Tachyon

by Ann K

RATING:  R, although ratings of individual chapters may vary. Please read carefully. 

CATEGORY:  X-File, some MSR

FEEDBACK:  annhkus@yahoo.com

UNIVERSE:  Think season five or so. This is just Mulder and Scully, trying to 
figure out a strange case and keep themselves in one piece during the process.

DESCRIPTION:  Mulder and Scully travel to a small Mississippi town to investigate a 
strange series of disappearances. Can they figure out the truth behind the mystery 
before it is too late?

DISCLAIMER:  Mulder, Scully and the X-Files belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox.  

 

Tachyon, Part One: Lost

I.

"Finis origine pendent." ("The end depends on the beginning.")

--Manlius

 


    

"So, you are saying that she simply disappeared?"

She couldn't help the look of disbelief that crossed momentarily over
her face. She was tired, she was hot, and she wanted to be anywhere
else, anywhere but Faunsdale, Mississippi, listening to this man ramble
on about vanishing fast food workers.

He glared at her, ignoring Mulder standing against the wall with his
arms crossed. "That's what I said, wasn't it? It's not like she
evaporated in front of my eyes. Like I told you, I gave her my order,
she turned around to walk behind the counter, and she never came back,"
he answered.

"Tell us again, Mr. Everett, how you were the only one in restaurant,"
Mulder said, his voice betraying none of the frustrations she knew he
was feeling. It had been a long week for the both of them. Mulder stood
beside her for just a moment, just long enough for her to be reassured
they were on the same wavelength, and then pulled the chair out from the
table and sat across from James Everett.

Everett's eyes flickered to her to Mulder, then back to Scully again,
and he sighed. "Look, I know this sounds bizarre. It does to me, too,
and I was there. But, for the last time, this is what happened. I got
off my shift late. I usually do, what with all the crazy hours they have
me working at the plant lately. I always stop by and pick up some supper
on the way home. Amy always worked the evening shift, and we got to know
each other."

He paused, and she saw the flicker of sadness on his face. Against all
logical reasoning, she realized with a jolt of surprise that she
believed him. "She kept the lights on when she wanted me to know she
would be there. I walked in the store, we talked for a minute, she went
to get my hamburger, and she never came back. I waited, and then I
walked around looking for her. That's when the police came."

An off-duty sheriff had driven by, seen the lights on in the town's sole
fast-food joint at a time when everyone knew it should be closed, and
now they were here, investigating the disappearance and possible murder
of Amy Johnston.

"What did you tell the sheriff, Mr. Everett?" Mulder asked.

Mr. Everett ran his hands through his balding hair, and slumped further
into the dingy chair. "Just what I told you. That she was there one
minute, and then she was gone." 

The door opened in the back of the room, and Scully saw the young deputy
stick his head in the door. He didn't look old enough to drive, much
less carry a gun. "You about done with the suspect, Mr. Mulder?" She was
almost accustomed to being ignored by the police force, seeing how it
had started the minute they arrived in town.Scully was too tired to care.

"You can take him. I think we are done here," Mulder answered, watching
as Mr. Everett walked slowly out of the room, the door clicking shut
behind him. Silence.

As Mulder moved over to the room's sole window, the dingy pane of glass
revealing the view of the town's main street, she couldn't help but
watch her partner. He wore his shirt sleeves rolled casually to the
elbow, an acknowledgement to the sweltering Mississippi humidity. His
hair revealed the slightest hint of gray, but his face remained the
boyish, inquisitive one she had grown to love--and she could tell this
case had him frustrated, but intrigued.

"So, Scully, what do you think of our Mr. Everett?" he asked as she
walked towards him, leaning against the wall. She shook her head at his
offering of sunflower seeds -- really, Mulder, have I ever said yes? --
before answering. "Prepare yourself, Mulder. I think I believe him."

He grinned. "I know. I saw your face when we were talking. For what it
is worth, I do, too. So, where does that leave us?" Scully paused at his
rhetorical question, and then answered anyway. "It leaves us to add the
disappearance of an eighteen-year-old girl to five unexplained missing
persons reports in the county in the last six weeks. No apparent
connection, no real witnesses, no suspects, aside from James Everett,
who, by some freak event of nature, we both seem to believe is innocent."

She stopped, walking over to the table to pick up their files. The
security tape from the restaurant had shown exactly what Mr. Everett
described, Amy Johnston walking to the back of store and simply
disappearing. One moment she was there, the next moment she wasn't.

"This doesn't make sense, Mulder. Not only do we not have any witnesses,
we don't have any evidence. No fingerprints, no bloodstains, no ransom
notes, nothing. The lab in DC said the tape was unaltered. But people
just don't disappear into thin air."

Scully waited for his predictable argument to that last remark, and
turned to look at him when he offered none. "Mulder?" she asked quietly.
He had seemed preoccupied over the last few weeks, months even. They
were both exhausted. Not that she had expected their jaunt to Faunsdale
to be a vacation for them, but it seemed on paper to be a simple, albeit
perplexing missing person case. Scully was thinking a little differently
now.

"Mulder?" she asked again, walking over to where he stood against the
window, staring at the people outside. "Ever wonder what kind of lives
these people lead, Scully? 

She watched as the young boy filled up his car at the gas station, some
teenage girls laughed outside the grocery store, and a line of cars
waited at the fast food restaurant. A dog wandered down the sidewalk, a
flock of birds flew overhead. Seemed to be a typical portrait of rural
America. For some reason, she found the Norman Rockwell imagery annoying.

"Normal ones, Mulder," she answered, feeling a little peeved at his
question. Did he want to know why their lives were so bizarre in
comparison? Hadn't they already discussed this? "Probably with no serial
murderers, alien clones, one-armed stalkers or mysterious viruses. Just
normal--families, jobs, children, mortgage payments." She was tired, and
just wanted to get home. 

Everett had given them nothing to go on, and had also probably extended
their stay in the lovely little haven of Faunsdale by at least another
couple of days.

She jumped as Mulder caught her arm. Looking into his gaze, Scully
realized how easy it would be for her to grab Mulder and settle down
into a normal life of their own. Sometimes, she amended her thoughts.
When things got too crazy, she wanted the white picket fence and dog in
the backyard. But only sometimes.

"I'm sorry, Scully. I was just thinking out loud really. I didn't mean
to upset you." He held her gaze for a second longer and then leaned down
to open the door. Registering the fact that being in the South seemed to
turn Mulder into quite the gentleman--occasionally--Scully smiled her
thanks. "I'm fine, Mulder."

The hallway was empty as they walked towards the exit. Not surprising,
really. The town was so small that they met the entire police force upon
their arrival. Faunsdale itself was tiny, only a couple thousand people,
but still one of the largest cities in the county. Which made the six
missing person cases even more of an anomaly. In a town this size, that
statistically just didn't happen in such a short period of time.

"Where to now?" Scully asked as they stepped into the sunlight. It was
unusually bright outside, she realized with surprise, remembering the
morning weather forecast that had called for afternoon rain. Slipping on
her sunglasses, she thumbed through the worn pages of Amy Johnston's
file. "We have the missing girl's grandmother, her high school
cheerleader coach, her Sunday school teacher. We might be able to get
some information from them."

Not only was it bright, she thought with a frown, the air was unusually
humid. Not really humid, Scully corrected. Heavy. Must be the rain
coming in, as she felt her blouse sticking to her lower back and the
trickle of sweat between her shoulder blades.

Mulder was silent. He was staring at the street in front of them, and
the intense look on his face gave her pause. "Mulder? What's wrong? Did
we miss something?"

He turned to her, his expression blank. "Hey, Scully. Look around. What
do you notice?"

She unconsciously lifted an eyebrow, trying to figure out the punch line
to Mulder's joke, and looked down the street. Everything seemed to be as
they had last seen it: the fast-food restaurant on the corner, the
grocery across the road, the lights in the drugstore sign dull in the
incredibly bright sunlight.

But something was wrong. Scully knew it instantly, but it took her a
moment to realize what it was. The line at the restaurant had
disappeared. No one was walking out of the grocery store. The chatty
teenage girls were gone. The dog, the birds. Nothing.

There were no cars driving on the street, no people on the sidewalk, no
customers in the stores. "Oh my god, Mulder. What just happened?"
Everything was deserted.

It was as if all signs of life had vanished, leaving only the two of
them standing in the desolate street.

Everyone was gone.

 

 

II.

When you live in a big city, with thousands of people and cars and
traffic, it is never really quiet. Even when you close your door and
pull the shades, there is an almost imperceptible hum, a constant
reminder of the life that surrounds you. She realized how eerie silence
could be, a complete and utter silence where your heartbeat was your
only companion.

Mulder's voice caused her to jump. "There's nothing here, Scully," he
announced, coming out of the last store on the section of street closest
to the police station. "No purses, cell phones, wallets. It's like no
one was ever here."

She had walked back into the police station first, only to be greeted by
the empty reception desk and a row of holding cells. She knew that two
of the cells had been full only moments ago, as she and Mulder had
walked into the interrogation room.

No James Everett, no Detective Monroe. No one. Scully reached for her
cell phone, the familiar weight in her jacket reminding her of her
ever-present link to the outside world. It seemed that, no matter where
they ended up, the cell phone worked.

Mulder watched her as she hit the speed dial, connecting to Skinner's
office in DC. The sound of the numbers rushed through the line, but then
there was no sound, and no receptionist. An odd crackling noise sounded
distantly in her ear, a strange, unfamiliar noise. "Anyone there?"
Mulder asked. Scully shook her head. "No connection," she offered. She
glanced down at the face of the phone, where the time and date were
always displayed.

It was blank.

Scully walked out into the street, blinking into the harsh sunlight. She
felt like she was in a daze. Mulder came to stand beside her. They were
both silent, likely because neither of them knew what to say. Not only
was there no one around, it was as if no one had ever been around.
Faunsdale was an admittedly small town, but it was bustling for its
size. There was no way that everyone had decided to go home for the day. 

"Let's look at this analytically, Mulder," she offered, feeling a
desperate need to have her version of reality verified by her partner.

"We spent last night at the Dew Drop Inn in Faunsdale, Mississippi. We
are here investigating the disappearance of Amy Johnston, another victim
in what has been a string of missing persons. You got coffee this
morning for us at the Stop and Go, the restaurant where our victim was
last seen."

He nodded, going along with her tale, although she knew he was only
trying to make her feel better. His mind was already working through a
thousand possible theories. "We picked up some muffins at the grocery on
our way to the station," Scully continued. "The grocery was full of people."

She looked at him for confirmation, and felt a rising panic. "Mulder,"
she whispered, reaching out to hold his arm, "what the hell is going on?"

Scully couldn't shake the feeling that had settled on her since they
walked out of the police station. It was like a winter blanket, cutting
off her oxygen. Something was wrong, very wrong. She never panicked,
even during the worst of times, but she felt the rising surge of nausea
in her throat as she glanced down the empty street.

Mulder met her gaze and offered a reassuring smile. "I don't know. But I
know that I am here and you are here and that is something. What I don't
know is where the hell everyone else is. Not ten seconds before we
walked out of that station, I looked out the window and saw people. I
saw cars driving down the street. I saw that damned annoying woman from
the grocery store this morning."

He walked away from her, rambling as he ran his fingers through his
hair. "What are our options here?" He was thinking out loud, and Scully
instinctively joined him. "A hoax of some sort, perhaps," she offered as
her first thought. "It's not like we have been too welcomed here since
our arrival."

Mulder thought for a moment. "But there wasn't enough time for everyone
to get out of town. And there would have been evidence of some sort.
Tire tracks, personal items. And who would have orchestrated such an
elaborate set-up?"

She frowned. They had been in unsettling positions so many times before,
dangerous ones where the difference between their lives and their deaths
depended on the ability to rationalize the answer to whatever dilemma
presented itself. They could figure this out.

"Okay, so if it wasn't an elaborate hoax, could this somehow be related
to the missing person cases? I mean, all of our victims came from this
area," Mulder suggested, walking over to the sidewalk and sitting
unceremoniously on the curb. 

"Sure, it could be related," she answered. "But the whole town to go
missing instantly? That's even more of a statistical anomaly than the
facts we knew, that we were sure of, before we came here."

She sat beside him, gazing down the street. The streetlight caught her
attention. It was hanging still in the stagnant air, and she pulled her
sunglasses down to look at the lights closer. They were all shining; the
red, yellow and green staring steadily back at her. Leaning backwards,
she saw the lights on the opposite side were the same. All
illuminated. But none of the other lights in the town were shining.

She looked back at Mulder, surprised that he was speaking. "It is
possible that the townspeople have disappeared," she caught him saying.
"I mean, there is history of this sort, of towns vanishing without a
trace, with no word from the residents." 

Scully shook her head. "But in a ten-second time span, Mulder? That's
not likely. And everything else in town is still here-- the buildings,
the trees. Even some of the electricity is still working. Look at the
streetlights."

Mulder looked at the lights as she pushed herself off the sidewalk,
walking into the store behind her. It was only slightly cooler inside,
yet Scully noticed the same vibe in the air that she sensed in the
street. It wasn't necessarily a current she could feel against her skin,
and it wasn't something she could hear. It was a vibrancy of sorts;
intangible electricity in the air that she sensed rather than heard or felt.

She turned as Mulder came in behind her, and watched him as he picked up
a candy bar off the shelf. "Mulder, really. How can you be hungry at a
time like this?" He gave her a wry smile. "Power food, Scully. Makes me
think more clearly."

In spite of the tension, she couldn't help her light laugh. "If that's
power food, then you might want to pass some my way. I think we need the
combined power of our brilliant analytical skills to figure this one
out." Scully watched with amusement as he carefully broke the chocolate
bar into two pieces, then hesitated only for a moment before giving her
the slightly larger half. "Thank you, Mulder. I think." They resumed
their watch of the empty main street, leaning against the counter, his
shoulder resting lightly against her own. 

The sunlight was impossibly harsh, reflecting off the asphalt and
shining directly into her eyes. Even inside the store, she squinted
against the brightness. "It's so damn bright outside, Mulder. And humid,
the air is so thick--"

The answer came to her with such clarity and force that she doubled over
with a gasp, sitting unsteadily on the ground. "Scully? What is it?
What's wrong?" Scully looked up at him, the concern on his face
registering at the same time the words tumbled from her mouth. She was
amazed they hadn't realized the truth sooner.

She managed to find her voice, unsteady as it was. "Mulder, I don't
think anything has happened to the people in this town. I think
something has happened to us."

 

 

III. 

"The laws of physics do not rule out the possibility of time travel."

Dr. David Deutsch, "The quantum physics of time travel," Scientific
American, March 1994

 

She awoke in Mulder's bed. His masculine smell lingered on the cheap
motel room pillow stuffed under her head, and she could feel the rumpled
sheets around her feet. She kept her eyes closed for a moment longer,
unwilling to open them to answer the question of why she was in Mulder's
motel room. 

The sensation was comforting, yet she knew more sinister things awaited
her when she opened her eyes. The air was ominous, and shadows danced in
front of her closed eyes. Scully drifted for some time between sleep and
reality. She dreamt of her mother, and Missy, and she swore she saw her
father standing beside the bed, reaching out to comfort her with a
withered hand. Oh, god, she was tired.

Scully rolled to her side slightly as the bed shifted and his voice
reached her ears, concern underlying the whisper. "Scully? You awake?"
Her eyes fluttered open, into the brightness of the room. "Hmm," she
managed, struggling to sit up, feeling instantly queasy. "When did we
get back here?"

Mulder steadied her as she swung her legs over the side of bed, watching
her carefully before going to the dresser behind him and picking up a
bottle of water. "You don't remember?" he asked softly. She shook her
head, trying to clear it, trying to put some semblance of order to her
thoughts. Everything was a blur inside her head, and she felt the
remnants of a pounding headache behind her eyes.

"I remember sitting inside the store with you, eating a candy bar and
trying to figure out where everyone was. Let me guess, Mulder. You gave
me the tainted end." He smiled, though only in appreciation of her
attempt at humor, and sat beside her again, offering the bottled water.

Scully couldn't remember the last time she felt so exhausted. Rather,
she didn't want to remember, memories of the hospital and Penny Northern
and her cancer sneaking in uninvited. It was the same feeling she'd
experienced standing in the deserted street, a heaviness in her chest, a
tingling in her toes.

"I didn't faint, Mulder. I am fine."

She could see the anxiety in her partner's eyes as he watched her
steadily. Finally, he looked away, and blinked twice. "I didn't say you
fainted," he offered defensively, but she could sense the concern in his
voice. "I brought you into my room so you could rest and I could watch you."

They had to figure out what had happened to them, not be concerned about
her need for a nap in mid-afternoon. She had no recollection of getting
back to the motel, but she wasn't about to tell Mulder that. He didn't
need to know how disoriented she was. They had to get back home.

"The motel office was empty," he said quietly. "No dial tone on the
phone, no reception on the television, no static on the radio. I agree
with you, Scully, that something has happened to us, has affected our
version of reality, but I can't quite figure out what that was. The time
span was too short, between looking out the window and walking out that
door."

"But you do think that something happened to us."

"I think that much is obvious." She mussed over his response, trying to
remember the last time they agreed on anything, besides James Monroe's
innocence. "So where does that leave us?" 

He accepted the bottled water back and took a quick drink before
answering her. "For now, I figure it leaves us right here in this motel
room, until you get to feeling better and I get some rest."

Scully stood, swaying slightly, then forced her feet in front of her.
Step, pause. Step, pause. Jesus, she felt horrible. Mulder had opened
the front door wide, and she pulled the paisley curtains open from the
motel room window. The sun was as bright as it was when they were in
town. She saw the sky at the same time as Mulder's hand came to rest on
her shoulder, and she knew that he, too, had seen.

The clouds were racing by as if someone was playing a videotape at fast
speed. There was no breeze in the air, but the white plumes in the sky
rushed by them. The cluster of pine trees across the road weren't
moving, nor was the cotton in the nearby field being disturbed. Only the
clouds in the sky were twisting and dancing above them.

Almost as if they were standing still, and everything else was moving
forward. Only that wasn't possible.

Mulder's voice broke her awed silence. "It has been like this since we
got back to the motel. I didn't notice it in town, and you saw the
weather report this morning yourself." She nodded, remembering that she
had told Mulder to bring an umbrella. The forecaster has said there
would be a small rain shower this afternoon. But these weren't rain
clouds. There wasn't a hint of gray in the sky, yet the aura was
foreboding and definitely gloomy.

"Guess the weatherman got this one wrong, huh?" she sighed. His hand
tightened on her arm, then he stepped out into the parking lot. She
listened to his shoes crunching on the gravel, and was convinced she
heard an echo.

What the hell was going on?

"Mulder, where's our car?" she asked, finally cognizant of the fact that
their Taurus was missing from the parking lot. In fact, there was
nothing there, not even the spawn of big rigs she saw last night on her
way to bed. He met her quizzical gaze. "You don't remember?" he asked.
She grimaced, and forced the truth. If they had no car, she refused to
contemplate how Mulder had gotten her back to the motel room. "No, I
don't remember. But I am assuming that it wasn't where we left it in
front of the police station, from the look on your face."

"Points to you, Scully. Now, if you can just tell me why it wasn't
there, we'll be back to Washington this evening."

"I don't have a theory yet." He pinned her with his intense gaze as she
continued. "But I assume you do." Of course he did. He always had some
insane reason why they were chasing down liver eating mutants or
possessed children or homicidal maniacs. Unfortunately, at this moment,
Scully decided that whatever Mulder had come up with might be rational
enough to be believed. There was a shortage of other options at the moment.

"I'm waiting with baited breath, Mulder."

"Are you telling me," he asked, his hands on his hips and a bead of
sweat trickling down his brow, "that you, Agent Scully, are open and
receptive to my theory in this case?" She couldn't help the grin at
their familiar banter, although nothing else about this situation felt
familiar. "Don't push your luck, Mulder. I am saying that I am
interested in hearing your thoughts as to how you and I came to be the
lone inhabitants of Faunsdale, Mississippi, and how the sky managed to
get stuck on fast forward."

The clouds loomed behind him as he leaned forward. "Fine then, Scully. I
think you and I have traveled in time."

She knew what he was going to say that before he said it. So why did his
words cause a shiver of fear to go down her spine? She wasn't scared, of
anything. Not that she would ever admit. She tilted her chin up to meet
his gaze. "Time travel," she said, slowly, rolling the words around in
her mouth as she considered the idea. She conjured up images of 1950s
horror movies and H.G. Wells, not anything legitimate. Time travel was
scientifically impossible. She had studied the idea when she was in
college, contemplated all the possibilities. But it was impossible. 

"Yes, Scully, time travel." Mulder was as concerned as she was over
their bizarre predicament, but she swore she could see the glimmer of
excitement in his eyes. Typical. You could put them in a vat of
ectoplasm, and Mulder would try to figure out where it came from before
they got out.

He waited for the idea to sink in before he continued. "Think about it,
Scully. Several cases of missing persons reported in the last six weeks,
all mysteriously disappearing, in some cases right in front of our
witnesses. People vanishing in thin air. Poof. Not possible, right?"

She nodded her head. Definitely not possible. But the cases were real.
She had looked through the files this morning before they left for the
police station. "And all of the signs we've seen point to some sort of
larger atmospheric disturbance," Mulder continued. "No automobiles, no
people, no reception on the television, no phone service. It is as
everything that existed this morning vanished. Everything that was
alive, biological or otherwise, is gone."

"Except for us," she concluded, her words sounding melodramatic in the
stillness of the afternoon.

"Except for us," he confirmed.


"Our time is a very shadow that passeth away."
The Book of Solomon
 
Part Two: Discovery
 
I. 
  
Having the phone ring at two in the morning was never a good thing. 
When you were assistant director of one of the largest investigative 
units of the FBI, it was a regular, yet still ominous, occurrence. 
Walter Skinner reached for the ringing phone at the same time he 
slipped on his glasses, mentally running down a list of his agents 
and their current status. 

Madsen and Suarez, on assignment in New York, scheduled to return to 
DC in the morning. Horton, consulting in Pennsylvania, but he had 
just spoken to her yesterday afternoon and everything seemed to be 
progressing normally. Lindsey and Greer, writing up the report from 
their latest kidnapping case in California. 

Mulder and Scully. They were off investigating a case in 
Mississippi. Somehow, he knew their names would be the subject of 
the early morning phone call. Despite Scully's steadying influence, 
Mulder's propensity to engage in the bizarre had landed the two in 
strange predicaments over the last four years, and had caused his 
phone to ring numerous times in the early morning. 

No wonder Skinner was going increasingly bald. 

"Skinner," he mumbled into the receiver, the slight husky tone to 
his voice the only hint that he had been asleep. 

"Assistant Director Skinner, this is Beverly White in the 
communications department. I am sorry to disturb you so early in the 
morning, but I have an urgent call on the line from the field office 
in Mississippi." 

Funny, he felt no victory in being right about this one. 

"Transfer," he said briskly, sitting up in bed and switching on the 
table lamp. 

There was brief moment of silence, and then a thick Southern accent 
reached his ears. "AD Skinner, this is SAC White from Jackson. I 
hate to be calling you at this hour, sir, but we have a situation 
here that you might need to be aware of." 

Yes, Mulder and Scully were certainly capable of being called a 
situation. "I assume this is in regards to Agents Mulder and 
Scully." 

"Yes, sir. They called us a few days ago when they arrived in town, 
and I spoke to Agent Scully once by phone after they traveled to 
Faunsdale. But I received a phone call from the sheriff this evening 
telling me that they haven't checked in for two days. He assumed 
they left town, but then he saw their car parked in front of the 
station. I was hoping they had checked in with you." 

Such an answer would be too simple, and he could well imagine Mulder 
getting the urge to run out of town following up a new lead, but he 
instinctively knew that something was amiss. "No, Agent White, they 
are not here in DC. And no one at your office has spoken to them in 
the last few days?" 

"No, sir. I just didn't want to let this one go, in case." His voice 
trailed off, and Skinner silently filled in the blank. In case 
something was seriously wrong. Mulder and Scully had been 
investigating a string of missing persons, he remembered, the 
bizarre underscore to the case being that the victims had vanished 
into thin air, with no evidence to be found related to their 
disappearance. 

"When were they last seen?" he asked. 

He heard the younger agent shuffle through some notes before he 
answered. "Two days ago, in the morning. They were interviewing a 
suspect in the latest abduction at the local police station. Seems 
that no one saw them leave, and no one has seen or spoken to them 
since." 

Skinner felt the small hairs on his neck stand on end. His instincts 
had saved his ass more than once in his professional career, and his 
instincts were screaming at him that something was very, very wrong. 

"Thank you, Agent White. I'll be in touch," he murmured, dropping 
the phone back onto the receiver and throwing off the bed sheets. 
He prepared for his flight to Mississippi as soon as the sun came up.



II.
  
"This is better than my home movie collection." Mulder's voice was 
earnest and just a touch wistful. 

She shot him a quick glance, and smiled at his sincerity. "That's 
saying a lot, Mulder, considering how attached you are to some of 
your special videos." 

They sat on the floor facing the open window, watching the clouds 
dance above them in the sky. She had to agree with Mulder. There 
was something fascinating and hypnotizing in the way the clouds 
were rushing by. At first, it was almost nauseating, the speed at 
which the sky traveled. But, after watching for some period of time, 
she felt relaxed, lulled. 

Their cell phones lay on the floor between them, useless, although 
they had been trying them periodically. Mulder had left the 
television on, but it was silent. There was no static and no sound. 

"Pass me the chips, will you?" She handed Mulder the open bag of 
chips near her leg and settled back against the bed, comforted by 
the warmth of his body next to hers. 

"Should we be tired yet, Mulder?" Her wristwatch showed that it was 
nearing midnight, but there was no sign of darkness in the sky. Her 
body was giving her mixed signals. While her eyes were beginning to 
droop with exhaustion, she could feel the tension and nervous energy 
in her body from the anxious atmosphere. 
  
"Maybe," he answered. "But I'm not tired." He paused for a brief 
moment, and she heard him munch on a chip before he crumbled the 
bag into his hands and tossed it into the air in the general 
vicinity of the trashcan. "He shoots, he scores," he proclaimed 
in a stage whisper, slinging his hands up above his head. 

"Hey, Scully," he finally asked, twisting his body over to look at 
her. "I know you don't believe in time travel, and I know you think 
what I said outside was crazy. But what do you think about the 
actual subject, from a scientific perspective?" 

She hated to even say the words, feeling that, by doing so, she 
would somehow give credibility to an idea that was simply 
impossible. But she had nothing better to offer as a hypothesis 
at the moment. 

"Time travel, Mulder," she began, after picking at the worn carpet 
beneath her fingers for several moments, "is one of the great 
scientific hoaxes of our time. People want to believe, to change 
the mistakes of the past and learn the mysteries of the future, so 
we have been subjected to a grandiose Hollywood version of something 
which cannot exist." 

"Why can't it exist, Scully?" His look was intense, and so 
incredibly Mulder, that she relented. 

"Mulder, even though I may have rewritten Einstein, I am not a 
quantum physicist. My interpretation of his whole twin paradox idea 
is that, while intriguing in theory, it is impossible in practice." 

"You may not be a physicist, Scully, but you are familiar with the 
laws that govern the universe. You can't just rule it out of hand, 
and I believe, at one time, you didn't. I know we have seen some 
impossible things happen since we've been together. Things that 
don't always fit into a neat category. But wouldn't you agree 
that the laws of physics can often be distorted in our work?" 

"Mulder, you don't distort them. You discard them all together." 
She earned a derisive laugh, but kept going. 

"I believe that time as we know it is not multi-dimensional. It 
exists in the moment we draw our breath, and then it is gone, never 
to be recovered. What Einstein wrote about may follow the laws of
theory, but not the laws of reality," she said. 

Hearing her thoughts in the stillness of the motel room saddened 
her. "Of course, there are things I would like to change, Mulder. 
I would want to be there for my father one last time. I would stop 
Missy from ever going into my apartment. I would relive the first 
day we met." She wasn't surprised to feel the warmth of his hand 
covering her hand. "But I can't, Mulder, because those moments 
don't exist except in my memory, and I can never physically go 
back there." 

"And the future?" he asked. 

She sighed. "We both know that the future could hold some 
ominous things, Mulder. I don't know if I want to see how the 
world turns out, but even if I did, I can't. Not beyond my 
biological lifetime, anyway." 

God, she was so very tired. Whatever had happened to them, it had 
drained her of her strength, and she realized that she just didn't 
give a damn anymore. Without asking, she laid her head down in 
Mulder's lap, and closed her eyes, blocking out the dancing 
clouds from her view. 

Mulder never flinched. Hesitating only a moment, he reached up to 
stroke her hair with a gentleness that surprised her. "In theory, 
Scully, I might agree with you." She made a mental note to jot down 
the day's date, whatever it happened to be. Mulder actually agreed 
with her that day, not once, but three times. 

"But, what if, Scully? What if, somehow, when we walked out of 
that room into the police station, we walked into some sort of 
alternate dimension? Forward, backward. I don't know. But isn't it 
somehow possible that we encountered some sort of transport of 
sorts? Something that affected only the two of us? You said it 
yourself, when we were in the store, that the town as we saw it 
this morning still exists. You and I are the only ones who have 
been affected." 

"In Faunsdale, Mississippi," she replied, her sarcasm thick. "A 
time transport, a shift in the speed of light that caused us to 
be bumped forward, or backward, in time. From the police station. 
It makes perfect sense, Mulder." 

Mulder's words were ludicrous, yet they throbbed against her closed 
eyes, creating another soon to be pounding headache. She felt 
herself drift along his words, and was unsure if he was still 
talking, or if she was dreaming. She slept restlessly. Mulder's 
voice was distant. "A transport, Scully. Einstein himself predicted 
it. You wrote about it. A shorter dimension connecting two points 
in space, in time." 

Time. Her father stood over them. His body was slightly decomposed, 
and she drew back from him in fear, feeling a cold sweat drip 
between her breasts. "Dana Scully, what have you done?" he 
whispered, yet his voice echoed loudly in her ears. What have you 
done, she asked herself. What have you done? 

The vision of her father disappeared as Mulder jerked to his feet, 
crouching down low on the ground. She rolled onto the carpet before 
he leaned over and put his finger to her lips. "I heard someone," 
he mouthed silently, jerking his head toward the open door. 

Oh, Jesus. It was her father. He was outside. 

The haze of her dream disappeared and she took a deep steadying 
breath. Her father was dead. She was here, somewhere, with Mulder. 
They hadn't seen another soul all day, besides each other. And now 
someone was outside. 

With a quick nod to him, she pulled her Sig from her holster, 
absently wondered if the damn thing even worked, and stepped in 
front of him into the parking lot.

 
III.
 
 
She closed her eyes briefly against the blinding sun, and she felt 
Mulder's hand pause momentarily on her back as he came up behind 
her. It seemed that, no matter how often they played this little 
game, the thrill of the hunt never went away. She felt that thrill 
again today, but she was dismayed to realize it was accompanied by 
something else she rarely, if ever, experienced. Fear.

"Where did you hear the voice coming from?" she asked Mulder, her 
tone low and urgent. They had been stranded in this place, wherever 
it was, for too long for them to miss out on this opportunity to 
find someone, anyone, who might know what the hell was going on.
  
"Over there," he answered after a brief second, nodding his head 
toward the main office. She absently noticed that his hand never 
left her lower back, staying there for longer than was really 
necessary. At this point, she didn't care. She craved the touch, 
and it made her feel safe, everything that their surroundings did 
not.

They walked silently together under the overhang, their footsteps 
making an even cadence on the concrete. Scully jumped when Mulder 
grabbed her arm. "Do you hear that? It's the voice I heard before." 
She watched him with squinted eyes. Was Mulder losing touch with 
reality? She hadn't heard a single sound other than the persistent
and eerie echo of their footsteps. "Mulder, I didn't hear anything," 
she started before he reacted.

"There it was again," he exclaimed, walking quickly toward the motel 
office. She hung behind for only a moment, long enough to admit that 
she had heard a faint laugh coming from the building. A woman, maybe 
the manager? But it was faint, and distant. It didn't sound right.
 
Scully trotted up behind him as he pushed the door open with his 
foot, and she raised her Sig to her shoulder, surveying the 
surroundings. It was as empty as when they saw it this afternoon, 
the pitiful fern still occupying the dubious place of honor by 
the front window. "Mulder, there's no one here. Was it the 
television you heard? Or the radio?" she asked, walking over to 
where the radio sat behind the counter. 

He stood in the center of the empty room. "I heard a voice, Scully. 
It came from here. I heard it all the way down in our motel room."
He was defensive, which made her worried. If Mulder was hearing 
voices, and she was agreeing with him, then neither of them could be 
expected to be rational in this situation. And that was exactly what 
they needed. But it was obvious that no one had been in this office 
for some time.

"Mulder, I think your mind is playing tricks on you," she said 
reluctantly, walking back out to stand before him. She instinctively 
put her hand to his face and leaned closer to check his eyes. 

Bloodshot, but not overly dilated. His skin was warm, but not 
feverish. Taking care of Mulder was as second nature as her own 
name. "I'm fine, Scully," he said, pushing her hand away with 
irritation.

A sudden movement from outside caught her attention. There was a 
female figure standing by the window, and Scully clearly saw her 
blonde pigtail hanging down her back. "Hey," she shouted as she 
pushed Mulder to the side, running toward the open door. "Stop," 
she added, her voice shrill to her own ears. She felt a rush of 
oxygen into her body as she stepped outside, reaching her hand 
toward the woman.

Then she was alone. The figure that she saw so clearly in front of 
her, the petite blonde wearing jeans and a ponytail, vanished. 
Her hand grasped into nothingness, and she nearly lost her balance, 
falling against the brick wall in an effort to keep upright. Looking 
into the office window, she saw that Mulder was gone. He wasn't 
there.

She gasped, panicking. "Mulder!" she shouted, turning quickly to 
see if he was behind her. "Mulder!" she shouted again, carefully 
holding her weapon in front of her as she retraced her steps 
back into the office. Dear god, no. She could not be alone. 
She had left him standing right behind her, had stepped outside 
for only a moment. There was no time for him to go anywhere.

Just as there was no time for everyone in the town to disappear 
this morning. 

A sharp clatter from the parking lot caused her to jump, bringing 
her gun instinctively in front of her. "Mulder!" she shouted 
again, forcing her legs to support her and walk her to the door 
of the office. "Where are you, Mulder? Talk to me, damn it!" 
She was screaming, her voice hoarse. Scully knew she was 
panicking. She catalogued her body's reactions with the 
patient efficiency of her medical training, and remembered 
the first rule of engagement from the academy. Maintain the 
upper hand.

"Oh my god," she whispered as she walked into the parking lot. 
Something was changing. The sky was darker, and she saw the 
clouds whipped into a fury. They were mocking her, dancing over 
her head. She swore they were like tap shoes, and she could feel 
the pounding in her head behind her eyes. Even the tops of the 
tall pine trees across the road were moving in rhythm to the 
increasing chaos, and she felt the weakness flow through her 
as she became immersed in the turmoil.

Suddenly, a strong hand gripped her shoulder, and she turned, 
throwing a punch with her right hand before she focused her 
eyes.

"Jesus, Scully," Mulder exclaimed, grabbing her as she fell 
forward against him. "It's me, Scully. It's Mulder." He took 
the gun out of her hand and slid down to the ground with her, 
holding her tightly.

"Where did you go, Mulder?" she asked, desperately trying to 
focus on his face. His eyes were blazing with concern, and she 
felt an instant remorse that she had caused him such agony. 
"I'm sorry I almost hit you," she added with sincere regret.

He was silent, the irony of her statement obvious even to her. 
"I imagine you are, Scully." He pushed her hair away from her 
eyes, and she could tell from the trembling of his hands that 
he was more frightened than he would admit. "I was right here. 
I never left the office. You ran outside and just vanished, 
and when I walked out to look for you, I saw the sky. It was 
dark, like a thunderstorm coming in. And then you were there 
in front of me."

"I saw someone, Mulder. I saw a woman standing there, and when 
I ran out to see her, you vanished."  She saw the doubt flicker 
in his eyes before he gave her a solemn nod. "But I did, Mulder. 
I saw her, just like I am here with you right now. She was 
standing right here, looking out at the road."

Her voice trailed off as his gaze followed her hand, and they 
both saw that the sun had once again returned, and the clouds 
had slowed their demonic dance. It looked just as it had when 
they first arrived at the motel. The trees were still, and the 
glare from the two-lane asphalt caused her to squint. "I need to 
lie down," she admitted, feeling no shame from her weakness. 
Something had affected her differently than it had Mulder, and 
she knew she needed all her strength to help get them out of 
here.

"C'mere," he managed, hoisting her up against him and leading 
her back the sidewalk to their room. "You know, Scully," he said, 
supporting her under her arm and grasping tightly onto her hand, 
"I always imagined that if I was leading you to bed like this, 
we would have been having a lot more fun beforehand." She gave 
him a light shove in the rubs. "Before we even got to bed, 
or after?"

He helped her into bed without comment, placing the thin pillow 
beneath her head. "Water?" he asked, and she nodded. Her throat 
was so dry, and she felt like she had just run a marathon. Even 
her toes were tired. 

"Hey, Mulder," she finally asked after she emptied the water 
bottle, sitting up slightly so she could see his face. She 
imagined what she was about to say was going to shock him.

"I think I know what happened to us," she continued, and he leaned 
forward slightly, encouraging her to go on. It sounded so 
preposterous to her ears, but, after what happened to her in 
the parking lot, she was ready to believe anything that was 
even the slightest bit tangible. 

She took a deep breath. He made her believe, made her remember 
the Dana Scully she once was, hunched over physics books, 
examining the possibilities through eyes that were unjaded 
and open. She used to believe. Maybe, in their current crisis, 
she could believe again. 

"Somehow, Mulder, you and I were caught up in a warp, an 
atmospheric disturbance. Einstein predicted that the faster 
a person travels, like at the speed of light, the more time 
slows down for them relevant to someone standing still."

Oh, god. She sounded just like Mulder at his most fervent. He 
was never going to let her live this down. "And?" he prompted, 
his face expressionless. "And, I think that this transport has 
placed us forward in time. The woman I saw, and I did see her, 
Mulder, she was the image of someone from another moment in time, 
standing outside that window. I don't know why we saw her, or 
where I went to when I walked out that door. But this is the 
only thing that makes sense." And it makes damn little sense 
at that, she thought. But she believed, she had to believe.

He took the water bottle from her, and could hear a thousand 
offhanded time travel jokes running through his mind. But he 
believed, too. He had from the moment she first woke up in his 
bed, and he was waiting for her to accept the same conclusion. 

"A future that does not yet exist?" he solemnly asked, reading 
her thoughts. She nodded soberly. "It only exists for us," she 
whispered. For all they had encountered, and all she had seen, 
this moment might be the most profound. A world with only she 
and Mulder. The concept was almost impossible for her to fathom.

"I agree with you, Scully. I don't know how we got here or why,
but something has changed." They both knew the dilemma. She sat 
up and grabbed onto his hand before she spoke. "But the question 
is, Mulder, is not how or why we got here. How do we get back?"



IV.
 
 
Skinner stepped out of the dusty Dodge, and felt like he just walked 
into a sauna. It amazed him how it could be this hot at six in the 
evening. The sun was setting in the field across the highway, but 
the thick Mississippi humidity caused his dress shirt to stick 
lightly to his lower back and a persistent drizzle of sweat to 
inch down his neck. Damn, it was humid.

He had arrived in Jackson early that afternoon, after missing the 
flight out of Dulles and being shuttled through Atlanta for some god 
awful connecting flight. Agent White met him at the small terminal, 
and briefed him on the situation during the drive to Faunsdale. 
Seemed as if Mulder and Scully had really done a number this 
time around. 

From all accounts, the two had simply vanished. The police reports 
showed they had arrived at the station early in the morning to 
interview a suspect in their case. The young officer at the desk let 
them into the room, and then watched as they questioned James 
Everett at length. He escorted Mr. Everett from the room, leaving 
Mulder and Scully talking by the window. And that was it. No one 
saw them leave; no one had spoken to them since. Their car 
sat parked in front of the station, and their motel rooms 
were empty. 

The nagging suspicion that something was wrong, that he first felt 
in his bed in DC that morning, was now pounding, causing a massive 
headache to build behind his eyes.   

"This is the motel where your agents were staying, sir," Agent White 
said, leading the way towards a plain one-level motel set back from 
the two-lane road by a large parking lot. "The manager saw them 
leave in the morning with Agent Mulder driving, but they have not 
returned. Their rooms have not been entered."  

A petite woman came walking towards them from the office, her long 
blonde ponytail bouncing with each stride. She greeted them with a 
wide smile, her hand extended. "Ya'll must be the FBI agents from 
Jackson. I'm Sheryl. My grandfather owns this place." They exchanged 
pleasantries, and, while Agent White spoke to Sheryl, Skinner turned 
to survey the building.  

It looked like a million other ramshackle motels where he had stayed 
during his own stint as a field agent, and the forest behind the 
building reminded him of the acres and acres of pine trees he saw 
from the airplane as he flew into Jackson. 

"Can I see their rooms?" he asked, interrupting Agent White's 
question. "Of course," Sheryl answered, extending her hand with two 
silver keys. He took them, and then walked toward the building, his
shoes crunching on the loose rocks in the parking lot. 
 
He was so focused on the job that it took a moment for the sound to 
register with him. His steps, and the soft echo. He glanced behind 
him, expecting Agent White to be following, but was surprised when 
he saw the young man standing where he had left him, by the rental 
car near the road. The echo accompanied him the remainder of his 
walk to the door.  

He opened the first door with a small click, and knew instantly it 
was Scully's. The bed was neatly made, even though Sheryl had 
mentioned that the housekeeper had not entered either room since 
the night before they disappeared. A few toiletries were stacked 
near the sink. In a strange way, Skinner felt as if he were 
violating Scully's privacy, and walked lightly towards the 
bathroom mirror, turning back to face the door.  

The man silhouetted in the doorframe surprised him, and he 
unconsciously reached for his holster before he spoke. "Can I help 
you?" he asked, his voice even, betraying none of his anxiousness. 
This case was too strange, and he was jumpy. "I believe you can, 
Mr. Skinner," the man replied, as he stepped into the room, leaving 
the door open behind him. Across the road, Skinner saw the last of 
the sun setting behind the trees, and the room was dimly lit with 
the emergency lights from the walkway.  

Flicking his cigarette out the open door, the man stepped toward 
him, dropping a bundle of loose papers on the bed. "What are those?" 
he asked, his suspicions on full alert and his hand still resting 
on the handle of his Sig. "These papers, Mr. Skinner, are the 
explanation to your missing agents. You should be able to put 
the pieces together, but I don't think you will be able to find 
them. Your presence here is unnecessary and dangerous."  

Skinner walked to the bed, glancing down at the letterhead on the 
top sheet. "NASA?" he asked. "What the hell does the space agency 
want with Mulder and Scully?" The papers were crude copies, 
streaked in black ink, but he could clearly make out the NASA 
logo on the subsequent pages as he thumbed quickly through them.  
 
The man's answer was as dark and ominous as his expression. 
"Nothing, Mr. Skinner. Yet your agents came across something they 
shouldn't, and now they are gone." Gone? This made no sense. 
"Explain," he growled, glaring at the man lounging by the window.  

"You wouldn't understand even if I did, Mr. Skinner. But I assume 
you are familiar with the Stedman Space Center?" Skinner nodded 
impatiently. Stedman was one of the ten NASA field centers, 
located not too far from Faunsdale, near the Gulf Coast. 
"I know where Stedman is," he answered. "Tell me what the hell is 
going on."  

"Stedman is in charge of research for the rocket propulsion systems 
for the shuttle, Mr. Skinner. Stedman was also chosen as the site 
for research that relates to your missing agents." Skinner glanced 
down at the top sheet a little closer, and saw "Project Tachyon" 
staring back at him.  

The man continued. "A tachyon is a particle that can travel faster 
than the speed of light, Mr. Skinner. It has always been presumed 
to be hypothetical, of course, until now. Scientists believed not 
enough energy existed to propel a particle that fast. Do you know 
what happens when a particle travels faster than the speed of 
light?" 
 
Skinner tried hard to remember his basic physics classes from 
college. He frowned. It was impossible. "Traveling faster than 
the speed of light means traveling faster than time." But time 
travel was a science fiction concoction, an impossible scenario.
The man read his thoughts. "Nothing is impossible, Mr. Skinner, 
not when the federal government and infinite amounts of money are 
involved. Who needs infinite energy when you can siphon tax 
dollars?"  

Skinner stood very still, holding the papers in his hands. Despite 
the humidity, he felt the sweat chill on his neck, and his hands 
felt clammy. "Are you telling me," he said slowly, enunciating 
each word carefully, "that Mulder and Scully have traveled in 
time?" 

The words were ludicrous, but the man's intense gaze spoke of his 
utmost sincerity.   

"The project went awry, Mr. Skinner," he concluded, walking towards 
him and stopping a few short inches from his face. "The ability to 
transport articles into the future became uncontrollable. They shut 
it down, but it was too late. Ripples of the effect have already 
gone out. There's nothing you, or your agents can do." 
 
With that, he turned toward the door. Skinner clutched the papers 
firmly in his hand. Despite his belief that time travel was 
impossible, he knew the man was telling what he believed to be the 
truth. 

"Why should I believe you? What's your name?" he asked, and his 
voice dropped off as he saw the figure of the man in the doorway, 
the edges hazy and undefined. "I'm simply a friend, Mr. Skinner. 
Go home. There's nothing you can do here." Skinner blinked, and 
the man was gone. 

A few seconds passed before he ran to the door, bumping into Agent 
White coming down the walkway. "Sir!" the younger agent exclaimed, 
stepping backwards as the papers scattered across the parking lot. 
Kneeling down to pick them up, Skinner took a deep breath. Barely 
glancing up, his voice was low and urgent. "Did you see anyone leave 
the room?"  

Agent White hesitated, trying to follow Skinner's train of thought. 
"No, sir. I was talking to Sheryl and then walked directly here. 
There was no one." 

Skinner stood up, barely glancing at Agent White as he spoke. "Get 
on the phone to your office," he managed, his tone clipped. "Find 
out everything you can about the Stedman Space Center."


Part III. Flight  


I.
  
"We need to go back into town." His words were decisive, and served 
to rouse her from the stupor she found herself in since the events 
of the afternoon. They laid on the bed close together, her head 
resting on his shoulder, his hand lightly stroking her arm. She had 
no idea how long they had been together like this. Minutes? Days?  

She shifted up on one elbow so she could see him better. "Why do 
we need to go into town, Mulder?" Her speech sounded slurred to her 
own ears, like she had been drinking at a local bar rather than 
blindly seeking their way through the confines of time. To be 
honest, she couldn't think of any rational reason why she should 
leave the safety of the motel room at all. Its gaudy wallpaper and 
outdated light fixtures had assumed a sort of comforting quality, 
lulling her into a lightheaded, restful state. 

She could feel each heartbeat echoing in her chest, her blood 
sluggishly moving through her veins, Mulder's breath teasing the 
small hairs on her arm. She didn't think she ever wanted to leave 
this spot. 
 
Mulder's gaze was intense; his eyes, shadowed and unreadable. "I've 
been thinking, Scully. About how we got here, and what we need to do 
to get back." Her forehead wrinkled in concentration as she tried to 
understand his words. "We both agree something has happened to us," 
he continued, "something that has altered our time, our reality."  

She nodded dumbly as he moved off the bed, his sudden power draining 
what little of her own energy was still pulsing through her body. "I 
think something has changed," she said, her face feeling slightly 
numb, reminding her of when she had her wisdom teeth removed the 
summer before she starting college, and the ache in her jaw that 
took days to go away. "But why do we need to go into town? There's 
nothing there. There's no one there."  

Her words saddened her. No one, but she and Mulder and a vision of 
her dead father. But Mulder ignored the uncertain tone in her voice, 
moving around the room in a fervor, grabbing food and supplies from 
the countertop and shoving them into a black duffel bag. She saw all 
the tell-tell signs. Mulder thought he was on to something. 
 
"Think about it, Scully. Whatever portal we traveled through, 
whatever happened to us, we were in the police station, in the 
interrogation room. Our only chance is to hope that the portal is 
still there, that we can somehow catch up to that moment in time, 
in that room." He paused, just long enough to grab her sweatshirt 
from her open suitcase, and turned to her, his eyes wild with 
energy. "Or that moment in time can catch up with us." 

Somewhere in her exhausted body, the Dana Scully she once was 
stirred, Mulder's words evoking a sense of normalcy, her intellect, 
an understanding of the physics of the world, of time, of the 
universe. She summoned the strength to sit up, placing both her feet 
unsteadily on the floor. Her head swam, spots dancing behind her 
eyes, and she forced the words. "We need to go back to the police 
station," she said, slowly, deliberately. It did make sense. She 
forced her brain to think logically, slowly putting together 
pieces of the puzzle.  

She stood, watching Mulder as he spun around the room with a 
devilish intensity. "If this place, Mulder, is stagnant," she 
thought aloud, "if time doesn't exist here, then we are caught in 
an eddy, an unchanging vortex. If we have traveled in time, then 
the time we left behind may actually be moving forward. We may be 
able to find it again."  

He stopped long enough to nod, a small smile tracing his exhausted 
features. Her explanation made the only sense to them they could 
find. They understood. They had an idea, some idea, of what was 
happening to them, how they might be able to get back home. It was 
the only thing she could grasp onto at the moment, so she did, with 
the last of her tenacious strength.    

It did make sense. Assuming whatever happened to time was a tangible 
force, an unseen entity which affected their physical reality, it 
might still be there, in the time and place where it first affected 
them. She knew she encountered the same force that afternoon, 
outside the motel office, when she saw the image of the young 
woman in the parking lot. It had taken her, thrust her 
instantly into another moment in time, where she somehow or 
another met up with Mulder again.  

But the police station was their best chance. It was their best 
chance of finding their way back, or forward, to their reality. A 
cold shiver of fear traced its fingers along her spine as she 
realized what would happen if they stayed in this room, stayed on 
the bed where she felt so safe and comforted. Their time might pass 
them by, leave them behind. They might never be able to return to 
their lives. The sky might begin to dull, and she didn't want to 
know what would happen when the clouds began to slow.  

Mulder grabbed her by the arm, handing the smaller of the two bags 
to her. "Are you feeling okay, Scully? It's a good walk from here." 
She decided she liked this chivalrous, considerate Mulder, and 
wondered idly if he would still exist if they made it back home, 
back to their normal lives in DC. She hoped he wouldn't vanish 
into the unknown.  

"If you could get me here, Mulder," she answered, hoisting 
the bag up onto her shoulder and turning to pick up her gun from 
the side table, tucking it easily into the holster, "then I think 
we can make it back together." Her words were a brave front for 
her exhausted body. She still had no memory of that morning, or 
whenever it might have been.   

They stepped out into the parking lot together, its eerie desertion 
almost seeming normal to her now. Her first steps caused her thighs 
to tremble, and she forced her stride into a regular rhythm, 
matching Mulder's determined gait. Her partner was on a mission, 
and she, for once, was damned glad to be with him on the journey. 
He was her best hope for getting home. She needed his steadying 
influence. They needed each other.  

"Thank you," she said softly, as they reached the deserted road, the 
fields of cotton and the tall pine trees silent observers to their 
drama. The asphalt crunched under her shoes, and the light echo trod 
behind them, an uninvited guest to their entourage. She looked up to 
see him watching her, an affectionate gaze, and then he turned away. 
"For what, Scully?" he asked, his tone revealing the fact that he 
truly did not know.  

They took care of each other. Even here, surrounded by a dense 
backdrop of trees and swirling clouds and the smell of pine hanging 
heavy in the air. She decided not to answer his question, not 
knowing what to say to explain it, not wanting to demean the moment 
by fumbling for the right words.  

He accepted her silence, and they walked together along the two-
lane for some time, each step becoming easier for her, the 
headache behind her eyes diminishing slightly as they left the 
motel, its blur a smear of concrete in the distance. It was quiet, 
so very quiet, with not a sound except the echoes from their 
footsteps and her own breathing.   

She wondered idly if this was what the world might be like, if the 
forces of the universe took away human life, all life, leaving 
behind the vestiges of a society which took a perverse pride in its 
own immortality, never knowing that it could all be swept away in 
a heartbeat, leaving behind abandoned buildings and deserted roads 
and the semblance of what used to be. She knew they should not be 
here, that this image of the world was never meant to be seen.  

"This happened for a reason, you know," she said, her voice sounding 
husky and betraying the weakness in her body. She wasn't sure when 
she had last slept, really slept, her time in the motel spent in a 
dreamlike state.  

"I know," he answered, putting the bag on his other shoulder, 
rotating his arm in the air. "I don't think it was meant to happen 
to us. Hell, I don't think it was meant to happen to anyone in 
particular. It was too random, too uncontrolled. Someone has to 
know we are missing."  

She nodded, wondering what her mother thought, wondering if Skinner 
called her with the news that her only daughter was missing. With 
Mulder. Her mother had been through so much because of her, so much 
pain and loss. She cringed at the thought of putting her mother 
through yet another ordeal, another indirect trial of waiting and 
uncertainty. 
 
"But this force, this energy that we got caught up in, Mulder, it's 
not a natural creation. The universe did not create this." She 
looked up into the sky again, the white clouds slipping by of 
their own accord. She and Mulder were moving against the flow, as 
if the clouds were escaping from the very demon that they were 
walking towards.   

"Someone did, Scully," he responded, his voice determined, and 
his stride steady. "Someone did."  
  

II. 
  
Skinner was tired, his eyes bleary and stinging behind his glasses. 
He took off the frames, dropping them on top of the piles of 
paperwork. Methodically rubbing his eyes with his fingers, he 
pondered a simpler life, one where he wasn't trying to decipher 
the impossible, trying to understand how Mulder and Scully were 
missing. Were lost in time, if a shadowy man in a doorway could 
be believed.  
  
Agent White's baritone interrupted his thoughts. "This is the last 
of the information I was able to get from the office on Stedman," he 
said, entering the small room with a handful of papers clutched in 
his hand. "We have the basic information on it as a federal 
facility, layout, things like that. More detailed funding 
information is beyond our access level. Or at least mine."    

Skinner nodded at that, taking the papers from Agent White, adding 
them to the top of the pile on the desk. What he learned about 
Stedman and NASA had brought them no closer to understanding where 
in the hell Mulder and Scully were. He didn't understand this, and, 
from the puzzled expression on the younger agent's face, he wasn't 
alone.  

"Do you think Mulder and Scully might be headed to Stedman? I don't 
understand what NASA has to do with the missing persons from this 
area," Agent White admitted.  

Skinner only stared at him blankly, unable to tell him the truth, 
that a furtive stranger had dropped papers on the motel bed before 
he disappeared into the evening air, and that, when Mulder and 
Scully were concerned, suspending the rational might be the best 
way to go when confronted with the impossible. The problem was 
that Skinner didn't believe, or at least not with the same 
ferocity that possessed Mulder.  He couldn't believe, not with 
his title and his responsibility and the fact that he had the 
perfect sideline seat to Mulder and Scully's adventures. 
Unfortunately, most of the time it was just that. A sideline 
view.   

But now, he felt like his disbelief was a betrayal to the two 
agents, and could very well be putting their lives in danger.  

"I'm not sure myself," he finally admitted, standing up to pace the 
length of the small interrogation room. This was the room where 
Mulder and Scully were last seen, interviewing the sole suspect 
in the latest disappearance. He could easily see the two of them, 
in the familiar interrogation format, Scully seated at the table 
talking to the suspect in earnest, Mulder standing by the window, 
taking everything in. He enjoyed watching the two of them together, 
and the way their easy partnership worked. "But I got a tip, 
that somehow Stedman might be involved."  

"A tip," Agent White responded flatly, clearly not following 
Skinner's story. And no wonder, Skinner thought dryly. The X-Files 
were as foreign to the younger man as they had been to Skinner 
before he was brought on board as Mulder's supervisor. How could 
he ask someone to believe things that he himself found incredible, 
even though he was so close to being there for so many of the 
events? 

How could he ask someone else to believe when he wasn't sure what 
he believe himself?  He couldn't, which meant he was alone on this 
one.  

"Why don't you go back to the motel, Agent White, and get some sleep 
for tomorrow? We can interview a few of the other men from the 
station then, try to get some more information." Skinner knew that 
no one could provide them with the information they needed, though, 
just as he knew that Agent White would never understand why the 
words Skinner heard in the motel room, about NASA and Project 
Tachyon and Stedman Space Center, could be true.  

After the younger agent murmured his goodbyes, closing the door to 
the small room with a soft thud, Skinner turned back around, looking 
out the window to the main street. Even this late in the evening, 
there were still a few people out, teenagers mostly, standing in 
the circle of the warm streetlights. Innocents, with no idea of 
the dramas that unfolded every day, every minute.  

When had he become so jaded?  

With a deep sigh, he walked back to the table, looking at the papers 
the stranger had left behind in the motel room. Project Tachyon, it 
seemed, was the culmination of a decades-long project within NASA, 
funded by all levels of the United States military, and various and 
sundry government agencies. He wasn't surprised to see the four-
digit identification code for the FBI listed among the sponsoring 
agencies. He learned long ago that the Bureau had no real 
allegiances, throwing its lot in with whomever might give it the 
most benefit, and reward.  

But, at least according to the paperwork he was seeing, the project 
had been a success. A small dog had been subjected to incredible 
amounts of energy, its body bombarded with the particles, and then 
it simply disappeared. Two days later, it reappeared in the same 
small room, seemingly none the worse for wear. The switch refuted 
everything Skinner had ever thought about time travel.  

Something clicked in Skinner's brain, something that screamed for 
his attention, but he couldn't seem to grasp onto it. It was 
elusive, and the longer he thought, the worse his headache became, 
dulling his senses.   

He looked at the files of the missing persons, the photographs 
revealing victims with absolutely nothing in common, other than 
their sudden disappearance and the fact that they lived in the 
county, so close to Stedman. A young eighteen-year old cheerleader. 
A farmer who never came home from working in his field. A 
schoolteacher smoking a cigarette before her afternoon classes. 
In each case, no witnesses, no evidence. Nothing.  

Exactly what he was told that afternoon, that they had vanished 
into the ripple effects of a twisted government experiment. He 
forced himself to visualize these people wandering around somewhere, 
wherever time travel might leave a person. He couldn't imagine what 
might happen, if there was even a body left to cope with the 
dramatic change. He saw the victims lost, and he saw Mulder and 
Scully, and realized he had no idea what to do to help them.   

Overwhelmed by helplessness, he stood, hoping that a quick shower 
and rest might sharpen his reflexes, enable him to make some sense 
out of what was happening.  
 
But, as he gathered the papers into his arms, and reached up with 
his free hand to turn off the fluorescent lights, a movement by the 
window caught his attention. It was the tailored blue Oxford dress 
shirt that he recognized first, and then he heard the voice.  

"I'm sorry, Scully. I'm so sorry I brought you down here on this 
case."  

From behind him, a voice. As he spun around, seeing no one, he heard 
Scully's response. "It's okay, Mulder. How could you have known, how 
could anyone have known? I don't blame you."
  
His heart was racing, and he flicked the light switch back on. But 
he was alone in the room, and the hazy outline of Mulder's shirt 
that he saw in the streetlight shining through the window was gone. 
They weren't there, but he clung to the moment, knowing he heard 
their voices, knowing that somehow or another, they had been in 
this room a second ago.  

He was as sure of that fact as he had ever been. But he didn't 
understand, couldn't comprehend why they were here, and then gone. 
His heart was racing, and he swore he could almost detect Scully's 
light perfume in the air, and feel her standing behind him. It 
was terrifying, and eerie, and he forced the air into his lungs, 
taking a long breath.  

Exhaling, a piece of the puzzle fell together. If Tachyon had 
created the ripple effect that his informant believed, bouncing 
individuals back and forth in time, then his vision could very well 
have been his agents standing in this very room in the past or 
the future, trying to get back home. He saw them. He heard them.  

Before he could begin to doubt himself, he opened the door, seeing 
a few officers milling about in the hallway. "Sergeant?" he called, 
motioning to the young man he first spoke to about Mulder and 
Scully's disappearance. "A cup of coffee, please, and the phone 
number for the Biloxi police department."  

If Mulder and Scully were minutes, hours, days away from returning 
to this room, he was determined to be here if they finally arrived. 
When they arrived.  
  

  
III. 
  
Just as they crossed the small bridge that spanned the creek at the 
city limits, the wooden sign in front of them cheerfully announcing 
"Welcome to Faunsdale, a happy home for happy people," Mulder
stumbled, falling heavily down to the asphalt before she could 
react.   

"Are you okay, Mulder?" she asked, kneeling quickly down beside him, 
wiping the sweat from his brow. The walk from the motel had been 
long, and they ran out of words a mile or so from town, instead 
concentrating all their energy on getting back to the police 
station. There was something comforting in their solitude, she and 
Mulder against the world. But she could tell by his labored 
breathing that he was exhausted, the events of the past day taking 
their toll on his body.  

Had it really only been a day since they walked out of the police 
station? The concept of time seemed so distorted, and she felt as 
if she had been walking along the desolate two-lane for years. She 
felt a sudden rush of fear at the possibility that maybe she had, 
that maybe whatever happened to them was even greater than they 
could possibly comprehend.  

Shaking away the thought that she couldn't even begin to decipher, 
she concentrated instead on Mulder. "I'm fine, Scully," he 
answered, drawing himself up into a sitting position, wrapping 
his arms around his knees. "Just a little tired," he admitted 
with a somewhat embarrassed tone. 

She did not comment, passing him the water bottle from her bag and 
sitting down beside him. The bizarre nature of the moment did not 
escape her attention. She and Mulder were sitting in the middle of a 
deserted road, looking down the main street of a deserted town. The 
sun remained bright, its glare creating 
ripples down the asphalt.  
 
Nothing. They were alone.  

"I have a confession to make," Mulder said, offering her the water. 
She shook her head, and he screwed the cap on tightly before 
returning it to the bag. A confession from Mulder was always 
interesting, and she turned to watch him, nodding her head. "Well?" 
she asked, curious to see where this was going.  

"I turned in a vacation request to Skinner right before we left 
town, effective for the beginning of next month." He hesitated a 
moment before continuing. "I just felt a need to get away from 
everything for a little while. Sometimes I feel like I'm too close, 
too close to so many bad things that I can't appreciate what is good 
in my life."

She couldn't explain why she felt hurt at his words, knowing they 
were true. In the years they had been together, she had seen what 
their life had done to Mulder, playing on his naturally volatile 
emotions and tendency towards a dark nature. But she almost felt 
like he wanted to get away from her, that she was part of the 
problem.  

Before she could speak, she felt his hand on her arm. "Actually, 
Scully, my confession was that I turned in a vacation request for 
you, too. I wanted you to go with me, wherever you wanted to go. As 
long as it was away from DC, leaving the damn files and Skinner and 
all our problems trailing in our wake."  

Well. That was a confession. She had a fleeting thought that perhaps 
she should be angry with Mulder for his presumption, turning in a 
forged vacation request for her, making plans without consulting 
her. But then she read between the lines, and saw the anxious look 
in his gaze, and she smiled. "Wherever I wanted to go, huh? I think, 
Mulder, that I might have to take you up on that offer. As 
long as we didn't go anywhere near the Mississippi state line."   

She idly wondered if they might die here, in this abandoned little 
town that she had never heard of up until a few days ago. She knew 
the risks of their jobs, knew that every day they stepped out into 
the field might be her last. It was macabre, but it was her reality, 
and she knew when she decided to join the Bureau that it was a 
reality she was choosing to live with.  

But she never expected her death to come like this, beneath a 
horrific sky, in a place that offered only a semblance of her life.  
 
"I wish we had never come here, Scully," Mulder said sadly, standing 
up with effort and reaching his hand down to help her to her feet. 
Standing beside him, she held onto his hand tightly, and, to their 
mutual surprise, stood on his toes to kiss him softly. It was a 
spontaneous gesture, but one that came from her heart.  

His lips were soft beneath hers, and she detected the faint taste 
of something she could only define as Mulder. She savored the taste. 
If this entire nightmare taught her anything, it was that he was 
her salvation.   

He smiled at her kiss, a genuine smile that reached his eyes, but 
he didn't say a word. Instead, he continued to hold her hand, and 
they walked slowly together down the street. She felt an urgency to 
get back inside the police station, but she couldn't understand it. 
Time had no meaning for them anymore. Although their hope was that 
returning would somehow provide them a window in which to go back to 
their time, neither of them gave voice to their deepest fears.  

That the same thing was awaiting them inside the police station as 
they had seen in the motel and the countryside on the walk back 
into town. Nothing.   

"What would it take to produce the kind of energy that would create 
time travel?" Mulder asked. "Hypothetically, of course," he added as 
an aside. He knew her belief was a tenuous one.  

She mulled over the same question since they left the motel, and 
had come to no definite answer. "In theory, time travel would 
require an incredible amount of energy, more than the human mind can
comprehend. It's one of the reasons that the conventional scientific 
community has always thought the idea to be impossible. You can work 
out the process on paper, what would happen to a finite body when 
put into such a situation, but such a situation could never exist. 
At least not within the confines of the world as we know it."  

"It's like the idea of space travel," she continued. "We have the 
understanding to send a human being light years away into space, but 
the person would die before they ever got out of our universe. It's 
the quintessential scientific dilemma. Theory versus reality." 
 
At that moment, their reality was the small brick police station, 
now in front of them. It looked eerie to her, its windows a shimmery 
gold from the sunlight. But it had an ominous air about it, and she 
felt a sense of foreboding. Whatever their future might be, however 
they might define that term, was inside that building. Her entire 
life depended on what might be breathing within the walls.  

"I guess we should go in," she said uncertainly, and she felt 
Mulder's hand tighten against hers. He felt it, too, the sense of 
danger lurking all around them. She caught herself looking over 
her shoulder, knowing that no one would be there, but wanting to 
convince herself of the fact.   

It was as if whatever had happened to them had assumed an identity 
of its own, hiding in the empty storefront and around the bend in 
the road and behind the stubby bushes lining the sidewalk. Waiting 
for them, appraising their every move.  

Mulder finally answered. "I guess we should. I don't think anything 
is going to happen out here on the sidewalk." It was that unknown, 
the "anything" that they couldn't quite define, which haunted them. 
Neither of them moved, however. She stared at the sky, watching the 
clouds.
  
"Do you see that?" Mulder asked, and she only nodded. She saw it 
earlier, when they were sitting in the street, but she didn't want 
to say anything. Drawing their attention to it wouldn't make it 
any better.   

The clouds were beginning to slow, losing some of their steady 
pace that had marked the hours since they first left town. She 
couldn't be sure, but she thought the sun was beginning to dull. 
And she didn't want to wait around to find out what might happen 
next.  

"Let's go," she said, ready to face whatever might be waiting for 
them around the proverbial bend. They walked up to the front doors 
in silence, Mulder swinging them open with one hand. The air that 
greeted her was musty, reminding Scully of her grandmother's attic 
and summers spent exploring with Missy. It was stale, and a hint of 
what might be awaiting them.  

Stepping inside, she stopped, and squeezed Mulder's hand. She wasn't 
sure if she was trying to reassure him, or her, but it didn't 
matter. Nothing mattered other than each other, than getting home. 
"No regrets," she said with decisiveness, wanting Mulder to 
understand everything, everything that she couldn't put into words, 
about how she felt about him and their lives together.  

His nod assured her that he knew, and, with that, she walked into 
the darkness. 

Part IV. 
Travel


I. 

The hallway leading into the main lobby of the police station 
was dark, despite the filtered sunlight entering through the 
windows. She jumped self-consciously as Mulder let the door slam 
shut behind him. "Sorry," he mumbled, walking up behind her and 
resting his hand near her hip. They stood there uncertainly, not 
sure exactly which direction to turn. 
 
"It looks the same, doesn't it?" he asked rhetorically, finally 
moving away from her to walk to the lobby desk. 
 
"Unless you count the fact that it is deserted," she added. 
 
It was deserted, and the eerie feeling which haunted them during 
their walk through the main street followed them into the police 
station. Scully swore she felt it in the air, an almost human 
presence, a time shifter that was watching and waiting for them to 
make their next move. It was some sort of bizarre game, and she felt 
like they were on the short end, not knowing the rules. Seemed to 
sum up most of her career with Mulder, she realized. Flying by the 
seat of their pants. 
 
She straightened her shoulders and followed Mulder through the 
lobby, resting her hand on her holster. 
 
"Do you remember what you saw when we first walked into the 
station, Scully?" Mulder was across the wide room, standing in 
front of one of the empty cells. The room was spacious, with the 
lobby desk immediately in front of her. There were only a handful 
of desks in the center of the room, and a few plants scattered 
here and there.  
 
"Yes," she answered, stepping down the incline into the room. "Both 
cells were occupied, there was a young man at the front desk, and 
two officers near the phone." It was a lifetime ago. 
 
It looked so strange, like everyone had walked out to have a cup of  
coffee and would be back at any moment. The chairs were in various  
positions, some tucked neatly under the desks, some pulled out, 
waiting for their occupant to return. None of the computers were on, 
and, as Scully walked past the air conditioning vent, she didn't 
feel any air coming out. Out of the corner of her eye, she 
half-expected to see someone sitting in the chair, or walking out 
the side doors.  
 
But the hum which she first heard on the main street, which 
followed them during their trek to the motel and back, was louder. 
Mulder recognized it, too. She could tell by the way he was suddenly 
very still, and then turned quietly to meet her gaze, his eyes wary 
and watchful. The sound had assumed a near sinister quality. 
 
"Do you hear that?" she finally asked, and he nodded his head 
slowly.  
 
"It's the same as I heard in the store," she continued, walking 
through the room towards him, her eyes finally adjusting to the 
dimmed light merging through the windows. "It's almost like 
electricity, a voltage of some kind." 
 
She stopped near Mulder. "Electricity," he said, as if mulling over 
her words. "Didn't you say that time travel, if it were possible at 
all, would require a tremendous amount of electricity, more than we 
could even fully comprehend?" 
 
Of course, she realized, nodding her head. "The sound is somehow 
related to what happened to us," she thought aloud, "to the 
phenomenon that placed us here at this point in time. If it was a 
tangible reaction, then it is still here, in the air. Still active." 
 
Mulder finished her sentence. "And, if it is still active, there is  
still the possibility that we can get home." 
 
Home. She thought a lot about that word during the events of the 
past hours. Home was her mother's house, her own apartment, often 
her office at the Hoover Building. But home was also anywhere she 
happened to be with Mulder, or her mother, or anyone who she valued 
as a part of her life. She and Mulder weren't walking out of this 
place until they were returned to their time.  
 
"Should we go in?" she asked. 
 
She felt like they were facing their judge and jury as they turned 
towards the interrogation room, where she knew this chaos had all 
begun. 
 
The door to the room, situated immediately off the main lobby, 
was closed. The small window in the door allowed them a glimpse 
inside, and, as they walked closer, she could see the table and 
chair situated in the middle of the room. Just as it was that 
morning, when they first interviewed James Everett. As she 
peered through the dusty window, she saw the chair was pulled 
back from the small desk. 
 
She squinted, trying to remember if the chair had been pushed under 
the table when they left the room that morning. She was almost 
certain it was, but, with the events of the day combined with the 
weakness throbbing in her muscles, she couldn't be sure. 
 
"Looks like someone is sitting there, waiting for us," she said in a 
near whisper. She knew they were completely alone, and had been for 
hours. But she couldn't shake the feeling that they were being 
watched, that someone, or something, was listening to their every 
word. 
 
Mulder only nodded, and then turned the brass doorknob, striding 
into the room. 
 
She followed him slowly, listening to the dull echo of her heels 
on the old linoleum. The room was much as they left it, although 
she had the faint sensation of returning to a place of her 
childhood, where the memory grew in proportion to the actual 
physical size. She visualized this room during their walk back to 
town, and it assumed a larger proportion than the dusty box-shape 
staring back at her.  
 
Mulder paced the confines of the room, running his hands over the 
walls, and stopping by the window. "It's gotten darker outside," he 
said to no one in particular, peering out the glass. She stood 
silently near the door, trying to understand the feeling of deja 
vu which washed over her at that moment. 
 
"We wanted this, didn't we, Mulder?" 
 
She could tell by the look on his face that he was confused by her  
question. "Wanted what?" he finally prompted, looking at her with 
a curious gaze, concern etched on his features. 
 
Scully felt her knees get weak, and grabbed onto the side of the 
table for support. Mulder never moved closer to her. "We wanted this 
life," she tried to explain. Her words sounded disconnected from her 
body, and she felt like she was sitting by as someone else spoke 
with her voice. She couldn't understand what compelled her to speak 
with an urgency she found frightening. "We have always known what 
we were involved with. We have always known the chances we were 
taking." 
 
The sound of the hum grew louder as she spoke, and Scully felt like  
she was shouting to be heard above the noise. 
 
"I'm sorry, Scully. I'm so sorry I brought you down here on this 
case." Mulder's figure was hazy, and his words were thick. She shook 
her head, trying to clear her vision. 
 
"It's okay, Mulder. How could you have known, how could anyone have 
known? I don't blame you." And she didn't blame him. Without him, 
she would have never made it back to the police station. She would 
have never been able to walk out of the motel room, to face the 
unknown which resided beyond the door. 
 
Mulder was her reason for so many things. 
 
But, as she tried to tell him, Scully realized she could no longer 
shout over the hum of electricity emanating from the lobby, and 
instead, she closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the darkness.


II.

She knew she was cold. She could feel the chill seeping through
her body, a light touch against her skin. Her toes were numb, 
and she swore she felt something brush against her legs. A hand, 
maybe? Mulder's hand? She couldn't be sure.

"Mulder?" she whispered. But she didn't know if she were shouting 
or whispering. Her voice seemed to have an echo, much as her 
footsteps had for most of the day.

She struggled to open her eyes, and when she finally did, she shut
them immediately. The room was dark, ominously so, and she swore 
it was turning. As she squinted again, forcing her eyes to open,
she saw that indeed the room was upside down, the table and chair
which she had just been holding onto now perched above her head.

But she felt as if she were standing perfectly still.

"Mulder?" she shouted again. This time, the shrill sound of her
voice caused the headache behind her eyes to nearly blind her 
with its intensity, and she crumpled the ground, shutting her
eyes tightly against the chaos that surrounded her.

What the hell was happening?

She screamed as she felt the hand firmly grip her shoulder. "Scully,
it's me. Are you okay? What's wrong?" It was Mulder's voice, and 
she smiled, opening her eyes.

But it wasn't Mulder. At least not the Mulder she had spent the 
last twenty-four hours in Mississippi with. This Mulder was younger,
his eyes still bright, not wary and weathered as she saw them so 
often these days. He was wearing a slightly wrinkled white Oxford,
and one of the garish ties he favored early in their partnership. 
He stared at her intensely from behind his glasses, his hair 
longer, hanging low over his forehead. 

"Mulder?" she asked uncertainly, sitting up slowly. She looked
around the room, and was surprised to see that she was on the
floor of their office, back in DC. If she squinted, she could 
decipher the headlines of some of the newspaper clippings pinned 
to the wall behind Mulder's desk. She wasn't sure, but she swore 
they reminded her of cases they tackled soon after she joined 
the X-Files. Mulder hovered over her, a worried expression on 
his face.

"Are you okay, Scully? You were standing up to go get some coffee, 
and then you just collapsed to the floor. You were out for a few
moments. Do you need a doctor?"

He was so concerned for her, and she smiled in spite of her 
confusion. "I'm fine, Mulder," she said automatically, taking 
his outstretched hand and standing uncertainly on her feet. 
Something was wrong. The walls of their office were distorted, 
and she could hear "I'm fine, Mulder" echoing through the room. 

But Mulder didn't seem to notice the echo or the strange light 
that illuminated the room. Instead, he helped her into her chair, 
his touch lingering for a much shorter time than it did when 
they were stuck in the motel room. It was an almost quaint, 
impersonal touch. 

Somehow, she realized with a sinking sense of horror and amazement, 
she was sitting in their office, only a few weeks after she started 
working on the X-Files. Before everything had gotten so complicated. 
Not only with her sister and her abduction and the thousands of 
close calls she and Mulder experienced with their lives. But before 
she and Mulder had established the complicated emotional 
relationship she was so protective of, the relationship which had 
sustained her not only through the last twenty-four hours of their 
ordeal, but through almost every detail of her personal life.

She nearly laughed from the irony of it all. Instead, she surveyed 
the room, memorizing every detail. It seemed so long ago, different 
from how she remembered it. 

Why was she here?

"Mulder, are we okay?" she asked, her voice trembling in spite of 
herself. She knew she was supposed to be in a small police station 
in Mississippi, waiting for the moment that was to transport she 
and Mulder back to the land of the living. Of anything living 
besides themselves, she corrected.

If this was transmitting her, than something was seriously wrong. 
Who was she kidding? Something had been seriously wrong with this 
entire scenario, she thought warily.

The past-Mulder only smiled at her. "Of course we are, Scully," he 
said, apparently satisfied that she wasn't going to faint again and 
fall out of her chair.  "I figure if we can survive that plane 
flight back from Oregon, and what we saw there, we just might be 
okay."

His words had a resonance she was sure he didn't intend. How could 
he know what she knew, what they would experience together in 
the days and months and years to come? She opened her mouth to 
tell him, to warn him about what happened to them over the last day, 
that she knew so much about what they would encounter in their 
lives. But Mulder looked at her quickly with an earnest smile on 
his boyish face, and she knew.

She could never prevent him from searching for what he perceived to 
be the truth, and she would never want to alter the essential fabric 
that bound she and Mulder together.

So, that was how it was going to be, she said, watching as the walls 
behind Mulder's head became increasingly hazy and shimmery in the 
bright light. If that was what she gained from this entire case, 
from this nightmarish dance through the remnants of time, it just 
might be enough.  

Scully stood unsteadily, and walked over to Mulder's desk, grasping 
on tightly to the file cabinet for support. "Thank you, Mulder," she 
murmured, and she swore his figure became hazy, the shape of his 
glasses becoming lost in his dark features. 

"For what?" he asked, barely looking up from the papers on his desk. 

"For everything," she managed, just as the room tilted eerily to the 
side, and she fell, hitting the side of the cabinet heavily with her 
shoulder.

The sensation of falling made her nauseous, and she fought the 
vertigo, trying to keep her eyes open, to regain her sense of 
balance. But there was nothing to see, the familiar confines of 
the office disappearing into a shadowy haze. 

Was this heaven, she wondered, suddenly desperate to know what 
was happening to her. Or hell?

"Agent Scully!" a voice shouted from her right, and she smiled. 
AD Skinner was waiting for she and Mulder in hell. How appropriate, 
she mused, feeling delirious and increasingly nauseous.

She wanted to tell him that it was all too strange, too incredulous 
to be believed, but she couldn't force her eyes to open against 
the bright sunlight streaming in from the small window. Instead, 
she managed only a shaky laugh. "It's good to see you, sir," 
she said, her voice thick, before she fainted, falling into 
Skinner's strong arms. 


III.

By the time the sun came up, he was on his fourth cup of coffee, the 
empty Styrofoam cups in front of him testimony to the evening he 
endured. He figured that, if he were a smoker, he would have easily 
emptied a pack during the night. He wasn't exactly sure what he was 
looking for, but he knew it was in this room. And he knew it 
involved Mulder and Scully.

He had played over that moment endless times in his mind as he sat 
in the straight-backed chair, the bits and pieces of the 
conversation he heard, the hint of Mulder's blue Oxford he saw, 
the perfume which lingered in the room for hours, that he swore 
was Scully's. He knew he was tired, having spent the past two days 
traveling and interviewing numerous witnesses and others involved 
with Mulder and Scully before their disappearance.

But he was sure of what he saw. Mulder and Scully were last seen in 
this room, and he had to believe it somehow held the key to their 
safe return.

"Assistant Director Skinner?" He turned to see Agent White, looking 
wide-eyed, his hair slicked back. He assumed he had just gotten out 
of the shower, and he looked the exact opposite of how he felt. 
"Have you been here all night?" the younger agent asked, genuine 
concern in his voice.

"I have," Skinner answered, his voice scratchy from an evening spent 
with too much coffee. "I have been going over these documents we 
received regarding Stedman. I think there are a few avenues we need 
to explore." Skinner disregarded the fact that he sounded much more 
confidant than he felt. He wanted to pretend that his evening in 
solitude had actually resulted in understanding what had happened 
here over the last few days.

In fact, there was no understanding. He had no idea what he was up 
against. He had no true understanding of where Mulder and Scully 
were, or how he was supposed to help them get back. He realized, 
with sinking clarity, how Mulder and Scully must feel, faced with 
the almost daily challenges of life with the X-Files. Facing the 
impossible, the incomprehensible, but being spurred forward by a 
passionate sense of right and wrong.

"AD Skinner?" White asked again, taking a few steps closer to the 
table. Skinner could only imagine how he looked, and how much the 
other man didn't understand, could never understand. And, in that 
moment, he knew that nothing would ever quite be the same. While 
he had never truly considered himself an adversary, he was now 
firmly in Mulder and Scully's camp.

"I'm all right," he responded, a little frustrated. He didn't need 
this man's sympathy. That wasn't going to help get Mulder and Scully 
back. "Go check with Officer Parker out front. He was supposed to be 
bringing in a fax I was expecting from DC." The fax was information 
he needed to file a federal warrant to search the premises of 
Stedman Space Center, in the hopes of finding information related 
to the disappearance of two federal agents.

The chances were slim, but, for the moment, they were all he had.

Agent White stared at him blankly for a second longer, and then 
nodded his head abruptly, walking out of the room. Skinner was 
reminded of what it was like to encounter a well trained, 
and still obedient junior agent. He had seen precious few of those 
in recent years, he thought with a wry smile.

"I'm fine, Mulder." Skinner was startled. It was Scully's voice, 
sounding faint and far away, like she was shouting from across a 
large room. But it was unmistakably Scully. He jumped away from 
the table, knocking the chair onto the floor in his haste, and 
stood absolutely still, his hand resting instinctively on the 
sidearm in his holster. His eyes scanned the room, looking for 
Scully's petite figure. If all else failed, then he would grab 
her, whatever part of her body he could decipher, and then 
face the consequences.

"Are we okay, Mulder?" Scully's voice, again, coming from behind 
him, so close that he felt the hairs on his neck prickle. He 
whirled, watching, knowing that she was here. He was not losing 
his mind. He heard her. She was here, goddamit. He could sense 
her standing close to him, almost like she was next to him. 

Then Mulder's voice. "Of course we are, Scully. I figure if we can 
survive that plane flight back from Oregon, and what we saw there, 
we just might be okay." Oregon? What was Mulder talking about? 
His confusion caused a delay in the realization that Mulder's 
voice didn't sound the same as Scully's. While Scully sounded 
closer, so close he could reach out and touch her, Mulder's voice 
was like the reception on a cheap television.

"Agent Scully!" he shouted, walking around the room, feeling the 
walls with his free hand, not knowing what else to do. His heart 
was pounding in his chest, and he could feel the blood rush through 
his veins. He stopped near the window, and stared at the floor. 
The light coming in through the double panes was wrong. It was 
bent, and was streaking across the floor and up the walls in dark 
columns.

"Agent Scully!" he shouted again, trying to ward off the fear he 
felt in his chest. He had seen too much in his lifetime to be 
truly frightened by most anything these days. After Nam, nothing 
scared him. But this room, hearing Scully's voice, he knew that 
something was wrong here. Something was happening that he was 
never meant to see.

He thought he saw the small door to the room open just a fraction. 
Agent White must be coming back with the fax he needed. "No," he 
tried to shout, to warn the man against entering. He didn't know 
why. But, as he took a few steps toward the door, Scully's voice 
sounded once more.

"Thank you, Mulder, for everything," she said, in an almost reverent 
whisper, and then he saw her.

At first, he could only decipher her hair, the distorted shadows 
playing against the vibrant red. It was unmistakable. Then he saw 
her face. Her eyes were open, staring right at him, but she was 
looking past him. Her expression was intense, anguished, and 
emotional. So many emotions that he had never seen from Scully 
before. And then she closed her eyes, and the look on her face 
was one he would never forget. It was almost as if she were 
falling, her eyes tightly shut as gravity rushed past her.

He called her name again, desperate, and ran towards her. 

Suddenly, she was in his arms, her body heavy. "It's good to hear 
from you, sir," she said, her words thick, as if she were having 
trouble speaking. He barely managed to hold onto her before they 
both slid to the floor in a heap. She was shivering, and her 
body was freezing, even through her clothes. 

He knew from the pallid expression on her face, the way her lips 
were tightly clenched and faintly tinged with blue, that she was 
in shock. 

"Where in the hell did she come from? Is she alright?" That was 
Agent White, who stepped into the room a second later, dropping 
the papers onto the floor and rushing over to their side. 

"Get the paramedics," Skinner growled through clenched teeth, 
never letting go of Scully. He brushed her hair away from her face, 
repeating her name over again, trying to get some sort of response 
from her. She opened her eyes, barely, squinting against the bright 
sunlight in the room, and then managed one word, in a tone that 
spoke volumes of her anguish and exhaustion and fear.

"Mulder."

Part V. 
Renewal


I.

Scully refused to leave the room to go to the hospital, despite 
Skinner's pleas and the stern looks from the paramedics. She didn't 
really give a damn what anyone said to her. She wasn't leaving this 
room until Mulder was returned, and that was that.

So she sat propped against the wall, her legs covered with a 
blanket, an IV running in her arm, a clear bag of fluids attached 
to the needle. She knew she was dehydrated, and in mild shock. But 
the chills had finally subsided, and her vision was clearing, and 
she had to figure out why in the hell she returned and Mulder 
didn't. And what she needed to do to bring him back.

After she found herself in Skinner's arms, his strained voice 
screaming for a doctor, she somehow managed to get to her feet, 
stumbling around the room, frantically calling Mulder's name. He 
simply wasn't there. One minute, he was standing by the window, 
talking to her. Now, by way of a twisted detour in the office four 
years ago, he was gone.

She didn't even move when Skinner sat down next to her, wordlessly 
handing her a Styrofoam cup filled with hot tea. He looked as 
confused and exhausted as she felt. From what she gathered, he 
arrived in Faunsdale not long after she and Mulder were reported 
missing, and had been searching for them for the past forty-eight 
hours.

Was that all? Two days were all that she and Mulder had been gone. 
Funny how, in such a short span of time, everything seemed so 
different.

Especially Skinner. He looked older, more haggard, like the weight 
of the world was weighing on his shoulders. As he sat motionless 
next to her, she realized that he knew. He knew what happened to 
them, and he knew the responsible parties involved. "Tell me," 
she said, speaking to his bowed head. He refused to look her 
in the eye. 

"I don't know where to start, Scully. After I arrived in town, we 
went to your motel. There was no evidence you were there, certainly 
not that you and Mulder were in that room at the exact moment." She 
had briefed Skinner on what happened to she and Mulder, how they 
stayed at the motel for an indefinite period of time, unsure of 
where to go next. 

"And then a man appeared, almost out of nowhere. He gave me papers, 
documents linking the Stedman Space Center to a controlled time 
travel experiment." Scully's stomach clenched at his words, and she 
felt the nausea rise in her throat. Time travel. So it was true. She 
and Mulder had talked about the idea, and she had even come to 
believe. But that was when she felt like she was in a dream state, 
drifting aimlessly through time and space with Mulder at her side.

This was reality, Mulder was missing, and Skinner was confirming her 
worst fears.

"But the experiment went awry, Scully, and they shut it down. It was 
too late, though, to stop the ripple effects. God knows how far they 
traveled, but you and Mulder seem to have been caught up in 
something."

"But I came back," she said, slowly, as if trying to convince 
herself. 

"You did," he confirmed. "But you're the only one. No one else has 
been found, not one of the other victims." She sensed he wanted to 
say something about Mulder, to ask her why she emerged from 
nothingness to fall into his arms, and why Mulder had not. But she 
couldn't explain it, and she refused to contemplate the thought 
that Mulder was still out there, lost, searching for her.

"I don't understand," she said, her voice reed thin. If she could 
have seen herself in a mirror, she would have been shocked. Her 
voice reflected her disheveled clothes, the way her hair was tangled 
near her shoulders. Skinner had never seen her in such a state of 
disarray. But it was Scully's face that spoke volumes. Her skin was 
deathly pale, a ghost white, as if she had not seen the sun for 
months, or years.

She wasn't sure how long she sat there next to Skinner, shivering 
intermittently beneath the wool blanket. But the paramedics had 
long gone, as had Agent White, who Skinner explained was the agent 
in charge in the Jackson office. She vaguely remembered him from 
their earlier conversations, when she and Mulder first arrived 
in town. 

It was a lifetime ago.

"I have to bring him back," she said, shifting so she could survey 
the room more clearly. She knew she couldn't sit by, waiting for 
Mulder to appear. She had to do something, before the window of 
opportunity passed them by, before whatever portal she found was 
gone forever. She refused to believe that it might already be 
too late. 

Skinner held onto her arm, steadying her as she leaned forward onto 
her elbows. "But how, Scully? I've contacted Stedman several times, 
I've sent a small team in based on a federal search warrant I got 
this morning. There is no evidence." He placed an emphasis on the 
last part of his sentence. "There was nothing there, and the 
administrators are denying everything. According to them, there 
was no Project Tachyon. Time travel is scientifically impossible."

She was surprised to realize that she is angry. Furiously angry. She 
lurched forward so quickly that the room swam in front of her, and 
she managed to steady herself on her knees. "I refuse to believe 
that," she said. "I refuse to believe that there is no one who 
can help us. I refuse to believe that Mulder has vanished. If I 
can return, so can he."

Somehow, she managed to stand, pushing Skinner's hands angrily 
away, clutching onto the table for support. "We were in this room," 
she whispered, almost in a trance, staring vacantly at the small 
space as she disconnected her IV. "We were standing across from 
each other. This is where we were when everything changed. It 
only made sense that this was the way back."

Scully walked around the room unsteadily, her hands tracing the 
worn plaster, searching for something she could not explain. 
Skinner stood back, watching her, a blank stare on his face. He 
couldn't help her, she knew. For whatever she and Mulder had 
experienced, they experienced it alone. For whatever Skinner 
had been led to believe, his belief was weak in the face of 
her own. For she and Mulder and lived it.

You would be proud of me, Mulder, she thought grimly. I believe.

"Mulder!" she screamed, her voice nearly hoarse. The familiar 
headache behind her eyes, which had finally abated as she sat 
next to the wall, returned with a vengeance. The intense pounding 
nearly brought her to her knees, and she whimpered.

Skinner never moved. He only watched her, a sad, solemn gaze. 
He was helpless.

But she wasn't, she vowed. "Mulder!" she screamed again, stumbling 
toward the window. "Don't you leave me, goddamn it! You can't 
leave me. Mulder!"

Then she saw it. It was almost unnoticeable, the way the light 
bent slightly at the window, the way the haze in the air shimmered. 
She stared at it, trying to decipher what she was seeing. She 
wanted to turn around, to tell Skinner to look, but she was scared 
to take her eyes off the vision. She was scared it might disappear.

"Sir!" she whispered, loudly, as she stepped forward. Maybe it was 
just a trick of the late afternoon light, distorted through the 
glass panes. Maybe it was her exhaustion, combined with her shock 
and her nausea.

But it wasn't, she knew, as she reached her hand toward the 
shimmering light, ignoring Skinner's voice from behind her. 
He was running toward her, making the ground tremble beneath 
her feet. But she stepped further, toward the light, reaching 
towards the window.

And then there was nothing. She was floating, and it was so bright 
she couldn't see. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, 
the light still causing a luminescent glare from behind her lids. 
"Scully!" she heard Skinner shout. She heard his voice again, and 
wanted to tell him that she was okay, that she was right here.

It wasn't Skinner's voice. It was Mulder's, his deep baritone 
echoing, causing shivers across her skin. He shouted her name 
again, and this time she distinctly heard both Skinner and 
Mulder, calling for her.

"I'm here," she tried to say, but the words came out in a stilted 
moan. She jumped, startled, as a hand clasped onto her wrist, 
firmly, and began to pull her. She couldn't tell if she was being 
pulled away from the light, or towards it. She didn't know where 
the voices were coming from. She didn't know.

So she gave in, letting her limbs go limp, letting herself be pulled 
in whatever direction the voice wanted, as the headache pounded past 
her skull and through the rest of her trembling body.


II. 


She stood alone near the sidewalk, her arms wrapped loosely around 
her waist. It was early afternoon, yet the heavy clouds in the sky, 
a promise of impending rain, kept away most of the sun, casting her 
face in dark shadows. She looked frightened, exhausted, and more 
vulnerable than he had ever seen her.

"Scully?" Mulder said softly, walking up to stand beside her. 

She looked up quickly at his question, and he was pleased to see the 
small smile on her face. "Quite a case you had for us here, Agent 
Mulder. I can't wait until we get to write the report for this one."

He couldn't quite decipher how light her tone might be, but her 
words were like turning the knife in his heart. He knew what 
happened to them. They both did. But Scully nearly lost herself 
again trying to bring him back. Somehow, she did bring him back. 
The terror was written on her face as he and Skinner held onto her 
arms in the interrogation room. "Scully," he managed, questioningly.

"I'm fine, Mulder," she answered, surprising them both by reaching 
over to hold his hand. "I'm just not sure where to start processing 
this, what happened to us, why we both ended up back here when none 
of the other victims were returned. Why us? Why are we here?"

Her question was essentially rhetorical. There was simply no answer, 
at least not an answer that wasn't buried in some secretive 
government office. He held onto her hand firmly, and looked down 
the street. 

It was much different than the view they saw over the last few days. 
A group of giggling teenagers loitered in front of the drugstore, 
and the streetlight lazily changed to green, a Ford pickup pulling 
slowly through the intersection.

"I don't know if we'll ever find out the truth, Scully. But we're 
safe now, and that's something." It was indeed something. For there
was a period of time, when he and Scully were lost, that he wasn't 
too sure they would make it. It made him angry. 

Scully sighed, tucking her hair behind her ear. "I know, Mulder. But 
I want answers on this. We deserve them." She sounded angry, edgily 
so, and Mulder was surprised to realize that she sounded like him. 
At his most passionate, his most determined, she echoed the tone 
in his voice that spoke of their need to find the truth. It 
surprised him, and he wondered how this experience had changed 
Scully. Had changed them both.

"I saw you, Mulder," she finally said, breaking their uncomfortable 
silence.

He wasn't too sure what she meant. They had talked only briefly 
since their return yesterday morning. Scully spent the last day 
in the hospital for observation, and treatment for a heavily 
bruised shoulder. "You saw me?" he asked, turning so he could 
see her face.

She was staring off into the distance, a near dreamy smile on her 
face, her eyes slightly glazed. She nodded. "I saw you, in our 
office in DC, before I found Skinner. You were younger, like you 
were when we first met. I think it was right after our first case. 
I asked you if we were going to be okay." Her eyes now shone with 
unshed tears, and Mulder felt the weight of the moment like a stone 
on his chest. So this was it. Whether he and Scully were going to be 
okay. He had no memory of Scully ever asking him that question while 
they were in the office, but he prayed that his other self had the 
good sense to answer in the affirmative. "What did I say?" he 
choked out.

To his utter shock, Scully stood on her tiptoes, inches from his 
face. "You said that we just might," she whispered, and then she 
brushed her lips softly across his. 

Mulder wasn't sure what affected him the most. The words, the 
simple trust that existed between he and Scully. Or her kiss. He 
wrapped his arms around her, and simply held her close to him, 
resting his chin on her forehead. "You know we'll find the truth, 
Scully," he heard himself say. And he meant it. "We'll find out 
what happened to us."

Scully did not answer. Instead, he heard a small sniffle against 
his chest, and felt her head move slightly in a nod. She knew. 
Whatever happened to them, they would figure out. They had to.

A brief honk from a car caused them to jump apart, and Mulder saw 
Skinner sitting in the front seat of his rental car, looking 
slightly embarrassed. He had gone back to their motel, to collect 
their remaining belongings while he and Scully finished up at the 
police station. "Ready?" Skinner asked in a gruff voice. Scully 
walked around the car to the passenger seat, while he slid into 
the back.

They were all silent as they drove out of town. Mulder felt a 
strange disconnect, as if he were watching some sort of movie. 
The town was humming with life, but he knew how it could be. 
The eerie stillness that came from its empty streets and desolate 
stores, and the way that could make someone feel inside. Searching 
for Scully's eyes in the rearview mirror, he knew she felt the 
same. The crease between her eyebrows spoke volumes.

"I was able to get us on an earlier flight out of Jackson," Skinner 
said, after some miles had passed and the city limits of Faunsdale 
were long behind them.

"Thank you, sir," he answered automatically. Skinner believed. He 
was afraid to admit it, Mulder knew, but he believed. Skinner saw 
Scully disappear into the shimmering light. Mulder appeared to help 
Skinner save her. He shook his head, trying to clear it. There 
was so much he didn't understand.

"This is for you, Agents," Skinner announced abruptly, and Mulder 
looked up to see him hand Scully a large manila envelope. She 
looked at him questioningly, and then slowly opened it. Mulder 
watched, as Scully pulled out the top few sheets. He could 
clearly decipher the words "Stedman Space Center" written at 
the top. 

Skinner was handing them evidence. 

"While this investigation may be officially closed, I am not 
satisfied with our answers. I have a feeling you're not, 
either," Skinner said. "Let's just look at this as insurance. 
For when we do figure out what the hell happened to you."

Mulder was silent, watching Scully as she fingered the papers in 
her lap. He could almost define the moment when she mentally 
drew herself upright, pulling herself together. "Thank you, 
Sir," Scully whispered, and he wanted nothing more than to 
reach over the seat and take her hand.

Instead, he settled back, watching Scully's hair blowing through 
the breeze of the open window, and thought about going home. 
About resuming their life, about sorting through the changes. 
But mostly about finding the truth.




Author's notes:

Thanks as always to my wonderful beta Kayla. As a fellow author, 
she knows exactly when to inspire and to gently suggest, and her 
encouragement and prodding allowed me to continue this story when 
I wasn't sure I would be able to do so.

My husband always has a willing ear and some crazy ideas, which 
I appreciate, even when I don't use them.

I started this story during Christmas of 2001, driving past the 
real Stedman Space Center along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. 
And, yes, I do have an idea for a sequel. I had it in mind when 
I wrote the conclusion. Whether life ever gives me the time to 
write it is another thing. 

A special thanks to Tamra, Nancy, and all those who emailed 
their encouragement over the last year. I treasure each email 
and comment, and am glad you enjoyed the story. I'd love to 
hearfrom you. annhkus@yahoo.com

Dedicated to the memory of my friend JWB. The world is a lesser 
place without his presence. He was always my dreamer and my
believer.