Chapter 9
Even Harrison Wells, the smartest man in the world who somehow didn't seem to know the definition of 'tact', seems to realize he'd gone a bit too far in addressing Mulder and Scully.
"Forgive me," he said apologetically. "I realize things are obviously vastly different between our universes, but I've seen you on the news so often the past fifteen years that's how I've been used to hearing you addressed."
"It's still better than Fox," Mulder said softly. "I know I'm probably going to regret this question, but what federal agencies are Scully and I are in charge of in your universe?"
"My universe's Dana Scully has been head of Homeland Security for the past seven years," Wells told them. "And F.W. Mulder has been Director of the Paranormal Protection Department for the past decade."
"I guess in your universe you wanted to make sure that no one ever called you Fox," Scully said with a smile. "Out of curiosity, how major a law enforcement agency is it in your world?"
"It wasn't a big deal for a long time, but under the leadership of people like Senators Richard Matheson and Arthur Dales, it's been one of the biggest law enforcement agencies in the country since the turn of the century." Wells said.
There was a nostalgic grin from both partners at the latter name. "I'm glad to know Arthur finally got appreciated by somebody for his work on the X-Files," Mulder said fondly.
"Well, you were instrumental in getting the building named for him," Wells seemed more on solid ground. "I'm guessing he was a pioneer in this world."
"Yes, but like us, he ended up regulated to the back corners of the Bureau," Mulder said sadly. "When he passed away in 2006, Scully and I were the only ones at his funeral."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Wells genuinely did. "I spoke before his committee quite a few times when I was trying to get funding. He was prickly and I always thought the cup of coffee in front of him had whiskey in it, but I always gave me a clear path."
"Here it was scotch," Mulder said. "I'm glad he didn't dead-end his career at the FBI."
Wells frowned. "Cisco told me you worlds were different, but I didn't know they were this different."
"What are you talking about?" Scully asked.
"The FBI was dissolved in 1958," Wells told them.
Both Mulder and Scully wondered if they should have felt some kind of staggering loss knowing that the agency that had devoted their lives too hadn't even existed in this universe. Instead, given everything they knew about how corrupt it had been in their world, they felt a strange relief knowing that it had been rooted out.
It did, however, come as something of a shock to Team Flash and the fellow superheroes. "That's something I didn't pick up on when I was there," Barry said slowly.
"I think I can guess, but what happened?" Scully replied.
"In the fall of 1954, J. Edgar Hoover was caught in a men's bathroom with Walter Jenkins," Wells said slowly.
"Who the hell was Walter Jenkins?" Oliver asked.
"In our world, he was one of Lyndon Johnson's top aides," Mulder said slowly. "Was LBJ Senate Majority Leader at the time?"
"Actually, he was majority whip, but everyone knew it was going to happen," Wells acknowledged. "In another era, they might have been able to cover up, but it was at the height of the Lavender Scare."
"What the hell was that?" Kara asked baffled.
"One of the most shameful periods in our nation's history. Hell, probably the universe's," Wells said grimly. "During the 1950s, there was a hunt within DC for closeted homosexuals in the State Department and much of the Federal Bureaucracy. Many good people lost their jobs and God knows how many died. When it turned out that Hoover – who'd been supplying McCarthy with the lion's share of his names – was himself gay, the uproar was so big he couldn't hide it. Kefauver and Hunt spent the next year putting everything Hoover had done under a microscope. And when they found out about all the blackmail material he'd been keeping on every President since Coolidge, the reverberations were felt for decades. Hoover spent the rest of his life in prison and the Bureau was basically torn apart. It took years for the public to even consider trusting the idea of a national law enforcement agency again. That was at least part of the reason for the rise of costumed vigilantes in the 1970s. No one was willing to even think the government had any credibility when it came to justice."
Mulder and Scully took this in. "I'm sorry it took that to bring him down," Scully said, "but I'm glad at least somewhere, the bastard got what was coming to him."
"I'm guessing he was just as horrible here," Wells told them.
"Oh, it's worse than that. My entire career at the Bureau, Scully and I had to work in a building named for that son of a bitch," Mulder said bitterly. "Even if you leave out his involvement in the conspiracy here, what he did was so much worse. He didn't just blackmail presidents, he wiretapped the entire civil right movements because of his own personal bigotry. The CIA has done some reprehensible things internationally, but domestically the FBI's record is far worse."
Wells frowned. "What's the CIA?"
"Already I like your universe better than ours. Can we trade?" Mulder asked.
"Trust me, it's no picnic," Barry reminded them. "Besides, considering that Lavender Scare happened doesn't exactly make me think it's perfect."
"Oh, it happened here too," Scully said casually.
That got a mutual: "What?!" from everybody.
"The Red Scare gets all the publicity because it was all over the television," Scully told them, "but though it was smaller by degree, it did nearly as much damage to people's lives and well-being in the 1950s."
Mulder nodded. "I'm assuming that Senator Hunt, the man who led the commission in your universe was from Wyoming." Wells nodded. "In our universe, his son was caught in a homosexual incident in a public park in DC in '52 or '53, I don't remember when exactly. I'm well aware of the consequences, though. The whispering campaign was so much for Hunt that he killed himself a few months later rather than deal with the fallout. So it was all the ugliness, minus even a glimmer of the positive outcome that you're talking about."
Their younger friends were looking at this with some astonishment. Only Cat Grant didn't seem shocked by this. "You know, I studied history very thoroughly. But I didn't learn about that particular dark period until a late night conversation with Ben Bradlee. I could never understand why The Post was so far behind the curve on speaking out on gay rights. This didn't justify it, but it gave a little context."
"I was pretty sure my teachers in high school failed me," Diggle said grimly. "It's just starting to hit me how truly bad a job they did."
"And that's without the extra credit you need to take on extra-terrestrials." Everyone looked at Mulder. "Sorry. Joke reflex. Happens when things get too dark even for me."
"Do you ever get used to it?" Felicity asked Scully.
"No, but after seven years, it becomes background noise." Scully turned back to Wells. "I'm assuming you didn't come here to get our autographs."
Wells shook his head. "Dr. Ramone and Dr. Snow told me you were facing an invasion. They wanted to know if in my universe there had been anything like that and if so, was there any information I could help you with? Frankly, given the fact that you have two of the premiere experts in the field, I'm a little stunned you'd ask for my help."
"Oh, we definitely know more than anybody in the federal government. The probably is, until recently we were the only people in the government who were tasked with handling it," Mulder told him. "And let's just the say that in this universe, the FBI is as interested in learning about the supernatural as the Cleveland Indians are in being a contending ball club."
Wells looked a little baffled. "You mean the Indians haven't won the last three World Championships here?"
"Boy, I would love to visit your universe," Mulder said with a smile.
"Again, rogue speedsters, crime out of control, metahumans gone wild," Barry reminded him.
"Hoover went to prison, the CIA doesn't exist, and Scully's the head of Homeland Security," Mulder countered. "Sometimes you gotta take the bad with the good."
"Unfortunately, we also have a slight problem with aliens in our universe," Wells acknowledged. "If I had to guess, another one of the major differences between my home and here is that we dealt with it first."
"Considering you mentioned Arthur Dales' name, I'm inclined to agree," Mulder asked. "What does the official record say about alien involvement in your universe? It'll probably help us going forward."
"There's still a fair amount of debate on that subject," Wells told them. "The first confirmed citing is, as I'm relatively sure it is here, was the incident in Roswell in 1947." When Mulder and Scully both nodded, he continued. "But there were rumors going back as far as soon as the first days of the airplane. Back then, pilots were considered barely sane, much less soldiers, so no one took the reports they were seeing unfamiliar craft seriously. A lot of the reports were still written off as new aircraft or atomic bomb testing. Had it not been for the work of Dales in the 1950s, we'd probably still be making wild accusations."
"I'm guessing he was dragged kicking and screaming," Mulder replied.
"Well, according to his memoirs, he still wasn't convinced there was something to it until after Kennedy was elected."
"John?" Scully asked.
"No, Joe Junior." Wells told them. "JFK was the black sheep of the family. Only one who didn't go into politics. Became a reporter, won a Pulitzer Prize at the Boston Globe for his reporter on corruption in the Teamsters Union. Ended up running the place by 1970."
Cat Grant raised her hand. "Out of curiosity, when he did die?"
"1975, I think. Way too young, but they just didn't have the medicine to treat Addison's back then."
Cat didn't seem surprised. "I guess some stars just don't shine that long."
"How did the President know Arthur?" Scully turned back to the subject at hand.
"Joe had been obsessed with what they called flying saucers ever since he'd been a pilot in the war. He'd actually chased one and nearly crashed his plane. Once he got to DC, he kept making requests for information from the government and kept getting the runaround. This went all the time he was in Congress, and he actually formed a couple of committees in the House even though dear old Dad told him to leave it alone."
"Sweetheart in any universe," Cat muttered.
"Finally, after he'd become President and the fallout with Hoover was still boiling over, he told his father, if I can't know now, when am I gonna know? "
"Why'd he pick Dales?" Oliver asked.
"He served with him during the war didn't he," Mulder deduced.
Wells nodded. "He was a couple of years younger. After the Bureau dissolved, he'd crawled into a bottle. Joe sent him to investigate some funding he'd found in the Army about a project called Majestic. When he wrote his memoirs, Joe admitted than it was more to get a pal from the army of the sauce. Not even he dreamed what Dales would find."
"The Arthur we knew wasn't a brilliant profiler, he was just an honest man who believed in the truth," Mulder told them. "If you believe him, he only discovered the X-Files by accident and it pretty much torpedoed his career."
"And I'm guessing Hoover didn't help," Joe was starting to catch on.
"There's no direct evidence, but I'm pretty sure he was neck deep in it," Mulder said. "Was it true there?"
"In all candor, no one knows for certain just how much Hoover knew about it or would have cared if he did," Wells admitted. "Hoover was such a determined anti-Communist that he thought the Nazis was a lesser threat. Any group that tried to speak for its rights – women, blacks, unions – had to have been painted red. I imagine at some point, some nameless bureaucrat could've told him we need flying saucers to fight Stalin and he'd have signed off on it."
That's not that far from the truth Mulder thought, remembering what Dales had told him about his only meeting with Hoover. "What did Dales end up finding?"
"The military had known about aliens since after the war and had been using the technology from these so called UFOs to expand a military buildup. The cover story would've been enough on its own to keep the tabloids for months. They said they were using alien technology to run an arms race with the Soviets. The military budget was being inflated twenty times above pre-war levels, so that they build newer and more extensive aircrafts."
"We actually learned that part," Scully said. "The difference was, the aliens were the cover story."
"What was actually going on?" Cisco asked.
"At some point in the late 1940s – even Dales never knew for sure – a group of men representing almost every First World government entered into an alliance with an alien race. These aliens were planning global domination. These men engaged in an agreement with them to stave off the invasion in exchange for their technology."
"What did the aliens get in return?" Mulder wasn't sure even he wanted to know the answer to that question.
"Permission to carry on scientific testing on the population with complete immunity," Wells told them. "Assisting these aliens were…"
"…Axis scientists," Scully finished.
Wells didn't seem particularly shocked to hear this part. "Is it still going on here?"
"The original scientists are dead, but the work goes on," Kara told him.
"How much work did Arthur have to do to bring this to light?" Mulder asked.
"It took Dales two years to get enough information to present to President Kennedy. And it cost the President a lot of political capital, which royally pissed off his family. Finally, in February of 1963, Kennedy entered a deception of his own. He founded an organization called the Peace Corps. Ostensibly, its mission was to go into satellite nations and provide medical and financial aid to those countries. Dales was named head of it. In actuality, its job was to gather information on what would confidentially be known as the military-alien complex."
"The John Birchers would have had a field day if they heard that story," Cat Grant said.
"I imagine there are some people in your business who would believe it now," Joe countered.
"It took a long time to get the necessary intel. Dales said they lost a lot of good women trying to get proof." Wells said. "Finally, in February of 1970, working in tangent with Senator Sam Ervin, Dales presented his information before the Senate Intelligence Committee."
"And how many of those distinguished gentlemen laughed him out of the room?" Mulder asked.
"Oh, they very well might have had they gone in half-cocked. But by that point, the nation was primed to believe that there were larger powers at work." Wells told them. "The Hoover Files publications in '65, the assassination of Secretary of State Stevenson before he was going to make a speech in Dallas in '63, the Klan's campaign of assassination of civil rights works in conjunction with Southern Governors even after the Racial and Gender Equality Act was passed that same year. No one was inclined to trust government at any level, state or local, on either side of the aisle. Trust in government officials was at its absolute nadir by the end of the 1960s. There needed to be an accounting. The Ervin Commission actually met to hear all of the so-called 'crank' theories that were in circulation. I've no doubt all of them thought they were just going to let the country let off a little steam."
"And instead Arthur blew it up," Scully said.
"For thirteen days, the entire nation was glued to their sets," Wells told them. "I'm not old enough to remember it but everybody who went to school after that has seen the footage. Members of the military and whistleblowers from the State Department were willing to come forward and tell what they knew."
He looked at Mulder hesitantly. "In this universe, people who were very close to you were at the center of this Syndicate."
The delicacy in Wells' voice was not something anybody who had come to know him last year was used to. "I think it's safe to say that my family was at the center of it," Mulder said carefully. "I'm guessing that didn't change."
"One of the people whose testimony shook the country was William Mulder," Wells said carefully. "He admitted that he and his colleagues had been engaged in a conspiracy to conceal the truth about extraterrestrials from the government since the early 1950s. He told stories of covering experimentations on men as early as late 1940s to negotiating diplomatic immunity for Nazi scientists to covering up the story of a man who had died from radiation poisoning trying to unearth a UFO from the bottom of the Sea of Japan. He was willing to give names and dates on the full extent of the treachery." Wells paused. "On his way back to the hotel, he was shot by a man named Malcolm Gerlach."
Mulder took all this in – even the news of his father's assassination – with complete stoicism. Scully walked over to him. "Maybe we should take a break," she said gently.
Mulder shook his head. "No, I'm all right," he said with a catch in his throat. "At least there, he died doing the right thing. Please tell me there were actual changes."
"That's an understatement," Wells said. "Over the next decade, there were a series of major legislative and executive overhauls throughout the government. Five different constitutional amendments were passed, including lowering the voting age to eighteen, the Equal Rights Amendment and the elimination of the Electoral College. There were dozens of high profile and hundreds of smaller resignations within almost every major government department. The State and Defense Department were basically torn down and completely rebuilt – they had to be, considering the level of corruption that had been allowed for this conspiracy to grow and fester. Even with all of this, it was until I was a teenager that people were beginning to trust the government again, and even then, it was mostly because of the work people like Dales and Matheson had managed to do in establishing agencies to counter the threat the world was facing."
"Wait, I thought you said the conspiracy had been exposed," Barry said.
"I'm guessing the aliens never got the message," Mulder said.
Wells nodded. "They went underground for awhile. But in the early eighties, they returned with a vengeance. The Syndicate was telling the truth about exactly one thing; that they had forestalled an alien invasion. Eventually, however, the aliens got tired of waiting."
This was what they needed to know. "What did they do and how bad did it get?" Kara asked.
"It's never been entirely clear," Wells told them. "It never matched any of the description of the invasions so many of grew up watching on TV and in the movies. There were no ships flying over the nation, blowing up cities. No giant monsters striding the landscape killing people. It didn't even fit the description that whistleblowers like Mulder's father gave. Instead, what the world went through were a series of attacks in bizarre place. Only a couple of major cities were hit, and even there, the damage was miniscule compared to some of the smaller wars that consumed the country. Most of what happened was a kind of warfare that the world was completely unsuited for, even all of the preparation."
Mulder had an idea. "Bio-warfare."
Wells nodded. "Diseases to be specific. Many of them we'd thought we'd eradicated a century earlier."
"Small pox," Scully said.
Wells was unsurprised. "There would be clusters throughout the world. Many of them happened in Africa and Asia, where herd immunity had not been reached. New strains of the virus that hadn't been seen in generations occurred throughout rural America. Some small towns were nearly wiped out. This went on for a couple of years. The death toll has never been entirely clear even nearly a quarter of a century later. The worldwide count may have been anywhere from three to ten million."
"Did anyone in your world figure out the strategy the colonists were trying?" Mulder asked.
"Most of the members of the Syndicate were dead. The ones who were left refused to reveal their stories without release from prison and blanket immunity; non-starters for the Justice Department even under these circumstances. The world took the position of not negotiating with terrorists. That became a lot harder to cling to in '86."
Mulder had an idea what might've happened, but he needed to hear it. "What happened next?"
"Throughout the spring and summer of 1984, a series of mass slaughters took place throughout the world. Chechnya. Tunguska. Roswell, New Mexico. Throughout Pennsylvania. Even now, it's never been clear how many people ended up dying; it may have been hundreds of thousands."
"Why didn't they know?" Barry asked.
"Because the bodies had all been burned beyond recognition," Mulder told them.
Wells nodded. "The flesh had been cooked from the inside out in many cases. The bodies that were identifiable had no obvious connection to the others. However, when they did the autopsies, they found one common element."
"An implant. Subcutaneously placed in the neck," Scully said grimly.
"I don't know why I should be surprised you know all this already," Wells told them. "When did it happen here?"
"Between March of 1998 and February of 1999." Mulder told them. "The Syndicate referred them to as the Resistance. Aliens which had destroyed their faces to avoid being infected by the Black Oil that the colonists planned on using to take over this planet. Please don't tell me anyone in power considered forming an alliance with them."
For the first time since he began telling his story, Wells seemed a little taken aback. "Earth had been in a state of war for the better part of three years. All options were on the table. There were fierce debates going on in every home in the world as to whether or not these new players were trustworthy and whether we should ally with them or fight against them."
"Even though they'd slaughtered countless innocents," Mulder said with the first signs of anger.
"Millions of innocents had already been slaughtered by the Colonists," Wells pointed out. "The major talking point was we'd allied with Stalin against Hitler. Let's deal with this devil and worry about Yalta later. Of course, that was easy enough to say, considering that no one could even consider having a conversation with one of them for the first year they were around."
"Let me guess. They were even less interested in negotiation than the Colonists," Oliver said tiredly.
"It took months just to figure out what was going on," Wells admitted. "The incinerations left very few survivors, none of whom could remember how they'd ended up in these locations in the first place, much less how they'd survived."
"The implant compelled them to go there," Scully told them.
"They tried to figure out how the implants functions. Agents spent weeks working with survivors and it took the work of several regression hypnosis therapists just to get whatever information they could on these faceless aliens." Wells told them. "Even then, it took until one of the rebels was captured before they could finally get any real information."
"And when they learned his story?" Kara asked.
Wells looked carefully at Kara before continuing. "A lot of people in government – hell, the general public – wanted him strung up even before they learned his explanation. When they learned why the Resistance claimed to be doing it, the world was even less inclined to consider an Alliance."
This was one of those questions Mulder and Scully had never gotten a reasonable answer to. "Why did they do it?"
"The people who had been tagged by the Syndicate and the Colonists, it was so they would be able to survive the coming apocalypse," Wells told them. "It was part of the program the Syndicate had since the beginning. They called it…"
"…Purity Control." Scully finished.
"I keep forgetting you've heard this story," Wells said.
"Yes, but we never really trusted the teller," Mulder replied. "Stop me if you've heard this one. The plans the aliens were working on with your shadow government were experimenting on so many people was to try and find a way to make an alien-human hybrid. A breed that could survive the apocalypse. There were some who argued against this. They wanted to create a vaccine to resist the black oil."
"Different universes, same plan," Wells said slowly. "It just happened a lot earlier on mine."
"The difference seems to be that the one of the group that the Resistance incinerated was the Syndicate," Oliver said slowly. "And according to our Mulder and Scully, they haven't been since then."
He looked at Scully and Mulder for confirmation. "Since February of 1999, there's been no sign of them anywhere," Mulder acknowledged. "I'm hoping that since the shape-shifters are still around to some degree, the rebels are too. But I know that's false logic."
"Do you think we could even trust them if they were?" Cat Grant asked. "I know you guys are the experts, but I've seen the footage of what they left in their wake. Do you think they're the kind of creatures who'd be willing to make a deal?"
Mulder turned back to Wells. "Did they?"
"There were debates about it for months," Wells told them. "Hardened diplomats at the Security Council almost ended up in fistfights. At least three major foreign governments dissolved in civil war under this very question. There were even some journalists who theorized the rebels were actually on the side of the colonists and were only there to try and create the very chaos the Syndicate had wanted in the first place. Finally, under intense pressure in October of 1987, NATO signed a treaty that under no circumstances would there be any negotiation with any alien species no matter what side they claimed to be on. Even then, it seemed it might be too little, too late."
"How did your universe survive?" Scully asked.
"By pure luck," Wells told them. "During the rebel's captivity, the CDC had found that there was enough genetic material from it that combined with the material gleaned from the Syndicate, to make a vaccine for the alien virus. It took nearly eight months to develop it, and in one of his final acts as President, John Anderson signed the Universal Medical Distribution Act which shared all information relating to the alien vaccine to the entire world. Even then, it might never have worked if it hadn't been for the first person who agreed to be Test Patient Zero."
"Who was it? Dales?" Mulder asked.
Wells shook his head. "You."
Even knowing everything they did about this Mulder, this still came as a huge shock.
"You'd been working at the Universal Peace Corps since before you graduated Oxford," Wells told them. "You'd been working for DARPA trying to figure out a way to stop propaganda about what was happening for months. Dales had always blamed for himself for William's death, and had served as a surrogate father to you and your brother and sister."
"Samantha and Jeffrey," Mulder had gone very quiet.
"Your adopted brother," Wells said quietly. "When his mother found out just how involved her husband was, she shot him three times."
"Bully for Cassandra." Scully said.
"That actually killed him?" Mulder asked skeptically.
"Why wouldn't it?" Wells asked.
"Oh, do we have stories to tell you about him," Mulder shook it off. "What are they doing in your world?"
"Samantha's on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Jeffrey's currently U.N. Ambassador. There's talk he might be the first Secretary-General from the U.S."
"I guess public service runs in our family," Mulder said.
"There were arguments about it. Your mother no longer believed in sacrifice. But you and your sister convinced her. On August 11, 1989, in an event that was covered globally, you took the very first dose of the vaccine. Before you did it, you said that you did it for mankind and to honor the memory of your father."
Scully walked over to her partner. It was the first time any of the new team had seen him near tears. They didn't know it was the first time Scully had seen him this upset since he'd learned his mother had killed herself.
"H-how many people were betting I would die?" Mulder managed.
"No one. The prayers of billions were answered," Wells told them. "It wasn't anywhere near a picnic doing what needed to be done – it took the better part of a year for enough doses to be made and another year and a half before herd immunity was reached. The aliens didn't exactly go quietly, either. There were hundreds of attacks on vaccine sites across the planet. The estimate is another eight million worldwide were killed in these attacked. And that was without all the conspirators yelling that the vaccine was actually just another attempt by the shadow government to get us under the control of the aliens. We're just lucky the Internet was nowhere near the size would've been even five years later. Otherwise, we might never have convinced people to agree to this at all."
"But the invasion was thwarted," Barry said.
"By December of 1991, in a global conference hosted by President Hart and Premier Gorbachev, they announced the threat that the aliens had planned against the human race was officially over. The world rejoiced and we really thought we had reached a new era. I remember having completed by doctorate and actually thinking I might do so in a world of peace." Wells told them. "Hard to believe I was that naïve."
"When did the metahumans start showing up?" Barry asked.
"Oh, we knew they were already there," Wells said casually. "One of the things that the Dales Commission had learned almost as a sidebar was the fact that our world, in addition to being inhabited by visitors from another planet, was also inhabited by creatures that didn't fit the normal definitions of biological classification." He looked at Mulder. "Of course, when you were named to head the Department of Unexplained Phenomena in 1992, there was a general sense of relief that we had the right man for the job. And to your credit, during the thirteen years you ran it, encounters with these supernatural creatures were handled professionally and transparently. People may not have been thrilled to see your weekly press conferences, in which you related the number of supernatural attacks that had happened, but you answered every question the media asked you and you did provide a sense of security. The worst of the agents you hired for the department were at least competent at their jobs, and your applied science division probably helped saved thousands of lives a year."
Scully shook her head. "I always knew you were great at your job."
"Yeah, but I never got funding for it," Mulder pointed out. "Just out of curiosity, how well did I delegate in that universe?"
"Oh, you gave so much agitation to the world," Wells pointed out. "Dales apparently got irritated that you insisted on investigating so many cases that could be handled by subordinates personally. 'You know how hard it is going to be to replace you if you fall into a sewer wrestling another Flukeman?' he said he told you. He actually wanted to promote to a cabinet post so you'd be less inclined to die."
"It wouldn't have worked. Trust me," Scully said with a smile.
"Why didn't he do it just to spite me?" Mulder asked.
"You were too popular," Wells told them. "You were exactly the role model for government the country needed. And that was before they made the TV show."
That got everybody's attention, especially Cat Grant. "They made a television show about him?"
"Called it The U Folders," Wells said. "I admit, it was a bit of a reach getting Lance Henriksen to play you, but he made it work."
Cisco shook his head. "It'd never work. His face is too blank and expressionless."
"The whole concept is flawed," Mulder said. "Who would even watch a show like that?"
"In my world, forty million viewers a week," Wells told them. "One season, NBC just put a variety series with Jay Leno running against you so it wouldn't have to waste money against you. Nearly wrecked the network."
"I guess our universes aren't that different," Cat muttered to herself.
"What finally convinced him to take a desk job?" Scully asked.
Everyone who wasn't Mulder or Scully looked really shocked by this. "Boy, they really were oblivious," Oliver said.
"Tell me about it." Cat Grant said.
Wells actually looked a little awkward at this. "I, uh, never knew for sure, but the rumors around D.C. were, after you missed your wife given birth to your third child to lead a raid on a house of liver-eating mutants, everybody in your family – your mother, your brother, and every single one of your in-laws threatened to castrate you if you didn't stop believing your own sound bites and got out of the field."
Mulder grimaced while Scully smiled like the Cheshire Cat. "Just to be clear, my wife is…" Mulder started.
"Right here," Wells said.
"How long had we been married by then?" Mulder asked gingerly.
"Eleven years," Wells told them. "She was a forensic pathologist at Quantico when you two met over an autopsy."
"Why doesn't that shock me?" Mulder now had his hand on his forehead.
"How long after that did it take him to ask me out?" Scully said quietly.
"The next day."
"How long before he proposed?" Scully asked.
"Six months."
Mulder was taking this part the hardest. "So all that time I was running the X-Files in your universe, I was also…"
"Yes," Wells now sounded puzzled.
"Which means we were also...?"
"Why wouldn't you?"
Mulder couldn't seem to remove his hand from his forehead. "So in your universe, I'm apparently a lot smarter and a lot dumber than I am here."
"Wait a minute," Wells said. "How long have you been married in this universe?"
"They're not," Joe said.
"How long have you been together in this universe?" Wells asked.
"About fifteen years." Mulder said. "More or less."
"So you weren't working together until then."
"We were." Mulder said. "She started in the Bureau in 1993."
For such an accomplished scientist, it seemed to be taking Wells quite awhile to do the math. "So the two of you…" he finally managed.
"That's right."
"Even though…"
"There were rules against fraternizing in the Bureau!" Mulder said helplessly.
"Since when did Bureau policy ever matter to you?" Scully shouted.
Mulder looked around for a friendly face and found none.
"You're telling me that in this universe, the man who was named Man of the Year by Time twice never made a play for the only woman who was voted Sexiest Woman Alive by People and Scientific America in the same year?" Wells asked rhetorically. "I've seen some astonishing things in both of these universes, but I can't wrap my head around this one."
"Right there with you, Harrison," Cisco said.
Scully took Mulder's hand. "We'll always have Roswell," she said kindly.
"So, in your universe, Scully and I are both in charge of major government agencies," Mulder said slowly. "I've been married to her for twenty-three years. We are the quintessential DC power couple. We have three children. That black-lunged son of a bitch has been in his grave for forty years. I've already helped save the world from one alien invasion. And I had a frigging TV series based on my life?"
"And a movie franchise after it ended," Wells said cautiously.
Mulder took this in. "I always knew no one appreciated us here," he finally said. "But this is ridiculous!"
"Look on the bright side," Felicity said cautiously. "Once you save the world here, maybe they'll finally give you a three-picture deal."
"Actually, they're on film number five…"
"Not helping!" Everybody shouted at Harrison.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
I've always had a place in my heart for alternate history and given the fact the Berlanti-verse literally deals with alternate universes, I couldn't resist. For those of you who might be puzzled by some references, here's what's real and what isn't.
The Lavender Scare was real. It took place in the 1950s around the same time as the Red Scare and though it was public, the damage was nearly as painful. What happened to Senator Hunt was real and truly tragic.
J. Edgar Hoover did all the horrible things I attributed to him, and was very likely a closeted homosexual. The fact that the Bureau bares his name bothers many. Walter Jenkins was LBJ's top aide, and was caught in an incident in the fall of 1964. Johnson basically disowned him to protect himself. It may be unfair, but I wanted to create a scenario not even one of America's greatest monsters could talk his way out of.
Joseph Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash during World War II. It is widely expected that he lived, his father would've pushed HIM to run for President and not JFK, so that's what happened here. JFK was thinking of becoming a journalist, but his brother's death pushed him into the family business. JFK also really did suffer from Addison's which even now is a horrible autoimmune disorder. During the 1960 campaign, his family stashed medication for it all over the country. It is doubtful he would have lived a long life even if he hadn't been assassinated.
4. Arthur Dales and Senator Richard Matheson have small but key roles in the X-Files mythology. See the fifth season episode 'Travelers' to know Dales' backstory. I think that if what Hoover's files had ever become public, the FBI wouldn't have survived. I threw in the CIA for free; I don't need to go into details of their ugly history.
5. In October of 1963, Adlai Stevenson (JFK's Ambassador to the UN) did visit Dallas, and was received so harshly some circles thought it was dangerous for Kennedy to even visit Texas. I decided to let Stevenson's death stand in for Kennedy. Stevenson was a great man, and I encourage anybody to learn about him.
I attributed to William Mulder, he actually did in the series (Travelers, Paper Clip and Apocarypha). I like to think this universe gave him a chance to redeem himself. Malcolm Gerlach is part of X-Files canon. In 731, a much older man with that name nearly killed Fox Mulder. Guess he never learned his lesson.
Anderson was a Republican Congressman who ran for President as an Independent in 1980 and won praise for his forthright views. Gary Hart… well, let's just say there was no Monkey Business in this universe. Personally, I think both would've made fine Presidents.
8. Yes, I know. I probably did crib that title from X-Files fanfic. And I know the Lance Henriksen joke. I just couldn't help myself.
9. How many X-Files fans over the series original run couldn't come up with a real reason why the two hottest people on TV only hooked up after they conceived a child? I'm not surprised even Harrison Wells couldn't believe it.
We get back to the main action in the next chapter. Thank you for indulging me.
