"Remembrance of Things Future"
An X-Files/Star Trek Story
by William Leisner
Author's Note: This is one of my early pieces of fan fiction,
written around 1997 and initially printed in the fanzine Star Crossed #3.
Dayton Ward, in the book Voyages
of Imagination, cited this story as one of his inspirations for his final
SNW story "The Aliens Are Coming!", a point in which I take far too
much pride.
This story is presented as it was originally written, prior to my first
professional sale, warts and all.
And, needless to say, I do not claim any ownership of the characters or
elements associated with Star Trek or The X-Files.
WEDNESDAY, 1:47 AM
It felt as though he had been thrown backwards through
time.
He stared up at the cracked plaster ceiling over his old bed, picking out the
same picture patterns he did when he would lie here sleepless as a kid. Turning
his head slightly, he could see the plastic airplane models hanging by fish
wire over his desk, and he clearly remembered the youthful pride he felt upon
completing each one. Only his Air Force dress uniform, draped carefully over
the desk chair, reminded him that he was no longer the boy who lived in this
room. Otherwise, not a thing had changed.
No, that wasn't true. The atmosphere of the old house had been completely
altered. The emptiness was tangible. Even alone in this little room, he could
feel it -- his mother was gone.
They'd known for better than two years that she had cancer, and for more than a
year than she would not prevail in the fight against it. But that foreknowledge
didn't lessen the blow when the battle finally ended. She wouldn't be peeking
in the door to make sure he was sleeping tonight. Wouldn't come to the rescue
should he be awakened by a bad dream. Tonight, the bad dream was reality.
He understood now why his sisters and their families opted to stay in a motel
instead of here: the memories were too thick, nearly suffocating. He kicked the
covers off him and jumped to his feet. He padded out into the hall, then
downstairs to the kitchen.
He saw the light was already on. His father, not surprisingly, was also unable
to sleep this first night after his wife's funeral. He stepped into the small
kitchen, and found his dad closely examining the seam where the back door met
the doorjamb. The son didn't register the oddness of this examination right
away, and just said, "Hey, Dad."
John Christopher spun on the intruder with an expression mixed with fear and
desperation. "You can't keep me here like this!" the old man shouted.
The younger man stopped short, having no idea what had prompted that outburst.
After a second, he managed to ask, "Dad?"
"I have a family down on Earth!" the father pleaded. "I have a
wife and two children! Doesn't that mean anything to you people?"
The son was now frightened. He slowly crossed the room, where his father just
stuck out his chin, defiant. He reached out to gasp the old man's shoulders,
shook him slightly, and said in a clear forceful voice, "Dad! It's me,
Shaun! You're home! In the kitchen! Do you understand me, Dad?"
John's eyes shifted into focus, and he noticed his son. "Shaun?" he
said in bewilderment. He looked around at the kitchen cabinets and appliances,
clearly not expecting to see them. "What happened?"
"I think you were sleepwalking," his son said.
"Sleepwalking?" Pride took hold of the
former Air Force captain, and he shook the younger man's hands off his arms.
"I don't sleepwalk."
"Well, you weren't awake, that's for sure," Shaun answered. "You
were shouting something about being held somewhere, saying you had a wife and
two kids 'down on Earth'?" He made that last sentence into a question,
hoping his father would be able to tell him exactly what had been going on in
his mind.
"'Down on Earth'?" John repeated, no more
understanding it than his son. "Why would I say something like that?"
"You tell me," Shaun replied.
"And two kids? Why would I say 'two kids' instead of 'thr--'" John Christopher stopped cold, and his eyes
took on the same far-away look again. He grabbed a
chair for support.
"Dad?" Shaun asked, extremely concerned now.
"It was before you were born," John whispered. "Before you were
conceived."
"What was?"
"The UFO...." John said, then paused.
Shaun nodded, encouraging him to go on. He remembered back to when he was
seven, driving home after having seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The film had blown him away, but it was nothing compared to his father telling
him that he once had a close encounter of the first kind.
That revelation was nothing next to what John Christopher said next.
"I was aboard that UFO."
The old man managed to get his rear on the chair before he fell to the floor.
"Holy God, Shaun,... I'm starting to
remember..."
*****
WASHINGTON, DC
11:45 AM
She picked up her travel bag as soon as she saw his car turn at the end of the
block, and started down the walkway. By the time he rolled to a stop and hit
the button that popped his trunk, she was right at the curb, lifting the lid
and throwing her stuff in. They'd been through this drill so many times in the
past two years, they now had it down to a science. She
slammed the trunk shut and climbed into the passenger seat. "Morning, Mulder."
"Morning, Scully," he answered as he lifted his foot off the brake
and they continued toward
"We've got a possible alien abduction, in
"Uh-huh," Scully prompted neutrally, and waited for her partner to
elaborate. Instead, Mulder reached into the briefcase
propped up between their seats, pulled out a manila folder, and handed it to
her. Scully opened the file to the first page. It was an official Air Force
document, typed, not computer printed. She only got as far as the entry for the
report's date when she turned back to her partner, eyes open wide.
"Mulder," she said incredulously,
"this report is over twenty-five years old!"
"I know," Mulder said with a nod.
Scully looked at him for a moment longer, then turned
away with a sigh. She learned early on that Mulder
didn't answer questions until he was good and ready to do so, even if he was
asking you to follow him a thousand miles across the country on one of his
"semi-official" investigations without a peep of protest. So she
propped her right elbow on the car's armrest, balanced her head on her fist,
and started to peruse the file her partner had handed her.
On July 10, 1969, she read, radar at Omaha Air Force Base detected an
unidentified flying object at an altitude of approximately 500 miles. An F-104
interceptor was launched to investigate. The pilot, Captain John B.
Christopher, reported seeing a space vehicle, saucer-shaped, with three
cylindrical protrusions. The object then suddenly disappeared both from
Christopher's sight and from radar. "I could have sworn there was some
kind of ship," Christopher was quoted as saying, "but nothing could
move that fast." There was an internal investigation by Project Blue Book,
which attributed the sighting to anomalous weather patterns and tricks of
sunlight, and the case was closed.
Scully finished reading the rest of the file by the time Mulder
parked his car in the long-term garage. Scully held her tongue as they bought
their tickets and walked through the terminal to the relatively uncrowded gate where their Omaha-bound airliner was
prepping for flight.
"Okay," she said, as they sat in a pair of molded plastic seats.
"An Air Force pilot sees a UFO. It's a week before Apollo 11 goes up, so
the military invents some lame weather explanation, brushes it under the rug,
and goes ahead with the launch."
Mulder smiled. "Two years ago, you would have
accepted that 'anomalous weather patterns' B.S. at face value. I'm very proud
of you."
"Thanks," she responded with a good-natured smirk. Then, serious
again, she continued. "But, given the fact Apollo 11 did go up without a
hitch, I'd say the Air Force made the right call. Whatever Captain Christopher
saw, it apparently was nothing."
"Or maybe not, Scully," Mulder told her.
"Captain Christopher has recently begun to recall a few more details of
that encounter."
"What sort of details?" Scully asked.
"Being taken aboard the spaceship," Mulder
replied, eliciting a look of surprise from his partner.
"Christopher is the one who was abducted?" she said in
disbelief. "When? According to the reports, he
saw his UFO disappear before his eyes as he was approaching it."
"Even assuming Project Blue Book's version of the incident is
accurate," Mulder began, in a tone that said he
assumed no such thing, "the apparent manipulation of linear time is not
uncommon in abduction cases."
"Still, Mulder, why are we
hearing about this now, after all this time?"
"The man just lost his wife of thirty-three years," he
explained. "Emotional stresses often bring suppressed memories to the
surface."
Scully shrugged. It wasn't worth arguing the fine points with Mulder this early in the game. "What else does Captain
Christopher remember now?" she asked, successfully keeping all traces of
skepticism from her voice.
"Not much," Mulder said, with a hint of a
sigh. "He remembers being treated well. They were courteous to him,
expressing regret that they had to abduct him."
"Regret?" Scully said quizzically. "I
don't think I've ever heard of any alleged alien abductor showing regret."
"Yeah, that is damned unusual," Mulder
answered, just as the initial boarding announcement was made. Standing and
moving toward the line of fellow passengers, he added, "But then, if it
wasn't unusual, they wouldn't need us, would they?"
*****
2:10 PM
John Christopher sat in his living room, staring blankly at the television. His
thoughts, however, were millions of miles away.
Ninety-three million miles, to be more precise. Flying
toward the sun at an incomprehensible speed, then sling-shotting
around, back toward Earth...
Why? He couldn't remember.
And now, he couldn't even remember what had just flitted through his head.
That's how most of the events of those lost hours twenty-six years ago were
coming to him: buzzing his conscious mind like mosquitoes around a porch light,
then disappearing back into the dark.
He felt Shaun's concern as he paced the house, constantly looking out the front
windows. Dorothy's death had been especially hard on him. He could only imagine
what he was going through now, having to worry about his old man going nuts at
the same time.
He wished to hell these random memories would make some kind of sense! Or that
more of them would stay with him, so they could be pieced together into a
coherent whole. But getting them in quick flashes like this was maddening! What
had these aliens done to him?
Alien.
That thought called to him from the very edge of his unconscious mind. Alien.
Singular. A chill ran through his body, and he knew he
had a significant piece of the puzzle within his grasp.
But, if they weren't all aliens on that UFO...
The memories remained elusive.
*****
Mulder and Scully got out of their rental car and
walked up to the front of a small, post-war style house halfway between
downtown
Mulder put out his hand as soon as they were close
enough to shake. "Hello, Lieutenant," Mulder
greeted him. "How are you doing?"
"Not too bad, Agent Mulder," the young man
replied. "Thanks for coming all the way from
Scully noted the easiness of this encounter; there weren't a lot of military
types Mulder would be so friendly toward, even the
sons of alleged abductees.
Mulder then turned to his colleague. "This is my
partner, Special Agent Dana Scully. This is Lieutenant Shaun Christopher, USAF.
John Christopher's son."
Like father, like son, Scully thought. "I'm sorry about your
mother," she told him and she shook his hand.
"Thank you," he said, sadness creeping briefly back around his mouth.
He managed to keep it in check, though, and added, "Please, come in."
Inside the small, cozy living room, they found the elder Christopher sitting in
an overstuffed recliner, staring blankly at the television. Some stand-up on
Comedy Central was cracking jokes about Khan Singh and the situation in the
Middle East -- hardly very funny stuff, Scully thought to herself. The man
didn't turn his gaze from the set until his son announced, "Dad? This is
Agent Mulder, and his partner, Agent Scully."
John Christopher then turned his head to consider the strangers. He tried to
put on a masque of contempt, but his fear and apprehension peeked blatantly
through the cracks. "So, you're the Feds?" he practically accused
them.
"Yes, sir, Captain Christopher," Mulder
answered. "Fox Mulder.
I assume your son told you about me?"
"He said you met at Edwards four years ago," the elder Christopher
said neutrally. "You were investigating some snafu during one of the
shuttle landings."
Mulder nodded. "Shaun was very helpful to my
investigation."
Scully turned an eye to the younger Christopher. That's why Mulder was so familiar before. She vaguely remembered
the incident the father was referring to, having reviewed Mulder's
old cases right before they'd been partnered. The snafu was a computer
malfunction on the shuttle, likely sabotage caused by persons -- or, according
to Mulder, beings -- unknown. She also
recalled several mentions of an Air Force second lieutenant who flew one of the
chase planes during the shuttle's descent helping the investigation. That's why
their trip to
Meanwhile, Mulder kept up the small talk with
Christopher, almost like a stranger allowing a dog to sniff at him to gain his
trust. Finally, Christopher let down his defensive posture. "I really
don't remember a lot, Agent Mulder," he said,
looking down at his lap, his entire body sagging.
"Anything you can remember is helpful," he prompted. "Anything at all."
"It's just the general knowledge that came back to me at
first," Christopher said. "I know I was on a spaceship. I know.*
But the details..." He paused, struggling. "There are just these
quick, hazy images. I'm not even sure what some of them are."
"What kind of images?"
Christopher took a long pause. "My jet breaking up... light sparkles all
around me," he said. "Sliding doors... a food dispenser..." He sighed,
obviously frustrated at not being able to give them anything more substantial.
Suddenly, his head snapped up. His eyes sparked with sudden revelation.
"Pointed ears."
"Pointed ears?" Scully echoed.
"The alien had pointed ears."
*****
3:40 PM
"Pointed ears!"
Mulder shook his head as they headed down US Route
75, having just finished their initial interview. "Extraterrestrial
life forms whose most distinguishing physical characteristics are points on
their ears!"
Scully, in the passenger's seat, turned to face her partner, and noted the
rarely-seen look on his face: disbelief. "Mulder,
if I didn't know better, I'd think you were actually upset Captain Christopher
wasn't abducted by little green insect people instead."
Mulder cracked a tiny smile. "It just sounds
more like a low-budget '60's sci-fi show than a real close encounter."
Now it was Scully's turn to be incredulous. "You doubt him?"
"I didn't say I doubted him," Mulder said.
"I'm just saying, first it was the regret thing, now it's
pointed ears. These are not your run of the mill aliens..."
"Mulder," Scully started, a firm edge to
her voice, "is this a real investigation, or are we just going through the
motions as a favor to your friend?"
Mulder gave her a long, hard look out of the corner
of his eye. "This case may have been brought to me by someone I know, but
beyond that, it's just another investigation. John Christopher believes he was
abducted, and I want to get to the truth." After a second, he added,
"Even if the truth is he was abducted by Santa's elves," under his
breath.
*****
4:00 PM
Fox Mulder would never admit it to anyone, but
military installations gave him the willies.
He'd been through too much with people in uniform (starting with his earliest
memories of his father) to ever feel completely at ease on their turf. Even
John Christopher, some five years retired, looking so small and scared, wreaked
with grief and apprehension, still projected a powerful military air about him.
Mulder felt on edge the whole time he was in his
house.
That uneasy feeling rose in Mulder again as they
pulled up to the main gates of
When the sentry allowed them to drive through without any questioning, his
uneasiness tripled.
They parked in the visitor's lot, and walked across a quad to the small, squat
building that housed the Administration and Records Office. As they walked into
the office, they found a young lieutenant sitting at a computer terminal, doing
some kind of data entry. Once he looked up from his screen, Mulder
flashed his badge, as did Scully. "Special agents, FBI," he informed
the receptionist. "We're wondering if you might be able to help us."
"With what?" the young man asked curtly.
"We're investigating an incident that occurred on this base back on July
10, 1969, Lieutenant Kade," Mulder
said, reading the man's name from the pin on his breast pocket. "We were
hoping we could get hold of --"
"Nineteen sixty-nine?" Kade interrupted.
"What's the FBI doing, investigating a twenty-six year old incident?"
"New information has recently come to light," Mulder
explained. "We'd like to look at any flight records, duty rosters,..."
"Well, from '69," Kade said with a small
shrug, "you're not going to find anything here."
"What do you mean?" Scully asked.
"Just what I said. We don't keep stuff around
forever. Nineteen sixty-nine was a long time ago, you
know."
Mulder studied the young man with a hard eye,
realizing he likely hadn't been born in '69. Scully stepped forward now. "The
government doesn't just throw out old records after so many years," she
reminded Kade. "If you can't help us, could you
tell us who can?"
"What exactly is this 'incident' you're investigating, anyhow?"
Mulder hesitated. There were certain kinds of people,
in certain kinds of situations, that he could tell
about his pursuit of evidence of extraterrestrial activities on Earth. Kade, clearly, was not one of those people.
When he got no answer, Kade simply resumed his
computer work as if the agents were no longer there. After a couple of seconds,
Mulder and Scully actually were gone.
*****
Omaha AFB had a very active grapevine. Word that a pair of
Feds were wandering around the base, asking unusual questions, spread
quickly.
Other information, of course, did not spread quite as well. A military base is
home to many secrets, some that are viciously guarded, and others that, for one
reason or another, never managed to find a mass audience.
The man waited in the car next to the agents' rental in the visitor's parking
lot. He knew a secret that fell into the latter category.
He waited patiently for his audience.
*****
After nearly an hour of walking around the base from building to building, from
bureaucrat to bureaucrat, they learned that the records they were looking for did
exist on base, and they also found the person who could find them.
Mulder gripped the roll bar of the jeep as Major Nan Fadcot drove Scully and him around the perimeter of the
base. "I have to apologize for Lieutenant Kade,"
she told them. "He's one of those kids who signed up because of those 'Aim
High' commercials, then found out not everyone gets to go off into the wild
blue yonder."
"And you?" Mulder asked.
"I joined for a steady job," Fadcot said,
then added, with irony, "Of course, that was before the fall of Communism
and military downsizing. Here we are." They pulled up in front of an old
hanger, which had been converted into storage space several years earlier. They
walked up to the door as the captain pulled a large key chain out of her jacket
pocket, picked one, and inserted it into the single lock.
It didn't work.
She looked through the key chain for another one that might open the door.
"This is all the security you have for these materials?" Mulder asked Fadcot. "One lock?"
Fadcot shrugged as she tried the second key, then
tried to select a third.
"Seems secure enough," Scully observed wryly.
"There's nothing in here anyone would be interested in," Fadcot said, with a slightly embarrassed grin. "If
there was, it wouldn't be here; it'd be at the Pentagon, right?"
Mulder just nodded. He would give his eye teeth just
to get a list of things that were hidden in the recesses of the Pentagon.
Finally, Fadcot got the door open. She switched on
the lights as they all entered, revealing a cavernous space, filled with
shelves and filing cabinets of all shapes and styles. On the shelves closest to
the door were rows and rows of thin boxes, standing on edge like books, covered
with dust, and uniformly marked with the date and range of time, military
style, that their contents were created.
Fadcot gestured with her hand. "Here are your
tapes, Agent Mulder."
Mulder hid his smile, and scanned the boxes. The
tapes closest to the door were dated sometime in the '50's. July 10, 1969, was
actually a significant distance toward the center of the building. Mulder picked out the box labeled 1200 through 1800 hours,
and opened it to find a large metal reel, at least a foot in diameter, wound in
wide magnetic tape. He marveled at the fact that this represented the cutting
edge of technology in the same year he watched Armstrong walk on the moon.
Today, these six hours of audio would fit in his pocket without showing a
bulge.
"Where can we play this?" Mulder asked Fadcot.
Fadcot just stared at the reel in Mulder's
hands. "This tape format hasn't been used for at least twenty years,"
she said. "Everything we have on base now is digital; all our analog
players were scrapped when we switched over."
Mulder rubbed his temple. I really hate the military, he thought to himself.
*****
"We could call the local Bureau office," Scully said as they walked
back to the visitor's lot. "They might have a machine to play that. Or
maybe the office in
"Doesn't matter, Scully," Mulder replied,
shifting the heavy box from one hand to another. "Fadcot
gave up this tape without thinking twice. If there was any evidence in the
flight recordings, they were edited out long ago."
"Well, if we can find the right player, we should be able to detect
any alterations," she said. "Editing techniques have improved just as
much as taping since '69."
Mulder just shrugged. Before he could say anything
else, though, a man jumped out of the car fifteen feet in front of them. Both
agents tensed, ready to duck for cover.
The man, sensing the situation, put up his hands to show he was unarmed.
"You the FBI agents?" he asked.
"Yeah," Mulder said, relaxing a bit.
"Who are you?"
The man shook that question off nervously. "You're looking into some pilot
who says he was taken on a UFO, right? Name of John
Christopher?"
Scully took a step toward the man. "You knew Captain Christopher?"
This man was about the right age that he could have served with Christopher,
she noted.
He shook his head again. "I just know the name."
"From where?"
In answer, the man reached out to the agents, a collection of stapled papers in
his hands. "I think you might want to see this."
"What is it?" Mulder asked as Scully
accepted the man's offering. The first sheet was a photocopy of an article from
The
"I found this stuff out completely by accident," he told them.
"I was cleaning out the lab records when I first came here, in
'81..."
"What lab?" Scully was keeping a cautious eye on the man still, while
at the same time looking at the papers in her hand. She silently read the
article's title, "Pteroylmonoglutamic Acid: A
Nutritional Breakthrough."
"The base infirmary lab," the man said. He was shooting looks around
the lot, growing more paranoid the more he said. "At first, I thought it
was just some weird fluke, one of those Ripley's Believe It or Not things. But
now, with this UFO angle..." The man trailed off. Scully could clearly see
the man was spooked.
Finally, the man gathered up the courage to say, "People should know about
this." Then he ducked back into his car, fired up the engine, and drove
away.
*****
ROUTE 75
OUTSIDE
6:00 PM
Mulder concentrated on the title of the Journal
article. "Tero-yuh.... Tero-ee..."
"Ter-oyl-mon-o-glu-tam-ic," Scully
prompted.
"So, what is it?" Mulder asked.
"It's a synthetic B-complex vitamin," she answered, eyes forward as
she drove. "It's what they put in all those kids' cereals so they can say it's part of a nutritious breakfast."
Mulder shrugged. "I don't get it."
Scully reached over and turned the pages for Mulder.
Following the article was a copy of a laboratory blood analysis report, dated
July 14, 1969. The name at the top was John B. Christopher, and the body of the
report was full of an inordinate amount of notations. One scribble in
particular had been highlighted in yellow:
Vit. B-??
"The lab techs who analyzed Christopher's blood sample, taken right after
his UFO sighting, found something that they couldn't identify," Scully
interpreted, "except to say that it resembled a B vitamin.
"Then," Scully turned another page, to a different form. "The
Air Force sent the sample on to Petrucha Medical
Technologies, Incorporated, in
"Let me guess," Mulder interrupted.
"The Journal article about ptero-whatsit
was written by a researcher at Petrucha Medical
Technologies, Incorporated, right?" Scully nodded. "Christopher did
say he was fed by his abductors, didn't he?"
"He mentioned a food dispenser," Scully answered. "Mulder, if we're to assume this substance was in the food
Christopher ate during a period of alien captivity, then either these aliens
knew a hell of a lot about human physiology, to the point that they were
developing synthetic chemicals for use in humans..."
"Or else these pointy-eared guys have near-human physiology themselves," Mulder picked
up, "to the point that they have the same nutritional needs as we
do."
Scully pondered that silently as she turned the car into the court of their
motor lodge. She had come to accept, over the past two years, the possibility
of the existence of extraterrestrial life, based on having seen radically
different beings and DNA samples. So what was the significance of Christopher
being abducted by beings that, from a medical viewpoint, could not easily be
differentiated from humans?
Her thoughts were interrupted when she noticed, in the headlights, two women
standing in front of Mulder's room. Scully killed the
engine, and the agents got out of the car. "Hello?" she called.
"Agent Mulder?" the taller of the two women
asked.
"I'm Mulder," he answered. "This is
Agent Scully."
"My name is Robin Christopher," the woman told them. "This is my
sister Ann."
Scully let the car door close and approached the women. "Captain John
Christopher's daughters?" she asked, even though she already knew. There
was an unmistakable family resemblance.
"Yes," Robin confirmed. "Uh, could we possibly speak to you?
It's about our father."
Mulder quickly unlocked his door, and let the three
women in. There wasn't a lot of floor space in the inexpensive room, but the
Christopher women still attempted to pace the room nervously.
"How did you ladies find us?" Mulder asked.
"Our brother, Shaun, told us what was going on when we went to visit our
father this afternoon," Ann answered.
Robin interrupted. "Agents Mulder, Scully, why
is the FBI interested in our father?" she asked with a voice of mild fury.
Scully looked to Mulder, who stood wordlessly for a
second. She knew what he was thinking: these women had just lost their mother,
and the last thing he wanted to do was give them the impression, however
unintentional, that their father was losing his grip on reality.
"Your father claims to have had an encounter with a UFO when he was in the
Air Force," he finally answered.
"Yeah, back in 1969," Ann responded. "Right
before the first moon landing. We know all about that."
"The Air Force held him for two days, interrogating him," Robin
interjected. "Why are you putting him through another interrogation now,
of all times? He just buried his wife, for God's sake."
Scully couldn't help but feeling a pang of guilt. If the police had come around
to interrogate her mother after her father's death, no matter the reason, she
would have reacted the same way these women were. "I am sorry about your
mother," she told them. "But, her loss seems to have been a trigger
for something inside your father. Memories of the incident with the UFO are
coming to the surface..."
Robin held up a hand to silence Scully. "Our brother told us about these
'memories,' too. The FBI doesn't really suspect our father was kidnapped by
aliens, do they?"
"There's a whole division within the Bureau that deals with unexplained
phenomena..." Mulder tried to explain.
"And this is what our tax dollars are used for? To chase
flying saucers?" Robin Christopher shook her head. "Does Newt
Gingrich know about this yet?"
"I'm here as a personal favor to your brother," Mulder
said.
"No need to write your congressman," Scully added, hoping it sounded
flip instead of defensive.
Ann Christopher gave a quiet little snort. "Elliot..."
Scully cocked her head. "What?"
Robin half-smiled, but was apparently still too upset to share her sister's
amusement. "That's what we used to call Shaun when we were kids. After the
kid in E.T. Shaun wants to believe Dad was taken by aliens more than he
does, I can assure you."
"Why do you say that?" Mulder asked.
"Shaun's been a huge space freak his whole
life," Robin explained. "He's seen every movie, read every book, you
name it. He'll tell you the reason he joined the Air Force was because of Dad,
but the real reason is that he wants to get into NASA, go up there and look for
aliens."
"He's not even that picky," Ann chimed in. "He says if there are
any more NASA budget cuts, he'll move to Japan and try to get on one of those
DY-100 ships they're developing over there."
"That as it may be," Scully interjected, "your brother really
isn't connected to this. Your father told us what he remembered about
being taken aboard an alien spaceship."
"And how friendly the aliens were?" Robin asked.
Scully's eyes grew wide at that. "He's talked about aliens before?"
Robin nodded vigorously. "Right after they let him come home. When he got
back, we bugged him with all kinds of questions: what was the spaceship like,
did he see any Martians? We were five and seven, so he gave us this story about
nice little purple men flying him all over the universe, taking him the Planet
of the Kitty Cats, and the Planet of Chocolate Ice Cream..."
"Not exactly Isaac Asimov stuff," Ann added.
Inside, Scully was slightly amused by the childish story, imagining her own
father as the narrator as she curled up in bed with her favorite doll.
Mulder was not in the least bit amused.
"Friendly purple aliens, he told you?"
The sisters nodded.
"Do you remember, could these friendly aliens have had pointed ears?"
The sisters just looked at Mulder for a long moment,
obviously wondering what the point of that question was.
"I guess, maybe, yeah," Robin answered.
Ann confirmed this with a shrug.
Mulder let loose a long, frustrated sigh.
*****
THE CHRISTOPHER HOME
6:45 PM
The wind was whipping up now that the sun had gone down, chilling Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and Shaun Christopher as they stood
out in front of the small home in Sarpy. "Agent Mulder,
he really believes this happened to him," the young man insisted.
"He's remembering more, and none of it has anything to do with kitty cats
or ice cream."
Mulder shrugged. "Lieutenant, I personally
believe that we are not alone. But that doesn't mean I view abduction as the
most likely explanation in cases like this."
"The mind plays tricks on us," Scully explained in her best
scientific manner. "Memory isn't always an accurate record of actual
happenings."
Shaun Christopher stuck his hands deep in his pockets, shifting his gaze
between both agents, a look of betrayal in his eyes. "You know, my father
joined the Air Force when he was 18. He flew more than a hundred spy missions
over
Both agents shook their heads. "He requested a transfer to
Agents Mulder and Scully exchanged an uncomfortable
look as Christopher trailed off, close to tears. After a long silence, Mulder said, "We've got an eight o'clock flight back
to
Christopher grudgingly let Mulder squeeze his hand,
and then shook Scully's as well.
"Take care of your dad," she said. Christopher gave a slight nod,
noting the subtext of her words, and resenting the implication.
*****
8:00 PM
"Weird, huh?"
Scully turned to face her partner as she settled into her window seat.
"What's weird?"
"Nothing," he answered. "Nothing about this case was weird. No
close encounters, no shadowy secret government assassins, no
shootouts with telekinetic mutant serial killers in some darkened
corridor..."
"Believe it or not, Mulder," Scully said
with a smile, "before I hooked up with you, most of my cases were just
like this."
"Well, no need to thank me for rescuing you from that drudgery," he
told her, eliciting a laugh. Then, turning serious, he said, "Scully, I
have a confession."
"What?"
Mulder sighed. "You were right. I knew there
wasn't much to this case from the start. The time frame, his impression of his
captors,... But Shaun was a real help to my Edwards
investigation."
Scully nodded, understanding. "Well, at any rate,
we did uncover some interesting stuff about pteroylmonoglumatic
acid," she told him.
"I've been thinking about that, too," Mulder
said. "Although, if people don't worry now about putting that kind of
stuff in their bodies, do you think knowing it came from aliens would change
their minds?"
"It's more likely Christopher has some sort of unique metabolism,"
Scully commented. "That his body processes certain nutritional elements in
a certain way. The discovery of pteroylmonoglumatic
acid was probably a fluke, just like our friend from the parking lot
said."
"So, you don't think visitors from outer space came here, left some
scientific advancement behind for some corporation to exploit, then time-warped
their way out of here?" Mulder asked jokingly.
Scully smirked as she laid her head against the transparent aluminum window of
their jet liner. "I tend to doubt it," she said.
*****
O'HERLIHY VETERAN'S HOSPITAL
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
FRIDAY, 10:00 AM
John and Shaun Christopher rode the elevator in silence, up to the seventh
floor, to John's new home. There was some politically correct designation for
this area of the hospital, but John knew what it really was.
The mental ward.
It didn't matter to him the FBI agent, the one who ran the paranormal
investigations for the Bureau, didn't believe he had been abducted. It didn't
matter that even his own daughters didn't believe their old man. He knew
he wasn't crazy.
John looked at his son. Shaun kept his eyes straight ahead, like a cadet
undergoing inspection, unable to face his father. John knew his son hated what
he was being pressed to do. But he held no ill will. This was his only son, the
man who would carry on the Christopher name, who would make sure that name lived
in history forever. John didn't know how, or why he
was so certain he would, but he beamed with parental pride all the same. Shaun
noticed out of the corner of his eye, turned, and returned the old man's smile
uncertainly.
At that point, the elevator doors opened. They walked down a short corridor,
through a door, and into a large gathering room. Patients were playing cards,
watching TV, talking. One would hardly know, at a glance, these people were all
here for one type of mental disorder or another.
Shaun walked over to the admitting desk, while John lagged behind. He spotted
one patient in particular, staring at the television. He looked somewhat
familiar, but he couldn't say from where. He approached the man and tapped him
on the shoulder. "Excuse me," he asked, "but I seem to recognize
you. Were you ever posted at Omaha AFB?"
The man, a former air police sergeant named Hal Lipton, looked up at John
Christopher. His eyes told John that Lipton recognized him also, even through
his drugged haze. Lipton smiled like he had found a long lost friend.
"We were at
John Christopher slowly sat down, realizing now where he recognized this man
from. They began talking, building upon their swiss-cheesed
memories, filling in each other's holes, searching, struggling for the elusive
truth.
*****