechanically filled out warrant cards. A midway had been found, she told herself. Somewhere between daydreaming and expertly acting out the repetitious parts of an FBI field agent. Reaching for the pen from her trench pocket, however, she also found a Choco-crisp bar. The weight and shape of the thing called to her like nothing else, even if she knew it wouldn't stay in her stomach for more than a few minutes; that sane and cognizant prayer to the starkest of gods.

"Is this the right place for the Cher photoshoot?"

A smooth-faced man, strangely handsome, stood lankily at the end of the Camry bonnet. If things get any stranger-

"Agent Scully? I'm Agent Mulder. I believe you've just had a call from Old Man Dinkins that we're being partnered-up on this thing? So I hot-footed from DC. It's actually pretty convenient; I told the taxi driver I was an expectant father and he should put his foot through the floor".

Fox Mulder. The man referenced in that strangest of phone calls, 'Did you know that the FBI has its very own department for studying crimes related to the paranormal?' There was some kind of giddiness, be it conspiracy or coincidence, but for now she put it out of her head like someone choosing not to pursue an avenue in a dream.

"Pleased to meet you, Agent Mulder. I haven't received a call from Director Dinkins yet, but I'm guessing this won't be an insurmountable case. You've heard the highlights?"

Smiling a little, "Sure".

'Studying crimes related to the paranormal'. She imagined it as the FBI's equivalent of a multinational corporation's faintly ridiculous dummy-subsidiary, existing only as a tax-dodge red-herring.

"I'd say-", she tried to make the 'say' sound cheerful, lyrical -it almost worked, "We have a typical teenage drama mixed with criminal conspiracy. Possibly the chemical burns suffered by Elvira were self-inflicted, or caused by the other children in the class. I think it's part of an elaborate attention-seeking game. We won't know which it is which until we've got through studying the school and hospital surveillance footage, and had some rounds of questioning. But I'm certainly glad you're here!"

Fox Mulder smiled like David Letterman, maybe like Larry King. "You say 'self-inflicted' -what would Elvira's motives be for burning herself like that?"

"It could be a very direct attack on her parents, possibly a result of violence in the home, maybe emotional or sexual abuse. Victims often find it hard to confront abusers except through a very elaborate recourse, self-inflicted injuries being the commonest form".

"I guess", Mulder palmed the hood of the car. "But what about this new figure who rose from the bed? Whether she's one of Elvira's attackers or accomplices -what would her motive be?"

Even as she spoke, Scully heard the gasping annoyance in her voice, "Children are -creative when it comes to seeking notoriety, creating urban legends".

From within his own trench coat, Mulder's head and shoulders stiffened slightly. His easy manner seemed like something significant in the night air. He smiled to himself even as his body tensed horribly. "People manufacturing 'urban legends' is something I know about. This feels different. Even if all the kids at Davis High were part of some occult society, I've never heard of any rite that involves burning someone's face off in science class. And I don't think it's bullying, either. Even if the girls either side of Elvira had forced her head into the plaster, there'd still have been some initial commotion and everyone else in class would have looked around. I know you're an MD, Scully, how long would it be from sinking her face into the plaster to feeling it burn?"

"No longer than fifteen seconds -until it got unbearable", Scully guessed. "So it started as goofing off on Elvira's part, and now one of her enemies has taken advantage of it by making this -bizarre pantomime".

"To what end?", said Mulder insistently.

Scully filed the warrant cards in the five-by-six wallet and confronted Agent Mulder as best she could. "Irrespective of that, I guess we can agree that our first priority is for one of us review the feed from the school surveillance cameras while the other interviews Elvira's classmates".

Hands on hips, Mulder stared at the silver-night landscape. He chewed something in his front teeth; his jawline rippled. "I like your thinking about the school cameras. But we need one of us in the monitor room, one of us down where the accident took place, right where our mystery girl put her hands on the table top. We need a set of fingerprints".

Scully wagged her hands. "You think it was never Elvira at school that day? That it was someone in some -Mission Impossible mask?"

"Right now I don't think one thing or the other".

Exasperated, hateful that what should be smooth-running field work had degenerated into sci-fi debating, "You said yourself this is all about motives. We won't know anyone's motives until we get out there and start interviewing!"

Said Mulder easily, "But if we take the time to interview everyone, and the interviews turn up nothing, in the meantime our only piece of tangible evidence, the fingerprints, would have faded away to nothing".

"Actually, Agent Mulder, I've had the first hydrocolloidic face-mask that Elvira was wearing preserved as evidence. If the worst comes to the worst, we can have it DNA-tested".

Not in the least defensive, Mulder looked down at her kindly. The twinkling smile, however, usually accidental, soon became the look of being preyed-upon. "DNA-testing will take weeks, in as much as you can trust government labs at all. We need fingerprints which we can circulate along police and bureau lines -by ourselves if necessary. And you know what? I get it, OK? Call me Spooky Mulder all you want - paranoid and esoteric to the hills. But I've got no vested interest in finding a missing sixteen year-old girl. Do you?"

Off from the car park was a corridor-block, inside of which, what Scully took to be an oversized canvas of smudged orange shades - minimalist art. As she glanced, she realised it was simply a disused pin board. She flickered her eyes as she went into some socially-awkward shock. 'Spooky' -she couldn't imagine how such a nickname could have proliferated among grown adults.

"I don't understand where this gets us", she tried. "Even if the fingerprints on the table aren't Elvira's, it would mean that someone in a disguise would've needed to masquerade under the nose of all the dozens of people who saw her that morning, all of which will show up in the CCTV feed anyway. It isn't feasible".

Mulder creased his huge lips. At no point had Scully felt his eyes on her crucifix; it came as quite a surprise when he used her faith as a token, "Almost all Christian denominations accept demonic possession as a real phenomenon. And a characteristic of at least a quarter -spontaneous facial reconfiguration".

A sigh. "I agree, that -demonic possession might be a remote possibility. But we need to at least try to be methodical, even in such a weird situation".

"If you want off the case, that's fine, but my supervisor AD Skinner has given me jurisdiction as senior agent. I need your help, Scully, but I can't be someone I'm not just to satisfy your standardised beliefs".

The animosity she tried to deflect now. She mixed her sighs with a diplomatic backstep. "We'll go to the school. I guess I'll defer to your expertise. In any case, I'll give the headmaster a call and get him to meet us there".

From the hospital, northwards, each little house seemed a mysteriously-abandoned husk. In a way far more eerie than what Scully had seen in the sky not two days ago. Satin grey voids filled a neat space above the groomed, complex hedgerows. Even as she activated the hands-free facility and started the unavoidably-dramatic conversation with Principal Fuente , there was Agent Mulder in her hindsight, lounging backwards in his seat. Clearly he didn't believe that the middle-American principal would advance their investigation in the slightest, that he was anything more than a walking set of keys to the science room and CCTV lounge. Mulder tacitly believed that the disappearance of Elvira was supernatural. That was one thing. Scully almost came to accept it, reminding herself of the scientific value of opposing points of view when a theory reaches its impasse.

Or no. What stymied her, upset her sensibilities -the way Mulder's body was so stern and full of concentration. As if he was a character in an emotionally draining stage play three-quarters finished. What did it mean, the way they'd finally been maneuvered together by the Smoking Man, if indeed this was his work?

Along bypass grandeur, they passed fifty foot stalks which seemed to be highway lights, then on closer inspection -weird ventilation ducts for warehouses. On interstate swing-roads came a number of tiny roundabouts with oversized arrow boards. At this desolate time of night, it seemed strange to obey them, or do anything other than surge past at speed. Was there worry about how Mulder would judge her driving? He was lost in the lonely urban recesses, but not looking out for some cryptozoological man-beast. More likely the need for psychological peace that came from any harried FBI field officer. Kinship?

As with almost all modern schools, Davis High was a pretentiously-steel coated business centre dominating the far end of its small town. The principal was leaning on the hood of his car looking infuriatingly tense.

"Is there any word on Elvira?"

"We're going to check the camera feeds from your security room, Mr Fuente", said Mulder airily. "We've got a few working theories".

Thoughts of deepest winter came, the night darkness and beige light bulbs hitting the shining floor, no doubt the life's work of a cliché-immigrant janitor. The silence was something from the end of the world, and just the long, main corridor, an ambient hell.

At a junction beside the CCTV nest, the three of them stopped dead. Mulder presented his business card to Scully, smiling as if it was a highschool love-letter passed between tables. "I'm willing to bet you're better with the fingerprint-dusting kit than me. You wanna go to the science room and I'll direct you to where quote-unquote placed fingers?"

Scully turned to Fuente. "If you lead the way, sir, we'll try to be done as quickly as possible".

Before they went, the head-teacher addressed Mulder, "Don't you need help to operate the CCTV console?"

Smiling, "We're G-men born-and-bred. Snooping on CCTV is our life's blood".

The doors made heavy mahogany clunks as they eased into place, no reverb. Rounding the corner, Scully grudgingly started to enter Mulder's number into her address book. A long time ago, maybe foolishly, she'd decided to persevere with arranging her contacts Christian-name-first. It sometimes seemed disrespectful, making it sound as though the FBI District Commander was a personal friend. But now more than ever, it seemed eerie to be in the random-hierarchical orbit with such a name as Fox Mulder. Breaking the rule of a lifetime, she arranged it as, 'MULDER, FOX'.

On hearing the line click open, "We're in the science room, standing by".

"I won't keep you, Scully. I'm just passing back through the time codes".

Once again there was the strange feeling of guilt, of everyone being trapped in their own little worlds. Fairly obviously, Mulder's work as a paranormal investigator was ninety-nine percent pie-in-the-sky. But he was still misty-eyed and scrupulous. Why?

"Scully? I have a live feed of you on one monitor, on the other, the classroom at the time of the incident. Go to the back of the class. The main work bench -count six stools in from your left".

It was a dark piece of irony -Scully was more than able to identify the place where Elvira had been sitting since none of the droplets of blood had been wiped away. Pencil cases were still present. A clipboard with pasted images of Justin Timberlake and Aaron Paul was precarious on the edge.

"Wait a minute. You have an ID on Elvira beforehand? Is it definitely her? How clearly do you see her?"

"There's a girl that looks like Elvira", said Mulder lightly. "But it's like you said, Scully, look out for those Mission Impossible masks".

Scully went from foot to foot and rolled her eyes.

They spent a few more seconds fine-tuning where the girl had placed her fingers, Mulder talking her through it, memories conjured of one of her brothers directing her backwards into a choice hide-and-seek spot, into a space that was barely big enough for a cat. She took out the evidence kit, the Faulds stick and powder. Dusting for prints; such a direct part of the investigation, so satisfying. A soccer player scoring a goal. A copy-writer getting his cheque.

She took a step backwards and examined the Zvetco app of her phone. The imprints were very clear regardless, but the high-resolution imager cleared them into super-unambiguous 8-bit files to be cross-referenced on the national database. Which in this case wouldn't be applicable.

"What in the world?"

"Scully?"

All human fingerprints are more-or-less ovaloid; it's a basic evolutionary premise of skin-growth. Or no, not today. Scully's mouth fell open as once again all the rules of a sane world were upended, spitefully. The skin across each of the Elvira-girl's fingertips was strangely-patterned, each coming together in a perfect 'X' shape. And how she fought back the shame to tell Mulder.

xx

Small, clunky kit-bags were hastily dropped. Chain-operated shaftdoors were thrust low. Mainly there was a very distant sound of six-wheelers coming to an extravagant stop, a world away from the disciplined reversing of the plant's regular low-loaders. It depressed Kyle that he knew the ambient sounds of the workshop so exactly, that it was a whole little world, that he could intuit there was something very wrong by the absence of this-or-that generator. These army guys had brought along death-dealing, totalitarian horror; whether you chose to panic or not, you couldn't deny it.

Fredericks stirred; the feeling of doom came and went stupidly. Kyle grinned. "I got bad news for you, buddy. They didn't manage to beat you handsome".

Fredericks thought about it then laughed. "Well let's hope they kill us before you run out of Dapper Dan".

Raising their eyebrows at the jailer, it was hard as ever to get a reaction beyond military snideness.

Fredericks asked Kyle, "Do you think they're keeping us here, just trying to figure out how to kill us? I mean, how to kill us so it looks like an accident?"

The maddeningly-uneven wall behind them was dirty. Kyle had no qualms about resting his head back, though, even if it did crease-out his hair gel. He stared at their guard, making sure he kept his eyes wide and unblinking, all the while examining the other man's eyes. "You figure that's true? You boys going to kill us?"

An infinitesimal sagging of his lower eyelids gave the soldier away, even if he kept expert control of his brow and mouth. The unspoken truth was yes, the two of them would indeed be killed.

Adrenaline and effrontery were wearing off. A strange tiredness played around Kyle's eyes, his shoulders, the type of tiredness where it was impossible to actually doze, even if he'd granted it. Already in his head were old cartoon theme songs from when he was a kid. Next there'd be even gentler little daydreams. It was after an hour or so, Kyle resolved to get disciplined and bide his time thinking about nothing, or at the very least, further ways to psychologically humiliate their guard.

Which was pointless. Every hour-and-a-half brought a new jailer. Some were standard-size men, others looked like WWE wrestlers. Not one of them seemed like 'just a regular guy doing a job', which is the type of nobility-porn the recruiters depended on. One and all? Serial killers.

What irked Kyle most of all, he soon figured out, was the way Fredericks was keeping so uncharacteristically quiet. It wasn't as if a guy like him ever got traumatised, rather his raging introversion going into overdrive. Like a seventies aftershave advert, he was suavely shouldered-up on one side, no doubt having composed two or three novels just while waiting to die. Either that or he was forever on the cusp of facing Mecca and delivering some strange Muslim prayer.

The little bale-room, at one point, did have windows. But shutting out the lights, a lazy-yet-effective mixture of black table tops and spray-painted covers. Memories came of two summers ago, when their maintenance team had needed to re-mark all the pallet-bay lines as a hasty safety-in-the-workplace dash. So many ruined tins of paint and solvent work materials should be making the little room stink. But the cold morning air nullified it all. Even approaching midday, everything stayed maddeningly still, with Fredericks in exactly the same sort of pose, never once losing control of his cropped ginger head and letting it sway or roll. He was thinking about God, and Truth, and novels, all of it getting churned up in his chattery little mind. It would stay that way forever, which made no sense to Kyle. All Frederick's endless intellectual soul-searching was surely only equal to the satisfaction he'd get from, say, pulling back the guard's head with a palm to the forehead, while the other hand slit his throat with the man's own knife.

They were dead, though. Their stomachs made horrible bangs as a fanfare to the immanent executions. And Fredericks couldn't keep his ideas to himself any longer. "It seems strange. Dying like this. Like we should almost be grateful for the strangeness. All the loyal Communists who died in Stalin's purges. They probably even understood Stalin's reasons for doing it. But that didn't stop it feeling -strange. Like, you can either have strangeness, or have totally-explicable human nature, which will see the world burn all the same. And now here we are with the greatest strangeness of all. Flying saucers are real! And in that thing out there on the workshop floor, there's probably a cure for cancer, a free power-source that'd save the world -but who has the biggest picture? Who can be trusted?"

Kyle ignored this nonsense. He'd turned in the direction of the plant's central utility grid. He heard the distant, abrupt hiss of the coolant pipes automatically flicking on and off.

"They've turned on the main air valve. They're using the rivet-drivers".

"What?", said Fredericks croakily. "No -why would they need rivet-drivers?"

"There's nothing else it could be. Maybe they need the air-blasters to clean the thing up, but from what I saw last night, it was pretty pristine". Kyle practically grinned at the revelation. He opened his mouth to elaborate more -just before it was his turn to be clubbed over the jaw with the guard's rife butt.

Recovering quickly, they made deepest eye-contact. "Go ahead, hit me again, comrade".

The guard -phased, but only through his own sheer hatred. He soon recovered himself, hissed, then rapidly beat Kyle to painful unconsciousness.

An ugly semblance of the world had only been in place for a few moments when both he and Fredericks were hustled to their feet. Outside the bale room, there was the same phenomenon of stepping out of the cinema after a three-hour show, Kyle feeling like a giant, just before the usual below-average vengefulness seeped into his bones. Two guards, overstaffed like Wall-Mart joes, escorted them alongside the disassembly end-points. The grey-hue vanishing point, he'd never quite appreciated before. Beyond, the flying saucer had been hastily sealed off with silver-rainbow screens, protective of the sun but strangely non-sterile. They put their eyes forward as they approached the main works office.

It seemed it'd be an inopportune situation for any more violence, and so Kyle went to town, "We going to get our severance cheques?"

They were ushered up the spidery stairs in dreamlike silence, with a dreamlike sense of momentum. Behind Guy Tanner's little desk was the same peculiar authority figure Kyle had glimpsed the night before. His grey eyes regarded the prisoners, not-quite-smiling. Kyle observed the classic etched-glass ashtray poised ready at his elbow. Somehow, for some reason, he took it to be the symbol of someone who existed in a whole different realm to the one where people worried about cancer. He flipped out a cellophaned box of Morleys as the smoothest and most mechanical act in the world. He smoked but drew little satisfaction. As if dying of cancer or living on were the same joke-polarising choices as Nietzsche's good and evil.

Dryly, "Gentleman. I trust you've heard the stories about people seeing flying saucers and being 'silenced'. So it is with reality. We have no choice but to see you both dead, I'm afraid. Kyle Parks, Fredericks Chartis. I know everything about you, and to a point I would feel ...regret. Perhaps you can draw consolation from the way that -at least there's no condescension here. You lost your jobs because the economy is a -dark and ungrateful place".

The Cigarette Man looked into the eyes of one of his subordinates, and whether it was a pre-arranged cue or not, everyone was permitted to stand tall and approach the small grey door which led down onto the biggest work bay of the facility. Before them was the flying saucer in all its glory. Troopers were easily able to walk across the white-spearmint surface; some were kneeling and attacking the hull with some kind of apparatus. On staring hard, Kyle was intrigued that they were using Thor's own air-decrimpers -which meant, unbelievably, that the saucer's hull used conventional M-12 rivets. Which was insane. That the thing was made by men, rather than little green space-aliens -he could accept that. But why would such an advanced stealth plane use the same rivets as a Ukraine-built train carriage, an ugly old plough, a nineteen-fifties sceptic tank? Could Sam Ross' UFO cult in fact have been some eccentric Eastern Bloc steam punk commune?

"The weight of it!", observed Fredericks. "Weight must not be an issue for whatever powers it".

Kyle was more pressed to ask, "So crazy old Sam Ross was embezzling materials from Thoru and using them to build Close Encounters?"

The soldiers and the prisoners stared acidly at the flying machine. Said the Smoking Man, thoughtfully, dryly, "It's hardly important for you to know the answers to these questions. What's more important is that you believe what I've told you. Neither of you will leave this place alive. Do you accept that?"

The boys temporarily moved their eyes from the majestic white disc. Fredericks tightened his lower lip in an expression that could be read as horrific acceptance. Kyle? Merely grinned.

"No one gets out alive".

Above the craft was an overkill of sportsfield floodlights, putting any kind of operating theatre far to shame. The shape of the top half nagged to be thought of as a long-lost cousin of the Millennium Dome in England, except there were no uniform umbrella segments. Mainly, only the rivets were visible; squinting, certain plates could just be perceived, but it looked like a patchwork, long overpianted by weird, reflective matte.

The Smoking Man, as he laid down the road-map of the terrible situation, sounded much like Kyle's own inner voice. It was mild, a Bing Crosby embrace of fearful outcomes.

"Fredericks Chartis. Your mother, Louise, is sixty-one. Father, Edward, sixty-eight. They live two towns away in Keysville. You visit them every Sunday, and it would seem you love them very much. Kyle Parks. Your father was serving a twenty year sentence for gross fraud when he was killed ten years in, during a riot. Your mother lives in Louisiana. You haven't had any documentable contact with her in over seven years.

"You'll find that there's plenty of irony here. This country is slowly rejecting bluecollar skill. Detroit. The Winchester Bulb factory. Unions are caught in the conceit. Do you see the way my men struggle to operate your rivet machines?"

He didn't expect an answer. Kyle gave one anyway, darkly, "Each to his own. I'm sure I wouldn't know where to start, mowing people down with a gat-gun".

It was amusing, though, the way the soldiers manhandled the release-drivers -they'd be lucky to remove a single rivet per hour, and at this rate would be better off trying to hack the joins away with a hammer-and-craw. They laboriously drew down the hand-rigs from the overhead line, not seeing the gears and pads which must necessarily be pressed as the crimp started to give. And these were the older machines. God Almighty knew how they'd cope with new, speedier Rhino-drivers which Kyle preferred.

It was Fredericks who said it, "You want us to train them, in exchange for our lives?"

"No", said the Smoking Man in an easy voice, "as I said, what we're doing here is beyond top secret. I can appeal to you only as I appeal to my liaison with those soldiers down there. What we learn from these machines-"

"Flying saucers", smirked Kyle.

"What we learn from them will directly save the human race. And more than", he took a winsome drag of his Morley, "fighting in a contrived foreign war, each man here will be honoured, even if it takes a thousand years, five, ten".

"That's not a lot of incentive". Fredericks surprised Kyle because it was exactly the kind of thing he might say.

More direct now, the Smoking Man shamefully locked eyes. "Our line of work gives us perspective. A nagging perspective. Things that really matter. Mr Chartis, your parents, a few hours ago, were made millionaires on a pretext of ancient government bonds suddenly paying out. Mr Parks, your father's fraud conviction has been posthumously overturned, and already the government is working out a million-dollar settlement for your mother. If you feel the need, I can put each of you on the end of a phone-line to them, though any mention of your own predicament would see a hand over your mouths and your throats cut".

Trying to understand the situation, Fredericks didn't seem much more weak-jawed than usual. He kept his body lean in the clean white atmos of the floodlights. They all stood straight. The old leader-man, he smoked, ever sheepishly.

"You expect us to help you out of gratitude?"

Despite his tar-ridden inhalations, the Smoking Man always spoke smoothly. "No. This world is a prison. I expect you to help us out of -solidarity".

"Supposing", Fredericks jerked his lips, evidently with on-the-spot insight, "we said we understood you? Supposing we just kept quiet the truth about what goes on here?"

Brightly, "It hardly works that way. The truth is insidious. We operate as an invisible republic, the centre of which, an unknown reality which no man, woman or child can live without".

"Bulls-", said Kyle.

It surprised him that the rippling presence of guards behind didn't rush forward to club him. Wouldn't have mattered if they did. He thought of the whores in the Route 20 cathouse, and the ones he'd visited in Tijuana as a kid. You could tip a girl an extra ten bucks because she was unusually pretty, or because you felt sorry for her. But around one in ten of them would feel low and embarrassed, which would lead to Kyle feeling low and embarrassed. It was all nonsense, hell, but it was satisfying because it was fun to pretend to have sensibilities.

"People who give to charity are fools. And if people who believe in flying saucers are nerds, what does that make the people who secretly play with them, try to take them apart? You people are jerks. And I choose death".

For Fredericks, this was palpably the most shocking thing he'd heard. "Kyle, wait I- "

But already the guards had caved-in Kyle's knees and brought him to the deck.

The ginger guy caused a little flutter, a commotion, which the Smoking Man noticed. They were both about to be shot; in the uproar, it seemed less a matter of the soldiers getting organised and co-ordinating the gunfire, more of being in a tumble-drier with half a dozen trigger fingers. For all the ape-like violence, Kyle reckoned it was his own stupidly-concerned expression which saved them. He didn't want Fredericks to die. This concern was carefully noted by the leader. He called off the soldiers.

"Gentlemen. Get to work", said the Smoking Man blankly.

xxx

In Sam Ross' world now, on top of the glaring white surface of the UFO, a possibly-psychosomatic wave of space-radiation seared up onto their lank, bruised bodies. Only micro satisfaction was taken from sweeping the air-drivers out of the hands of the soldiers and getting to work on the rivets. Admittedly they were fused-in pretty solidly, but it was nothing that couldn't be worked through, Kyle's richly-coloured skin always threatening perspiration, never quite getting there. When rivet one was uncrimped and rotated free, there was quite a bit of satisfaction in dropping it clear onto the shining ground -just prior to taking a sly little glance at the base of the unit. S135X. A production code that suggested the rivet had indeed been fitted by Sam Ross, though why he'd still use a company code while making his own little flying saucer was a mystery.

Already a feeling of hated repetition set in, even as Kyle started work on the next rivet. Plain-and-simple boredom. Clearly there would be no grand, face-to-face meeting with any of the occupants within the saucer, whether they were alive or dead, human or Martian. There just wouldn't be. That would be too exciting. From now on, there'd be only delirious exhaustion and death. Fully there was an expectation of removing the best part of the hull plates and being shot in the head before anything interesting was visible.

After ten minutes of skillful un-crimping, Kyle threw clear the second spent rivet. Kneeling a little further down the hull, he had a good view of the four foot space between the edge of the saucer and the workshop floor, the weird luminosity. High-power floodlights built into the underside would be the easiest way of explaining it, but clearly that would be a misidentification. Kyle judged the bright patches of air as some kind of radiation, and with a shrug, he guessed that'd be it for his manhood even if he did get out alive.

Fredericks was also pausing, swept up in the momentous glow of the ship. He wasn't scared to just -stop work, gape open his tiny mouth. "I think what's going on here -is more than just aliens. I think they might be from God. Actually religious".

Kyle felt his jaw bunch up like a slew of vipers. Truly he was starting to hate him. He hissed a little air from the driver and resumed work. "I think you should lay off the crackpipe".

xxx

It was four hours from daylight, though already the rifling currents of air were at work through the small trees and orchards. A deep grey was constant, the surprising nebulas of black, strikingly uniform shades of brickwork striving to snatch Scully's attention as she drove them towards the freeway. A blackbird hopped up on a mountain of logs in a timber yard, and everything was right with the world. And everything was wrong with the world.

"Where do you hail from, Scully?", asked Mulder in a steady voice.

"I come from Lingua Point, Maryland".

"Well that's barely forty miles down the interstate. I suggest you drop me at the nearest reputable motel and we'll liaise again a coupla hours from now".

Scully inclined her head and changed gears. "No. We should stick together and both stay at a motel. I'd suggest the Renfrew Villas just along here; it's clean, the staff are pleasant. But we need to get together as early as we can to start the interviews".

"You're sure? I wouldn't want to keep you from Mr Scully".

As usual. The implication that all fat girls, by necessity, must be homely and married. Mentally reeling tho she was, Scully didn't respond one way or the other. "If there's a guilty party here, we don't want to give them time to rehearse".

The sighing edge to her voice, unintentional, was something Mulder clearly picked up on -'Now that alien fingerprints are confirmation of a too-good-to-be-true teenage prank'.

The X-files chief chewed a forefinger. "You know what? Maybe the questioning will turn up something. Maybe the cops'll get lucky and catch Elvira, Miss X, all the conspirators making for the border, or crossing the street looking the wrong way. But my hunch is, we're playing the long game".

Hunches. They found a place in the neat parking lot beside the motel. In a tired, semi-conscious blur before reaching for the door release, Scully couldn't help herself, "Mulder, what is this? I don't want to -belittle what you do, but how can the FBI afford to have such a responsive unit for investigating the paranormal? I mean, with terrorism, organised crime-"

"None taken". Olive branches given and received. "For one thing, the paranormal does exist. It exists in volumes that'd surprise you, Scully. Then there's the other reasons. If you have advisors and officials in the US government such as Bob Lazar and Steven Greer, running around and making pretty convincing arguments about alien conspiracies, it becomes a case of liberal, interdepartmental oneupmanship, even if the consensus is that the whole thing is garbage. Mainly? I guess the FBI intelligence centre just likes to use the X-files as an extra little snooping tool. They figure that if someone is bold enough to lie about getting groped by Bigfoot, or knocked down by an invisible elephant, those same folks are likely to have perpetrated insurance fraud or counterfeiting".

As Scully stared, phased, at the thin air in front of her, Mulder hauled himself tall into the night air. They met again across the roof.

"I guess that's depressing enough to be true".

"Who cares", Mulder grinned, "as long as it gives me a chance to take down my arch-enemy Bigfoot".

Scully -was on the same continent as a smile. "Well, Agent Mulder, as a physician, I can tell you it's a bad idea to eat anything at this time of night, and so I think I'll -sleep!"

In an easy voice, "Eating? I'm in my running shorts under here. I gotta go for a jog before I hit the sack. It's one of my endearing quirks".

With the duck-toned blip-blip, she locked the car. Her face, she knew, was heavily scrunched as they strolled across to the brightly-lit foyer. Somehow the idea of going for a jog in the early hours of the morning, outside an interstate motel, was the eeriest thing she'd yet heard. They grasped up their keys and stared at each other beside the short mahogany desk.

"Are you really going for a jog?"

"Sure am. I bet you kinda rock the Clarice Starling FBI woodland run yourself, Scully".

"At this time of night? No. Jog if you want, but be sure to get a couple of hours sleep, too. We need to be fresh!"

"Yes, Ma'am".

Their rooms were in opposite directions. Parting ways, his smile continued to burn her. "It was nice meeting you, Scully. Sleep well".

Quizzical, "Enjoy your run, Agent Mulder".

xxx

They met again in the same pose, over the roof of the car, now in bright sunshine. Mulder made a joke about his nightmares of being chased by a giant fingerprint. At the high school, it was ancient knowledge that officers of the law must be accompanied in their questioning at all times by a member of the School Authority. Rather than Scully's infuriating ally Mr Thinnes, however, the agents were joined by Masie Scott, an imperious twenty-something who was simply consternated by the whole affair. In several different disused conference rooms, their questioning quickly reached the edge. Beyond the edge -apparently nothing. Scully used hard and accusatory questioning. Mulder, it seemed, was a master of transforming himself into a seen-it-all-before deep interrogator, always speaking from a position that the girls were guilty, even just of a mild with-holding of evidence; they'd get their legal punishment as sure as the sun rose.

Above all, it seemed that being an FBI agent, spooky or not, was as natural to him as breathing.

Even trapped in the vice, however, each of Elvira's friends spoke convincingly of a girl who was held benevolently by her peers. Those who'd visited the family home painted a picture which, to Scully, was earthy and uncomplicated. She stared into the moisturised, pretty faces of the high school girls, uncomprehending of how they were such exaggerations, caricatures, clichés. They spoke hurriedly and delivered their observations in acute detail, as if high school life actually meant something. As if they weren't just in a holding pattern prior to having their lives broken, insidiously, subconsciously -or outright.

None of them were capable of criminal conspiracy.

Dragging the seatbelt across her silk shirt, promising herself that the sensation of skimming fat was somehow an illusion, Scully gasped and wondered what Mulder's assessment of their morning's work would be. In particular, questioned individually, the two girls who'd been sitting either side of Elvira presented accounts that were identical, that no amount of innovative questioning or bluff-calling could drive a wedge between.

"Well, I guess -are you ready for the big one this afternoon? Mr and Mrs Hoek?"

Scully stared dully at the steering wheel, the windshield. "We need to get a feeling for them. Statistically, we should focus on Mrs Hoek. Abuse by father to daughter is the more commonplace scenario, but as the dominant personality of a family unit, the father is better placed to conceal it".

"You know, I do have a psychology doctorate and five years field experience with the Behavioral Unit. Good days one-and-all", Mulder smiled warmly -in that engaging, particularly boyish way of his.

The air-con clicked. Holding off the ignition, Scully skirted her eyes to his quadrant of the car. The often-washed hair, easy to comb. Unfaded birthmark that told of well-fed boyhood nourishment. "I meant no offence. I'll fully defer to your expertise. If you have an alternate plan-"

"We'll bleed the Hoeks. Find out if they were the Brady Bunch or Capturing the Friedmans. Beyond that, and I know you don't want to hear this, Scully, but we need to have Washington Analysis take a closer look at those fingerprints. It's not unheard of for million dollar cat burglars and espionage front-liners to employ fake fingerprints -but it's always just a gambit to tie-up police resources short-term. On a microscopic level, there'll always be a differential, signs of stretching and contracting across the surface of the fingers".

Now, to demonstrate that her annoyance at Mulder's Quioxtian tilting wasn't overpowering, Scully said nothing, coolly starting the engine to drive clear onto the sunlit bypass. She waited a few beats, then, in an unphased and waspish tone, "I'm not clear where you're going with the continued testing of the fingerprints. At this stage, surely there's no need to question the whys-and-wherefores of why they've perpetrated this crazy, shapeshifting hoax -only that they have".

"Unless", the broad atmos of sun enveloped Mulder's thumb-chewing completely, "it's really no hoax".

Flitting along non-pastoral canopies of countryside, they were going nowhere. Now the sun was bright, the mass of leaves were eye-catchingly dark. And how she brooded. For lunch, Mulder suggested they stop at a Ma and Pa chain he'd spotted beside a gas station lot. Scully agreed, persuading herself that the impending psychic horror of eating in front of a stranger just wasn't happening.

The place was homely. The menus were maroon, laminated, with pictures of rich, primary colour food all in tight-frame. If only there wasn't that subtle hatred of people who picked up on whether a cafe is picturesque or not. Life is utilitarian, except under special circumstances, a drive into headlong emotionless rigour.

"The usual way I like to dine out on Uncle Sam is a T-Bone or three, but I think it's a little early for that", Mulder grinned. "I'm gonna go for the burger and fries".

Scully knew she was drowning. The horror of eating and proving her fatness justified; it all mixed together with the problem of the Hoek case. She wished she'd had more partners, and they'd had disagreements she could have learned from. If you never build up a tolerance, something takes you out in a fell swoop. Something strange.

"I'll just have a Rivita bar from the counter".

Mulder's face grew buoyant. "You're not hungry? It's been hours. Are you feeling OK?"

Meekly, "I'm fine. A girl can choose a light lunch, can't she?"

"You're making me feel guilty. Come on, Scully" -and then he said it, a sarcastic comment so plainly hurtful it took her breath away, "if you were any skinnier, you wouldn't exist".

Her head spun and her bile-filled stomach knotted, her neck just able to turn and track Mulder's walk to the wicker-basket counter. She'd never believed the talk of seeing your life flash before your eyes just before you die. It suggested that the consolidation of life was something which happened in the mind, rather than the mind being attacked, ravaged, dissolved by hate until only death remained. Her life didn't flash before her eyes, but maybe her career at the FBI -and it was no way to live. She'd worked so hard. There'd never been a single word of praise from her superiors. In this way, the Bureau suffered the same problem as any modern, national institution, be it state or public sector. It was overstaffed, one was tempted to think by overzealous administrators, but that wasn't quite true. Scully had never been part of a case she couldn't have solved single-handed, from the initial investigation, through forensics, arrest, all the way to a liaison with the Department of Justice or Federal Prosecutors. But to hell with this ethos of having dozens of agents, either compartmentalised or homogenous on the whim of their smiling administrators -and as long as you could respond with the same faux-nine-to-five smile, you'd be fine. Add the punitive salary and fear-of-God consequences if ever a mistake was made: it was no way to live.

Scully stared down at her ID card on the booth table, maddeningly stark against the polished teak and the wicker basket condiments. She felt the protrusion of her gun holster against the hideous curve of her waist. These things -she could get in the car right now, be in the office of Director Dinkins by late afternoon, resigned from the Bureau by dusk. A career in surgery called to her, or at any rate, something solitary.

Mulder had been hovering foot-to-foot at the counter giving curt smiles to the serving girl. Subsequently, he received a mobile call and stepped backwards, pulling his head down in powerful concentration. Would she feel guilty at leaving him the lurch? Perhaps only the same guilt as not buying a rag magazine from the student doctors who hung around the FBI Medical HQ on Pennsylvania Avenue. The same amount as ignoring the fake beggars who sidled round the convenience store near her apartment.

Much over-the-phone gesticulation came from Mulder's fingers. A furtive question to the serving girl led to her leaning over the counter and writing something on his notepad. Funny pulsing struck up in Scully's gut. Directions to a local coven? A UFO hotspot? Now she was grateful to be bowing out.

His forever-smooth strides brought Mulder back to their table.

"I put lunch on hold for half an hour. Turns out this thing's a real dragnet. That was Skinner. We're to wait here and rendezvous with two other agents out of LA and Greenwich respectively".

"Who's Skinner?", asked Scully.

"My AD. Never left 'Nam. Think Lou Ferrigno before his stitching goes".

Noted. Scully tapped her thighs and tried not to look delirious. "I'll drive back to town and get our notes Xeroxed".

Now Mulder beamed like never before. "Something tells me that won't be necessary. We're scrambling round on the tip. These guys've spent months investigating the iceberg itself. Get excited, Scully, this thing goes deep".

xxx

"First of all", Agent Doggett started, chewy accent somewhere between extreme Brooklyn and Boston, "I need you guys to help get me out of my posting in the LA hills, which is A-1 hell, believe me".

"Did you ever see Caitlin Jenner?", asked Mulder.

Admittedly, Doggett was the very image of a chiseled FBI hound, even more so than Mulder. He said sourly, "Also the rest. It transpires that these days, mob speculators only want the surest investments. Which translates to backing Hollywood movies and over-hyped TV shows. 'Fine', I say to the State Director. But why are you assigning this to me? I toured Bosnia, Camp Iguana. Spent ten years as a homicide and narcotics cop, hunting gold-teeth gangstas who'd cap you soon as share a sidewalk. But he tells me there's no one he knows in the Bureau who looks more like a G-Man tough guy than me, and that's what all the weasly little producers and studio bosses will respond to. So what, I'm now getting assignments based on my celebrity looks?"

"I've done OK looking like Manalow", came Mulder's wise crack.

"Anyhow, there's not one of those swanky studio lounges I didn't walk into where I didn't feel like Lieutenant Colombo bumbling round in front of Robert Vaughn".

"John's being grouchy. It happens that from LA, he was slowly getting dragged into the case of his life".

Scully stared at Agent Monica Reyes, absolutely enthralled. A first reaction was to think of her as the textbook definition of unconventional beauty. The second reaction was really profound. With powerful nostrils, sensual-scowling lips, rich-black eyes, she had a face that told a thousand stories and was forever in the midst of a doorstop thriller. She was the type of woman Scully wanted to be. It was hard to tear her eyes away even as Doggett resumed his LA travails.

All this anguish-talk of people never getting the respect they deserve. Personally, Scully had a strong sense of guilt to keep it all in check. It was deluded, ugly, counter-productive. But if even Satan, originally an angel, had fallen victim to feelings of inferiority, what chance did any human have, and how could you afford to call it deluded?

"I arrested little black-suited, thirty-year old mafioso, with no kind of strategy on my part. Film projects that ate un-laundered money and were strangers to the box office from now till forever. I stared off all these geek lawyers who made a profession of philandering Hollywood cash. So all this got me a name. J Arthur Goldstein, head of Universal, summons me to his palace on the highest peak of the LA hills.

"'Did I know much about film history?', he asks. Not a damn thing. Then he just smiles. Says that I know more than enough for the case he's about to give me. Frankenstein. Dracula. The Wolf Man. The Invisible Man. The Mummy. Tells me all about the nineteen-thirties, when there was this weird rush of Hollywood monster films coming out of nowhere. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi inventing all our Halloween costumes for the next thousand years.

"Then he asks me, had I ever heard of 'The Tulpa'? In 1932 there was a producer, Kingsley Felks, and a director, Jack Cetacean. They'd worked on this movie -it was to be the eighth big Universal monster picture of the thirties. They made it with a budget of 200 K, a little less than the others, but still throwing crazy money at set designers, lighting, make-up. Told me it might not be the thirties equivalent of Avatar, but it was easily Inception. The actors were above-average vaudeville players, complete unknowns but as committed as hell. Now the supposed story of what happened to this movie after it was finished-"

"What was the movie about?", interjected Mulder.

Monica said, "It supposedly cobbled together for a couple of real life incidents. Eastern mystics who managed to create real, autonomous lifeforms just by the power of their own imagination and concentration".

Scully tore her eyes from the huge dish of fries which the others continually craned their fingers into. "That's a pretty high concept for nineteen-thirties movie-goers to swallow".

Said Doggett, "I know, right? And by all accounts, the director was too much of a boat-rocker. There was supposedly a scene where this magically-conjured girl appears in a balcony above an army being formed in parade ranks. She makes a disapproving face; a lot of the soldiers get distracted and drift clear from the sergeant major. When he sees the rushes of this, the studio exec says no-how are we having a movie that makes light of serving in the army, not so soon after WW1. And when he sees the scene where a greedy American corporate boss hallucinates getting drowned in a sea of money -it just ain't gonna happen. It was the thirties, right? Capitalism versus communism was only just getting started, yet it was enough for these studio geeks to worry the picture was a damn sight too bolshie and red to be allowed a release. No sooner was it completed than Universal said, in no uncertain terms, 'We don't want it no more'.

"So the story goes.

"As told by one Carlos Allende Felks, allegedly the great grandson of the guy who originally produced this movie. Out of the blue, 2012, he appears at the latterday Universal HQ and presents them with the original canisters containing this lost movie, found in his parents attic. So, maybe they want it now? And then some. The studio makes a multi-million dollar payment to buy back the movie, outright. I mean, it looks the part. Chemical testing proves the film stock used is panchromatic-silver from the thirties, recorded using the same print-and-punch editing they'd have used at the time. It looked the part; the fashion, the flickery lighting, architecture, everything. Granted, the soundtrack, recorded separately, had been long-lost. But even this wasn't a problem. No sooner had the computer boys at Universal taken sweeps at the movie until it shone in digital 4K, they hired Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix to dub new dialogue, hired some big-shot composer to record the soundtrack of the century-"

"Hans Zimmer", said Reyes, clearly a soundtracks fan.

Mulder started smiling, "But then someone spotted that the whole movie was a dirty fake".

It was rare to see a man scowl so achingly. Doggett's tightly-packed eyes glowered at everyone. "It wasn't just a fake, it was a fake that conjured up the s-storm of the century. The Universal bosses were so sure the movie was going to be a legendary, historical success, they poured in money from a special government fund they'd been saving for just the right occasion. To the tune of two million of the taxpayer's hardest -hence the FBI getting dragged in. So that's the money. But there was also a nasty, political side. As you can imagine, there's not many of the nineteen-thirties Hollywood elite left nowadays. No one to verify whether the movie was real of not. So what this Carlos Felks did, he approached the nearest relatives of those old-time studio bosses and bribed them that, if anyone asked them, they'd say they dimly remembered their fathers and grandfathers talking about this long-lost film".

Mulder's smile spoke of a breezy and enjoyable disbelief. "The huge amounts of money floating round in Hollywood and he still gets them to bat their eyelids?"

Doggett hadn't eaten any fries in quite some time. Reyes chewed big mouthfuls, while her eyes remained pensively fixed on her partner. Everything he said now: grave. "He offered whatever sum they wanted, within reason".

"Sounds kinda like a James Bond villain", noted Mulder.

Said Doggett, "Well, he was good for it. Several of his bribe-ees said, pay us x-billion into whatever off-shore account', and sure as hell, in it went. But here's where everyone's blood ran cold. Universal discovered the movie was a fake, six weeks before it was due to hit theatres. There was a scene with someone pouring a condiment on a meal in the far background of a shot. The brand was identified as McVune's Vinegar. But the shape of the bottle -it wasn't around until 2011. LA detectives and prosecutors rounded up all the bribe-ees. Turns out that, to convince these guys he was more-than-just-greedy, Felks also offered to put twenty million dollars into whatever charity they wanted.

"One guy said Cancer Research. Fine, in goes the money. Another says African relief. Ditto. Donkey sanctuary? You got it. But one of them wants his twenty mil to go to Afghanistan Veterans Aid. At which point, Felks just fixes him with a stare to freeze the Humber. 'Choose again. Anything but that'. So now, on top of it all, we're faced with the possibility these guys are Islamic terrorists, and Homeland Security predictably goes nuts".

Scully had been treading water. It was a huge and horizonless sea, undeniably breathtaking in how well it held her attention. Even now, as he spoke on, Doggett was mystified.

"There was a lot of other things about it that pointed to it being terrorists. For instance, they spent more in these crazy studio bribes than Universal actually paid them for the fake picture. They wanted no cut of the box-office or DVD sales. Explain that, Agents. Wiser heads than me, like Monica here, have watched the thing and reckoned it's some kinda allegory for religion overthrowing the West-"

"I'd actually say religion saving the West", said Reyes.

Mulder fixed them with a business-like gaze. "Has anyone analysed the movie for subliminal messages, flash-cuts, mesmeric sound editing? In 1981, the Stasi experimented with a black-and-white propaganda film featuring a thunder storm, the perfect visual cover for deep-cognitive programming".

"I've watched through the movie a couple of times", Reyes flickered her brilliant eyes. "Every kind of CIA and NSA analyst has seen the picture frame-by-frame, and there's nothing. If 'The Tulpa' represents a threat, it's ideological".

Now Doggett creased his leathery eyes. "Monica, why don't you tell these good agents how the caper got you mixed up?"

Reyes pouted, she spoke adroitly. The matter was deep and spiritual, but there was no shame in taking it head-on. "Since I joined the Bureau, all the other agents saw how I was -emotional, empathetic to the thieves and felons we tracked. Not sensitive -I had no trouble pulling a gun or putting myself some place tough. Maybe it would have spelled trouble if a Bureau chief ever found out, but it went on too long. When eventually they did discover me, they looked at my rap sheet and figured they could still use me. I was sent to the Berkley field office, working all the 'nik communities, what once would have been called left-wing, as if that was ever a bad thing. They wanted me to work inside alternative lifestyles, get a bead on drugs, radical activists, dangerous political lobbies.

"The strip where I hung out was full of healthfood cafes and community surgeries, free legal offices, graffiti art studios. But there were also the big offices of dot com companies that'd gone from ethical hipster bedroom projects to household names. Actually? I guess I stopped a dozen industrial protests that would have cost the government a few thousand but would've cost the hipsters twenty year sentences. Over five years, I practically became a member of Greenpeace.

"So when my chief told me to break my cover, I guessed it must be something big. In the middle of all the coffee shops and free drop-in centres, you had the glass-fronted offices of Bebop Games. Have any of you heard of a series of computer games called 'Deeds of the First Men'?"

It seemed to Scully that of the three of them, at least someone should have put their hand up and said, 'I have a nephew who's crazy about video games'. But apparently, the FBI was increasingly the domain of people with no family. Solitary and defeated people.

"It's the second biggest computer game franchise in the world. They guy who runs it, Andrew Zelzer? Explained to me that they got big by taking their time developing their games. They tried to appeal to non-traditional gamers, and going after public popularity instead of critical approval. Above all, their games are about making these -vast worlds to explore, the equivalent of forty miles in the real world.

"Walking into their offices in American Canyon was weird and atmospheric. All around were these wall-size prints of frontiersmen walking beneath sunny glades, so -lush and delicate in the light- shafts. Zelzer talked to me about the hype concerning Deeds of the First Men VI, how he'd been pretty confident it would live up to the online buzz".

Mulder smiled a little. "My bar tender knows about computer games. I remember he was complaining that DFM VI was taking so long to reach the shops. I think he just resented having to get a life".

Said Reyes, "The release date of the new game had to be put back two years. It was a case of corporate sabotage. Zelzer took me through to a hospitality lounge where there was a TV double the size of my apartment walls. Edged in through the screen doors was a sack truck loaded with cases of this computer game, which had turned out to be un-sellable because of the glitch. He took one and loaded it on the console. Told me to spend a few hours playing and soon enough I'd see what the problem was. Originally, the game was meant to be about some bandits preying on peasant villages. What they actually got -"

The other agents looked at her intently. Monica withdrew inside herself, sonorous eyes remaining. "The opening cut-scene was like a movie. It reminded me of Tree of Life. Through the eyes of a child, you watched all the life going by at your parent's farm. Sunlight and trees like characters in themselves. All the time in the world to watch the animals goofing. Good times, tranquil times.

"A passing trader stops by and offers to take the family farm into a conglomeration. Things change subtly -but absolutely. You see the surrounding land get bought up while the steady pace of your own little farm keeps on. Rich people in capes and carriages bluster past the picket fence, and all the peace goes. You watch your father getting older, having to work twice as hard. As he rows with your mother, you climb up on the roof and stare across at the newly-built city, and I guess, 'ominous' isn't the word for it.

"'Set your character'. Next there's a screen where a completely ambient figure appears and the player has to set each characteristic. Male or female. Size, weight, bone structure. And the level of detail you could go into designing the head was deep. Shading, growing or shrinking the jaw, eyes, nose. It was millimetre by millimetre. If you were a good enough artist, you could recreate anyone. I guess because I'm a creative type, I spent longer than I should have trying to make a close enough copy of me. I even got out my pocket mirror to try and get my mouth right.

"I was pretty happy. I clicked, 'OK' to proceed with the game?

"The character who appeared in the fields at the city edge wasn't me. She wasn't what I'd just spent half an hour perfecting. But that wasn't all. I went to the city. Whenever I came within a metre of any of the people, a prompt appeared above their heads for us to have a conversation. They said things to me, friendly or challenging, things that were clearly meant to start missions or proceed the game. But in reply, I could only say one thing. In a completely cool voice, with a -weird authority you probably shouldn't hear from someone so beautiful, 'Moderate your greed and laziness or perish'".

Blinking and flexing their hands, the agents absorbed this. It was hard to absorb what happened next, however. Reyes slid out onto the restaurant table a high-res print-out of the girl who'd been hacked inside the computer game. In turn, Doggett placed next to it a black-and-white screen-grab of the central character from 'The Tulpa'.

They were one and the same, also one and the same as the girl who'd risen from Elvira Hoek's hospital bed. Mulder looked boyishly, selflessly fascinated.

For Scully; a new layer of darkness. The computer game girl. The Tulpa. Both wore an elaborate silver hair clip, a symbol and motto she recognised at once. An Omega sign and Ankh combined, and that pouting concept 'no flags'. The window sticker from the abandoned car the night of the saucer. Into her deep-matte nightmare of a life, a fresh cause for disarray.

"The hairclip. What's the significance there?"

Doggett shrugged and netted his cowboy fingers. "Already we've seen it as graffiti in half a dozen cities. We gotta figure, if there's a symbol for the next big religious revolution, this is it. With the Tulpa and DFM VI, they've been caught in the nick o' time. But they're strong. They're iconoclastic and aiming at middle-America politicos, culture-vultures, goths, hipsters. Washington just thinks if they carry on proliferating into the mainstream media, there's all hell comin'".

'There is Hell coming', Scully's tortured thoughts confirmed.

xxx

Following several hours, Kyle's eyes acclimatised to the whiteness of the saucer hull and the intensity of the floodlights; it was only then, ironically, that he grew too weary to continue. Beneath the rivets, there was still something weirdly solid and impenetrable about the structure. Pulling clear an entire four-by-five plate, he was confronted with a seamless white subdermal of something very much like polarised platinum. In his mind, he pictured it as the web-shaped anti-crush struts you sometimes got on fancy modern jets and minisubs. Then as he un-riveted the next plate along, a big surprise happened. Beneath the current layer, there was still more rivets, a dense alternate pattern.

The saucer was a Russian doll of ever-decreasing hull-plates, all masterfully fastened with thick, old-fashioned rivets. Which made no sense. Did Sam Ross' little cult really have so little money that they couldn't afford thicker, more durable metal and fancy welding? Presumably the saucer had to stand up to damn stressful g-forces and changes of inertia, none of which this rivets-constructed hull could possibly endure. It also hit on the question, if the bulk of the saucer skin consisted of so many thin, riveted layers, why not simply burn it away with a high-temp blowtorch?

Unless, of course, there were alien occupants inside the saucer, and they demanded all this delicate work as a kind of consecration. Kyle carefully considered scooping up a little Martian and dragging him past the goons as a human shield.

Across the resplendent surface, maybe twenty feet or a hundred degrees, Fredericks was fully absorbed in his own de-riveting. Against the mesmeric nature of the work and the tiredness, he was definitely doing well; there was a steely look in his eyes, forever. Increasingly, though, he was easing up, pulling his body clear from the rivet-releaser. He hung back on his knees and stared with a raw expression at the floodlights.

"It's hot as hell in here".

Kyle glanced up and simpered. It wasn't hot. If anything, he felt the comfortable side of cold. Again, it was pretty obvious that the radiation emitted by the saucer would royally screw-up every square inch of their bodies, and Fredericks was simply the first one to feel it.

A coy, nothing-left-to-lose grin powered up. Kyle had always promised himself that if ever he got cancer, rather than the radiation-therapy, he'd simply go for death-by-pimp, or maybe go to the biker den off the bypass and try to steal one of their Hogs, just for kicks, just for the sledgehammer death they'd administer as the sun went down.

Hot? No, but the swollen heaviness in his eyes told that it would simply be impossible to carry on working before he'd got some sleep. And it wasn't like the strategy Fredericks had found for combatting his phantom heatstroke: keeping his knees on the ground, he curled his torso down and laid his forehead against what he perceived to be the coolness of the saucer hull. The side-effect, that he seemed to be religiously submitting to it, was pure Fredericks.

Thick army boots spread across the hull and the guys were dragged away to rest. Along the tactile industrial floor, Kyle's brain started to shut down, except for keeping an eye on the men's guns and figuring how easy it might be to grab one, analysing their dour expressions and figuring how easy it might be to administer a hustle. Through the translucent, sand-tinted transfer bridge, they were eventually delivered back to their bale room cell, Kyle falling asleep without any conscious effort.

He woke an indeterminate time later, though he guessed about twenty minutes. Hell if his bladder wasn't nagging him like a boss. At this point, however, the dynamic of the captured industrial plant had turned oddly bohemian. None of the milling troops or sentries moved to beat him back, even if he was still unable to move a single metre without a dozen pairs of eyes tracking him hawk-like. Surprisingly, however, he was free to make his own way to the washroom alongside the mesh-covered forklift pens, where years gone by, he'd gone to smoke and get high on the smelting odor. Urinating, not bothering to flush, he nonetheless luxuriated with the liquid-soap, experimented with using it to re-set several strands of loose hair.

A guard loomed around at the door. Approaching, not quite being allowed to pass, Kyle paused and hicced out a silent laugh, something so steady and certain that the bigger man had no juncture to get angry, only feel tacitly insulted. Back out beneath the dying desert of floodlights, it was a gentle, keep-on-truckin' stroll. Back to the cell? A blackbird had flown inside because none of the military idiots knew to dim the lights as they opened and closed the bays. Maybe the guy knew he was trapped, maybe he didn't care. Up around the fat old rafters, he seemed happy to flap his wings wide, content always with the illusion of flying free.

Fredericks was awake.

"Beneath the hull plates, there's just more and more layers of riveted joins".

"I know", said Kyle.

"Why not just have a single layer of thick hull-plates?"

"I doubt we'll ever know".

"It could be for just this reason", Fredericks said keenly. "The aliens or cult members, they know that the military will be scared to damage whatever's inside, and so they've made it like this on purpose, so it'll be time-consuming to de-rivet -while they formulate a plan to re-take the saucer".

Kyle lay back on the cold, terracotta floor, his Sicko jacket acting as a pretty comfortable pillow. "And what makes you think that those liberating guys will see us as any different to these army c-?"

Said Fredericks, semi-fiercely, "Because Sam Ross will've told them who we are".

Kyle's bitter smile. He could almost see it on his own face. 'Us and them' -in tough times people believed it more than ever. And maybe there was no shame in disbelieving evil and greed could perpetuate among regular folks in the street less than in the government or among tyrant employers. But you had to know that it was hard-wired into them anyhow. You get lazy to preserve your energy, you get grandiose ideas to give you a philosophical foothold. God bless evolution.

"How many layers do you think the Saucer has?", Fredericks heard his ponderous tone and forced it to become more edgy. "I mean, do you think they'll make us disassemble all of it, or just the bits with difficult rivets?"

"The reverb on the thing feels kinda tangy, like it could be more fragile inside. I dunno".

Fredericks said, "What do you think is inside? I mean, maybe if it's an alien, and he's alive, he'll vouch for us?"

Sardonic, "Maybe once we're inside, we can claim diplomatic immunity".

The crumpled ginger man didn't really laugh. He darted his eyes across an old-tho-well-painted lectern that had been placed upside down in a corner. It was daylight outside: somehow this was clearly discernable. There was something to be said for still being allowed to know day from night.

"Listen, I've been -brooding on this thing. If it gets to the point where they realise they only need one man to do the job, or -if there's some kind of trouble, and one of us is killed. Don't blame yourself if it's me".

And with gratitude, Kyle picked out almost all of the words, heard the rough nature of Frederick's register. Admittedly, he liked the part 'if there's some kind of trouble', thinking - trouble instigated by me. To shut down this whole circle o' hell.

Time wasn't pressing and he no longer felt as tired. He stared at the stone ceiling, not once blinking his dry eyes. Talk like someone toeing the line in a dream, then, "I think I'll see if they'll let me go to my locker and get some magazines. Maybe my glove and mitt. There's no point worrying 'bout any of this. Less in letting them see you're worried".

Which he wasn't. Which he never would be. He walked freely; the break-pattern siren blasted to nothing and no-one, the crossing beacons flashed with their pretty noises all killed. Near the junction of Warehouse Two, the tub of anti-rodent pellets had been tipped over in some kind of micro-scuffle. Up in the rafters, no sign of the bird.

In an ever-quieter section of the workshop, though still within eyeshot of at least four goons, he paused next to the scrap conveyor. Here, it had always been tempting for Kyle to snap off some of the cheap magic eyes that controlled the flow. Today, he did it. Interestingly, they were each controlled by their own little pen-light batteries, rather than the mains. As he rotated round a dozen in his hand, they cast dizzy constellations on the corrugated roof. But eventually he tired of this and threw each one into a dark corner. All except one, which he kept in his palm like the bullet with his name on.

At his locker, he removed some copies of Sports Illustrated and Maxim, and removed himself to the little bench outside the First Aider cabin. He read about the best baseball strikes of the season so far, and as usual imagined how satisfying it would be if, say, Miguel Cabrera's best swing connected with the head of Janus Nysor or some other c-.

There was a clear line of sight across to the distant gangways either side of the UFO. Kyle observed the leader of the goons absorbed in the last dregs of a cigarette, smoking in such a way that looked totally without character. Though goon lieutenants and goon logistical men passed by constantly, he was a man alone.

Smiling waxily, satanically, Kyle fingered out the magic eye and aimed it across the fifty or sixty metres to where the Smoking Man stood. Surprisingly, the beam of light actually made it that far, creating a tiny red speck across his heart. It looked just like a sniper's bead; Kyle smiled from ear to ear. He smiled at the prospect of the man's dull panic when he noticed.

He did notice, looked at it with interest, but didn't panic once. There was no knotting of the brow, just a mild consternation of his temples and weak mouth. Even if it was deadly, it was still only a nine-to-five problem in his above-human-scale conspiracy; he clearly believed that death and pain meant nothing in the scheme of things. The source of the red dot, he identified, and no more than glanced into the face of the reclining plant worker before starting to walk, roughly keeping the smudge of light across his body.

"I bet if I'd aimed that at one of your soldier-boys, they'd have shot me on sight".

Said the Smoking Man, "No. You're quite safe until I say otherwise. You are important to us. One thing that can be relied on is the willingness of the Western World to let someone else do their manual work".

"Why don't you save that commie talk for Fredericks?"

"Very well".

A swipe of the head from Kyle, a sickly smile. "It tells me one thing, anyhow".

A fresh cigarette was tapped out of the old b-'s pack. It was casually lighted, dragged on, then swept up in several long beats before eventually a reply came, "And what would that be?"

"You don't carry a gun yourself".

"If you found a way to kill me", said the Smoking Man keenly, "you might be able to draw a last breath before those soldiers killed you in turn".

"And you'd be OK with that?"

"Of course. Everyone living in this century, in this corner of the globe, is wholly expendable. One should care only about proving the sacrifices we've made have been -tactically solid".

Smiling at the epoch-melodrama, Kyle tried a different tack. He nodded up at the pale, greenish daylight ebbing at the high slats. "Looks like a pretty pleasant day out there. Maybe Freddo and me could take a walk in the fresh air? Might make us work harder?"

"I think not", said the Smoking Man.

Continuing his gambits, "Fredericks thinks there's people en route to retake the saucer, that's why you're hurrying us along. Reckon I know the truth. The thing has no blackbox, no transponder, otherwise they'd be here already. So how else do you protect your fleet of flying saucers? You rig each one up with booby traps for when Earthman gets his hands-on".

"You're correct", the Smoking Man fixed him with a chilly stare. "Traditionally, the craft are either destroyed at a trace-level upon impact with the Earth, or within a few hours of the disassembly process beginning".

To show he wasn't daunted or afraid, Kyle grinned.

The Smoking Man became absorbed in his Morley.

And a stranger figure there'd never been. You can tell the mold which most people are popped from. That guy was born skinny. This guy was born average-build, that guy was fat. What type of man old Smokey was -a mystery swallowed whole in the century-long mists of time. Sometimes his suit seemed a size too big for him, sometimes a size too small. Chain-smoking had filled his grey face with lines, but his posture had stayed remarkably solid; when he slouched, it was because he was some kind of relaxed, big-time iconoclast - rather than the gaunt old cancer-bait he should be.

Kyle pretended to look in completely the opposite direction while expertly scrutinising his slave-master. "You know, you can tell a lot about a man by the way he smokes".

"Tell me", said the other, indulgently.

"A guy gets physically addicted to something, he shows it. You're not addicted. A guy takes up smoking as something to concentrate on, something to carry him away. Maybe that's it. But hell if you haven't been smoking for a long time. Plus, if you had a wife, kids, they'd be griefing you to give it up. I'm guessing you lost someone, a long way back. Fifties? Sixties?"

"Quite the amateur psychologist", the Smoking Man blinked, and was ambient. "What makes you believe I'm not exactly what I seem on the surface -a shadowy conspirator, grappling with the future fate of the world?"

Kyle smiled incredulously. "Really, the world? In this world you've only got deluded geeks or fool romantics. There's no one else, brother. At least you and me know it".

"The human race will prevail", stated the Smoking Man.

Wan, gallows-cheer manifested in a smile, Kyle's eyes showed real emotion -almost.

Said the older man, "About my smoking. You're missing the most obvious explanation of all".

"Which is?"

"You guessed, wisely, that I'm no addict. Perhaps I smoke by means of a distinguishing feature, a recognisable trademark in the very exclusive societies I move through. Perhaps, in the course of the conspiracy that I represent, we long ago found a cure for cancer, meaning I can smoke with impunity. To all things there's a 'perhaps'. Perhaps you should carry on with your work and be grateful. Or perhaps you'd simply prefer to -die as an animal, like everyone else?"

Kyle slowly removed himself to the work area once more. As he passed the high racks, the huge robotic scanners, he also licked his lips at the thought of such a sprawling new world of power.

xxx

"Hey, Scully. Sleep well, or were the cogs in your brain turning as hard as mine?"

Mulder angled his tall frame over the driver's seat and, chivalrously, creaked open the door for her.

"I slept well", Scully half-truthed of the strange night.

It was her practice to read the Bible for half an hour before falling asleep. Usually she read the New Testament, but last night had doted on Genesis and Revelation, hunting hard for all the weirdest and most cryptic passages that might set a precedence for this latest direction in her life.

The trouble? While imaginative and satisfying, a lot of the more blatantly-mysterious references were either willfully profound or else laden with Gnosticism, something which Scully found far too depressing to deal with. The Tree of Knowledge. The Book of Job. What use was a religion that had only the bluntest suffering at its heart, unless the whole world was a knife-edge of sorrow and grief?

You resist it. The idea of a psychological conspiracy.

Her Dad's old Navy watch. She'd always been fascinated that it had a rotatable bezel with seven hours highlighted bright red, the idea being that if you woke in the middle of your sleep period, whether day or night, your semi-conscious brain would know that you were still following orders, striving for the minimum amount of rest that humans need. No laziness even in sleep. Faith in the system.

Except now she'd grown to associate those deep red hours entirely with the UFO that had drifted above her house. Nothing more, nothing less.

"What Reyes and Doggett said, we shouldn't let it distract us; there's still too much to investigate at the school and the Hoek household".

"I quite agree", Mulder brushed his lips with the back of his hand, then lolled his head, ever more relaxed. "We definitely need to ingratiate ourselves, get an idea of Elvira's social circles. Climb inside her brain, see what secrets carried her through this life".

They drove across the scant intersections where rock funneled against rock, occasionally marked by compound gates, a shrugging drumblast tree. Clearing a long loop, the lanes were so stark as to be nothing except hip-level tufts of moonweed plus ruddy green hedgerows, all snaked together by red-leafed branches and brown shadow. It was single-track, too; the way they only needed to pull in once for an oncoming vehicle was a statistical coup. They passed from recess lanes onto the main bypass, barely twenty minutes from the high school, though it felt like the beginning of an epic trip.

Scully felt her shoulders wane from tension level red to tension level amber. About the highly-directed rising sun, there was something primal, reassuring, full of intensity.

By way of a getting-to-know-you, Mulder said, "So why'd you join the Bureau, Scully?"

The truth, "I'd always had an interest in medicine. During my training at UMCP, I got to realise how biology, pathology, human physiology permeates everything -not least of which the very biggest criminal investigations. I figured it would be a pretty useful career, and satisfying".

Gently, as he fingered out his healthfood seeds, "Has it worked out that way?"

"I guess for the most part. There are days when I feel buried, but everyone feels that way. Who am I to complain?"

Mulder's eyes twinkled charmingly. "You're well-placed, Scully. Look at the way this world's going. Corporate lobbying over chemical patents, biological terrorism, antibiotics as the number one source of international revenue. The future's gonna be all about medicine".

True enough, she mused. Amazing, though, that a man who chased Bigfoot and things occult could also have such a pragmatic view of society.

"What about you? What called you to the FBI?"

He shrugged. "You know how it is. When you're a kid, you dream of having a badge and gun. I wanted something more exciting than CHiPs but less dangerous than Miami Vice. Gotta be the Feds, right?"

"You look the part, anyhow, the way you owned the high school questioning yesterday".

"Well, anyone can have a badge and a gun", Mulder glanced right. "Though I guess in your case, you wanted something more exciting than Dr House but less dangerous than Quincy M.E?".

Scully felt bold. Questions-on-questions; a strange little part of her suggested it was like the first few volleys of a love-affair. But she knew of old, even if it was -love affairs are always a mistake. Speaking up, to at least show she wasn't afraid, "Has anyone ever told you, Mulder, you probably watch too much TV?"

"So what do you fall asleep to? Medical reports?"

"Pretty much. I don't deny I'm a crazy workaholic. I can't remember the last time I even switched on my TV. I guess next year I'll watch the USS Cygnus launch, but that's about all".

"You're kidding me?"

"Not at all".

"Come on, Scully, you're joking, right?"

"I am not".

"What about sports? Who's your team?"

Scully thought hard. "My brothers support the Vancouver Canucks. I guess I'll put that on my resume, too. I played lacrosse at college and university, enjoyed it -but I've got two or three dents in my shins to warn me never to play again".

"Fink the Whale, eh?", japed Mulder. "I'll try not to hold that against you. What do your brothers do?"

Breathing steadily, "Geoffrey sells hunting equipment in Richmond. My younger brother Mark has a different job every week. My sister runs a new age shop in Harrisonberg, selling healing crystals, josh sticks, holistic manuals, that type of thing".

"You believe in any of that stuff?"

Inwardly, Scully chewed it over -calling new age paraphernalia 'that stuff', as if it had any less validity than crusading the paranormal. Fox Mulder was a man of pretty deep dichotomies.

"I do not. What about you? Do you have much of a family, Mulder?"

He stared at the sun in the horizon. "Got an old man who's literally that. The ripe old age of 100. My mom is a sprightly 88. He was a psychologist on a retained military contract all his life. My mom was a nurse, later a data-curator at the National Cancer Research Centre".

"Those are some pretty high-powered jobs. From 'Fox' I would've have assumed they were coffee shop bohemians".

Snug in the passenger seat, Mulder flexed his neck and smiled. "Getting grief for being called 'Fox' was always the least of my worries. But it wasn't 'A Boy Named Sue' kind of thing -my Mom applied for a job as a nurse at a New Mexico airbase in the fifties. My Father was there giving the applicants psychometric tests, psychological screening, that kinda thing. When it came my Mom's turn to take a Rorschach test, she had trouble spitting out what she saw -she'd read somewhere that if you only ever saw animals, it revealed you had a personality that was far too childish. Yet, that day, there was just no denying it. Sheet after sheet, all she saw was bears, and geese, and hogs, and try as she might to make something up, she just couldn't do it. So, my Father heard this huge list of animals and figured out what was bugging her. When my Mom got too embarrassed to continue, he looked over at the ink-blot himself and prompted her, 'Fox?' -they both started to laugh. The rest, I guess, is history".

"That's an old fashioned romance", Scully tipped her head appreciatively.

Mulder grinned. "Ah, maybe. I'm just glad the same thing didn't happen with the lady psychiatrist who gave me my FBI Rorschach, otherwise I'd have a son called 'Whisky Bottle' and a daughter called Elle MacPherson".

They drove steadily in the gold sunrise, up into a newish tract of freeway. Having finished uploading the highschool CCTV for a close analysis by Washington, they had a state-regulated six hours to return the hard drive to the principal's office and have it signed back in. It made sense to get this duty out of the way before pursuing their interview with Mr and Mrs Hoek. Pulling in to the crazily wide track that ran the edge of the football field, Scully wooed herself back into the mode of high-power FBI agent, even though the Ethan Hawke / Julie Delpy overtones filled the car now like every kind of brainwashed oblivion. She pushed the car door open with her fingers. Stepping free, she fought the urge to tug down the back of her suit jacket, the most blatant sign that she was ashamed of her fatness. Also, that she'd retained in her stomach a whole three slices of white bread was a symptom of profound complacency.

"Good Morning, Agent Scully", said Thinnes sheepishly.

"Good Morning, Sir" -ignore the other religious souls wherever possible.

They neared the corridor of Principal Fuente's office; there were plenty of thick wooden doors and reflective panes to haunt her as she hauled each handle. She caught sight of her dour expression. Perhaps, in reality, the anorexia was nothing, just a minor symptom. Perhaps it was no more than a stupid, squirming reaction to that damned sour face. Elle Macpherson -Scully knew she could never smile like that in a thousand years. She could never match Macpherson's casual, un-neurotic twinkle. Even when the photoshoot was artistic, demure, reposed.

Out in the swelling courtyard, it was now overcast. As with the powerlines next to her apartment, much buzzing followed the slightest change in temperature. At a long circuit of not-quite deathrow wire fences, pupils meandered and chatted quite aimlessly.

"Are there any leads on Elvira?"

Scully took in the glistening eyes of a very distinguished-looking seventeen year-old. Notably, he had an arm missing, his left, just below the shoulder. The absence, however, was almost nondescript, offset by his tall-collar body-warmer and the way his remaining arm grasped a small backpack, the pose of school children everywhere.

Mulder said, "Cops and FBI agents always tell you, 'We're following a number of leads', but in this case we really are".

The boy nodded intently. Scully tried and failed to analyse his rolling accent. "What's your gut instinct? Is she alive?"

The agents regarded each other. Mulder winced and thought about the matter for some time. "Well I don't see why she wouldn't be. Are you a friend of Elvira's?"

"A close friend", he said confidently.

"Boyfriend? Ex-boyfriend?"

"Platonic", he smiled. His right hand gestured. The naked stump of his shoulder jerked poignantly.

Mulder nodded back his head in solidarity, "Platonic friendships with girls -I remember it; the curse of any high-school dating scene".

"It's not an issue for me", the boy said affably. "People are in too much of rush to fall in love, don't you think?"

"Did Elvira have many boyfriends?", wondered Scully.

The boy scratched his style-free hair. "Maybe one or two. She showed restraint".

"Come on", Mulder smiled. "Dating guys, looking for love, that's not such a bad thing".

"It depends-", the boy thought for a moment, "-on what you think the ultimate purpose of love is, and whether it has any real connection with life".

The agents fell silent. Mulder's eventual wisecrack was aimed ninety percent at Scully, "The purpose of love. Maybe something to entertain you if you don't like watching TV".

She creased her mouth in a good-natured grimace. It was all valuable thinking time; there was something, not necessarily sinister, but certainly leading about the boy. "How often did you see Elvira socially?"

"I visited her house very often. I took her DVDs which I thought she'd like. She was always trying to set me up with her friends, but I had no time for that. We were both about art class. Elvira reveled in colours, while I always fooled around with high concepts -I envied that, the bright, direct mindset. Anyway, everyone knows we were just friends -there's no secret in that. After she ran away from the hospital, I was one of the people Principal Fuente took out of class. He said that if I was upset and needed to take time out of school, that would be fine. I'd been planning to go and visit her parents tonight. Try to give them comfort".

Quickly, Mulder seized on this. "We were just heading over to the Hoek residence ourselves. You know, you could tag along with us if you want? We were going to interview Elvira's mom and dad separately, so I guess it'd be pleasant if they each had someone they knew to talk to while Scully and I are interviewing the other".

Scully tried to be professional and keep from glaring at her partner. It was damn unorthodox, though, to bring a member of the public along to a questioning, even if he was just going to hang around in the background as moral support.

She could only assume Mulder saw some major new line of investigation in the boy, something which would be exposed as they drove along the freeway together. He started to head towards the car. "So what's your name?"

The boy adopted a theatrical hood voice, "Ya really think I'm going ta squeal to the Feds?"

Mulder smiled. Scully tried to.

"Teddy Holvey. Good to meet you".

"Special Agents Fox Mulder, Dana Scully". Unexpectedly he stopped beside the driver's door and gestured his palms for the keys, "What's say I give you a rest from driving, partner?"

And so, her ribs alive with nervous energy, Scully took the back seat with the amputee boy. Teddy looked from the window -a calm beat of three seconds. He looked ahead through the silver spread of the front seats, another three seconds. He glanced at her, shrugged his lips, looked at his knees -three seconds, three seconds.

Mulder slung the steering wheel left and sped away. "You not gonna lose any cred with your homies, riding in a 5-O wagon?"

"You're hardly the police", said Teddy thoughtfully. "I always thought of the FBI as more of a clinical investigative unit than a gung-ho enforcement squad. Am I right?"

Said Scully, as she tried and tried to analyse the accent -Slavic or Eastern?- "It's good of you to say so, Teddy. What're you thinking of doing for a career?"

Blinking, "I have a massive interest in particle physics and trace radiation. Have you ever heard of Discrete Synaphotonic Funneling?"

Mulder peered into the rear-view mirror, eyes sedate and probing both at once. "Just remind me".

"It's strictly theoretical, but there's a some interesting studies going on at CERN and a couple of the smaller international research units. It's the study of the discrete charges given off by the synapses of the brain and the nerve-endings, the way they extend beyond the physical body. I started to study it myself, because -guess why".

He rotated his shoulder and proffered his stump. He said, in a steady voice, "They believe that one day they might be able to have the synaphotonic charges interact with other forms of radiation, perhaps eventually leading to something on the macro scale. Condensed energy streams, hard-light diffusion; with the help of particle emitters, a very scientific form of telekinesis in unison with the 'phantom arm' phenomenon".

Scully was fascinated, if only she could give the theory any kind of credence. "I understand the principals involved, but -you're talking about energy charges that are ten-to-the-power-of-a-thousand beyond anything that can exist outside our bodies. I guess it would be easier than trying to pin down a quantum particle, but that's not saying much".

Teddy, he replied calmly. "I didn't say it would be easy".

It was, at any rate, enough to keep Scully from reacting as Mulder deliberately missed the two narrow offshoots which might have carried them to the Hoek residence. Enough information buzzed in the air, buzzed everywhere, to keep each of them relaxed and silent.

Scully looked at the boy's backpack. In her day, it had still been the fashion in some quarters to decorate your bag with correction fluid, the names of Pearl Jam or Sonic Youth. Curiously, Teddy had used hard-wearing enamel to create a large and elaborate piece of art. Through repeated glances, she took it to be the logo of the 2012 British Olympics. Just cracked rectangles of primary colour, each shard amazingly intricate.

Mulder said, "How'd you come by the lost arm in the first place, Teddy?"

"That's a long story", he said quietly. "It was just an accident when I was a child".

Well. While it was a still an answer, it was the first time Teddy hadn't given such a luminous reply.

Scully blinked. "You'll have to forgive us, Teddy. It's a byproduct of our training that we don't see when we're being obtrusive".

This self-aware analysis made the boy's eyes spark. "When I was three years old, I was visiting the Murray Hills theme park with my mother, father, two older brothers, not long since we'd first arrived from Romania, Green Carded by my father's job at the State Department. It was a second-rate theme park, and none of us were really happy. I became separated from the others, but was too much of a fool to even notice or care; you know how it is. I remember I had a yellow balloon. It was drifting, and drifting. I wondered on to a miniature train track and became very interested in the thick iron plates laid in the gritty earth. Anyway, it was only a miniature train but it still managed to do this. All the doctors and specialists said it was a miracle that a small boy could survive such an accident".

A wisecrack from the driver, "Thomas the Tank Engine can be a son-of-a-bitch".

"What about school-life?", Scully asked in a fascinated voice. "You seem to be thriving now. It must have been hard".

Teddy Holvey was aloof. "I suffered from depression for a short while. But when you accept your troubles from second-to-second, it becomes easy".

His eyes flicked a low, at a furtive angle through the window. He was noticing that they were no longer taking even the most circuitous route to the Hoek household. Scully also found it hard to figure where they might eventually double back or dovetail, this between staring at the intricate shard-designs of the boy's graffitied backpack.

By now the sunlight had standardised into dark-brown shadows. The same in the undergrowth, the same on the far horizon. In three hours time, just the same. In four, five.

Mulder asked, "What about Elvira? As a person, would you say she was pretty compassionate, intrapersonally aware?"

The boy stared at the back of the headrest with a look of well-met hubris. "You're a psychologist, aren't you, Agent Mulder? Talking in nuanced terms to an illicit a response that's equally telling and revelatory?"

On the wheel, Mulder's hands hardly looked nervous. "What Agent Scully said, we're obtrusive. But, yeah. I spent time as a criminal psychology hack".

Scully spoke steadily, "I think what we'd like to know most -you've obviously lived quite a life; it's given you a unique way of looking at things. Did Elvira think like that, too?"

"You're asking if she was an outsider. No. Elvira was the right side of a vibrant, socially-integrated high-school girl. She's my best friend, but there's very little to make of that. It is what it is".

Now Mulder's eyes almost became sparky. "I always thought you should make all the friends you can in this life".

"I disagree. I could be alone for a million years. It's the most natural thing in the world".

The space between them now seemed very tight, far too oxidized. It was all Scully could do not to fidget her hands; she could not think, certainly, about the way her own life-outlook overlapped with this -cult member? Political zealot? Or at least, the villain of the piece, heavily surveilled by Mulder's tactically-smiling eyes.

"You believe it's possible that I had something to do with the disappearance of Elvira", concluded Teddy. "I'd be happy to take a lie-detector".

Off-handedly, "A cool customer like you? You could fool a lie-detector calibrated to detect dust on the home base of Yankee's stadium".

Scully glowered and withdrew into herself. The others were rushing ahead of her. Rushing with, "So, here we have a problem, Agent Mulder -if I was guilty of something, now that I know your suspicions, I'd simply redouble my care and secrecy".

"You really think that'd work?"

The boy smiled ambiently. "Since we're having such an arch conversation, apparently brutally honest, I'll go one further. If you openly ask me, without guile and with a completely open mind -what I had to do with Elvira rising from her convalescent bed, then I'll tell you the absolute truth".

A dark, ambivalent smile tilted on Mulder's face. It faded, leaving only trace darkness and no ambivalence at all. "So give it up, Teddy. You're the best lead we've got, and however you fit into this thing, you know we'll respect it. Right, Scully?"

Scully roused slightly. It was a mistake, always, to indulge Id-heavy, Munchauseny suspects like Teddy. "Yeah, I'll treat the matter impartially".

Now resting his single hand on his thigh, as if it was no more purposeful than the left-side stump, Teddy spoke coolly into Scully's eyes. Evidently, he'd focused on her crucifix. "I prayed for her to heal. No more and no less than that. I'm sure, Agent Scully, you've done just the same".

"Mulder, pull in the car", she said urgently. There'd been some sort of cognitive countdown, a magic-eye puzzle in her mind, which Teddy had been aware of. Staring at the shattered image the boy had painted on his backpack, it was less a matter of what the four fragments represented than the random shape which was at the centre. Random? Scully saw -an Omega symbol combined with an Ankh. All that was missing was the words, 'No Flag'.

She seized the boy's skinny wrist. "Teddy Holvey, I'm arresting you for conspiracy to kidnap and-"

It had seemed inconsequential to worry about his opening the door. Yet somehow he did. He seemed to tumble, roll, disappear through the metal with a glimpse of severely arched spine, tho never once losing control. The agents reacted slowly, but soon took on racing heartrates and moved after him.

On a wedge of open space between farm boundaries, Teddy fled clear into the wilderness. How he ran, sometimes bracing his existing arm, sometimes arching his stump, was impressive. Mulder's limbs were fearless and scissor-like. On the sketchy slants of yellow grass, at this speed, there was a danger of toppling. All were equal to it, as they fought for sanctuary in the packed meadows, the conflux of grazing hills. A very low canopy of tree-weeds, not quite solid wood, offered a chance for obscurity. Where it was possible to think at all in such a pursuit, Teddy recognised this and scrambled beneath the twigs. Mulder followed suit, Scully now a handful of yards behind.

They flowed their racing legs through the mish-mash of dry, woodland debris. Ugly swells of tree roots, bark peelings, badger pits, all of it was relatively easy to skim over. For Scully, relative to the sight of their shoulders dipping over small furrows and basins. When they achingly descended to the edge of the wood, an expanse of sunlight brought out a small valley of short grass. An arena of open ground where Mulder would be free to dash him? No. Into the trees at the other side of the micro-valley. Teddy crabbed his body upwards, apparently a lot less adaptable than Mulder. Except -a simultaneous combination of the laws of criminal luck and underdog prevailing? Perhaps he could run indefinitely.

Scully could only draw a silent breath as her partner brought him down half way up the rise. An awkward tumble caught Teddy on the arc of his amputated arm, bringing a gritty fetching of blood and strained tendons. It didn't effect the boy -from his side, he kicked out and caught Mulder between his shoulder blade and neck. And raced on.

Beyond was a narrow level of grass, picked out and made dramatically short by the sun, dramatic in general by the soccer-style sprinting. Mulder was on the verge of catching Teddy, once, twice, and it would have been comedic if not for the strangulating aura of real life. Impressively, Teddy picked up speed on an overgrown hillock beside a quite modest copse of evergreens. Along the edge, it was straight again - a period of directly-matched chasing, a perpetual twenty feet between them, all twigs breaking like dogs snapping at mad humans. It was heading back down that they hit ankle-length bushes and were forced to wade.

For Scully, here was a clear position from which she could hang loose and get to work using her phone. Each joint in her fingers was filled with strained energy, if only her fingertips had much sensation. She dialed the direct line to the local PD.

"This is Agent Scully of the FBI, badge number 3-3-1-6-1-3", she kept her eyes on the deer-hopping chase, "I need all possible units to converge on the north side of Obeltsville, Highway 19, stand by-"

Keeping the line open, she switched to the maps program of her phone and struggled to find any lanes or adjacent highways that might make a head-off point. There was one or two, but damn if they had any numbers or names, even when she zoomed.

"Stand by-"

On some dusty earth near an ancient outcrop of trees, Mulder had wrought a decisive takedown, and this time Teddy was far too limp to escape. Scully trotted nearer. She anticipated a sound of a breath being taken and rights being read. It was different -

"You think you're all safe and enigmatic inside your little conspiracy?!", shouted Mulder.

Scully was no psychologist, but she ID'd the venting of neurotic anger, pent up for years. It was -a terrible thing.

"I don't care about secret societies! Keep it! Where is Elvira?!"

A gasping, fizzing Teddy stared up at him as a picture of resilience. His eyes were twin skyscrapers surviving an earthquake. His mouth worked to recoup air and saliva, and that was all. Mulder took the entirety of his weight in a clasp of his collar, shaking and pushing him in awkward rage. When no answer was forthcoming, Mulder fumbled for the set of cuffs that lay in the tiny utility behind his gun holster.

Hell came. A man with a shotgun stepped forward from a line of trees. The unashamedly redneck garb of boilersuit bottoms and tunneled baseball cap suggested he was either a trucker or a farmer. This far from the main highway, a farmer.

"Keep your hands where I can see them. Put the boy down".

Mulder did neither. He continued to snag free his cuffs. "Raise your gun and step back, this is FBI business!"

"I don't see FBI business", said the farmer. The aim on Mulder's head tightened. "I see someone administering a beatdown to a one-armed preppie. And I am sick of you fools using my land for your filthy drug deals".

Scully entered the arena, badge wallet held high. "It's true, sir. We're FBI. Please raise your gun and move away".

A sneer. "Like badges aren't part of the dark arts. I want you to get outta my sight. You two first. The boy second".

Interestingly, no one was majorly surprised when Teddy said in a satisfied tone, "Apotheosis Vector X65-Y; the working class generation shows disproportionate benefit-of-the-doubt to hell teenagers. Civilization falls".

Mulder's usually smooth jaw rippled as he kneaded Teddy's spine low and, in the absence of a conventional wrist-to-wrist cuffing, connected one end to the boy, the other to himself. An uneasy stand-off took hold, the eeriest thing in the world. Scully tried to confront the vice-like demeanor of the farmer. "Sir, this is all under control, but I need you to step back and put your weapon away, right now".

And perhaps the farmer was thinking about doing this. Except that the drama wasn't finished by a long shot. Teddy folded his body around in a strange ballet, even as his single skinny arm was connected fast to Mulder. In a pose that was only slightly more free, the sans-arm section of his torso started to move in a strange rhythm. It was violent. Correspondingly, Mulder's neck and jaw jerked like a high tide.

It took Scully inside three seconds to identify what was happening. Her partner was being punched, in kung-fu close-quarters, by an invisible fist, maybe HG Wells, maybe pure psychic energy.

Roles were reversed as a woozy Mulder fell low. All dynamism now, Teddy plucked free the agent's gun and shot the farmer cleanly through the head with no aiming time. He flicked the barrel towards Scully-

A gun floating in mid-air, aimed at your head. She accepted it. In the meantime, the scant seconds to draw her own sidearm and prepare the chamber paid off; spontaneously, she shot Teddy twice through the collar.

Shock bounced around her mind, for two or three seconds. She recovered, ran to the tangle of bodies, found Mulder's keys and uncuffed him. Teddy's wounds, naturally -non-lethal, even if he was practically a puddle of spasming sweat. He managed to speak as Scully's shaking hands got to work applying pressure. He wheezed out a laugh.

"Your -Agent Mulder -was torturing me. Farmer -interrupted. Mulder shot -him. On the basis of-", he wanted to laugh again, but was just too breathless, "-a teenager who prayed, and decorated his bag with paints!"

From the fields beyond, the fierce wails of PD -yet Scully well-noted how Mulder had all the time in the world to stand and glare at the guiltily hot gun in the grass. As someone who got to grips with sci-fi very quickly, he approached the offending area of space-time beneath Teddy's leaden stump. He slammed his palm around to discover nothing but thin air. Then he looked back at the gun. Somehow it was a safe bet there'd be no prints on the grip. This time not even 'X' shaped prints. Nothing but his own.

xxx

You take a beating, you get delirious, and then life is all about how you recover from it. That you will recover somehow isn't in doubt -life is a prison of either fool-headedness, pain or survival. Around the time Telecom V disposable phones had first hit the Krogers, Kyle had found a boxful at the truckstop on Route One. They were all useless because inches of rain had soaked inside the shipping cartons. Fine, all the same. He got to work xeroxing register receipts on bill paper and set about cashing in the lifeless phones around the local electrical stores. Easy work for his evenings.

Three-quarters of the phones gone, seven hundred dollars up, he hit the Dometron store in the tight backstreets of Front Royal. All the men who worked there were fat. The guy who rumbled Kyle had been fat with a red face, with eyes that smiled directly into hell. It was clear immediately that his hatred of Kyle for trying to hustle their money was strangely nonexistent. But his hatred of Kyle in general, just the look of him, his thinness, his damnably fearless eyes? That was a thing. The nothing-smiled lieutenants dragged him through to a concrete loading bay where the dominant fat man proceeded to beat Kyle with a weird, clinical force.

'I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy', was a phrase often used by Kyle's mother, never more often than when his father was incarcerated. The trouble, Kyle figured -yeah, fine, you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy. Who actually wishes for anything? But the gentle, bored self-centeredness that spoke of finding entertainment wherever you could -he'd seen it in the eyes of the red-faced fat man. He'd grown to respect it, almost, as his lungs were punched shut, as his jaw was broken. Probably the only thing that had saved his nose from getting busted was the fact that it was naturally small and so resistant to catching the bluntness. Only briefly had he worried that he might lose his looks; each oblivion-promoting strike pushed the worry further from his mind, right up until he lost consciousness.

And when he woke, with a mysterious numb feeling, several blocks away, there was still a total disregard for the damage that might have been done to his body. He'd stood upright on legs he could barely feel and walked steadily back to his apartment.

In the twisting loop of small overpass lanes, some hick kids were balking at a smaller, six or seven year old who'd fallen into the shallow storm basin. Alone, and unable to co-ordinate his stubby limbs to climb out, he wept uncontrollably, aware of his sorrow from second to second. Kyle stood and stared for minutes on end. The way it was such a profound urban curveball of pure sadness, hypnotic.

On the curb outside the Arpol District Minimart, the flat-mouthed homeless man was unable to get properly drunk. He sang an over-emotional song which Kyle guessed was something from Les Miserables, but this time just two or three lines from the chorus before he automatically switched to cursing the other residents of the city. Without even being properly drunk, it had come to this, in the undying grainy twilight. Again, the beating-numb Kyle had looked on with empathy. It was a very specific kind of tragedy: if just one person had spoken to the guy between the chorus of his song, and before his cursing started, it would have broken the spell. He'd have been freed.

'One time, when things wuz lookin' bright, I started to whittling on a stick one night, who said, 'Hey, that's dynamite!' - Nobody'.

It the bottom-most hall of his apartment, the young foreign couple were rowing. The husband was getting it in the neck for some perilous mistake, and Kyle had to forgive the guy at once because his bunched-up temples were so utterly twentieth century. Tragedy -at the same time, looking at the wife, her beautiful creme face was so uniquely intelligent. Why couldn't they understand each other? It was the shattering irony of all time, and Kyle stared, mesmerised, in utter sadness.

Through his apartment door, it was too much effort to take his jacket off, get a pitcher of water, do anything except ghost his way down onto the mattress. He became, for a good while -not-quite-unconscious. He felt his eyes were open, so in tune with all the acidic bruises and aching organs that powered up across his body. More than that, the lying, transcendent sadness faded, too.

Because with full consciousness, he remembered that he'd always hated the hick kids who played by the overpass. He remembered he'd always hated the flat-mouthed homeless guy at the minimart. He remembered he'd always hated his Indian neighbours. Only now was the defeated geek dullness fading.

"Listen to it".

Fredericks' body was shutting down -every symptom of major exhaustion except sweating. Kyle dimly wondered about the ratios that were playing on them, was it mainly the slave labour of disassembling the saucer, or the radioactivity seeping into their skin? Sometimes he wondered if there was any radioactivity at all, or was it all psychosomatic?

The ginger man broke from his haunches and walked across the circular rise to where Kyle was working.

"You should get on with it, pal. What we were talking about before? We're getting close to where they're only gonna need one of us".

The tiredness at odds with his mind, somehow, Fredericks said, "We are getting close. Can you hear it?"

"I can hear myself sweating", conceded Kyle.

Fredericks folded to the deck, both knees together, to place an ear on the strange metal plates. "It's real, Kyle! Do you know what this means?"

Why not? Kyle crumpled his body down and laid an ear to the Starship Enterprise.

"I hear approximately jack. But you think there's something in there? Fine. Be my guest. Keep working and maybe we'll both get to see it".

"It's not something you can see with these eyes", promised Fredericks.

"Well then I'll borrow Smokey's", jeered Kyle. "Keep getting those rivets out. Maybe The Prophet or whoever you think is in there will save us".

But the other shook his head profoundly. "No. It's more important that we get free and tell the world".

It was deceptively counter-intuitive, brave, dry, the way Kyle levelled his eyes at the overhead manager's booth. Wasp-chewing soldiers looked down and sneered. The sneering told only of regret that they weren't living in some transcendent void where they could dispose of the two sardonic plant workers in a heartbeat. Dogs, snarling on leads. Always the easiest to hate.

Smiling, "How do you figure we could 'get free'?"

For a moment, Fredericks passed from being a religious zealot back to the sly, regular joe that Kyle had known so long. He jutted his head, then massaged a rag across his face, talking quietly as he went.

"The saucer was blazing with light as they swung it in here, even tho it was clearly powered down. I think whatever these plates are made of, they've got the same qualities as luminous moss. You take away the light, they start to glow. Haven't you noticed, the plate I just discarded? I put it in the shadow of the ship".

Kyle intimated to lean over the edge and spit at the foundations. Just for a second, sure enough, his slanted gaze picked out the chiaroscuroed hull-piece.

Mr Colditz continued, "I think, if you took away all the lights, each section would start to blaze the way those high-atmos UFOs do on Yu-tube. I think they'd shine so powerfully, not one of the soldiers would be able to get a clear bead on our bodies".

"No", Kyle scowled. "Even if they were shining like Antarctic floodlights into a mole's face, by the time we got inside ten feet of the door, they'd just pepper everything and get lucky".

Fredericks picked up a spanner and pretended to think about getting back to work. Which seemed stupid to Kyle. When you had two slaves about to die, it probably made small odds to give them conversation time, just a little. Or at least, there was nothing suspicious about Frederick's variety of hippy going about some last minute soul-searching.

"To start with, we find some way of cutting the power lines. I'm thinking, a claw set beneath a two-by-four, slammed down. All the fuse-levers in the control room will slam shut. After that. we've got an advantage they don't know about. Behind the recycle bins, there -the bits of chipboard covering the walkway into the abandoned factory. It's sealed, and pitch black -they couldn't get power to it if they wanted- and you remember the way it has just one long workspace that leads out beyond the perimeter? We could run, and smash out one of the little half windows, get free through the woods".

Kyle thought about it just as much as he needed to. The plan was a giddy little nerd taking the term 'long-shot' and redefining it into a waking dream. He thought about it and smiled.

"OK. When's it going down, escape-boy?"

Frederick's eyes went scurrilously low as they were joined on deck by a scientist, white coat flapping as he tip-toed over the orange-peeled UFO. He spoke with some regret to the two condemned prisoners; it almost meant something.

"You need to get some sleep, please".

Kyle nodded down at his work. "We're pretty close".

"You are very close. I don't know what The Smoking Man has told you, but this is a momentous situation. The force contained beneath the metal responds and reacts to the minds which enter directly into its field of influence".

"What does that mean?", wondered Fredericks.

"It means you should try to rest, even if merely suggesting that sounds trite at this point. Perhaps meditate. Content yourselves that you're a critical part of a historical event as big as humans have seen".

The scientist had a woollen jumper beneath his lab coat, and a grey military buzzcut that suggested he was a thousand times more of a bad ass than he really was. Either way, for good a minute or two, it was the Fredericks and Dick Professor show, and Kyle couldn't care less.

"Where is the Smoking Man? Are you his second in command?"

Meekly, "He has business in Washington. You didn't think he was some mere journeyman administrator? He's as powerful as most presidents. If he needed a second in command, it certainly wouldn't be me".

"So, what's inside", exhaled Fredericks. "Is it a religious thing?"

Without hesitation. "Yes. How religious depends on your semantics, but yes".

"Which religion?"

In a deadly serious tone, the scientist volunteered, "All of them. Except militant atheism".

The profound dogma in Fredericks' face shone through, exacerbated by the tiredness, kept tight by the need to escape. "There is only one religion. I understand that now. In time, you will, too". Followed by an Arabic prayer that was pleasing on the ears if imposingly un-repeatable by any non-initiate.

The gantry-ladder was wheeled into place. Both of them were aching, but Fredericks' movements were solid. On the tight formica of the ground, they were led away alongside the port-holed maintenance rooms and lockers, now more than ever with the creme floodlights hitting the chipped metal and grainy surfaces. Deep, motionless sights - meaningful because their last hours on Earth were ticking away. Yes, the grainy, prefabricated stone arenas were humble and utilitarian like something from a Middle Eastern state. It meant little to Kyle, though. He was exhausted, but with delirium? Never.

A random soldier stupidly hunched up his body as they passed. Kyle aimed for waspish hate when he said to the man, "Nice machine gun, friend. Ever get worried a ricochet might catch you in the eye?"

It was the same old fat-headed humanity.

His beating at the hands of the Dometron store manager started to heal pretty fast. In just a few short days he was rising in the gold morning light of mid-summer and heading off to work the same as ever. And each day, en route, coming home, there was a new piece of satisfaction to be had.

Near his apartment, the hick kids didn't start playing on the looping overpass until afternoon. And so Kyle had put down twenty dollars in a toy store and bought three really nice little die-cast sports cars, models that would surely appeal to any six or seven year-old anywhere. While the traffic lanes were still completely vacant before rush hour, Kyle idled across to the side lane dividers, thick concrete wedges full of urban grime. The first car he placed on its side at the base of the bulwark, just the get their attention. The second two, using all his brute strength, he wedged deep inside the concrete gap, just six or seven inches from where estate car wing mirrors and artic' steeple-bonnets would be speeding in just two hours time.

All day long at work, he'd had a doughy kind of smile on his face, and no one could figure out why. Sure enough, returning home at dusk, he saw signs of a rubbery conflagration on the road surface, plus an NNPD flag appealing for witnesses. Paying for his groceries at the 9-5 store across the way, he asked the cashier, 'what gives with the crime scene?'

"Those idiot kids", blinked the old fella. "What I hear, one of 'em got flung, got a pulped arm for his trouble. The other had his leg done".

"No one killed?"

"Someone must have been watching over them", said the cashier, intimating God.

"No one deserves it", Kyle fake-agreed.

Night followed day followed night. Kyle's loins gave ghostly taps and pulls with the suggestion of travelling to one of the cathouses in the neighbouring suburbs -only now there were slightly bigger attractions to be had. He went to the sideboard beneath his kitchen sink; emptied and washed out the bottle of 49-cent bleach. He refilled it with Green Blaze Absinthe, then wrapped it with thick shipping paper. At his wardrobe, he pulled on the orange puffa he'd always hated, which he hadn't worn since he was a teenager -but gave the necessary suggestion that he was a frat boy. He donned a hip-hop cap and departed for the Arpol District Minimart.

Of all the late-nite folk swinging by, buying chips and milk, those who drew too near to the edge of the parking lot were subjected to abuse by the flat-mouthed homeless guy. Like one of those miniature sharks you saw in home-store aquariums, he seemed to be perpetually feeling his way around the edge. He cursed merely the eyes of any geeks who approached, in the meantime singing his little song with little or no soul.

"Nice territory you have here", staring laconically into his eyes.

"Maybe the flatness is my home! You can deny a man his home all you want! All you want, and see what happens!"

His tingling legs had moved smoothly towards Kyle. They walked their bodies around in unison, slowly; it was fine -pretending to be drunk was part of the illusion. His beating-damaged muscles certainly added to the effect.

Said Kyle, "Man has to fight all the days of his life, that what you're saying?"

"You're still not far from being that Mexican greaser again, boy".

This was almost breathtaking. Kyle was two generations removed from Mexico, and with as much ambition-heavy Southern blood as anything. He edged forward and upper-cut the homeless man in his gut; it didn't quite land true and produced only a modulating rasp. They tussled with fists and forearms. Beefy legs aimed for Kyle's kidneys, the short-term aim to bring him down in a non-fetal position on the high curb. It almost happened before the homeless man was warded off by a couple of jabs to his emaciated ribcage. Socially-disenfranchised rage in homeless-men is a deceptively subtle thing, however -he rushed Kyle again, almost immediately, punching him in the abdomen.

"Woah!", Kyle grinned slickly, "I'm just wondering around full of fight, friend! You know how it is. Doesn't mean anything that I landed on you!"

Now was a good time to go long-ways and raise his palms for a truce.

"You're finished working for whoremongers!"

"Yes I am", agreed Kyle. "Buddies. Look -!"

He padded away to the metal crash barrier behind which he'd hidden the bleach bottle of Green Blaze Absinthe. Taking an exaggerated swig, he then offered the bottle to the hard-breathing brawler, the controlled breaths just fading.

"This is toilet cleaner!"

"No how", grinned Kyle. "Maybe twenty percent. It's from a recipe I learned from a guy who learned from a guy. But hell it works. A fifty percent proof litre bottle, under two bucks fifty to make. Take a sup".

The homeless man drank modestly and liked what he tasted.

They spoke into the night, for a half an hour or so. There was criticism of women running businesses, power-matriarchy being the main thing that was going to destroy civilization. Kyle realised he liked that the guy had no specific sob-story about losing a wife and family, that he was just a seventies-style man-alone leant him coolness. Or rather, by 'like' -Kyle was happy that it made him such a nuanced target.

In the latter stages of comradeship, Kyle started to write out the ingredients in marker pen on the rear of a spent lottery card.

"Paracetamol... rat poison? Rat poison is -poison".

"I know, right?", Kyle arched an eyebrow. "First time I heard it, I freaked out, too. Gotta be Minimart own and the pellets have gotta be crushed. Couple of years back, the government passed a humane bill. Sure poison's gotta kill the rat, but they ain't allowed to suffer. So get this: for every ten mills of poison, law says they've gotta include a quarter of diacetylmorphine diacetate. Know what that is? A derivative of henry. Handful of rat poison pellets don't do a thing to hurt a man, but for the user? He gets as high as a kite".

"Bull-", said the Homeless Man -but as an exclamation; he clearly believed.

To add to the effect, Kyle took a last swig of the mystery bottle and stared at it appreciatively. There was about three fingers left, which he surrendered as a gesture of goodwill.

Homeless men disappear. They vanish into the urban sprawl, and if they have any spark to them, if they show any life -well, they disappear all the quicker. Grab the power from sh- eating fate; the thought of taking the place of every kind of capricious god filled Kyle with a cold-burning pleasure. And in reality the only kind of high that you can buy for under three dollars is death.

Through the next morning and afternoon. He listened to GG Allin and then Rammstein. He barely heard himself making the call to the pizza company, except that he used the cool, hiring-and-firing tone that was the main chatter of the universe. He detected his breezy tone as he asked the operator whether they used male or female delivery staff. The lady didn't find it in the least odd that he should be asking.

He set up his digital camera on a tripod, at a tight angle inside the communal garbage centre. The rider, suitably skinny tho handsome, arrived inside twenty minutes and stood exactly where he needed to on the rouge door mat. Kyle activated the rapid-succession facility by remote control, pleased to see Mrs Chang smiling even though she had no idea why anyone could wrongly phone-in such an elaborate address as 21-A Skyland Gardens.

Kyle's intercom rang and, grinning, he said, "No, no pizza needed here".

Mrs Chang then left the apartment to go to her office as she always did at around two in the afternoon. Wearing a tight fitting jumper he'd never worn before, and wouldn't again, he jogged down the stairs and took his place on the rouge door mat in the Chang's front porch. Again hitting the rapid-succession key on the remote, he proceeded to carefully act out the closing of his jeans zipper. Once, twice -three times for good measure. Content that he had all the material he needed, he collected the camera from the outbuilding and returned to his rooms.

Loading screen upon loading screen hicced as the secondhand laptop struggled to come to life; Kyle smiled waxily, content to be patient. Maybe it was the sensation of the Devil thinking, grudgingly giving his admiration. The art program was one up from Microsoft Paint, just sophisticated enough to have a cutting facility that harmonised one pixel hue to another. Which was all he needed. He looked through the days photos until he had two that were perfectly angled, perfectly proportioned. And in the end it was ridiculously easy to cut free the head of the handsome pizza guy, stick it over the figure of a man zipping up his jeans, then reintroduce the whole thing back into the original photo of Mrs Chang smiling, denying all knowledge of ordering a pizza. Or, no. In Kyle's new world, smiling at a gratified afternoon of adulterous sex.

He ran out to the drug store and used the half-hour photo-print service. The photo -eerily convincing, less the work of a man but a highly-targeted and mischievous god. No blurring. No straggly pixels. The lovers were even connecting eyes and pretty shamelessly. Maybe they could have told in a JFK-style crime lab picture analysis, over the course of months. But for Mr Chang's marriage, it was here that the gut-punch emotions would take over and stop him looking too closely. Kyle leant back in his chair, took out a writing pad and drenched it in 'Lave', an aftershave he'd bought once and never used again because it smelt too much like ladies perfume. As he flourished his fingers in an imitation of an elegant female hand-writing; again the devilish ease -memories of faking prescriptions and out-of-school notes in his mom's copperplate.

Aleister, please forgive me for the pain. Here is a photograph I include with a terrible regret. But I cannot control how I feel. I've been around you for some time now and I know that you are a good man, and a man that any woman anywhere would be grateful for. I discovered your wife's adultery by accident. I speak up like this only because I know how terrible it is to discover something so bitter, my own marriage having broken down following an infidelity by my husband of five years. I know it is one of the worst things to happen in the world, but you will recover, believe me.

I'm sorry.

A friend.

Spraying the envelope in lady-smell for good measure, he wrote the guy's full name in elegant block capitals and stole away to pop it through the Chang's letter box before he arrived home. It was Friday; the cursed clockwork of a domestic couple's life: he would arrive home first.

Rammstein in abeyance, Kyle waited, head back against the wall. He smiled softly at the thought of his mischief going wrong somehow, and that it still wouldn't matter. His smile was slick when he knew it certainly would go right. Soon a car pulled into the loop, into one of the clunky-echoing parking slots. A geek-jangle of keys in the deadlock were followed by the horrible discovery, a long breath and trembling fingers. Long swirls of silence came where normally there'd be cooking sounds and the reassuring bass of a large TV. It was pretty deadly, and Kyle grinned.

When Mrs Chang in turn arrived home, there'd been shrieks and sobs, impenetrable raised voices, all of it speaking of a finessed marital breakdown. It could have been his imagination, but he even fancied he heard a physical blow being struck. Certainly Mrs Chang fell over as she rushed from the house in tears.

And then, perhaps oddly, Kyle had felt his mind drifting free from all the drama next door, straight on to his next game of dominance. The one after that. Then the one after that - all of them, until the whole world was a broken mirror, shards reflecting only his slick, insidious grin.

xxx

There was something about a gloomy purple sundown mixing with the swirling lights of a dozen squad cars. Mulder clammed shut his cellphone and stalked over to where Scully stood passively.

"We're wanted back in Washington first thing tomorrow. Skinner says he's trying to hold off the DA from a Board of Inquiry. It doesn't look good, though".

"Mulder, there's something going on here, we need to explain-"

"There's a dozen ways of explaining what happened. None of them can help us. I'm sorry you got mixed up in this".

Scully peered carefully into his eyes. The evening was growing dim and nothing now could drag it back. "The symbol on Teddy's ruc-sac -we know these people are powerful. It's not beyond reasonable doubt that they could orchestrate something like this".

"If gang symbols are inadmissible even in LA and Triad country, what hope do we have with this? Besides, using an invisible limb to throttle me? Unless Teddy had his arm cut off by Occam's Razor itself, we're going to have a difficult time proving that to anyone".

"I don't understand what happened with Teddy's arm", Scully said in an irate voice. "It'd be erroneous to focus our investigation on it. But the initial stages of any case are about following your suspicions. When Teddy comes to be questioned, we can steer it, maybe we can trap him-"

Mulder shook his head. The dying light was just enough to give his smooth skin a sheen. "He's too intelligent. If you've been doing this as long as I have, you'll know they're always too intelligent".

Defeated, managing to keep the shame from her eyes, which was the main obstacle always, she ducked inside the Camry. On the drive back to the motel, Mulder seemed fidgety rather than dejected. Selfless but full of energy. He looked through the CDs in the dash undercarriage and surprised her quite a bit by selecting a track which matched their glum mood exactly; Lovely Head by Goldfrapp.

At the motel, the acting-out of a swirling and ever-present Demiurge hit Scully as glittering lights. The sounds of happy bar laughter. If it had been a coffee shop, she just might have been able to summon the courage to ask Mulder for a drink, an emotional debriefing. But the overtones of alcohol, socialising-for-the-sake-of-it; it was too close to that region of coy one night stands.

Though his hands were raised high on the door frame, Mulder managed a suave shrug.

"Well, I'm not sure this case is something you'll ever tell your grandkids about, but I hope you got something out of it".

Scully asked, "Will you tell your grandkids?"

"Hell yes, I will! We've got a duty, Scully. Think of all the obscure legends that grew up in the centuries gone by. 1751. The holographic cathedral that appeared in Ballybeg, Ireland. Angelic ships getting snagged on Victorian buildings. The Devil's Hoofprints. It's collective shock-and-awe, too wild and hard-to-co-ordinate to be hoaxes. Think about it: psychological tricks-of-the-brain or not, the only thing that stopped these incidents becoming household knowledge was just that they didn't proliferate".

She smiled a little. "I think you've certainly given me my quota of dreams for the night".

The Camry was manually locked and they approached the rooms, Mulder loafing his limbs as he mused on UFO's, invisible arms, his outgoing partner. The entrances were tight; as he opened the door, his forearm parallel and inches from her breasts, a distinct tension sparked. Which she just didn't have time to analyse, spurious as it was.

"So the walls are pretty thin in this place. I'm gonna watch Millionaire and tip the mini-bar down my neck. Be sure to whack the wall if I keep you awake".

"I guess", she sighed, and darted her eyes into his, "whatever gets our minds free from -Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World".

"So you do watch TV after all!"

Except she didn't. Late into the night she dwelled on mid-sections of the New Testament, all the people-in-the-street who Jesus met in his very deliberate, non-deliberate sojourns. The unashamed acknowledgment of lives being forged by both bad luck, poverty and The Almighty Himself. Jacob. Jehu. Even the folks who might have struck in the craw of a twenty-first century analysts were beautifully deconstructed. The Prodigal Son. Capitalism tackled head-on with something other than communism: apocalyptic and far-sighted love.

Joseph, Nicodemus, a dozen Romans. Expectant, not particularly innocent, as broadly guilty as anyone; just like bystanders in a crime-scene witness report. It occurred to her that through the years she'd loved the Bible because it was the literary equivalent of a passport photo, the general tone of the chapters informing each character: 'Do not smile'.

Around the room there were ambient features to snatch up her tired eyes; curtains the colour of brickwork, the alcoves like empty Stations of the Cross, the thin white shelves. In no time there was a merging with the ticky-tocky dreams of early sleep. She dreamed of shouting, some kind of concerted yelling. Whatever caused the yelling was profoundly troubling, yet the desperation behind it cried for an emotional breakthrough that must be equally complex. For this reason, the anguish was tolerable, just. It was the human condition, refined beyond anything the waking world had to offer. She dreamed of a banging on the motel door. She dreamed of successive shouts.

Decisively awake, she rushed to the door. It was only five seconds into her conversation with the motel clerk that she realised she was wearing only shorts and a bodytop, and was horribly vulnerable. But when you get swept up, there's no escaping.

"Are you Agent Scully?"

The lady was grasping the ledger from the front desk. Behind her was another party of disturbed strangers; the ma and pa from a vacationing family unit.

"Your partner is going crazy. I think he's -I don't know what he's doing".

Sure enough, behind Mulder's door -the sound of a man confronting Hell. Scully forced her voice to be calm. "Do you have a master key?"

The reception lady had the gold Yale keys poised, and handed them over. How long had the strangeness been going on? Scully braced herself; he stomach tightened as she shouldered in.

Mulder was standing in the broad space between the bedstead and the TV-shelving. His eyes were not-quite forward-looking and not-quite rolled-upwards. There was no REM movement. Similarly, what persuaded Scully this was more than a simple flourish of sleepwalking night-terror was his bizarre pose; forearms and palms quivering outwards, feet taking slight steps forward and backwards, conscious even if the rest of him wasn't. And, 'Samantha!'

Who was Samantha?

Scully noticed that he was facing the direction of the TV; it was the main light source of what was an above-average-size motel room. At some point the Satellite receiver had switched off while the screen itself remained active, leaving a wall of rolling static. She pondered whether there was some kind of photosensitive connection as per epilepsy. Calmly, and never once turning away from her partner, she hit the 'off' key -but Mulder's raging diminished only slightly.

It's a bad idea to wake sleepwalkers, or at least, so conventional thinking went. Scully aligned herself directly in front of his eyes. For a fraction of a second, he seemed to take in the sight of her, except everything was being sieved and swirled, inside the giddy critical mass of his nightmare. The motel peripheries, the curtains, Scully's impotent, grasping arms -everything was an existential barrier between Mulder and Samantha.

To begin with, Scully intended only to place a warm and relaxing palm on his shoulder, conveniently naked thanks to a redneck cut-off T-shirt. She really didn't mean to say anything; the hushed words came purely by accident. "Mulder! It's OK! It's Scully! I'm -here!"

"Samantha!"

The cry was as loud, as frenzied as ever. Then, through a convulsion in his heart, he became aware of her hands, her eyes, by degrees the remainder of the motel room. Stumbling backwards, he just managed to prop a hand on the side of the mattress before falling down.

Meanwhile, the clerk stood by, fascinated, just inside the threshold. "Will he be alright?"

Scully said, as much a way of saying anything, of disposing of her, "I think if we could get a glass of warm milk, it would help".

The door was closed. They were left alone. Mulder shivered slightly, his heavy, clenched fist with no inclination to free itself from the ribs-side of her T-shirt. A little mindlessly, a little like lovers, she angled her cheek against his clammy scalp. "It's over now. I guess that's what they call a bad dream. Ease back to sleep".

Where he was able to think at all, Mulder had no intention of going back to sleep, though his fist did ease free from her night-shirt. Ghosting away, she felt the terrible nudity of her flesh just millimetres beneath the cotton.

"Scully".

"It's OK", she promised him. Perhaps he was already in need of a more sophisticated reassurance, "Every one of us has nightmares. You've certainly cleared that one".

After a time, dully, "It's recurring. But I haven't had it in -ten years. More. I was yelling her name. 'Samantha', right?"

"It sounded traumatic. I guess you should just be grateful it recurs only every ten years" -all the while suggesting that he didn't have to talk about it if he didn't want to.

However. Reluctantly he moved his body free from hers and lay coolly on his back. Scully rubbed her forearms nervously, sparky red-alert phase two.

"When I was sixteen and she was eight, my sister was abducted, right in front of my eyes, right out of our home. And maybe -It was the one thing I'd always taken for granted, that we'd always be together".

Scully waited. She drew her legs into a slight triangle.

"And she's never been returned. Like an act of spite. They always bring people back, but not this time. Like a bonus act of spite to make me look crazy".

"They?", wondered Scully.

"The room was filled with light. Like no kind you ever saw before. I saw my sister floating free in the air. Hooked on an invisible alien fishing line, towards a flashpoint, then up into the sky outside the window. They found me yelling just like you did, maybe two or three hours later.

"And then the fun really started, Scully. Police interview rooms with one specialised psychologist after another, never specialised enough to root out what happened. The consensus was that what I thought I saw -the light, the floating- was a psychological blocking mechanism, maybe a self-creating allegory for the trauma of some regular, earthly serial killer. Picture crackerjack-corduroy analysts, each one claiming that the blinding light was a kind of hysterical blindness my brain had thrown up, to save me from the sight of my sister being abused while I was powerless. But the psychological reflexes of a twentieth century, middle-American teenager don't work like that. What I saw was really there. One guy worked on the hypothesis that the abductor had sprayed in some kinda hallucinogenic gas, or forced me to ingest LSD. But even as a kid I knew that was crap. No kind of hallucinogen heaps stress on you and then negates imagery in favour of a blinding white light.

"But it was frustrating. Everyone created a conspiracy to try and protect me from going nuts. Only my Dad believed I had the gumption to search for answers. We went to Dr Swan, a theoretical psychologist working out of Chicago. He was a good man. He put me under, and I confirmed everything I'd seen in just as calm and lucid a voice as you can imagine. I confirmed I wasn't Mickey Mouse or Jack the Ripper. I confirmed that my Sister had been taken up by an alien spacecraft".

Scully resisted the deep and gasping breaths that such a story naturally wrought. She dipped her eyes and clasped her hands. It was fantastical; yet it explained Fox Mulder so perfectly -his character, his dogged belief, the strange tension and loneliness in a man who'd otherwise be an alpha male, overgrown jock. He was utterly lost.

"You persuaded the Bureau to create a unit that investigates the paranormal? No one could have done more".

Mulder shook his head. "I joined the Bureau with the sole intention of subverting their intel and resources into finding her. I figured the military, even if the stories of their being in bed with ET were false, would be too hard to climb through. I figured the CIA would be the same, or maybe too sensible to believe much in Little Green Men. That the FBI already had a unit for investigating crimes connected to the paranormal -that was a happy coincidence".

There was a meek little knock on the thin wooden siding. Scully arose, accepted the warm milk with a smile, then closed the door forthwith.

She handed her partner the glass with a tense, darting malaise. "Sometimes coincidences matter. Mulder, a day before I was attached to the Elvira Hoek case, I saw -there was, above my house -a huge, luminous object. There's no other way to describe it than a flying saucer. I got in my car and followed it, but it disappeared in an acceleration beyond anything I'd ever seen before. On the way, I passed an abandoned car, at an angle in the road. The car had a window sticker. The 'No Flags' emblem. I wanted to tell you before, but I didn't have the courage to admit to myself-"

Mulder's thick lips parted in a slight, twinkly smile. "You're a dark horse, Scully".

"The saucer vanished not far from my father's old naval yard. I drove out the next day to see if they had any information on the craft. It came to nothing. Then on the way back, I got a cellphone call. It was a man I'd never heard before. He suggested I make a report to you. He gave me your name. Mentioned the X-files, by name. Again I said no. And I had no other inkling it was important until we met with Doggett and Reyes".

Croaked Mulder, "What was it like, the saucer?"

She sighed now as her memories eased backwards. "It was hard to get an impression of the size because the mass of it had no identifying features. It was glaring. White. But like something luminous in the absence of light rather than an electrical filament. The speed, to begin with-"

"That's not what I mean", said Mulder. "There are reports everywhere. Every night of the year. What I want to know, how did it make you feel? The sight -did it hit your instincts as full of fear? Was it peaceful? Did it know you were watching?"

She considered the matter carefully. She glared at the unfeasibly thick duvet. "I wasn't afraid. And it knew I was watching it, in as much as I got the feeling -it was such a silent midnight scene. Underneath, there were even cattle standing like plastic models. All the landscape was black and peaceful like something from a modern day fairy tale, or a poem. And there were trees falling down in forests and no one hearing. There was me watching this -UFO!- but it could do this because it had accounted for the peace. It was just -camouflaged in peacefulness, like it was part of the night itself".

They speculated for a little while on the parasitical relationship that might exist between savvy outsiders such as the 'No Flags' group and these strange, pastoral aliens. Scully, eventually, broke the sense of jazz-debating. The early hours of the morning; good for nothing, but strangely brave. "We need to be fresh for inquisition tomorrow. Try to get some shut-eye, Mulder".

She stood to go. He grinned. "I don't know what Suzanne Vega and Luca were complaining about. Glad you came to investigate the shouts?"

"That remains to be seen". A smile, with an asterisk, a jokey meta-proviso that'd been paid for in drama.

On leaving, she noticed for the first time a padded envelope on his bedside table, with vial on top containing -hair?

"What is that? Something from a case?"

"In a manner of speaking". Mulder's skin was smooth now, sweat-free. "Sent to me from a contact in the Rockies. Bigfoot hair".

An indulgent smile, "What on earth makes you think it's genuine?"

"It cost me 40 bucks", he shrugged.

"Good night, Mulder".

And didn't she just float from the room.

Xx.

"So you've got Barack Obama grinning away at you, then just below him, at the desk, Skinner is always surly as hell. It's a weird dynamic, but you just gotta go with it".

Mulder sat in the largest seat of the reception area as if it was a living room. Scully - demure, skirted knees together, focusing tightly on her own thought processes. When she became conscious, it was to look at the mahogany-chip door, and sometimes AD Skinner's receptionist, who was more absorbed in paperwork that most homicide clerks she'd known. Mulder jiggled his knee and rippled his jaw. It was no Bond and Moneypenny, anyhow.

Assistant Director Skinner was a man spinning plates -other Bureau commanders came and left the office, necessitating the door to be left open at all times. Scully saw the aforementioned portrait-photo of President Obama, a world away from the sharp-scowling operations chief who sat below. Every curt swipe of his head spoke of a former platoon leader who hated his new administrative position but tolerated it for the greater good. For the quarter of an hour they'd been waiting, it'd been subtle, hard work keeping track of who came and went from the office; even now there was a tension in his muscular shoulders and his eyes, telling that he wasn't alone, was never alone.

"Agents, Director Skinner will see you now".

The room had an empty, disconcerting walk-in of brown blinds and dust-mote-haunted slants. Scully led the way, encompassed by Mulder's huge limbs behind, his shoulders, his poised lips.

"Mulder, Scully. Sit down. I have spent the last few hours staving off district attorneys and every kind of small-town counsellor, demanding to know what the hell happened yesterday. Agent Mulder, your report is pure science fiction. Scully, your report is so speculative I may as well use it for the assassination of President Kennedy".

"Sir, our investigation simply-"

"Stow it, Mulder". Skinner paused and finessed his irritation. By now a disgusting boiled sweet sucked at for decades. "I can picture, vaguely, a ten stone teenager being schooled in close combat, sleight-of-hand, by a militant cult. What's unbelievable is that two FBI agents wouldn't be equal to some -paranormal mind control. That you're so intent to sidetrack a delicate investigation into a treatise on occult science is unacceptable. Do you even understand what I'm saying, Mulder?"

Since being seated, Scully had been aware of a further administrator, or at any rate a high-ranking observer, sitting somewhat lazily at the nearby hexagonal conference desk. The man was smoking. Faint astonishment at such a powerful breach of social normality dovetailed with darker drama, once she realised that here, probably, was the man who'd first tried to recruit her. Fear and an utter lack of direction overpowered her. All the same, it was best to forge ahead.

Mulder swung out his palm, about to say something rueful. Scully spoke first.

"Both Agent Mulder and I are aware that the shooting will be full of ramifications. Our only intention is to -respect the situation with a thorough exploration of the possibilities, inexplicable though they are".

Without drawing a breath into his wrestler-like body, Skinner grasped the leaves of a case-file. The uppermost A-4 had an enhanced image of the 'No Flags' symbol, which he brandished, less like a piece of paperwork and more like an accusatory murder exhibit.

"The two of you are wrapped up in the idea of a secret society. Think of the Diggers or the Yippies in the sixties. Imagine if we'd chased down anyone with a CND badge!"

Which brought a stringing reply from Mulder, "There is a connection, sir. Every part of Teddy's attitude and his relationship with Elvira says as much, and to suggest he isn't in league with the woman who rose from the hospital bed is baloney".

Glowering away, "If it's all so integrated, Agent Mulder, find a connection at a local level. You're chasing conspiracies. You really think we can afford to have a field investigation turn into a state witch-hunt based on some flimsy internet cult? We need solid evidence based around the boy himself".

Now the AD was wagging his head swarthily. It's rare that muscular men are also venomous; Scully boggled at that. Trademark-dry and conciliatory, she decided to speak up, "So we're being kept on the case, sir?"

"That's under review".

At the fuzzy beige corner of the office, the figure of the Smoking Official became slightly more animated, almost like a normal man. In addition to the cigarette, for some reason, he was toying absently with a large metal rivet. And intrigue. When he abruptly spoke - no eye-contact.

"I think the work of these agents is diligent -under exceptionally arduous circumstances. They should probably be allowed to continue their field work".

Words hanging like the dying motif of some clever piano piece, it was hard for anyone to give up a reply. Except for Mulder in his tenacity. "Every second we spoke to Teddy, he was incriminating himself. The hospital says he's fully responsive; I want Scully and I to pick up the questioning where we left off".

"That's out of the question", pouted Skinner. "Our code of practice is there for a reason. Agents involved in a shooting are to be considered too biased for direct questioning of the suspect thereafter. Especially a suspect who's as big a PR nightmare as the Holvey boy".

"It'll be a bigger PR nightmare when Teddy is revealed as a Heaven's Gate style cultist".

"So retrace his movements. Pull his cellphone history and internet use. I don't care as long as there's tangible leads".

Mulder's expression grew bold. "Do we have clearance to interview his parents?"

"Absolutely not. How would you feel if the people who shot your son arrived to interrogate you?"

"We're either looking for the truth or we're not".

Warned Skinner, "You're out of line, Mulder".

But again it was the guest-official who parted the seas. Last dregs of his cigarette held carefully. "The boy's parents would be too territorial, as any parent would be. There may, however, be some validity in conducting an interview with Teddy's two elder brothers. As I'm sure Agent Mulder is aware, no one has a stronger perspective than an older sibling".

Mulder was now a picture of paranoia as he said to Skinner, "Who is this?"

And was ignored. The AD never once looked at his subtle overlord, though it was a constant battle to hide the shame at his presence. One half of the office was a trap for yellow-etched sun, the other was entirely head-achey, shades of holding binoculars the wrong way round while staring at something all-important. Admittedly, the cigarette produced an eerily small amount of smoke; it barely even diffused the atmosphere. Only the smell of heavy tar held fast in the neat, crisp gulf between the FBI agents and their imperial advisor.

"Interview anyone you think is necessary in the immediate circle of Teddy Holvey", stated Skinner in his bass tone, also with a hint of surrender. "But I want hard and fast leads that will draw him out when we begin to question him. Am I clear? Dismissed".

Mulder stood and pulsed his eyes, intense, unimpressed, towards the leant-back figure haunting the conference table. It was maybe the junior school loner facing-off against some cursed and self-aware teacher. Scully placed her body in a tight angle against her partner, but he didn't take the hint to leave, barely even saw it.

"Is there a problem, Mulder?", Skinner glared over his brow.

Without turning from the Smoking Man, "No, sir. You're very clear. Looks like everything's been mapped out for us".

Mulder stalked his tall body from the office. Scully followed, gulping. In the buzzing walkway that lay beyond the huge anteroom, she wondered if the perceived bond she had with him was actually a strained illusion. He didn't stop when she called his name, possibly not even hearing or sensing her presence. She tried again. This time he halted, said nothing, didn't deviate from his anguished swiveling when she touched his arm. That strange shoulder-mass, as distinct as any Californian beach hog -minus the ugly ripples, the dimples, the creases. And how Mulder was smooth, angular, one-in-a-million.

Once again he took her into his confidence. A stormfront fading into cornfields.

"Who's to say, Scully? Who's to say whether they're macro-government conspirators doling out deals for ET magnates, or just -jerk-off bureaucrats desperately looking for a piece of the action?"

And yes, in his anger, Mulder still wasn't in the mood for soulful eye-contact. At least, not the variety which Scully could offer. She tried anyway. "I shouldn't have an opinion yet. But I do. The truth is probably somewhere between. And greyer still".

She wanted to grasp him again. Mulder sensed it too, now. Counter-intuitively, she took a backwards step and glanced over her shoulder, back towards Skinner's deadened nerve-centre.

"Take a coffee across the street. I'll meet you".

Mulder raised his face slightly. "Coffee? My mood's equal to a dozen hell-sour Twizzlers".

He smiled a little, departed; Scully folded her arms and prepared herself.

Joseph Stalin, particularly in his later years, had rarely given direct orders. Yet the way he'd hung around his government chiefs, making subtle suggestions, smiling intimations, genially denying that he was an iron-claw superpower -Scully had always been fascinated by that, not least the way he'd dominated the work of medical luminaries such as Vladamir Filatov and Leonid Rogozov. It was amazing that no latterday day world-leaders had reached that level of power-crazed, faux wisdom.

But perhaps they had.

At a nearby edge of the walkway was a very modern sub-office with a plate glass window extending from carpet to plated ceiling. Just under shoulder-height, the glass was frosted. As far as Scully could see, the narrow little room was empty; she stealthy slipped inside and took a conference-seat with her back against the wall-window. On her Archos, in the broadest mime, she used the pretense of cruising e-mails and reports; in reality, switching to the mirror facility and commencing spy work.

Two or three minutes passed in the quiet exhilaration of remaining undiscovered. She was prepared to wait upwards of half an hour, though something told her she wouldn't have to. The exterior was now highly ambient, quiet, office-block-raw. Still the Smoking Man joined with the subdued atmos as he sheepishly slipped from Skinner's office. The welding rivet which he'd been toying with was slipped into his jacket pocket, along with his train-station lighter and Morleys pack.

Scully anticipated duplicity, maybe charming, maybe not, maybe with specific little lies she could later use in a process of elimination. To this end, she wedged the tablet into her blouse and set it to record their confrontation. For once, the high octave of her voice fitted perfectly, "Wait!" It was a powerful tone and she was somehow proud of herself. The fear, the anorexia, the lack-of-place; they were perhaps being left behind, even if they were giving way to an equally shattering climax.

"Agent Scully", only mildly disconcerted. "What can I do for you?"

"Who are you?"

The grey figure was mildly thoughtful. "How would my answer effect your investigation? I could tell you I'm Homeland Security, and there would be an element of truth. I could tell you Central Intelligence, NSA, The Office of the President himself. My place within the government shifts as required".

Scully grasped her hands. "What do you know of the object I saw earlier this week? What is your relationship with this case?"

Sans a cigarette, the man seemed slightly younger, a pensioner in the body of a forty year old. He smiled pleasantly. "You're an FBI agent; that alone would suggest you have a certain amount of faith in the hierarchy of your government. The veils of secrecy that exist, it would not be wise to disturb".

"The FBI charter demands full interdepartmental disclosure", Scully swiftly countered, "or at least written documentation by a state judge that the with-holding of a testimony would damage national security".

"Well, then", a nimble smile, "if I'm unable to convince you that we're all on the same side, perhaps I can persuade you by the sheer -scope of my activities".

Here was meat-and-potatoes. Or at the very least, fresh lines of communication to be pored over. Scully found her body was bolt-still, her eyes probing frantically. He beckoned her back inside the frosted-glass side room, and had it been just a little more enclosed, a little more secluded, she would have been extremely ready with her gun.

"There is no way the surveillance of the American people can be denied these days. My organization has levels of technology which, speculatively, are a hundred years ahead of their time, and all of it is trained on domestic spy-work. Specifically, we chart the fine psychological nuances of every man, woman and child in the country. And I know, Agent Scully", he tapped out a cigarette, "about you".

"If you know about me, sir, you'll know how committed I am to the truth of this investigation".

"Of course. But there are other qualities which make you far more important to us. Every aspect of your life has been surveilled. For instance, both your mother and late father were eerily close in psychological terms, both measuring seven-point-five on the Nelladow scale of introversion, far above the national average. Your father overcompensated to such a degree that he became a high-ranking Navy commander, and thrived. But one has to wonder, how is it that two precise levels of introversion come to court each other, given that extroversion is the prime mover of evolution?"

"I'm no behaviourist", said Scully pointedly. "And I would be grateful if we kept to the subject of Elvira Hoek and the No Flag connection. What do you expect us to learn from investigating Michael and Charlie Holvey?"

In his nasal, smoke-harmonicaed tone, "I expect them to be as enamored by you as I am, and take you into their confidence. Evidently, as with any cult, they place an emphasis on religious devotion".

It was really something that this arch-spymaster could speak so quickly, so compellingly, apparently without guile. As if he knew -all the dark, secret details of the world could indeed be reached through a layman conversation, but it would be a conversation so deep and involved, no one would ever have the time.

In the absence of an ashtray, not that the Morley gave off much residue, the Smoking Man appropriated an up-turned coffee pad. Scully felt strangely ambivalent. "I won't have my religious beliefs used to screen suspects".

"No, and that's to your credit, Agent Scully". A small wince followed. "Even though our nation currently has ten times as many double-agents and quislings embedded with religious fundamentalists as there are bona-fide terrorists. The salient factor is, this particular cult believes in aliens from outer space. Or, at least, a concept which is analogous with aliens. 'Advanced beings'. In our intellects, cleared of quasi-modern atheist prejudice, we know that spiritual empathy would be a vital component for any race seeking to survive entropy, travel beyond its solar system. It's a characteristic which our human race has always lacked to any significant degree. And so, we imagine them. Carousing this Earth. Monitoring us for any signs of counter-intuitive spiritual sensitivity".

"I think this is a snakeoil sales pitch", Scully grew irate. Confidence powered through, allowing a staunch adjustment in her spine, a fearless darting of the eyes. "Just because I have a religious faith doesn't mean I care about intergalactic politicking, nee Scientology, nee - psychological totalitarianism".

"Indeed".

It was a nuance of the Smoking Man -he rarely initiated the lines of a conversation, preferring to chicane and manipulate his satellites with coy propositions. What happened next made Scully clasp her hands. Standing, he turned away from her and stared blankly through a rise in the frosted glass. He slouched, still passing for an ultimate fount of knowledge.

"It started as soon as you cleared your highschool days, as it so often does. Your romance with a university lecturer failed. Your undergraduate postings were filled with the fear of making mistakes that could, at any time, wreck your medical career and your desire to be a distinguished asset to all that's noble. It was too much and the stirrings of a nervous breakdown were undeniable. One night, after completing the formula for synthesized hydroxyethyl methacrylate at the University of Annapolis -a very basic component of medical surgery- you were returning home along Highway Nine. Ten miles clear from the university, you stopped at a layby on route 101; the highway surveillance cameras captured a haunted expression on your face. You drove back to the university. The night porter let you in. You moved stealthily through the lab corridors, praying not to meet any of your 'perfect' supervisors. You checked the centrifuge to assuage the self-doubt that you'd entered the incorrect ratio of hydroxyethyl; you looked for clues by frantically stock-checking the ten-vials and the BOM weights. But of course, you'd made no mistake; you'd been as diligent as ever. That didn't stop the exact same scenario being played out on two further occasions, later in the year.

"Being so sensitive was no longer an option. You entered what psychologists call 'blackout', suspending any extremes of sensitivity by force of will, and merely to survive. Your internet history, the books brought through your credit card -tell that you diverted the stress of maintaining this charade of confidence into an eating disorder, possibly bulimia, possibly anorexia".

Imagining that no one would ever find out about the anorexia, devising no contingency, Scully remained stoic. And as for the incident with the hydroxyethyl methacrylate formula, in her head, it was no more significant than a half-remembered nightmare. "I'm not impressed by these theories. That you're aware of these things only proves that your branch of the government is -desperate, tyrannical".

The Smoking Man showed just a small reaction in the back of his head. "Precisely. But my point is, the 'blackout'; it's exactly what's happened to the collective unconscious of the capitalist, Western world in its entirety. Minds become deflected onto endless coping strategies as a matter of mere survival. Imagine, Agent Scully, the proverbial 'advanced alien race' arriving to save us. Who would they try to save first? Those with high-powered careers, large families, delusions of capitalist philanthropy? They are far too reliant on their coping strategies. Perhaps the aliens would intercept us as children, before the cancer even takes hold? At the very least, they would favour those who are single, childless, neurotic; people for whom the tension carries rather than encases".

There was no possible way of knowing how to respond. Scully found a way. She stood up and tugged her velvet skirt, inclined her head with only the mildest consternation. "I am an FBI officer. I only care about finding Elvira Hoek. Being part of a mass psychological experiment is beyond my remit".

But speaking croakily -with a hint of sadness, she fancied-, "Yes. Elvira Hoek. Samantha Mulder. We can only hope that if we ever see them again, they'll be able to tolerate us for a single moment. Good day, Agent Scully".

He turned, cigarette fully-spent, looking at her from the extremities of his grey eyes. He departed and still she hung in the plush-office atmosphere. Digging the Archos from her blouse, she was impressed that it had carried on recording the entire time. When she tried to rewind the eschatological conversation, however, nothing more than lurid pixel-blocks filled the screen in a feverish deadlock. Passive-aggressive psychological conspiracies. Eyes only. Slowly, the question presented itself to Scully's arch-analytical mind - it was one thing to have the world prey on you for being oversensitive; she'd always been prepared for that. But what if there was a bigger predator still, that would one day eclipse everyone?

Xx

A semi-mystical refusal to worry about whether the mind was sharp enough, his limbs filled with alacrity, and so it was on. At all points, the array of peeled-away UFO hull-plates presented an alienesque 4th of July bonfire many times the size of what remained to be worked on, an easy enough escape channel, maybe. In any case, hesitation could go to hell.

From what was presumably the tantalizing final layer, looking down on the workshop floor, and huge though it was, there was damnably little fear. There was drama, and tension, but these were things to coast and carry. The dry, white atmosphere in the top corners of the warehouse canopy - admittedly, it was easy to imagine staring at it while bleeding out, having been shot by one or more of the goons. As long as hesitation knew where to go.

Was his little accomplice ready? Twenty feet away across the other side of the naked UFO, Fredericks ranged his lank body, holding the female-decrimper just as lazily as comeback Elvis his mike. Kyle felt a little snide that he was in league with such a religious dreamer at the height of his delusion. It didn't matter, though. It was lucky Kyle didn't have to initiate the escape himself, so relying on Fredericks to be ready. Let the guy be a hero and start the crapstorm all on his own.

It'd drizzled earlier and the ionisation in the powerlines above the workshop had spread down inside the corrugated roof. Sharklike, the patrolling goons were impelled in the peaceful air. Dourness seeped through every pore. No Iraq or Afghanistan rainbow sunglasses here, just complacent puffy eyes like anyone.

And wasn't it a world of goons leading goons.

At his feet, the maybe-alien metal was just -nothing. There was no Hiroshima-bomb-fascination, only the idea that it might be a simple prop. For sure, the etching power of the floodlights created a perfect illusion of patrolling soldiers revealed as no-brain fish in an orthodontist's aquarium. In the waiting room, aged twelve. The ones he'd fed rat poison to as retribution for charging his mom fifty dollars just for a check-up. Just to tell him he didn't clean his teeth for a whole ten minutes a day.

Unnoticed apparently, a Devil-brand craw had been surreptitiously wedged inside the end of the dexian crossbeam they used to winch grease onto the surface of the saucer. Seconds of eye-narrowing tension followed - a soldier drifting very close behind Fredericks, and Kyle laconically tracking his semi-businesslike gait, figuring that when a move was made, it would be when the goon was at a maximum distance. Personally, he 'd be inclined to swing the craw into soldier-boy's eye and then break the floor cable. His partner in crime wasn't so bold.

The soldier to the left grew distant. But not as distant as might've been wise, as Fredericks pounced down, swinging the proxy craw-hammer into the power cable. Sure, and it was a chain-gang greaser making a mad gamble at breaking his tether. As envisioned, the power supply for the entire facility tripped and died. There were a few pleasing beats of shock before two almighty bursts of action took place simultaneously. A yellow, marijuana-shaped peal of machine gun fire pointed to the area where Fredericks had been. Also, the dark-sensitive technology of the UFO hull plates reacted. White, over-powering dazzlement filled the eyes of everyone. More machine gun fire spat and cackled, but near directionless in the blinding void.

Kyle depended on having mentally-rehearsed which direction to scramble in, plus a radar intuition which may or may not exist. The leap from the saucer edge brought him down to the smooth concrete floor with a minimum amount of pain to his tendons. An itchy feeling told that the machine gun fire was close, and could triangulate onto his torso at any time. Kyle was panicky, but the fear was pretty useful in sustaining him. Bounding scrambles, one, two, three, four, brought him to the sharp edge of the metal counter, and it was there that he placed his hand on Fredericks' arched spine.

Together they grasped the huge locker and made slow progress of screeching it across the floor. Very delicate but ultimately fruitless patterns of automatic gunfire were traced in the air alongside Kyle's head. They paused, braced, then pushed on. It seemed they hadn't cleared nearly enough space when the panic told of time running out. Fredericks, for one, was acting out a dream whereby they'd already cleared a definite escape route; still holding the modified cross-beam, he thrashed it upwards into a lazy-watercolour of right-angles. But apparently, this was the window; the gulpy sound of very old glass gave reason for hope. Kyle pushed the locker just a little bit more then grabbed a small plastic flow box and joined Fredericks in smashing through.

Gunfire played and played with endless rigour. The goons shouted ad-hoc co-ordinates to each other, as dynamic as any professional group of men ever can be. Really not dynamic at all. Some c- only had a handgun; the ricochet far above Kyle's head sounded like a coyote yelp. Enthused, he picked out the hair-line swirl of light that was Fredericks' back, and helped bundle him through into the relative darkness of the abandoned warehouse.

A yin-yang of pitch blackness versus unearthly light, perceived through the tiny window, was a hell of a thing. Their shadows made harsh, radioactive burrs on the burial tomb interior, much too jumpy to focus on. When they'd both finally collapsed through into the recesses, the unremitting light blasted once more, an all-blurring nightmare. Kyle picked out what he hoped was an old-fashioned wooden work bench. Fredericks fell in with his thinking and together they manhandled it over the smashed window and the hell-pervasive light. The bare millimetres worth of gap allowed enough of the whiteness through that they could intuit a direction to run.

"Worm's turning today", grinned Kyle.

"Let's go", said Fredericks promptly.

Alongside the partly-oppressive, low-set ceiling was a black-painted window, boarded off on the other side by odd storage shelves. Still the alienesque light seeped through and picked out every fine detail. Going down on their bellies like Spider-Man, they speed-crawled through the dust. The smell of decaying industrial chems added to the weirdness.

Machine gun fire churned up the area behind, where they'd clambered through, by now a comfortable distance away. Kyle took it upon himself to stoop upwards slightly, the better to scuttle. It was inside a minute that the main power supply was restored outside, which was probably all they could have hoped for; the creaks of ethereal light died away to barely-perceivable etches of brown. Kyle removed a shaving of the alien metal from his pocket, which, in the near blackness of the abandoned work block, had a glow many times greater than an LED. It corrupted the air particles themselves, corrupted the haziness of the dank chamber into sharp daggers. Throwing it hard, it landed two dozen feet beyond; they hustled after it.

The second painted-out window also took a lot of gunfire now. Miraculously, they avoided catching any bullets. A disused line-operations room was wedged in towards a right angle, narrow in the extreme. Before they took it, a few chimes of broken glass indicated that the goons had already realised where they'd fled to and were pursuing - yeah; Kyle saw a small, dizzy flashlight dancing around in the mustiness. At the precise corner of the corridor there were stacked barrels of silicon metal-preservant balls. Fredericks unclamped the lid and rolled them out for the soldiers to skid on, very Home Alone, but probably effective. And then the pair of them simply bounded on. A decades-undisturbed cork noticeboard had A4 sheets which looked like they'd been underwater. And into the deeper, darker recesses of the breezeblock warehouse, the thin air was strangely pressurised; they were inside a giant throat, was how Kyle would have described it, hitching away as the drama got more and more scary.

As an industrial maze, the old warehouse dwindled until it became a series of micro-lounges, back in the day probably cloak, coffee or first-aid rooms. There was a funny sense of being on a frontier. It reminded Kyle of a duty above-and-beyond that of a mere escapee. Sure enough, when they piled into a stairwell that no longer had stairs, beside a door that had been sealed with exaggerated rims of two-by-four, there was an epiphany. Shouldering it open was hard, but eventually they saw the narrow section of parking lot on the north side of the complex. A military helicopter hovered quite a way behind, with search beams that probably wouldn't highlight them if they chose to make a dash for the perimeter fence.

But Kyle explained, "We gotta go back. We gotta go Rambo and pick some of them off".

"What?", Fredericks, almost, was angry with him.

"Look, if we just run, we might be able to make it to a town. Get the word out to a single shock-jock, who won't believe us, before those a-s recruit 5-0 to hunt us down as terrorists. But if we get some of those AKs, mow a couple of them down, no doughnut-eater is gonna sign up to go on a hunt for Statham and Seagal".

"And what if we get killed straight away?", Fredericks moved his head dizzily, though it wasn't quite a disagreement.

Kyle playfully slapped his bicep. "Who wants to live forever?"

The old work block extended a dozen metres beyond Thor Riveting proper, an ornament to the barely-used admin rooms and dusky privets. Gamely, Kyle peered up at the sharp edges and the guttering, sure that the military had installed their own little fancy-cameras. The pair moved quickly then, hunched alongside the dark bank of underground heating vents; such a huge mass would provide some kind of cover, hopefully that they were erroneous, inanimate shadows by association. A kink in the creme masonry below the business room windows gave them an opportunity to scope-out any breaking-and-entering options. Fredericks picked up a 'W'-shaped guttering slab and brandished it to smash the glass.

"Forget it", said Kyle. "That's modern glazing. It'd take forty tries and then some. Try this-"

From his jeans pocket he produced a Philips-head, nothing more complicated than that. Tracing the metal tip to where the catch was on the interior, he held it loosely between his tunneled fingers. "Whack it, don't hit my hands".

Fredericks gripped the piece of concrete and arched back, hitting it as squarely as he could. The metal-lace PVC dented significantly; another attempt was quickly lined up.

From somewhere off in the core of the facility, an unearthly noise picked up. To Kyle it sounded like a mixture of Arctic wind and the loosing of some hoist-the-size-of-a-planet.

"You hear that?", Fredericks was awe-struck. "The saucer is opening".

"Fredericks", said Kyle urgently.

Wide-eyed wonder remained.

"Fredericks!"

Determined and spontaneous, in a way that was unnerving, the wild-eyed ginger man swung the concrete and the screwdriver went through, turning the lock on the other side into a bulging husk. They teased out the lips of the frame and entered swiftly, uncaring, really, if the intruder alarm was activated. At the door of the small office, beside a thick-frame file locker, they narrowed their eyes through the subsequent maze of booths. The place was carpeted; it would be hard to hear the goons' boot-scuttling. What could be heard was ghostly ambient squeaks from the main workshop. They hustled onwards.

"This is a hell of a thing to be doing", said Fredericks.

Kyle barely heard. It was too hard to imagine all the stupid directions F must be being pulled in. There was no value in seeing an alien ship opening up to reveal some pasty-face God-On-High. Kyle cared only about surprising fat soldiers with death.

On the way through one of the workshop-bound pedestrian links, he took a plush office chair and left it beneath the frame, thinking that soon the auto lock-down would be triggered and an exit strategy might be needed. In the tapering, somehow-gleaming end of the main workshop, they stopped to appreciate the huge and empty recess. A single solder paced backwards and forwards, making single-phrase reports into his radio, gun ready at two seconds notice. Across the way, a sharp corner was presented by a pallet stack and the alcove of small lorry bays. He glanced; his shoulders jumped. All too obviously it was the direction he worried hell might come.

Kyle approached the forklift a few metres inside their concealment area. Once or twice, he ducked inside the lorry cleats, the height of cowardice whenever the soldier even smelled like turning around. Arriving behind the huge turbo housing, though, felt cool, decisive. He looked back towards Fredericks, who was uncomprehending.

The soldier drifted. Kyle nodded toward him and mimed hitting him unconscious at the neck. Fredericks look daunted, but acknowledged that he understood. He carefully lifted out one of the pallet corner supports -heavy metal, the size and shape of a hockey stick.

Operation go. All the times when Kyle had surreptitiously forklifted down pallets for his own pilfering now paid off. He disconnected the circuit which automatically set off the movement klaxon, pulled the E-stop outwards until an unhealthy click was heard. This fooled the shaft into resetting the system, all the way back to the most recently-used setting, which was usually DRIVE. In his left hand, what the dock crew always called 'divers boots', one of the fifteen kilo tare weights from the huge bagging machines. Ironically, it had the exact size and depressing ability as a forklift driver's accelerator boot.

All the pseudo-noble soldier dreams of 'peace-keeping', as if the politics of Planet Earth wouldn't be better if it was a Wild West of sheriffs and posses, outlaws and desperados. Keep your alpha male fantasies, lose the conceit. The electrics took a second or two to respond. The outlaw Kyle worriedly rushed away. Here was a haunted golf caddy joke, the forklift travelling into the heart of Fort Thor and, you think this is the real Quaid? Soldier-boy lit up the area with lotus-shape machine gun fire. Fredericks moved forward almost in a ballet and hit him squarely at the base of the cranium. One or two of the encroaching goons were promptly torn up; that Fredericks knew how to use a mounted Parabellum was mildly impressive. Mainly it gave Kyle a few seconds to slide up, relinquish the handgun from Hurt Locker's thigh holster and join the fight.

It seemed it would be deceptively easy to aim and shoot the goons up around their heads. In all likelihood, there was a requirement to be smarter. In the final analysis, too much temptation existed to simply do the most rewarding thing; Kyle ran behind the racking, threw a piece of disassembled boat-rail -in the flurry of activity, he took a good three-second aim and shot waddle-boy through his jaw. Another soldier-boy he shot in the neck and nose.

Sometimes a chill ran up Kyle's spine and he looked behind him, cowardly. It doesn't do to think of yourself as a coward, though. Through the grills and the girders, lotus fire cut upwards spectacularly. How machine-gun flare never set anything on fire was obviously a hell of a delicate thing. He took a few strikes a metre or so to his right. Creeping clear, he saw a trooper approaching at an angle behind the metal rack. Kyle ducked, shot out his ankle through the fork-space of a pallet. On hitting the deck, his Mitrailleuse skidded clear, allowing a skinny little arm to reach through and grasp it, just.

The thing felt curiously light and unimpressive. Like a joke. He ran around into the open, onto a partially-clear walkway, opened up on the first spods he saw, and coincidentally those nearest to him. With his handgun, he shot two more distant goons who were moving aimlessly by the fire door.

Running while firing was the main game, and he lost count, lost the smallest approximation, of how many soldiers went down. It was the same old dynamic, though. Rising over geeks is easy; it's the double-thinking and the s- eating morality that brings you down. Circling the area beyond the racks, a little base-camp where the military had set up logistical crates, he saw the Scientist worriedly pacing and edging ever-backwards. The man was unarmed. Kyle smirked and shot him through the heart, then circled out.

During a few seconds of silence, a particularly wild and dangerous flash of machine gun lit up the area of open floor a few metres away. He realised it was nothing but the dying reflex of a goon who'd been lanced open by handgun-fire. There was Fredericks, cautiously hunching out from his little nest.

They looked at each other for twenty seconds or so. Fredericks scuttled over.

"How many soldiers were there? Have we got them all?"

Kyle shrugged. His smirk said, 'I reckon so'.

The ginger man stared at his Parabellum. "How can two civilians take out a platoon of pro soldiers? It's a miracle. The ship must be protecting us".

Trying not to balk, Kyle smoothly nodded his head. "You're forgetting two things. One, it's about to explode, and I should say ET's got bigger things to fret about. Two, we've still got a damn chopper to remove".

All Fredericks could so, of course, was accept this, since the throbbing of the saucer was as ear-catching as ever. If anything it was now baser, more dangerous still. Presenting a different kind of panic was the sound of the helicopter, lilting, waiting, very close beyond the rafters. Kyle ranged his body out and headed to the APC that had been backed into the furthest bay. He clicked open the under-carriage weapons locker and examined the rocket launchers.

"I don't suppose your space-gods transmitted into your brain how to work one of these?"

Narrow face frowning and wrestling, Fredericks traced his hands over the heavy artillery, completely without a clue.

"It doesn't matter", said Kyle.

He walked quickly back to the war-torn workshop, where dead soldiers were crumpled at all the most artistically random points, just shy of the old wooden benches, backflipped against stillages. He collected up some fresh magazines from their web pouches and refitted his Mitrailleuse. "We'll just use these".

Fredericks heard the words, but that was about all. He absently racked the barrel lever and fitted a new magazine of his own. In the past, Kyle had seen him writing out his little short stories for Ploughshares and Tin House, or articles for Worker's Vanguard. Apparently he was a good writer, or in any case the publishers paid him average dollar. That didn't mean the guy wasn't totally preoccupied as he tapped out the keyboard. Eyes looking round in a daze. Daydreaming because, as with everyone, he wanted to be somewhere else.

So much like portholes on a very delicate Nautilus, many of the bay roller-doors had glass rectangles. Using tough military blades, they gouged out the rubber seals and popped the panes inwards to make impromptu gun turrets. Even before they rested down their gun barrels, however, the presence of the helicopter was a wild flurry, snatching their attention into the eerie night sky. There was something about the wildness, too, the partially-reckless careens, the ill-informed gyro. Kyle stepped backwards and noticed the plates of the all five roller doors were making weird, base grunts and rattling of their own accord. Similarly, he glanced into the stillages of M6 and M7 washers, the top layers trickling back like surf on pebbles.

"Magnetic waves", said Fredericks. "From the saucer".

"The bay doors are aluminium", pointed out Kyle.

"It's not that sort of magnetism. Can't you see it? It's in the air, like swarms of insects".

It was nonsense. Never more so than when the ginger spaceman reached his hand into thin air to tweezer-out one of the imaginary lightning bugs.

"They're insects, but they swarm together in huge patterns. Huge patterns. And they've got tiny words written on them". Indeed. It was reading the text on these hallucinatory insects that Fredericks blanched. "The helicopter's gonna crash anyway".

Cringing and enthusiastic in equal measure, Kyle peered out through the football-size slot. Around thirty feet above some nearby outbuildings, the chopper held itself juddering in a hysterical attempt to buy time. Except truly, the back rotor-stem was out of control, a driftwood branch in high tide. The cabin went at an angle, a lurch, an inexorable plunge into the tight recesses. An explosion oddly colourless and deeply disturbing.

Said Fredericks, still absorbed in his insects, "I wish you could see them. They're like rainbows through a refracted glass of water. Rainbows from nothing. I know what's going to happen and I'm not scared".

"Let's get as far away from here as we can", suggested Kyle in a prim voice.

Fredericks smile was wistful, "Yeah, far away's where I'm going".

Thumbing the green starter-switch, the roller-door opened barely three feet before the motor shorted out. They ducked through the gap and walked unpanicked across the courtyard of Thor Industries rear entrance. Alongside the high mesh fence, all of the main floodlights died at once, the dull blue landscape becoming brighter in contrast. And certainly more expansive. At the curved sliproad that led to the highway, there was an option to steal away into the woods. But Kyle elected to stay on the night-gleaming road, all the while keeping his machine gun roughly inclined to the horizon.

Fredericks, "I remember truanting in ninth grade. There was a strange feeling, some kind of transgression. It felt like every kind of catharsis at escaping from a lifetime prison sentence - and you'd think there'd be some kind of friction between your fear and your sense of freedom. Only there wasn't. It was just a weird sense of freedom, that you couldn't even imagine before, because it had nothing to do with anything. All you'd be thinking is, 'This is a completely new dimension, and God Himself knows: f- school'".

There was an Earth-based lightning clap. With a final rattle of the plasticky roof corrugates, it seemed pretty obvious that the flying saucer had finished imploding. Fredericks exhaled. Kyle gave a very derisive smile. Now, as it so often had in the past, the Thor complex seemed like an odd slice of civilization within thirty miles of overblown wilderness. Wafting inwards from the acres of skinny trees, the natural night ozone was crisp and clear, though regardless there was something in the sky which drove off any stars.

They proceeded to walk the slight rise towards the freeway, much traction in their heavy feet. Not that Kyle couldn't spur himself to readiness when they heard a car approaching. How demure and peaceful it sounded against the dense countryside, as he raised his gun, firmed-up his mouth, took deep breaths.

"This is it", said Fredericks confidently. Kyle hung back and let him cruise forward, the machine gun in his grasp not particularly ready.

It was an Toyota Rav-4. Twenty metres away, ten -it eased to a stop and the forthright attitude of the occupants became clear. Unhesitatingly, the driver stepped out first, a plasticky-faced soldier in a beret and shoulder-pad sweater. Across the roof of the car, the aim of his snub-nose gun switched sharply from Fredericks to Kyle. Then Occupant Two stepped out: the Cigarette Smoking Man, saying coolly, "Now, Gentlemen. This has gone far enough. Aim those guns away from us".

A single second passed by -Kyle was careful to measure it in his mind. He shot the Smoking Man's driver, hitting home just above the left eye. Not a single bullet came from his gun, though the tension-release was horrible in the sound of crumpling limbs, gun-metal clattering on asphalt. A slight advance was made. The Smoking Man looked nervous.

Before Kyle shot Fredericks, too, in the back of the head.

xx

Amoral leader-of-the-future though he was, Smokey couldn't help being perturbed at what had happened. Kyle played around with his gun, but didn't entirely aim it clear from the last man standing.

"What do you want from me, son?"

'Son' - cute.

Stated Kyle, "I don't want a thing. It's about what I am, right down in my bones".

Almost-but-not-quite unpanicked, the Smoking Man's hands hopped around his trench pockets in a search for cigarettes. His grey brow creased, though perhaps not as much as it should. "Which is what?"

"I'm ambitious".

"Lots of people are ambitious. In this life, it's an entirely ugly attribute".

Grinning waxily. "I figured you'd say something like that. I know you're not ambitious. I can see it in your eyes. Throughout this whole jerk off, all you've cared about is getting inside that spaceship, and you didn't care about any of the soldiers or scientists around you. But you needed them to be ambitious. The problem was, they weren't ambitious enough. I am".

"You're saying", the Smoking Man's hands froze in the motion of lighting his Morley, "you want employment, with the most elite section of the world government, as if you know a single thing about us?"

Said Kyle, "I know you have lots of downed spaceships like this. I know you compete with lots of space-cults to get to them first. Your blabbermouth scientist told me as much. All I'm saying, turn me loose. I get you the results you want, you let me rise through the ranks".

As the pair walked clear from the carnaged vehicle, the older man seemed to crumple, grow partially disinterested. Across the gritty courtyard, they entered the small reception area through a tiny plate-glass door, into the gaping shadows that led to the workshops. It was hard to say whether this was a long or a short walk, but Kyle was absorbed in every single glimpse of his former work place. Despite the gunfights and the crazy magnetic implosion, the place had stayed mostly clean and demure. Heavy pallet-truck scrapes on the floor-bulwarks told the stories of a thousand lazy-hurried shifts, everyone living for two days out of seven, everyone a comrade in nothingy survival. It was normality coming to an end, suddenly, as if Kyle hadn't always been ready.

They stepped over a dead soldier and paused next to the well-lit alcove that led to the workers washroom.

"Clean yourself up", said the Smoking Man.

"Where are you going?", asked Kyle.

"Where would you imagine?"

Hair was smoothed-out; trace amounts of soap were used in lieu of pomade. He washed his face, dried it off with the abrasive blue hand towels. In Fredericks' locker he knew there'd be the usual can of lemon soda he could bogart, though it was too much like hard work to go and fetch the key. When he emerged and breezed out into the main complex, it was to meet with more wry amusement. The Smoking Man had squatted down within the cluster of implosion-dragged stillages and benches, more or less on the precise edge of where the Starship Enterprise had been. Only a thin aura of brown, visibly-irradiated dust remained. The way the man danced around his own sense of reverence, though, collecting samples but also staring hard like a jilted lover -weird.

"You needed to get inside".

This was too obvious a question to answer. Instead, the Smoking Man stood tall, drawing air and saliva into his baggy old mouth. He removed a tablet computer from his jacket and lined it up in front of Kyle's face. He realised he was having his picture taken, and just in time produced a suitably nihilistic expression.

"Some time in the next week", breathing steadily, "one of the rival cults you spoke of will arrive to investigate this site. Accompanying them will be two of my assets, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. They're doing my bidding, as it were, without entirely knowing it. Your purpose will be twofold. Work with the cult, and the FBI, to find further crash sites and incidents of so-called alien contact.

"Your second objective - in 1987, Agent Mulder's young sister was taken, in a ship much like the one we just had before us. His entire life has been spent in an obsessive search, with a tenacity that makes him my most prized asset. There's every chance that one day soon he might even find her. You can never let this happen. Mulder must be -forever searching, never finding. Beyond that, I believe Agents Mulder and Scully may be falling in love. At some point, the death of Agent Scully might be a suitable spur to drive him on. However, this must be weighed against Scully's numerous skills and attributes. Forensic investigator. Disbeliever in the paranormal. Religious devotee in an age of atheism. I leave the matter to your discretion".

Kyle kept his expression eager, tho to a larger degree unreadable. The Smoking Man was now working on a device which had so far been concealed in a military attaché case. It looked to be some kind of miniature photocopier, and though it required his whole attention, he still reached inside his trench coat to give Kyle a swish computer tablet.

"What's this?"

"Quantico training modules, arrest procedures, case histories. The years-worth of lectures one would need to become an FBI field officer. I suggest you start memorizing it now".

The output of the miniature printer was finished, too. The Smoking Man slotted the ID into a small wallet and handed it to Kyle, who was despondent.

"Are you sure about the name? Sounds Jewish".

The older man casually returned to his cigarette. "Mr Parks, don't tell me you're antisemitic on top of everything else?"

Kyle shrugged. He stared hard, turned the ID card over in his hands to get a feel for it. The face was as trustworthy as needs be, while also disarmingly youthful, strong -ambitious. In time, only grinning remained. Something told him the world had always been waiting for Alex Krychek.

xx.

Scully spent most of the night anticipating how he'd keep her entertained en route to the Holvey Brother interviews. Sure enough, it was as vibrant as having a living podcast riding beside her -and carefree, smiling softly.

"When I first started work on the X-files, the whole of the Washington building was like a private resource to me. I requisitioned more files and national records into cases of neo-vampirism than all the leads in the Lindbergh kidnap put together. And get this: psychic scientists working on thought-materialization, silenced by persons unknown, routed through hundreds of government subcontractors to the point where every third person with a security badge is a stooge. But there's always a lead, Scully; they can't take that away. And wrapped up in the middle, Fox Mulder: poring machine. Did I know or care that they called me 'Spooky'? No more than that my barber always gives me taper when I ask for square. Check out my favourite album -"

From his suit jacket he pulled a CD. The cover was a very lifelike painting of a vintage-dress-wearing girl standing beside a fifties-suburban bungalow. She broadly faced a metallic flying saucer not too far in the sky beyond, while hesitantly turning to lock eyes with an unseen first-person. It was intriguing.

"Phenomenon by UFO. I got back to my office once and found it propped on my monitor. Some other FBI stalwart had bought it from Kanes during their lunchbreak especially as a joke on ole Spooky. But how could they have known? The music is spectacular, Scully. Like Led Zeppelin by another name".

He placed it in the dashboard player and proceeded to blow her socks off. She turned the volume down a distinct four units but nonetheless smiled appreciatively. It wasn't the sort of music she'd listen to normally, though the well-crafted prog-guitar -a cut above, that much was true. Explained the senior FBI agent, "I consider 'Space Child' to be the official Fox Mulder theme tune".

Scully blinked at the rising sun, concluding: like Jesus, people have entire worlds inside them. After her disastrous courtship with Professor Clark, she'd had the gift of scanning prospective lovers in the space of a heartbeat. Just a few mannerisms was all one needed to see into the future and answer the question, 'Will I ever have a row with this man? A few weeks from now? Five years hence? On my worst day?'

She and Mulder would disagree endlessly, but they would never row.

Even now he was all boyish optimism as she delivered her opinion, the frankness sexual, "You make it sound like the world's against you, but you've managed to carve a little niche, and thrive".

She saw the tiny shrug from the passenger seat. "I guess you could say that. But look at it this way, on a beautiful fall morning like this, with the sun in your eyes -you let it carry you. It's good to be alive, and if all their damn obfuscation has led you here, who can complain?"

Soon he shook his head at the wonder of it all. "When it first happened, it was all about the shock. I guess the shock is still inside me. But on a deeper level I know: Samantha was special. What happened to her, she's not coming back, because whatever weirdness she's been taken into, she's equal to it. She'd have grown up to be a Nobel novelist or some kind of ultimate mystic like Carlos Castaneda. Little things she did and said, half of them I've forgotten, but from what I remember -

"Spring break, when she was five or six. We were in the park across town. I was trying to get fresh with this-or-that highschool girl, and Samantha insisted that I watch her run across the fifty yard pitch of grass. She swore that she'd been able to sprint so fast that her legs had skipped, but she'd carried on moving, levitating. Her eyes as she told me that, Scully -daring me to disbelieve her, daring me to worry that disbelieving her even mattered, even for a moment".

Scully wondered, "Did she? Run so fast that she levitated?"

He reached his long arms and pawed the plastic leatherite of the dash. "She ran fast. Straight across that big, empty pitch in an exact diagonal. In the burning sun it was pretty much like a dream. Could she have levitated? I gotta believe it".

"So I guess that was your inspiration for believing you could catch up with Teddy Holvey when he ran?"

Grinning, "And Marianne Gravatte when she was signing photos outside the Lake Shore Playboy office".

"I grew up in a naval base", said Scully in a steady tone. "And even now, sometimes I'll find myself -standing there, staring out across the water at these huge, destroyer superstructures, like specked-grey cities in the water. I know it's a dream, but it's as real as anything. More real, in a way, because it's so impressive that I can be imagining all this -complexity. And my dad -I never see him, but I know he's there, standing beside me on the quayside gantry".

Mulder looked at her for several seconds, more or less, eyes full of unflinching good humour. "All the biggest authorities on lucid dreaming, all the most skilled practitioners like Fritz W. Sire and Professor Frank Storm -they all deny that there's any value on a religious level. But just one. Just one out of a thousand, Dr Jose Hefner out of Chicago -he recently wrote in the International Journal of Parapsychology, that lucid dreams are a legitimate new level of reality. And when you get sufficiently deep, the dreamland warns you. You have to keep quiet about all you see and all that happens".

"That's ridiculous, Mulder". Scully grappled with the gear stick in her trademark double-jointed clicks. "You can't inject a conspiracy into something that's pure wish-fulfillment".

Countered by, "But you could argue that all of human aspiration is wish-fulfillment".

"I wish I'd worn a sweater that was less spikey".

She scratched at the space between her shoulders. Mulder appreciated her control of the steering column. He stared at her hips, then quickly looked out of the window. In time, he explained, plucking at his thick lips with a knuckle or two, "There's always some kind of conspiracy. So for a while you might try to give yourself a vacation by hunting something harmless like Bigfoot or El Chupacabra. But even then, the conspiracy comes in the form of some big family drama in the life of one of the witnesses. 'I can't talk about it because my dad's a crazy disciplinarian who won't stand for nonsense', 'My uncle's getting his farm marauded by hunters who want the fame of catching ole Sasquatch all on their own'. There's always some kind of conspiracy, Scully. It's human nature".

Scully thought, "We'll just have to be Elliot Ness and the Untouchables".

"And Bigfoot Al Capone. I like your thinking".

She scratched at the rawness between her bra strap and the most-regretted Velma-style sweater. Mulder flicked his gaze furtively across the dash. Scully wondered.

xx.

The residence of the Holvey brothers was a pre-war terraced domino set above deep basement steps. It seemed well-kept, surprisingly so given that it was the domain of thirty-something bachelors. There was enough, anyhow, for Mulder's eyes to scan closely over the neighbour's berry bushes and the recently cleaned windows. He turned and stared at the sullen greyness of the opposite houses as Scully rang the bell.

"Hi. Can I help you?"

The very direct man who opened wide was Michael Holvey, Teddy's eldest brother by five years. The resemblance was only trace, with a certain European toughness in the nose and brow, along with rounded cheek bones, dainty lips. A quick glance at Mulder told that he'd already made a mental penciling-in of the possibility 'half-brother?'

A continued dryness in her partner demanded it be Scully who make inroads.

"Agents Mulder and Scully, sir, with the FBI".

"You're the lady who shot my brother", awed Michael.

"I'm afraid that's so, sir. Can we come in? We have a few things we'd like to clarify".

"The family liaison lady that came around here -said that you shot him, because he stole your partner's gun".

Said Scully, "That is true. I really had no choice but to fire on Teddy".

"He was always overexciteable".

"That's one way of putting it", entered Mulder. "Your brother is what you might call a unique kind of guy".

Deferring with a solid, amiable expression, Michael gestured them in. Scully saw at once: while the place was painted with optimistic colours, this was just a concession to some kind of European direct-mindedness. A bicycle was covered in waterproofs. Canisters of road salt were piled high in readiness of winter ice. A heavy-duty flashlight was on constant charge, ready for what variety of night-time maneuver?

In the kitchen, the agents watched Holvey carefully as he fixed a kettle. In turn, he moved slowly, for whatever mysterious, mesmeric reason.

"You'll have to forgive me if I'm slow on the uptake. I'm coming off a sixteen hour shift".

"Would you prefer that we come back later?", Scully volunteered.

"No!", Michael chuckled warmly. "I can be of assistance to you, I'm sure of it. Your liaison told me that you were talking with Teddy in relation to a girl who's vanished from a hospital bed. Is there any word of her?"

"Not so far", said Mulder simply. "By all accounts, she was friend of your brother. Did you ever meet Elvira?"

"In passing".

"Mr Holvey", Scully breathed ominously, "There's been evidence in our investigations of a religious cult. Did Teddy ever show signs of being attracted to any sort of -religious literature or a secret group?"

In his lofty hands, the weight of the kettle was now extremely tactile. He placed it down on the tiles, just for a second or two, the better to think aloud.

"Well now, religion is a funny thing. No. I can honestly say that Teddy was never majorly religious. Can I ask, is religiously-motivated crime something the two of you specialize in?"

Ever unashamed and provocative, Mulder said, "I specialize in crimes relating to the paranormal, specifically the criminal lengths which governments and individuals will go in exploiting purported extraterrestrial life".

Reflected Michael. "Aliens, then. And do you actually believe in them?"

On a wild hunch, tearing away at some kind of seam, Mulder became a man of sheer drama, "Whether or not we believe in them is a moot point. They believe in us. When I was sixteen and she was eight, they stole into my house on a wave of light and abducted my sister from right in front of me".

Their host was fascinated but far from dumbfounded. He paused with two mugs latched between his fingers and his left hand resting on the futuristic kettle. Scully integrated herself into the giddiness. She presented Michael with a photocopy of the 'no flags' symbol.

"What about this emblem, Mr Holvey? Teddy was fond of it, and we believe it's very relevant to the Elvira Hoek case".

Michael -poured their coffees without asking about milk or sugar. He ever-so-slightly braced himself on the spot, braced his eyes in their sinewy sockets.

"Yes. This is the symbol of the secret organization which me and my two brothers belong to. Sit down and I'll tell you what you need to know".

xx.

"My mother emigrated to the United States from Khrushchev-era Kemerovo. She was a Soviet more by nature than free will or peer-pressure, so it was pretty-well ingrained. For a while, there was wrangling about her green card, but it went through eventually because our stepfather, Teddy's biological father -he had a few ties in the State Department. It's strange because of the three of us, it was always Teddy who showed the most interest in Mom's Communist past.

"Because that was where it started. All through the time of video cassettes and DVDs, we only ever had films originating from the Mother Land. The Red Snowball Tree, Mimino, things like that. There was never any official embargo on bringing American movies into the house, we just never lusted for them. One minute we'd be watching Cheburashka the Bear, the next, Polé Chudes. Even more adult-orientated things than that. It was like Teddy just enjoyed watching the grain of the film stock, like it transported him to another world".

Interjected Mulder, "Was this before or after the accident which cost him his arm?"

"We'll get to that", said Michael powerfully. "It all ties in to the Andrey Tarkovsky film 'Stalker'. I don't suppose either of you have ever seen it?"

Mulder shook his head and smiled. To his partner, "Have you ever had any interest in 'Stalker', Scully?"

"I have not. Tell us more, Mr Holvey". She steepled her hands over her knees.

"You would call it science fiction, but unlike anything you'd imagine. It's as much a -meditation about deep countryside, collapsed industrial ruins, beautiful old masonry. Most of the scenes were deeply hypnotic observations of flooded farmland and rusting mining equipment, all the beautiful grimness in the nooks and crannies of former Soviet livelihood. It challenged you to wonder whether Communism was only ever beautiful grimness, or if it was obviously, painfully -something more. The storyline told of a vast area of the Soviet landscape having been evacuated, sealed off for decades due to an extraterrestrial visitation. What the visitation consisted of is left to the imagination. Only rumour remains, that at the centre of this ruined landscape is a magical room, and whoever enters will have their deepest desires made manifest".

Coffee pawed at, Mulder partially-relaxed his huge shoulders and said calmly, "You say 'hypnotic'. The 'No Flags' group have been heavily implicated in developing motion pictures as a form of subliminal, Communist propaganda. So let me guess, this was where you and your brothers got pulled in".

Michael was bright, disarmingly so. He leant forward and smiled inclusively. Scully swelled her mouth and held judgement.

"You're half way there. But Andrey Tarkovsky was only an inspiration for what we do. A profound inspiration, but an inspiration nonetheless. Some might say he was part of something in the collective unconscious trying to get out, but I'm a far simpler man.

"Of all the video cassettes we had beside our VHS, it was 'Stalker' that was usually playing. It was the one Teddy liked best. And then one day, there came to be in our house, a magazine. 'Vnutri'. It was probably some Soviet equivalent of Starlog, two-bit with seventies-style black and white film stills. All pretty reverent considering most of the articles were as much about Flash Gordon-style nonsense than anything highbrow. Actually, I think that Charlie had brought it home, just because it had a feature article on Tarkovsky".

'Deepest desires made manifest', 'extraterrestrial visitation', 'Flash Gordon'. Scully had settled back and folded her legs at the shins, absorbing the giddy sci-fi exposition as if it was a clinical hemilaminectomy briefing. She told herself she had faith because Mulder did.

Michael said, "This man. One of the most respected auteurs in Russia -or- the West, and at the same time his name was synonymous with mere sci-fi space adventures. Agent Mulder, you must have a similarly tough time getting your investigations into UFOs taken seriously -almost as if the universe itself wants the matter derided".

"Gotta grab your pants, get a better stance, jump up high", Mulder smiled.

"Well", Michael calmly gestured, "this particular magazine had a huge letters section. A British woman had written, suggesting that Tarkovsky's Stalker was so profound and lyrical, necessarily, because it was true. She told of visiting the remote sprawls of England and Wales that had similarly destitute areas of industrial ruin. Old ordinance compounds, logging communities that had failed to diversify and fallen to apathy. Slate quarries in Wales. Tin repositories in Cornwall. Coal mines that had been shut down by Mrs Thatcher as if she was an unstoppable wave of death. All these farms and warehouses abandoned to the wilderness.

"The writer told of exploring these old structures. And frequently joined by a companion. A black dog. The self-same dog featured in Stalker. There was a kind of underground network of people who had the same ideas about the reality of the film. They all reported seeing the dog in various remote, post-industrial areas. They reported hearing the music from the film, in the air itself".

"Mr Holvey", Scully tried to be patient, "there are any number of basic psychological mechanisms that could lead to shared-hallucinations".

But from Mulder, "Actually Scully, it's common parlance for alien abductees to at first report seeing animals in their homes, and only under hypnosis is it revealed that their conscious minds, unable to cope, simply substituted the image of a dog, cat or bird for something which is totally outside their experience. Alien".

"If we're talking commonalities", she breezed through her indignation, "the black dog is first and foremost a symbol of social isolation and depression. You're a psychologist, Mulder, you know this".

Rattling along, Mulder merely sparkled his eyes back to the interviewee.

Said Michael, "The three of us decided to write a letter to this woman from England. Do you remember in the eighties and nineties when magazines would print the whole addresses of their correspondents? We asked if there were Stalker-style hotspots anywhere in the states. The reply came by airmail, special courier. The woman was aloof and blunt, but kind of scintillating like some great novelist, leading you. She gave a response to the effect of, 'There are hotspots, everywhere. You'll just have to look'. She gave us the address, though, of a regional group, and we made contact. We went hunting together. Hunting for aliens, hunting for God, who can say?"

Scully removed some photos of Suspect A from the case folder, comprising the security footage from the hospital, plus some of Doggett's movie publicity shots. "Was this woman part of your group?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes", Michael made a face, mostly a scowl.

"You never met her face-to-face?"

"We dreamed of her, though we could never explain how. She told us where to go, the rough locations of entry points into the Zone. Seeing her, in our minds eye, there was a feeling of... it's hard to explain. But before you say anything, it was more than just a dream or hallucination. She's a real person. Predictably unpredictable. Every now and then, she'll use the name of a celebrity in her sentences. Like, 'I can't Yogi Bear to see that', 'People can be so Tom Petty'. I don't know why. Maybe she needs to deliberately ally herself to our culture. Maybe it's some kind of psychic watermark. Maybe she does it just because it's cute".

Now Scully exhaled heavily and prepared to leave. Turning to her partner, "Mulder, can I speak to you outside?"

Only Michael sensed the impasse, dismissed it by continuing his story straight through. "Teddy's accident, as you know, came during a family trip to a theme park. There are things you don't know, though. I immediately blamed myself. You see -we were separated from my mother and stepfather. And randomly? We looked across the outbuildings and wasteground surrounding the theme park, and we saw in the sky -a UFO, in the truest sense of the term, in that it wasn't a flying saucer, wasn't a ball of light-

"It was made of bones. A cross between an oversized rib cage and some -alien egg! There was a membrane covering it, but it was thin and translucent like a single ply of skin. We all three of us stared for a second or two. Ironically, no one else at the theme park noticed. But it was moving fast. It was Teddy who gave chase.

"He tore right off. And at the edge of the park, he ran directly into the path of the miniature steam locomotive that looped the rides. From my perspective, it looked like he'd gone completely under, though I guessed it just winged him. His arm was severed -messily. I remember, it disturbed me that at first there was so much blood, then so little, and it could only mean he was dead. But the paramedics got there, he was bundled up. Our mom rode in the ambulance, while my stepdad stayed behind with us. He was too confused to shout at us and ask how we'd let it happen. Though part of me wished he would. I was so guilty I wanted to die.

"But through it all, I had the presence of mind to slip away through edge of the park to where the bones-thing must have come down. I looked all through the dying grass.

"And of course, it was just a Chinese lantern.

"The layer of tracecloth had congealed to be practically non-existent, the cheap wooden frame had shrunk down to look like a gnarled collection of bones -but it was a Chinese lantern, something from any street corner party store.

"Didn't I go crazy with rage. I hated the cult. I hated that they'd wasted my brother's life by making him obsessed with UFOs and mysticism. I bolted from the park and ran what must of been two miles back to Oakley, to the home of one of the cult's most prominent members, Quinn Sterling. It was getting to be dusk. I planned to -well, you know. Mess him up. Maybe not kill him. Rounding this and that corner, I started to turn it over in my mind, but it didn't help. I was just too angry.

"I was there on his street, running all the way. At his lawn. And at the moment I slowed down to go into his home -I saw dozens of other cult members standing around on the grass.

"Somehow they knew what had happened to Teddy. They didn't say exactly that they'd had visions of the accident. We call it receiving implicate knowledge. Some people had nose bleeds. One man was pissed because his job was bagging groceries at the Circle K, and his boss hadn't understood why he just needed to go. But everyone who was there, they all knew what had happened. They knew more than I did.

"A pink beam of light hit me. It could have been aimed from the sky, it could equally have hit me from any angle: all I felt was the force. And then I saw her face -the woman from your photographs. She told me in no uncertain terms that Teddy was dying. Not straight away. He'd lost a lot of blood. Over the coming days, an infection would set it, 'staphylococci'. Devil's law, the antibiotics that they'd normally use, Teddy was allergic to".

Michael became emotional, but still off-hand, not as emotional as he might have been.

"But there was no need to worry, she told me, in that -English- way of her's. The hospital where Teddy was being treated was enrolled in a Modesto University research project where the ranking doctors would select at random a group of one hundred patients who had less than a twenty percent chance of survival, and as a clinical test of whether God truly responds to prayer, fifty would be prayed for, fifty wouldn't.

"I know what you're thinking, 'Only in Oakley!' To do it justice, I wasn't thinking anything. The woman told me: Teddy would be placed into the group that wasn't prayed for. What I had to do, seek out a Doctor Leewar. L-E-E-W-A-R. Tell him I'd found out about the University project. Insist he liaise with the university people that Teddy be placed in the prayer list.

"And then her voice -she continued to talk to me for some time, reassuring me, but- I -to say her voice was speeded up gives the wrong impression. It was like the audio equivalent of using a high-power microscope, and each word a living cell, almost overlapping but instead just growing denser and denser the deeper I went. She could have perfectly described a Van Gogh painting in less time than it would have taken to glance at it with my eyes. And she talked, and talked, and her words became so fine and -apposite, I guess- they merged into my own mind like diluted water. The beam of pink light vanished".

Fighting between distaste and impatience, the impatience won out by a small margin on Scully's face. She propped herself heavily on her elbow. Adversarial, or just brutally honest?

"So Teddy then developed a staphylococci infection, and you did as you were told and had him cured by the power of prayer?"

"That is correct", Michael smiled and scratched his knee.

"I'm sure that your experience means a great deal to you, Mr Holvey. It would to anyone. But these people you talk about, the people in your story -they sound like a classic manipulative cult, with classic psychological recruitment tricks. And you should be aware that's exactly how we're going to investigate them".

With interest, and yes, boyish as ever, Mulder looked quizzically between his partner and the interviewee. Who smiled, maybe with ugly confidence, maybe with confidence hard-earned.

"Agent Scully, Agent Mulder, you won't believe we have a link to the higher universe... until you've seen it with your own eyes. And maybe not even then. But if you want-"

Michael took out a ball-point pen wrapped fiercely in factory floor electrical tape. He tore a page from his TV guide. The figures he wrote were long and tortuous. Handing them to Mulder, who was nearest, there was a crisp flash of recognition. Excitement. The numbers were a latitude and longitude, plus a date and a time on the twenty-four-hour clock.

"There's going to be an opening in the Zone. We've been promised beamships. One, maybe more. Beyond that, glimpses of the Other World. Eternal life".

Put in Scully, intending a sober and downbeat last word, "Elvira Hoek is beneath the legal age of consent. Anyone implicated in keeping her from her parents will be prosecuted".

"All the harsh religions, with all their harsh disciplines", said Michael -for unfortunately he was fearless, "everyone distrusts them, without ever stopping to think there might be one whose harshness is justified. Just come with us. You'll see the future".

Xx.

Nestled between trees were Civil War-era work rooms, the sun blasting their backs in a giddy pink haze, hitting also the smart farmhouses, the lank flag posts. The speed limit-obeying Camry absorbed the light in a way that was deeply private. The passenger seat in particular, a constant corner of yellow slants, brown dimness. And didn't their debate spark and flow in the strangest way possible. Mulder felt vexed. Scully felt vexed. They forged through it with no animosity; in a way, she grew to love the to-and-fro, the tangled ball of options.

All those acclaimed true-crime books like The Fate of Lucie Blackman and The Executioner's Song, where an impasse in the forensics and fieldwork meant that the future of the case had to be confined purely to the gut instincts of the investigating officers. That and a dozen coincidences and things that were too bizarre to be believed. Scully wondered, would there one day be a tome bestseller based on the Elvira Hoek case? The reader swept up in the unearthly mystery for an inordinate amount of time. Then the sudden rush of clarity could only come with a shock. Agent Mulder killed two chapters from the end after being lured into a trap by post-morality space-cultists.

She tried, "Everything we've done so far has been on their terms. We have a missing girl, and there's every chance they're just leading us astray with these -games. First Teddy, now this. It's time to start getting tough with these people. I think we should pull as much information as we can on the Stalker group. We get a hierarchy and we start issuing Obstruction of Justice warrants".

Eating sunflower seeds or no, Mulder's jaw made tiny ripples. "I think that'd be counterproductive. It doesn't make sense that they'd have this dialogue with us if they were evading justice".

"It makes perfect sense, Mulder", Scully promised. "Doggett and Reyes said as much, these people have an -egotistical need to show the world how strange and zeitgeisty they are. And what better way to get credence than manipulate the FBI's number one paranormal researcher?"

"You know, if you're asking me if I'm more a paranormal researcher than I am a FBI agent, I make no bones about it -if you'll excuse the pun on Teddy's fairground encounter- I'm an alien-chasin' loon. But do the two really have to be mutually exclusive? I'd still be doing what I do even if the only ship that'd ever come to Earth was the one that hovered above my house in 1987. And the No Flags group, the Stalker group, whatever you want to call them -they'd still be out there".

Scully was full of remorse. "I'm sorry, Mulder. I respect what you do. I really do. I don't think I've told you that yet".

The senior G-man smiled blankly at the single-shade hedgerow speeding and spiking. He lolled his head to his partner. "I gotta admit, if I could have the whole business wrapped up by good old FBI methodology, I'd like you to be the one to do it. You're right. It might be better if we make a split; tomorrow, you follow up some of the leads from Davis High and the University Project, get heavy on their asses. I'll fall in to the co-ordinates tomorrow and see what this 'opening in the Zone' is all about. But don't blame me If I come back with bug-eyes and antenna".

"That would make for compelling evidence", she admitted.

A block of time was presented from mid-afternoon to evening which they used as a solid research period, setting their laptops back to back across a cleared motel desk. There was only one chair, and so Mulder was forced to take the huge bundle of spare blankets and lodge them precariously on the tiny wash basin. Henceforth they were engrossed. Frequently cups of coffee were consumed that tasted like they'd been made with caramel filler and powdered milk, as the names of all the key witnesses and suspects were ranked in a rough list. Each agent took fifty-fifty, Mulder investigating according to his expertise -anything deep-rooted and psychological- and Scully looking at forensic leads, or anyone who might have enough knowledge to interfere with the ward security at Stanley Hospital. For the medical-themed work, Scully was grateful: she disliked looking through the criminal records of ordinary people because it often proved that even responsible, psychologically secure people might be of interest to the FBI. And if that was true, what hope was there for someone like her, who beneath the surface could barely operate in a pro-active society? The best-case scenario might be that anyone who'd ever had a nervous breakdown had expended and expelled their irresponsibility, and so hadn't fallen into a life of crime. But it still only emphasized her own ghostly inadequacy.

Regardless, while Mulder was frustratedly trying to contact the former editors of Vnutri magazine, she had enough to form a running theory. "Both Dr Leewar at Modesto State and Dr Veda have had experience treating people who've become addicted to mind-altering drugs. In Dr Leewar's case, he even has ties to Fort Phipson, where Special Forces soldiers are trained to withstand hallucinogenic compounds".

"So you still think this is a matter of mass-delusion?", Mulder asked calmly.

Scully -kept her trademark frustration at bay as best she could. "Think about what we've seen, or apparently seen. A badly scarred girl rising from her hospital bed with a new face. It's impossible, Mulder. What better place could there be to covertly administer hallucinogenic drugs in a closed environment? And it's at the centre of a plot where we've seen... a 16 year old boy with an invisible arm made of psychic energy. Where -I- have seen... a spaceship, in the sky above my house!"

Mulder jerked his head, said quickly, "I think that's a solid theory. Except for motive. If you were a revolutionary group with hallucinogenic drugs that could be applied so precisely, wouldn't you target government officials, or use it to raid fat-cat corporations the better to redistribute wealth?"

"Perhaps that is their ultimate plan", Scully rooted herself in her chair, neither relaxed or tense, "but in the meantime they're just recruiting people?"

Qualified Mulder, "Helping people. They saved Teddy. Arguably, they've saved Elvira from living the rest of her life with a skull for a face. And this under-handed way the Bureau and Cigarette Man are hunting them. It's a classic, McCarthy-era over-reaction".

"That view might be a little hysterical, Mulder. The McCarthy mindset disappeared with Communism itself. I've worked with National Intelligence. For anyone who accuses a particular counterculture, or, say, a moderate Muslim of being a Jihadi, there's a dozen voices who insist on being subjective and open-minded!"

Mulder's eyes danced while never entirely leaving her's. "Actually, Communism is in a special category. I've seen the classified NSA and Supreme Court advisements. their thinking runs: one in a thousand westerners might convert to Daesh Islam to fall in with an Arab invasion, even if our brave boys allowed it to get that far. But people are starting to notice how three-quarters of the debt of Western states are owed to China. Communism is a practical solution, but it'd be an end to our good ole dependable governments".

"Are you a Communist?", she asked worriedly.

Mulder held out his palms, "C'mon, Scully. Look at these hands. I can barely file baseball cards without getting calloused".

A lull came. In difference to the new-found confidence she had around the opposite sex, Mulder in particular, Scully's gaze shifted low. Eye-contact was suddenly perilous. "I'm worried about what might happen to you when you go to the co-ordinates. Have you been to Geo Gle Earth? I mean, the woodland is -dense! There's enough abandoned warehouses for a thousand gunmen to hide in. There's roads to three interstates and they'd be gone without a trace in twenty minutes".

"It's also", Mulder's marble-effect ballpoint tipped from hand-to-hand, "exactly the sort of remote place messianic space-aliens would come a-callin'".

Scully started to say something -a knock and a business-like chirp interrupted, "Turndown!"

For a while, Mulder's smile floated strong, before he roused himself to retrieve the huge bundle of used bedding which he'd lodged on the basin. "Just coming!" The plan was to keep the sheets lodged on the ceramics with his knee while he opened the door.

Unexpectedly, the left-hand brace holding the sink broke free from the wall; Mulder's jaw hung. He continued to knee the precarious sink in place while opening the door and surreptitiously passing the bundle through to the wash-lady.

Assistance would have been given, but Scully was laughing, in tears, from the start. There were no breaths to be taken. The pumping in her lungs could only make her more joyous and it was like being bathed in happiness. Slowly, after the turndown lady had been seen off, she hunched from the bed towards the calamity.

"There's a- there's-"

"Quit laughing!", said Mulder, beaming himself, and grappling with her abdomen as if that would help.

"There's a tube of epoxy in the dash of the car!", she managed. She tried to take over the holding of the basin while he went out. But as he righted himself, and her, the good times refused to end. Something profound evolved.

The agents stared at each other, embrace unbroken, unbestreitbar romance activate.

"There's a tube of epoxy in the dash of the car", stated Scully.

Xx.

An adventurous ship-wreck, swept under in an exhilarating crosstide of warmth and energy. Eventually, of course, she bobbed to the surface and radiated in the sun. A little more research was done, but it was hard to think straight. Mulder sat behind his laptop and swiveled his head now and then, clearly just as sheepish as her. Six PM came and he tossed down his pen, tossed out the end of his tie in the same motion.

"You know this place has a Michelin Star restaurant? So-called because the steak tastes like old tires. But what do you say, Scully? Are you as hungry as me?"

It always happened over the years, with chirpy co-workers, with prospective friends and boyfriends. She declined to join them for lunch, or else going along but not eating anything. At the end of the day, they might invite her for a supper at a bar or barbecue, as entirely good and noble work colleagues. At which point she'd either claim to have a customary big meal waiting at home, or perhaps go along and make the herculean effort of forcing down a bare social minimum of toast, soup or rice. The finesse of an agonised anorexic attempting to behave naturally at a works dinner: she always wondered if there was an equivalent in the work of some Oscar-winning actor, and was she Meryl Streep or Sissy Spacek? Was she the entirety of Birdman? But no, no one. Actors are never trapped in that strange prison of shame.

Mulder was something new, she told herself. He was a human being. He would either be necessarily empathetic due to his own trauma with Samantha, or he'd be totally disinterested. Either way, completely unconceited. Perhaps.

He stood and snagged up his jacket from the bedpost, and in the terrible gulf of seconds, Scully pre-empted him.

"I have anorexia". Her gaze fell roughly in his direction. "I'm self-diagnosed, and self-treated, and I operate just fine through life, but -food and I have a relationship which barely exists. I get by on glucose and vitamin tablets, at most foodstuffs like soup and bread, just the same minimum you'd try and force on a sick child".

Mulder was motionless. He pulled at the shoulders of his David Byrne jacket and looked like a matador. Dusk light played through the window, spoke of a higher reality of chasing pastoral UFOs, dreaming on Bigfoot. If only it was a world she could share. Eventually, "I guess it takes quite a lot of courage to tell someone that".

"I wouldn't know about that", said Scully, pathos-ridden.

"Well-", he hauled on his jacket and rounded the corner of the bed. "You know, you're the second most pragmatic person I know. So I'm guessing it's pride alone that stops you going to a shrink. I'm not exactly qualified as a therapist, though I know all their baloney, so if you ever want a good pair of non-judgemental ears-"

Talking to Mulder about her condition, in any kind of protracted way, would be the kiss of death to any alliance, a friendship, let alone a love affair. She stared at the fine creme carpet.

"I just wanted to confess, and get it out in the open, while we're working together".

"There's no 'confess' about it. It's psychological. I'm not going to judge you! Except to say that the backchat we get up here-", he rotated a finger opposite his frontal lobe, "-is an enemy to anyone who has the tiniest bit of a personality. It's a crime we can't disentangle it. I mean, you couldn't get any skinnier, and even if you were twenty, thirty kilos heavier, you'd still be- hell beautiful".

Pulled in all directions at once, it was all Scully could do not to glower. "Mulder, it doesn't work like that! Even if I was skinny, and beautiful, I can't look at myself objectively. It's as impossible as seeing infrared or hearing radar. That's what anorexia is!"

A man who could never be deterred, he grappled with her huge trench coat, in a way that momentarily harkened back to the drama with the bed sheets. He sleeved it up onto her vulnerable arms and tingling shoulders. "Still proves what I said. There're conspiracies everywhere, even in the synapses of our own brains. A brick wall of unsolicited voices crying out that this can't be true, that never happened, you can't believe your own eyes. Come on, let's get a drink at the bar. Unless you're going to tell me you're also tea-total?"

Actually, she was tea-total, near enough, but social drinking was a lot more manageable than having to eat, leading her to bow her head and grab her wallet. Outside, a little blue daylight clung to the roof of the world in an otherwise twi-lit landscape. A holidaying Volkswagon had just pulled adjacent and the little girl who disembarked carried herself like a marched-out soldier. Fine; all was well with the world. Scully, at least, was a tireless machine built to compute FBI leads, wholly outside the world. There was a thin chance she could be something more, but it was incidental.

The bar was deeply rural, built from b-grade mahogany and dexian. There was red-painted pine involved too, if the oldest-looking pine in the world. Behind the barman's head and the transparent-plastic liquor cradles, a framed photo showed the motel's grand opening from many years ago. The guest of honour, it seemed, was Terrance Cauthen from the 1996 Olympics.

A glass of house white. A bottle of Miller. Mulder stared at her and smiled, as of to emphasize nothing more complicated than 'easy-going'. She began to wonder if she really had told him about her anorexia, of if it had merely been a deeply experimental daydream.

"Who's the first most pragmatic person?"

"Say what?"

"Back in the room, you said I was the second most pragmatic you'd ever known".

Mulder tugged at his suit pocket and resisted taking even a first sip of the beer. He looked across at the glass-embossed Toulouse-Lautrec frame. "That would be my dad. You want to know the story? Back before Samantha was taken, I was a hell-raiser. My buddies and I would hustle just about every store and institution in and around our hometown. We worked doubling-up receipts. Confidence tricks. Bad cheques. We jive-talked money from anyone even remotely susceptible to Sith mind-tricks. I was good, but one day I got busted. The cops warned my old man that if I carried on down that path, I'd end up in jail. It was only my dad's air of authority that stopped me going to juvie.

"But as we were driving home, did he get angry? Did he start to go to town on me? Uh-uh. He dryly tells me that he trusts me, that I just needed to be more independent. And he was going to get me my own apartment, and a car".

Scully drank an exuberant throat-full of wine. "He must feel pretty vindicated now".

"I guess. But a couple of years back, I ran into one of the guys from my old crew, just buying chips in a one-stop. He'd been ten years a reach-truck driver in a warehouse, and for ten years scraping twelve dollars an hour. Told me he'd spent a lot of that time feeling angry and worried, alternately. Then one day he realised there was something worse than the anger and worry he felt over that damn job. Every now and then, he'd think, 'If I wasn't angry or worried right now, I'd be thinking about my girlfriend, or vacationing in Vancouver, or out on the sea in high summer, bagging some devil-faced marlin as strong as a man'. Because it may sound nuts, but just those thoughts, which would've come and gone from anyone else's mind without a fanfare -just those thoughts alone were all he needed, are what life's all about. And while he cursed and hated his job, it had nothing to do with anything".

Asked Scully, "What did you tell him about your life?"

"That it was no easier for me in Travolta's entourage", twinkled Mulder. "So what about you? What drove you to the FBI - Medical Doctor dichotomy?"

There was, of course, no issue of his misunderstanding the crippling nature of anorexia. There was no evidence of baiting an elephant-in-the-room. It was solidarity in a fundamentally imperfect world. A measured sip of beer and a palms-forward pose suggested platonic-with-a-plan.

Sipping wine, thinking, the tavern was not particularly well-lit, if below their knees the legspace was bright and crystalline. Scully tried not to analyse the shape of her thighs. "I guess I always had a firm knowledge of science and medicine. And I was just totally in awe of doctors, I guess the way everyone is".

"So what were you aiming for, ER? Operating room? I'm guessing research".

"Believe it or not, I never really had a plan. I just thought, if you're a good person, the world will find a use for you, but I don't think that's exactly how it works". She checked, "You know, Mulder, I hope you're not planning to get any more work out of me tonight".

"Only holding me back as I curse at the moon and pick a fight with strangers. No wait, that's Tuesday night".

She looked at him critically, "I can imagine you getting pretty angry. Your theory of conspiracies being what it is. Where there's conspiracies there's people to rage at".

"You should see my office in Washington. I've thrown a hundred dollars worth of pens and pencils into the ceiling, borne of frustration. But it's only ever anger at the system, not the people. Politicians and state officials get a bad rap, but you gotta figure they're only doing what it takes to protect their voters and protect the status quo. Occasionally, you'll get someone who really is power-crazed and dangerous, some ex-military meat-head, but what of it? He'd be just as much of an S.O.B if he was manager of a hardware store, and that hardware store would probably go from strength to strength. The only thing that will save the world is full disclosure and total honesty. Whatta you say?"

"I think people are an unknown quantity, and -you can as much weigh things in the balance as you can win the lotto, Mulder". In a way it was a confession more sordid than the anorexia and the chicanery of the Smoking Man put together. "Maybe we can -sieve through people's lives, and maybe they'll even co-operate, but just under the surface they're panicking. Everyone is".

Drinking some Millers down, Mulder said. "Cool cats like us, at least we've got the upper hand".

Scully stayed silent now and assumed a faintly pleasant, confident expression at the gleaming bottles across the bar. She was in no way a 'cool cat' but daydreams fly.

Near the ceiling support at the corner of the lounge was a small concession to being a regular family pitstop, a curved glass cabinet full of cakes. Forearms laid flat on the surface of the bar, there was much nonchalant stretching and cheek-puffing as Mulder inclined his head towards them. "So you're a doctor and a scientist. A crazy-delicious slice of chocolate cake like that. Contains such-and-such calories. Psychology is based on either under-reacting or overreacting, right? Your intellect tells you you've got such-and-such a metabolism, and that twenty minutes of hard, cardiovascular exercise is gonna burn those calories away. Suppose you sneak out the emotional overreaction and replace it with physical overreaction, by doing -I don't know- 40 minutes of exercise instead of 20? No one ever died of too much exercise, right?"

"I can tell you're not a doctor, Mulder", smiled Scully. "Or a psychiatrist".

"I'm barely a nose-breather", he conceded.

"If you want to go ahead and get a slice of chocolate cake, don't let me stop you. Is it something you'd normally go for at this time of night?"

"Hell, yes", he said quickly. "But I was thinking more along the lines of you and me both having a slice, then maybe you'd join me on the customary Fox Mulder night-jog".

"I don't have any running gear with me". Relief.

"Those easy-trainers you keep under your backseat look man enough. And I have a spare T and tighty-whitees".

"How do you know I ever jog, that I'm capable of even keeping pace?", she quested.

"In a kinda clinical Sherlock Holmes way of observing everything, I may have glanced at your hips".

While a good-humour-diminished scowl held sway on her face, Mulder wagged his huge wrist to summon the barman and bring in two slices of the chocolate cake, the nemesis, the insane genocidal warlord. Scully didn't allow herself to think too much on the horror of what was happening, except running parallel was the suggestion it was all a game. She asked the barman if he could wrap one of the slices to go. It was a legitimate maneuver in the game.

She looked at Mulder, slyly, to suggest she'd won this round of humility-baiting. He started to eat, fork-and-no-spoon, which seemed insane given the consistency of the chocolate mix. Her own cake sat before her in cling-wrap, not calling to her in the least.

They talked for an hour-and-a-fraction about life in the FBI. Mulder had a further beer; she switching to decaff coffee. There was a feeling of professional discipline, given that tomorrow the case had to be worked, the fate Elvira Hoek divined through luck and trace clues alone. Mulder, he continued to emerge as the most unique man she'd ever known. A paranormal-hunting Ahab who'd one day vanish with all the insouciance of his easy-going personality.

Their paths diverged a dozen steps from Scully's motel room door, he wishing her goodnight with a typical left-field joke, "As senior agent, I order you to get a good nights sleep".

"I'm the medical expert", she pointed out.

"I defer to your expertise. Fifty dollars on the smartphone bingo, then to bed".

Actually, the plan was to drift through her room in a daze, then read, then dervish around in a high approximation of sleep. Just behind the door was an impact crater in the brittle plaster. The rorschachy shape resembled the outline of Agent Mulder, looking to the south through an undersized telescope. At his shoulder was another figure. Undeniably Agent Dana Scully. The similarity would have been striking, she decided, even if she wasn't in such a hypnogogic state.

On the dresser was a code for accessing the Wi-fi router, which might save the FBI's own network bill, but she was too agitated to concentrate on the instructions. Instead, there was a dim memory, when she'd first booked in, of looking in the uppermost bedside drawer and seeing a Gideons New Testament, of course faux-leather-bound but no less charming. On opening it now, however, a thousand years later, there was nothing. No doubt the phantom memory from some other anonymous motel on a past assignment.

What she did find, in the second drawer down, was an electronic twenty-questions game. A handheld novelty no doubt left by the last occupant, or the last-but-one. The screen was the size of her index finger. The four keys only, 'Yes', 'No', 'Unknown', 'Sometimes'. Scully was vaguely disappointed that the two triple-As were missing from the back. She was childishly enthused, however, when she realised she could commandeer the batteries from the satellite TV.

She changed into her briefs and folded down onto the bed, thinking intensely on something that might fox it. There were no smiles, not even a twinkle in the eye, just competitiveness. Her fingers hovered between the 'Unknown', 'Yes', 'No' and 'Sometimes' buttons.

Think of something. A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. Ree-ead-iee?

Yes.

Is it an animal?

No.

Vegetable?

No.

Mineral?

No.

Other?

Yes.

Do you hold it when you use it?

No.

Does it make a sound?

Unknown.

Was it used over 100 years ago?

Yes.

Is it larger than a microwave oven?

Yes.

Does it bring joy to people?

Sometimes.

You're trying to confuse me...

'Not necessarily', thought Scully, feeling strange and inadequate.

Can you buy it at a store?

No.

Is it man made?

Unknown.

Can you put something into it?

Yes.

Is it outside?

Yes.

Would you find it on a farm?

Sometimes.

You can't beat me.

'I hope that's true', thought Scully. "I want vindication'.

Is it something you can purchase?

No.

Can it be painted?

No.

Is it heavy?

No.

Do most people use this daily?

'Hmm', thought Scully. 'Not these days'.

No.

Is it dangerous?

Sometimes.

I can read you like a book! Can it be used more than once?

Yes.

Does it bring joy to people?

Sometimes.

Final question, then. Does it exist only on Earth?

Unknown.

OK, you win. I have no idea. ONLY JOKING! Is it - a flying saucer?

Scully felt strange. Strange enough to blanch. After an period of staring numbly at the space around the little toy, her fingers crept around looking for an off switch, before discovering it timed-out automatically. Now. What strange dance of fate had allowed a child's toy to dictate the priorities of her life?

The thing she'd been thinking of was religion. And in the pragmatic war between the afterlife and twenty-first century agnosticism, nee atheism, what right did she have to complain that a strict algorithm of 'yes-no-sometimes-unknown' answers had led her to UFOs rather than God?

The collapsing wash basin. The chocolate cake. The sexual tension whenever Mulder was even in danger of touching her. It was all a slipstream. God, He's there. The quantum web, it's there. And now flying saucers. All there to tantalize you, and not caring if you take the fascination or not because it's all contained in a socially-recognised algorithm. She looked at the plastic-wrapped cake on the far dresser. She looked urgently at the faux-old-fashioned bedside clock. Just breaking free from the folded position on the bed snapped the chilling night air to her arms and legs. Nothing she couldn't take, twinkle-stepping to the tiny window to see if Mulder had emerged from his room, or was in the process of emerging.

Her heart beat and her lungs took in air in strange, varied ways. She judged her sleeping briefs to be good enough running garb, and the T-shirt suitably rugged. Still the world spun upon opening the cabin door and slipping out to get the easy shoes from the Camry.

There was consciousness all the way, no autopilot, as she slipped back inside to fit on the shoes while leaning on the tiny dresser. Certainly it was coquettish, the way she closed the door as if to avoid being seen by her partner until the last possible moment. A rumble of motel doors came, and for some reason she associated it with some other guests leaving for the night. On going outside, however, she saw the back of Mulder's head some hundred yards away, almost vanished in the grey night landscape.

Frowning, she closed her cabin door and prepared to give chase. Before opening it again, snatching up the chocolate cake. She took a deep mouthful, which she barely tasted at first, then savoured to the degree that it was the very definition of chocolatey. The rest, she threw into the sidings for the raccoons to eat.

The greatest fear, as Scully started to move, was that there'd be a sensation of extraneous fat bouncing around her abdomen, jiggling around eternally. If it was there, it wasn't as bad as she'd feared. Or was it just insidious? There was a certain thickness stretching from her pelvis to her rib cage; it could be ingrained fat, or it could equally be nothing more than the folds in her T-shirt. An answer was to distract herself by running hard and fast. The blood supply around her eyes growing ever tighter and more tingly, the veins in her head a crazy switchboard. Getting out of breath was a manageable problem, whereas the general exhaustion dogged her into a daze, held steady for a while, then threatened automatic shutdown if she didn't moderate her pace.

Offshooting the hamlet-to-hamlet lane was an even leafier track which ran across to an agricultural footbridge. A little-used stretch of brown rail track was beneath. Momentarily there was no sign of Mulder even in the far distance, and she was forced to guess. The vague-tho-undeniable hints of industrial outposts -sheet metal fuse boxes, abandoned trunking- spoke of the same romance the Stalker group liked so much. Except Mulder would probably be winding down for the day, and wouldn't be making the associations. She knew she barely was. Still she ran past the engineering debris and scanned the left-hand line of hedgerows, heading out to countryside that was even more secluded. As a hopping-striding speck, Mulder's white T-shirt caught the eye as filthy, but an honest kind of filthy, like those fifties and sixties baseball tunics mounted in displays.

The gap didn't once close. Scully wasn't particularly concerned. The effort of running was devilishly hard work, but curiously achievable. Dragging fingers of frantically-oxygenated blood mauled at her veins, stalled across her torso. A lack of rhythm brought pros and cons, namely that even the worst inclination to stop could be fought back. And priorities shifted. She would not slow up, even for a second. She would not dilly-dally in the mindless pattern of life-as-usual.

She sprinted and weaved. There was no fear of getting lost. Something similar, though -the idea that she was rushing at such a speed that if she were to walk back to the motel now, the distance would seem icily elongated. Huge. Grey white light clung to the half-cultivated hedgerows in an approximation of frost. Grubby plastic sidings had become justifiably grubby after exposure to such pale, agricultural cud. Her mind streamlined down until she saw only what was necessary, while still retaining a feel for the place, the atmosphere, the chase.

What seemed to be dust-motes of some kind swam before her eyes. Or maybe what the Irish call midges, persistent mircoscopic flies the movements of which spoke of a semi-conscious net. There were elements of unconscious blackspots, too, but mainly -she soon suspected- the patterns were just some kind of bio-electric dissonance inside her optic nerves, brought on by the stress of ceaseless exercise.

And Scully continued to believe this, even as the specks of light took on new characteristics, wholly separate from her rasping breaths. They were more serene. They were like flakes of snow in front of a streetlamp, only with a certain conscious dance, the way someone might visualise quantum entanglement. She fought through the vales of colour, refusing to let Mulder vanish from the night.

She ran, and only the most shocking new twist forced her to slow. A closer swirl of the microscopic lumens entered her fore-vision, and where previously it was a matter of luck if the grey light managed to pick them out, these were bolder, thicker, more resolute; somehow her oxygen-starved brain had been granted a microscopic facility.

What she saw: the tiny objects were indeed conscious. They were insectoid, and fearfully coordinated in a way one might imagine Jackson Pollock going about his work, or multiple Jackson Pollocks. 'Hallucination', she thought succinctly. It was a terror which forced her to slow down and try to relax her lungs, deeply, properly. Life-affirming breaths were taken.

But the tiny insects remained.

They existed as far as the eye could see, and in fact, flicking into obscurity within the overall density of the fields, becoming one with every part of the sky and landscape. Above all, there was no possible rationale to follow except, 'hallucination', 'hallucination', hallucination'. For surely she was experiencing some serious brain disorder. Not in the richest lucid dream was there anything like this. Intricate, all-encompassing; there were more insects in her field of vision than grains of sand on a Hawaiian beach.

Strange, too: the disparate orbits of the swarm came together to form a translucent human figure.

The ghost-figure looked profoundly at Scully.

The risen girl from Elvira's hospital bed.

The Hollywood-baiting nemesis of Reyes and Doggett.

Teddy's alien messiah.

"Where is Elvira Hoek?", Scully managed in a croak.

Said the girl simply, "Elvira is in a state that the living would call, 'timeless', as someone who's dead seems timeless in your memory, or someone who's yet to be born. She's alive, though, if that's what you mean, and can be returned".

"This can't be real", struggled Scully.

"It's A-1 real", promised the vision affably.

"You say Elvira can be returned. Then return her, right now!"

Sardonically, the pretty girl shrugged. "OK. She'll wake in her bed tomorrow, thinking it's Tuesday when it's actually Friday, but otherways unaffected. X-file closed".

"Who are you?"

Now the intangible girl frowned. "I can never tell you who I am -because it detracts from the meaning of what we're doing here. What I can tell you, Dana, is that I'm human, and used to be as fleshy-and-bloody as you. I mean, I hate allegories, but this one is unavoidable: imagine this is a science fiction story, from issue one thousand of a cheap pulp magazine. I could tell you I'm a robot, or an alien, or maybe that I'm from the future, but what would it matter? The reader, if they're worth any salt, would only care that I'm completely different from their constrained twenty-first century, capitalist life".

Abruptly, Scully's breathing and tingling body were completely under control, as if she'd never been running. If only she could now think analytically.

The best she could come up with, "You're English".

"I'm English and you're American. Let's f- with Iraq".

The vision before her was much like a sci-fi hologram. It caused Scully to wonder, "Are you in England now?"

"No", the girl's voice was curt. "It's too painful for me to be in England. It's too far gone, it's a waste of effort. But America? There's still hope. A lot of people have memories of Motor City, Steelcase in the North, Waccamaw Timber. Every schoolchild who studies the Old West gets a collective guilt at the inhuman and exploitative way European settlers treated the Indians. Your sense of economic morality is already there, waiting to be tapped".

"So it's true what they say", Scully marveled. "You're latterday communists".

A shrug. The flickering miasma of glowing creatures comprising her beautiful face: queasy to behold. "Hasn't it ever occurred to you that God might be a communist?", she asked provocatively.

Dourly, "And will He be rebuilding the Berlin Wall, and gulags?"

"No. Although I have it on good authority He'll be bringing back Tab Clear".

Something scientific kick-started Scully's analytical mind. "I can see through you. You're -physically immaterial. And yet when your lips move, I hear a voice. Conventional soundwaves".

"No soundwaves involved", stated the visitor. "I'm a psychic manifestation existing only in your Max Headroom".

"Are you responsible for the flying saucers?"

The girl looked vexed. "That's a complicated question. No. Yes. Partially. I'd be more forthcoming if I could".

Scully grew instantly furious. "Where is Samantha Mulder?"

Charmingly, a haggard breath was taken to show some kind of solidarity within the mired intrigue, the decades of mystery. "I know how goddamn annoying it is to be around someone who's willfully mysterious. I respect you too much to jive-talk. I will not talk about Samantha Mulder, except to say, yes we have her. She's safe. She's -vital to the revolution".

For the first time, the night air truly started to sting. It stung the inside of Scully's mouth as she took a truly disgusted breath and clenched her fists. How every corner of her vision flowed and fragmented like Dali disintegrating. While still retaining a deeper sensation of being in the dead of night -incredible. Miraculously, for a chilled rural nightscape, there was no fog at all. That, she sensed, was the pervade of her mind, as she struggled with the desperate propositions, hovering right there on the spot.

"You people are monstrous. You have -wealth. What you tried to do in Hollywood was clever! Why not just work within the system? Let the people decide if they want this revolution?"

The girl's beautiful face was rueful. "Revolution? Do you really want to have the revolution talk? I've had it twice before now, in stories with bigger stakes than this, and I'm scared to death of being a hobby horse".

"I don't understand".

"In your brain, you picture it the wrong way", explained the vision coolly. "Revolution as something that must necessarily seek to change the whole of society. But we're entering a new phase of human understanding. Communism was never about bringing justice and equality to the exploited, not really. It was a way for the few self-aware people to show solidarity to the like-minded. Because the greed and the conflicts-of-interest that exist among the mortals -it's always there and it's nothing we can control. We can't even see it. We certainly can't extricate ourselves".

Struggling to keep pace with the raw arguments, the logic of what was being proposed, it surprised Scully quite a bit when she formed a completely emotional response, "You're a marginal group, and you have big, lofty ideals. You have to let these ideas disseminate and osmose in general society -or you run the risk of breeding terrorists. Passive-aggressive maniacs".

The girl shrugged, in as much the dense, holographic insects swirled in crazy-abrupt arcs. "It's a very different thing. A very different thing. Avery Brooks. An economy can exist healthily without religious terrorists. That equation will always fail. But we can't exist without the proletariat. My group work in secret, to at least give them a sense of belief, and so ensure the survival of the human race".

"Belief isn't enough". Scully's face ached.

Widening her eyes. A billion lustrous fireflies, "No one wants to have belief alone, but it's necessary. Where does rooting for the underdog end and wallowing in self-pity begin? The truth is, even the most black-eyed bourgeois would have to admit that Fidel Castro is the coolest and most insouciant world leader, and if any kind of collective unconscious exists at all, that's an infallible truth. Either Fidel Castro or, in the new century, me".

Leaving. Without turning around, it was implied that the rational, waking air had swallowed the insect-girl whole, dissipating her completely. If only that English-Cheshire-Cat voice didn't stay behind.

"Scully. Here's a concession for you. What's the most important thing on your mind? Whether Samantha Mulder is alive. What's the second? Whether you're in love with Agent Mulder. If he could love you. If the two of you could have a viable love affair.

"Serious questions both. Not to be f-ed around with.

"But from my perspective? When it comes to important things like this, there is such a thing as fate. And he loves you like he's the Geoff Love Orchestra. And you should definitely go with him to the co-ordinates tomorrow".

Released, Scully made a decision that there'd be no more running, though she walked quickly. Footsteps on the firmed-up dirt carried the hiss of the huge landscape, then at other times seemed compressed under an apocalyptically low canopy of clouds, air pressure. She reeled and threw around ideas of the hallucination-that-was-not-an-hallucination. Taking in the weight of her limbs, the gravity itself seemed shackled.

Blank-eyed autopilot dictated that she try to return to relatively-ordinary life. But what was the quickest route back to the motel? She saw the lights of the highway, or an off-shoot. Laterally, she crossed the edge of a field because it was the quickest route. She stared down at the tide of grass wrought by her easy shoes, at the same time with the purple-light atmos filling her head, guiding.

Her family's first billet, back when her father had just become a humble lieutenant, had been a tiny apartment with one big living space and all other rooms closet-size. It was emphasized, too, by the way that, as an infant, her environment should have seemed huge, not diminutive. The bath-tub looked incredibly small. Possibly it had just been the ceramic base of a shower unit -but then, earliest memories are allowed to be inconclusive. The water level came to Dana's chest, in such a way that she floated ethereally; she remembered being happy to splash around indefinitely.

As an extra piece of entertainment, her father had brought along some of her brother's plastic battleships. Weirdly, even as a barely-conscious toddler, she thought it was strange that such an elaborate piece of war-machinery as an aircraft carrier had been reproduced as a bathtime toy. Unlike Junior and Charlie, she could never enjoy the nuances of war adventures, even if she was a tomboy in all other respects. The lives of the hundreds of crewmen: too much to calculate, leading her to dismiss playing with the battleships out of hand.

Her father left for a while to see to some household chores. Little Dana splashed around innocuously. When he returned, he was upset to see the tiny ships lolling at the bottom of the water. In adult hindsight, she guessed his sadness had been jokily-affected, though at the time she'd felt profoundly sorry, tears welling hard.

On through the years came that unique father-daughter nickname, 'Starbuck'. The oversensitive supporting character who in the final chapters becomes all-important. Through all the struggles, it was no struggle at all.

Between the hedgerows she found an ancient concrete plateau, some sort of farmyard staging ground for washing cattle or parking feeders. She crossed it, edged through a small copse. On the rise, on a long track, she was surprised to find Mulder. The proverbial 'good' surprise. He was talking on his cellphone while staring at the darkest green grass.

Eventually, looking up, gasping, he held a finger to the receiver as if to hush the lips of his caller. "Scully?"

She tried to smile. In the final analysis, it was probably the most optimistic smile she'd ever mustered. Still not perfect.

"I just got a call from the Obeltsville Sheriff's Department. Elvira Hoek is back. In her room. No scars, no burns, saying everything's the same as ever. I'm going to call Skinner and try to wrangle us an interview".

"No". Scully's eyes were flickering, finding his and holding steady. "We have to go to the Stalkers' co-ordinates tomorrow".

"Whattaya mean?"

"I believe - there are bigger considerations going on here than Elvira Hoek could possibly know about. I can't explain".

Silence followed, and with Mulder carrying the weight of it for a long time -open-mouthed smile and eyes sparking even in the dead of night. "I trust you. But this situation, there's circles within circles. Why would you -"

Where reasons existed, they were too labyrinthine to talk about.

Romantic intimacy between a man and a woman never truly exists; it's an impossibility. Yet with Mulder, pages were turning. Things were eschatological.

Her breath was steady. Somehow they'd come within an arms grasp of each other, and this was more than coincidence. She leant forward and kissed him. Ten seconds. Enough. The cellphone, he folded down abruptly.

Xx.

It was a big characteristic of the beechwood trees on the rise, just before the forest proper, that someone had once pruned them even as they'd died. Now grey muscular rods rose up from the ivy into artistic morning sky. The grass was ruddy and not particularly easy on the foot, but somehow it was satisfying to wade across. As in all childlike and joyous treasure hunts, there was a marked difference between the location highlighted on the map and what lay before them in the silent landscape. Switching from EPI to a satellite photo, the patchy woodland was innocuous whether it was photo-real or a single-tone representation. Scully saw: a place made higgledy by abandoned shrub projects and ninety-degree tree husks, profoundly uninhabited -but also surprisingly navigable. No birds nested in the trees, or used them as stop-offs. Deer could be present, and it was just secluded and magical enough that they might actually see one. In the meantime, the sky above was comforting. Giddy, she guessed, because of the unknown-romantic superimposition. It was the first day of the rest of their lives together. On a crazy whim, they'd chosen to remain as before: paranormal researchers and thankless FBI agents.

"Fashionably late, or fashionably early?", Mulder peered around.

From first waking, he'd glowed. As she had. Barely a Roentgen more than usual, but making all the difference.

"Should I have worn my best dinner party dress?"

"I'd pay to see that one time".

"Maybe they're further in? Holvey didn't actually say anyone would meet us here".

Mulder winced. "Would they miss out on their own flying saucer lightshow?"

"Maybe it's a case of gently does it, then?", she flapped around the arms of her lightweight jacket. "I never heard of any flying saucer appearing to a huge group of specially-chosen onlookers, anyway".

"Scully? I've heard of everything".

Down the rise and through the estuary-shaped coverings of brambles, there was no easy route. Eventually, near the lazily-accumulating trees, there was clear footing again, a type of ivy that grew on the ground like carpet. She liked that: that he still called her 'Scully' rather than 'Dana'. Likewise: reassuringly soulful that he hadn't touched or caressed her since the night before. except for shouldering on her coat with those wildly-oversize hands. Continuity of personality, living subtlety -that was a thing of the future.

Heavy, moss-ridden tufts swelled near and far. There was never a track. Twigs snapped, admittedly like something from an adventure story, as they made inroads to no particular nexus point of raggedy barks. More trees were at an angle than not. Scully found her fingertips and the Gortex elbow of her jacket had turned moss-green, even though she had no particular memory of having touched anything.

Maybe it was ten minutes or a quarter hour in, she was forced to slow up and nimbly climb over the small part of a fallen tree. Mulder didn't stop to help, didn't even notice her absence, though by coincidence he halted on the brim ahead. It was a slight basin area with a two hundred metre vantage of straggly trees, sparsely arranged in a tide-versus-shore equinox.

According to Michael Holvey, a prerequisite of 'The Zone' was a sense of desolation. To Scully, this semblance of deepest woodland certainly played the part, with trees that were two dozen feet apart, artistically separate. What made her brood was the idea it was wholesale desolation. Odd symbols of industrial destitution were spread far and wide, as if to distribute the man-made loneliness as broadly as possible. In a nearby tree: what might be a tiny bird's nest. On closer inspection, as she passed underneath, she saw it was the plastic end cap from a side of racking. A 'Guard Dogs on Patrol' sign lay flat on the ground, and how she wanted to lift it to see if there were salamanders present. Non-biodegradable foam clamps and a domestic table knife also poked clear from the recess. Scully moved on at a creep - Guard Dogs nothing. It was the ownerless Black Dog she peeked for.

The first sign that they were within the limits of a factory or warehouse complex was a sagged-to-the-ground net fence, then beyond that a breezeblock wall that had once supported a water tank. Mulder turned to her as if to gauge an opinion. A dozen metres onwards was a single-story brick warehouse, but presenting a strangely elliptical air -the beige colour of the bricks was almost identical to the trees which straggled the outside. The stillness of the air, the silence, suggested there couldn't possibly be people within. Still the agents started to take wide and careful strides across the mess of branches, now with a particularly post-modern approach to looking for UFOs: staring into the stratosphere, also examining tangled branches as little as a metre away. Scully decided, if they could see themselves, it would be heartwarming, funny, tragic.

Sometimes they simply stared at each other, Mulder simply gaping like a teenager.

For the most part, the GPS was surprisingly well-behaved. Admittedly, 'the sticks' were ever a black spot, with the degrees playing a constant catch-up in huge blocks of figures. But all it took was thirty seconds of lingering beside this-or-that swirl of weeds to bring back a rock-solid fixture. Scully stared at the mid-size mobile, wondering if she should disregard the satellites completely. Always there was a suspicion that while obsessing over the co-ordinates, a lozenge-eyed alien or unearthly black dog might equally be obsessing over her.

She saw, strangely, the lithe engine of a ferry-boat, wholly removed from any kind of chassis. To the east was a significant drive-in section where telegraph poles were stacked like timbers. 'Goods-In Area B' told the Twin Peaks-style sign. How vast a stretch did the compound cover? It seemed bizarre that aliens should choose to visit the inside of an anonymous warehouse complex. But maybe that was the point: mystery. She couldn't guess. Maybe Mulder could: he moved purposefully, always. She figured she couldn't have loved him more if he'd grasped her hand and led her like something from an eighties MTV video.

Out of misplaced respect for private property, they gave the small warehouses a wide berth, while still inside the wire fence. The posts were heavily-sanded concrete pillars, which funneled outwards dramatically, reference a sense of alien intrigue being joined by human chicanery. A dreamlike level of isolation.

Beyond, now, were trees and muddy glades, still within the perimeter of the warehouse company. Mulder swiveled his head almost as fast as he walked -

A deep whine suddenly permeated the entirety of the air. They jumped. Massive though it was, Scully was able to dismiss it immediately as nothing particularly unearthly. Maybe an industrial rock transfer, a powered tanker lift, something of that variety. But obviously, Mulder took hurried steps towards the breach.

Into a lagoon or lake, a dozen-strong team of elite soldiers were hauling a stubby fighter plane. It was only partially draped in concealment webbing. To aid with the pulling, the twin engines occasionally fired up through the down-planes, though the sound was abrupt and unhealthy, possibly dying. Were the soldiers trying to scuttle it? It seemed the only explanation. Except wouldn't it be more cost-effective for the American military to try and repair such a million-dollar aircraft?

There were bigger considerations. The fearful action took place barely two hundred metres away. Scully explained, "We have to get clear. They'll have guards making perimeter sweeps".

"What are they doing? Why a military exercise all the way out here? Unless they were trying to intercept exactly the same thing the Zoners were looking for".

"If this is a military exercise, Mulder, it's obviously on the level of what Putin did in Ryazan. And what kind of self-inflicted terrorist act would be so sensitive they'd need to scuttle an F-35 for fear of it being used as evidence? We've been dragged in here. This has nothing to do with UFOs: they just wanted FBI witnesses".

He looked at her doubtfully, but only for a moment before wallowing in the military operation once more. It was rich, the way they each presented their own primal opinions, so intent on wrapping the other in total truth, bluntness. The open-hearted paranormal drive of Fox Mulder versus the grasping-pragmatism of Dana Scully. She knew if there was a philosophical equivalent of their weirdly-satisfying love-making, this was it: arguing, working cases.

But indeed there was the feeling they were on the cusp of being discovered. She could feel it in the tingling of her skin, the weight of her limbs. The distinct, alarming sound of foliage being crumpled made them whirr around.

There stood Michael and Charlie Holvey, together with unknown men and women. A man in mobster coat that exemplified round, bulletproof shoulders. At the same time, a young woman in a silken shirt, a man who looked like a grocer, a teenager. All stood ready.

Michael said, "Welcome. It was kinda prophesized you'd come along".

He was staring purposefully at the lake-side activity. Mulder was swept up.

"What's going on with the military?"

"The military always has interests that are parallel to ours", Michael frowned. "But we really don't have time to discuss it. I suggest, if you don't want to be on camera, you step clear. And probably if you don't want to be shot at, either".

He withdrew a modest smart phone and started to film the excitement. Mulder and Scully both stared at him numbly. The spirit of avuncular good cheer, he explained, "Our objective is not necessarily to expose the military, or that weird, totalitarian secrecy the government likes so much. All that Julian Assange stuff is hateful. But we do it anyway because it's unavoidable".

Scully was waspish. "They'll shoot you, and confiscate your phone".

"Shoot us? That's a given. But the footage is being uploaded through encryption to a dozen dummy web pages. Commandeered rep sites, disused price-comparison domains, confectionary companies. Klondike Caramel. Remember that? I suggest you watch the video on how they make pina-colada lacquers".

From Mulder, "How'd you know we're not just government stool pigeons, stealing away your secrets?"

"Because you're just not. Now. If you want to fight, you'd better draw your guns. Viva the revolution".

What did he mean? Drama. He took off from the partial cover and, still keenly aiming the smartphone at the three-quarters-submerged fighter plane, hand steady, there was no bringing him back. The soldiers spotted him at around twenty metres across the straggly ground. They spotted also his dozen bodyguards, wood-tinted Ammunation-purchased guns and rifles brought carefully to bear. Surprising really: the bobbed hair of the girl and the hastily-rolled sleeves of the men told that they were ordinary people one-and-all. At the same time, their method of aiming-and-moving was curiously close to FBI training. When agents have the luxury of approaching multiple armed targets, keep your weapon aimed at a single point, so presenting the gun-play equivalent of mutual assured destruction. Scully saw that, of Holvey's group, a droopy-mustachioed skeleton-man made dizzyingly earnest efforts to cover the extreme right-hand edge of the group of soldiers. A small woman with a dour mouth took equally intense care to cover the left, the others targeting soldiers at all the points between.

'Viva the Revolution', he'd said. Scully thought of what the hallucination had said about the fallacy of revolutions, and how the Holvey brothers might react to that. She felt a certain pleasure at the emotional complexity where previously only horror and bleakness had ruled.

Now the enemies faced each other.

"Hands where we can see", said Michael steadily.

Except, no one presumes to get the jump and give orders to the American military. Flashes of honed machine gun fire started almost immediately. The Zoners scattered to whatever cover was available, though with two or three felled from the start.

From behind their vulnerable bank of twigs. "Mulder, we can't afford to be dragged in to this".

"I hear that. Let's get out of here".

Retreat in place, still the agents felt it wise to produce their own sidearms and unlock the chambers. A little across the way, thankfully at a sharp angle to the rest of the gun-fight, a decent chance of cover was presented alongside the lowrise brick warehouse. Mulder made it in a Chuck Berry-esque lunge. Scully aimed for the same spot but was disarrayed when three rounds of handgun-fire shredded the turf at her feet. Amazingly, it was only a slight inconvenience, allowing her to dart cleanly to another block just slightly ahead of Mulder's position.

The lovers looked at each other. Mulder seemed breathless; Scully took it upon herself to provide the charge. A metre inside the relative safe zone was the alcove of a fire door, un-openable from the outside - under ordinary circumstances. Spreading her arm flat and turning away to avoid shrapnel, she fired on the hitched area that concealed the mechanism. A shoulder barge and entrance was gained.

But was it truly the best course of action to retreat? In the high points of the woodland, the surreally-confident movement of uniformed men-with-guns made her think of the Anders Breivik massacre, writ large, writ with totalitarian backing. Mulder fired his gun with an outstretched arm, and was pretty successful in overwhelming a cluster of the soldiers, even if he didn't hit any. If she showed even the tiniest flare of bravery, he would follow her endlessly. They might even save one of the No Flags people. But she knew they had a duty to inform the government, try to inform civilization, even if it was a fool's errand.

Into the grey atmosphere of the stock room. They rounded a corner, with Scully as the point-man aiming for the right-hand corners, Mulder covering the left. From the start, what lay before them was an oddly unexpected sight. A man tied to a chair, conscious and curiously unruffled in his starched blue shirt.

"FBI! Stay calm, sir. Do as we say, we're to help", announced Mulder.

The bound man irked his shoulders. "I'm bureau, too! Out of the Salt Lake office. See the stack of carry-cases in the corner? They locked my ID and gun in the top".

There were no windows in the tiny warehouse, just ventilation slats, which Mulder edged past, covering the next fire door while Scully unclipped the linked cable ties at the man's torso and ankles. The handcuffs proved more difficult. Her universal key was too small, and she was forced to use a pin, plus the ratchet mechanism. The nearby sound of machine guns, she found curiously unaffecting.

"You're a field agent?"

"Alex Krychek. I was here tracking a former employee of this place, believed to be sleeping rough. Fraud. Question mark money laundering".

Mulder and Scully noticed the way his eyes craned to see the progress of the badge and gun being retrieved. Maybe understandable.

"What was his name? Was he a member of No Flags, AKA Stalker group?"

"What is that?"

Urgently, Scully eased him up and helped him creep some circulation back into his limbs. Mulder said, "You're through the looking glass, Krychek. That piece you carry, how good a shot are you?"

"I ranked proficient-to-skilled at the Lee Kay shooting range. What's going on? The man I was chasing was Sam Ross. I'm guessing he was some Homeland Security terrorist, right? That's the war that's going on out there?"

They stood in a loose triangle, springly limbs and guns ready to level should either of the firedoors burst wide. As Mulder explained things, Scully took in the sight of Agent Krychek. There was something of the Billy the Kid about him, the slightly-underhand, over-enthusiastic outlaw from a thousand generic westerns. Of the three of them, he probably had the best odds of survival.

"If you didn't know already, the guys in uniform are the villains. Think of it like a Homeland Security breach if you want, but everything you ever read on is true. There's a military-industrial conspiracy to make your head spin".

Krychek said, "And if we make it out of here, we testify to that? It may be a smarter move to surrender".

"Surrender if you wanna be collateral".

Scully tried for a more considered explanation. "Believe me, I've had first-hand experience: their surveillance of our lives is so sophisticated they allow you to go about your daily business knowing the biggest secrets. Think of it like the Cold War, Agent Krychek. They're benevolent but all-seeing dictators, like the Stasi".

"I was born in 1988", protested Krychek.

"Then think of it like the Borg in Star Trek", countered Mulder. "They don't notice unless you start shooting your phaser in public".

"I don't watch Star Trek", he winced.

Scully grew impatient. "This is a fight the Stalker group can't win. We have to get out of here".

Mulder slid up to the furthest fire door, clenching his jaw as he listened. Without a doubt, the bulk of the flip-storm was happening barely a hundred metres away. It seemed crazy to try and make a more detailed estimation than that, so he simply touched the release bar and readied himself.

"I'm sure you're good, Scully. And Krychek, you say you were proficient-to-skilled at the firing range. I was proficient-to-Robocop. I need you two to get clear, get back to the highway while I cover you".

Scully was indignant. "Mulder, I grew up never more than a block away from a Navy shooting range. When I was sixteen, I won the white ribbon at the CMP Elite Contest".

Mulder smiled at her. "Notwithstanding, I feel lucky, punk. Don't make me order you".

She wavered. She briefly drew close: he took her face in his hands. Touching his wrists, blinking, they made some kind of soulful promise. Krychek carefully checking the barrel of his gun, queasily-smiling as a hungry man might lick his lips.

Xx.

He held his gun ready to use, and ran at a pace. At the same time, on some weird subconscious level, it felt like he was moving in a vast crowd. Good people. Ordinary people. Doomed people. Heavily sharded trees and ragged leaves gave way to ivy-covered clearings, very easy to trip on, though he knew he could stay level. It was weird altogether how little he needed to concentrate. In the meantime -the primordial past, designed as an education by the devil. Moving among all those lame old codgers at the Meadowbrook Arena , the ones who'd been scammed by his old man. He remembered a poodle-haired old woman who was practically spitting on one of the district attorneys. There was also a dry-faced senior man with eyes that shouldn't under any circumstances be wild or anguished, currently having a nervous breakdown. It had dawned on the secret-mission nine year old that he should be feeling something. Probably a full-on, over-the-edge embracing of evil. Hatred at the weakness of the human race.

But no, it was more sophisticated. He felt sorry for the poor old codgers. A lot of them looked like farmers, maybe the same stock his mom came from, and didn't she still have some kind of ethnic thing going. A prime memory was a T-shirt-wearing young guy complaining that his mother had been so traumatised that she'd withdrawn into her mind, couldn't concentrate on her job at the meat-packing plant, had started talking to herself. But - into her mind? Talking to herself? Even with all that upset, it was still the same person. She hadn't gone crazy as the world wanted her to. Sure it was upsetting, but this jerk in the T-shirt was complaining about just -the capacity. The capacity the devil's given us all to suffer.

Beyond a slight frontier of reedy, yellow trees, there was the idea that the landscape might change, soon. He watched Agent Scully bend low in a uniquely feminine pose, which was actually pretty sleek when it came to staying hidden. He guessed he should try to look more fearful himself. If only his spine didn't feel so damn phallic. A couple of times he even swaggered behind her back.

The extreme edge of the Thor Rivets plant gave way to reassuringly flat fields, no doubt leading to some kind of highway -eventually. A slight zig-zag of gradients was compounded by shrubs like giant dandelions, nothing that would provide cover from gun fire, but which might distract the scope of a sniper for vital seconds. The FBI agent examined the horizon quite hopefully, then looked at Krychek. She gave him her card.

"I'm going back for Mulder. We'll rendezvous when we can. If not, Mulder and I are working for a director named Walter Skinner out of the Washington office. Report to him, but only him. This case is heavily corrupted. Trust no one, Agent Krychek".

He looked at her dismissively. The burning red freckles either side of her nose, he figured, might be attractive to some men, an acquired luxury taste. Her boney shoulders were poised like those honed girls from Sports Illustrated, every mysterious, tingly sense in her skin tuned to excitement.

He shrugged, as if to follow orders, and replaced his handgun in the trendy holster. Then from his inner pocket, he produced the second gun, military-issue. The grip and trigger had been covered by a plastic evidence bag throughout. Not even when he twisted the unlock catch with the deathly motion of snapping a chicken's neck did she suspect what was happening.

To start with, he shot her just beneath left-side rib. That counted as his lazy shot. While she still stood, trying to aim with her own gun, he focused on her heart and hit home exactly. As she started to swivel low, he tried to take out her brain; the bullet merely making a tangle of her pretty neck.

The body was in the grass, impressively still, apparently completely lifeless. There was still a strong desire to see a bullet in her brain, but he guarded himself: ballistics, forensics. Lab geeks work over time as if it -is- work. All that was left was the need to complete the illusion of an ambush. He considered shooting himself in the shoulder, but wasn't nearly brave enough to endure the pain, and so threw the sidearm as far as he could into the shrubbery. Stooping over the dead lady-agent and pawing at her neck, he hoped it would be enough to show he'd tried to save her, and getting traumatised in the process. Oscar nominations. He found it surprisingly easy to affect emotion, only using whatever the opposite to method-acting is.

There was no drama in him, and the evil was something the devil had seen too many times before - so what was the strange feeling of profundity that filled the air? ID'd: a sense of being watched by something bigger than the human race. The air, it seemed, was a degree or two colder, just enough to be eerie.

Krychek drew back on his thighs -and cowered. Two sidewinder missiles scarred through the air over the tops of the trees. With no obvious target, though, they drove up and down like released balloons, exploding echolessly. The F-16 that had fired them shot headlong at barely controllable speed. And he smiled with childlike wonder. Something was happening -exciting and lurid, just the way he'd always imagined his own death. The grass and a lot of the waxy leaves had started to glow, a kind of spearmint blue, no doubt something to do with the warm and buoyant air. The way it didn't exactly envelope dead Agent Scully, just played with her. He saw what looked like dense cloud of microscopic firefires finessing and lifting the crucifix at her neck, until it stood on end like a magnet, attracting -

The powerful motion of the flying saucer made him feel weak. He gasped, and winced, and frowned like the gaunt Mexican boy he'd always glimpsed in the mirror. It wasn't human. It wasn't a piece of technology. Maybe it was like a brighter shade of the sky itself, mid summer on a winter day, refined into an M & M-shape lozenge.

It wasn't human, and it wasn't a piece of technology; at the same time he found it easy to look away and dwell on something as simple as a dead, earthly woman. The swarm of alien insects had eased in at every point of her body and were lifting her into thin air, slowly at first. He laughed at her calm, thoughtful expression, and that tiny crucifix. At least, as she was guided upwards to her space-friends, she didn't assume the Christ-like pose. Just a crumpled mass.

Fear of ballistics or no, he tried to shoot her again as she rose higher, laughing as he did so. Laughing as he did so, he tried firing on the saucer itself, but the bullet made a sharp ricochet even as it left the chamber.

Xx.

What the arrival of a Chinook signified, Mulder had no idea. The concern was that it might be bringing reinforcements, and he felt his legs tingle in readiness for an all-out retreat. Still there was a hasty kind of movement in the fuselage. On the ground, absolutely no sensation of heavy army boots decanting onto the ground. Bobbing his head clear from the cover he saw a collective scuttle of commandos climbing aboard and jolting their backsides down. A war-zone, then, being cleared?

Back through the stock room, he edged away from the woodland scene with its perceptible-imperceptible haze of gunsmoke, leaves swirled violently by something other than wind. Semi-tones of musty brown enveloped even the deep black of his field jacket. Back alongside the chair Krychek had been tied to, the spot they'd all talked together, right up to the giddy inner recess of the original firedoor. He opened the bar a crack while keeping his attention entirely on the icy etchings of daylight at the other end. All was silent, allowing him to ease his way outside towards the outer scattering of dead trees.

He'd investigated covens of witches, Satanic cults, truly frightening pagan sacrifices. In a world that was majestically godless, everything was sinister while nothing was actually eerie. Except this place, this situation. Titling in the sky above were the wings of an F-16, with shakier, more flustered movements than could possibly relate to a mere 'military exercise'. He moved clear with backward glances, thinking, 'They even had a bear in the air'. Things happening in the sky were just symbols of doom; he expected his actual end to come through being rounded up by goons at the perimeter. Charlton Heston's friend who ends up with desaturated eyes and a lobotomy scar.

But if the military transports were so boggling, what came next, just for a second, cast him into a reverie. On the low leaves near his ankles, he saw a certain reflected glow. Spearmint, emanating from something low in the sky, passing by at supernatural speed. He was immediately taken back 28 years.

Still he laboured on, because what else was there to do? He glanced up but the alien overlords were gone just as soon as his eyes were halfway. The bitterness, it flowed. So carry on walking, playing conspiracy.

It would be pretty funny if he got lost on the way back to that low range where they'd originally entered. It would be hilarious, and he felt a distinct tension in his ribs, but Fox Mulder - he with the homing instinct. Even in the open farmland which preceded the woods, there was quite a void before the horizon allowed you to co-ordinate towards the highway and the lanes. It was a long way to start out alone. At the last straggle of trees before glorious open world, he half-expected to see his comrades waiting.

No one was present.

He walked a little way into the open grassland. A sudden realisation that silence had retaken the land, a hundred percent, jerked him into high speed. He debated the wisdom of dialing Scully's phone, since military triangulation through phone-bugging was a bitch. He tried anyway and the tone seemed to pass to voicemail far too quickly. He tapped 'end', and immediately tried again as he jogged back to the woods for an evidence-hunt.

"Mulder".

Near a tree, Krychek was half-bent with his hands on his thighs. He straightened up and assumed the wavy body language of a strike-team jock about to deliver bad news. The blood stain on his shirt, dramatic.

"Where is Scully?"

"What happened", Krychek thinned his lips, "was crazy".

"Give it up, Krychek! Where is she?"

"We were running, and out of nowhere she got hit in the leg. They stopped firing; we couldn't figure why. This thing picked her up -some kinda light!"

"Start making sense, Krychek!"

"She's gone!", the younger man reiterated as kindly as he could. "In the sky, a real-life space-craft!"

Impotent rage was in play and would not fade. Mulder listened to himself, realising he'd gone into shock and was sinking deeper.

The adolescent play-psychology of envisioning contingencies that were impossible under normal circumstances. Meeting a girl who looked like Corinna Harney and fixing her Buick. Hitting the home run in the World Series. All healthy fantasies. Mulder had only ever fantasized about how he might have uncovered the location of Samantha, since all other leads were gone. Call up NATS radar control? Try to get them to reveal the flight-path of the UFO, by bluffing through their codewords and security protocols? Such a technique could only be used once, and he resolved to learn the secrets and terminology of the government UFO conspiracy before he made an earnest attempt. Alas. No matter how much he learned, there always seemed to be a deficit.

Certain government officials, linked by name to the Flying Saucer conspiracy. Might it not be a better move -instead of learning the nuances of a hideous shadow-government, to simply go to one of their offices and hold a gun to their head?

His lack of gumption stopped him finding Samantha. His lack of gumption had also now robbed him of Scully. The nightmare of his life whirred around him.

"Were they human? Were they men? How many took her?"

"There was just -light", Krychek said uneasily. "But the army must have known the UFO was around here. We need to get evidence".

Mulder -didn't hear. He paced backwards and forwards, gun in hand but no more able to aim than if he'd broken his arm.

"Mulder!"

Rage. "Don't you get it? Anything short of a UFO landing on the White House lawn, they never care! Who knows. What can be proved. We're on our own, and no one cares".

Krychek was still trying, though. "We're government agents. We have a duty to the truth!"

"I can't do this any more!", he croaked.

"We can get evidence, Mulder! The jet they were trying to scuttle. I saw another F-35 blow it clear into the water. But it's still there, half submerged. We could get some markings, figure which base it came from, maybe get a bead on the logistics chain. And the bodies - they've gotta be coming back to clear them. Some sort of cleaning crew. If we get a vantage-"

A small gesture of surrender and resignation was needed. Mulder holstered his weapon, looked swarthily at Krychek and led the way back into the scattery woods. Few twigs snapped at he walked, the sound of his trampling greatly in tune with the hush of the skinny trunks. The other man refused to put away his gun, instead holding it loosely out of hot-shot machismo.

Let all records show, the Washington agent really didn't care if he was caught by the military and tried for whatever trumped-up crime. He didn't care what his temporary partner thought of him. For both men it was quick-moving progress through the thin, pale trunks.

"You don't want to be around me, Krychek".

"You guys saved my life", said the junior agent in an optimistic voice. "Don't you think I wanna help you?"

Mulder qualified, "You don't want to be around me, because these ideas you've got of gently spying on the military, trying to figure out what they know? That's not me any more. Know that the first person I see I'm going to bind and torture till I get answers".

Two years into Samantha's disappearance, there'd been a power cut one night in his home. Just an ordinary power cut, of the sort that most people are fully prepared for. William Mulder, very practically, had gone around the house fixing lanterns and torches. Teena Mulder had tried and failed to light a gas stove, and had cried, and caused an argument. But even this wasn't too out of the ordinary. The thing that was an epiphany, the way 18 year old Fox had sat in his pitch black bedroom and known - he would always be in the dark. At college, his girlfriends loved him because he was funny, and breezy. He could still laugh at Pee-Wee Herman. At ball games, he had a knack for berating a poor batsman in a way that made the whole stand laugh. But these were just psychological reactions to the fact that he was forever alone, and aimless, in a pitch black room.

And Samantha was the lucky one.

They passed into the tiny storeroom which Mulder now associated exclusively with the memory of Scully's beautiful shoulders, there to linger beside the stack of military crates. The uppermost, where they'd hidden Krychek's badge and gun, teetered anxiously. He swung and knocked it violently across the room. The units beneath contained foam blocks, cut cable ties, card dividers. Through each one he scrambled for clues, smashed them wildly to the corner.

Next, they stalked to the half-open fire door at the woodland end, mildly observing the dramatic new shrapnel gash in the metal. And dramatic, the half-dozen bodies on the uneven ground between the warehouse and the lagoon. A few black-ops military. Mostly the alt-everyday folk, the No Flags fighters. It felt eerie to be neither one side or the other. Krychek clenched his muscles sweatily. Mulder remained still, though it felt like his body was crawling. He was barely thinking straight, and to make matters worse, he knew he probably wouldn't be thinking straight for the remainder of his life. An impression came of illusive clues and details throbbing in the atmosphere like heavy air-pressure, always missed. Things like -why didn't Krychek stoop to check if the corpses had an ID? Why didn't he take photos with his phone? It seemed crazy that he so readily believed their assertion that literally no evidence mattered in the face of omnipotent government cover-ups. Even Mulder himself hadn't believed it when he'd first been drawn in to the X-files.

"Who were these people?"

Mulder felt his face freeze like marble, "Everyday people who wanted to meet aliens".

"Aliens are real, huh? Kind of a cool thing to find out"

"Actually? It spells hell for us. They're either planning to invade or they just don't credit us with the intelligence to understand them. And meanwhile, we fight stupid wars, and get eaten alive by cancer, and are doomed from birth".

"Let's find somewhere to hide", said Krychek easily. "So we can wait".

By nature, Mulder was a man with loose limbs, impossible to tense. Currently, though, he arched his body back in one big shrug of resignation. There was no real high point from which to have a vantage, though maybe by trailing off down the scattery slope they could achieve a far more insidious cover. The two men crouched down behind an ancient pallet shelf. Aching eyes strained dizzily through the dusky leaves. When he wasn't glaring, Mulder creased into a migraine-ridden, praying pose; thumbs massaging the bridge of his nose. He was trying so hard to convince himself he wasn't disintegrating in hell.

"Assuming we get no answers here, what do we say in our reports happened to Scully?"

Mulder's mouth opened just a crack, but remained silent.

Krychek continued, "Maybe they've taken her somewhere better. You gotta consider, no one likes being hated, right?"

"They could be angels from heaven and I'd still have a score to settle", pursed Mulder.

At which point, Krychek's sonorous brown eyes held steady for a long time, and seemed satisfied. It was an intellectual debate that was timeless, eerily so.

"They might not get hung up on good and evil the way we do".

Mulder looked at him agape. He stared into the dirt and tipped his head in despair. "They understand good and evil just fine. They once took someone close to me -who was innocent, and sensitive, with as clean a soul as you can think of. And now they've taken Scully, who's just the same".

Krychek smiled, in such a way that Mulder's eye was irrevocably drawn. The younger man fooled with his gun; about all you could say was that he was completely without guile. "I saw that crucifix around her neck. She religious?"

"Catholic. The sure-minded kind that'd make Richard Dawkins wanna fall in at the Vatican".

Krychek, "Now, you see, I disagree. You think the aliens might prey on people who are innocent and sensitive? Well then, that'd mean anyone who's a son-of-a-bitch has a distinct advantage in survival-of-the-fittest".

"Well, I guess I can be King in Hell", Mulder said exhaustedly.

"One hell of a day", came the other man's assessment, blinking at the thin canopy of leaves.

The seating arrangement, to begin with, seemed undisciplined, with Krychek resting on one wall, Mulder slumped across the other. By and by, there was a variety of sense to it, that they could keep each end of the woodland covered while still wading deep in the profound conversation. Except profound was a two-edged sword. Even facing each other, eye-contact was rarely made. The need to talk resting at an all-time low.

Because in his bones, Mulder felt tired. He hardly worried about his new ally's lack of an outdoor coat, even with the white-grey atmos growing to be thick and impenetrable. In a lot of ways, images of a solar eclipse were conjured; the same vibe of utterly unnatural stillness. But maybe with single-tone mugginess in the place of moonlight.

Sometimes, Krychek smiled coyly.

"Why not go public with all this? They might be able to silence you one time, but across all the social networks, from a dozen different SP's, with dossiers going to all the big met newspapers?"

Said Mulder in a tired voice. "It all gets weighed in the balance and lost".

"Really?", pointedly. "Because you look at Yotubue. People are enthusiastic for this kinda stuff now more than ever".

"No. 'This kinda stuff' is my life. It's mine alone".

Time passed, quickly, harshly, almost with a disremembrance of exactly who they were, what they were doing. Mulder knew he'd become a man who'd lost something profound. From the look of sardonic readiness on Krychek's face, it was clear that he too was lost in the slow burn. And meanwhile, how even the nearest black-grey shrub played Dr Caligari games with perspective.

"A way to read it is that everything's justified in this damn world".

Mulder said, "I never cared much for that Miltonesque heaven-and-hell stuff, either, you know? Kids're born free. So what do you notice first, good or evil? Which do you indulge in, obsess over, and whose fault is that?"

After the super-abrupt halt, Krychek winced. He touched the wax of his immaculate hair. "One of my first cases out of training was an old man who'd swindled folk out of their life savings for a pie-in-the-sky investment dodge. He was only doing it for his own family, didn't even think of the people he was scamming. They were just chaff to get put in the harvest. So how do you call him evil?"

"How do you not?", said Mulder.

"I guess only the aliens know for sure".

"Funny", Mulder blinked at the ground while resting his forearms across his knees. "Do you remember the old C20 forms you had to fill in, stating your personal assessment of a witness, as if that mattered at all?"

"You mean the C-9 forms?", Krychek's inky eyes smiled. "Unless you guys have got different codes in Washington?"

Mulder blinked a little. "My point is, thinking a field agent knows better than a judge or prosecutor! Just a crazy little left-over from the days of J Edgar, I guess. Who's your honcho at the Salt Lake office?"

"Director Kyp Bowman. Hell of a guy".

"I never cared for him", confessed Mulder. "He still got that big strand of grey hair over his temples?"

"You're thinking of Jeb Rovin, maybe. Bowman has straight-brown".

Mulder nodded now; 'Gentle mistake'. As Krychek fooled with his gun, still in control enough to aim if someone or something appeared in the grey vortex of trees.

"I think you're the agent who had his sister taken when he was a kid. You sometimes get interviewed on RT, about government records, that kind of stuff. You're friends with Black Francis from the Pixies, right?"

Mulder kept his face steady. "You suddenly remembered all that about me?"

"I suddenly remembered all that about you. What's he like in real life? Black Francis. A cool guy?"

"Cooler than me and you put together".

"And what's the vibe on your sister? You think she's still alive?"

From a nebulous, nearby stretch of undergrowth, a frightening growl came. It was so low and constant, the immediate thought was that it must be a machine. Mulder was agape when he saw it belonged to a sizeable prairie dog, black.

The animal snarled unblinkingly at Krychek, never at Mulder. It was still no excuse for what he was about to do: the younger man cocked his gun and aimed. Mulder cringed and unholstered his own sidearm. A stand-off struck up.

"Krychek! What the hell? You're going to shoot a dog?"

Krychek was confident. "You mean, instead of getting my crotch chewed off?"

"Stand down! If he goes for you, we can take him!"

Except, a wiry little sneer told him this wasn't going to happen. In a flash of inspiration, Mulder fired blindly over the stray's head, and he fled across the woodland. Shaking his head incredulously, Krychek maintained the aim at a patch of thin air, even as Mulder rotated his own muzzle onto the back of his skull.

"Drop the piece".

"Sentimental. Over a wild dog?"

"I know what you are, Krychek".

The smaller man winced. "How can you be sure?"

"The confidence. The hands on the hips. You're pretending to be an FBI agent, just the same as me. The difference is, I'm not greyed-up behind a sinister son-of-a-bitch".

"'Greyed-up behind a sinister son-of-a-bitch'?", Krychek rolled his eyes.

"Drop the piece or take a bullet in the ankle", warned Mulder. "Your choice".

Limply, like a vision of every surrender-at-gunpoint ever filmed for TV, the sidearm was allowed to slip down onto the mud. Perhaps even smoother, his biceps and shoulders seemed weirdly relaxed as the tip of Mulder's Glock 23 grew nearer.

"Drop your arms".

Immediately, the other dropped his arms. An infinitesimal chink of metal was heard as Mulder reached for his cuffs, and in a motion greater than the speed of thought, this was when Krychek moved. Knuckles and the back of his hand connected with Mulder's cheek, who after a second or two managed to fire off a round -though the shot was so wide it was as impotent as a small child shouting, 'bang'. Mulder noticed this phenomenon. There was an impression that Krychek didn't. Too over-wound to deploy a beat-down, his fists went low, combined with a rugby-style surge in his feet, moving over Mulder's torso to grab his lapels.

Something indicated there was no point trying to use proper countermoves, or even the rough choreography of Gunsmoke or Star Trek fisticuffs. Mulder went weak. Mulder always, purposefully, went weak. When Krychek had brought them down into the undergrowth, at the same time looking vaguely stupid and desperate, he knew the main priority was to keep him unmindful and unco-ordinated as to where the gun lay.

Around his midriff, there was squirming. Towards his neck was an ugly, bitter clasping sensation, less a matter of trying to strangle him, more just getting the necessary premeditation to strike at his jaw. Maybe? No. It was Krychek's intention to choke or knock him unconscious as quickly as possible.

Did Krychek even have the authority to kill him? But of course, even in ultra-compartmentalized conspiracies, initiative and judgement-calls must sometimes be used. Jesse Ventura would not come a knockin' and all things would vanish into thin air.

An awkward side-swipe was deflected, giving Mulder leeway to haul his opponent high to the right, a little way to the left, straining -against the tide at nothing. Sensing a lack of protection in his side, he palm-punched into what he hoped was the man's lungs or kidneys, but could equally have been thin air.

A graceless period followed, no progress possible, Jesse Ventura simply turning away at the sight of two warring cavemen. Occasionally, the scrambles manifested into punches, blood being drawn unilaterally on both men's faces. Krychek had no objections to smashing his skull in the most inhuman manner possible. Mulder, by nature, was more conservative. A deadlock was broken when he headbutted Krychek somewhere near the jaw, to drive him off, briefly onto his feet before toppling backwards thanks to a supreme lack of balance, strength, fighting stance. Mulder advanced. Krychek booted him in the stomach in a surprisingly bold movement.

When he went low, Mulder's aching eyes saw just enough to get a fix on the gun. He picked it up and aimed.

Krychek raised his palms, level with his shoulders but no higher.

When the dropped cuffs were retrieved from the dirt also, he tossed them to the younger man's feet.

"It's over".

Krychek sneered. "It's over for you, Mulder".

"Cuff yourself. Now!"

The bracelets in place, Krychek slumped his body, as repentant as a fool-playing schoolboy among peers. It was bizarre to think so, but the line of rich, red blood seemed to suit him inordinately, a symbol of rank across his bronze-colour skin. Now.

"What really happened to Scully?"

"Just what I said". Then genially, "I like it as much as you do".

"Who do you work for?"

He shrugged. "You credit me with being something other than a no-questions mercenary, Mulder? Gotta say I'm flattered".

"Who hired you?"

"He smokes. So much he'll never catch cancer 'cause the devil hates obvious".

On hearing this, a squirming developed in Mulder's gut; he bent slightly to control it. Of all the airy bureaucratic ignominy he'd encountered, it was rare to have a face to latch on to, a single figure. Then again -he thought of Scully. Scully would still be gone and the Smoking Man would still only be an aspect of... madness.

He had to try, though.

"I know this man. How was he going to pay you, what for? Killing me? Getting information?"

Krychek rolled his eyes. "This is where I plead the fifth".

Now Mulder let his square shoulders do the talking. Their height difference being what it was, he towered, he loomed.

"Why the loyalty? I'm the one who can kill you now".

Krychek smiled. "Ain't a question of loyalty. I like seeing clowns and fools getting their lives smashed. I always have. I just choose the side that offers the best view".

All of which led to Mulder staring hard. He'd lost count of how many times he'd unbuckled his holster and pulled free his gun. This was the most purposeful, to be sure. He slowly and deliberately aimed, felt the terrible lack-of-expression buzzing from his face.

And sighing, Krychek spontaneously changed his mind. He rolled his eyes, still fronting but for the first time with a subtle intimation that things weren't going to plan.

"I can take you to the place I was due to talk to him. But what do you expect to achieve other than getting the sniper-dot surprise?"

Somewhere inside a wan, ironic smile flowered -while outside the same lack of expression ruled. "Expecting me to be scared? I'm a pet to these people. I'm no David Kelly and the Iraq war. No one gets killed over flying saucers".

"Your wrong", Krychek spoke in blunt voice. "There used to be another guy just like me, but he was shot for being too much of a pussy".

Mulder considered this for a moment, but a moment only, wagging his gun over Krychek's torso. "Get moving".

"Where to, boss-man?"

"Forward. Don't make me put a lead on you".

The distance to Scully's car was eerily small considering the amount of ground they'd covered simply running backwards and forwards in the gun battle. The dirty beige trees grew low, the landscape opened out to deep-rolling fields. Everything looked undisturbed. Not that the sight of the Camry didn't make him feel dizzy with loss. In a surprising burst of sunlight, the chassis shone silver.

And then came the realization that his dead, missing, oblivion-bound partner still had the keys. He rested both his free hand and gun-hand on the hood, leaned close, despaired.

"Lost keys?", guessed Krychek.

Mulder took out his cellphone. Nigh ambidextrous, he aimed the gun while simultaneously dialing for directories. As he was being put through, he tossed the phone into Krychek's cuffed palms. "Tell them you need to hire a car, and get it delivered to a latitude and longitude. Read them the figures in the top right. Say something I don't like and you won't have time to regret it".

Except Krychek gave a pitying look. "You're such a goon".

He placed the phone of the bonnet and calmly walked to the narrow verge. After a few seconds of scouring, he located a suitable rock and smashed the driver-side window. It was impossible that he hadn't at least damaged his hands to the point of needing sutures.

"I never met a car I couldn't hot-wire", and he threw the rock distantly into the trees as the intruder klaxon cried out for all the world to hear.

Mulder picked up the phone and rang off. He glared, furiously. "Any tricks and you're dead".

Shrugging, even as he kicked free the steering mount, "What I've seen, it's gotta be some kind of magic trick. But a magic trick from an amoral old bastadr with a private army? I'll pay to see how that turns out".

"All of you", scowled Mulder, "in federal jumpsuits, paraded on CNN".

With impressive speed, the engine was indeed brought to life, even if it meant an oversized printed circuit board dangling limply at the driver's knees.

Mulder moved to Krychek's side and cuffed his right hand to the steering wheel.

"I can't drive like this".

"You're going to learn".

"We can't make contact until nightfall anyhow". The pleasant grin flickered, remained strong.

Mulder felt like hitting him, though evidently, Alex Krychek was durable, resilient.

"Why the hell not?"

"From what I understand, where we're going, there's protocol. A certain amount of signaling needs to be done with lights. You'll see what I mean".

"An ambush".

"You can hardly mistake it for an ambush. You'll see what I mean".

The engine purred with complete normalcy. The afternoon stretched out before them like a first day in hell, and taking it easy. Sure, Mulder figured he would see what Krychek meant. Probably directly before their lives came to an end.

Xx.

Dusk came quickly, took both itinerants wholly by surprise. Mulder had pulled in just short of a countryside gas station, but only to buy snacks from the vending machine. The last meal? Tostito Chips and Oreo mini-bites. Evidently, neither man had a problem with junk food. It was like being a teenager again. He even bought sticking plasters for the man's cut-up hands, not that they were greeted with anything other than a sneer.

In a considered tone, "Game on". They hadn't spoken for some time, but his youthful voice was anything but dry. "We need to get to higher ground, somewhere that overlooks a lotta houses".

"If this is BS", warned Mulder, "I promise you'll regret it".

But Krychek was uncharacteristically practical. He ran his tongue along his teeth to clear the biscuit. "I'll guide you through every step. You'll see there's no tricks".

They drove twistily around the troughs and upturns of the suburban green, and oftentimes there was an impressive distance between them and the horizon. Unkempt and golden-silenced gardens spread forwards before heavy-bricked townhouses. But the selection of homes still wasn't suitable, apparently.

At this late stage, he figured he would have gone along with Krychek to the ends of the Earth. His analytical mind didn't matter, anyway. He thought only of Scully. All the subtleties of her face aligned in his mind like points of a treasure map. It was crazy. He'd been in love before, but this seemed to be the only time that -mattered, beyond his life, beyond anything. A woman who so embodied unusual psychological weaknesses, unusual psychological strengths...

"Here's good".

They'd come to a stop on a semi-industrial hilltop lane, banked with hedgerows but with no man-made obstructions, except some folded cattle pens and a broken-up orange stand. Down below was a sizeable housing plaza.

"We need one where no one's home, that we can break into. Otherwise the choice is yours".

"How come I get to choose? I'm getting tired of your damn games, Krychek".

The prisoner? Undaunted. "You're forgetting, I trust Smokey less than you do. We arranged to make contact in neutral ground like this because he wouldn't be able to send a military strike team into the middle of a civilian housing complex".

"He could send a single sniper", Mulder said angrily.

"Maybe", breezed Krychek. "But we keep cover inside the house, we've got a fighting chance. We've just got to make it as far as the upper floor".

Furiously, "Why?"

The handbrake was cranked up as Krychek lolled around, apparently completely at ease with his cuffed predicament. "You won't believe it till you see it. But I get why you're scared. All this? Might not even work. We agreed not to make contact till I was months deep into my partnership with you".

"We'd never have worked as partners", was Mulder's swarthy reply. "They'll know that".

Shrugging, smiling, "Cop shows and sit-coms are founded on less. We'd have been great together. Then one day, maybe 2035, 2040, I'd have shot you in the head along a dirt road".

Mulder considered a joke, then went with it, though he hated himself, "When you're in prison, I promise to read your YA Fan Fciton".

He scrutinized the network of houses, all the properties that were suitably dark and missing motor vehicles in the driveways. He pointed to one, at the end of a long rank of semi-detached castles, just opposite a high plywood fence. Krychek stared, seemed to accept the choice pretty impassively. The cuffs were freed up from the car, reattached, and together they hustled into the blue-moon concrete.

Shaped like a robot's head, the security alarm was so imposing that the makers hadn't even bothered with a flashing light. Krychek stared upwards like a cat, then wincingly aimed a small device which apparently rendered it blind. For his next operation, however, the movement wasn't nearly so smooth. With his cuffed hands, he struggled to align a pen-shaped device over the keyhole.

"You wanna take charge?", he soured to Mulder.

The answer was no. The FBI man's calmness told that they had all night, trust at an all-time low, jet-fighters circling the airport on an alert for hijacked planes. Acrid, laser-metal fumes wavered invisibly in the air.

Inside, there was no feeling of immorality or transgression. Mulder wondered if he had any personality left at all, and would Scully even recognize him if they ever met again? It was a clean, shiney corridor, leading to an even cleaner and shinier kitchen -domestic sheen a default for all time and space. He thought of his own little apartment and felt suitably transient.

Through a door in the kitchen walkway, a modest garage loomed large. Krychek led the way showing no particular stress in his shoulders or spine.

"We're looking for masking tape, the darker the better".

"I'm losing my tolerance for being jerked off", Mulder's voice was firm.

Undaunted, Krychek scooped around in a card box on a shelf. There was a slight feeling of remorse in making him do all the work, but soon it fluttered away like dust motes. As reels of copper and strimmer line were knocked free across the floor. Questions of whether they'd need to leave the place in an orderly way, or simulate a break-in, were strangely unimportant.

Mulder went a little way off, found a reel of silver-black carpet tape atop a paint tin. He threw it to Krychek, who stared at it as if he'd been handed a weapon.

"Now? All we need is a table lamp. The brighter the better".

Mulder ground his jaw. He the felt horrible stare emanating from his eye-sockets, that of an adversarial teenager, a meat-head. "Then let's get a table lamp".

Together they walked through the dark house. The silence was fearful, quaking, able to be felt up around their shoulders, always. There were two entrances to the living area. Krychek ducked inside the smaller one and hastily grabbed-up a huge study lamp. He scooped up a cordless phone, too, and wedged in his belt. They headed towards the stairs.

"We going in to this thing with a game plan?"

Mulder considered staying silent, then went with, "The game plan is, I know every dirty trick that goes through your mind, and I see something I don't like, I blow your head off".

"I'm not your enemy, Mulder. You'll see that now. Can I get a beer?"

He wondered what to say. They paused by the kitchen. "Knock yourself out".

In the refrigerator, Krychek was delighted to find a four pack of Desperados and an oversized ham.

They headed upstairs. There were three or four big bedrooms, and they edged into the furthest, the most elongated. Large, modern houses have so little clutter; it was ironic he should find that comforting. For so many years after Samantha had vanished, he'd been fascinated and petrified by the memory of the hypnotic, alien strobe flashing over the boisterous trappings of their adolescent rooms. The chipped, overflowing shelves. The beanbags. The signed photo of Robin Williams as a booming, insightful id. He found it hard to imagine the alien light accosting any other house but theirs. Spooky Fox Mulder. But this was a new kind of spooky, associated with the very end of his existence.

He jerked backwards and watched. Krychek hastily tore off several approximate or precise lengths of carpet tape and affixed them across the skylight in an 'X' formation. Placing the table light underneath, he started to flash an elaborate code.

Mulder glowered. "No one's gonna see that. The angle is too tight".

"No one on the ground", Krychek cringed at the effort. "What Smokey told me: satellites. Every square inch of the world is secretly watched by these lenses that are super-telescopic hi-def platforms. It's too big a hassle to get living geeks to monitor it, so they program the computers to watch for certain patterns".

Asked Mulder dourly, "What pattern are you sending?"

"Just what the son-of-a-bitch told me. That we need to make contact".

As Krychek worked, Mulder arched out to one of the nearby port windows. Savagely, "It's not gonna pick up anything. There's too much cloud cover".

Flashing the light, as if he knew the code off by heart, "Nah, they use some kind of special imaging. They'll see it. The-"

The cordless phone in his waistband rang jarringly. The initial blast was petrifying -though even after a few seconds the tension remained breathtaking. Fearful even for Krychek.

"You gonna take that?"

Except he didn't. Gun-toting once more, Mulder placed a hand on the prisoner's chest and waddled him back toward the nearest chair, a heavy wooden affair, before latching him fast to the horseshoe backrest. It took some effort. And at exactly the same time Krychek resumed breathing, the ringing stopped.

Both men blinked in the darkness, horribly tensed.

The phone started ringing again. To be answered vengefully, "This is Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI".

"Mr Mulder! Perhaps you'd like to locate a wireless source so that we can talk relatively face-to-face? I believe there's computer somewhere in the corner of the north side of the room?"

That dry, morally-fearless voice -it conjured nothing but ire. The Smoking Man.

"Face-to-face? The better to manipulate me?"

"Your days of being manipulated by me are over", the voice was magnanimous. "That dream that you and all the high-minded snoopers share of one day having full, government disclosure. That time is now, if you wish it to be".

"You expect me to believe that?"

"Frankly, Mr Mulder, yes. Your time on the X-files has no doubt given you a sense of the strangeness of the truth. The facts I'll give you now are nothing if not strange".

"So tell me", snapped Mulder, "the quicker I can have you on federal charges".

"The computer, please", insisted the steely voice -as un-intimidated as can be.

Scowling in the darkness, Mulder walked across the grey carpet to a corner-mounted table, there to discover a slimline laptop sitting squared-up and modest. He bullishly lifted the screen and, somehow by remote, the power flicked on. No boot-up code of directories came, simply a featureless, blue-on-grey flash of anonymous programs being loaded at speed. A Skype-style layout presented the face of full government disclosure, dizzyingly calm and unperturbed. They stared at each other, Mulder full of hate, The Smoking Man pragmatic but with faint traces of hope, goodwill. All via loathsome complacency.

"It never fails to surprise me how you resemble your mother and father in equal measure, so distinctly".

"That you're an old family friend means nothing. I want answers. Why were your people at the Creagerstown forest? Where is Scully?"

The man lit a cigarette, though before taking a drag, gestured with it long-wise. "That I knew your parents is telling of everything. You're a psychologist. Haven't you ever stopped to consider how strange it is that a textbook-introverted woman as beautiful as your mother should have married an equally introverted man like your father, rather than being lured away by an extrovert-narcissist, as psycho-sociological dominance would normally dictate?"

Mulder's face ached from the dispassion. "You're saying you match-made my parents marriage? Is that what you're saying? This is a new low, even for you people".

"I'm afraid, 'you people' is disingenuous. Hierarchically speaking, I am at the very top of your much-chased conspiracy. For better or worse. But I really had no hand in your parents marriage. A more interesting observance is that, since the start of the last century, mankind has increasingly lived in densely-populated urban locations. Introverts are exposed to extroverts as never before. Extroverts are more skilled in mating dynamics, and so evolution being what it is -their kind gains power, gains dominance. The question becomes, why haven't introverts become extinct?"

Extrovert, introvert -he thought of himself and Scully and shuddered. In the meantime, he played along. "You're involved in some kind of mass social experiment. I don't care. Where is Scully?

"I'm involved in a mass experiment?", The Smoking Man smiled bleakly. "I care very little about what happens to the people of this world. It wasn't always so, but knowledge and experience take their toll. You will soon see, Mr Mulder, you and I are perfectly alike in how we've been -ravaged".

A savage noise came. Mulder's role as tick-tock confessor was interrupted by the sight of Krychek dragging the heavy wooden chair across the carpet until it was flush with an old-fashioned TV set. He switched on and kicked back, legs folded high on the table. The beer and the liquor were consumed with abandon. In any case, he had no interest in the apocalyptic conversation.

Continuing, "I don't care about your BS. I want answers, and I'll have them one way or another".

The Smoking Man was genial. "Rest assured, I meant what I said, Mr Mulder. This is your day of full disclosure. Ask me whatever will ease your mind and lead us to be allies".

The matter was so urgent, Mulder barely had time to give an internal sneer at the idea they could be bedfellows. It was as crazy as suggesting that he and Krychek could ever have been partners. As crazy as the idea that he might now have a bond with anyone but Scully.

"Who are you? I want a name. Why did you send Krychek to intercept me at Creagerstown?"

Krychek nothing. The Smoking Man laconically began his life story.

"My name is William Spender. I have no official rank in any branch of the military, no official position within the government of any country. I started my life as a clerk for the National Logistics Office, as lowly as can be". He examined the tip of his cigarette -but it was barely thoughtful. "It was an innocent time. World War Two notwithstanding, the military-industrial-complex had no conception of secrecy. My superiors felt it was necessary for me to liaise with the United States Airforce, where I participated in a number of atomic-based experiments. They were related to both aircraft propulsion, intercontinental weaponry, domestic power plants, the moon project, beyond-"

"Cobblers!"

"You What?"

"Cobblers! Six pounds twelve and threpence. What do you have to have your shoes mended for? I brings home enough, don't I?"

"Bah!"

Looking up, Mulder briefly saw that Krychek had chosen to watch an old British TV show about two hobos in a junkyard. The sound wasn't too intrusive, so he figured he'd allow him to sit there in peace -if peace it remained.

Said The Smoking Man, "To begin with, I was a reluctant conspirator. Our work with the Atomic Commission evolved into a general power-grab of the scientific talent left in excess at the end of the war. Nazi mathematicians, gulag-bound Russian mathematicians. We recruited them all. Codename Locas. We grew to be distinct from the Manhattan Project in that we were more concerned with theoretical physics. Nothing that had a practical end".

Mulder pouted, "Why would the government care for physics that can't be applied to anything practical? You're making no sense".

"Things rarely make sense immediately", the Smoking Man's shoulders crumpled down slightly, his suit jacket remaining brittle. "Bohm and Capra have made significant comparisons between Eastern philosophy and the nature of quantum physics. Yet these are only the scientific-philosophical concepts we've allowed the world to know about. They're liberally inconsequential. In the late nineteen-forties, the secret concern of several world powers was that one day a scientist or mathematician would make a discovery which would either prove or disprove the existence of God, and so would destabilize the world. Worse still, from the point of view of any capitalist nation, there was a fear that an advanced mathematician might make a pragmatic, statistical analysis of Communism, and find that it was the only option for the survival of the human race. The purpose of my conspiracy, to begin with, was to steal away and control any scientist or mathematician who might make such a discovery. To subvert their findings for ourselves".

"I don't believe any of this garbage", Mulder leaned close to the screen, did not blink. "Give me names".

The internet connection wasn't the best. Still it was observable that the exhalations of Spender's cigarette were so tar-heavy that they hung low, his inhalations consisting of relatively clean air. Always he was fearless, if emotionally dead. "The names would mean nothing to you, and they certainly can't be investigated or cross-referenced. Suffice to say, our brains-trust consisted of people whose insight and intelligence made Hawking or Einstein look perfectly irrelevant".

"How would you know?", Mulder ground his jaw. "If you abducted all the smartest people on Earth, who was there to check their work?"

"You rotten, selfish, greedy little pig! That is despicable, that is! All I've had is four rotten, uncooked snails! All the time I've been asleep, you've been stuffing chocolate biscuits inside you!"

"Bah!"

The bleak-comedic arguments of the scrap yard hobos on Krychek's TV only ever became intrusive -and eerie- while The Smoking Man paused to muse.

"Our efforts in this matter were on an international scale. The United Kingdom, several European countries, Japan, China -all had similar, secret brain-trusts".

"China?", demanded Mulder. "You just said the whole thing came about to disprove Communism".

"Indeed it did. Before more pressing matters entered the equation".

"You're lying", stated Mulder, with utter disgust. "You're going to tell me that my sister, and Scully, were taken up by some advanced government craft just because they had a high IQ? You're lying, and I'll be goddamned if I get drawn into your games".

"Mr Mulder, I take no pride in what I'm telling you. In a similar way that Agent Scully and your sister vanished, my wife was taken in 1969".

Mulder digested this. It was a wildly pathos-ridden claim. He figured that if Scully was here, she'd have all the empathy in the world. If only the world hadn't devolved into a falling elevator of heck-conspiracies.

"Who took her, then? Give me names!"

Finally , the golden word came by way of a pragmatic exhalation - "The matter of what you people think of as 'aliens' came about in a flagrantly bizarre fashion. My brains-trust was located at Fort Esqueleto, New Mexico. The scientists and mathematicians, in a team a dozen strong, had started to work sifting statistical algorithms based on -probabilities. Predictions of certain technological discoveries and political trends. The sociological researchers perfectly envisioned the outcome of the Apollo space program, the economic boom of the fifties on a week-by-week basis. They predicted the end of Communism, right down to the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late eighties, the number of people who would die in the immediate run-up, the colour of tie the party leader would wear in his address to the European Council. They predicted the rise of militant Islam as a world-threat, based on the relative wealth of certain Yemenese Sunni dynasties, not least of which the Bin Ladens. And though it was only 1946, they envisaged such a concept as the silicon-based microprocessor , predicting it would enter dominant usage between 1975 and 1985. They foresaw a short leap to quantum-based processors and zero-point fusion, technologies that have yet to emerge but are currently the talk of every science journal and university board in the Western world".

He paused. A strange kind of pause in that there were no particular signs of sheepishness, yet something -something- told he was bracing both himself and Mulder for an unpalatable truth. Mulder thought: it was like watching a sci-fi horror movie spliced with Nuremberg. He waited, crack-mouthed, staring.

"They predicted, by equation, that the rise of artificial intelligence and quantum-harmonic technology would lead to the creation of what can only be called -god. Not for hundreds of thousands of years, but inexorably".

Said Mulder, "You're lying. This is sport to you".

"Really?", The Smoking Man seemed pleased at the chance to elaborate. He smiled. "Why do you say that?"

"No civilization lasts for hundreds of thousands of years. And us human types aren't cut out to go big on a project like making god. And if you're gonna tell me it's aliens in charge of this 'god-machine', I say baloney! The grief they put my family through, how can that ever be part of god?"

"Baahhh!", came the outburst of one of Krychek's hobos. As Spender lit up a fresh Morley.

"It's refreshing, Mulder, that you should appreciate my position, when, in 1947, I was tasked with standing in front of a committee of presidential aides and five-star generals, forced to explain this -mess. At best, we could cite as evidence the recent discoveries of a-temporal particles and super-discrete energy, the way they might one day be harnessed by omega-point technology and used to proliferate religious experiences into the past, to and from 'new dimensions', etcetera. But obviously none of my so-called superiors had time to entertain such notions. I knew my brains-trust would one day need to be eliminated. I had romantic notions about keeping them alive as long as possible, but in the end, I personally gave the order to have them killed. Scrutiny by the Security Service meant there was very little option".

What else to do but glower?

"What happened to the brain-trusts in the UK, Japan, China?"

"Executed also. Such was the worldly pragmatism of the twentieth century. But I suppose in those days I must still have had a measure of idealism. Unbeknownst to my government liaisons, I put out feelers, internationally. The Vatican, private corporations, the rich and curious, jaded military contractors. It was here that the core of the conspiracy began. Your father was -an intermediate member".

"I can't debate or dispute my father's private life", said Mulder venomously. "Tell me what happened to Samantha and to Scully".

"In 1947-"

"Tell me where Samantha and Scully are, you son-of-a-bitch!"

The small office chair didn't suit him. Probably didn't suit anyone. He felt like throwing it, if only the Smoking Man wouldn't remain damnibly unperturbed.

"There is nothing extraneous in my story", his voice dark and deadly. Drier still. "I developed a quest for the validity of what my prisoners had told me. Call it Quixotian. Call it Ahabian. My marriage suffered. I asked that my wife tolerate my distracted state, though she had no reason to.

"The line of reasoning given by my researchers was that we should be as methodical as possible, even in this -ridiculous haze of the spiritual and the paranormal. They forged equations and extrapolations based on the idea our god or gods would be created at some point in the distant future by quantum-harmonic technology as yet inconceivable. Not some distant dimension or implicate, a-temporal void. And for a time, there was a coherent theory. God cannot reveal himself to us for exactly the reason the proverbial science fiction time-traveler cannot. One diverts the time-line, one endangers one's own existence".

"What kind of god is vulnerable to anything?", jeered Mulder.

"Quite", said The Smoking Man. "Although keeping such a vulnerability secret would be a small price to pay for God's existence. This is the optimism my adolescent self laboured under".

"A poor old man, out of his mind! All he's trying to do is defend his meagre possessions against a grasping capitalist wanting his pound of flesh! Breaking into his house in the middle ofta night!"

Mulder looked away from Krychek's TV. The profound intermixing of scratchy black-and-white on an LCD screen. He observed Spender, leaning back as if at a corporate conference table. "Project Mogul's working theory of God was that He or It 'loved' us, and sought to interact while co-ordinating the timeline as loosely and tacitly as possible. My brains-trust looked at models for the dissemination of radical, socially volatile information, historically. Codes. Allegories. Legends. This, their equations told us, was necessarily how He or It would need to communicate with us. One cannot damage the timeline where no physical actions or direct orders have been left. But you cannot, as Mr Medgar Evers said, kill an idea".

To his surprise, Mulder's mind was sharp. "I've heard it all before. Passive-aggressive Christians squaring off next to passive-aggressive atheists, 'the Book of Apocalypse is just a metaphor 'cause how could it be anything else?', and in the meantime, Tristan and Isolde get to be the Nazi's favourite TV dinner".

The Smoking Man's tactic was to agree, "Obviously, the whole business is tiresome. I tasked myself with finding proof in an inherently proofless world. Have you ever heard of Project Argonaut?"

Mulder's wise-crack came by autopilot, and he hated himself. "Is it an army of stop-motion skeletons?"

"Certain left-wing senators believed the oncoming intercontinental standoff of V-2 and Semyorka warheads could be averted if an unprecedented, interdenominational system of prayer was used to shield our nation. Or rather, they believed there was a small chance, and couldn't afford to discount it. I subverted this project, using my ties in the Vatican and the Arch Diocese of America. It was a surreal sight to see a fully robed priest, inside a disproportionately-guarded military hangar, circling a weather balloon and blessing it with holy water".

Mulder's stomach moved at the idea that they should be going -there. As rapturously deep pulls of the Morley were taken. Did he smoke with any kind of satisfaction? Perhaps sub-atomic particles draw satisfaction from the fusion in the sun. He found himself hating the Smoking Man in a new, more pitying way.

"You know the story, Mulder, as everyone does. You believe you've heard every permutation and every theory. We needed to-"

"We're talking about Roswell?", he clarified.

"Indeed. On July 6, 1947, I lingered alone on a rise some way off from the Foster Valley grasslands of Roswell, observing with a porrotronic scope the wreckage which we had distributed over two hectares. It was designed to suggest a direct and violent impact. We'd used the most futuristic materials we could find. In addition to the high-atmospheric weather probe, experimental shards of galvanised beryllium from a yet-uncompleted nuclear plant were used. The so-called occupants, of course, were an even more sophisticated proposition. We acquired the corpses of children, dyed their dermal layer with ethanoic palladium. Plastic surgeons inserted modifications to their skulls and eye cavities, flushed their noses. The apocryphal 'grey' alien was born".

"Why would you admit to that? Children's corpses. You fool with human dignity -how's that ever gonna win you credit?"

It occurred to Mulder that, disturbingly, he cared little about the ethics of using dead children in a secret experiment. It was simply a rising horror that the lives of Scully and Samantha might have ended as similarly bleak collateral.

But continued Spender, in a croak, "You do see our intention, Mulder? We surmised: God can only communicate with us through legends. Therefore would create our own controllable legend, one through which He'd necessarily save us. Word of the greys would spread: on one side, God would project, on the other the human race. And in the intermixing, we would all be saved. This is what we believed".

Mulder continued to be venomous, "Sounds like mass schizophrenia".

"Ironic", Spender savoured his cigarette, "that between 1988 and 1991, following the abduction of your sister, the State Board of Clinical Psychiatry desired to call you 'schizophrenic' and endlessly medicate you at the Yakima Greenway hospital. Your Father and I made their assessments disappear".

"Only because you know what really happened to her!", Mulder shouted, prompting a smiling Alex Krychek to briefly look round from his black-and-white sitcom.

"My conspiracy has no formal allegiance with the people who took your sister, or who've taken Dana Scully. But on that day in 1947, I met one of them".

Mulder ground his teeth and waited. His mind whirred.

Xx.

It was a source of comfort somehow that his earliest memory was of Manners, their beloved family dog. On a yellowy summer morning, he'd observed him sitting proudly in his rough old sofa chair, grey-flecked brow rippling as he thought of food, or the feel of the sun, or whether to tidy and arrange his blanket. Mulder could entice him into play, and they'd surely fool around with his tennis ball for a half hour or so. But it was never simple-minded, the play-with-abandon that some kids could have with their dogs. Manners had a tendency to try and predict what you'd do by tracking the movement of your eyes.

Years later, when Samantha was old enough to appreciate such things, she'd asked their father an intriguing question, 'Is Manners an adult?"

William Mulder said, 'You mean, an adult dog? He's fourteen, which is the same as a human being sixty or seventy".

"I know that", Samantha insisted. "But I'm talking about being a adult human. I am just a kid. If it was just me and Manners, who would be called a adult more?"

Their father thought about this, for a strange amount of time. He'd always looked old, though sometimes his trademark grey cardigan was like a stately badge of office rather than a surrendering of all style. His face twitched. "I've often been led to think, there's no such thing as an adult. Not in the sense that there's anyone who should have authority over you".

"What does 'thority mean?"

"Children's minds move quickly. Dog's minds move quickly. So you hear people saying to children, 'Think slower so you don't run into the middle of the road. Think slower so you can have children of your own some day, and get a good job and a house'. There's a third kind of thinking, though. It isn't quick or slow".

"What is it?", wondered Samantha.

Said their father, "It's adults who know -how foolish all of this is, how lucky they'd be to be children again. Or naughty dogs, who just want to wag their tail and eat Bully Beef".

He smiled at his daughter.

She'd smiled back.

Mulder stared at the Smoking Man and waited.

"I stood alone on an inclined field, a hundred metres clear from the crash site. It was a delicate operation. We needed word to disseminate among the population, perhaps with one or two newspaper men coming to attend, before my military officials swept in to remove the evidence".

Asked the FBI man, "What would've happened if the cops had beat you to it, and fingerprinted the corpses?"

"We had close watch on the surrounding area, and could tacitly vet those who arrived, and those who didn't. At least, this is what we assumed. I stood by and -waited". With a sharp and wincing inhalation, "I suppose in the final analysis, I excel at tradecraft, but am -flawed when it comes to practical fieldwork. I had no inclination that I was being watched in turn. I could have stood there for another hour. But I happened to turn my head-

"A girl. Slightly below average height. She wore a fur-lined check jacket. Red hair in a bun. And she spoke my name. My first thought was, this was somehow an infiltration by my counterparts from the United Kingdom, especially since her British accent was so marked. I was ready to be shot, and have my position annexed. Perhaps if I'd had a gun, I'd have used it. Instead, I thought of my wife.

"And then? The girl told me that this was a historic occasion. Well, one could hardly dispute that.

"I was young, and foolish. I was barely 35, where I judged her to be five or ten years older than me. I had the weight of a world-changing conspiracy on my shoulders, though when I looked at her, it felt like -nothing.

"She told me that the speculations of my brain-trust were more or less correct, except in some minor details. There was, she said, no future-technological aspect to the quantum-harmonic revelations I was looking for. It was the natural, psychical evolution for all existence that mortals should become gods.

"But this -girl. I'm afraid I was 'given away' by some -expression. My view that the human race, as it stands, is incapable of anything other than destruction, and our deliverance can only come through impartial technology. It was a belief that she 'd once shared. Still, she said, destiny has a way of side-stepping this obstacle. I was warned: the truth is unpleasant. It is the last unpleasant thing any mortal ever has to learn in their lives, granted, but it's unpleasant nevertheless. Was I sure I wanted to hear?"

I sure as hell do, thought Mulder. In time, however -was that true? Going from one claustrophobic box into the ultimate claustrophobic box? He wondered how Spender had framed his answer. Had he been smoking at the time? Had the stress caused him to start smoking? Mulder cared -a little. He listened.

"The emphasis Western religions put on faith, rather than outright truth. The more sophisticated practitioners speculate that this is some method of attuning our minds to the existence of the afterlife. Yet the afterlife is either waiting for you or it's not. The sole reason we're required to have hope, and faith, is because otherwise, our sorrows would drive us insane. We would enter eternity as irrevocably broken husks. The truth is bleak. There are two varieties of human being: those who aren't conscious, and those who are -hounded by torments. God tracks us through our sorrows. Everyone else? He disregards".

Shocking, the speed at which Mulder found he could reply. "I don't buy that crap. Why sorrow? Why not joy?"

A shrug came from the smudgily-pixellated screen. "On a strictly evolutionary basis. One who suffers desires to expand".

"This makes no sense!", croaked Mulder. He felt like getting up and pacing, stormed in the knowledge he was being irrational.

"One must look at the evidence. You're a paranormal investigator. And the information I'm sending you presents a Unified Theory. It accounts for the millions of verifiable cases of people receiving visits from the afterlife, receiving checkable information, while their visitors say nothing about the relationship between life on earth and life in heaven. Could you tell someone that they're destined to live through a sorrowful love affair designed specifically to drive them to madness? Could you tell them they're destined to be bereaved beyond all measure of coping mechanisms? They remain silent about these things because they must. Because they love us. It's also, I've found, the reason that demonic forces are so gleefully dismissive of our attachment to this -damned place".

Insisted Mulder, "I need evidence. Eye-witnesses. All I've heard is hokey Milgram Experiment nonsense mixed a with who-knows-what extremist agenda".

"You shall have evidence. The girl told me: her group had reached an alliance with the force that we call 'God'. But it was highly Faustian. They might circumvent the natural sorrowful-psychical evolution that play on people's lives, but only at the last possible moment, when help is most needed".

Leading Fox Mulder to spit, "I say: garbage. You're telling me that anyone who's about to commit hari-kiri gets delivered on high by some extra-dimensional visitor, never to be seen again? But what the hell? If they're going to Heaven anyway?"

"They have an agenda", said Spender distastefully, "Which impacts on those of us still living. Not least of which, the restoration of Communism, the dissolution of arrogance and laziness as human character traits".

"What you're saying is insulting. What do you expect to come of it? All people can do is live their lives, even if this baloney was true. I'm going to ask you one more time. Where is Scully?"

The Smoking Man was pouting, though it occurred to Mulder he'd never seen him when he wasn't pouting -morose on some high bureaucratic level. "I'm sending to your smartphone a portal which contains three-quarters-of-a-century's-worth of beyond-classified documents. As I said, this relates to full disclosure on my part. You could, of course, take this evidence to the media, or social networking, or recruit your rockstar friend Mr Black. You would reach a large audience. You might even find international followers. But no one of any consequence, and the risk of diluting the truth with the general publics' nonsense and mischief is far too high.

"My motives could not be more transparent, Mulder. I expect you to hunt her. Her, and her group of acolytes. I read in your case notes, hear in my surveillance of you -you call her people the 'No Flags' group, the 'Stalkers'. Keep these names if you wish. Use the information I've sent you. Use your own contacts among so-called abductees. I have sent you a link to the Titor National Surveillance grid, a computer program designed to locate suspected time-travelers. All I ask is that we pool our intelligence. My wife's name is Cassandra Spender. She was taken from me in 1969 from Fort Esqueleto airfield. If ever you find her, she might be-"

He faltered, his mouth far more limp than usual, gasping for something more substantial than tarred-up nicotine. Emotion of some kind was the thing he searched for.

"I would ask her to forgive me".

"I believe word one of what you've told me", warned Mulder. "I believe in aliens, and I believe that you've always experimented on the psyches of the people of the United States. Now your psyche is getting experimented on in turn".

In a very feminine motion, Spender narrowed his eyes, tilted his head, blew smoke in a slant. "Naturally, I would hope this is all simply a harmless experiment. But I don't think so. Return to your apartment in Washington. Familiarise yourself with the documents. Begin forging new leads. It is entirely possible they will come to you, rather than you to them. We knew they'd taken an interest in Agent Scully before she was ever assigned as your partner. We knew that you would be attracted to each other; the single-minded commitment to your sister having robbed you of the normal alpha-male traits which she detests. In turn, she was beautiful and pragmatic, a challenge who would slowly become more and more tolerant of your... wild theories.

"We believe them to have a romantic aspect. They may even seek to reunite you. At which point, I would hope that you report to me".

Like a jerky mental patient, Mulder darted his eyes around the room, then back towards the Smoking Man. The moon-colour light of the attic room had been constant forever, so it seemed.

"If any of what you've told me is a jerk off, I'll make you pay".

"If that's all...", Spender stubbed his cigarette, the angle close to his body, still curiously out of range of the webcam.

Now. "What about Krychek?"

A wan, crumpled smile spread across the older man's face. "I would suggest you kill him. Mr Krychek -as you know him- is a singularly dangerous and unpleasant man. If you should choose a more liberal option, however -included in the documentation I have linked to you, are details of a safety deposit company in New York. Bluebird Unity Incorporated. The owner of box 3561 is the dummy company Global Exchange. It will be refilled each month with five thousand dollars, with an access code that alternates periodically. The code will be messaged to Mr Krychek's phone in assurance of his silence".

"But what about the-"

Unexpectedly, Spender's narrow shoulders moved forward to log off. "Goodbye, Mr Mulder. I wish you god speed at finding what we've lost".

Phased as the image on the screen blipped into a software-scarring wrench -that was apparently all. He looked breathlessly towards Krychek, henceforth into the hurried lifetime that lay ahead. Delving through all the stupid lies, the military-urban-legends he'd now have to discredit before he could even begin to find Samantha. His heart moved strangely. He knew he wouldn't sleep for days. In the years to come, he knew he'd lose all sense of self, then his mind.

In the meantime: Scully. He knew he'd have to prohibit thinking about her if he expected to carry on functioning. Her perfect soul. The little gold crucifix. The god that tracks us through our sorrows.

Xx.

From second to second, he drew solace from decisive action. Standing over Alex Krychek, prisoner-no-more.

"Get up, you're out of here".

The black-and-white show had finished. Now there were clips of vintage baseball with an overlay of eighties-style action music. "We're square? Just like that?"

"Didn't you hear what your man was telling me? It was all garbage, and where do you go with garbage?"

There was one more Desperados bottle left unopened. Krychek toyed with it as he flunked his head.

"Word 'God' kinda makes you prick up your ears, though. And it's all gotta mean something".

"Then why didn't you drag your chair around and get involved?"

"Makes you prick up your ears, not mine. Smokey knows what people're interested in".

"I don't believe in god", were Mulder's swarthy words.

"Little Agent Scully did".

Mulder said, as he undid the bracelet from the chair, then from Krychek's wrist, "Quit trying to play me and just get out of here. Bluebird safety deposit house in New York. Box 3561. You get a five-k payday every month as long as you stay quiet about what you've seen".

"You believe that?", Krychek calmly rubbed his wrist.

"Believe it. Don't believe it. We're done".

"I walk out of here", the younger man tipped his head charmingly, "I'm dead within a week. You're an FBI agent. You've got an obligation to protect me".

Gradually, Mulder started assess how much straightening and replacing he'd have to do to make the house look undisturbed. But there was no replacing the burned-out lock. He found he didn't care, anyhow, half-hoping the mystery would make their complacent, domestic heads spin. As a concession, though, he removed the 'X' criss-cross of carpet tape from the skylight.

"If I go down the road of being an FBI agent, that means I've got to bring you up on charges. Think you'll be any safer in prison?"

"You're a monstrous kind of guy, aren't you, Mulder?"

Mulder said nothing.

"You know, we could still be partners?"

Producing a horrible, numb frown. "I work alone. I should have known that before I got Scully mixed up in this".

"Can I at least get my gun back?", Krychek tried.

"Not a chance".

The house, he noted -the damned, apocryphal house- all of a sudden seemed a lot smaller. Still in the lower-white-collar-aspirational zone, the corridors were eerily large. There wasn't even trace shadow cast as the two men walked clear towards the top of the staircase, past an old-style world map and a painting of two nineteen-twenties British aristocrats. A feeling that they were ghosts. Worse than ghosts.

How to explain to Krychek what his profiling skills had taught him? A basic psychological reading had told that Spender was strangely eligible for their trust. If it had all been a cathartic story, if he'd planned to have Mulder or Krychek offed at some point in the near future, he'd have needed to off-set those emotions somehow. A quarter-strength sadness in the eyes, an amoral smile, anything rather than remaining his grey, jaded self. Above all else, beyond his dour-conspiratorial presence at the FBI, it was -maybe- true that his wife was somehow a contemporary of Samantha in the alien void. Stroke spiritual awakening. Stroke mass, Scientology-style experiment.

It'd make one hell of a nightmare, Mulder briefly considered, their tussle, followed by standing in the centre of a small, suburban house, never more than two rooms removed from the outside, still not finding your way out. There was a side-long wall which glinted like the tactical chart from a submarine movie; he hitched up his waistband and headed alongside towards the moonlight. Krychek compulsively smoothed out his hair, messed with the belly of his shirt, then followed suit in a stroll. Into Mulder's consciousness for first time came the smell of his cologne. It was Beckham, or some other modern variance on Old Spice. Not unpleasant. In fact, it made him feel strangely inferior for being so unimaginative that he always went straight for CK. Strange.

They entered the kitchen side room. By now the acrid smell which had been wrought by their storming the lock was completely cleared. The handle was strangely cold to the touch, strangely pliant when it came to opening the door. Outside, all was subdued and motionless. At most, a car would pass along the distant highway and making a wholly un-car-like noise. Mulder resented that, that it was dragging his attention away from the range of semi-detached houses where the real threat might emerge. The hell if there was time to deal with some little fat guy in a white T and slippers, neighbourhood watch like a dangerous sliptide.

And such is the pattern of life. He remembered the time before Samantha had vanished. All his gang had wanted was to smite and confuse middle America. They'd been endlessly creative through an Orson Welles War of the Worlds earnestness. Fox could never have dreamed that fate would in turn get creative on him. Aliens. God. Being the type of man without the time or inclination to fall in love, only to have Scully delivered to him.

Krychek stared at the black horizon from across a richly-varnished fence. He kept his back to Mulder and was sickeningly confident he wouldn't just leave. The other man began to stalk clear nonetheless.

"I'm gonna need to get my gun back, Mulder". He saw that Krychek had his hands on his hips. The default stance of a jobbing federal agent if ever there was one. It all tied in with what he said next: truly unnerving, "You said it yourself. We're just the same. Two loners out of hell, just pretending to be FBI agents. Your conscience won't let you walk away from that!"

Swiveling, "You follow me and I bind and gag you and leave you cuffed to a tree in the woods. Get out of here, Krychek".

Now Krychek glared. Just as if Mulder had said something wildly unexpected and profoundly offensive. He started to backtrack, saying in a tone vaguely sinister, "OK!"

From the end of the weirdly-twisting lane, Mulder looked back and saw that he was gone; either back inside the house, maybe petitioning the Smoking Man's satellite once more, or vanished from the area completely by the tiny walkspace along the yard fence.

It was a breathless moment, when all the evils flooded in with no distractions. Foremost, he had to figure that Spender would use his FBI influence to set up some kind of cover story about Scully vanishing under more explicable, earthly circumstances. No one in authority would care. Maybe Scully's brothers. Her sister, the crystal healer -what was her name, 'Missy'? He'd have to speak to her. And in Mulder's experience, new-age types were wildly dogged and loyal; the pressure would only serve to make him feel more feverishly alone, damned.

Too tired and numb to avoid looking at things which might upset him further, Mulder had no choice but to take in the vivid array of stars which lay in the near quarter of the sky. He saw them, then forced himself to screen out any meaning. Up towards the hilly area where he'd parked, the smell of chlorophyll was only slightly diminished by the night. Passing a public bench, a heavily padded footpath gate, it was clear this was a nook where gas exhaust and the smell of the rubberised surfaces were truly riled up. Even in the most obscure suburban spots, the world moved. It would always move, while the investigative progress of Fox Mulder would always grind to a schizophrenic halt, cursed.

The car was in sight, as his loafing feet and rubbery arms painted a picture of despondency -utter. It was maybe his life's final hope, crumpling down on the bonnet to once again dial Scully's phone.

Or try to. The service provider had the same sage-like insouciance in telling him that the mobile may be turned off, or have software or reception difficulties. Mulder blinked, each warm and dry close of his eyelids was like a full-on surrender to sleep. He considered calling Doggett, Reyes, maybe even Skinner. The state he was in, he knew they'd empathise. Life is humbling. Losing everything; brings home the fact that even your worst antagonist is still only human. But only in relation to-

The god who tracks us through our sorrows.

And so what to do? He prepared to climb aboard and try to make sense of the jerry-rigged dash. Henceforce he'd go to his apartment to wallow in the secret American history of alien and god-baiting. It was a curiously twentieth century problem to be sure. A man losing a loved one, then scouring through the exaggerated, overexcited claims of alien contact. Was it any different to losing a loved one to Isis, then scouring through the exaggerated, overexcited psychological problems of the terrorists? Perhaps even going one step higher -the exaggerated, overexcited motives the West had to antagonize them in the first place.

But it was no source of comfort that the world was closing in on everyone.

He despairingly palmed free the last shard of broken glass from the car window. It was less than an inch-worth along the rubberised insulation, but still it was something to do.His eyes were burning from the manly withholding of tears, his heavy breath just the same. The cold night air helped a little, he found, as he stared up at a sharp bank of stars and felt crazy vertigo. There was the feeling that Scully was out there somewhere holding her breath.

He opened up and sat down. In the instant before he exhaustedly folded in his legs, however, the door was blasted against his knees in a truly savage strike. As he cringed low, unwisely, the metal of the door made further stinging sweeps against his jaw, skull, shoulder blade. He was flung out onto the grit.

Apparently out of spite, Krychek stamped on his leftside hip. He then withdrew his sidearm, swiped off the safety and aimed breezily.

"How'd you know my name?"

Mulder winced through the stringing pain. He struggled to understand. "'Krychek'? You told it to me yourself!"

"No, you dumbass f-! You said, 'Get out of here, Kyle!' What was that, a little reminder that you were the boss of me all along? Well who's the boss now?"

A joke seemed fitting. Mulder sensed he was about to die, and so a joke seemed defiant. "Tony Danza?"

Krychek -or 'Kyle'- kicked him hard around the collar bone. It was curiously painless. Still Mulder spasmed and rasped. "I don't know a thing about you! I didn't say, 'Kyle'! To me you're just -Alex Krychek, son-of-a-bitch".

"To you I'm Alex Krychek, who's about to see you dead".

It was spoken as an absolute certainty. Still Mulder struggled against the side of the car to raise himself. The other man tacitly allowed it.

"How can a liar get pissed when he's lied to in turn? What happened to, 'We could still be partners'?"

Krychek smirked. "In this life? Only person who's got your back is the devil".

"That's real cute, Alex", was Mulder's conclusion. Slowly, full of aching cramps, he edged away from the car door as if to acquiesce. Then came the single breath in which he moved; the only unit of time he had to calculate whether it would actually work, whether he'd simply be shot dead. Speed was the thing. Inevitably, Krychek fired. Mulder felt renewed heat around his already damaged collar bone. But these things are either grievous or not. A clumsy half-fist, half-cuff was directed into the gun-hand. In any case, they whirred around together and maybe the Glock was lost in the painful miasma.

They tussled, with lazy blows exchanged. Primarily, Mulder felt his ability to think getting damaged, or rather sinking into a pool of mescaline self-indulgence. Jim Rockford himself didn't take so many beatings. But then Krychek struck with a head-butt: all comparisons with The Rockford Files vanished.

Something made him think of Krychek's confiscated gun. There was a clear risk he might retake it from the inside pocket, but still the consideration was a drop in the ocean. Grappling hands seemed to be as much trying to damage him a little as finding the most dignified way to kill him outright. On the ground like dogs. Mulder's size gave him an advantage in trying to knock the fists up and away, though it was a losing battle amid Krychek's advantage: the man was a neurotic psychopath always.

Landing blows chip-chipped him ever closer to exhaustion, and full-on unconsciousness. Something to do: he attempted to edge Krychek onto his side. In the meantime, the fist and elbow strikes fell 3-to-1 in the other man's favour, and all of it measured.

The distant horizon, noted Mulder, was icily beautiful. One or two tiny specks could equally be plastic grocery bags in an updraft, could equally be nocturnal birds, could equally be stars. And their whiteness was so artistically complimented by the far treeline, there between two or three valleys: dark blue, into light blue, then back into a blue so damn dark it was the stuff of dreams.

As if to emphasise this, he saw a flying saucer move steadily left-to-right. It was at least five miles away, probably ten. He bore it no malice for what it had done to his family -he figured in the same way a clinically depressed man gets Darwin-Pavlov'd into ignoring all the specific problems of his life, instead getting dragged in to the numb malaise of bi-polar oblivion. Watching the saucer as it moved in a methodical, searching motion. Though evidently, not searching for him. He bore it no malice when, despair-foiling-hope, it dipped low and vanished.

Funny, last blows inflicted to Krychek's neck and jaw were savage, but were still not winning. Conversely, the other guy's kneading of Mulder's mouth could afford to slow down and grow refined. Probably, he could have afforded to say a word or two if he wanted, but he chose to remain silent. As the business of strangling the FBI man began.

Of course, it was a little embarrassing that the man's hands were so tiny. The embarrassment phased into pain, then discomfort. Into a distinct feeling of dying, as Mulder's vision was assaulted -black spots and electrified stymies both at once. He wondered, in the quickest flash of a second, whether the UFO on the horizon had been a similar under-oxygenated hallucination. Now of all times, his secret fear returned in hella force. He'd once interviewed a very convincing Air Force retiree who'd claimed that the saucers were no more than airborne appropriations of Brion Gysin's dream machine. Designed to float above tyrant-oppressed foreign lands and subliminally influence the locals into embracing democracy.

Krychek embraced his democracy as never before. The squeezing and compressing ended -never. In an unrelated incident, the UFO was now extremely close by, inside five hundred metres. The distance was scintillating, though with no feeling that they'd come to help or intervene. It wasn't that type of vibe. It wasn't that type of life. It was all -impersonal.

Interestingly, from his death-bound vantage point staring down and across the grassland, he watched as the saucer moved to land, then continued downwards, revealing its true, immaterial nature by phasing inside the earth. Krychek saw too, but merely 'g'ah!'ed malevolently. Little bits of foliage stirred and became still again.

Mulder gave up, and prepared to pass out into death. Even a god who tracks us through our sorrows would still be something. A horrible, thick agony crushed his neck; he figured he was dead.

As the saucer started rise through the earth directly behind them: in its glowing glory the silent visual equivalent of a roar. The nearby trees and grass tufts were violently upset while moving at unnatural angles. All leading to a single thought from Mulder: so this is what it felt like for Samantha. His body felt insensate to everything, not least of which the hard mass of Krychek's panting form, the ground, the way his limbs should be getting teased by the weird gulps of wind.

Shaffenfreude go, shaffenfreude no -Krychek's eyes showed tingling panic as he felt the urge to turn his head and could not. Like an abstract version of Jaws writ large, possibly something by late-era Dali, the oval roof of the phenomenon glided ever higher through the earth as it moved to engulf them. Any intimation that they were ultimately kindly angels -the fear and terror told that this was patently untrue from second to second, as ever it was.

The solid light consumed a large part of Mulder's legs, inexorably consumed Krychek's side. There followed a slight feeling of atmospheric imbalance, otherwise the inside of the thing was just the same as their earthly environment. As silently, with no ceremony except an inhuman strobe, they were swallowed entirely.

Xx.

Notes on being inside a flying saucer. It was a nod towards FBI methodology and good detective work, even at the point of no return, the way he set his eyes to scan and record. Over the years there'd always been two possibilities in his head: either there'd be an interior extension of the outer glow, or else it would consist of grubby living spaces a la Whitley Strieber -places getting grubby by virtue of being lived-in, no matter how technologically advanced they are. At most there was a chance he might find himself on one of the clinical examination tables that'd been reported at the height of the alien-medical-experimentation reports of the nineties.

In the seconds which followed entering the phenomenon, he waited patiently to see if the powerful light would resolve into tangible form. He awaited news on gravity, maybe for something to happen to his badly wounded limbs. There was nothing. Really, why would it change? The intensity of the light and the a-gravimetrical forces which supported their limbs were merely comfortable, a hot bubble-bath that telepathically altered from inch-to-inch to distract muscles from an unearthly predicament. Mulder realised: this is what it feels like in a dream.

The brawling earthlings were pulled apart by immaterial forces. The respective men both retained a slight ability to move their eyes, though it was nowhere near full-functionality. There was a kind of expression on Krychek's face, an inverted-hysteria that fully endorsed the wild nihilism. Meanwhile, it was all Mulder could do to pull his tightened jaw apart and rasp.

Because as far as the eye could see, and maybe it was studio-size or maybe all eternity, the comfortable glow was constant. From the outside, he would have expected pulsing or modulation in rhythm with the movement of the saucer. It occurred to him that maybe the phenomenon of UFOs were not singular objects but rather portable openings into some other dimension.

'Some other dimension' being the same old stubborn frustration. Being a prisoner in your own life and finding the idea of progress an outright illusion. Even mystery itself -what a pernickety lie. He remembered watching Star Trek with Samantha. He must have seen each of those old sixties episodes three times over, the way everyone does eventually through channel-skimming osmosis. Yet for Samantha, each one was new and fresh. Every Tuesday she'd watch, rapt beyond words, as Kirk, Spock and Bones had such weird fights picked. It was always after the second ad-break that she drifted away to play with Manners. Fox could never understand why she'd be so intensely fascinated for the first twenty minutes of the story, then utterly dismissive of the second. One day he'd asked, to have it pointed out: whatever happened, Kirk, Spock and Bones would be back on the Enterprise by next week, and whatever brilliant mystery had stopped them dead in space, it would only ever be revealed as alien 'civviliations'. She'd doted on the word 'civilization' before she'd even learned to say it, dismissing the concept even from the start.

Hot damn, he'd known she was ready to graduate to the Twilight Zone. Except life was still horribly misaligned. You couldn't expect a 7 year old girl to sit through episodes as bleak as Death's Head Revisited or Nothing in the Dark, or even episodes that were just stark, like The Midnight Sun. And so Samantha would simply have to remain... young, and innocent, if unsatisfied.

He thought about this, plus a thousand other things. Also like being in a dream, these prosaic-yet-meaningful ideas surging cleanly in his smacked-up mind. Weirdly, he found it was a near-pleasant sensation, maybe even addictive, though he knew it'd start to frighten him if he embraced it. Besides, the fallen-cowboy image of Alex Krychek or 'Kyle' was not something you could transcend in front of. As something to do, he tried to crease his shoulder to look at his Accurist, only to discover that the normal movement of his limbs was muted, two-thirds anaestheticised. Now, would that classic piece of UFO reportage be in effect, the EMP which shut down machines, the time-imbalance between life on Earth and life in the disc? Indeed, the second hand moved only after ponderous stretches of time, with no 'tick', either, only a wrenching pull. Wondering.

It was what was left to the imagination that was deadly, how it bolstered Spender's assertion that the aliens were psychologically knowing -plus Mulder's own suspicions that they were too psychologically knowing for their own good. Like a child worrying about whether God pays attention to your most insightful thoughts, or merely your actions, he wondered if they'd properly managed to distinguish between himself and Krychek. 'You're pretending to be an FBI agent, just the same as me' kept doggedly returning to haunt him. Plus that other spectre of the imagination: where the hell were they? In the high atmosphere? Immaterial, travelling through the centre of the Earth? Crazy intuition told him they'd kept well clear from outer space, though he had no idea what the feeling was based on.

By and by, he started to figure that the end of their lives would be spectacularly bleak. Surely, the light from the UFO represented ugly-if-sophisticated amber, insects studied by a godless Jurassic Park scientist who had no intention of cloning them. He recalled the Entrance Exam of the FBI Profiling Division. They'd been asked to reproduce the so-called 'Fixation-degradation table' of personal belief systems. The idea was, the concepts which shaped a person's moral code were necessarily benevolent and honourable. But filtered through the psychology of a criminal, they altered in entirely predictable ways. And so God becomes a symbol of capricious power-with-no-responsibility. Government becomes covert dictatorship. Love becomes death. He considered just what the concept of shining visitors from space might translate into. The answer, surely, was an oblivion-bound mess. Like some macrocosmic vision of Schrodinger's cat, the aliens would doubtless be compacted into a schizophrenic nightmare.

And then -eerily, the moment he resigned himself to vanishing under an inhuman light- the glare retched apart into something less than void. Beyond arm's length, the substance of the atmosphere was revealed as something that had -seams? A mesh? Mulder wanted to think of it in terms of some conventional technology, only to be prevented by -there'd been more beatings than the Rockford Files; it followed that his next assault would come from the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, Tuesday nights at seven on ABC. Scattering apart like a shoal of fish, the substance of the UFO altered. Neon fish that had been trained to form in ranks obscured his vision. Presently -and somehow he retained the ability to be fascinated- the fish equally took on the dynamic of insects. They -became insects? Or were insects all along, albeit dramatically graceful? Krychek's bronzed face showed jerky fear. Mulder felt curiously under control.

Given freely then snatched away, the belief that it could all be a hallucination. As in his hypnotism with Dr Swan, the details were mescaline-fine, tho it was hard to say if they were inhuman by nature or else magnified from a subatomic wonderland. The gift that keeps on giving, however: he saw such new and tantalizing qualities from second to second. Some of the glowing proboscises, fluttering together, seemed to highlight words. Whole sentences. Reading, 'Some of the glowing proboscises, fluttering together, seemed to highlight words. Whole sentences'.

Gaping wonder was smashed by a springy capacity to be frightened. The edge -call it a living hull or swarm of letter-insects- rippled apart completely. Blue sky was seen beyond. A distinct absence of oxygen, tho: this was fascinating and petrifying. Now it combined with the ability to scramble his limbs once more, rich and satisfying, even if it was just the desperate squirming of a man dropped from a plane with no parachute.

No parachute. Not even any context. He sensed it was going to be the most elaborate execution in human history. With the interior of the saucer dissipated completely into open sky, a second or ten minutes ago -down they rippled. An animal-sneering Alex Krychek managed to snatch forwards and connect with a lapel. Mulder grasped at his stomach -only as something to do. Ice cold, however, the effort of controlling his fingers while also urging his lungs to absorb air, tore them apart.

And so. He figured it was a freestyle way to die. Living flotsam in a sea of stratosphere and wind-blown eyelids lapping like a friendly dog. Weirdly, he could take on just enough oxygen to maintain his electrified brain, if only there was any use for it. A sky-diving video it was not. The block of air that clenched and rolled him was anything but friendly, lolling him down towards glimpses of earth that didn't even stay long enough to be scary, figuring it was much like sitting in some revolving cinema chair.

And hell of a thing the speed at which he thought, the number of sensations that iced into his soul. He lost consciousness by degrees, only for it to return periodically with excitable force. He felt something -a little like God. Matched all the criteria, anyhow: explained everything, was infinitely powerful.

And up came the ground like a chasm.

He guessed he'd always known that Samantha was never going to return. His mother and father seemed inconclusive, but he'd known in his Bones McCoy that she'd become -mystery itself. Enter the hidden, driving force of all psychology -besides f-ing. Trash was talked about love, about it being a lilly-livered, non-Darwinian mess. He guessed there was no denying that. But true love is the spirit of exploring, expanding, transgressing -and then reporting back to the one you love. For better or worse, and as if it was the meaning of life. Samantha had always itched with extreme curiosity. As for himself and Scully, it was a clash of dissatisfied FBI soulmates the world had never seen.

Missing her to the point of dime-romance melodrama, he willed the ground to claim him faster, the better to fill his report with split-second excitement and gallows-humour. It obeyed, more or less, with only minor aberrations that indicated that he might actually fall forever. In play was the same logic as those dreams where you're stranded a perpetual five miles from home no matter how fast you walk. It never occurred to simply speed things up.

Pleasingly, the ground filled his whole vision, coupled with the sickly sensation that he'd be able to reach out and consciously touch it, even if the touch only lasted an inhuman microsecond. And taking the ultimate, transcendental right-hook in the Fight Club of his life, he did indeed hit the ground. His mind vanished.

Xx.

Life returned by way of thick corn husks, an inch or two high, no more than bits of straw planted firmly in an icy ground. An ability to think was effortless, and blessed. But life is a kind of Faustian addiction; Mulder intuited that if he tried to move, tried be a part of the physical world, his lot would be obliterating pain. Not that it was avoidable, either.

No help came when his howl of pain lanced across the fields. No explanation came of how he'd managed to survive a fall from thousands of feet in the air -even if he was as pain-filled as a body can be. The grey sky shrugged when he looked at it. Mystery-palooza, Scully. Am I the FBI agent who dreamed he was a meteor, or a meteor who liked the Yankees? Clearly, the prime factor to be scoured was how his spine had remained intact, at all points, with limbs as loose and free as Al Jolson singing Toot-Toot-Tootsie.

Crawling seemed out of the question. He tried anyway; it was confirmed. A long period of millimetre-wide limb-testing followed, the consensus of which: it was like a virtual reality minefield. If he co-ordinated his movements in a just-so ambulation, he could progress forward. As his left thigh took the weight, his right thigh made an arc and, working with his Satan-searing elbows, he was free from the ground and able to move, just a little.

It was a sharply-inclined crop field. On the left-side horizon, he saw unlimited forests of dark green Chris Pine trees, the vibe of which was that the buds were only quite so thick and green to combat the pervasive winter atmos. Without a doubt, he'd catch pneumonia if he didn't get lucky soon. Help from the right-side? The scattering of elm trees was slightly more delicate, but still there was no sign of civilization.

Pain or no, Mulder moved urgently forward. Bravely, stupidly, he tried to reach some approximation of an upright gait, bones clicking and pulling together as if by the sheerest luck. In a recess at the bottom of the dip, he saw a large block of single-story farm buildings. The telegraph and electrical wires which fed it were slung low across rickety poles. Maybe it was something you'd see in Louisiana, or more likely with the cold atmos, Canada, yet he sensed he couldn't be nearly so lucky. He was a long way from home. The disgusting smell of poultry drew him on, wondering just how his mind might finally start to shut down.

An eerily huge accomplishment, he reached the vicinity of the buildings. The wooden walls, he noted, were a single shade of subdued brown, and there was something in them which made his mind feel horribly decadent and unworthy. In truth, whenever he felt light-headed, there was nothing per se that prevented him from feinting away. Still some providence sent him stumbling, shambling, onwards into the future.

He rounded a corner-

Krychek sat in a wooden chair he'd dragged down from the porch. He seemed a lot less damaged than Mulder. All at once, he inclined his head through sheer intuition, "Hey, partner".

Mulder could open his mouth, but had no breath for words, no idea how to react.

Krychek turned ever more sharply in his chair, "I thought you were dead. I mean, weird how we can be alive, right?"

Mulder swayed, blinking.

"You'll like this, anyhow", Krychek grinned like a child. "We're in Siberia. In Russia. Can you believe that s-? Scheme I've got: we put out feelers, maybe get some kind of quid-pro asylum with Putin? We don't trust anyone, but slowly, slowly, we catch the monkey?"

Alive, alive-o: Mulder breathed.

"The old farts in the shack, I hoped they might have a gun or two. Maybe the next best thing. They had kind of a Russian Yellow Pages. I found an ad for coyote-killers. Actually said, 'Coyote Killers' -in English. I've called 'em. They're on their way. We get their guns, get their transport, get back in the game".

'The old farts in the shack' -Mulder glanced towards the deathly-silent walls and knew full well that he'd find bodies within, quickly and callously murdered. He only gradually looked back to Krychek.

"Look, man, I know you're upset that-"

Through the prohibitive pain, Mulder drew his gun. He aimed quickly and shot Krychek in the head. As he started to slump, he shot again, and hit him between the shoulder blades, the pelvis, the fourth shot missing him completely. But the main thing was that his head had taken a rose-shaped impact of blood.

On the floor, Mulder eased into unconsciousness, for the final time, he figured. He thought of Scully. Spiraling down.

To his astonishment, black oblivion was deflected by his ability to look with interest at a new arrival. Someone in semi-fashionable corduroy trousers paced easily. The legs stopped to stare with disproportionate concern at Krychek's body. Weirdly, very damn weirdly, he felt ambivalent emotions everywhere.

In time, the guy in the trousers came to investigate.

"I'm sorry I couldn't help you".

Mulder tried to speak, almost succeeded.

"Take it easy, you'll be alright. You're in no more danger of dying than anyone. And I know you've got questions. Big ones, little ones. I can answer about ten percent".

Cute. In sharp contrast to the rigid pain in his bones, Mulder felt his expression soften, become kindly. From the stranger's point of view, this was hardly a good thing. Looking into his eyes, at his wild ginger hair. Everything has been seen and heard before.

Exhaling, "I can see you're not convinced. Part of it is this guy's fault. Kyle Parks. Hell of a character, right? And you're thinking, 'Who are you?' Maybe it's a more fundamental problem even than that? My words sound weird nowadays. I don't trust myself to talk to non-initiates. And the zeitgeist -the God who only notices you when you suffer. No one's ever going to believe that, are they? The atheists will think it's some kind of masochism, a psychological self-fulfilling prophecy, not realizing that it's all just part of the twenty-first century capitalist mindset. Believing you can side-step suffering is no different to believing the economy can operate with manual workers being paid a hundred times less than middle-middle-middle management clerks. The-"

A political tirade wasn't what was needed. It allowed for an irritated breakthrough in Mulder's throat. "Who are you?! What're you-?"

"At the end of the day", gulping his words, nodding to Krychek, "I'm this guy's friend. He shot me for my troubles, but that's just his nature. Doesn't alter much".

Mulder's eyes flicked from side to side -but before he could rasp another question, Ginger's unsolicited words flowed on. "Before I set you on your way, let me just tell you a story about him. We worked at a factory together. Or more specifically an industrial disassembly plant. Kyle believed he was untouchable by the management because he'd been there so long, and was willing to subsist on such a low wage. But then we got this new supervisor who got wise to the way he'd constantly be taking calls and text messages from the whores and easy girls in town. They argued about it, and Kyle backed down -always with that look of sick confidence he gets in his eyes. What he did? He just recorded the beeping sounds of our industrial metal testers on his phone, used them as the ring tone and text alarm, so he could get calls in work time and no one would notice. But still there was trouble. I needed to hear the ping on those testers so I could do my job, and it really sent me out of sync when Kyle's phone started confusing me. We argued about it. Really a bitter argument. I took a swing at him and missed. He took a swing at me and it connected, but clumsy. We fell against some stillages and something made me look at the old timers working on the reach. They wore these neon ear plugs connected by a yellow cord. Brainwave. That night I purchased a pair of skinny earphones from the Circle K and peeled away the foam of the factory earplugs onto the ends, painted the black cable yellow with enamel paint. The jack fitted into Kyle's phone, so he could hide it in his shirt and take calls with total privacy without anybody figuring. And you know what that son-of-a-bitch did to reward me? Made me smile from ear to ear? The rare books store in town. We always used to go in there so Kyle could paw at the vintage issues of Private and Gallery. But while we were in there, he saw me looking at 'Protest and the Urban Guerrilla' by Richard Clutterbuck. Sixty dollars. Stole it right under the guy's nose so he could give it to me as a present, though he called me a dirty commie goon as he handed it over. Funny how we know each other..."

Hell-aching, and like some collapsed cavern, Mulder's throat was strong enough to give words. For now, however, the angry glare prevailed.

"Walk through the woods. Head towards the sun. There's an outpost that I think'll be of interest to you. I know your body probably hurts like blazes. But it's a psychosomatic thing: ignore the pain and it seeps away like a sad song followed by a happy song. Music: now there's the thing. You get your religion where you can. It occurs to me I'd have been just as happy in my life if it had only been me and Depeche Mode".

Fox decided through the pain: the purpose of the X-files was pretty much inherently flawed. Chasing after one outer-space cult when everything everywhere is an outer-space cult. A lesson learned not-quite too late, as he hitched up his knees, a walking position to take leave of the ginger geek, the corpse of 'Kyle Parks'.

"An 'Outpost'? More religious-alien nutjobs, huh?"

"Look, I'm just a guy", he produced a bitter kind of shrug. "Kyle and I became aware of the UFOs just by -coincidence? Bad luck?"

"Bull-"; less than a critique of the man, more the situation in general. "You gonna tell me anything I need to know?"

Honestly, "Probably not. Couldn't if I wanted to".

"Is it true there's a phone around here?"

"There is. But the phones in this place -there's never an operator. Can't dial international. You can make calls, and there's even people to speak to, but it's just -there's no American Embassy if that's what you're thinking. Also, Kyle scuttled the handset. He's not stupid".

Mulder looked at his own phone. Something had happened to make the battery expand and misalign with the connectors. Fine: at any other time in history, he'd be overjoyed by the fact he couldn't be hounded by Skinner.

It was time to go. Lurching and limping, he'd almost cleared the dirty farm shacks.

"Got a word for Kyle, when he comes back?"

Mulder burst free from his silence. "He's got a bullet in his head. He's not coming back".

"I guess not. But supposing he did? Like a bad penny? What would you say to him?"

The FBI man clenched his jaw.

"I don't know, either. Guess I'll have to give it some thought. But probably the first thing: you think this is really Siberia? Listen to those nagging doubts. You've been slotted down- bang in the middle of a little place known... as the Twilight Zone".

Xx.

Onwards. Aside from the trademark pines, all the trees were small, at an angle, dragged down endlessly by a heavy chill. A kind of frost that was unified with gravity, inhospitable soil, vapourous cold. Untended fields were filled with grass that looked like wrapping paper in a grandma's attic, and should he perhaps walk across them? The grass looked easier under foot than the forest debris, but then, pros and cons, the forest had branches to periodically brace his damaged body.

Hills in the near-distance looked to have been ravaged by raw atmosphere, ever since prehistoric times. Sunken ridges were filled with mildewy grass and caught what little sunlight there was in a majestic postcard. Undoubtedly the landscape had a harsh beauty. Too much of a good thing, though: phase out and use it as a spur. Mulder decided to amble forward through the confines of the tree-trunks. He loafed painfully beside areas that were enclosed coliseums of bark, maybe broken down tank turrets, HD at every point. This crisp but cold beauty: it was no blu-ray to be returned to the store because of poor contrast in the digital transfer. Where dreamy, defeated haze-particles drifted in the air, they did something to brilliantly show the sharpness of the new world.

A thoughtless period of wading and lurching brought the inhuman feeling that he'd already been out there for hours. It wasn't unpleasant -for all the loneliness and pain. The gradual slope between two dense pine fields was much like the generic clearings where his FBI duties had brought him to a dead child, a murdered lover, mobsters getting philosophical through a single bullet. It was all just death. He wondered whether Scully was dispassionately praying for him, or whether, like him, she was just preoccupied by their romance. And which would he prefer? Earthly existence: pretty emphatically the absence of love, with the only method of paying for such a luxury-delineated world: prayer. It wasn't a fair deal, though.

Aching, pain-reconfiguring shoulder blades rested momentarily against a musty trunk. He wondered what he was doing, how to extricate himself from the truth that he was insane and lost. He pressed on a little ways, eyes twinkling even in the daylight.

Minutes passed. He found a Starfleet-gold rag tied around a small tree. Several black arrows had been savagely and effectively drawn on with ballpoint pen. He followed, wondering just what this final cult would be like. They'd give jive-answers the same as anyone, sure, but at least they might fix up his body.

Through the trees now was a range of mountains some forty or fifty miles away, all uniform and modest, still significant enough to be a landmark on the face of some huge, two-tone continent. He stared intently to the side as he limped through the pain. In a moment, he realised there'd been a clear contingency, right there in his subconscious all along. Since embarking towards the latest cult, he'd been on the look-out for rural structures, barns, broken down cottages, anything that might have a pane of glass to be freed-up and used to send a message to Spender's satellites. He'd use morse, he figured. 'MULDER. ALIVE'. He rehearsed the dots-and-dashes in his mind, and it was something to do.

He staggered for hours.

As promised of the Twilight Zone's healing effects, his pain became more manageable as his mind flitted on to things related. Ultimately it was nothing, though. The weird aching in his joints remained, along with a weird resonance that told it was surely there to stay. Mystery and pain, then. Periodically, he followed the utilitarian arrows scrawled on trees, rocks, dreamcatchers. At one point, there was even a rusted roadsign liberated from some far-off Russian construction site.

Mineral-rich soil sprang back into shape the moment his feet lifted free, up over twigs that seemed to have fragmented over thousands of years. He started to see moss. Could it be a mind-trick, or was the temperature starting to rise, at least three degrees?

Mulder lusted for a breakthrough. It came with a glimpse of man-made objects at a sharp angle to his left. As he stalked across, he saw a small house, so broken-down it was debatable whether to think of it as one or two story, or even just fragmented walls. But in any case it was a focal point for a mass of hand-made signs and momentoes -he could only equate it with those ad-hoc roadside memorials that sprang up around the sites of tragic accidents. This collection, however, had more of a practical purpose: where there were photos of smiling family members and joyful little knick-knacks, they were attached to arrows pointing ever onwards. It was clear that these were messages left by cult members, hoping or assuming that friends or family members might one day come looking.

He saw the photo of a man with an infectious smile, wearing a T-shirt from the Old Ale Inn. He saw someone in an ultra-cheap 'Grey' alien costume, completing a marathon to be greeted by his genuinely pretty wife. Across the rough soil, someone had weighted-down a laminated poster of a smiling nu-folk collective. Everyone was happy, as people in cults always are, even alien-orientated cults.

Leading Mulder to sit back and ruminate, Hamlet cigar moment tinged with a very real desire to reach for his gun and blow his brains out. Even having traversed the conspiracy, there was still his own secret isolation. He had nothing to do with these people. Aliens should never provoke smiles. The people behind the curtain should never be your friends.

He screwed his eyes and exhaled -but in time stood tall to follow the arrows to the heart of the jerk-off. His feet carried him in a wide berth of the trodden-foliage which surrounded the signs. He was almost clear. He noticed, however -was enticed by?- an upturned bathroom sink which had been dragged free from the wrecked house and placed on a mossy rise.

The thing was shattered, bleak-looking like something from a dark surrealist painting. But the name that'd been written on the remaining porcelain, marker-penned in that practical style of hers;

'MULDER. THIS WAY'.

He welled up, rubbed his eyes. All in the same movement starting to run.

Xx.

The sharpness by which he eventually stumbled into the community was unnerving. Well-concealed by a ravine, it was exactly the kind of location that might be chosen for a guerilla encampment, a mixture of huge leaves and long run-ups that would make any intruder horribly vulnerable.

Except he wasn't, partly because there weren't any sentries, partly because the very first sight that greeted him was strangely harmless; a huge spread of orchards being tended by geriatrics and perma-smile middle-agers. Partially unobserved, he loafed through and stared with wonder at the bountiful vegetables in an allotment. It was weird. He wondered if he'd ever truly noticed before the way old-timers really loved gardening.

An old man in an English soccer rain coat -Tottenham Hotspur?- was more than happy to answer his questions as he breezed by.

"What is this place?"

"There's no name for it", the Brit said enthusiastically. "Giving it a name would go against the whole idea, so long as you know we're not hippies".

"I wouldn't suggest that for a minute, sir".

Joy sparked in his mind. So this is how it ends: a conversation about hippies.

Said the Brit, "You're an American, and you haven't sunk as low as we have. My country is part of Europe: the whole thing is like the Mafia. To people nowadays, any idea of being self-sufficient is just -impossible. As impossible as little green men coming down in flying saucers to tell us off. When everyone thinks something is impossible, that makes it a good secret weapon".

Mulder mauled his greasy stubble. "How come everyone around here is so damn political?", he asked, thinking also of Krychek's little friend.

Said the Brit lightly, "Dunno, maybe we're going back to the seventies and eighties".

The eighties -inevitably, he thought of Samantha. The intervening decades of arrested development that had been suffered by himself and-

"I'm looking for my friend, Dana Scully. Fresh off the boat?"

"Try the War Room".

"'The War Room'?"

"I know", said the Englishman. "I'd have called it 'The Revolution Room', except she doesn't like that word. Says it suggests that the majority of the population is complicit in subjugation, which, you know, they are, but there's no need to rub their noses in it. Honest mistake".

Mulder looked down at the splay of tomatoes, looked back. "And calling it a war is less divisive? I take it we're talking about The Tulpa Mystery Woman? The resurrector of Elvira Hoek?"

"Yeah. But you can have a war of ideas, I suppose. That's what she said. Personally, I don't like the politics so much. I'm just here to grow things, and I've got my own piece of real estate that back home would've cost me two lifetimes to afford. Would you like me to show you where the War Room is?"

"If I can tear yourself away from your tomatoes, Mr-?"

"Ken. There's another Ken across the other side of town. You can tell us apart, though. He wears a massive gold chain".

They strolled through the artful paths that mingled greenhouses, wells, a wind turbine in the middle of a garden show rockery. It was all pretty boring, even if his pace was a lot quicker than when he was usually escorted by a civilian -around a crime scene, into a prison, to see a traumatised child. The sun shone like Siberia nothing.

As for his relationship with Ken, he kinda liked the guy, but that was no reason to go easy on him while trying to sniff things out. "You hit the nail on the head about them trying to make unbelievable things believable. How'd they get you here? Same as me? The drugs that made you think you'd been in a saucer?"

Alas, there was nothing to be sniffed. "I don't know about the drugs part, mate".

If the farming areas were boring to a Washington DC urbanite, what he saw next was unambiguously thrilling. He looked among the log cabin streets. A fifty foot tower, at first glance, was being dangerously harassed by robotic drones, movement like flying beetles. Their silence produced in Mulder's spine a feeling that was eerie. Then, when he figured exactly what they were doing, the fiercest fascination began. Someone had rigged them with a remote-control array of spray cans; clearly it was an ingenious method of spraying graffiti in previously inaccessible spaces. The drones operating on the far side of the tower worked with an even more sophisticated proposition: they linked together, one holding in place a laminate stencil, the other applying paint. Mulder craned to see what the image was, though it was immediately blanked over by a third drone. So: the training arena for an army of futuristic graffiti artists, society-destabilizing guerillas one and all. In a building with atomic bunker slats, he saw the operators smiling into a cockamamie dream.

Ken, interestingly, was oblivious. He didn't bat an eyelid, even when they drew near a group of conventional street artists. From a stopwatch-timed, 'Go!', a single guy would hurriedly tape his stencil to a wall and begin work. Presumably, time was of the essence if their targets were in heavily populated cities, teeming with cops and do-gooders. Mulder? Kinda rooted for them, as the girl with the stop-watch twitched nervously. He felt the power of a minority group to re-educate the autopilot majority. If the tone was bitter then the pop-cultural references could only bring a smile -as the stencil was hurriedly peeled away, he saw the image of three duplicate slack-jawed teenagers in a row. The third was being cleanly sliced into four-tenths by Danny Trejo, wielding a huge knife. The message, 'OVERPOPULATION? MACHETE DON'T DO 2.4 CHILDREN'.

He tried not to trail off behind Ken, but found he couldn't help it. A below-average-height woman was just managing to move a section of fence that was almost as big as she was. As she tried to slide it on top of a pile of other fence-sections, Mulder assisted. In time, they were helped by another woman. Reddish hair tight beneath a grey baseball cap.

Spontaneously, Ken decided to leave him. Breathing sharply, "Nice meeting you, fella".

Mulder almost dropped the fence section. "What happened to escorting me to the War Room?"

"You'll be looked after".

The woman in the baseball cap looked at Mulder. Her eyes, he noticed, were twinkling like crazy.

"Fox Mulder?"

He leant back on his heels, hands on hips. "What is this, the part of a Twilight Zone episode where two characters meet and the incidental music dies for a second? I'm getting a fatigue of meeting you people".

"It's me, Fox".

His mouth cracked as he stared, taking in the sight of those eye sockets that seemed to grow vibrant, colourful -through emotion alone. No tears yet, however.

Stated for the record, "It's Samantha".

Glowering followed.

"So what was our last conversation?"

"Ah!", in pleasant irritation. "I think you were about to move out, and I was jockeying for you to give me your record player".

A thousand foot dive from a UFO. Bone-skewing impact. Today it'd been nothing. Somehow, he managed to stay standing, to stare into her eyes, always frightened to absorb the rest of her face for fear of having the hard-sought identity confirmed, denied, tortured on.

Whatever that weird and holy precision that people use in identifying other people's faces, the secret known only to police sketch artists and David Hockney. An equidistance from eye to eye, the incline of the mouth measured in fractions of millimetres, often registering purely in the subconscious. But ah, if it's someone you love? Mulder stared at her.

He figured he must have long-recorded the way the angle of her cheeks and temples caught the light. Like the walls of a haunted house catching long-distant emotions, how they conjured the Mulder family home, seventies heatwaves, Manners wagging his tail...

"You're smiling. I gotta figure why. Mom's gonna ground you for life".

The woman smiled all the more. "I always had a bet with myself that the next time we saw each other, you'd make a joke. In spite of the drama".

A joke? Like falling down the stairs while drunk. Mulder was immediately attentive of everything: how to think, how to manage his emotions. But increasingly -it was Samantha. He put his hands on his hips, the muscles in his face utterly numb as he tried to process -anything.

"What is this, Samantha?"

"It's a way for the world to carry on. I may not have come here out of choice, but it took me all of two or three days to figure I was in the right place. Even as a child. Everyone knows there's fundamental problems with the world. Then there's the even deeper problems that no one can admit to themselves because they're so insurmountable".

"Did Dad force you to come here? Did he force them to take you?"

"What we're-"

"Answer me!", said Fox desperately. "Did he force you?"

"Yes", spoken simply.

The FBI man stared bleakly into thin air, was somehow bleaker still when he looked back at her beautiful face. "Tell me you're not just a another damn cult member. Can you do that?"

Taking a march backwards on the balls of her feet, she thinned her lips. Passing proles started to flick their eyes, sensing from the sound of hush-to-raised voices that a fight was beginning.

"What's wrong with cults? Everyone's in a cult. You try to operate your mind as something other than animal instinct -you become a cult member. A one-person cult, maybe two or three at best. Only we can claim to be a cult for the furtherance of everyone, not just buying a house, getting a desk-bound job, having three kids, pretending that's somehow a foundation for the future of civilization!"

"You've been indoctrinated", he said.

"I have not!"

"You've been brainwashed!"

"I have not, Fox!"

"When you take a-"

"Tickle me".

At first he was stoney-faced, as if he saw everything, the attempt at innocent humour a cynical ploy. He turned away to stare at the ozone wedged fast on the horizon.

Repeated Samantha, "Tickle me, like you used to. If I'm so serious that I'm a world-class revolutionary, I'll be too proud to laugh".

"I fell thousands of feet from the ship of one of your space-friends. I'm too broken up to do any tickling. You know they do that, right? Hurt people?"

In adulthood, Samantha's features had sharpened to resemble their mother somewhat. Her eyes resonated with an understated power that was searing -but only when she was against a wall, struggling to maintain herself.

"What happened to you, to any of us, is hard to explain. It didn't really happen. It's just -the fabric of reality, indulging the human mind's interpretation of something that's transgressive of our lives in a completely new way! There's no such thing as aliens".

"So who's in charge of all this baloney?", he spread his arms to indicate the entirety of the encampment. "Missy Ankh Hairclip? I want to see her".

"She's not here. But I'm a fairly high-ranking lieutenant. You've got questions, I'll answer them!"

Fox Mulder was terse and silent, in an attempt to plumb emotions, secrets, the very depth...

"What you want, Fox", she gulped, "is just -assurance that I know how hard it was for you. It was hard for me. The hardest thing in the world. Living without you, and Mom, and Dad. Manners. In time, this might just be the greatest tool we've got for gaining the trust of the bourgeois: that we know what love is. A new civilization based on sanity and love".

"But no democracy?", pushed Mulder. "Because take away capitalism like your boss-lady wants, all that'll happen is that democracy will fall, too. You'll be latterday Nazis".

"When everyone is proud of their own self-sufficiency, when everyone knows everyone else's motivation, democracy will be forgotten about. From where it was only ever a word, invented by the Devil, to excuse men's laziness at not wanting to pick a fight with inequity".

"You're thirty-six now. Maybe you can believe that if you want. But no eight year old girl snatched from her parents would've cared about it for a heartbeat", Mulder glowered.

"This one did. It's just -sanity".

Exhalation. Followed by deep-thinking, for some time.

"My Sister", he spoke decisively, "Had an identifying mark on her side".

Samantha looked dumbfounded.

Sheepishly and still a little numb, he drew close to her side. He gestured to a raw and exposed section at her abdomen, "She had an identifying mark-"

He tickled her. She laughed joyously. As a result of the skin-tingles, somehow dozen times worse than anything experienced on a flying saucer, she started to cry with laughter. In time, she simply cried.

They hugged.

Xx.

"Is Agent Scully your girlfriend or what?"

"Did Dick finally get down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow? Where is she?"

"Sitting tight in the main blocks. We are heading there. How did Manners die, in the end?"

Fox raised his brows, then settled on a softer expression. He figured asking about the dog was psychological transference for the fact that she'd never again seen their parents. He knew it, she knew it.

"Manners got to around sixteen. One day, ate his evening Good Boy Jerky, fell asleep by the fire".

"Is that true?", she said critically. "You're not dressing it up to make me feel better?"

"Sometimes you get a happy ending. I always carry a stick of Good Boy around myself, in case I start bleeding out from a gunshot".

"So you joined the FBI, worked to get into the X-files, just to find me?"

"Got to get every cent from your tax dollars".

Samantha clamped her small lips, stared at the pebbled walkway. Fox had to wonder that she had any kind of authority while also being so publically sensitive. People passed them, regarded them casually and thoughtful in turn. Some kind of renaissance society.

"Did you enjoy your work?"

Semi-committally, "Gotta love a job that lets you slide round corners with a gun".

"There's more to it than that", she smiled. "I often wonder which side cops will take when society starts to change. There's something about a government agency that works for something practical, other than placating people's greed and laziness. The mindset of keeping things straight just at a street level".

Bringing a shrug from Mulder, "I'm kidding around. Now that I've found you, I'm looking for a lake so I can take my badge and have a Dirty Harry moment".

"We watched Dirty Harry together once", she remembered. "Mom was worried that it was too violent for me. Dad said it was fine".

"Dirty bohemians. You really think your people can change society?"

But Samantha replied at once, "It's a bit like a magic word. Something as simple as saying, 'open sesame'. People don't think before they choose a shamelessly fifth-wheel job. People don't think before they have too many kids and a house they don't deserve. But is there any reason they can't think about it? Look at Britain. Suicide is the biggest killer of males-under-thirty-five, because their subconscious knows that modern life has robbed them of hunter-gatherer pride. It's simple. And yet it's Satanic how no one sees. Dad looked at me: he could see I'd be the kind of person who'd just be crushed by twenty-first century life, so he set me free".

Towards a complex of log buildings, maybe like a more ornate version of World War Two barracks, a swarthy-looking man with silver eyes was watching his young daughter play with a ring of light. It was projected on the ground, yet Mulder was damned if he could see the source. Alien technology. The sheer power of the light gave him courage to ask, "You know people won't give up their damn blue-blood lifestyle. How come this place isn't pin-pointed by beady-eyed satellites and raided by Bilderberg? You're protected by aliens?"

"We're protected just enough. Aliens exist just enough and God exists just enough. But it's no fun to be around either".

No sooner had he asked about the providence of their new civilization staying unmolested, than they entered an area of huge buildings protected by car-size Normandy jacks. Asymmetrical patterns of grass were stirred by a light wind, accompanied by white sunlight as far as the eye could see. The effect was like being in a dream, no denying. But increasingly a dream about finding only one person.

Into a building that had an interior like the most luxurious alpine resort. Multiple stairways led down to pine-shining sublevels decorated with rich Persian rugs and draperies. Mulder tried desperately to figure how the interior of the place must follow the contours of the land it was built on, and could not. A central window that would otherwise seem like something from the Overlook Hotel was given a contemporary look by a dozen beanbag chairs.

Scully sat quietly, massively absorbed in -an Xbox game?

He put his hands on his hips, exhaled. In time, he realised the relief at seeing her was too close to looking like crazy-heck romance. A wise crack must be conjured. From a safe distance he said to Samantha, "She's gonna get ribbed for this. Told me she doesn't even watch TV, and now she's playing Xbox?"

"It's like no kind of Xbox game the world's seen. It's something we've been working on ourselves. It came about after a twenty-something programmer joined us. He noted how Xbox One and Playstation 4s, loved though they are, are starting to become casualities of capitalism, and maybe we could use that to our advantage? They have almost unlimited processing power and cloud-storage, yet they're still limited by the amount of time software writers are allowed to spend developing games. And games that have nothing to do with real life, either".

Mulder pointed out, "We've just been riding in flying saucers, sister-o'-mine. What do we know about real life?"

"We're about to find out. The plan is to mass produce these games by the million-load, give them away free. Air-drop them. Leave pallets down every backyard lane. Make so many they're commercially worthless while still being a media storm".

"Have you seen my Harry Potter DVDs?", japed Fox.

"It's no gimmick", Samantha's voice was tremulous. "There's four different varieties and each recreates a different kind of job. The bluecollar jobs currently being sent into oblivion by all the Atlantic countries. Farming. Factory Work and warehousing. Nursing. Surgery. Our designers have worked hard to make the graphics and movements photo-real, your surroundings, everything. The farmers and factory workers get to talk to their co-workers -other online players- at the same time they're held to a production quota as addictive and demanding as any computer game in history. The prospective surgeons get a taste of using skill to save people's lives. The nurses become one with humanity.

"But here's the clever bit. You put the game in, it asks you to give up your bank details. Anyone who does, we start paying them a wage. A wage based on our predictions of what England and America would be like, if we ever got rich again through tangible, manual jobs instead of the vagaries of desk-bound yuppiedom".

"So you guys think it'll be like Pavlov's dog getting a joypad?", wondered Mulder.

"No. It will just remind people how satisfying the work of a proletariat can be".

"'Proletariat'?", he grinned. "What's in the surgery game? Making clones of Karl Marx's brain and putting them in the bodies of rich Republicans?"

"Not his brain, only his heart".

Mulder said breezily, "Government won't like that. Revolution or not, they may even start a new hunt for you based on tax charges or money-laundering, considering the dubious method your leader has of getting her cash".

"If they suggested a lack of capital on our part", Samantha was wise and stoical, "it would just show how weak their own position is. Because who has any real, tangibly-earned money nowadays? Not governments. Not individuals. You can't use quantitative easing to give people money, then complain when someone else uses it for something that's truly communal and pragmatic".

Thinking on pragmatism, "This plan to save the world. If it works, people will stop being abducted by aliens? Or whatever you want to call them?"

"The games have a built-in obsolescence code that we can trigger any time we want". With a frown of her delicate face, the theme of epic solutions continued. "Probably just as we establish ourselves as a new political party. In as much as politics will start to fade as people rediscover their own responsibility".

She was a long way off, still Mulder could see across Scully's shoulder an operating table, the strangely elegant shape of an exposed chest cavity. Sure enough, the graphics looked utterly real, the ventricles gleaming with reassuring grossness, the heart beating steadily. It was magical to him, the mix of hesitation and boldness which highlighted in her tensed neck. The masterfully precise applications of mini-sutures which swirled into place so magnificently.

Briefly, Mulder thought of himself. "I don't imagine you've got any computer games that I could consult on? Something that involves sliding around a corner with a gun?"

Samantha beamed, "As if there's never been a computer game that involves that. You've been through hell because of me, Fox. You deserve a happy life now. One of my earliest memories was you, Mom, Dad, Manners and me, driving out somewhere together on a weekend. Sometimes we'd drive all the way to the caves at Luray, or Arksnow Valley. Yet when I think of it...

"In my mind now, it seems an impossibly large distance from our house. The way we just headed out through all those little back roads. Why would we have set out so far? It was as though even then, we were involved in some great mystery. But we were free, and happy. I want that again for us, Fox".

He reached out and touched her arm, twinkled his eyes promisingly. They hugged like strangers at a baseball play-off, before Mulder slipped free to retrieve some Xbox headphones from a table. He activated the second quarter button and connected himself to Scully's console, not doubt just within range.

"You're doing fine, Doctor Scully. But the patient only came in with psychiatric UFO delusions".

She steeply turned her head, rushed to him -and all was right with the world.

Xx.

The evening came with a banquet of cheese, crackers, strange foreign beer. Flash-bang memories of Krychek watching that tiny black-and-white TV while sucking on liquor: Mulder tried to dismiss them, and was only able to do so by telling himself that maybe the guy would come back to life in the Twilight Zone, that fate is blessed of sons-of-bitches who die with their backs against a wall. Even with the shooting of Scully, Krychek was more ugly-tragic than a bona-fide hate figure.

The entirety of the eighties and the nineties were relived through their conversation. Strange conspiracies became as mundane a topic of dinner party insouciance as hobby investment funds. It was a new world, for sure. Mulder observed the way Scully consumed the crackers, not quite naturally but with Anorexia-denying abandon. The girls, they raved about science and medicine, Samantha's style magazines that were years out of date though still solid when it came to fashion tips. Intervals of three minutes, however -maybe inside three minutes- brought distracted, romance-buzzed eye-contact between the FBI agents. Drunkenness held an attraction as never before, as he lay with his skull against the sofa edge, the more stately females with curved knees embedded in beanbags. Staring at Scully. Staring at his sister.

"I have to go, Fox. Reports".

"Reports?", Mulder wondered exactly how drunk he was. "Don't gimme that. What have you got to write reports about?"

"I'm a stateswoman", Samantha insisted.

Mulder, "'The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world'".

Neither Samantha or Scully understood, beyond the suggestion that he was bait-baiting some pop-culture reference they weren't nearly cool enough for.

"I'll see you in the morning, Fox".

With only a trace of bitterness, "That's what you said last time".

They stared at each other. "There are no wild horses in Heaven or Earth".

She departed. Mulder called after her, "Rod Serling needs those reports in triplicate!"

Thereafter every pine surface seemed to dim, drawing Scully to snuggle at his side beneath the sofa. He held her, simply floated in happiness.

"I've got a surprise for you, Mulder, but I'm worried if I show you now, you'll be too excited to sleep".

"Is it stockings?"

Scully gave an 'ah' that was subtly forgiving of his red-blooded wolfing. "It's something that's true to your Spooky nature. Your life's work".

Chagrin. Chagrin and a crumpled smile. They continued to hold each other and drift in happiness. Sleep, admittedly, seemed like the obvious recourse from an epic day within an epic life. Except the warmth of their bodies -something else. They made love.

Scully sat up and shivered. Mulder leaned upwards also. "That's one less thing to be excited about. I may as well get my surprise now".

"You really want it now? It's eleven twenty at night. You're not going to sleep when you see it".

Said Mulder seriously, "I'm willing to take that risk".

Scully sighed and led the way. He enveloped her body as she walked. The bullet-explosion in her neck; how it healed from hour to hour, currently the shade of sunlight caught weakly in a magnifier, there beneath the silver of her crucifix chain.

Without, the night was not particularly tranquil or beautiful, still the blue-grey comforted, soothed, distracted. As a primal reaction, they looked at the stars even as their gazes were pulled backwards and forwards beside the collapsed conveyors and the paddocks of sheep, all of which bordered having a personality hidden in their caprinaeic eyes. In all: Hong Kong, Bankok, Adelaide, recreated in a field-corner of ruddiest wilderness. Chinese lanterns glowed across practical-flamboyant porches, not completely separate from the wing lights of a fifty-foot wind turbine. Here, at least, there was no parrying with local resident associations that they were eye-sores. It was hilly, yet everything was laid flat beneath a vibrant night sky, a smudged Van Gogh painted with barely two tubes of oil. Coming down from cornfield hell.

"I'm still not sure I can process any of what I saw", Scully said pensively. "Teddy's arm? The Saucers? Mulder, I'm glad you found Samantha, but -I'm seeing these things, I'm accepting them... but there's no belief there".

"Belief in the twenty-first century is the ultimate precarious currency. More than the Euro. More than the drachma. When I was eight, my Dad took me to a betting saloon, gave me twenty dollars but told me I could only bet on teams that had a return greater than thirty-to-one. That way I'd enjoy it more. It was some kind of gonzo psychological experiment, for sure, but you know what? I sure as hell did enjoy it. First few games, I'd put a dollar on, say, the Elsinore Storms or the Cucamonga Quakes. Then, after I'd thought on it for days, weighed up all the intuition and the reasons for crazy hope, I put the remaining seventeen dollars on the Tacoma Rainiers, during their worst season, with Joe Bronson's hands turned to rubber".

Scully was confused. "You're saying they should build a betting shop here?"

Mulder was thoughtful. Eyes twinkling, smile as easily as Californian sunshine. "I was thinking, more of a church. 'The God that tracks us through our sorrows'. What is that, except another way of saying us human dweebs always come off worse against chance? But a good betting saloon stool-jockey knows that you have to draw your odds from everywhere. Your mind, your heart".

Scully immediately made a joke; his heart sang. "I'll be sure to give you name to the Vatican Assembly when Pope Francis dies. Did they win?"

"Who?"

"The -Tacoma Rainiers".

"Where'd you think I got the money for these fancy I-talian loafers?"

"I still don't get your point completely, Mulder", she warned.

He straggled in behind her, jogging her legs like the lovers they were, trying hard for a dance. "I guess what I'm really tryin' to say is, the hip, hop, the hippy, the hippy, the hip-hip hop you don't stop the rockin' to the bang, man boogie say up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie to be".

Scully continued to think. Actually, in a single conception, rather than a weighing of the facts, she was starting to understand. No one ever complained about God not existing except that He was non-interventional. Yet how could He intervene? People might be filled with horror at the way a disease or an injury might force them to live in constant pain. Yet this was part of evolution. The concept of evolution was a necessary concession to the material world, which we tacitly agree to the minute we scrape our knees as children and acknowledge it as a small thing.

Far more disturbing was humanity itself. How could God possibly influence the sovereign minds of men? Morality is commandeered by politics and family unit propagation. Extremism was held in abhorrence, while anything in the middleground, no matter how damaging, was regarded as noble. One might daydream about, say, God influencing a blackbird to nest outside a city banker's window, that he might look outside, see the bird committed to physical labour and so feel guilty. Except there are far too many layers of conceit inside the human mind, far too many for an outside agent to influence. They see Che Guevara as a face on a T-shirt, defiant, but only for defiance's sake. They see religion only as a megalomaniacal exercise in dogma, with no other purpose.

So how does God exist in the world? Not why, or if, but how? He desires to influence us, express His love, but how? It would follow that His frustration might ebb, and simmer, and grow, until the final nervous breakdown is an unconscious eclipse, staggeringly precise and utterly creative.

Say, bringing forth lights in the sky to deliver anyone who is remotely sympathetic.

Back into the cool-and-fast adventure of the night, they arrived near an opera-house-shaped structure at the edge of the encampment. Mulder figured it must be constructed from some loveable, ultra-cheap alloy. This was the first thing he noticed. Coupled with the hemispherical nodes along the oval roof, however, plus a highly unusual turret, Ufology folklore flowed in full strength.

"This is a George Adamski beamship, vintage of 1955".

"What on earth is that?"

"He was one of the most famous UFO fakers of the last century. But still kinda beloved. His snaps were beautiful".

Intriguing pseudo-platinum walls or no, it was still obvious this wasn't what Scully had been leading him to. In all likelyhood, the saucer was just the advertising structure from a Vegas-outskirts burger joint. But damn if he didn't start to feel at home. Through an entrance between fake alien girders, Scully led the way. The inner rooms were like a pillbox bunkers, surprisingly cramped with computers, Dr Frankenstein electro-nodes.

"Samantha told me you'd be brought here. In the meantime, it was implied that I had the run of the place, so I started to wonder. This whole camp, it's pretty much a communications blackspot. Obviously, I was looking for some kind of transmitter tower. This was the next best candidate".

The dynamic between them: Mulder knew that sometimes it would seem like he wasn't listening. But never dismissive. As strike team gun officers sliding around walls in unison, they would always be on the same page. The resonance in the air told him Scully perfectly understood this as she joined him beside the central console, a nineties-era monitor. To the right was a small sleeved area, like a miniature version of the hermetic booths in maternity wards.

"That's a DNA code, right?", Mulder pointed to the simplified diagram on screen.

"It is, but the language is in -I don't know-"

"Alien-ese?", grinned Mulder. "Come on, Scully. You can say it".

"I scrolled through different areas of the program. As far as I can see, there isn't even an English language setting. So I started experimenting. My first thought was that maybe you'd put a sample of cells in the slot and it would analyze it, a cytopathoscope. That isn't quite what happened!"

Mulder put his hands on his hips, waited excitedly for her to indulge him.

From her wallet, she produced a puffy hair band. "I borrowed this from my Sister Melissa".

"Is it a mystical, faith-healing hair band?"

"Better than that. This is some -future science". Studiously, now bespectacled, Scully used her nails to finesse an embedded hair. "This is one of Melissa's. She has browner hair, after my father".

"Ah, Scully. We both know you're only a bottle Autumn Sunset".

Now, she freed-up a pair of disposable close-work gloves from the dispenser and used her finger tips to apply the hair to a petridish. Into the scanner compartment it went. Quickly removing the left-hand glove, she hit the dirty keyboard, possibly at random. A light grinding sound ensued, which could be traced to the emission of a semi-human-spectrum light waves.

"Kinda like a cat scan, or an X-ray machine for decoding DNA?"

"Wait and see, Mulder", she smiled confidently.

Perhaps as predicted, the model of a DNA helix appeared on one of the screens: surprise of a mild, patronising nature edged onto Mulder's face. Mildness, followed by awe. The medical diagram dissolved into the image of high, earthly atmosphere, queasily reminding him of his own recent tumble from the sky. Soothing and deadly air pressure the shade of denim played violently, but somehow didn't rumble the lens of the camera. If... camera it was. The point-of-vision moved a little, only with a bizarre smoothness, reference licks of fire or the human eye itself. It started to move dramatically. Down into the low atmospheric clouds above a valley-side town, then gulfs of countryside, surging above gas stations, warehouses, farms.

Mulder simply stared in dry stupefaction. "That's the Pacific Seaboard it's overhead. Telescopic satellite feed?", he wondered.

The eye-in-the-sky moved so fast now that he was almost lost for words, in a recognition of closely-whizzing sidewalks and people going about their daily business, all of them unmindful of the apparently invisible presence.

"I don't think so. Look at the way it turns at angles. It's more likely to be some kind of -drone. But even if it was, why would none of those people not look up and see it?", questioned Scully. "I think it's -tiny, possibly sub-atomic. The way that the movement -"

Her voice trailed off as she gave a limp little smile, both triumphant and awed.

"And that's Melissa".

The silent observer hung back at an equidistance and took in the sight of a pretty, sharp-faced bohemian woman having a conversation in the street.

"It scans DNA traces and takes the observer straight to where the owner can be found".

Marveled Mulder, "But we could adapt this, back-engineer it, put them in Washington and use them to track down every missing person and every kidnap victim in the country. The world!"

"Let the other G-men do that. You have an arch-nemesis to catch, Mulder". Scully squared up to him romantically, practically stood on his toes, then at the last minute scurrilously poked her fingers in his inner pocket. As they kissed and fooled around, she absently undid the lid of the small container and poked it into the scanner, disposable gloves be damned. The atmospheric zoom-down started once more, this time roving among far greener and wilder landscapes.

Pelvis-to-pelvis, their torsos twisted just enough for them to see the computer give a result. Amid hanging branches the weight of shipping containers, a hairy humanoid walked laboriously through the leaves and the twigs. And somehow, beguilingly, Bigfoot is always a lot taller than we could ever have imagined.

Xx.

Epilogue.

2016; the Laisong Telecom worker decommissioning an underused telephone booth in rural Blackwood, Dakota. Nearing the booth, he'd noticed that the line of small trees at the edge of a nearby field had been uniformly sheared off, as if by some giant cauterising tool. Walking through the wilderness to investigate the trees, and the landscape beyond, a metallic disc some twenty-to-thirty metres in diameter was revealed -embedded at a ten degree angle in the grass. Later, in his Majestic debriefing, the telecom man revealed that there'd been an unaccountable sense of fear, far beyond what was natural even of an ordinary man approaching a flying saucer. He felt, in some way, that those brief seconds of walking towards the disc were somehow his whole life, and everything else a simple illusion. He'd tried to describe the feeling to his partner, a schoolteacher, but frustration had led to what he claimed was their first row in ten years of marriage. Spender believed this above all other things.

In a piece of irony so acute it could only be dismissed, the bluecollar ran to the phonebooth to find it had been vandalised beyond use. His own mobile phone showed no signal. He jumped into his vehicle and shakily drove four-to-five hundred metres until the signal was restored, at which point he'd dialed his department manager. The monitoring algorithms at Fort Temperer immediately picked out 'crashed flying saucer', analyzed the stress patterns of his voice as genuine, then copied a live feed directly to Spender. Dispatched from the base: two blackhawk helicopters and a chinook. Dispatched from base: the usual worry that the local military wouldn't understand the level of secrecy required of them, the queasy fascination of what might happen if they did something other than blindly obey like unloveable dogs.

The instruments of the flanking helicopter, as it happened, were destabilized when it was barely a hundred metres off, the pilot just able to observe the flash of metallized atmosphere as the craft imploded. And then nothing, the pain of day-to-day earthly life resuming.

Into 2019. A pleasingly old-fashioned dynamic saw a young boy, Ethan Snow, walking from the centre of Coos Bay, Oregon into some industrial grasslands to do some fishing. The freeway overpass had a pedestrian section which he struggled along with his fishing gear. It was while he was pausing to rearrange his pack, that he saw a tall man with an unnaturally narrow face standing in an inaccessible spot between some metal barbs. Frightened, the boy hurried along.

At the beach, however, the narrow-faced entity reappeared in the siding between an unoccupied beach cabin and a long metal rail. He spoke directly to Ethan, asking him to fetch some magnesium with which to repair his ship's 'Nuclide shield'. If the repair was successful, he'd be able to return home to the Alpha Centurai galaxy.

Ethan agreed to help, but immediately sought adult advice. He tried to telephone the National Guard directly, as the urchin from a nineteen-fifties B-movie might, with the operator treating him kindly and innocently in turn. There was no suspicion that the narrow-headed man in the blue jumpsuit might simply be a pederast, even from the youthful police officer who was sent to investigate.

In this way, the whole case took on a gentle and innocent feel, juxtaposing sharply with the sin-filled room in which Spender first received the call. Dogged, his perusal of the boy's school records to search for any signs of mental illness or past mischief. His decision, en route to the site in a motor pool sedan, was to scramble a unit of Majestic 14 marines, hastily disguised as beach conservationists.

Meeting the boy, Spender had tried to smile warmly. Perhaps he'd even succeeded.

"Well, I hear that you're in the market for magnesium, to assist the space-alien in repairing his ship".

"That's what he told me".

Brightly, "You and he had a conversation just around the corner from that sand dune, is that correct?"

"That's correct. He was as near to me as I am to you. He breathed and blinked in a weird kind of way, but he was totally real".

"Point to exactly where you spoke to him", ordered Spender.

The boy pointed with an arched arm and a maddeningly relaxed finger. It was an anonymous, sand-and-pebble outcrop, currently being scoured by civilian-dressed Majestic men with geigers and Ehrenfest meters. Cold air exacerbated Spender's staring eyes, taut as they were. He stared for what might as well have been hours.

"He said he was from the Alpha Centurai Galaxy", the boy announced. "But Alpha Centurai is already part of our galaxy anyhow. I remember that from science class. Why would he say that? Was he confused?"

Spender lit a cigarette -with accursed ease given the blustery air. "Confused. Or possibly it was an outright lie. They fear how fragile we are, and vice-versa".

"Have you ever met an alien?", the innocent question of an eleven year old boy.

"The aliens have no interest to me", said the Smoking Man.

And finally into 2021. Peoria, Alberta. Sometime after the dusk on a balmy May evening, several people across a two mile range of farms reported waking spontaneously, for no apparent reason, to be drawn to their windows. In the sky above, a teardrop-shaped craft fell to earth on a very low, gradual incline. Some of the ranchers suggested they'd been fearful of a crashing airliner, possibly given exotic colours through a burning, fissile hull. Others claimed the craft did something strange to the sky itself, taking huge, disproportionate 'gulps' of the hemisphere and turning it an effervescent orange, pink, satin. Contact was made with the local law office, who in turn tried to reach the Army -only to have their calls neatly diverted to the Majestic operative at Fort Temperer.

Commander Salkmayer was a dour, robotic man. In many ways, as Spender had liaised with him over the years, it was something he very much approved of. It was only tonight, when the officer first started to show trace amounts of impatience and incredulity, that a wedge was driven. Perhaps it was the way Spender automatically took control of his men in such a tense search of the surrounding radius.

Perhaps it couldn't even be called tense, though, not really. More like a dream of tension, filtered through the fevered imagination of a man who rigidly operated on emotional blackout. Dark, armour-clad figures crept through trees and across clearings, while Spender stood fortified in his felt trenchcoat. In the blackness, the tip of his Morley burned red, and he imagined it as a final, highly abstracted version of prayer.

In his younger days, he'd hoped or daydreamed that during the scouring of a UFO hotspot, one of the soldiers might bring him, say, Cassie's Bakelite necklace, her scarf or wallet. The man wouldn't have known the significance, only that it didn't belong there. For the most part, that hope abided, too, though it was increasingly guilty and tortuous.

They searched the mid-Alberta wilderness well into the twilight of the next day. Nothing was found. The Truth: Spender realized that for many years now he'd been living within ever-decreasing rings of hopelessness, and there was now no room for maneuver whatsoever.

Snagging up the ever-oversized military radio, he called Salkmayer. "Dismiss your men".

"Say again, over", said the Commander impatiently.

"You heard me perfectly well the first time".

How he hated the military.

Replacing the transmitter in his trench pocket, he sparked up one last cigarette, though it tasted anything but significant.

It was over. Quietly, in his soul, he'd known it for a long time now. Soon he'd look conspicuously damned, simply because so few chain-smokers lived into their eighties dodging cancer. A far more dizzying, infuriating number lived into their nineties. It was inconceivable, however, that a man who famously smoked fifty-a-day should live to be 109; profound questions would start to be asked. He'd become a security risk.

He turned the problem over in his mind. No, indeed; no chain smoker in history lived to be 109, unless they had some occult-tinged cure for cancer, unless some Faustian demon was embarrassingly showing his lack of humanity all the way to the furthest corners of hell. Or here, the silent border between dirty forestry and unloved grassland. And so he hissed, withdrew his snub-nose, raised it to his temple. Emotional phraseology such as 'it's better to have loved and lost' powered away like some hateful and overexcited child.

As he pulled the trigger, and nothing happened, and everything happened, he was transported.

For one thing, as a hundred-and-nine-year-old-man, there was a sense that he was simply playing 74-year catch up. That very modern statistic, beating away like a living pulse beneath the whole of society, that suicide is the biggest killer of males-under-thirty-five. No one ever bothering to cross-reference it with the rise and zombification of capitalism, the increasing shallowness of the average citizen. Anger and sadness could only twist together like strands of DNA, and we only know the correct one to modify only at the very last minute.

In the meantime, where was the blood? Where was the brain-matter and collapse? He hung on his knees, perfectly aware that all the muscles in his limbs had moved into deathly shock, and he was somehow frozen in a synapse-fused dream.

Cassie appeared before him, as beautiful and humane as he remembered, and youthful in a way that was irreverent, infectious.

Afterlife? He wouldn't be so presumptuous, but it was at least a chance to clear the air. 'The God that tracks us through our sorrows'. The anger-and-sadness DNA of a twenty-first century Nietzschean horror.

"Tank Mitchell", his baggy face felt like it was closing on a smile. "I should simply have punched him on the nose, shouldn't I?"

Almost at full force, Cassie smiled. "And get blood all over my Rayon Taffeta dress? It's all in the past now, William".

Spender, he wept. Hanging on his aged knees though he was, he felt his -aura?- had more than enough give to reach her. "Where do I begin again?"

Cassie was blunt, "Well, I really think you should quit smoking".