From: Skinner Box Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 22:57:11 -0500 Subject: A submission for gossamer Source: direct We Won't Bore You With the Details of How We Escaped From the Antarctic By Skinner Box Email: BurrhusFrederic@worldnet.att.net Rating: G Classification: VH Spoilers: TXF-Fight the Future; minor for One Son Summary: Short self-referential silliness. Disclaimer: The X-files and the characters created therein belong to Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen and Fox. I play with them out of love and for no profit. Archive: please ask first We Won't Bore You With the Details of How We Escaped From the Antarctic The traffic on the beltway was bumper to bumper, inching along at a geological pace. FBI Special Agent Dana Scully would never get to her mother's house on time at this rate. Stuck in traffic with nothing to do. What do people do in traffic anyway, if their partner isn't there to argue the current case with? Music! That was it. They listened to music. Dana Scully wondered why she'd never tried it before. Excitement rising, she poked the radio to life with a slim, impatient finger. News. More news. Static. Still more news, all of it mindnumbingly generic. The classical and jazz stations seemed to have changed formats in honor of the traffic jam. She tried classic rock. Some whiny woman was only happy when it rained. On several different stations. Dana Scully gave up in disgust. A thought rose unbidden in her mind. So that's why I never listen to the radio. "@#$%&# royalties!" she tried to mutter. Only the word 'royalties' came out. Another ill-lit, smoky room. More nameless old men around a polished table. "This was part of your plan from the beginning," Alex Krycek heard himself saying. "You bioengineered corn that carries the alien virus and convinced the colonists you could use bees as a vector for pollination despite the fact that corn plants don't produce nectar. You did it deliberately as a delaying tactic so that you could buy time to..." Alex listened to himself blather on. /Na koy leshiy?/ What the hell was he doing? Suddenly all became clear. He was giving exposition. Alex Krycek was oddly comforted. FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner removed his glasses and rubbed tired fingers across his throbbing forehead as the door closed behind the departing field agent. The colorblind field agent with the history of mental imbalance. Not for the first time he wondered why he spent so damn much of his time with this man out of the eight thousand or so agents in the division he administered. Or why he personally had to sign off on the man's 302's. "Look on the bright side," the words materialized in his aching bald head, "you've got way more fan recognition than Scott Blevins ever had." It was two A.M. when the phone rang. "Scully, it's me. I had that weird dream again." Dana Scully sighed and put on the bedside lamp. Her partner needed her. "Which one, Mulder? The one where you relive your sister's abduction?" "Not that one," Mulder said. "The swimming pool one with your father?" Scully asked. "Worse than that," Mulder said. "It's the one where I'm sick of the X-files and I want to leave and devote myself to romantic comedies. And people keep calling me something like David Anchovy." "You ate pizza after midnight again, didn't you, Mulder?" The End Stay tuned for part two: Scully's brother Charlie visits! Krycek explains why a Russian-American has a Czech name! Skinner wonders whatever happened to Agent Spender! Mulder gets a nasty rash from sticking his ungloved finger in goo!