Contact Ironic
by Peregrin Anna
peregrin_anna@hotmail.com
March 29, 1998

Rating:  PG, for language
Category:  VA
Keywords:  character death
Spoilers:  Gethsemane
Summary:  Assume "Redux" didn't happen.  Believe the lie. 
Scully finds out that Mulder's timing was singularly awful. 

Disclaimer:  Everyone here (except the Emissaries) belongs to
Chris Carter and the rest of the Boys in the Band at 1013
Productions. No money's changing hands, and no infringement
is intended. Let's just call it homage and leave it at that,
shall we?

Thanks, love, and acorns to Gem and Lisa, friends and beta
readers extraordinaire, and to Jen for catching a few more
mistakes and giving me a little extra dose of courage <g>.

Archiving is very okay, but if you're posting this anywhere other
than one of the Gossamer sites please let me know so I can
keep track.  

Feedback is better than chocolate!  Write me at
<peregrin_anna@hotmail.com> and I will most certainly
respond.

* * * * * * * *
Contact Ironic (1/2)


Fox Mulder missed contact by five days.

Five lousy, stinking, awful days in which I identified his body;
testified at a hearing and called my dead partner a dupe;
explained it all over again to A.D. Skinner; broke the news to
Mulder's mother, *my* mother, and the Lone Gunmen; went
back to the doctor for another treatment and more bad news;
and helped plan Mulder's funeral.  I made it through *that*
particular hell, and then, just when I thought I could collapse
for a few hours, I got the call.

"Agent Scully?  This is Assistant Director Skinner."  

As if I didn't *know* who it was.  How many ex-Marines did he
think barked at me over the phone on a regular basis?

"I know you wanted to take some time off, but we've had a
situation arise that needs your particular talents and
knowledge."

"Sir, I--"

"Agent Scully, I wouldn't be asking for your help if this was not
a matter of utmost, international importance."

International?  I tried a few discreetly-worded questions but
couldn't get any more out of him.  I decided, what the hell? 
Might as well go out with a bang.  "I'll be right in, sir."

"No, Agent Scully, I would rather we go directly to the site.  I
can fill you in on the details en route.  I'll pick you up in an
hour."

"Yes, sir."  I should have known.  Skinner wasn't going to let me
drive, either.

* * * * * * * *

The situation, as Skinner explained it to me, was the cherry on
top of the surreal sundae that my life had become.  Exactly
five days after Fox Mulder, eternal chaser of flimsy leads, lost
hopes, and disappearing evidence, traded it all in for a bullet
to the cerebrum, his holy grail--the one I told him wasn't *my*
last dying wish--showed up in his own backyard.  It knocked on
the door and asked for him by name.

Mulder's truth appeared in the skies over Quonochontaug,
Rhode Island, in the form of a gleaming, silvery-black  starship
that looked like a bigger, sleeker, classier version of the
Stealth bomber. The hurriedly-snapped-and-faxed pictures
Skinner showed me would have made my partner--sorry,
ex-partner--drool.  George Jetson, on the other hand, wouldn't
have blinked an eye.  We later learned that they had been
monitoring our television broadcasts from about twenty light
years away.  This was their idea of blending in.

They had proceeded to hover over the summer house of one
Mrs. Mulder (still no first name, which tells me it must be even
worse than Fox; personally, I thought of her as Slappy the
Squirrel).  She had, apparently, returned to the 
long-abandoned home to deal with her grief--or whatever it
was she was really feeling--if, that is, she was capable of
feeling anything at all.

She was the first to notice the ship, and she must have made
some well-placed calls, because by the time we arrived the
neighbors had been hustled off to an evac center.  They were
told there'd been a chemical spill just offshore.  Yeah, right. 
Tell us another fairy tale, Bureaucrat Grimm.  All air traffic
had been re-routed and the US Government was gearing up for
its biggest cover-up of all time.  

"Denial of, by, and for the people," Frohike cracked.

That's right.  The Lone Gunmen were there, in all their
paranoid, peeping-tom techie glory.  Apparently they were
monitoring some super-secret military transmissions and got
the information at the same time Skinner was yanking me back
to the X-Files.  Somehow they managed to arrive a good hour
before we did--and Skinner's no slouch when it comes to
covering hundreds of miles of wide-open interstate, either.

"We took Mulder's secret route," Langly told me with his
demented punky-geek grin.  Oh, sure--that explained
everything.

Anyway, they had shown up before most of the feddies, and
since they refused to leave--and started invoking the name of
one Fox William Mulder--it was decided that they could stay.  I
could tell, even if they couldn't, that no one was planning on
letting them leave, not that they would have minded if they
had known.  This was what they'd waited for all their lives;
the reason that they'd hooked up with Mulder in the first
place.  

Frohike was singing "Blue Suede Shoes" under his breath in
preparation for the second coming of Elvis, which, he told me,
was imminent.  Even Byers was having a hard time staying
cool, and Langly had given up altogether.  He was bouncing,
literally *bouncing* on his toes, like a kid in line to ride 
Space Mountain for the first time.

Sorry, bad choice of rides.  Make that the Matterhorn.

To be honest, I half expected *him* to be there, too.   He'd
saunter up to me and drawl,  "Oh, hi Scully, I wasn't really
dead, it was just an elaborate fake designed to fool the
conspirators and make you feel guilty, but this is just too big
to miss."  I was ready for it.  Trust me, it wouldn't have been a
fake for long if that had been the case.

But he wasn't there.  If I wasn't sure before, if I had harbored
any lingering thoughts that this was just another New Mexico
boxcar incident, this was the final proof that shut the door on
that hope for good.  No way in heaven or hell would Fox Mulder
have missed the eerily beautiful sight of that starship hanging
like an immense bird of prey over his own backyard if he could
possibly have managed it.

Their message had been broadcast exactly once, over some
kind of laser-precision PA system, and apparently the
occupants of the space ship were waiting for our answer.  Of
all the people there, from Mrs. Mulder and the odd assortment
of associates Mulder had collected in the past few years,
through the Assistant to the Special Representative to the
Secretary General of the United Nations (who, incidentally,
was batting her eyelashes at every piece of male flesh she
approached and seemed awfully damned familiar with Skinner),
down to the military units with names I was sure never
appeared in even the most top-secret documents, and the
Consortium members that I knew had to be there somewhere,
there were only a handful of us who understood what it meant.

"Where is the one who wants to believe?"

By the time we got to the site, it had been four hours since
the ship had shown up and the message had been broadcast. 
Now, whoever or whatever was up there seemed to be waiting
patiently for an answer.  

The ship hovered over the strange group on the back lawn and
waited for the believer to come back.  Those of us who
understood they were looking for Mulder--though at the time
we couldn't fathom why--were quite befuddled about what to
do.  

Those who didn't understand were ready to shoot it out of the
sky; not that the military was guilty of overkill, mind you, but
there were more guns, lasers, and other high-tech weaponry
there than had probably been brought to bear on Noriega's
Panama.

I had the pleasure of seeing Assistant Director Walter S.
Skinner completely kerflumoxed.  It didn't last very long, of
course, but for the brief minutes that it took us to walk from
the car to the perimeter the military had set up, he was
rendered speechless, gaping at the thing with a mixture of awe
and dread, like a toddler being sent to sit on Santa's lap. 
He finally turned to me and asked, "Did you and Agent Mulder
know about this?"

I sighed.  "Sir, if Agent Mulder had known about this, don't you
think he would have stuck around?"

Something other than pure astonishment crossed his face for
a brief second--remorse, maybe?  A sudden realization that
the timing of this event could even be appreciated by Alanis
Morisette?--and then he blinked and went to work.

"Who's in charge here? You?" he barked, turning his attention
to the most decorated jarhead in the bunch.  "What in God's
name is going on?  How did this get here undetected by our
satellites?  What are these civilians doing here?"

"This area is under military quarantine--"

"I'm with the FBI, general, and that woman is the mother of
one of my agents.  That gives me at least partial jurisdiction." 
It was flimsy, but you had to admire the guy for trying.  His
imposing bearing seemed to be more effective than his
credentials.  "I wanna know how the hell this happened,"  he
spat out.  He dragged the general off, leaving me to deal with
the Gunmen and Mrs. Mulder.  

And so I stood, staring up at the technological wonder above
me, looking at the holy grail that had never been mine, having
all my ideas about how the universe worked fundamentally and
drastically shifted, witnessing the biggest scientific discovery
of...of Ever...and all I could think was how stupid the timing of
the whole thing was, and what a fool my partner had been for
giving up. 

"Goddamn it, Mulder, you fucking idiot."

It was unfortunate, and unintended, that I actually said what I
was thinking out loud.  How was I supposed to know Mommie
Dearest was standing right behind me?  They tell me she
recovered from the faint once they took her to a nice, bright
hospital and explained I was referring to her son and not to
her.  Apparently she didn't have a problem with anyone
badmouthing him once he was dead, either.

Of course, that little event did flush the Cancer Man out of
the shadows.  He glared at me with open hatred as he 
watched Mrs. Mulder being carted away by the medics.  It was
obvious that there had been more than water-skiing between
those two.

The whole thing was disgusting.  I was tempted to pull out my
Glock and waste him right then and there.  But he was
obviously flustered--whatever the conspirators had been up to
all this time, it was clear that this wasn't in their plans--and
the pain of seeing all his carefully laid schemes being shot to
hell was worse than any bullet could ever be.  

Served him right.  Even though I was just as clueless, I felt a
vicious triumph in seeing his world fall apart.

About that time, Frohike sidled up to me.  "Isn't it beautiful?"

"Sure, Frohike.  It's gorgeous.  What is it?  I mean, what the hell
is it made of?"  The outer skin of the ship sucked in light and
gave back a sheen that barely outlined it on the night sky.

He shrugged.  "Could be titanium, could be some other
compound we know nothing about."  We listened to the faint
hum of its engines--I supposed it had to have some kind of
engine--a sound that was almost too  high-pitched for our
ears to detect.  "How about that propulsion system, huh? 
Nothing on earth could just hang there like that."

I snorted.  "Nothing *we* know about.  Although from the
military presence here, I'd guess it's not anything *anyone*
knew about before tonight."

Langly looked up from some kind of notebook computer, where
he was messing with God-alone-knew-what.  He grinned a
maniacal grin.  "Bet you don't believe your eyes, huh Agent
Scully?"

At that moment, I went very still.  

"What?"

"It's just, you know, you being such a skeptic and all, I said,  'I
bet you don't believe your eyes.' "

Something snapped.  Some inner well of reserve that I had
been drawing on for the past five days--no, for a lot longer
than that--ran completely dry.  

"My eyes, Langly, work perfectly well, as do my powers of
*scientific* observation.  This craft does not appear, according
to what we know of it so far, to be of earthly origin, and if the
data supports that observation, then I am perfectly willing to
accept it.  I am not blind.  I am not so rigid that I cannot
incorporate irrefutable evidence into my world view.  Of
*course* I believe my eyes.  The only things I ever had trouble
*believing* were Mulder's preposterous explanations for what I
saw!"

Letting go like that was a very freeing experience, and I
just--went with it.  I felt as if I were standing outside myself
watching the scene I was creating.  I could see, out of the
corner of my eye, Frohike exchanging a worried look with Byers,
and Skinner looking up from his conversation with the general
to see why I was raising my voice.  Poor Langly looked as if he'd
reached down to pick a flower and plunged his hand into a
hornet's nest instead.  He started backing up, but I followed,
poking him in the chest once for every point I had to make.


"It was *Mulder* who set me up to be the unseeing,
unimaginative skeptic.  *He* was the one who wanted someone
to play against.  *He* was the one who painted me as an evil
stepmother to his paranormal Cinderella!  All I ever wanted
was proof, just some tiny bit of *real* evidence that the
theories he was propounding could be backed up by events
that happen in the real world!"

I stopped and blinked.  We were now standing directly under
the craft, in the single shaft of light that beamed without
flickering from its underside.  Langly kept backing up as he
stammered, "We...well...that's wh-what this is, isn't it?"

"Pretty damn much, Langly.  So why did you ask me such a
stupid question?"  I knew I was being too hard on him, but I was
enjoying it for a change.  I was running on pure adrenaline and I
wasn't about to put on the brakes.  "Do you think I can stand
under THIS--" I jabbed my finger straight up "-- and not
BELIEVE?"

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered the sounds of
other voices, directed at me, trying to tell me something. 
Langly was moving away from me even faster now.  

"Of COURSE I believe!" I finished, flinging my arms out in
exasperation.

Big mistake.

The part of me that hadn't gone completely 'round the bend
felt my feet leave the ground as the light around me grew
brighter.  Above me, in the belly of the ship, an aperture
appeared, growing larger as I approached.

The last glimpse I had of the crowd was of a still-smoking
cigarette tumbling from the gaping mouth of the Cancer Man.  

* * * * * * * *

(end part 1/2)

Contact Ironic
by Peregrin Anna
peregrin_anna@hotmail.com
March 29, 1998

(Summary, disclaimer, and other miscelleneous nuggets of
information may be found in part 1.)

* * * * * * * *

Contact Ironic (2/2)

Well, if you're reading this, I assume you know what happened. 
The aliens turned out to be benevolent emissaries (that's the
name that seems to have caught on, only capitalized--the
Emissaries) from a few hundred light years away who just
wanted to share with us the benefits of their advanced
civilization.  They were glad to find that they weren't all alone
in the galaxy, and they were eager to teach us what they knew. 

They chose to convey this message through me, which was, of
course, a great kick in the head if you keep in mind how Mulder
would have reacted.  

They cured my cancer almost immediately.  One swipe of a
glass wand that had some multi-colored, glowing material
inside that they said was radioactive but not harmful, and the
pressure was gone, the exhaustion was gone, the headache
that had been there for so long I hardly even noticed it
anymore was gone.  Later, my doctor confirmed it with x-rays,
but after what I'd seen, the whole process seemed hopelessly
primitive.  Oh, well.  It will take a good long while for us to catch
up with our new friends.

They told me what they wanted to do, they showed me how
they would do it.  I certainly don't pretend to understand
everything I saw that night, but I saw enough to convince me
that it wasn't an elaborate hoax.  

Yes, I admit, even then the thought crossed my mind that
Mulder had planned all this out with some Hollywood director: 
"Dear Mr. Spielberg, as discussed, here's my trust fund.  In the
event of my death, please have your people call my people and
execute operation I Told You So."  In retrospect, that probably
wasn't fair, but I was angry with him--still am, in point of
fact--and I didn't care.

So it was that I, Dana Scully, Skeptic, Ms.
Facts-Are-Better-Than-Truth (Mulder was really proud of that
one; he came up with it all by himself), got to deliver the
wonderful news to the world:  We Are Not Alone.  Don't blame
me for talking in capitals.  Everyone's doing it these days.

Anyway, you've seen the pictures and the news footage; you
know what these new friends look like and how they've carried
through with the promises they made that night.  You've been
to your doctor for the one-stop vaccination for everything
from the common cold to AIDS; you've heard about the hungry
being fed in every third world country and big-city ghetto; you
might have helped with the reforestation or water purification
efforts.  You certainly haven't seen any wars, or even minor
skirmishes, break out in the past few weeks, have you?

Like nearly everyone else on the planet, you've no doubt signed
up for your turn to take a joyride with them, to see the
Earth's features disappear as it becomes a pinpoint of light,
just another star, and then blip out entirely, only to have it
rush back at you in all its blue-green glory as you return.  The
Emissaries even say it's prettier than their own home, and
from the images I've been shown, I have to agree; but then, I've
never been a fan of purple and orange, at least not together
and certainly not on a planetary scale.

However, you don't know, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of
the story--the rest of *my* story.  

In the end I suppose it doesn't really matter how they ended
up at the Mulders' summer house, but it *is* interesting. 
Turns out Fox Mulder had a short-wave radio setup there
(courtesy, no doubt, of the Lone Gunmen) and had been
sending out messages for years, on every wavelength he could
establish, asking that his sister be brought back.  The
Emissaries picked it up, many different versions of it actually. 
They played some of them back for me.  It was the same words,
over and over, the desperation in his voice only thing that
varied.

"Please, whoever you are, bring my sister back to me.  I want to
believe in you.  I need to believe.  Bring Samantha back."

So, there you have it.  They came out of pity.  They came
because one believer had read _Contact_ one too many times.

Oh, yeah, the studio did go ahead and release that movie
anyway; guess they figured with all the time and money they'd
put into it, they couldn't exactly stick it back on the shelf.  It
flopped.  It was obsolete before it opened.  Irrelevant.  Sorry,
Carl.  

I rather liked it, though.  It wasn't all that far from the truth; I
mean, we've all seen that these beings can take on whatever
forms they like.  Besides, I'd always thought that if they made
a movie of my life (oh, yeah, and don't think *that* hasn't come
up in about a hundred phone calls), I'd want Jodie Foster to
play me.  Now I'm pretty sure she won't.  She's probably pissed
at the timing, and I guess she has a right to be, but it isn't my
fault.

To get back to what you don't know--one of the first things
the Emissaries asked me was who Samantha was.  Guess
that answers that question; they obviously had nothing to do
with her disappearance.  The people who did, the members of
the consortium, melted back into the woodwork quicker than
old men like that should be able to move, and they obviously
have some regrouping to do, but I doubt that they're 
permanently out of commission.  I'm sure they know what
happened to Samantha.  In a few weeks, when I've had time to
pull the threads of my life back together, I think I'm going to
try to find them, and her.  There isn't a hell of a lot left
for me to do.  Maybe I'll ask the Emissaries, next time I see
them, if they'll help me out.

You know, this should be a pretty giddy time for me.  I *am* a
scientist, and whether or not Mulder understood, this is
exactly the kind of thing science has been dreaming of for
years.  This is proof undeniable.

I'd like to think we would have gotten along pretty well after
this, that we both would have been happier after the arrival. 
Mulder would have had verification of one of the truths he had
pursued all those years and I would have had a hand, small
though it might have been, in bringing it to light.  Who
*wouldn't* want to present the global scientific community
with the most important discovery since gravity?

Well, me, as it turns out.

I shouldn't be so bitter.  I know that.  It's graceless and petty. 
I'm just so tired.  I slept for two days straight afterward,
after I got back and dealt with all the questions and the U. N.
inquisition and the reporters.  It had been a stressful week,
after all.  But even after that rest, and the relative calm of
the weeks that have followed, I'm still tired.  

When I awoke, the Emissaries were still here--everywhere, if you
can believe the news reports; accepted with open arms once
they went straight to the people via satellite, bypassing the
governmental chain of command because I told them to,
knowing they'd become just another X-File if they didn't.  Of
course, my face was plastered all over the TV screens, too--
that god-awful ID picture from my FBI credentials, mostly. 
Mulder would have had something witty to say about that, I'm
sure.

Mulder.  That's what it all boils down to.  He's been dead for a
month and he's still demanding my attention.

I still expect to see him, still expect it to be him on my cell
phone every time it rings, which makes no sense because I had
the number changed when the people from "Hard Copy"
started calling.

I do want to see him, because I want to kick his ass for being
such an idiot, for being a quitter, for giving up on his quest and
on himself so close to the goal, for giving up on me and my
ability to believe before I'd even been given a chance or a
reason to try.  I want to look him right his smug face and tell
him he died in vain.

I know now it was inevitable.  Of course he died in vain.  He was
a tragic hero, a persona he adopted long before he met me. 
The bitter irony had to be spun out to its inevitable conclusion.  

Five days, and he could have had it in his hands--not just
truth, but proof.  The hugest "I told you so, Scully" in the
history of vindicated faiths.

But he didn't.  He denied himself that rarest of opportunities,
and though I am cured of the cancer and the world is a much,
much better place because of that one night and all the days
that have followed, I still resent the hell I went through during
the five days that led up to it.  I resent his desertion and his
betrayal of my faith in him.  Every time I think of what could
have been, the knife in my gut twists a little deeper.  I hope
that, wherever he is now, he is aware of this and feels it too.

It would serve him right.

None of this is exactly fair, is it?  I'd like to blame him.  I'd like
to think that I became what he expected me to be, not through
my own choices, but because he played upon my stubborn
streak and my scientific mind set and twisted them all out of
proportion.  I'd like to claim that he made me into this rigid,
unbending skeptic who apparently, if Langly's reaction was
accurate, didn't have the intelligence or ability to accept proof
when it landed right in my lap.  

If I could blame him, it would be easy to explain why, when I get
the least bit excited about this, or start to feel proud of my
own role in it, all I can hear is Mulder saying, "I told you so";
why I get angry at him all over again and refuse to give him the
satisfaction of seeing me reveling in the vindication of his
beliefs, wherever the hell he is.

Of course, I actually know better than that.

This is my fault as much as his.   All of it--the way I feel, the
way I'm reacting; Mulder hasn't caused it.  How could he?  He's
not here.  It's my anger over the fact that he's not here to be
angry *at*.  My anger, yes, at him, for copping out, but also at
myself for giving him a reason to do so.  I wish I could take
back--wish I had never said--those words that came out like an
accusation but were really meant as a question.

"They gave me this disease to make you believe."

Because I said that, because I helped to seal his fate, because
my own guilt is hanging on like a bad toothache, because the
one person in this world who would have appreciated recent
events the most is no longer here, I find no personal hope or
redemption in the Emissaries' arrival.

Maybe I should just go planet hopping with them.  Maybe from
a distance, I can put the irony in perspective and rebuild my
faith in a hopeful future.

Maybe, but I doubt it, which, after all, is how it should be.  I'm
not supposed to believe.

Right, Mulder?


FINIS