This story does not belong to me. Nor would I want it to because I don't actually like it that much.

A/N: Jason the Lunch Cart man is a shout-out to Jason the Coffee Guy at the mall where I work.

I've been thinking about Jerry lately.

I'm not quite sure why that is, but I have. Maybe it's because I feel guilty in some way, even though I shouldn't. Maybe it's the general signs of global collapse of sanity I see happening around me on a daily basis, from the guy outside my building beating up his ex-wife's car to the Church of Scientology being granted tax exemption. Maybe it's that episode of Boy Meets World I accidentally taped, which Jerry would just despise (and rightly so) that made me start thinking about all the good times at VCU. Which wasn't very often. For obvious reasons.

Or maybe it's the details of what he managed to screw up that Doreen at the requisition desk finally told me: that Jerry somehow managed to send a key piece of evidence to the cleaners and it all ended up with a Federal judge losing body parts.

Somehow the rumor mill would have this be my fault, but that's just Jerry. He loses things. Still, I think there has to be some way to try to help him out – and I have no clue what that is. I mean, I don't even know who I should be making him look good to.

So instead I focus on getting the thing in Philadelphia all wrapped up. There isn't going to be a trial because Dorland folded like the wimp he is and is instead giving them the Istfahan, which is really a better deal anyway, so Lauren Kyte is free to live her life without ever hearing from us again.

The lunch cart comes through the bullpen at 1:30 or so every day, and when we don't have other plans, we often run upstairs and grab lunch together. Scully gets a salad and I get roast beef and sometimes we don't talk about work. Those are my favorite days – when we just sit at a table and don't talk about work. It doesn't happen often.

Today – that tragic day after the very last episode of Major League Baseball on CBS - promises to be one of those days, I think, because we don't have anything really going on. Personally, I think the cancellation of the High Resolution Microwave thingy screams "Conspiracy!" but I don't really know what to do other than call Senator Matheson and see if he knows who started that business. He hasn't gotten back to me yet.

We duck upstairs and swipe a candy from the pumpkin, and then we find the lunch cart (just look for the crowd of suits) and make our selections, and that's when I hear him:

"Mulder."

I don't believe it. "Jerry?"

I haven't seen him in more than a year. This can't be coincidence.

"You're Dana Scully, right?" He shakes her hand. Wow, I guess word does get around. "Jerry Lamana."

I try to recover my shock. "Jerry and I worked together in Violent Crimes," I explain.

"Worked together? What are you talking worked together." He turns back to Scully. "We were partners."

It's a little weird, like if Phoebe and Diana had met while I was still with Diana. Which is also a weird analogy but there it is.

"That's $8.50, please," says Jason, the lunch cart man, and it's Scully's turn so she gets out her wallet.

Try to keep it all together. "So, Jerry, what are you doing here?"

"Looking for you. And I'm buying you two lunch."

Scully tries to protest. "No, really ..."

"No, it's on me." He pays the guy, and we begin to walk away. "I need your help on a case."

I hate when VCU ruins lunch. That's the worst part of that whole department. The very worst. "What's the case?" I ask, knowing what's coming. Sharp knives or guns or gruesome death. Victims and suspects. I remember this world.

I don't miss it or what it can do to me if I'm not careful.

"Can we go back to your office?" asks Jerry. "I'll give you the rundown."

He's always sucked at that bit.

We walk back down the stairs in silence and take him into the office. He's seen the poster – I had it in VCU – and he knows I believe in aliens, so he doesn't even bat an eye when he sees the walls. It's still kind of surreal to see him standing there.

Scully offers him a chair, which he declines, and she sit down while he stands there looking like a schoolboy about to give a report on goldfish. It's a murder, of course. The case is always a murder in VCU. No happy endings – not one. "What kind of case is it, Jerry?" I ask him, because I know how this all plays out – and he knows I know.

"Cause of death was electrocution."

"And it wasn't accidental?" asks Scully.

Electrocution is a fairly unusual cause of death in murder cases. My interest is definitely piqued. Dammit.

"It looks like some kind of elaborate booby trap," and I can't help but twitch as I remember the Sanders case, "but we don't know a whole lot more. The building engineer just found him twelve hours ago."

"Who's running the investigation?" she asks.

"Do either of you know Nancy Spiller?"

I can hear the smile in Scully's voice. "The forensics instructor at the Academy?" She glances back at me. "We used to call her the Iron Maiden."

"On a good day." I know what's coming. I can hear it already. "Well, anyway she's putting together the squad and, well, I took the liberty of mentioning your name."

I wonder if this is how Scully felt when Tom Colton came calling. I don't want to do this. Not anymore.

"Look, Jerry," I walk to

ward him, hoping he'll get it and see the desperation. "I'd like to help you out, but we're not on general assignment." Ain't that the truth.

"Because of the X-Files?" And now I feel bad. Great. And now he comes closer and I can feel the waves of desperation and if I don't do this I'll feel guilty. And be guilty. "Look, the truth is, I could use a little help on this. I don't want to drop the ball on this one."

"You won't drop the ball."

"Drake wasn't just a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He was a good friend of the Attorney General's. Another feather in my cap would be really nice right now, because the one I got's looking a little mangy."

Jerry. No, don't do this. "Yeah, but Jerry ..."

"Look, I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important," he presses. "Just come down to the crime scene and take a look, okay?"

I want to say no. I really do.

"Okay."


He gives us an address in downtown DC, a skyscraper called "Eurisko World Headquarters". Some software company I've never really heard of, and tells us he'll meet us there. We get in the car and drive downtown in silence, Scully navigating occasionally, and then park in the parking lot outside the building.

It's not until we are walking inside that she asks, "How come you two went your separate ways?"

I knew she was thinking about it. "I'm a pain in the ass to work with." Which she must have noticed.

"Seriously."

"I'm not a pain in the ass?"

She rolls her eyes and thinks she's being blown off. But she deserves an answer. "We had different career goals. Jerry wanted the fifth floor." We climb a flight of stairs to the main entrance.

"And you?"

There's more to that question. What do I want from life? No idea. I used to think a typical life. FBI career, marry whatever lunatic will have me, kids, play ball at the park on Sundays.

But that never happened.

"I was gunning for a basement office with no heat or windows."

We walk into the building.

"I know where you ended up. What about Jerry?"

Stupid guilt. If he and I were still partners this would never have happened. "He ran into a little bad luck in Atlanta working hate crimes."

"What kind of bad luck?"

"He misplaced a piece of evidence, bagged and everything. Sent it to the cleaners." We pause at the elevator doors. "By the time he got it back, a federal judge had lost both his hands and his right eye."

The elevator dings and opens. We did not push a button. Cool. Inside, though, you do have to push a button. "Twenty-nine?" Scully asks as she does so.

That's what the man said. "Uh-huh."

"Going up," announces the elevator. What's next, a talking trash can?

"Must be for the visually impaired," mutters Scully.

Huh. "How do you like that? A politically correct elevator."

"Third floor....Fourth floor...." this could get annoying. Suddenly it stops. The whole thing stops. As in the elevator. Scully actually falls over, it stops so fast, and I have to pull her off the ground. "You okay?"

"Yeah. What was that?"

None of the buttons do anything but beep. Scully picks up the emergency phone. "Hello? This is Agent Dana Scully." Then there's a jolt and it starts moving again. "Uh, actually, I think everything's okay." She hangs up, and we lean against the rails again. She looks a little confused.

"You okay?" I ask her.

She nods. "Fine." The elevator continues counting until it reaches twenty-nine without incident and we exit into a crime scene.

There is nothing like a good crime scene, although I don't think I could confide that to anyone. Something about the way everything is frozen, like a photograph – probably why I liked my photography class. Something about this one frozen moment in time, that you can explore at your leisure. It just brings our my inner voyeur, I guess.

Jerry is standing in the office with the yellow tape on the door, flipping through a file, but he looks up when we enter. "Hi. Did you find it okay?"

"Yes, thanks," says Scully, the polite one.

I don't see how someone would be electrocuted in here, or for that matter, where the murder took place, but before I can ask, he continues, "Well, I'll show you the crime scene," and points to a door across the room, which leads into a bathroom.

A very nice bathroom.

The words "executive bathroom" could be applied, which makes me regret every nasty-ass roadside diner and rest area I've been to in my entire life.

He gestures to what looks like a computer panel in the wall. With a lock in it. Is the whole building run by computers? "Someone has tampered with the servo. They switched the ground to the negative so that when he put the key in the lock..."

"...he completed the circuit," says my resident physicist, as she tries to remove the key.

"It's fused. It takes a lot of juice to melt a steel key."

"And to throw a 180 pound man ten feet," adds Scully, glancing at the cracked mirror across the room.

Okay, try not to sound like an idiot, Fox. I hate machines. And computers, and, most days, electricity. "The, uh, servo switch. Could it have been moved manually?" The thing that is set to negative. Inside the open panel.

"We didn't find any prints in the surrounding area," replies Jerry. I glance at Scully and notice the phone is off the hook. Huh.

A black man in a tan suit walks in. "Sure it could have been switched manually. But whoever did it would have had to override the COS."

I don't think I want to know what that is. "What's the COS?" And is it anything like DOS?

"The central operating system." So that would be a yes, then. "It runs the building. It regulates everything from energy output to the volume of water in each toilet flush."

"This is Claude Peterson," Jerry tells us. "He's the building systems engineer. He discovered the body."

"If somebody wanted to override the COS, what would they ...?" I begin gesturing, hoping I won't make a fool of my not exactly tech-saavy self.

"Well, first he'd have to break the access codes which, well let's just say it wouldn't be easy."

Okay, well, first thing's first. "Well, we're going to need a list of all the people with that kind of know how."

"Well, I can tell you right now it'll be a pretty short list."

Eliminate the suspects, Mulder. "Would you be on it?" I hate that question.

"Me? Hey, look. I'm just a glorified building super. All I do is monitor the system. Make sure it's functioning properly. Like when I saw the overload in Mr. Drake's office."

Okay, so he can read a screen, not tell it what to say. Check.

"What about the phone lines? Does the COS monitor all phone calls?"

"Yes it does. Why?"

Huh. "I was just wondering."

"Okay, um, look. Can I go now?" he asks. I don't blame him.

"Yeah," says Jerry, and Peterson ducks away before he can develop nightmares – which he probably already has. People who discover bodies don't always fare well.

"Why'd you ask him about the phones?"

God, how many hours has he had this crime scene? Some people don't see what's right in front of them. "Phone's off the hook." I poke it back onto it's cradle. "Maybe Drake was talking to someone right before he did his Ben Franklin impersonation." Not my best reference. Oh well.

Jerry turns to Scully. "Taught him everything he knows."

This is just a surreal experience, working with the two of them, and it's gonna make me nuts. "You want me to do the profile?" I ask Jerry, even though he has a perfectly good degree of his very own.

"That'd be great, thanks."

I hate murder cases right now. Or maybe I hate being manipulated. And this killer's a fucking genuis. One that doesn't like to get his hands dirty and loves playing games and setting traps and all that kind of bullshit.

At the end of the day, no matter how pissed I am, I'm still a profiler. But maybe this is all Jerry needs – a working profile. If I recall, he doesn't suck at the investigating, and I bet he knows to do is dry cleaning after now. So if I just type the thing up and let him go, I'll be free on this one.

I hope.

"Can I borrow the crime scene photos?" I ask him, and he hands me a folder full of copies. "Okay, I'll look around here some more and then type up a profile for the task force meeting. When is it?"

"Tomorrow at three," he tells me. "They figure it'll take him a while to set another trap if this is a pattern."

Oh, and pattern killers. Hate them too. This is a great week.

I can feel the cloud descending on my mind already, and I have to fight it off, because I'm just not going to get that involved in this. I can't afford to.

I won't.

"I'll see you then," I tell Jerry, and I leave the room with Scully following behind me, probably wondering what the hell I'm doing, but she doesn't ask. I sit in silence in the car on the way back to the office, trying to get my impressions into words, trying to put those words into professionalese, wishing I couldn't do any of it.

Working with Jerry made the cloud descend more easily, that's for sure. That's why we were partners – he could help me get to that state, where I start to lose myself. And then he could bring me back when it was over. Very important.

It's the transition that nearly killed me, before I found something where I didn't need that cloud of not-me that floods me or surrounds me or whatever it does when I lose myself. I was relieved, at first.

And then I realized the X-Files would bring me it's own set of problems.

Scully pulls into the parking garage and I mutter some kind of thanks before I run back to the office and hope she wasn't offended.

I stay there all night, trying to get into his head without getting too involved, but there's nothing more I can do. Besides, game-playing sociopaths are pretty rare, so it's not a generic profile. Scully comes in at eight, when I've been to the car for my travel bag and shaved already so I look somewhat presentable and she has no idea I didn't go home again.

We do our usual thing. She reads the profile and says it makes sense to her, which isn't a shock (after all, I am good at this) and then goes to examine the body (already autopsied but still) before the meeting at three. I run upstairs for lunch, since I skipped dinner and breakfast, and then try to go through my books looking for examples of that same kind of game-playing thing this guy's doing.

Not much to work with, really. Psychology books can be hard to research, but I manage to come up with one point – just a little one – familiarity with not just computers, but that he used the COS specifically. It has a personal connection to the killer – that specific computer.

But I can't find my notes.

I mean can't find.

And I take my desk apart.

I glance at the clock. 2:55. Shit.

I'm still tearing it apart when there's a knock at the door. "Come in."

"It's past three." Scully. Why is she knocking? Sometimes women are just weird.

"I'm just looking for my profile notes."

"Maybe if you cleaned your desk more than once a year." She sounds like she's gonna laugh.

"They were right here. I'm telling you," I know it. She's leaning on the file cabinet, smirking, but I know it.

"Come on. We're late."

They aren't here.

They aren't here.

I'll do it from memory.

She hands me my jacket as I walk toward the door. "Mulder," she says as I push the elevator button, "You'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed on."

Not me, Jerry.

Jerry.

I have a very sinking feeling.

He wouldn't.

He would.

Never. Not without asking.

He wouldn't ask.

Not Jerry.

He'd think that if he asked I might say no.

But I wouldn't. Right now I wish I would.

Deep breath. Innocent until proven guilty. Which should take about another thirty seconds as the elevator lets us off on the fourth floor and we walk to the conference room. Jerry is talking as we sit down, and I know.

"I wrote a profile," he is telling the Iron Maiden, "that I think applies to this case." She nods and gestures for him to continue.

I find myself staring at the wall.

"Now, there are a couple of elements for us to consider, here."

Jerry was my friend.

Now what is he?

"Both the statistical rarity of homicidal electrocution and the complexity of the crime indicate a certain devious premeditation.

My words.

"After all, there are much simpler ways of killing someone. All of which leads me to believe that our guy was some kind of sociopathic game player - - maybe even a recluse since he designed a trap not only to avoid detection, but to avoid contact with the victim."

He's not even trying to hide it.

"Is that your profile?" Scully whispers.

And now I know what the hell I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give him this one. Just this one.

"Forget it, huh?"

"Drake's final phone call supports this theory."

Now I'm pissed.

"At the tone, Eastern Standard Time will be 7:35 P.M."

He didn't tell me.

"Drake's estimated time of death."

I put him onto it and he didn't tell me.

"Why would Drake call for the correct time just before he died?" asks Spiller.

"It was an incoming call. From somewhere in the Eurisko building itself. Whoever set the trap wanted to make sure that Drake took the bait."

That was my idea. Mine! It would have worked in the profile. It could have helped.

"Excellent work, Agent Lamana."

I'm gonna kill him. Now not only did he steal my work, he sabotaged my profile. Without meaning to, but still.

"Thank you."

I'm gonna kill him.

"We will continue, based on this profile. Dismissed."

In the rush to get out of the room, Jerry is closer to the door, and I lose him, but I know where he'll be. Downstairs. He'll come to see me, to make amends. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission and all that.

I power walk the stairs and catch him the the bullpen at the water cooler.

My terms, not his.

"Jerry, what the hell are you doing?"

"Hey, don't get all bent out of shape."

Bent out of shape? Bent. Out of. Shape. I let the words roll around my head for a second.

"Jerry, that was my profile." What the hell is wrong with him?

"Look, I didn't think you'd mind." I wouldn't have. He starts to leave and I grab his jacket, which is , very technically, assaulting a fellow officer. I can't see my friend in there at all today. He's gone, vanished, I think. "Anyway, they were just notes. I filled in the blanks."

God dammit. "Jerry, you went into my office and you stole my work."

"Look, you're on this case 'cause I asked you to help me out, and you helped me out. What is the big deal?" He walks away.

I know what he's doing. He's deluding himself, that's what he's doing. It makes this easier to swallow. It shouldn't but it does.

Scully walks right by him on his way out, and comes straight to me. "What did he say?"

"He apologized - in his own way." The only way he can right now.

"I just got off the phone with Peterson, the systems engineer." She hands me a slip of paper. Right, my list of suspects. With one person on it.

"One name? Brad Wilczek?"

"He said it would be a short list. And it's headline news how much this guy despised Drake." She hands me some other paper that I don't even bother to read.

Come on! "That just seems too obvious. To kill Drake would be so brazenly egomaniacal." We'll need a car. And his address. I start walking.

"And fully consistent with Jerry's excellent behavioral profile."

God dammit. "Fully."


I get the car from Doreen and we drive out to the country to the address Scully pulled up on that second piece of paper I never read. She's quiet, content to let me stew, which is fine with me.

On one hand I want to help Jerry, because he's a decent guy and he needs it. On the other, stealing my profile is not exactly decent-guy behavior. On a third hand, I did basically throw him to the wolves – all "taught him everything he knows" comments aside, Jerry really needs someone to watch out for him, keep him from losing stuff and whatnot. And I did sort of leave the department to go chase little green men. Okay, there was more to it than that.

I met Diana about six months before, and she was the one who heard of the X-files first. She heard a rumor that there were case files similar to my sister's – unexplained and unsolved – languishing in a basement storage room somewhere.

It took six months for us to track them down. No one seemed to know quite where they were, or have a key to the door. But once we got it open – treasure trove.

It had obviously been an office at some point. The desk was still sitting there, and there was an empty nameplate on the door. If I had to guess, I would say it had been building operations or maintenance – there's a lot of circuit breaker panels in the back of the office, next to Scully's area.

I was officially VCU, but I couldn't tear myself away from these cases. Some had similar elements to Samantha's abduction. Some were just weird. Some were obviously crackpots. The more I read, the more I wanted to learn, so I could sort out the crackpots from the non-crackpots. And I began reading.

And reading.

I kept reading until one day I realized I wanted to investigate one of these cases. So I opened a travel request and it got approved.

But I forgot to put Jerry's name on it. He wasn't really that into all this stuff anyway. I flew to Indiana without him, looking for instances of telekinesis on the Purdue campus. I found a professor who had drugged a drinking fountain with an unknown compound, but the effect faded within days.

When I got back, Jerry had taken a transfer to Atlanta and I was still on my special project. So I packed my stuff down to the storage room that might be an office and hung up my poster and that was that.

So why do I feel so guilty now?

Scully pulls down a country lane next to a golf course and one of those zigzag fences while I scan the page on Brad Wilczek. Guy went to MIT, software engineer with a 220 IQ. Basically don't get him mad, 'cause he can hack you. She pulls into his driveway, next to the white convertible, behind the motorcycle, and waaay behind the little red British thing, and we walk up the very expensive looking driveway to the front door.

Nice house. "So this is what a 220 IQ and a $400 million severance settlement buys you." A security camera tracks us as we walk to the front door, and Scully knocks.

He, the man himself, opens the door right away. "Yes?"

It's good to know that a computer nerd is still a computer nerd no matter how rich he gets. I pull out my ID, and Scully says, "Brad Wilczek? We're with the FBI."

She sounds surprised, but I bet he saw us coming a mile off.

"What took you guys so long?" He steps back to let us in. "Oh, do you mind taking off your shoes?" So we do. "You're here about Ben Drake," he tells us. It's not a question at all, but I answer anyway. "What can you tell us?"

He leads us further into the house. "You can divide the computer science industry into two types of people - - neat and scruffy."

"I take it Benjamin Drake fit into the first category," Scully observes as we walk into what I can only describe as a room with a tree in it.

"Neat people like things neat. They wear nicely pressed suits and work on surface phenomena. Things they can understand. Market shares, and third quarter profits."

He leads us to a computer desk. Next to the tree. "And you had a different vision for the company?"

"I started Eurisko out of my parents' garage. I was 22 years old. I'd just spent a year following around the Grateful Dead. You know what Eurisko means?"

I take a second. College was ages ago. "That's from the Greek, isn't it? Um, 'I learn things.'" He leads us past a glass partition into a – I really want to say meditation room, and down a hallway, but he pauses when I actually know something.

"Not exactly. It means 'I discover things.'" Hmph. Close enough for government work. "Unfortunately, Ben Drake wasn't interested in discovery." He starts walking again. "He was a short-sighted, power-hungry opportunist." He walks into another room and stands in front of a screen, gesturing to the two chairs in front of it that we sit down in. "Let me show you something - Smart Home." he clicks a remote and a screen lights up with three little dots flashing – I'm thinking the dots are us. "From this prototype, I have access to every square foot of my house. This place is as safe as Fort Knox and as energy efficient as your average igloo. We were two years ahead of Microsoft and Cebus when Drake, in his infinite wisdom, killed the program."

Huh. Pretty advanced. Really advanced. I stand up to get a closer look. "Mr. Wilczek, is this system related to the one in your corporate building?"

"Variation on a theme."

"In your opinion, how many people know the system well enough to override it?"

"Finally the bonus question." I thought he'd know that was coming. "Not many is the answer."

"Could someone have hacked into the system?" The Gunmen, for example.

"Well, not your average phone freak, that's for sure. But there's plenty of kooks out there. Data travelers, Electro wizards, techno anarchists. Anything's possible."

"Could you have done it?" asks Scully. But we know that answer.

"Of course. I designed the system. That's why you guys are here, isn't it? I'm your logical suspect."

"You don't seem too worried," she says, but why would he be? He's too smart to get caught.

"It's a puzzle, Miss Scully, and scruffy minds like me like puzzles. We enjoy walking down unpredictable avenues of thought, turning new corners - - but as a general rule, scruffy minds don't commit murder."

She looks at me and I look back. Whatever she sees there makes her take the lead. "Thank you for you time, Mr. Wilczek. We'll contact you if we have any further questions.

He walks us back to the door a different way and we put our shoes back on in silence.

The Iron Maiden calls us into her office the next morning. "How's the case?" she asks with no preamble.

Scully jumps right in. "We have a suspect but no proof," she says, which is true if a little misleading.

"Well," asks the Iron Maiden, "what would you need to tie him to the murder?" Like she's teaching a class.

"We have a motive," I tell her, "means – computer programming – and opportunity. But we don't know that he's the only suspect"- although all I have on that is his word - "and we don't have any way to connect him to the crime."

"I just got a report," she tells us, "that the voice on the phone may not have been a recording, but an actual person speaking. If that was the case, that would be your killer."

Makes sense. Scully speaks up. "The FBI has several of his taped lectures on file." God only nows why. "We could use the voice analysis software to break down the words in the message, try to find them on a tape, and see if we can get a match."

She's good at this stuff.

The Iron Maiden nods. "I look forward to your results."

I guess that's a dismissal, so we leave, stopping by the requisition office on the way to get the equipment we'll need and to request all of Brad's lectures on tape. They arrive an hour later, after we've plugged cord C into slot F and tested the system a few times on our new/old computer. Scully mans the tape players while I listen for words from the tape the COS made of Drake's last call.

We're in the middle of Brad giving a lecture at the Smithsonian when the door squeaks and we look up to see Jerry himself. The last person I want to deal with right now.

"Will you give me a second?" I ask her, and she nods, so I step into the hallway with him."Look," he says before I cans say anything, "I'm here with my hat in my hand. I screwed up - - I'm sorry." Dammit, Jerry, I can't stay mad. "What more can I say?"

The worst part was having to be upset. "All you had to do was ask. I would've helped you with the profile."

"You don't know what it's like, Mulder."

I guarantee I do, on some level. "What what's like?"

"You heard about Atlanta?"

Oh, Jerry, everyone heard about Atlanta. "Yeah."

"They got me on six month's probation. I got to file daily reports like some cherry new agent."

"That was bad luck. That could have happened to anybody." I know that's not true.

"Not to you."

I let that hang there, trying to figure out what to say. "Don't run yourself down, Jerry. You're a good agent. We did some good work together."

"Let's face it. I was tagging along."

"That's not how it was." That is how it was.

"How would you know, Mulder? You were too busy dazzling them up there on the high wire."

What do I say? "Mulder," Scully saves me, "take a look." We both go back in. "We borrowed this from the voice biometrics lab at Georgetown." I love how she knows the history of every piece of equipment the FBI has. "It's a computer spectrogram capable of identifying individual speech patterns," she exposits for Jerry. "Now this is the recording the Central Operating System made of the phone call Drake received just before he died."

"At the tone, Eastern Standard Time will be 7:35 p.m," says the computer.

"And this we spliced together from a series of lectures Brad Wilczek gave at the Smithsonian last year." She works better without me, even though we were almost done.

"At the tone, Eastern Standard Time will be 7:35 p.m."

"Now we'll stack them."

"At the tone, Eastern Standard Time will be 7:35 p.m."

"You're saying this is the same person?"

"I'm saying that both voices are Brad Wilczek's. He may have disguised his voice electronically, but he couldn't alter the form that is unique to his own speech patterns," I find myself saying. He's too smart for this, Brad is. Something's wrong.

"Which means that he was the one that killed Drake. He had the motive and the means. And now we have the physical evidence." She circles the bits on the screen that tell you it's a match with a marker that I really hope is dry erase. "Judge Benson lives in Washington Heights. I can get a warrant in less than an hour."

"Someone has to make sure Wilczek stays put," says Jerry.

"I'll go with you-" I begin, but -

"No. Let me bring him in alone. I need this one, Mulder."

He'll be fine. It's just one nerd. "All right." I think, as he walks out the door, that there was something in that look he gave me that was significant, but I can't quite figure out what. Scully is dialing her favorite judge, and I'm trying really hard to be glad we solved this thing.

It's forty-five minutes later that they get the warrant and I try to call Jerry, but there's no answer. We don't know where Wilczek is, exactly, so Scully and I drive to his house – but he isn't home.

A sinking sensation begins to work it's way up my spine. It's a weird feeling.

Something's wrong.

Scully's phone rings, and she answers. "Scully. Yes. Yes. Yes he is – yes. We'll be there." She looks up at me. "That was Spiller. She wants to see us. Specifically you, actually."

What did I do now? Nothing.

Something's not right.

We get in the car and drive back to work, and I don't think it can be what I think it is. Not Jerry. Nothing wrong with Jerry. But then why isn't he answering his phone?

He's fine, though, I tell myself as I run upstairs. He'll be fine, I repeat, as Scully gets pulled aside by the forensics office with a shouted "I'll meet you later!" as she's shown something in a folder. He'll be okay.

He has to be.

I open the door to Spiller's outer office and knock on her inner door without asking the secretary. She answers with a stern "Come in!" that tells me something is very wrong.

Jerry's been hurt. But he'll be okay.

He'll be okay.

"Agent Mulder, take a seat please," she says, and I obediently sit down.

"Agent Jerry Lamana was found dead at the Eurisko building today. He was in an elevator, it malfunctioned, and he was killed when it crashed."

The world fills with white noise for a second, and when it returns to normal, Spiller is saying "-notified his next of kin. However, if there is anything of a personal note you would care to add, we can forward a letter from you to them."

Oddly enough, the thing that comes to mind is one day, way back when, after a day when there were no serial murders and we decided to go out for a beer. Just hanging out and chatting about baseball and basketball and things that normal people talk about – landlords and neighbors and the cute girl in the supermarket.

Jerry was the last person with whom I got to be normal, just for the briefest moment, for years.

"I would like to extend my sincerest condolences," continues Spiller. "I know you worked together well for a long time. The Bureau will investigate Agent Lamana's death as a homicide until we determine otherwise. Bradley Wilczek was arrested at the scene."

Wilczek. That's who he was following. The buzzing is back.

"-final analysis of the malfunction before we charge him with a crime," she is saying when I tune back in. There's more to this. It's not Wilczek.

He's too smart.

"All evidence will be made available to you," she adds. "The building security camera recorded the elevators. I have a copy of the tape if you'd care to see it."

I pick up the tape she slides across the desk numbly.

This doesn't make sense. Wilczek didn't do this.

He wouldn't go back unless there was something for him there. The killer kills from a distance. No, there's something bigger here.

Something I can't see.

"Thank you," I tell Nancy Spiller, and then I leave her office and go to the basement.

I hesitate a full minute before I play the tape, because knowing is better than not knowing.

Wilczek ran through the lobby, and then he was followed by Jerry. The feed switches to the elevator camera, where Jerry gets in the elevator. He pushes the button, and the elevator rises and then suddenly it gets stuck between twenty-nine and thirty. And then suddenly it shakes and it falls and he sprawls on the ground and then suddenly it's all black.

And Jerry is dead.

Just like that.

Wilczek is also on the feed at that point, stepping back from the COS terminal. Same time.

It's too obvious.

I back it up a few times. Too obvious.

"I heard about Jerry. I'm sorry."

Scully came in at some point.

"I don't think Wilczek did it," I tell her.

"What?"

I've always thought it was too neat. "It doesn't make sense. Why would he go back to Eurisko?"

"To destroy evidence. To cover his tracks."

He knows where the cameras are. "If you were going to destroy evidence, would you pose for the cameras?"

She turns off the screen.

"Mulder, you've been through a lot - - more than I think even you realize."

I know. I don't care. "I think Wilczek is smarter than this."

She takes a deep breath. "He just signed a confession. How much proof do you need?"

More.

So we drive back to Wilczek's house to take a look at how he did it. There are suits everywhere. "Excuse me sir, this is a crime scene. You're going to have to leave."

Do I look stupid? "Yeah, I know." I flash my badge. "I ordered the subpoena."

"That subpoena's been obviated."

Huh? "What are you talking about?"

"Unless you have a code five clearance, I'm gonna have to ask you to turn back."

Code five. That's DOD.

I need help, I realize. I can't do this without help.


So I drive over to the Lincoln Memorial and sit on a certain bench and try to think of how I might get that help. Only one person can give it to me – and I don't have a way to contact him. That's annoying. I'm only seen him at Casey's bar, and again at the track. Both times he was there to meet me.

But let's assume he knows Casey's. He must have scoped it out, at least. It's popular among the agents. I go there infrequently, but plenty of people go there more. Jerry liked it.

So I go to Casey's and flag down the barkeeper. "I was hoping you could help me," I tell her. "I'm looking for a man, I think he comes in here sometimes. Older man, gray hair, distinguished looking." I just described a fair portion of the FBI upper management. "Speaks with an accent, New England somewhere, and he probably always pays cash." Because he wouldn't be wanting to give away his identity to anyone.

She frowns. "I think I know who you mean."

Okay, it's a start. Now what?

"If you see him, will you give him this note?" I ask, as I scribble out, NEED TO MEET, HOOVER COURTYARD, 10/28.

At least it's an attempt.

So I go to th courtyard, and I sit.

And I sit and I sit and I sit.

And I try to remember what it was about Jerry that drove me nuts, that I had to just cut him loose. But in the end, I know what it was.

He was too normal.

Jerry was one of those people who coudn't make that transition. He was just normal, all the time, and he could never immerse himself in work like I can.

I don't know what that says about me or him.

I just know I won't be writing that letter to his mother.

He arrives that afternoon, around 1pm. He walks by me and I rise and walk with him across the courtyard. "Thanks for coming."

"I'm here against my better judgement. In the future I must insist that you respect the terms of our arrangement."

Arrangement? Whatever. "I need to know why Brad Wilczek is the subject of a code five investigation. What the Defense Department wants with him."

"What do you think they'd want with the most innovative programmer in this hemisphere?"

Duh. "Software."

"For years, Wilczek has thumbed his nose at any contract involving weapons applications. He's a bleeding heart."

Okay, what, exactly? This isn't answers. "What kind of software?"

He stops walking and faces me"How much do you know about artificial intelligence?"

Doesn't exist. "I thought it was only theoretical."

"It was, until two years ago. You remember Helsinki, the first time that a chess playing computer ever beat a Grand Master?" I heard about that. "That was Wilczek's program. And the rumor was that he did it by developing the first adaptive network."

Huh? "An adaptive network?"

"It's a learning machine. A computer that actually thinks. And it's, ah, become something of a holy grail for some of our more acquisitive colleagues in the Department of Defense."

I can see why. A computer on our side. Just turn it loose and tell it who to shoot and it would. Completely amoral – and thinks faster than any of us.

Didn't these people see Terminator? "Wilczek built one?" Please tell me he didn't -

"He's never publicized it, but that's the suspicion."

Drake was going to kill the project. The computer, acting in self-defense, killed him. It all makes sense. Too much sense.

I bet Wilczek doesn't even watch movies.

"Don't contact me through Casey's again, Mister Mulder. If you want to talk to me, tape an X on your window. That at least can be blamed on a paranoid fear of earthquakes."

He walks away.

The only thing to do is confront Wilczek. I'll have to get him to tell me what to do – and how to turn the blasted thing off.

He's going to have to destroy his own creation, which sounds harder than it will be. Wilczek can't be proud of what he's done. For some reason, he's protecting it, but I don't think he's proud of it. He's too moral.

I flash my credentials at the federal detention center and get escorted in and left in his cell. He's alone, and he won't even look at me for a good ten minutes.

Jerry's dead and it's all his fault.

Maybe not all.

I wonder how self-aware that computer is. I wonder if it understands the concept of fear for one's life, and that Jerry was afraid before he died. Maybe it can understand intellectually, but it can't really know.

Not yet. It will know.

Wilczek is looking at his feet, curled up on his bed.

"Are you going to talk to me?" I ask him.

"There's nothing to say. I'm guilty."

Yes you are, and at the same time not.

"You okay in here?"

"They make me wear shoes all the time. What else do you want from me?"

Time to lay my cards on the table – he's my only hope. "I want you to tell me why you're willing to spend the rest of your life in prison for a crime you didn't commit."

"What are you talking about? I'm guilty."

Nope. Not really. Not in court. "I know you're innocent!" I move over to his bed and sit down next to him. "You're protecting a machine -- the Central Operating System at Eurisko."

"If I'm protecting anything, it's not the machine."

Okay, fine. The one thing I couldn't figure out. "Then what?"

He is silent for a moment, and then -"After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - - Robert Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life regretting he'd ever glimpsed an atom."

Ah.

"Oppenheimer may have regretted his actions but he never denied responsibility for them."

But I do understand. Oppenheimer knew that he had killed those people – not by some act he had undertaken but by what he allowed to be done to the science he was working on. Something he didn't even realize, really, could happen.

Until it was too late.

"He loved the work, Mr. Mulder. His mistake was in sharing it with an immoral government. I won't make the same mistake."

I get it.

But Jerry deserves better."But your machine killed Drake. And it killed my friend."

"I'm sorry about what happened. But there's nothing I can do."

Oh come on! I'm on my feet, now, and I'm yelling. "And you talk about morality. You're afraid of the government but you're willing to accept the risk that your machine will kill again."

"The lesser of two evils."

Okay, new game then. "What about a third option. You created that machine. Now you tell me how to destroy it."

He pauses again, and I am left to wait. And hope.

"Okay."

Thank you.

"I can make a virus to destroy the system if you can promise to deliver it."

All I ask.

So I return to work and find Scully in the office, reading what I think might be Jerry's autopsy report. I should really look, since I'm investigating his murder, but I can't.

So instead I drop the bomb. "I think I found the real killer," I tell her, and wait until she's giving me that look she's so good at. "I think it was the computer."

She stands up to give me what for, but I won't let her. I start heading down the hall and she follows. "Brad Wilczek is trying to keep anyone from using the technology for warfare – that's why he confessed. So no one will figure out that the computer's alive." The elevator arrives and I get in, forcing her to follow if she wants a shot at me.

"Mulder..."

I press the first-floor button. "Scully, think about it. Drake was going to terminate the program. Serial killers will often find ways to display their power to those they need to intimidate. It all fits."

The elevator doors open and we walk into the lobby.

"Mulder, I don't think..."

Not done. "We have to kill the computer, Scully, it's the only way to keep the D.O.D. From getting their hands on it – the only way to stop the killings."

We walk out the doors and into the courtyard, but Scully refrains from commenting.

"Wilczek can create a virus that will destroy the system," I tell her.

"Mulder, don't you see, blaming the machine is an alibi." Alibis aren't all inaccurate, you know. "And a bad one."

So it's a little on the original side. So what? That just means it's more likely to be true. "But it's the only thing that makes sense. The COS project was posting big losses for Eurisko and Drake was about to terminate the program." Simple fact.

"So the machine killed Drake out of self-defense?"

Might even hold up in court. "Self-preservation. It's the primary instinct of all sentient beings."

"Mulder, that level of artificial intelligence is decades away from being realized."

Not according to Terminator. "Then why was our government trying to usurp Wilczek's research?"

She pulls me off to the side of the courtyard we've been walking through then, and I know without having to ask that this as far as I can push her right now.

I'll be doing this alone.

It's okay.

"Mulder, I think you're looking for something that isn't there," she whispers, "and I think it has something to do with Jerry. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if you talked to someone."

Probably not.

But I won't, because Jerry wouldn't have. Stupid? Maybe. But it's what I'm doing.

She has my best interests at heart, and I reach out and squeeze her arm, just a bit, before I walk away. "You're probably right." And I walk away and leave her there.

Dammit, I can't even get mad at her.

"Where are you going?" she calls after me.

Back to indulging my delusions, chasing implausible shadows. Away from here. "To talk to someone." And then I walk away and leave her there.

I drive home after that, and pick up my little-used laptop and then I drive back to the prison and check it in. As long as he's not on a network, Wilczeck is allowed computer access.

They escort me into his cell, and it's about ten feet before that I get cold feet. What am I doing? This is pretty paranormal. I should be preserving it for study.

Paranormal, but not natural. This isn't a ghost in the machine at all. It's a dangerous computer that could kill us before we could blink if it put it's mind to it, and I'm not just thinking of SkyNet.

Some things should never be built because we cannot control them. Brad Wilczek has learned that, and I am learning it too. If something you made could spin out of control, don't make it.

That's how you keep bad things from happening. Stay in control.

Says the guy who investigates alien abductions for a living.

Still, it's a good rule of thumb. For example, if I had stayed in control of the situation with Tooms, Scully wouldn't occasionally – so seldom that I almost don't notice – come into the office with bags under her eyes and move the trash can a little to the left so it covers the air vent.

Talk about needing to talk to someone.

This creation of Wilczek's? Totally out of control. Totally could kill us all. Therefore – well, I don't know how to arrest a computer, so I'll just have to kill it. Simple.

They open the cell and let me in, Wilczek scrambles to sit up.

"How much time do you need?" I ask him, opening the computer as I sit on his bed.

He swallows and looks up at me. "This is what I have to work with?"

I nod.

"Can't be done."

It's a computer, isn't it? "Why not?"

"I suppose technically I can, but..."

"You can't leave this cell," I tell him.

"You'll have to plug it in to an outlet. The battery won't last long."

Oh. And I was worried he'd want some kind of network access. "Okay." I go to get an extention cord and leave him to his typing.

Brad Wilczek types for five hours and twenty-three minutes before he's done. I spend that time reading the newspaper (boring) and doing the crossword (more boring). I'm looking for something else to do when he calls out, "Agent Mulder!" and I run back to his cell. "I'll need the portable drive I had when I came in and a standard floppy disk," he says.

I go back to the office and get his box of stuff and dig through it until I find a black rectangle that plugs into a computer and a box of floppies, then return to Brad and pass it into his cell through the bars and he plugs it into the computer and hits a button, then does the same with the disk. "All you have to do," he says, "is put the portable drive in the B port. COS will automatically read the drive – it's an automatic response, like a reflex. That will give you administrative control and automatically read the next thing you put in the floppy drive. So you put in the disk, and it'll read it, and that's it."

Simple as that?

"It might put up a fight. Doors and elevators are all monitored by the system. You should take the stairs. The main terminal is on the twenty-ninth floor – that's the only terminal that it can't disconnect from when it realizes it's being corrupted."

Simple. Walk to the twenty-ninth floor and try not to die. "Anything else?"

"Don't discuss what you're doing – you could take it by surprise. Oh, and if you go to my house and steal one of my liscense plates, it should think your car is allowed in."

Not likely. It killed the last FBI agent who so much as set foot in the door. "Thanks."

"Good luck," he tells me, passing the laptop through the bars. "You'll need it."

I procrastinate after stealing Brad's liscense plate by sitting in a diner and having a slice of apple pie and trying not to think about what I'm about to do – climb to the top of a building and kill the computer that is the holy grail of artificial intelligence.

Maybe it's not my holy grail, but it's someone's.

Whatever, I tell myself. It killed Jerry. Let it rot.

But I don't quite believe that.

I go back to the car, drive to Eurisko, and get out. That is a tall building.

Quit stalling, Mulder.

It's 2:30 in the morning. No better time. More than half the building is deserted. I walk around and look up again. Still tall.

I open my trunk to get my equipment when a car pulls up behind me.

But what gets out of the car is the last thing I expected.

"Mulder!"

It's Scully. "Scully! What are you doing here?"

"Someone or something's been scanning my computer files." She runs up to me and I can tell she's wearing her pajamas and a jacket. Cute pajamas. "Tapping my phones. I traced the line. It came from somewhere in there." She points to Eurisko.

Okay. Once again, that's a big building. "It's the machine."

She lets out a breath. "How can we get in?"

Well, we'll try Wilczek's plan. "You remember the Trojan Horse?" I pull out the liscense plate. Wish me luck, Wilczek.

She smiles at me and hops in the passenger side of my car. I screw the new plate in place at the front and we pull into the employee parking. At first, I'm kind of encouraged. It scans us for a minute and then a little green light that says "pass" comes on and the metal gate raises. "Open sesame," I say in my favorite creepy voice, trying not to think that this was too easy and the D.O.D really should stop trying to get their hands on such a dumb machine. Scully just glares at me. Turns out she was right when the way gets blocked and the gate starts coming down right on top of my – oh, my car.

Yeah, well, that was my car.

My insurance company's gonna hate me.

I grab my backpack with the disk and my screwdrivers and other fun things and we both crawl out the driver's side. The horn is blaring, so I open the hood and disconnect it.

Yeah, I think the stairs were a good idea. "So much for the element of surprise. What do you say we take the stairs?" I ask her, pretending that that was my idea." We cross the garage and walk into the basement, then up the stairs.

Scully is silent except for the clomping of the heels she is wearing with her pajamas. I'm not sure she owns anything else. We clomp up twenty-eight floors and I realize she has no idea where we're going. "Twenty-eight down, one to go."

Which is when the lights go out.

"Oh, great. Mulder?"

Where the hell is my flashlight? I begin searching the backpack. Ah, found it. That would have sucked if I'd forgotten it.

I turn it on and shine it at Scully. "Trick or treat." She sighs. The flashlight is shining on the wall though – number twenty-nine. I bet it can see us.

She reaches for the doorknob.

I should have brought gloves for just this purpose. "No!"

"What are you doing?"

Not dying. I pull out my giant gloves and a screwdriver – plastic handle. Nonconductive. "I don't want to make the same mistake Drake made." I touch the screwdriver to the lock and sparks fly everywhere. Scully jumps back and shrieks. Something starts beeping. Door's still locked, too.

It can see us. Security camera. And I said twenty-ninth floor – it must have some clue what that means. I point at the camera and Scully shines the flashlight there. But at least it knows that we know that it knows.

I pull the other glove out of the bag and put it over the camera. "What are you looking at?"

Okay, there's a vent there. I'm too big to fit in, but Scully's not. She can climb through and unlock the door. Simple. "Take off your shoes."

"Why?"

I point to the vent and she rolls her eyes. "Mulder..."

It's right then that I remember her nightmares, the ones that we don't talk about. Ever. But I don't have another plan, and we've got to get out of here. She sighs. "Fine." She kicks out her shoes and I boost her up into the vent.

"Unh...." she groans.

This always works in the movies. "There should be a way for you to drop down and open the door."

I can hear her banging around in the duct as she crawls toward the door. The banging gets fainter and then I can't hear anymore.

"Come on, Scully," I mutter.

I can hear the heater humming, and nothing else. God, this is dull. And then the door beeps. And buzzes.

"Scully?"

The door opens. But it's not Scully. It's Peterson. "Agent Mulder? What are you doing here?"

What am I doing here? "I'm here investigating the death of Agent Lamana (close enough) and I got locked in the stairwell. Agent Scully was supposed to be getting help." Or something.

"Do you think it has anything to do with the COS?"

Uh-oh. "Why do you ask?"

He gestures down the hall. "Let me show you something."

He guides me down the hall to the room I was trying to get to – the COS control room. Convenient. "The machine's been acting all crazy. Power surges, shut off. That's why I'm here so late."

Well, we'll put an end to that – but all the toilets might run over. "Where's the B port?"

"Oh, it's right back here." He directs me into another room, where I plug in the little gray rectangle. Simple.

Too simple.

"Look, are you sure you know what you're doing? Because if you don't, it's my job on the line."

The screen above the port reads Access Denied. "Damn."

I pull it out and plug it into the next slot over – the whole damn panel is labled "B Port". A green light blinks on, and the screen says "BEGIN ALGORITHM CODE PROGRAM", while a loud voice announces, "system access granted."

Sounds promising. I run back over to the keyboard. "User code level seven," the computer continues.

"Now I can put in the virus," I tell him, and I sit down and grab my backpack, but that's when I see Peterson has a gun.

Too simple.

"Not bad, Agent Mulder. You know, I've been trying to access the CPU for the past two years." D.O.D. Dammit. "Now please, take out your gun and remove the clip." Sigh. I do what he says. "Careful," he warns me. What am I gonna do?

"Defense Department?" I ask him, like it matters.

"Lets just say our paychecks are signed by the same person. Now give me the diskette and step away from the console."No. NO no no no no. Crap. "You don't want to test my resolve, Agent Mulder." He holds out his hand and wiggles his fingers. I give him the disc. Now what the hell am I gonna-

"Put down the gun."

Scully. Not having a good day. In fact she's so pissed off I slip out of my chair and back away. She is scary right now.

"Look, you may think you know what you're dealing with -"

"Shut up and drop the gun." Which he does, and the disk too. But he turns to her.

"You're making a mistake, Agent Scully. Compromising your sworn duty. This operation is more sensitive than you can possibly imagine."

The worst part? She might buy it. "Don't listen to him." I run around the table to grab the disk.

"The technology in this machine is of enormous scientific interest."

"The machine's a monster, Scully. It's already killed two people. They won't be able to handle it any better than Wilczek did," I tell her, and I pray that I'm right, and also that she'll see that if I am.

"Make no mistake ...You will be held accountable."

There is silence. Utter silence. And then I know. "Mulder, put in the disk."

She's on my side.

So I put in the disk and the computer starts talking, and it sounds a lot like HAL. "What are you doing, Brad? Don't do this, Brad." And then it's gibberish and gibberish on the screen. "Brad....Brad....Why?"

And then it's over.

And the lights come on.

Part of me is even sad for the damn thing. I take the clip out of Peterson's gun and hand it to him. "Tell your superiors it had to be done." And then I grab Scully's arm and we leave together.

I try to visit Brad the next day, but he's gone. Transferred to an unspecified facility by guys in camo. I start calling every detention and protective custody facility I can think of, I call Congress, I even make a dead end call to the Attorney General, and finally, five days later, someone agrees to meet me at the park across from my building.

Weird place to meet.

So I'm not surprised that it's Deep Throat, sitting on a bench. "Good day, Mister Mulder."

Good day to you too. I sit down next to him. "Where is Brad Wilczek?" I ask.

No answer.

"I checked with Congressman Klebanon and the Department of Corrections Subcommittee. I even petitioned the Attorney General's office." He knows all this.

"You won't find him."

"They can't just take a man like Brad Wilczek without an explanation."

"They can do anything they want."

I suppose they can.

"Where is he?"

"In the middle of what we in the trade call "hard bargaining.""

Nothing will come of that. "Wilczek won't deal. He'll never work for them."

"Loss of freedom does funny things to a man, and remember, Wilczek confessed to two murders, and you effectively destroyed the only evidence that could have exonerated him."

That never occurred to me, but I'll bet it occurred to Brad. He knew what I was asking better than I did. "What else could I have done?"

"Nothing... Unless you were willing to let the technology survive."

It died, then. I killed it, at least. "The Department of Defense still hasn't found anything?"

"They've been on it for five days. Wilczek's virus was thorough. It left no trace of the artificial intelligence. The machine is dead."

I can only hope.

Scully goes to the funeral with me that afternoon, and we watch Jerry's casket lowered into the ground in silence. For all that Jerry was, I trusted him with my life – and he never let me down until the day he died, when I learned that there will be someone there to fill that void. I thought for the last few years that I didn't need that. That I could go it alone.

But I can't.

Someone has to watch my back. Someone I can trust, even if what I trust her to do isn't what I would do myself.