Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 21:32:23 -0500 (EST)
From: ChristianO@aol.com
Subject: The Night Office (1/1) by Anne Elliott

Title: The Night Office
Author: Anne Elliott
E-mail Address: christiano@aol.com
Rating: PG
Classification: SH
Summary: Aliens have problems, too. Strictly spoof mode.

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the television series
"The X-Files" are the creations and intellectual property of Chris
Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions, and FOX Broadcasting Company and
have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is
intended.

I didn't write "101 Uses For Jumper Cables" either (worse luck). It's
by Kathleen Lietz and the full title on Gossamer is "April Fool's Day
1 - 101 Uses For Jumper Cables".

THE NIGHT OFFICE (Begin 1/1)

Mulder dreamed he was drowning in a sea of paperwork.  Unfortunately,
when he opened his eyes, it appeared reality was imitating nightmare.
A leisurely stretch turned into a quick grab as the righthand pile of
file folders threatened to cascade into the wastebasket. The agent
shook his head in despair and decided to call it a night.

The doorknob rattled under Mulder's hand as he double-checked the
lock. The man's footsteps receded quickly down the corridor and
silence reigned in the basement office.

For fifteen minutes all was quiet. Then one set of filing cabinets
swung forward, revealing a secret entrance to the room. Light flooded
the office, though no light switch was clicked. Instead, the
illumination came from the entering figures themselves, looking rather
like a jumble of elongated paperdolls as they crowded into the room.

"I though he'd never leave. We may have to go back to doping the
coffee supply. All right, S2691. You take Scully's computer and work
on next week's schedules. If you have time, go on to payroll and
expense accounts." The largest stick-figure glanced commandingly
around as he issued his orders. "I'll take Mulder's computer and work
up the interim report for His Stubs upstairs.  Whose turn is it to
call Frohike?"

One of the smaller lights moved forward from the wall. "It's my turn,
I guess. But why does it always have to be Frohike? Why can't I call
Byers instead? That beard is really something."

"Byers isn't the one with the crush on Agent Scully, as you know
perfectly well."

"Oh, all right. But Scully left her laptop here. Can I go on-line and
get Frohike into a chatroom at least? If I can't have Byers, I ought
to be able to get some fun out of this one way or another."

"M1554 and Byers sitting in a tree . . . ," a thin piping issued from
the smallest figure, who dived under Scully's desk with practiced ease
just ahead of his sister's pounce.

"I told you those Colonial Acclimatization classes were a waste of
time." M2551 glared at his wife, still standing by the filing
cabinets.

"How was I to know this was the kind of thing he'd pick up? The ad
promised to fulfill his Earth history and English requirements and
provide cultural referents which would enable him to communicate with
Earthlings his age. You always encourage him to study the lower
lifeforms of whatever planet we're on."

"You should have known that Earthlings wouldn't have any cultural
referents worth mentioning."

"Be reasonable, M2551. The child is only nineteen."

"Look, you two. Can't you settle this later? We have work to do here."
H2761's aura brightened briefly, then faded again as he got his
annoyance under control. "M2552, you and H2762 see if you can find
that copy of the McNaught report Scully managed to sweet-talk out of
Pendrell. The man knows he's not supposed to release anything until
it's gone through channels, but he has absolutely no will power where
that red-head is concerned. M1553, maybe you'd better spend some time
in the personnel files and find something or someone we can use to
make the point to Pendrell, since his bosses don't seem to be able to
handle the job."

H2761 had barely gotten started on his report when chittering laughter
broke out from the corner of the room. "What is it now?"

M1554 and H1766, sprawling in front of Scully's laptop, looked up at
him as M1554 said, "I always knew humans were weird, but I don't think
this is physically possible, even for them." She glanced back at the
screen. "Especially on horseback."

"Let me see that, young lady." S2692 moved over to the corner and
peered at the screen. "No, I think you are definitely out of your
depth here. You two get out of the way and let me deal with this."

"What do you mean, 'Let you deal with this'?" demanded her husband.
"If Frohike is up to his usual . . . ."

"Oh, relax, S2691. I am a trained xenopsychologist, after all. I can
handle one human male very nicely on my own, thank you."

S2691 looked rather less than convinced, but returned to Scully's
computer without further comment. The two girls, however, were less
easily satisified. "What can we do now? We're bored."

"Why don't you go next door and watch some videos? I thought U2343
brought some up with him just so you would have something to do."

"Yeah, sure. Do you know what he brought? He brought 'Independence
Day' and 'War of the Worlds.' "

"What on Earth did he do that for?" demanded M2552. "Surely he could
have found something with a happy ending if he'd looked a little
harder."

"He's homesick," sneered H1765, lounging up against the wall in
counterpoint to Mulder's poster. "He wants a good cry. He's been
depressed this time of year ever since he found out all those hearts
scattered around on Valentine's Day aren't real. But I need some time
with the VCR anyway. I have homework to do."

"What do you have to watch?" inquired his mother curiously.

"One of Mulder's tapes. It's the fourth in a series, I think."  Moving
over to the desk, the figure bent down to open the bottom drawer.
"Let's see. Not this, not this, not this. What is the guy doing with
two copies of 'Pinocchio' and three of 'Cyrano de Bergerac,' anyway?"

"Agent Scully thinks it's a nose fetish," M1553 responded smugly.

"Here we go. 'Devil Dates Do Deneb.' That's what I need."

"There's a whole series devoted to that theme?" asked H2762, still
rummaging through the nearest filing cabinet in search of the
McNaught file.

"The first one is 'Alienettes.' The second one is 'Beetlejuice Babes.'
I don't know why 'Beetlejuice,' though."

"Can you spell Betelgeuse?" inquired his father drily.

"Um, no."

"Well, neither can that film producer, I'll bet."

"Oh. Well, the third one is called 'Cygnus Cuties Carouse.' Then
there's 'Devil Dates.' I'll be back later."

"What class is this for?" his mother asked suspiciously.

"Two classes, actually. Mostly it's for Xenobiology, but my English
teacher said if I could come up with a good title for the fifth film
in the series, she'd give me five points extra credit on my next
test."

H2761 snorted. "The things you kids get away with these days. When I
was your age, we were reading the plays of R8611 and memorizing
portions of the Conquest Saga. Large portions, I might add. Why, by
the time I got to Sixth Level . . . ."

"Look, Dad, I've really got to run if I want to catch U2343 before he
gets too far into 'Independence Day.' I'll be back later. Don't you
have to have that report upstairs by three?"

H2761 glared briefly at his son's retreating back before returning to
this computer screen. An anguished squeal interrupted him before he'd
even found his place again. "What is it now?"

M2552 stood over a sullen M1555. "You are not going with him and
that's final. You don't start Xenobiology for another eight years and
you know it."

"But I'm bored."

"So are we," chimed in M1554 and H1766, sneaking envious glances at
S2692, who was curled up in the corner with Scully's laptop, crooning
softly to herself.

"Look, what do you expect? I have work to do here. I can't spend my
time amusing bored teenagers. I got you on the Web. I got you
satellite hook-up to Ganymede -- and you know what that costs these
days. I even got you cable TV, in spite of everything."

"It wouldn't have been so hard if you'd picked the right house to use
as a front."

"They have cable all over this city, for pete's sake. What was wrong
with that house? I even had His Stubs string electrical and phone
lines to it so it would look legitimate."

"Well, maybe it wasn't so much the house as the neighborhood. After
all, have you ever seen the cable installation crew arrive with police
back-up anywhere in the suburbs?"

"All right. All right. The point is these kids have plenty of things
to do. They don't have to hang around here pestering me."

"We don't want to go back into the caves. We have to spend most of our
time there, anyway. We want to go out and do things. Why can't we have
another party?"

"You know perfectly well that the only safe kind of a party for you is
a costume party. And it's nowhere near Holloween."

"Can't you have a costume party any other time?"

"They have a point, H2761. There must be another holiday coming up
soon. These humans seem to have them every few days. How they ever get
anything done I'll never know."

"Well, one of their biggest celebrations is coming up fairly soon.
Maybe we can work something out then."

"Which holiday is that?"

"It's funny, but I don't know the name of it. They spend months
preparing for it and have very set forms and traditions associated
with it, but it's called different things from one part of the country
to another. In some ways it's even bigger than Christmas.  It's
sponsored by some group called the IRS and seems to be a sort of
Government Harvest Festival. Everybody in the country gets a copy of
the new puzzle forms about the beginning of the year, then they have
three and a half months to work the puzzle and mail in the correct
answers. It all culminates in a nation-wide race to see who can be the
last person to turn in their forms before midnight on April 15. The
Cultural Research Branch has been collecting information on it for
years now, but for some reason nobody has been able to explain the
background very well. Maybe a party would be a good idea at that. I'll
talk to His Stubs about it when I go upstairs."

"Thanks, Dad. That would be great. But what can we do tonight?"

S2694 volunteered from the doorway. "I'll take them shopping, if you
like. There's a new all-night drugstore I wanted to try. I've
collected a list of things to look for: Snack foods, toys, and do you
think they stock jumper cables?"

"For cars? What do you need with jumper cables?"

"I don't need them, of course, but S2691 wanted a set to carry around
for the look of it."

"Didn't we buy a set just a few weeks ago?" S2691 demanded.

"My dear brother and his friends melted the connectors when they were
playing with them the other day."

"How do you melt the connectors on jumper cables?" S2691 sounded
rather peeved.

"They found an article on the Net about '101 Uses for Jumper Cables,'
by someone named Lietz. It was on that cobweb site they seem to like
so much. Anyway, they were just experimenting with what they refer to
as 'extreme possibilities' when the connectors fused."

"What kinds of snack food were you going to buy?" inquired S1695,
trying to change the subject before more detailed questioning
ensued. "It's not as if we ate the stuff."

"S1698 wanted some gingerbread men, some animal crackers, and those
goldfish things to play with. Remind me to get some red ink, too, if
the drugstore carries it."

"What does she want with that stuff? Don't tell me she's taken to
playing house?"

"Don't be ridiculous. She's practicing her dissection techniques.
That's what the red ink's for. The little dear says it doesn't look
real unless she has blood spilling out of the incisions."

A frustrated grunt from the direction of Scully's computer drew
H2761's attention back to the work at hand. "What's wrong?"

"It's the payroll and expense accounts. You know how tight things have
been ever since that fiasco last October. Those scoutships cost an arm
and a leg. And His Stubs is insisting on taking the entire amount out
of our operating budget."

"Well, he has a point. I know that class of ships was designed to look
like weather balloons to confuse the Earthlings. But our own pilots
are supposed to be bright enough to know the difference. If that idiot
weren't the great-draf of old F5193 himself, he'd be pulling patrol
duty in the Galactic Rift right now. I don't know what the Service is
coming to these days."

"That's all very well for you, but N3747 is going to assign me a tour
of duty lighting the caverns of Arcturus VII if I can't make these
figures work. He's been in a prime mood ever since the colony in Libra
was ingested by that ambulatory mold. Maybe you've forgotten what his
'I'm going to hand you your aura on a platter' lectures are like, but
when he steeples his fingers and glares at me over the desk, and his
voice goes all quiet, the caverns of Arcturus start looking really
good. Those lectures all start the same way, too. 'Perhaps you would
care to explain exactly what you thought you were doing when . . . .'"

"Whose aura do you think is on the line over this McNaught business?
If Scully ever gets a good look at the original results and explains
them to Mulder at all clearly, he'll know exactly what happened to
those men. Then I'll be lucky if all he does is bust me to Galactic
Rift Patrol."

S2691 nodded his head sympathetically. "Maybe this would be a good
time for both of us to take one of those vacations Earthlings seem
to be so fond of."

"Don't even talk to me about vacations." H2761 turned back to his
computer with a disgusted look. As he started to key in the next
section of his report, he took time to snarl over his shoulder at his
wife. "And don't you think you're going to talk me into that 'Chateaux
of the Loire Valley' tour, either. I saw that brochure you got in the
mail the other day. I don't mind Carlsbad Caverns, or even the Boston
City Sewer System. In fact, I'd really like to see how the San Andreas
Fault dig is coming along. But no castles.  And that's final."

"Once an engineering sub-specialist rating, always an engineering
sub-specialist rating, I guess," sighed H2762. "Build it up and blow
it up. Build it up and blow it up. You'd think they were all put on
permanent psychological hold at age sixty."

"What does H2761 have against castles, anyway?" M2552 whispered to
H2762. "I thought he was the one who was so excited when they found
those first torture chambers."

"He was," H2762 confirmed. "He never could understand why the humans
didn't support such useful technology. He brought a complete set of
tools back to the Research and Interrogation Division. K5931 spent two
whole years updating the technology and now he swears by it for
stubborn subjects."

"Then what's the problem?"

H2762 sneaked a peek at her husband to make sure he was still
engrossed in his report writing. "Last year we saved up all our
Hardship Tour Credits and took two weeks to visit haunted castles of
the British Isles. Well, he always has trouble with the time
changes. I swear, you'd think anybody who'd been around the galaxy as
many times as he has could handle a measly thousand miles or so.  But
no." She paused to double-check the name on one file, then went
on. "The very first night he got restless and had to go out on his own
without waiting for the guide. He was strolling along one of the
garden paths, keeping his aura low and everything, just like they tell
you to, when he practically tripped over a member of some psychical
research society there to investigate reports of a 'white lady'
ghost."

"Oh, no! What did he do?"

"Well, at least he had the presence of mind not to zap the man on the
spot. He tuned his aura down just as far as he could and ran for cover
in the castle. He figured it would be easy enough to lose the guy with
all those corridors and stairways."

"But . . . ?" M2552 could tell the story wasn't over yet.

"He didn't realize there was a whole group of these people placed at
strategic intervals throughout the grounds and in the castle itself.
Every time he turned a corner, someone jumped out at him with a camera
or a geiger counter or a heat sensor or something. So there he was,
under strict orders from N3747 to keep a low profile, and trying
desperately to manifest his aura as a white ball gown while running
for his life."

By this time her friend was half-choked with suppressed laughter.
"How did he get away?"

"He finally found the entance to one of those secret passages the
humans of that era loved so much. He ducked in just ahead of half a
dozen society members. According to them, H2761 vanished mysteriously
into a solid wall after fleeing for 'her' life from a mysterious
pursuer. It caused quite a sensation. Apparently most 'white ladies'
are more sedate. The castle is undergoing a real tourist boom this
year."

Giving up on the second filing cabinet, the women moved on to the
third. "He got a whole chapter to himself in the next book the society
put out." Lowering her voice still further, H2762 confided, "He'd have
a fit if he knew I bought two copies and shipped one anonymously to
his mother. I did draw the line at the tabloid covers, though."

Sensing a suspicious stare emanating from the direction of the
computer, the two women turned back to their task. A diversion was
provided by the return of the shopping party, fizzing and arcing
unhappily.

"It's raining out there again," S1694 explained in annoyance. "I never
saw such a wet planet in all my life. Then when you do get a glimpse
of that garish yellow sun of theirs, the wavelengths are all wrong.
And you can't buy a decent sunscreen, either. The strongest they make
is SPF40, as far as I can tell. If I were Mulder, I'd swear the
Hegemony had re-engineered the star to make life as difficult as
possible for us."

"I could deal with the weather," argued M2552, "if Earth weren't so
far from everything. Holovids are nice, but I'd like the kids to at
least see their grandparents once every few years."

"It's not just relatives, . . . ." Whatever complaint S1694 had
planned to add was forgotten when H1763 stuck his head in the door.

"There's been a sighting!" he yelled. "Scully just pulled into the
parking lot!"

"Now of all times! How am I ever supposed to get this report out by
three if His Stubs lets these people wander in and out of here at all
hours of the night? Oh, well. She probably won't stay long. Now if it
were Mulder . . . ." H2761 muttered imprecations on humans in general
as he hastily closed down Mulder's computer.

Meanwhile S2691 was taking quick action to get the evidence cleared up
and everyone back into the tunnels before Scully hit the office.
"Come on, come on! And be sure everybody's out of next door. And get
those tapes back in the drawer. And close that filing cabinet.  Hurry
it up, folks."

The secret entrance clicked shut just seconds before Scully, key in
hand, reached the office door. Unlocking it, she stepped through and
switched on the lights. Through a peephole near the floor, H2761
watched nervously as Scully scanned the room.

"There it is. But what is it doing on the floor?" Scully murmured
under her breath as she walked over to her missing laptop. Picking it
up, she was startled when it flopped open in her hand.

"Something wrong with the latch?" Scully moved to close it again, only
to notice the screen was still lit. "Now I know I didn't leave it on
when I left. What's going on here, anyway?" Struck with a sudden chill
of paranoia, Scully started back toward the office door, which she had
neglected to lock behind her. Then she glanced back at the computer
screen. "Frohike!"

Paranoia was submerged in a sudden wave of fury. "I'll kill Mulder for
this! No, I won't kill him. I'll just make him wish I had. Now, let's
see. Where can we start?"

Walking over to her partner's cluttered desk, Scully eyed the insecure
stacks of paperwork that adorned its surface. She waved a hand over
the piles once, then again, and finally poked one hand deep into the
nearest tower. Pulling her hand back, she examined the folder she had
retrieved, waiting with clinical detachment to see if an avalanche was
imminent. Deciding nothing more was going to happen, she tucked the
McNaught report under one arm and picked the laptop back up. "Got it
on the first try. At least something is going right. I'll deal with
you later," she muttered to Frohike.  "Meanwhile, looking for this
report should keep Mulder occupied long enough for me to arrange a
little surprise for him in the morning."

The doorknob rattled under Scully's hand as she double-checked the
lock. The woman's footsteps receded quickly down the corridor and
silence reigned in the basement office.


THE END


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