From: "David Hearne" Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 10:28:36 -0400 Subject: xfc: Nine Source: xfc TITLE: NINE (1 of 1) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE RATING: PG CLASSIFICATION: V SPOILERS: Fight The Future, The Blessing Way, most of Season Five ARCHIVE: Permission given Send feedback to ottercrk@sover.net SUMMARY: Mulder spends nine minutes thinking about the past and contemplating a potentially abrupt future. AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here's another story that I bet somebody else thought up first. Still, I've gotten in the habit of posting a story every Monday so here goes. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 13:40 I once had a dream. Or maybe it wasn't a dream. It doesn't matter. In this dream, a dead man told me the difference between life and death was time. In the next world, time doesn't exist. The one constant over every person's existence (an universal invariant as a friend of mine called it) vanishes. You lose it, the man said, and you lose the very thing we use to judge our accomplishments and failures. 13:12 Of course, could you say that time really exists in this world as well? I mean, time is a form of measurement, not a tangible element. How we use it changes from era to era. Five hundred years from now, people might employ a twelve-hour day instead of a twenty-four-hour one. And there's the theory of relativity to factor in. Time is really a face we paint over the universe in the hopes it might tell us something. 12:37 Right now, it's saying that me and everyone else in this building has less than thirteen minutes to live. It's telling me that I'm helpless to do anything except watch it happen. 12:05 All I wanted was a soda, for God's sake. 11:50 How did I get here in the first place? Who gave me this assignment? Of course, I wouldn't even be here if I hadn't gambled everything on one little boy; if I hadn't crossed swords with that son-of-a-bitch Spender; if five years of work hadn't been incinerated. And...if I hadn't decided to check out the building the rest of the team was looking away from. And if I hadn't offered to get Scully a soda. Life sure is a hoot, ain't it? 11:19 Please, Scully. You've always come through in a clutch for me before. Don't fail me now. 10:52 God...if I know her...and I like to think I do...she won't leave this building until she gets my ass out. One thing my partner values above all is loyalty. She's stuck with me through danger, uncertainty and difference of philosophy. To say nothing of cancer and the rape of her body. All that has happened to her and she still walks with me through hell. 10:10 Hasn't she gotten tired, though? After Emily and the case with the four twins...a weariness settled on her. I know she was considering leaving the FBI to raise Emily. Maybe that was the last straw for her -- the one wound that can never heal. 9:36 Then came Diana. Another little thing I didn't tell Scully. Not as bad as hiding my knowledge of what was done to her ova, I know... Or is it? I'm not denying that seeing Diana again brought back some good memories. Some lousy ones, too, but I never had to work at what was between us the way Scully makes me work. Of course, Diana and I complicated things by making the beast with two backs, but she was a lot less likely to begin a sentence with "Are you suggesting..." No, that's unfair to Scully. I value that about her. With Diana, things could get too easy. With Scully, I had to refine my beliefs. Give them coherency. Test them. And we haven't screwed things up with screwing. Would that screw things up, though? I mean, I've considered it. Why not pursue a romance with the woman you've been closest with for the past five years? Maybe because I don't know how close we really are. Maybe it won't be until she walks out on me that I see the closeness. How did I get to thinking about this? 8:32 Oh, yeah. The bomb. 8:15 Time *is* relative, isn't it? I remember the "When I'm Sixty-Four" number from "Yellow Submarine" and how the audience laughed when it was demonstrated just how long it feels to count up to sixty-four. I also remember this Ingmar Bergman film where Max Von Sydow just sits and watches a watch tick a full minute, noting how silence could make it feel like a hour. Nothing is long about these minutes, though. They're racing by like wild dogs. 7:48 This strikes me as being a lousy way to die. I don't know why it would be lousier than getting killed by one of the several monsters I've encountered over the years, but it just is. Maybe because my death will accomplish nothing. Or because I don't want to die as a disgraced federal agent who got kicked off his pet project. I don't want to die with so many questions unanswered, so many truths unexposed. Besides, Spender's butt has an appointment with my shoe, not to mention the keister of a certain back-from-the-grave smoker. And there are things unsaid... 7:15 Maybe if I pulled that wire... 7:08 No, no, you idiot. You don't know anything about bombs. The only thing you can guess is that this Timothy McVeigh special will leave enough of your body to fill up a matchbox, if you're lucky. I almost laugh. Wouldn't that be funny? A matchbox being lowered into a tiny grave. Here lie the scant traces of Agent Fox Mulder who is still being cleaned up in Dallas. Nobody is laughing. Maybe because my straight man...my straight woman is not here. 6:40 Please, Scully... 6:16 Please, Scully. Help me. 5:51 I need you here. Don't leave me alone. 5:28 I need you to hear my dumb jokes. No one else will listen to them. Everything I say receives only silence. I'm sorry for everything I've done. I'm sorry for holding you back from a brilliant career. I'm sorry for Melissa and Emily. I'm sorry for all the hurt inflicted on you. I'm sorry for not telling you so many things. Please. Be here. 4:57 Please.... 4:45 Please... 4:40 Ring. Shit! No, no, it's my phone. That means... That means someone still wants to listen to my dumb jokes. And I already have one prepared. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX