Chapter 7

Peter and Mulder ended up at a coffee shop near the campus. It was called Quantum Jolt, and was popular with Harvard's physics crowd.

"So this is my first cup of coffee in fifteen years," Mulder said as he stared into the flat white Peter had recommended.

Peter smiled sadly, then sipped at his own coffee. "Believe it or not, I know what you're going through."

"You know what it's like to suddenly wake up and have years' worth of memories no one else shares?"

"Yeah."

Mulder's eyebrows rose. "Oh really?"

"Agent Mulder—would you prefer if I call you Agent Mulder or Fox?"

"Just Mulder. Everyone just calls me Mulder."

"Everyone?"

"I even made my parents call me Mulder."

"So, to be clear, you're named after an animal known for its good looks and cunning, and you choose to go by a name that sounds like something you would spray on the shower tiles of your enemies."

"I've always hated the name Fox."

Peter shrugged. "Mulder, the truth is we didn't track you down and wake you from a coma for entirely altruistic reasons; we have a case we think you might be able to help us with. To bring you up to speed on what we do, I'm going to need to tell you some things that are going to sound crazy. Frankly, they are crazy. Believe me, in my life the crazy just doesn't stop coming. It starts with my father. Doctor Walter Bishop did experiments that most sane people would classify as pseudoscience. Fringe science. Telekinesis, clairvoyance, parallel universes, stuff like that."

"Until his lab assistant died in a fire. He was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial and institutionalized," Mulder said, remembering even as he spoke.

"How did you know that?"

"I investigated stuff you might call 'fringe science' for years. Your father's name came up in my research. And I have a good memory."

"Ah. So does Olivia...Agent Dunham. She remembers everything. She says it's a curse as often as a gift."

"It is. Go on."

"As you said, Walter Bishop was institutionalized. In the meantime, his son dropped out of high school, skipped town, and started a life of globe-trotting, career-hopping, conning, and absconding. That was me."

"Oh really?" Mulder said, eyebrows raised. "What brought you back?"

"A pretty FBI agent with a great poker face. I honestly never wanted to see my father again. Then one day I'm in Iraq about to get a lucrative contract when Agent Dunham tracks me down and says they need me to get my father out of the asylum. I wasn't going to do it, but she said if I didn't, she would make my whereabouts known to certain interested parties. Interested parties she didn't actually know about, by the way. She was bluffing."

"Which is where the poker face comes in."

"Right. She was very convincing."

"What did the FBI want with your father?"

"Agent Dunham's partner, a man named John Scott, had been exposed to something, a chemical that was killing him. Dunham believed my father might know what it was, and how to cure it. She was desperate."

Mulder nodded. "I know that feeling. When Agent Scully was diagnosed with cancer, I would have done anything to save her."

"She and her partner were romantically involved. She got my father released into my custody—again, not my first choice—and he helped her figure out what chemical was killing her partner by inducing a shared dream state between her and him."

"Shared dream state..."

"I know it sounds crazy."

"No, I came across some cases in my research. Did it work?"

"We saved his life, and caught the guy who tried to kill him, the suspect in a chemical weapon attack on an international flight that killed everyone on board, including his identical twin. Weird case. But then the suspect claimed he was working with an FBI agent, and following that lead led Agent Dunham back to her partner, Agent Scott."

"He was dirty?"

"Yes and no. He was working as a double agent, infiltrating a group responsible for bizarre experiments that were called the Pattern. Apparently, some of your cases are the earliest pattern events on record, but you'll have to ask Nina Sharp or Broyles for the details. Long story short, Agent Scott murdered the suspect, and then died when his car crashed when Olivia tried to apprehend him. As you can imagine, that left an impression on her."

Mulder recalled a time when he had held Scully at gunpoint, not knowing it was her. He knew how it would have tormented him if he'd pulled the trigger. Agent Dunham had lived that nightmare.

"After that," Peter continued, "Broyles offered her a job investigating pattern events, and she dragged my dad and me and Agent Farnsworth into it with her."

"And where do you wake up with memories no one else shares?"

"Later. And earlier. What you need to know to begin to understand the things that happened is that this universe isn't the only universe. There's another one, close to ours and connected to ours. My father found a way to look into it decades ago. It's much like ours, but more technologically advanced. And almost everyone here also exists there."

"I've read up on multiverse theories."

"Good, so finding out it's true shouldn't blow your mind."

"My mind was blown fifteen years ago, apparently."

"Right." Peter smirked at his joke. "When I was a child, I developed a deadly genetic disorder. My father was trying to find a cure for it, and he knew from watching his own counterpart in the other universe that he was trying to find a cure for it too. My father failed. His son died. But using his counterpart's research, he developed a cure, a cure that his counterpart missed. He broke a hole through to the other universe, and kidnapped me, and cured me."

Mulder stared at him. "That sounds complicated."

"My parents lied to me about who I really was. They made me think anything I remembered that didn't match the reality around me was a fever dream."

"So, to be clear, you're not really from this Earth?"

"Exactly. And that is the tip of the iceberg for the crazy things we've investigated."

"And now you want my help on something?"

Peter nodded. "As weird as our cases have gotten, they've never involved aliens. A scientist disappeared several days ago. An unidentified flying object was reported at the same time. Rumor has it that's the kind of thing you might be able to shed some light on."

"I don't know about that. Most of what I thought I'd finally learned about aliens was just in my head."

"But before you were shot, you did investigate a lot of UFO sightings, right?" Peter asked.

"A few. I'll take a look."