TITLE:            Foolproof

AUTHOR:       David Stoddard-Hunt

CATEGORY:    S, heavy Angst

KEYWORDS:    MSR, veers from canon in mid-episode

CONTENT:      mature themes, some rough language

EP REFS:         Je Souhaite

SUMMARY:     Be careful what you wish for.

ARCHIVE:       Take, show, tell.

DISCLAIMER:  He made them, I made this. He profited, I

haven't.

FEEDBACK:     dmstoddardhunt@yahoo.com

WEBSITE:        http://www.iwtbxf.com/paige

*****************

Rock Creek Park

Washington, D.C., NW

time: his present

Once upon a lifetime, I had everything I could ever

wish for, and I threw it all away. A career, a calling. A

life! Of sorts, anyway. A love. Threw it away on a whim, at

the altar of my singular obsession. One wish granted, one

obsession resolved. And now? I wish I was dead. But

it's no use. I've run out of wishes.

So, I've come here. The last step, and I'm ready. Not

too many people who can say that. No surprise, really.

There aren't too many people, period. Check that. There's

exactly one person too many.

There is one thing I still don't understand. The

barrel of a gun: why doesn't it taste like blood? I mean, it

only makes sense. Blood tastes like metal. A gun barrel is metal.

See where I'm going with this? A syllogism for a suicide.

Plus, if true, it would have a certain, satisfying irony.

Something Scully would appreciate. If only she were here. Yeah.

If only.

It felt smooth, that gun barrel, cool and unforgiving.

I'm not quite sure why I said that, actually. I meant

"unyielding." I wondered how far back I'd have to push it in order

to do it right.

Then, all of a sudden, I was worrying about the

homoerotic subtext of the act. Christ. Sound ludicrous? Well,

yeah...now. But, at that moment? It made me uncomfortable, to

tell you the truth. Which is majorly fucked up because

there's no one here to judge me about anything I do.

Or think. Or feel. Not a single, fucking soul, save me

and mine. And my soul is mortally sick, not long for

this world, even if my body does manage to carry on.

No one. I made sure of that. Wished it so.

I inspected the gun first. Wiped down the barrel

thoroughly. Wouldn't want to pick up germs or grit off of it

before use. I know, it's crazy. But, it wasn't mine. I'd gotten it

from a pawn shop in the North East, just four blocks

from the capitol. Deeply discounted and unregistered. Who

knows where that barrel had been?

I knew where it was going, though. Watched it all the

way up. Sitting in front of the capitol facing the Mall.

Nice view. All the way up. Our bench was off down by the

Jefferson Memorial. I'd like to claim that I could see it, pick

it out from under the trees, picture us sitting there, but

that would have been a lie. And what would be the sense of

lying at this point? There were thousands of lies lying

fallow all over the District. None of them would make the

slightest bit of difference to the next few minutes of my miserable

existence.

Watched the gun as it rose, menacing the sunlight and

chasing it behind cloud cover.

Watched as it rose, tracing the shape of the

Washington Monument with its tip. Made it do a flying u-turn

homeward.

Brought it to my lips. Tried to watch that, went

crosseyed. Stuck it in my mouth and nearly chipped a tooth. Big.

Air moved in and out of the barrel.That kind of surprised

me. Did that for a small eternity, breathed through the

barrel of a gun.

Pulled the hammer back. Odd to do it facing the

business end. Pulled the trigger. Also hard to do. Pushed it,

more like. Grimaced, in spite of myself.

Click.

Blinked in surprise, then in frustration that I'd have

to go through the whole damned process again. Checked the

chamber: loaded for bear. More than enough. Loaded for

Fox would have sufficed.

Click.

Click, click, click, click.

I suppose it's still there, that pistol, in the middle

of the road in the direction of the Capitol South

Metro station. As far as I could throw it. What did I need

it for? For exchange back at the pawn shop? Shit, and

I'd failed to get a receipt. Honestly, though? I never

do remember to ask, so it's a moot point anyway.

Besides, back at the gun shop, I was fairly sure that

no one would ask me to produce one. Damn sure,

actually.

So.

I tried dozens of them, all calibers, all makes. I

even tried a MAC Ten, magazine fully loaded. Nothing. Not

one of them fired. I even tried a fucking starter's

pistol. Not so much as a cap gun pop. Silence. Dead silence.

The answer dawned long before I stopped trying to

ventilate my insides.

Jinnayah had granted my wish, and more. Peace on

earth. Her version of it, anyway. No people equals no

conflict equals peace on earth. But she didn't stop there. I

had to be taught a lesson. No working guns equals no bang

bang equals no dead Mulder equals peace on earth.

Warped fucking sense of humor.

Hell, and I thought I was cynical? Jini takes the

cake. Maybe five centuries' enslavement to a curse will do

that to a person. Peace on earth? Even the crickets, if

there are any left, have stopped singing.

"You are one sick, fucking son of a motherfucking...!"

I stumbled over my anger and out into the middle of

the road. Reflexively, I checked for the threat of

oncoming cars. None near-by, nor any in the future, near or

far. No roar of natural gas powered buses.  Not even an

echo to my little rant. We can't let an echo disturb Peace,

now, can we? Something to be said for her

thoroughness, I guess.

Peace on earth, maybe. But not peace of mind. Nor

peace for the soul. Jini knew. Must have. So this is her way

of punishing me. And for what? Altruistic impulses?

Sick and twisted. And she's made it so that I can't even

punch my own ticket out. Sick, twisted and cruel.

I think I've found a way around that roadblock now,

around the Jinnayah. An old fashioned way, but a serviceable

one. An oldie but goodie you can dance to, but only once.

Rock Creek Park has an abstract beauty from this far

up. I'm sure there's some wry sense in which 'not seeing

the forest for the trees' could be applied if I had the

energy or the inclination left to work at it. From this

height, the creek is a blood dark vein meandering through the

verdant flesh of the Earth.

God, Scully, I'm so sorry. At the time, it had seemed

like the perfect thing to do. "At the time," hell. It

was just three days ago. A once-in-a-lifetime

opportunity calling out to me, dangling a tantalizing lure: all

the answers. I had to take it. Now, the only thing that

calls to me is the soft green carpet of the meadow floor so

far down, beckoning with promises of its own, both

fleeting and eternal, of comfort and oblivion.

My plan was perfect, Scully. Foolproof, so I'd

thought. Then again, I'd thought my original wish was fool

proof, too. Jinn, as she lives to do, proved otherwise.

A day or two roaming about the District was all I

thought I'd need. Ahead of me, I had unfettered access to all

of the secrets. And I found them, if not every last one,

then more than I'd ever need and, certainly, all that I'd

ever craved. But, you know the saying "you can't take it

with you"? Well, you can't. I've tried. And it's cost me

dearly. In a moment, it will end up costing my life.

My life. That's not even the dearest part. No, not by

a long shot.

No pun intended.

Three wishes. I'd used one to get here, had one to

blow and one to get home. Far sighted and foolproof. Well,

fuck me. What happens when the designer of the plan is

the biggest, most near-sighted fool of all?

Man, it really is a long way down. I wonder how long

it will take. What's the formula for the speed of falling

bodies? Da Vinci's feather and cannonball dropped from

the Leaning Tower. I'm sure I knew that formula once.

Hell, even my curiosity is dying.

I take a business card from my wallet, a thin sliver

of my lost life, and flip it out over the railing,

timing its fluttering descent in my head. One mississippi,

two mississippi, three mississippi, four... By seven, I

haven't seen it for a mississippi or two.  This is it. Time to

go after that little sliver of my past, and rid me of my

miserable present in the process.

The railing isn't tall, but its wrought iron is

Victorian, ornate. I have to go carefully, lift my thigh high to

clear the pointed finials. Even now, in the instant before

my final act, I don't want to risk hurting the family

jewels. How fucked up is that?

Peace on earth - who'd have guessed it would be hell?

Well, in a few seconds, my little slice of that

sulfurous pie will be gone. Fuck you anyway, Jinn. Lucky for me,

there are still some things in life you don't have to

wish for to achieve.

***********************

Outside the Hoover Building

E Street, near 9th NW

Washington, D.C.

time: 72 hours before his present

"Jini!"

I feel kind of foolish yelling that name, as if my

last name is "Nelson" and good old Roger Healey and I have

gotten into yet another humorous scrape down in Cocoa

Beach that only...

"Jinnayah!"

I can feel the tendons in my neck strain to push out

the name with more force.

Give a chimpanzee a revolver, my ass. I'm nobody's

monkey, goddamnit.

"Jini, you're beginning to piss me off! You... This

isn't what I wished for and you damn well know it!"

A Metrobus looms up in front of me. Startled, I jump

out of its way. It dawns on me a moment too late that I've

been the one moving and that the bus is frozen in place,

straddling on-coming lanes of traffic in an ultimately

futile effort to turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue.

"Bitch!" I snarl, embarrassed and angry at my unseen

companion. "Barbara Eden would never have..."

"Funny thing about Barbara Eden," the sound of a

woman's voice from just behind my right ear makes me flinch

anew. "She's actually quite an intelligent woman. But she

played me as such a fawning namby-pamby! Didn't do me justice

in the slightest. And it's not as if I gave that prick

Sidney Sheldon any real cause for revenge. No more than he

deserved, anyway."

She has got to be kidding.

"You've gotta be kidding!"

"Nope," Jinn says equably, lighting a cigarette. The

ghost of a smirk haunts her face. "I didn't grant him half of

what he deserved, that pervert. I had no idea he'd be so

incensed," she says, amusement bubbling to the surface. "So. A few

years later, the early seventies I think, I'd been exiled to Bebe

Rebozo's place in Florida for the duration of the impeachment

hearings. That's where I discovered "Jeanie," in syndication on

UHF."

"UHF? You've been out of circulation longer than I

thought."

This remark elicits an oddly familiar look.

"Sheldon had simple needs, desires. He merely wanted

to be known as both the greatest lover and author of the age. His

precise wishes, however, if I recall correctly..."

"And you always do, don't you?"

"And I always do," she agrees, continuing, "... were

to have his "sexploits" known the world over, and to become the

best selling among his peers, a group of people whom he considered

to be the finest authors living. Himself excepted, of course. I

saw a way to grant both wishes in one fell swoop."

"Writing trashy novels in which the handsome, studly

hero is an embarrassingly transparent alter-ego for the author?"

"Mmmhmm. Unfortunately, others outside of his peer

group picked up on this formula for success and ran with it,

farther than old Sidney. Jacqueline Susann, Judith Krantz..."

"Pride goeth before the fall," I mumble to myself.

"Don't it just?" Jini snickers. She seems lost for a

moment in a particularly engaging memory . "Anyway, 'Jeanie' was

his petty, impotent attempt at revenge. The joke's on him,

wouldn't you say?"

I can only gape at her. Obviously, the Jinnayah takes

a perverse pleasure in her work.

"But my wish wasn't like that! It was totally

altruistic, the antithesis of prideful." Has this curse made her so

capricious that she can wipe out the entire human race - okay,

almost the entire race - without a care, simply to prove a point?

"Oh? Not prideful? When will you people ever learn? No

matter how hard I try to help, you always screw things up,

though, on the plus side, I always end up  having a good laugh."

And a small point, at that?

"My wish was as fool proof as it was brief. Only a

bent, misanthropic..." I grope for a word of sufficient

magnitude, "chucklehead," and fail, "could have warped a wish for

'peace on earth, good will towards men' into this!" I gesture to

the empty streets.

"No. You wished for peace on earth. I gave it to you.

You said nothing about 'good will towards men.' If you had, I

would have chewed you up on the sexist pig lingo, anyway."

"You know what I meant, damn it. You know what I

meant!" I'm losing this one. It is possible that, in the effort to

be totally altruistic, my eagerness got the better of my

common sense. Damnit. "A technicality. And no one says

'lingo' or 'sexist pig' anymore!"  Well, that was lame, but it's

all I've got left.

"So, what? You expect me to change the hearts of six

billion people?"

"Six? Just last fall it was five billion, wasn't it?"

My attempt at deflection doesn't succeed in the slightest.

"No religion in history has been able to pull that

off. Not Allah or Buddah or Christ. But you want me to do that

in your name?"

Now I see her point, even if it is stomach-wrenching

to have one's own arrogance highlighted in a bilious

chartreuse. Still, she doesn't have to be so smug about it.

"I bet you wish you hadn't made your first wish, don't

you?"

So damned smug. I can practically feel my spine

stiffen. A plan begins to form. Actually, it's just the wisp of an

idea, and it may turn out not to be the smartest thing I've ever

done, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, am I right? And I'm

determined not to let her get the better of me.

"I still have two wishes, true?"

She nods.

"And all I have to do is call out for you and you'll

pop in?"

"Yeah." She's wary now, but curious.

"Then, I think I'm going to stick around for a while."

"Here?"

Her eyebrows arch above the top of her sunglasses. A

pale imitation of Scully, but I'm not going to tell her that. She

might turn me into a newt.

"Well, yeah. There are some sites around town that

I've always wanted to visit but haven't been able to. You know how

it is."

She continues to stare, then relents. "Knock yourself

out, slugger."

I look off into space for a second, smiling. When I 

look back, she's gone. Now, for all I know, I'm the only living

being on earth. Literally one of a kind.

So, okay, here I am. Now what? I look around to get my

bearings and head off in the direction of the Federal Emergency

Management Agency. It's a flyer, but it's a start.

***********************

Foggy Bottom U-Stor-It

Virginia Avenue

Washington, D.C. SW

time: 45 hours before his present

The Freedom of Information Act was never like this. I

had the keys to the entire kingdom, an all-access, backstage

pass. Deep backstage. Even so, the search was more tedious than

I'd have guessed. Probably should have wished for a metal

detector for help in finding the proverbial needles in this federal

haystack. After a slow start, I was like a kid at Christmas.

Wait, forgot: officially Jewish - a kid at Hannukkah. Whatever.

Considering the monstrous deeds I was uncovering, I was most like

a kid at Halloween.

FEMA was a bust. It's not like I'd hoped to find

Spender's office. I really didn't even expect him to have one.

Okay, well maybe some small part of me might have. "Excuse me,

Smokey? I mean, uh, Mr. Spender? Do you have a minute? There's a

problem, Sir, with the, uh, with the copier." Man, I'd have

given my eye teeth.

There wasn't a CGB anybody or a somethingsomething

Spender listed in any of the public directories, of course,

nor was there anything in the director's private listing. I

did find one name in the Office of National Preparedness that

might have been an anagram: P(aul) C. Denberg. Wasn't

Spender. One glaring weakness - missing an 's.'  That, and the fact

that, other than a handful of credit card receipts for a

certain motel once a month in the Virginia hinterlands, there was

nothing at all incriminating of any sort in Mr. Denberg's office.

I found no files, electronic or paper, anywhere in the

building under either "v" or "a" for the 'viral apocalypse,' or

"i" for 'invasion comma of earth by aliens.' There were a ton

of reports outlining various and sundry disasters, methods of

coping with same, and management strategies for the recovery in

each situation. The sheer volume was disturbing, but that

is the agency's job. I have to admit that I was taken aback

by the depth into which the agency had explored certain

potentialities: fog, collision with an asteroid, and the return of an

ice-age, but I certainly wasn't going to lose any sleep over

it. Not now. These were all catastrophes from which, if

unavoidable, we could at least expect to recover. I was looking for a report

on a certain disaster which we would aid and abet, and from

which no hope of recovery existed. Colonization. If a tree

falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it? I wondered

whether, on this plane of my existence, the date was still set.

Surely, Jinnayah hadn't wiped out all life in the universe

just to guarantee peace on Earth. Had she? The more I thought

about that one, the less I wanted to ask.

The truth I had to accept now was that, just because

all doors were open, it didn't mean that what I sought was going

to be there lying around. After five fruitless hours, I was

on the verge of using my second wish. I began to compose it

in my head, evaluating each of the possible consequences that a

five hundred year old, borderline personality might conjure. I

couldn't find an alternative that wasn't liable to backfire

horribly.

Just up C Street, at the State Department, I found

cabinets full of historical material covering the Roswell period and

the years of my father's involvement. I uncovered hard evidence

of an alien presence on this planet, but nothing of the conspiracy

to abet their agenda. There was nothing at all in the archives

after 1973. Moreover, there was nothing on abductees. Nothing on

Samantha. She may be safe in starlight, but I realized that it

still mattered to me to apportion the blame for her suffering. I

still needed to know the truth.

Boxes were piling up outside both FEMA and State, with

the D.O.D. still to go, and I was on foot. So I chose a

centralized storage location - this U-Stor-It - and headed for the

holy grail which, I suspected, lay under lock and

electronic key at the heart of the conspiracy.

I believe in evil. I've experienced it in many forms.

To as great an extent as any, the Department of Defense has

been at the root of my experiences. The long walk from State

gave me time to think about this, a bonus I really didn't

need. Down Virginia Avenue to the Lincoln Memorial. A glance

across the reflecting pond toward our bench, then across the

Arlington Memorial over the Potomac.

Maybe my search for the truth has been about payback.

Payback for being saddled with a certain knowledge of evil,

here on Earth and...elsewhere. There was a sense in which I

owed my life to the denizens of the building ahead of me.

Granted, Spender had his own black-lunged purpose for the

meatball surgery I received. But, if his lust for

ubermensch-hood hadn't gotten the better of him, I'd have died. True,

they did leave me stretched cruciform, hanging between life

and death. And I would have died there, if not for Scully.

I clambered over a bridge abutment and up onto

Washington Boulevard. Lucky for me it hadn't been rush hour at

the moment I'd made my first wish. Still, the highway was

a car lot jammed with hundreds of pre-owned vehicles, enough

so that I had to concentrate on my route. Moreover, I

found myself distracted by another world, another life, to

which, more and more, I wanted to return:  Scully.

Keep moving, damnit.

Scully.

Focus. Plan a search method.

Scully!

Focus.

Ford Focus.

"Ow! Shit! Shitshitshitshit."

New plan. Foresee roadblocks and try to avoid them.

Scully.

Faster. The faster this gets done, the sooner I'm

home.

Home. Scully. Run!

What if something goes wrong?

Nothing. I've always got an out, a third wish.

I'm not going to need it. Nothing will go wrong. The

plan is flawless. Every answer I've ever sought.

Flawless. Scully. Home.

Run! Where? Where am I running? To her or from her?

Damnit, I'm not even sure.

"I wish I'd changed into running shoes... whoa! No.

That is not a wish! Not a wish. It's just a figure of speech.

Not a wish, not a ..."

I slowed to a halt, bending double, hands on my knees,

catching my breath. No sneakers, thankfully. My ankles

still ached, though. Not too bright to be running in

brogues. Even less so to be tossing around the term "wish"

carelessly. Not too smart to be thinking too much or too long about

home. When I could stand straight again, my destination

loomed just a parking lot away.

There are more than a few buildings in the federal

district known popularly by a name other than the official

designation of the tenant. The Executive Mansion is better known

by its color. The Department of Defense is better known by

its shape, although from the deviltry I'd seen and experienced in

its depths, I'd have thought "Pentagram" more appropriate

than Pentagon.

Once inside the entry gate, fortune smiled on me

several times over. A checkpoint guard's electronic key card

hanging on a hook, a lapse in protocol I'm certain he'd

imagined would only be momentary. Winking out of existence an instant

later would ordinarily be quite unimaginable. That key card

got me into the two outer, public rings. A secretary, in an

extraordinary breach of security that would never come

to light, had saved the system passwords for an entire

department on the underside of a mouse pad. It was

enough to get me through to the innermost ring and, from

there, into the depths of the Pentagon, the "white house" of

the shadow government.

The descent filled me with an inexplicable dread. I

was fairly certain that there was no one down there to

apprehend me. Jinnayah's interpretation of peace on earth was

enough to deny me even hostile companionship. No, it wasn't

the threat of being caught.

Crossing the Hallway Styx, I felt a presence that

pervaded and held mastery over this underworld. Spender's

footsteps still echoed, his ashen stench hung in the dank

passageways. His watery glare sufficed for its light. This wasn't

his office, or home. Nor was it the center of the

Consortium. But, if there was holy grail to my quest, this was the

castle keep in which it would be found. This underworld was

Spender's domain.

I was stilled by the thought that there should be

alarms, background music, something to mark what was quite

possibly the most auspicious moment of my career. A fanfare,

something!

"Nothing momentous is going to happen, Mulder, unless

you get to work."

Scully's voice, plain as day. Perfect. What better

fanfare could I have wished for?

"That's just another figure of speech," I reminded the

stale air, breaking into the first of dozens of storage

rooms.

Eleven hours later, coat and tie long gone, feet

undoubtedly blistered, I lugged the last of several dollies into

the storage shed, loading boxes full of files and

materiel, evidence of a coming conflict for which our surrender

had long been tendered, onto the rusting shelf units

within.

It was time to call Jinn. I turned toward the door

wondering how loudly I'd have to scream to summon her. Not very,

apparently, for there she was, just outside the unit,

peering in.

"How did you...?"

"Oh, that's just one more thing ole Sidney got wrong.

There was no need to make poor Larry Hagman blow his lungs

out every time he needed, well, you know. Truth is, I hear just

fine, when I want to."

Whatever. I just wanted to get moving.

"Look, all I want you to do is zap the contents of

this storage unit, myself and you included back into the real

world, okay? So, come on." I motioned for her to join me inside.

Jinn stood on the threshold, arms crossed, appearing

very much, I thought briefly, like her Hollywood

doppelganger about to grant a wish. At that, I started to smile,

until I noticed that she'd taken a step back.

"Hey! Whoa! Where are you going?"

"Oh, no," she began in obvious discomfort. "I've just

spent too much time in places like this. Way too

much time."

"Oh. Oh, oh." I was seized by a pang of compassion for

the Jinnayah, not having considered until that moment

what rigors a half-millenium cursed might have imposed. "I

know there's a light switch in here somewhere. There is a

light, after all." Shortly, I located the switch and

the bulb flickered to life.

There was a lesson in there somewhere, I knew. "No

good deed goes unpunished," or something like that.

Sometime later, however, I'd alter it to read "never show

compassion to a Jini."

Naive in the moment, I turned triumphantly, fresh from

the rediscovery of electricity, and beckoned her in. Still

she refused, only, now, that ghost of a smirk had

returned.

"In a minute," hauteur coloring her tone, "I'm pretty

sure you aren't going to want to be in there either."

The arrogance! I hadn't even made my wish yet. I was

trying to form an appropriately measured response when

it hit me. The tang of ozone. I'd seen the light

fixture before this but, in the gloom of the storage bin,

hadn't noticed the frayed wiring that led to it. Wiring which

had begun sparking and smoldering the second I'd flipped

the light switch. A small corona of flickering blue

appeared at the edges of the top-most box of evidence from

State, quickly ensheathing its neighbor from the D.O.D.

Shit.

I don't remember precisely what happened over the next

few minutes, but have been able to piece together the

general, calamitous outline.

I climbed up on the affected shelving unit in order to

rescue the two top boxes from the fire. I started

pulling on the nearest box, only to have it catch on the

flanged lip of the unit. Scaling sideways along the shelf, I

had some notion that I'd be able to lift it up from

underneath, gaining leverage from the adjacent shelf unit. As I

pushed, fresh air fed a tongue of flame which unfurled with

ferocious speed. I whipped my hand away, trying to

catch my balance on the other shelf, but succeeded only in

pulling it down on top of me, metal shelving, burning

boxes and all.

"Jini!" So what if I actually did sound like Major

Nelson? Who the hell cared? The main thing was to keep my

head, avoid panic.

"Jinnayah, a little help here?" The fact that I'd been

immobilized from the waist down could only add an

appropriate note of desperation to my voice. Just the thing to

convince her to lend a hand.

She shrugged. Apologetic half smile for good measure.

"If you've got a wish you'd like to make, I'd be glad

to help with that."

I tried to convince myself that I could use that to my

advantage.

"I mean, what other options have you got?"

Jini, we have a winner.

"Not many," I admitted. "Okay, here's what I wish. I

want all of these boxes transported to this same storage

facility in the real world. Oh, and with fire extinguished."

"That's it? No..." she pointed toward me and made what

I hoped was the gesture that signified being popped back

home rather than winked out of existence.

"No. I need to be sure, as sure as I can be, that

these boxes get back to the real world safe and sound. Then I'll

go."

She seemed to be weighing my words carefully.

"So. These boxes, same storage facility, back in the

big, bad real?"

"Fire free."

"Fire free," she nodded. "That's your wish?"

I nodded, my chin knocking painfully on the concrete

floor.

"Done."

It took a moment for the feeling to return in my legs,

and half that for the pain to kick in. But the boxes were

indeed gone, and now it was time for me, er, us to go, too. I

wish I had just made that wish, but no, I had to get in

just that little, something extra.

"Y'know," I said, shaking off the spidery bulk of the

now empty shelf unit, beginning to rise, "it's really too

bad that I couldn't just trust you to stick with the

spirit of the second wish, because, then I could have wished

us all back on that one, lock stock and barrel, to the

real world, and still have had a wish saved to do something

nice for you."

I don't know what it was. Maybe arrogance begetting

arrogance. I really don't know. I do know I should

damn well have kept my mouth shut. If for no other reason

than I would have been able to discern the popping noise of

over-heated rivets and the groan of shifting metal,

enabling me to duck and avoid the buggy whip of an iron wall

joist, instead of taking a glancing blow to the back of my

head as actually occurred.

I must have been unconscious for more than a few

moments because, when I came to, Jinn had a concerned

expression on her face and had actually braved both the confines

of the shed and the flames to kneel beside me.

"You do know that, when I said "knock yourself out,

slugger," I didn't mean for you to take me quite so

literally."

Flames. Fire.

"What did you say?"

Close by, on the floor, licking up the sides of the

shed. All around me.

Jinn was speaking again. She was kneeling in fire!

Couldn't she see that? Feel that? Speaking. I tried to her

listen over the roar of the flames.

Fire. All around us. Her. Me. Fire, the world on...

"Don't you have something else you want to ask me?"

She was shouting.

From where I lay, the flames leapt to such a height as

to obscure Jinn's face. Growing, spreading. I could feel

its heat on every inch of exposed skin.

It was coming for me.

"Get me out of here! Jini! Get me the hell out of

here!"

I couldn't see her, now, for the conflagration.

"Is that what you wish?"

Yes, goddamnit. Why was she being difficult? Didn't

she see? Fire? Surrounding, enveloping, plotting its next

and final scorching move? "Get me the hell away from

here!"

"Just so I have this clear, your wish is to be moved

safely away from the fire?"

"Yes, goddamnit! Yes!"

Strange, but in my memory of those events, I hear a

wistfulness, almost a note of regret, in her reply.

"Done."

***********************

St. Paul's Lutheran Church

4900 Connecticut Avenue NW

Washington, D.C.

time: 8 hours before his present

At first, I talked to myself. You got a problem with

that? First person to third. How 'bout that? I talked to

myself to distract from my thoughts, memories, my past, my

future. After that, I talked to the world, just to affirm my

existence in it. Finally, as always, I talked to Scully. Just because.

Because, even when the earth was full of people to talk to,

among the many who heard, she was the only one who listened.

Because I believed that, even if I was alone, she would always

hear me. Because, if I didn't at least try, there wouldn't be a

solitary chance she'd hear. And the weight of that thought

would be crushing.

Ultimately, I found myself here. To talk to God, I

suppose. Whose? Couldn't be mine. Scully's perhaps. I think I'm

in need of absolution. The way I see it, I've got two possible

futures: one long and tormented, the other short and violent.

Either way, if I'm to have even the slightest chance of

seeing Scully in a possible hereafter, I'm going to need absolving.

I'm also going to have to stop thinking of the hereafter

as a "possibility." I sound like a death bed convert, true.

But, I'm way past caring about any hypocrisy. Scully once

said that I could believe in almost anything except the

existence of the Judeo-Christian God. Well, now there's little

left to believe in except for that God and myself, and

confidence in my credibility has taken a severe beating,

recently, among those polled.

Of course, I've only made it as far inside this church

as to huddle on the stairwell of the north bell tower. The

sanctuary still seems too far a walk. But, I'm not giving up,

Scully. I'm not giving up. Not yet.

All the time I was rifling through files, a single

refrain marked my present: 'gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

for old time is aflying.' I could have done much worse than to

have the Cavalier Poets for company. Lugging box after box

of classified material to that storage place, I tried to

place which poet had written that particular couplet.  Not

Ben Jonson. Robert Herrick? Probably. Now, of course, the

line no longer consoles, but haunts. Old time has

definitely a-flown. It's been all I could do to think of anything

else. Each time I've succeeded, the quiet has begun to

envelop me like wet snow piling up underneath, silent and

relentless, muffling my footfalls and overhanging my eaves, icy

daggers threatening any noise that would dare approach my

ears, any but these: thoughts and memories, scratchy bygone

hymns and unbidden echoes of my future. Harpies now become my

constant, my only companions.

So, yes, you're goddamned right I've been talking to

myself. Problem is, I've drawn conclusions from my ramblings

and I'm beginning to listen.

Actually, the future, as bleak as it might be, has

been the simplest of the harpies to handle. Denial is a

beautiful thing. If I didn't look too far ahead, but simply

pretended that exile in this reality was only a brief furlough

from the real world, it was even fun.

I began by exorcising my First Amendment privileges

liberally, maybe a little too liberally, all over the Federal

District. On the floor of the Senate, I alleged that Senator

Mattheson's parents had not been married at the moment of his

birth. Or words to that effect, anyway. Unfortunately, C-Span

wasn't able to carry it out of Session. A short walk up the

Mall, in an elegant oval office, I found a surprisingly

comfortable chair situated behind an imposing desk and vetoed

every one of the appropriations bills I found there.

After that heavy morning workload combatting

Congressional excesses, I wandered back out onto Pennsylvania Avenue

with no destination in mind. On impulse, I descended the

wind-racked escalator at Metro Center. Jinn's definition of peace

on Earth may have ruled out combustion engines - believe me,

I'd tried several - but the gleaming subway system continued its

hushed glide from station to station unabated, even though it

could no longer, in any sense, be termed "mass" transit. I

rode aimlessly for nearly an hour, ending up on the red

line to the Maryland suburbs, coming to the surface at

Friendship Heights. The name of the station was both compelling

and appalling, a car accident I found impossible to

ignore. Friendship Heights. Did I imagine that, from there, I

could spot a friendship to replace the one I'd so recklessly

abandoned?

From behind scudding clouds, sunlight splashed at

random across abandoned buildings, shops, cars, as aimless in

its way as I was in mine. The dance of light seemed like

the only "living" companion left to me.

Across the way was a massive complex normally abuzz

with activity - the Mazza Gallerie. A mall. I don't know

what came over me then, or why. I'd like to think it was

simply whimsy and not something disturbing. Either way, I

strode into Nieman's, my hunter/gatherer instincts in high

gear, prowling the empty, pink marble grids, searching the

tasteful displays. A short while later, I was running down the

motorized steps into the Metro station again, this

time with an armload of expensive women's clothing in hand

and a very distinct destination in mind.

"To the Hoover Building, my good train," I joked to

the first car to pull up.

The Director's closet awaited. Maybe, if I'd gathered

enough gowns, I'd stock the Deputy Director's as well, that

is if I'd pulled any gowns from the plus-sized racks.

I should have picked a new suit off the rack for

myself. My own clothes were a constant reminder of my folly,

still reeking of ozone, smoke, fire, insistent on returning

me again and again to my dark, irremediable present. The

thought that kept me from stripping them off there on the Red

Line of the Metro was that these clothes were my last link

to reality, to my life, to Scully. Nostalgia began to

wash over me and I lost the stomach for my practical joke,

for any practical joke, long before I reached the Hoover

Building.

I began to take Scully along with me on a tour of our

Washington. The hot dog cart right outside the Bureau

building where I first bought her lunch. The bar where I'd met

informants and, more importantly, where I first bought

Scully a drink. Another bar where we celebrated her birthday.

Our bench. Her apartment.

Soon, there wasn't a centimeter within the district

that didn't seem subtly inflected with a zest of Scully.

A newspaper honor box, one of thousands, became the

exact one from which I'd pulled the account, severely

sanitized, of Mattheson and S.R. 819. Scanning it for any bits of

actual truth, I looked up to see Scully approaching with news

of Skinner, her mouth tight with a rage magnificent to

behold, eyes flashing like the approach of a storm at sea, her

mien utterly at odds with the soft roll of her hips as she

walked, and the slow grace with which she came to a stop close

to me, well within the protective ambit of our personal

space.

A taxi, set apart from the sea of yellow hulks only

when its peculiar alignment to the setting sun set its

windshield aflame in brilliant tongues of orange, gold and pink,

became the one Scully hailed to rescue me from myself, from

the mire of my self-loathing and recrimination, on a night

when it became wrenchingly clear that the toll for my quest

had begun to mount in human lives, of people dear to us:

my father, her sister, her daughter. Scully whisked us both

peremptorily out of the heart of the district and to my apartment,

stopping only to pick up some food. She sat up with me that

night, staying long after my bluster had died and I'd cried

myself to sleep on her shoulder.

A diner transformed itself for me, its sleek

silversides turning quaint - a white clapboard eatery in

California during the La Pierre investigation - where, rocked by

the manifold demons of a life with my sister that I could

never recover and of a future with her that was all but

lost, I thought that I'd come to an end, that all my searching

had been for nothing, or worse, for loss. Scully buoyed

me, listened, loved without question. I felt strengthened,

redeemed, adored. She alone made it possible to let

Samantha go.

These free associations began to come faster,

uncontrollably, until they felt like assaults. I began to run, but

still they came, to the beat of my breath, the throb of my

pulse. With some, a baseball diamond, I ducked, flinching as

if struck physically.

Blows to my solar plexus that left me winded, reeling.

Car with trunk left open - Duane Barry, abduction,

coma.

Georgetown University Medical Center - cancer.

A Catholic church - cancer.

The impending nightfall - cancer.

In the alley where, a world away, Scully once shot me,

I broke down for the first time and wept. I ran blindly

from there, screaming for blocks at a stretch to drown out

the voices in my head. Abduction, cancer, fault, my fault,

Scully, sorry, God, I'm sorry, if I had it to do over,

no, couldn't, couldn't do without you, couldn't,

sorry, so goddamned sorry!

Even in an empty world, the baying hounds of memory

nipped at my heels and lunged at my soul, flushing me from

the cover of my land of make-believe and herding me to a

destination I didn't yet fathom.

Streets, by turn bright with neon signs on timers, or

dark where homeowners would never again turn on the lamp in

the front room, passed behind me. In the distance, a

cross, softly lit, became my destination and my hope. This

church, open, thankfully, a refuge from memory, from presents

light and dark, from my exile.

This morning, I awakened cold and stiff from my

limestone pillow, resolved on my course of action. I knew where

I had to go, what I had to do, and soon, before the baying

memories returned to rip my sanity to shreds.

************

Rock Creek Park

Washington, D.C., NW

time: his present

Strange that such a reality should drive me away. This

is, after all, the Platonic ideal I'd been striving to

build, sub-consciously at least, my entire life. A solitary

existence practiced apart, at once contemptuous and

envious of the mainstream. A life lived without

distraction, insofar as possible, from one overriding purpose,

heedless of others, careless of beauty around me, uncompromised

by human interaction.

This is it: my Eden, my paradise. And, God help me, I

can't stand it.

It's too damned quiet. I spent very nearly my entire

adult life, both professional and personal, alone.

Even after Scully had been placed on the X-Files, I managed

to keep my little preserve pristine - never made it

our office, kept it mine and gave Scully visitation

rights.

"I should have gotten her a desk from the get-go,

damnit! I should have, should have gotten her a goddamn desk."

I realize I just shouted that loudly enough to spook

every bird in the copse to either side of me. And, yet? Nary

a flutter.

"Because there aren't any birds anymore, are there,

Jini? No! That would mitigate the lesson you wanted to

teach me, wouldn't it?"

"Well, get this! I did not wish for peace and quiet

on earth; just peace. So there! You didn't give me

what I wished for, did you? You were so eager to prove

your point that you made a mistake. Well, I'm not

letting you get away with it."

I'm so anxious to make myself heard that I'm panting

in order to get these words out.

"You said you were holding me to the letter of my

wish. Now, I'm holding you to it, as well."

Nothing.

"Jini?"

Not even a ripple in the air.

"I want birds, damnit! And, and, and crickets! Let's

see, what else?"

Scully.

"Jinnayah!"

Shouted from the top of my lungs, the syllables scorch

my raw throat. In short order, I'm running out of wind

and am forced to lean over. Bad idea.

"Whoa!"

Grabbing at the railing with both hands to keep from

falling prematurely, one hand nearly impaling itself on a

finial, lurching back and away, scrabbling, one arm ending up

wrapped through the fence around a post, one foot

hooked into an opening lower down, the other leg cocked

painfully underneath, injured hand dangling in space.

"Charlie fucking Chaplin."

Joke all you want, Mulder old boy. Your instinct for

self-preservation just kicked in, full-throttle.

"Shit!"

I don't want to die. How can I not want to die? Last

night, it was all I could think of. I looked forward to it. I

don't want to live. Not here, anyway. But, let's be

realistic. It's here or nothing.

"Jinn!"

Fucking Hamlet. That's what I've become. To be, or not

to be. That is not the question I really want to be asking.

That, and whether or not all the people I wished away ever

existed. If the answer is as I fear, then I won't be meeting

anyone in the afterlife.

"Hah!" That would be perfect. I leave this

godforsaken, lonely existence and arrive in the hereafter to find

that I'm the only one there? Better, in that case, that

there is no afterlife at all.

No afterlife at all?

Can't be. Can't be. It's my only chance. I'll do

anything. Anything! I just want to hear Scully's voice again. I

can only seem to recall snippets, one or two word phrases,

and not a long, carefully crafted exegesis on the evidence

before us or a scalpel-sharp dissection of my latest

cockamamie theory.

"Just once before I go, please! I want to hear her

voice. Just that. Just once."

Nothing.

"Please."

This time, with my back to the rail, I grip the top

securely with both hands, just to make sure I stay put until

I'm good and ready. Damn, it really is a long way down. Even

that little sparrow seems to be laboring to get up this

high.

Sparrow? A bird? It flies up and alights just to my

left, craning its little black face this way and that, as if

I'm the interloper in its domain.

"Mulder."

There are birds, Scully. Explain that one, if you can.

Where did they go? Why haven't I heard them until now?

"Mulder!"

Scully?

Releasing one hand from the rail, I turn to see Scully

standing a few yards away, hands in the pockets of her

mackintosh, the Jinnayah standing just behind her, a smug smile firmly

in place.

"Scully? How?"

I turn to face her full on, in my relief forgetting

myself and my situation. My balance is precarious and, with a

simple slip of foot, I'm falling. The bridge seems impossibly high

above me.

************

Apartment of Dana Scully

Georgetown, Washington D.C.

time: their present

"The Princess Bride? Awww, Scully!"

"What? It's a classic, Mulder."

"It's a chick flick."

"It's a fairy tale, Mulder, by the same *guy* who

created that paean to dentistry, "The Marathon Man." Besides, it's

loaded with guy stuff: sword fighting, pirates, Andre the

Giant..."

"Yeah, and Wallace Shawn. Look, Scully, if I wanted to

see a smart mouthed, pint sized megalomaniac, I could always

just go visit Frohike."

"Deal with it, Mulder. It's my turn to choose, and I

choose this."

Mulder looked with exaggerated moroseness at the

television, then down at the bowl of popcorn.

"There butter on this?"

She flopped down beside him, smiling. "Of course, what

do you think I am? Un-American?" They clinked beer bottles

together in salute. Sinking back against the cushions, Scully

picked up the remote and aimed it at the v.c.r.

"So, Scully. That's a pretty fantastic tale. Even if I

grant you that I might, *might* be foolish enough to take

that risk, why don't I recall doing it?"

Scully put on a goofy smile, crossed her arms and

blinked. "Boink!"

"Ooooooh!" Mulder groaned.

"Well, Mulder, to be honest, I don't really remember

it, either. The details, such as they are, come from her, the

Jinnayah."

"And you believe her?"

"I have no reason to believe or disbelieve her,

Mulder."

"That's quite a leap of faith for someone who's only

seen "I Dream of Jeanie" in reruns."

"Frankly, Mulder, I think she told me the story so

that I'd have an unbiased view of her actions. A more cynical view

might be that she wanted to soften me up for my final wish."

"And?"

"And what, Mulder?"

"Well, you never did tell me what your final wish

was."

Scully smiled, not looking at him, a softer, satisfied

smile. Settling in next to him, she tucked her feet up

underneath her, pressed play and popped a fistful of the buttery

kernels into her mouth.

**********************

Epilogue

Foggy Bottom U-Stor-It

Virginia Avenue

Washington, D.C. SW

time: one year into their present

"But, boss! Somebody obviously went to a lot of

trouble to save these. It smells like they rescued them from a fire."

"If all of this stuff were really important, Rodney,

then whoever owns it would have kept up with the rent. Take it to

the dumpster. Every last box. We need the space."

-end-