On the drive from the motel back to the office, Mulder kept looking over and meeting her eye, then grinning, and Scully glanced away quickly, but couldn't help smiling out the window, too. It was nice to spend the afterglow in each other's arms, but a hurried tryst certainly added a spark to the day—especially such a dreary gray one. They had only indulged themselves like that once before, but that had been even worse because it had occurred in the office. It had been at the very beginning, before they realized how essential it was to really separate work and their private life. It had been incredibly exciting though, and in the intervening weeks she hadn't looked at that side shelf in quite the same way. . .
As they rode up the Federal Building's elevator with several other people, Mulder continued to look straight ahead, but reached across and laced his fingers through Scully's, just to maintain a thread of that physical contact. Even the smallest gesture gave Scully a flush of pleasure, and she smiled at the back of the woman in front of her. As soon as the doors parted though, he gave them a squeeze and then dropped her hand. She missed him immediately, but knew the protocol. Back to work now; back to being just partners.
But she was looking forward to catching up on the cutting edge discoveries in a field she had once spent so much time studying, and maybe she would even get an opportunity to talk to one of these pioneering scientists. It made a nice change to conduct the scientific element of the investigation sans bloody scrubs and latex gloves, and hoped that she had escaped autopsy detail for this case. Plus, she admitted to herself, she appreciated that they were able to stay in each other's company longer this afternoon. Though she was reluctant to acknowledge it, she would have missed him if she'd been off on her own in an autopsy bay.
The elevator doors chimed open, and this time when they arrived at the reception on the thirteenth floor and introduced themselves, the person at the front desk handed them a pair of building passes. He explained that Agent Park had arranged them, and that she asked that they find the other agents in Meeting Room C. Exchanging a glance, the two of them let themselves in through the inner door and quickly found the side room, where boxes upon boxes of records and files were piled up in stacks in the corners, and in rows on the long table.
They found Montes and two agents they didn't know poring over the paperwork, with cups of coffee in various stages of fullness, water bottles, and chip and energy bar wrappers strewn all over the place. But what really caught Scully's attention were the fresh boxes of pizza, and she suddenly realized that she was absolutely ravenous.
Montes looked up from a thick stack of white paper, and raised a hand, looking bleary-eyed. "The FSD guys are just getting to the house now," he told them, then took a long draw of coffee. He looked exhausted and Scully knew that he'd been up since before them even, and they had been on the East Coast. Once again, she was grateful that she'd managed to catch some sleep on the plane. But that had also been the last time she'd eaten, and her mouth was beginning to water and the savory aroma.
"Did we manage to get ahold of the files regarding the suit against Geoff Love?" Mulder asked, taking a seat at the table.
"Jamie just brought it over," Montes answered, pointing a thumb at a young guy sorting through a box on the other end of the table. "We got access to them just before the courts closed."
The agent named Jamie nodded. "It's all here, Agent Mulder, if you want to go through it." He sounded eager, like he was just praying Mulder could relieve him from his dull, tedious work.
"So, I meant to ask Agent Scully on the phone: how did you find out about the lawsuit?" Montes said, stretching back in his chair. "Agent O'Brien—" he gestured to the older, gray-haired agent in the room "—just came across it this afternoon by talking to some colleagues about his various professional relationships, but you were just at the house, right?"
Mulder nodded and Scully told them, "Agent Mulder found a couple of articles in the home, which mentioned the suit." She pulled out the two journals and held them up, then tossed them on the table and took a seat next to her partner.
"I thought they might give insight into the victim and hopefully inform our investigation somewhat—"
"Which they did," Montes answered. "And now, interestingly, we can't track down the plaintiff, Hans Zydek. We've had agents to his home and place of business in Silicon Valley, Zydeknologie, and he's in neither place, nor is he answering his phones."
"Huh," Mulder said, nodding thoughtfully. "Yeah, we'll definitely want to talk to him. But what I'd like to know—and I know Agent Scully would, too—is, what is the actual technology at the heart of the suit? What is its purpose, and what can it do?"
"Well, you could interview some of the people on our contact list that worked on it, see if they can explain it in layman's terms," Montes suggested, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small notepad. "We've talk to an Eli Williams, a Jessica Chang, and a Larry Mitfuhlend, all from the victim Geoff Love's company. . .though you may have to wait to talk to them until business hours tomorrow."
"Not a problem, because I was actually thinking about someone a little closer to home. . . Agent Scully is a forensic pathologist and medical doctor with a background in quantam physics." All the eyes in the room turned to her.
"Though if need be, I'd definitely like to take you up on that contact list," Scully added, thinking that she might need a few gaps filled in her rusty knowledge. Though she liked to stay on top of the latest developments in physics, the truth was that she had never been an advanced student in that branch of science, and she had definitely struggled with the more obscure technical references in the abstract alone.
"Well feel free to log onto the system if you need to look up anything," Montes told her, and gestured to a laptop sitting in the middle of the table, with a large sticker reading "Room C' across it. "And help yourself out to the pizza!" he added, catching them both eyeing the boxes hungrily.
While Scully pulled the laptop towards her, Mulder propped open the box, and passed her two pieces before serving himself. After she'd eaten, Scully flipped open Physical Letters Review and started to skim through Geoff Love's biography, while Mulder circled the table and began to consult with Jamie over the lawsuit files. She half-listened, but knew that as soon as she plunged into the article, she would be too engrossed to hear anything else.
"What have you found so far?" Mulder asked Jamie in a low tone, while Montes and O'Brien went back to their boxes as well.
(". . .undergrad at UCLA, Masters and Ph.D. at Cal Berkeley, post-doc at Stanford. . ." Scully read.)
"Zydek was charging Love with industrial espionage and conspiracy," the slightly younger agent answered. "From what I've gathered, the gist of it is that Zydek had an employee who'd been his protégé since the guy was an undergrad lab assistant. Larry Mitfuhlend is the name. Zydek had fostered a long-term relationship and shared a lot of his vision, not to mention his research, with him. Then, several years ago, Mitfuhlend met Love, and Love managed to recruit him away from Zydek into his own new company. Zydek charges that Love used the employee's knowledge to steal ideas that Zydeknologie had been developing."
(". . .He has published numerous definitive texts in quantum mechanics, such as Macroscopic Properties of Classical Systems and Many-worlds or Relative-State Interpretation. ..")
"But to me, it doesn't look as if he has much of a case," Jamie continued.
"Jamie went to Harvard Law," Montes pitched in, without even looking up from his work.
"Why doesn't he have much of a case?" Mulder asked.
"Love's lawyers said that he was prepared to show that he'd already put significant research into all the areas he has since pursued, prior even to meeting Mitfulheld, and that he was tied to that set of ideas because it was how he received funding when starting his company. So he couldn't have been influenced by taking on Zydek's old protégé."
(". . .Love started his own company, P-works, in 1996 after receiving funding from venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road in the San Francisco Bay Area. . ." 'P' for physics? she wondered.)
Her fellow agents turned back to their work after this exchange, and the only remaining noises were the low hum of the fluorescent lights, the rustling of papers, the flick of a sheet being turned. . .and the familiar sound of Mulder husking sunflower seeds. Scully took a quick glance up to see him snaking a finger into his front pocket with its telltale bulge, as he focused on his page. She suppressed a grin and felt a rush of warmth, and he seemed to sense her gaze, because just as he was about to pop another seed into his mouth, he looked up and his hazel eyes caught her blue ones. They softened for a moment and then he winked at her, and she rewarded him with a small smile, but quickly forced herself to delve into the article. The bio had been interesting, and now that she thought about it his was a somewhat familiar name in her journals, but it was this study that most interested her. Lawsuits were somewhat rare in the science technology fields, so what was it that both teams had been working on, that Zydek was trying so hard to claim for himself?
After the first paragraph, Scully was already reaching for the laptop to refresh herself on some of the science, but it was so arcane that she didn't fault herself. She'd only gotten as far as a BS in physics, and this was very complex, avante garde work. It was slow going, as she paused every few minutes to look up a term or concept that she either couldn't remember well, or hadn't ever learned. Despite the supplemental help, she still had to read several sections over again numerous times to be sure that she got the correct meaning, and even then, she half-believed that she was still in error because what she was understanding was so far-fetched and incredible. But the more she read, the better grasp she had of the material, and as the picture began to form in context, she felt her eyes getting wider and wider.
If what she was piecing together through her own knowledge and the aid of the internet was correct—and she was now 99.9 certain that it was—Mulder was going to have a field day.
After over an hour and a half poring over the material, she closed the journal in a daze and looked up, blood roaring in her ears. Immediately Mulder raised his head from his work as well, in tune with her as ever. He shut the file he was perusing and cocked his head, watching her with an expression of keen interest not unlike how he had looked at her only several hours before in the shower. Even that mental image wasn't enough to distract her from the words she had just read, though, which was a testimony to their power.
"Are you done with the article?" he asked, but she could only nod, her eyes perfect circles. Thoughts raced through her head, and she opened and closed her mouth twice before she could speak.
"Mulder, what they're each claiming to be on the verge of. . .it's incredible. It's beyond anything I've read about before. I mean. . ." She struggled to find the words. . . "I can't even convey what an incredible discovery this would be, if successful. How world-changing. And it doesn't mention this in the article, but I can tell you that whoever got close to a breakthrough would receive billions in contracts. Forget the Nobel Prize, we're talking billions and billions. This would be one of the most historic discoveries ever made in science."
Mulder encouraged her on with an excited nod and raised eyebrows, and she looked around the room to see that she had the rapt attention from the three other agents as well. Before she continued, though, she paused for a moment to collect her thoughts and try to regain some calm in order to articulate what she had read.
"Both Geoff Love and Hans Zydek have been researching ways to transmit data which would be used to precisely reconstruct an object or organism at its destination," Scully began, trying to pare down the technical speak as much as possible, so that the others could follow. An image suddenly flashed into her head. "Umm, think Mike Teavee, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. . .At this point, they're still looking at various technical issues, such as whether the duplication of a human would require reproduction of the exact quantum state, which necessarily destroys the original and has significant religious and moral implications, or whether macroscopic measurements would suffice. They're calling it 'Replacement Tranferrence.' But the more familiar term would be—"
"Teleportation," Mulder said, staring at her. She looked back into the intensity of his eyes, and nodded wordlessly.
Jamie and O'Brien exchanged long looks, while Montes barked out a laugh in amazement. "Are you sure that's what it says, Agent Scully?" he asked, though his tone was one of amused astonishment rather than disdain.
"I am," she replied, and as soon as she said it, she knew it was the truth. "I can't even begin to explain the technical minutiae of how they're planning to achieve this, though they are being deliberately vague in order to protect their research. But yes, they both say they're closing in on major discoveries in teleportation."
"The government is no stranger to this type of study," Mulder expounded, picking up on her thread. "It's rumored that both the Philadelphia Project and the Montauk Project dealt with teleportation in various forms. In the former, the USS Eldridge was said to have disappeared, and transported over 215 miles. . ."
"And this isn't a totally unorthodox topic in science," Scully added, speaking over Agent O'Brien's derisive snort at Mulder's words. "Scientific American has published articles on the "Displacement" or "Topological shortcut" theories of teleportation. I've just never seen a study from not one, but two teams of scientists making claims that they're close to actual breakthroughs."
"So our vic was dealing in sci-fi," Jamie murmured, shaking his head in disbelief.
"More 'sci,' less 'fi,'" Mulder answered him. "And Agent Scully is right—such a discovery would not only win billions in various contracts, but the the highest possible accolades in his field and a major place in history. Einstein would have nothing on the scientist who found a way to teleport."
"Sure sounds like motive to me," Montes said, ". . .If Zydek believed Love was going to get credit, and knew his own suit against him was weak." He looked around the room. "When billions of dollars are at stake, not to mention your place of glory in the history books, what's a little murder and kidnapping?"
Mulder nodded vigorously. "Not only motive, but perhaps even means. Don't forget why Scully and I are here—this was labeled an X-Files after the Love family was killed or abducted from within their locked house. I want to know how close Zydek really was to cracking this so-called 'replacement transferrence.'"
Jamie and O'Brien continued to stare at Mulder, transfixed by his readiness to believe just as Scully had been once, but Montes looked delighted. He was getting the validation that they did indeed need the X-Files on their case, while also staying within the realm of science. "Well we're trying to track Zydek down, and as soon as we do, I'm sure you and Agent Scully will want to take a crack at him."
Scully couldn't wait. She was left stunned breathless by the potential convergence of her and Mulder's belief systems, and wanted nothing more than to have a one-on-one conversation about what Zydek had discovered. If that's how the murders had been committed. . . but thinking about that possibility was like staring directly at the brilliance of the sun: almost too dazzling to take in, and dizzying.
The next thing Scully realized, they were at the elevators, saying their goodbyes to the rest of the team, and Montes was promising them that he'd get SFPD to put out an All Points Bulletin on Zydek, and they'd help step up the search. "I'm not sure how I'll explain why we're suddenly so much more interested in him than earlier in the day, though. . ." he mused.
As soon as the doors closed in front of them and they were alone in the elevator, Scully slumped sideways against the door and felt a wave of exhaustion suddenly overtake her. Between the time change, the long day, the traveling, the energy she'd expended in their afternoon 'exercise,' and her rush over the journal article she read, she could barely keep her eyes open. "Wha' time is it?" she asked Mulder, and he chuckled at the slurring of her words, then checked his watch.
"Almost ten."
"Ten!" she exclaimed. "That's one in the morning our time." All she could see in her mind's eye was her motel bed, large and empty, waiting for her to lose consciousness on it.
"Yeah, but what a day, huh?" He smiled over at her, and reached for a lock of hair dangling in her face just as the door slid open. He dropped his hand out of habit, and smiled at her instead.
"No kidding," she tried to agree, but most of it was obliterated by a massive yawn, and this time Mulder couldn't seem to help himself from putting his arm around her as they made their way to their car.
"What are you going to ask?" Mulder asked her, once they were in the car and they were easing out of the driveway up to Larkin St., but Scully's brain felt so fuzzy that she could hardly make sense of his question.
"Ask who, Mulder?"
"Zydek, once we find him? What are you going to ask him?" How was it that he sounded so energized when she felt so thoroughly drained?
"Ummmm," she said, trying to shake the sleep from her mind, yet wanting to badly succumb to it as well. "I'd ask him if he knows where the Love children are."
Mulder let a beat of silence tick by, then: "Really? He's on the brink of changing the world as we know it and you'd ask a question about our case? I'm impressed, Scully. That's commitment."
Scully narrowed her eyes at that, though; he didn't really sound impressed, in fact he sounded distinctly unimpressed.
"Yes I would, Mulder, because we've got three missing kids," she retorted. "And before they're safe, the rest of it is secondary. As soon as we get them back, assuming they're still alive, then of course I'd want to know everything. But my own interests are not what's important here."
He nodded thoughtfully, and she recognized that as his concession, and leaned her head back against the side of the door, but she was less drowsy than she had been a moment ago. "What do you think?"
"What do I think I'd ask?"
"No. . .what do you think about the case now?" She swiveled her face towards him, and watched his unchanging expression as he navigated through traffic.
Once again, Mulder let a moment of silence pass before he answered. "I think I owe Montes a steak dinner for bringing us in on this." He was evading the full truth, and not only did she know it, but he knew she knew it.
"You're not disappointed?" she asked, and he chuffed loudly.
"Disappointed? Why would I be disappointed?"
"Well you thought it was—"
"I thought it was one thing, and it might be another. It happens all the time on our cases, Scully."
"Mulder," she cut in, placing a hand on his thigh. "You thought it was Starlight, and it looks like it's something else. You're okay with that?"
At first Mulder didn't seem to have registered the question, but then his expression flickered a little, and he sighed and glanced towards her. "It was more familiar territory," he admitted. "And I might have been able to bring a measure of understanding to the family, although it looks like there isn't really any. Apparently neither of the murdered Loves had any parents or siblings. . ." He bit his bottom lip, obviously turning something over in his head. "But actually, Scully, I'm relieved."
She squeezed his thigh at that, and he dropped his right hand from the steering wheel to take her hand in his. They spent the rest of the car ride in silence.