MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY CH01: PARTING (1/1)
By Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger @AOL.COM)
6/19/00

RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATION: XA series
SPOILERS: REQUIEM, 7th season.
KEYWORDS: Mulderangst
SUMMARY: In a cone of brilliant light, surrounded by silent and
compliant former abductees, Mulder comes face to face with the
Hunter. Why does this scene seem not unfamiliar and what will
happen now? This series traces Mulder's abduction and begins
with the events of the first few minutes. A companion story to
this one is Scully's PRAYERS RISE UP.
ARCHIVING: Gossamer, Emphereal, ATXC, and anywhere with
permission and as long as the author's name is retained.
DISCLAIMER: Where do I start? No, the X-Files and the characters
of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully do not belong to me. Chris and
David, thank you, thank you for giving us a great season finale
and NOT a Mulderless Eighth Season.

Author's Notes: I have trouble enough going a summer without a
new X-File (with Mulder). Now I have to wait till the depths of
winter! I need my fix and so I've created my own. I hope it will
help other addicts as well. This will be a series of short
episodes of posted approximately once every three to four weeks.

My older work can be found on Gossamer under 'Esty, Sue' with
the newer pieces at http://members.aol.com/windsinger.

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY CH01: PARTING (1/1)

     One's mother is supposed to teach you not to touch things
when you don't know where they've been. I guess I wasn't
listening that day. In my case, however, it is more likely that
good 'ol Mom neglected that part, her maternal genes, at least
in respect to me, never being particularly dominant. Who I can't
blame are the nuns at the Catholic youth camp my parents sent me
the year I turned thirteen.  They knew what hands should be used
for and what not... but let's not go there right now. Instead,
I think it's sufficient to note that it was curiosity that
finally killed the nine-lived cat.

     Clearly, the same goes for the over-inquisitive FBI agent.

     What exploding trains, gushing oilwells, burning railcars,
green bugs, poison darts, shot gun blasts, hospitals, Black Oil,
ghosts, hundred-acre fungi, water-sapping free radicals, and
million-year-old sociopathic worms couldn't do, curiosity has
done. Caught me good.

     I was only going to touch it. I expected at most to
encounter a bit of static or the edge of an invisible bubble.
Instead, it is as if a net of electricity grips my hand. As it
begins to vibrate, I stare at it unable to speak, unable to cry
to Skinner for help. It's as if my hand is not a part of me any
more. There's no pain, and yet I can't pull it back. Instead, I
am sucked within seconds into a whirlwind, a whirlwind without
wind. It is only my body that is moving, all of it gyrating now
in a totally bizarre fashion. There's not even any time to be
afraid because, all at once, it is over.

     I'm aware of my feet first. They are on the ground, only
the ground is as unstable as the rest of me. Think of the way
you feel just after you walk off a really serious roller
coaster. You know the world is standing still, and yet it isn't.
In the same way I'm aware that I am in the same Oregon forest I
started out from, and yet I'm not.

     This is why I don't run or cry out. I don't even try.
Running and screaming my lungs out won't do any good. Maybe it's
not a change in space, however. Maybe it's a change in time.
Lost time phenomena has been associated with UFO sightings from
the beginning. It would start to explain why this place is
invisible except to intensely phased light. Bent time, bent
space. Einstein would have understood. Believe it or not, I
remember the thesis you wrote -- "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New
Interpretation" -- so I would love to hear your theory on this.
At the moment, however, I would just as happily settle for
hearing you read the phone book.

     What do I see? Very little and yet so much. There's a
brilliant funnel of light only about forty feet from where the
ground is calming down under my feet. A hum seems to be coming
from it that fills my whole body. But do you know what the
scariest part is, Scully? This is all so familiar. We are
talking serious deja vue. Scientists say that there is no such
thing, that the phenomena is caused by memories of something
similar that happened to you before but which you've forgotten.
It's either that or a minor explosion in the brain. If it is the
second explanation working here, then I need to go back and
consult my neurologist. If it's the first, then by reaching past
the barrier that the Gunman's military-issue mini-lasers could
not penetrate, I have made a really serious mistake. Most
assuredly, the worst mistake of my life.

     And here I'm reported to be so bright.

     Of course that would depend on whether I ever had any
choice in the matter. I suspect I have been led here. Step by
step, embarrassing moment by embarrassing moment, empty year
after empty year -- I've been led to this moment. Some might say
it was why I was born. That's a depressing thought.

     Did I say empty years? Empty except for you, Scully,
hopeless except for you, meaningless except for you.

     Oh, Scully I am so sorry. The time we wasted.

     What it comes down to is that I think I've been here
before, or in a situation very much like it. I don't have an
implant, we checked that out, but if I and the other abductees
who have gone missing were not selected by that then what? I
always assumed that the microchips were the key, that their use
was how humans were tagged...

     ... chips... and smallpox vaccinations and who know what
else. How soon we forget.

     I don't mean to be cruel or insensitive, Scully, but did
something happen to you when you were out here that you didn't
tell me about? You didn't just faint did you? You weren't taken,
but I think it was a near thing. I think they thought about it.
I'm not trying to place blame for how things have turned out
for, like I said, chance may have had nothing to do with it.
Still, if I had known, it might have got me thinking along a
different path and I wouldn't be standing in this one now.

     On the whole, I'm relieved. I am thankful to your God that
you have been spared this. You have suffered enough. I will
admit, however, that there's a small, cowardly lion part of me
that wishes with all the wishes that I may ever wish that you
were here with me. That we could be seeing this together. That
I wouldn't have to go through this alone.

     Sorry. Got to take couple of deep breaths here. Can't let
fear set in. Get a grip, Spooky. Blood pressure up, palms damp.
Got to think logically like my Scully. This -- I tell myself --
is just another X-Files experience, which I've seen and you
haven't and which you won't believe. As always, I'll write it
up, you'll edit out the most extreme theories, and we'll go on
to something new next week. Back to the same desk, same coffee,
same Washington Post, Baltimore Orioles lost another one, FBI
management on my back.

     But that's not going to happen this time, is it? Why? I
have no idea. I guess I have somehow pissed the Grays off as
much as I have everyone else in my life.

     Wait... I have a thought.

     Maybe they made a mistake. That's right! That's all it is!
They got the wrong one! Hey, guys. Look! It's just crazy Fox
Mulder, the FBI's most unwanted.

     The wrong one? Really? Try again. Reality check time.

     The fact is that I'm where they want me to be. I'm where
I'm meant to be. I'm wanted.

     Now that's a novel concept, though I'd rather be wanted by
the New York Knicks. I'd even rather be wanted by the fuckin'
FBI.

     Now when I come back to this deja vue thing, I realize that
what I'm experiencing is memory. There's no doubt that I've seen
this cone of light from just this position before. And then
there's the hum and its terrifyingly familiar tingle. Want to
know more? I'm walking towards the light. Another brilliant
move, you say? No, this time it's really not my fault. I don't
want to walk towards the light, in fact it's the very last thing
I can imagine wanting to do. But I am. My body is doing it all
on its own the way it knows how to drive through a familiar
neighborhood while you mind is on everything but the car and the
road.

     As I approach, more becomes clear. For example, I thought
I was alone. Just me and the light. I'm wrong. There are a dozen
people, probably more, standing in the beam. It's actually
crowded. I sense this is new. I've always been alone before at
this stage.

     I can feel panic rising inside me, clutching at my throat.
I expect that every time I start to accept this I'm going to
have this reaction. Full denial, no doubt about it. I haven't
been abducted, I keep repeating to myself. I never have been. I
would have remembered.

     Like the flare of a sputtering candle, the surge of emotion
suddenly vanishes. Neither anger nor fear seem to last long in
this place. Instead, I'm made to face up to my own stupidity
cold sober. They say physician heal thyself. Well, the same
should be said of psychologists. There are many, many examples
in the UFO literature of individuals who have been abducted from
childhood, for years, for decades, who have no memory of the
experience until an eager therapist uses hypnosis to try to
figure out why they are so fucked up. I'm talking high
functioning disabilities like chronic, low level anxiety;
paranoia; insomnia; night terrors; a certain level of antisocial
behavior. Sound like anyone you know? And here all along I
thought it was simple, everyday Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome
from Samantha's abduction. I didn't know otherwise because Weber
never asked the right questions. He only asked about the night
of Samantha's abduction.

     Not of mine.

     Damn. How many times did it happen? Not too many times or
there would have been scars. There are always scars. I feel a
tingle at the base of my skull and fear once again struggles
through this odd tranquility that has seized me.

     Maybe not all scars are ones you can see.

     I force myself to look at the faces, afraid of more
revelations. I recognize some of these people; you would, too.
Billy and Teresa are most familiar, but there are others though
I don't remember our ever meeting. I'd like to think I am going
crazy. I'm  afraid I am not. Scully, remember those women, the
ones with the chips in their necks who said they remembered you
from 'the other place', from when you were abducted? I think
this is what I've got here. I have known some of these people
before and known them in this second reality, the one that my
subconscious has been keeping secret from me.

     The truth has finally sunk in. The truth. Inside I hear an
echo of hysterical laughter. The truth is that I'm not walking
out of here. I am going on this little trip. I've even taken
them before. Okay, I breathe; no big deal. I've always come
back, haven't I? On a conscious level I've forgotten or have
been made to forget, but my real life, such as it is, has gone
on. What comfort this gives me is short-lived for I hear my own
words to you coming back to haunt me. 'They are picking up all
the abductees. And they aren't coming back.' Whyever did I say
that? How do I know? Am I a prophet now? I hope in this I am
wrong. At the very minimum, I fear that it will be a much longer
trip this time around.

     I never told you, Scully, but I had this plan. I thought
that when I retired, that I would like to travel. For someone
who for the past ten years has spent a third of his life
traveling, that probably doesn't make much sense, but I was
thinking about writing a book. Something wise and humorous.
Unlike my case reports, something intentionally humorous.
Something like John Steinbeck's 'Travels with Charlie' although
Charlie was a poodle and I'd never be caught dead owning a
poodle or a Pomeranian. A golden retriever, maybe, or a husky,
though probably a mutt. A mongrel like me. Just as long as it
was something with lot of fur to keep my Scully's toes warm at
night. You see, in most versions of the dream you're there, too,
reading the 'AAA' guides and finding out-of-the-way and unique
places to visit like 'South of the Border' in South Carolina and
the Corn Palace in South Dakota and any place where water is
reported to run uphill. We'd eat the local produce and...

     But that's never going to happen now, is it? I'm coming
closer and closer to the light and my feet are not stopping.
Guess I'll just have to keep a diary, like Samantha did, though
I seem fresh out of pencil and paper right now. I can record all
of this in my head though. Eidetic memories are good for that.
I can picture myself writing or typing and then I'll take a
snapshot of the output. Better than flow of consciousness for
organizing your thoughts. I'll play it back to you when I see
you again.

     This side of heaven, I pray God.


     I'm only three steps from the light now. I can see the edge
of the beam and the fine particles of dust dancing in the light.
They must have refined their technology in seven years and
because there's none of the wind that we both remember from
before. Only the best for yours truly it seems. Faces turn
towards me. So many faces. Something wrong about that. If what
Billy told us is correct, people have been disappearing for
weeks yet here they all are. Waiting. But they couldn't have
been just waiting here all this time. If so, then what have they
been waiting for?

     Only a step away now. I tell myself that I won't actually
go in the beam. I'll just look. That's right, observe and
report. In a second, I'll run like hell and Skinner will perform
some fantastically heroic feat and put me back to reality.

     Our reality.

     I try to turn back. I try just to stop moving.

     I... can't.

     It's like my body isn't all mine anymore. It's related to
the hum and the tingle in the back of my skull that makes it
hard to think. I know I've become increasing more frightened and
more desperate with each step I take, and yet it's as if I were
functioning under half a dozen valium and all the emotion were
just shriveling up somewhere deep inside. Even the sweat on my
palms has dried.

     Now the expressions on the faces of my fellow abductees
make sense, or perhaps I should say their lack of expression.

     They are like cattle. Dumb cattle. Or like a crowd of
little gelded ponies crowded onto a merry-go-round, their future
preordained. I am like that, too, I realize as I reach the edge
of the light and with barely a second's hesitation just walk in.


     This is like some really bad '50's 'B' movie.

     Above all, what I really wish I could do now is cry.


     I enter between Teresa and Billy. They are at least a
little more animated than the others zombies. Guess their
reaction could be considered ecstatic around here. They are
pleased to see me and not in the least surprised, which confuses
the hell out of me. I didn't know I was coming. I didn't even
know I was returning to Oregon. How did they know? They each
place a hand on my shoulder in welcome. I hope I manage to force
some reaction through the nearly numb muscles of my face to let
them know that I appreciate a friendly face because I really do.
I am piss-shitting scared.

     Their touch does something else to me, Scully. It's as if
we  have this bond. Not a new one but an old one, like family
members meeting after a long absence -- or is that like soldiers
who have been through hell together. Either way, another pretty
persuasive argument for my having come this way before. There's
a part of me that realizes that I'm suddenly very curious about
all this; how, like an amnesiac, I want to uncover what I have
lost.

     To embrace this new life, however, I realize that I must
turn my back to a certain extent on the old. Odd, maybe it comes
with the fuzz on my emotions, but I don't have many regrets
about that. What am leaving behind anyway?

     Friends? The Gunman will do fine without me. My
disappearance will give them a fine main story for their next
issue and speculation for years to come.

     The X-Files? Since I found Samantha, the spark is gone and
management hates me anyway. That shit of an auditor rather
summed it up. Sister dead, conspiracy dead. The die was cast.
They were going to take it away, anyway, close it down. Even if
Skinner were willing to use his influence to save it, they would
have continued to nibble away at its financing and its scope
like rats until all the substance was gone. All my work for
nothing.

     Family? Dead, dead, dead. Even my fish are rather recent
acquisitions and don't care who feeds them.

     That doesn't leave much. Only you, Scully. Only you. You
are all I regret leaving and I am helpless to do anything about
that.

     Talk about ditching you... This is the big ditch of all
time.

     I'm so sorry.

     I wish we had held out a little longer. Maybe if we were
still uncertain about our feelings for each other, it wouldn't
be so hard on you. Don't waste your life looking into every
shadow for me the way I looked for Sam. Don't do that. Know in
your heart that when -- and if -- I can come to you, I will.

     For me? I'd like to say that this will kill me. That I will
die of sorrow, but it's more complicated than that. As I look up
at the source of the light, a wave of dizziness flows over me.
It's the underside of one of their ships, like the ship of sand
from my dreams. Remember? I told you about those while we were
basking in the afterglow and while I was trying very hard not to
do the very male thing and fall asleep.

     This is it then. It's the only place left for me to go,
Scully. I wonder if, in time, I would not have sought this way
out. I was in a box. No way forward. No way back. I'd burned my
bridges and there was no where left on Earth for me, except in
your arms and neither of us would have wanted me to hide there.
I never did fit in anywhere except with you and you deserve
better. You belong in the world and I belong -- here, where I
will find my answers if they are anywhere. Why did the Consortia
let me live all those years when I could have so easily have
been eliminated? Who is my father and was Sam my biological
sister as well as my sister in every other way? Half-sister? How
did I come to be and have that thing in my head? Did the
Consortia know about that all along? I'll hopefully find answers
to questions I haven't even thought to ask yet.

     This doesn't mean I'm not scared, Scully. This doesn't mean
that a part of me wouldn't rather be slaving over quarterly
expense reports right now. Worse, I realize that Billy and
Teresa are looking at me as if they expect something of me. What
do they think I can do? Save them? I can't even save myself.
Ever since I heard the voices crashing through my head, I should
have known a day like this would come, that I was special. Only
I don't want to be special any more than Special Olympics kids
want to be special. I never have.


     There is a rustle in the cattle pen. A opening is made by
the subtle shifting of bodies. A new form joins us.

     May I live and breath, I'm almost happy to see that it's
our old nemesis -- Mr. square-jawed, runner-up-for-the-Arnold-
Schwarzenegger-look-alike-contest himself -- the Bounty Hunter.
A villain, of course. Can't have a melodrama without a villain.
He comes right up to me. He stares into my eyes. I'm as pleased
as punch about the valium-like fuzz now because it allows me to
remain completely impassive before him instead of weeping and
cringing like a dog as I did the time we tussled in the sub. I
suspect, however, that he knows how frightened I am. He can
probably smell it. His nostrils even flare a bit, the smug
bastard. And why am I frightened? It's because by coming up to
me and no one else, he has singled me out. The specialness I
didn't want to be -- that I have never wanted to be -- I am.
Even here.

     What did he say to me the first time we met: "I could have
killed you many times before." When? In the womb? As an infant?
Has he been watching me from afar forever? Have I been his
little science project? Can he go home now because it's the end
of the term and I'm being pulled in as a little show and tell
for all his hard work as if I were some hot house plant or
prize-winning sheep?

     Oh, Scully... even here, I'm not like the others. Not just
another anonymous steer destined for McDonald's. No, I'd say
from the way he's looking at me in that alpha-male way of his
that he does not see me that way at all. There's contempt but
also a need to prevail, like papa bull letting the young bull
know in no uncertain terms who is boss around here.

     I feel my self-confidence twitch back into life. Somewhere
inside, I'm still myself, that cocky, impudent guy you learned
to love.

     This new strength is what I cling to when everything
suddenly turns white. Knowing that the Hunter is still out
there, I feel a need to say something to make him realize that
I can't be intimidated with light and mirrors.

     "You lied to me," I hiss, though maybe the accusation is
only in my mind. "You told me she was alive."

     More amazing than my question, he answers back in that
Nordic cadence of his. "She was when last I knew. They betrayed
us, your Consortia. They lied. It's why they were eliminated.
Remember that."

     I was analyzing this threat when I sense rather than feel
Billy at my side begin to move. Actually, what he begins to do
is rise from his place, to float. I sense his feet pass the
level of my shoulders. When he is above me another from the herd
begins to ascend. We are being taken up one by one as you
described Cassandra being taken. What is most astonishing is
that there was no sound, no struggling. There are even a few
smiles.

     "Why do so many seem pleased to be going?" I ask Teresa on
my left. "Does this trip come with beer and a movie, too?"

     To that the Hunter snaps, "Quiet. Your irreverent patter
has no place where you are going."

     "Sorry, Charley," I murmur not thinking that he can hear
me. Clearly he does for one massive hand came up under my
throat.

     "You had best learn your place and quickly, Mulder
Mooncalf. Even among these other >belagani< you are as a child
where they are no more than cattle to us."

     "It's Mulder. Just Mulder."

     "You will be called, and you will answer to, what we choose
to call you. Your other life is over. That you will come to
accept."

     "And we will continue to exist only so long as we serve
you?" I ask in my best vintage SciFi movie impersonation, which
at the moment is not very good. My head is so full of hum and
cotton that even with such an easy target I can't come up with
a better line.

     He doesn't catch the irony. "Good, now you understand," and
he releases me.

     While we have been marking our territory, more abductees
have gone. They are drifting skyward like so many white ghosts.
What was the name of that Science Fiction novel? "Unto Our
Scattered Bodies Go"?

     Finally, there is only he and I left on ground level within
the light. "Are you coming with us, Charley?"

     ">Belagani< do not address >Yei<."

     "If '>Yei<' is you, then I just did. I asked if I am going
to see you again."

     "I do not know if my next assignment will be to this ship.
Why do you want to know?"

     "Because I have questions. I have many questions."

     "For what good it will do you, you may ask one question,
little mooncalf." His snarl is like the rumble of a hungry lion.
"In your new life questions are not allowed. You will learn
patience, you will learn discipline. You will learn to do what
you are told without questions."

     Chills, Scully. I'm seized with nasty chills but not for
this goon to see. "Sorry, but I'm not the behaving type. Ask my
first grade teacher. Ask Skinner. I'm just not put together that
way."

     A smile turns up the lips of the Hunter. I think I liked
his scowl better. "You have no idea how you are put together,
Mooncalf. But then neither do we. But we will learn."

     And then he reaches out and he touches the side of my left
temple with just two fingers of his right hand. The touch is
very light, but I feel an instant surge of heat and something
like electricity jump from his fingers into the empty space in
the back of my skull. The world explodes in a foaming crash of
unpleasant sensation.

     I think I lost consciousness for a moment because, when the
white pain becomes simply the white fog again, everything is
different. The stone face of the Hunter is staring up at me from
what seems to be a long way away. There is no weight under my
feet. This is what weightlessness feels like. I am ascending,
only not like the others. They all seemed so relaxed as if they
were being lifted up by angels in white robes. I can't seem to
keep my balance. I feel like I'm falling. It's like riding a
bicycle for the first time -- over compensation this way, over
compensation that. If I were an Apollo spacecraft, I'd be
tumbling. I feel like God's clumsiest fool, but mostly because
Charley Hunter is watching.

     Eventually, I realize that if I hold my muscles very still
and not move at all, my ascent is smoother. I learn this useful
lesson just as I sense the iris of the ship's massive eye close
in around me. There's still light everywhere, but I can sense
enough to know that Hunter is following. He's the last. There is
no more reason for our to be here. Below my feet I can still
trees and grass as if through a Martha's Vineyard mist. Slowly,
the ship closes its eye, cutting off my last view of Earth.

     The ship has swallowed me whole. I close my eyes and for
the first time truly realize that this is for real.

     That shit of an auditor has won after all. "You need to go
where the aliens are, Agent Mulder. You need to limit your
scope."

     I've done that. Can I go home now?

The End

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