(Good Vibrations -- Chapter Three)
Welcome to the Hotel Pennsylvania
8:05 P.M.
MOTEL ROOM #204 -- BILLY'S SHANGRI-LA #2
YELLOW BARN, PENNSYLVANIA
Scully had seen worse, as far as motel rooms went. Far worse. Probably the worst she could currently remember was that time in North Dakota when the roof partially caved in under the weight of snow. That was also the motel that had had both suspicious stains and fleas in its bedsheets; the motel that had had only one bed in its last free (closet-sized) room. Of course, at least with that particular motel room, she hadn't had to deal with sharing that particular stained and bug-ridden mattress with Mulder. Because Scully had been sick that night with food poisoning, and spent most of the night feeling nauseous in the bathroom. Until the roof had halfway fallen in, at least. Then they spent the rest of the night in the rental car. Still, that didn't mean that "Billy's Shangri-La #2" was exactly the new Hilton, either.
Well, Dana, there are probably better ways to start off an investigation than spending all your time thinking about the Seven Circles of Motel Hell, she thought, making a conscious effort to transcend her bad mood. In and out. Just like Mulder said. We'll be in and out of here. It could be a heck of a lot worse. Judging from the pointlessness of this case, it probably should be.
At least the room had two beds, just like the receptionist had claimed it did. Sure, they were very small beds, and also very saggy ones, but since Scully's cot didn't collapse when she dumped her suitcase on top of it, they would probably last the night.
"How's the bathroom look?" she called out to her partner as she unzipped her bag.
"Decent," came his voice from around the corner. "Shower curtain's got mildew on it, though." Mulder decided not to tell her about the (unused) packet of condoms he had found discarded on the slightly sticky tile floor, opting instead to hide it in the very back of the cabinet underneath the sink. It was probably irrelevant to the investigation.
Scully carefully laid out her extra clothes in the top drawer of their room's bureau. "So you definitely didn't hear anything about, ah, UFO-related events around here?"
"No. And I wouldn't know about New Age conventions unless they overlapped with UFO sightings, and I haven't heard of any of that around here, so I don't know anything about it. Maybe this Billy person knows what's going on." Mulder re-emerged from the bathroom, trying to look innocent. I haven't been picking contraceptives off the floor. No, not me.
Scully glanced out the window, shutting the bureau drawer. "Think we have time to ask around before they all head in for the night?"
"We can at least try to get our bearings," Mulder agreed, tossing his suitcase off his bed and onto the floor, then flopping down in its place. "Oh! Jeez, I think a spring just went in my back." When was the last time I got a tetanus shot again? He closed his eyes. Ignorance is bliss.
"Tell you what, Mulder -- you recuperate, order takeout or something, and I'll go ask around outside," said Scully, brushing her hair back from her face and wondering if it would be appropriate to ditch her suit jacket in the course of a federal investigation. Sure, she might have to talk to some suspects on the disappearance--more likely, elopement--of Agent Lowell, but the temperature seemed to be rising.
"Aren't you tired?"
"I slept most of the way here, remember?"
"Yeah." Mulder yawned. Several broken springs were poking into his back, and his feet kind of hung off the end of the bed, but it wasn't so bad overall. He reached out with one hand, waved it around uselessly for a few seconds, and finally caught hold of the regional phone directory that had been helpfully left on the bedside table between the room's two beds. Mulder flipped through it, trying to find takeout listings for Yellow Barn. "Here's a likely one," he said, looking around the corner of the pages to watch Scully finally give up and rip off her jacket, flinging it down onto her bed. Be still my heart. "Charley's House of Authentic Chop Suey."
"Thank you. But no thank you."
"C'mon, Scully, the federal government would pay for it."
"Exactly." Scully sat down on the edge of her bed and began tying back her hair. "And so would my small intestine."
"If you insist."
"Look, just please try to find somewhere that hasn't been indicted for gross public health violations in the last five years."
"You don't know Charley's had trouble with the law."
"Never trust any food establishment that includes 'House of-' as part of its name."
"Not even the International House of Pancakes? And I thought you were open-minded."
"Actually, I've never been there," said Scully, wondering if it would be very indecorous to take off her pantyhose in front of her partner. Even overheated as she was, it was probably a bad idea, she considered. She sighed and stretched out her legs. "Besides, any place that feels such a need to over-emphasize the authenticity of its cuisine is probably trying a little too hard to prove something, don't you think?"
"Huh." Mulder tossed the phone book to the side and picked up his cell phone, dialing a takeout number apparently from memory.
"Show-off," murmured Scully affectionately, and left to go look for leads.
The first thing Scully noticed in the hallway was the man standing on his head. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. The first thing Scully noticed in the hallway was the noise the man standing on his head was making, which was what caused her to turn and notice him.
She blinked. Yes, he was definitely still there: A middle-aged Caucasian man, blood rushing into his face, was a few meters down the hallway--standing on his head, supporting himself with his arms and emitting some sort of rhythmic humming or droning noise. Although decidedly confused and, in general, freaked out by this development, Scully retained the presence of mind to mentally compare the man's reddened face with the pictures she had seen of Lowell. No, definitely not the same guy. Thank goodness. If this is the state he's fallen into, I don't think Skinner would really want him back after all, Scully thought, nervously edging away from that end of the corridor, thanking Providence that there were staircases on both sides of the hallway so that she would not have to pass by the humming man.
Her left shoe scuffed slightly on the carpet and the man let out a shout of surprise, tipping over as his eyes flew open.
"Agh!" Thump.
Scully rushed over as the man hit the carpet at a painful-looking angle. "Sir! Sir, are you all right?" she called out shakily, hoping that he hadn't ingested anything mood-altering that would affect his reaction to her. Please don't let him attack me.
The man scrambled to his feet, blushing slightly but otherwise fairly composed. "Oh, I'm fine -- I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't think anyone was coming this way-"
"What . . . what are you doing?" she asked carefully, keeping her distance from the man as he dusted off his suit jacket. He doesn't look crazy. . . .
The man brightened up. "Oh, well, I was just on my way to get some ice when I realized that the All was in Perfect Harmony and this would be the perfect place for me to tune in. I just couldn't help it."
This is why I am not a psychologist. Scully just stared, unsure whether it would be best to attempt (1) to continue the conversation, (2) to back away, or (3) to run.
Oblivious to her unease, the man continued on his own. "But I guess I just didn't stop to think that I might be in anyone's way. Most people are tuning in outside or in their own rooms, but not moving around between them." He shrugged and turned around, most likely resuming his search for the ice machine.
Curiosity overcame caution. "Uh, sir," began Scully, hesitant, "you mentioned, ah, 'tuning in'? What exactly do you -- ?" Surely these people aren't picking up radio stations' frequencies with their heads? Upside down?
The suited man turned around again, surprise written on his face. "What? You mean you don't know?"
Scully's hands twitched slightly at her sides. Obviously something else is going on here besides the disappearance of a lovestruck FBI agent. Something bizarre. We would end up in the middle of it. "No. No, I guess I don't," she said levelly.
The man laughed, then stopped when he saw her blank expression become just a fraction icier. He coughed. "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were joking."
She looked at him.
He bit his lip. "Okay . . . well, uh . . . I guess you noticed there were a lot of people around, right?"
"Yes." Or, at least, their vehicles. And their tent. It would be hard not to.
"Well -- it's not like any of us know each other," the man continued, beginning to look more at ease. "We just all felt it at the same time -- knew that this was the place we should be -- and spontaneously congregated. To become part of the Oneness," he added in contentment.
A cold feeling of dread settled in Scully's stomach. Please do not let this be a cult. Please do not let Agent Lowell have run out of the FBI and into a cult.
"It was like -- I just woke up in the middle of the night, and -- haven't you ever had one of those things where you just know, all of a sudden?"
"Ah . . . that's, that's very vague. . . ."
"Yeah, sorry . . . my degree is in accounting, not semantics . . . anyhow, we all got this feeling that there was something really special going on here. The vibrations."
"The vibrations," Scully repeated. Wondering if this man had misplaced his medication, or possibly ingested someone else's.
The accountant nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, we could all feel 'em. They transcended county and state lines to reach the conscious minds of all of us, and we knew that this was where they originated. The vibrations, that is."
Scully stared.
"They're good vibrations, though," the man offered, in what was probably meant as a clarifying gesture. "I don't think we have anything to fear."
"That's . . . good to know." Time to get out of here. "Well, I'm sure you've been very, ah, helpful, but I have to . . . I have to go and talk to some people."
"Oh, sure. Right," said the man happily, and wandered off in the other direction. Scully stared after him for a moment, understanding less than she had before their encounter.
Maybe he's an anomaly, she thought hopefully, and went off to find out if that were the case.
MOTEL ROOM #204 -- 9:10 P.M.
The motel room door closed with a very deliberate click.
Mulder glanced up from his bed to see Scully leaning against the doorjamb, staring at the windows on the opposite wall. She looked slightly unsteady on her feet, and was wearing the kind of facial expression normally reserved for his more improbable theories. Uh-oh. "I saved you some dinner," he said, sitting up in bed and gesturing towards the half-empty pizza delivery box that sat on the room's rickety desk.
"Thank you," she said, coming back to reality, and kicked off her shoes where she stood. About three inches shorter, Scully padded across the motel room carpet, making a beeline for the food. She made a small unhappy noise as she glanced at her watch, then gave up on evaluating the relative worth of the time she had spent. He watched her tiredly haul the box over to her bed, where she proceeded to sit, cross-legged, and attack her dinner with an exhausted single-mindedness. Deciding it would be more tactful to wait for her to finish before asking what had happened, he lay back down.
Eventually, Scully pushed the box away and fell back against her bed. She sighed. "Mulderrr. . . ."
"Yeah?"
"These people are completely nuts," she murmured, conscious that the food and the temperature of the motel room were working together to make her sleepy. "Allll of them. . . ." She closed her eyes, trying to block out the pervasive weirdness.
"Oh, yeah?"
Scully was silent for another moment. "Good vibrations," she finally said.
"No, sorry, I checked but there's no Magic Fingers in this room."
"What?" Scully rolled her head slightly to the right to regard Mulder in confusion. "What Magic . . . oh, no, not that . . . I mean it's why the people are here."
Mulder wrapped his mind around this. "They're here for the atmosphere?"
"I don't know," Scully responded wearily. "But it's what any single one of them will say if you ask why they're here. 'The good vibrations.' "
"What good vibrations?"
"I don't know, Mulder. I did ask them that, Mulder. If you want to try getting a coherent statement out of one of them, you are going to have to do it yourself, Mulder," she snapped, sounding more annoyed than she meant to. "Sorry. But it's true," she added.
"Did you find Billy?"
Scully let out a long sigh. "No. Not that I did not look. I also looked for Lowell -- who is, after all, the only reason we are stuck here to begin with -- and there's no one here who's ever heard of him. Or has seen anyone like him."
"Do they know who we are?"
"Frankly, Mulder, I'm not sure some of those people are aware who they are."
"Thad bad, huh?" Mulder yawned and closed his eyes, trying to find a way to stretch out his legs without making his feet hang over the edge of the too-short cot.
"I think they're nonviolent, but the only way to find out for sure would be to get in a fight with one, and that might not be an excellent idea," Scully said, and rolled out of her bed with some effort. "Oh . . . I have to change clothes or I'm going to fall asleep in these. I don't know about you, but I vote for our going to bed now and picking this up again tomorrow morning."
"Sure," Mulder said, watching her pull her nightclothes -- a medium-length plain white nightgown, it looked like -- out of her side of the bureau, remembering that he had forgotten to unpack. While she shuffled sleepily into the bathroom, he forced himself out of his bed. He got halfway unpacked before realizing that he really, really just wanted to sleep. Mulder made it out of his clothes and into a pair of his old sweatpants before collapsing back into his cot.
Meanwhile, the nightgown-clad Scully was in search of a paper cup with which to drink some water when she encountered an unopened packet of condoms way in the back of the cabinet underneath the sink. Blushing, she carefully hid the offending discovery behind a few more rolls of toilet paper. No need to tell Mulder. It was probably irrelevant to the investigation. She settled for drinking tap water out of her cupped hands, then returned to the bedroom, where she turned off the light and gratefully sank into her bed.