TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (1 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE CLASSIFICATION: S, Sequel to "The Seventh Age" RATING: R SPOILERS: Mythology, "Field Trip," "Tooms" ARCHIVE: Yes to all. Send feedback to ottercrk@sover.net Website is located at http://members.dencity.com/hearne AUTHOR'S NOTE: You don't necessarily need to read "The Seventh Age," but it wouldn't hurt. I should also note that "Slip-Stream" diverges from the mythology story as established by the seventh season. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART ONE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I first slipped out of time during a band rehearsal. At that moment, the biggest problem was figuring out what kind of band we were. That's what happens when you grow up listening to a sprawling smorgasbord of music; when you listen to T-Model Ford in the morning and Nick Drake in the evening with Koko Taylor, Merle Haggard, Funkadelic, Duke Ellington, Rancid, Lil' Ed Williams, The Roots, Charlie Haden, Big Joe Turner, Frank Sinatra and The Raincoats in between. The result is a rock-jazz-country-funk-rap-folk fusion. In other words, a big Smoking mess. "Dammit, Tom, I know you can play more than three chords!" our lead singer shouted at the guitarist, waving his bright saxophone in Tom's direction. As usual, Tom looked back at Leonard Suderman with an impassive face. Tom Cave and Leonard had decidedly different personalities. Leonard could shout for hours. Tom usually spoke few words in a quiet voice. Leonard had to be the center of attention. Tom preferred to sit in the back. When Leonard played his saxophone or sang, he was out to shake the earth. Tom didn't like to show off. He was content to play a rhythm and would only do solos when the song absolutely required him to do so. The two men didn't even look alike. Leonard was a big guy, both tall and wide. He looked like he had been carved out of a bank vault. Tom was wiry and long-necked though his arms were muscular. To top it all off, Leonard was an Alone and Tom was one of the New Joined. That's a potent combination in any circumstance. Sometimes, opposing mind-sets can balance each other out and enrich the music. Other times, it just creates friction and screws up the whole band. We were rehearsing in Leonard's basement. The song we chose to start out with was "Wang Dang Doodle" -- a fun, straightforward rocker of a tune which the whole band could enjoy. Or so we thought. "You are not helping any of us by holding back!" Leonard declared. "We'll know when it's time to step in," Tom replied, looking down at his guitar strings. "NOW is the time. The time is NOW. Don't make me come over there and slap you on the head like Muddy Waters did to Buddy Guy!" Our bass player, Nora Konsinki, looked at me and I looked back at her. We had the same thought. Slapping Tom would *not* be a good idea. Tom was not Buddy Guy. Buddy Guy had been a modest, sweet-tempered man. Tom kept to himself, but that was only because he was biding his time. In the pre-Message days, Tom had been one of the Irregulars. Back then, he had been called Ender, a name borrowed from a fictional character who killed other children in his youth. I could see why he had been called that. I once saw him in his backyard, shooting at a target with a pistol. His concentration as he pulled the trigger was unbreakable. When the Irregulars had been rounded up by Purity Control, Ender had been forced to become one of the Joined. Or, rather, the Old Joined. Maybe in the time before the Message, his hard and methodical personality had been submerged under the effects of a Joining. If Tom had changed, though, he must have changed back. He was giving that same look to Leonard that he gave to his backyard target. Our lead singer may have been younger and bigger, but I would have advised Leonard not to jab his stick into Tom's cage. "Cor, it's the battle of century, folks! It's Leonard 'Sax Machine' Suderman versus Tom 'Stone-Cold' Cave! Hope you blokes in the front row brought your raincoats 'cause they're gonna be some blood flyin' through the bleedin' air tonight!" That was Alonzo Gamboa, our drummer. His Cockney accent was self-taught -- another one of his tributes to his idol, Keith Moon. Like Moon, Alonzo adored chaos, spectacle and practical jokes. He also had Moon's erratic time-keeping abilities. This marked another reason why Nora and I were considering a departure from The Channel Surfers. For now, Nora tried to be peace-keeper. "Look, maybe we ought to try something else." Tom stared at Leonard for one more second, then looked over Leonard's shoulder at Nora. "What were you thinking of?" he asked, his voice mild as ever. "Remember that Buju Banton song we were listening to last night?" I held back a groan. On top of everything else, did we have to add reggae to our stew? I didn't say anything, though. In fact, the only thing I did was slump forward and hit my head on my keyboard. That's what the others said I did. I don't remember that. Here's what I do remember -- The smell of rotting meat thickened the air. I stood on a road covered with this sour meat turning green under a brown sky. When I looked at it, I saw other things -- a toenail, an eye, a nose. Jutting bones pierced through torn clothes. Across the remaining skin, wounds were spread open like toothless mouths never to be fed. Eventually, I recognized the meat as being human remains and the expressions on the intact faces to be horror. A black oil was leaking out of some bodies. The oil was gathering together in the middle of the street. It formed a great dark pool, pulsing and desperate for a place to go. I realized that this street was familiar. It should have been. I lived there. The houses occupying this block belonged to my family and neighbors. Only now they had been smashed and broken, almost as irreparable as the bodies at my feet. A sound made me look up. Floating across the brown sky were three metal aircraft. Two were square, one was circular. The squares were smaller than the circular ship which was half as long as the street. Its two square companions hovered with a protective air next to its big brother. They all passed over my head, slow as melting ice. Green lights shined on their bellies, pulsing in time with the oscillating hum the ships made. Then I heard another sound -- closer and behind me. It was like the growl of an animal, but no animal I had ever heard before. You probably guessed that it ended right there. Dreams usually end before we can see the face of the monster. I don't know if this is to protect us. Maybe it's more dangerous not to see the monster. In any case, the next moment found me no longer on the street, but in my bed. This familiar surrounding was bloodless and orderly. Next to my bed were some live people -- my father, my mother and Nora. They were all looking at me in relief while behind them, posters displayed Charlie Parker, Otis Redding and Pete Townshend in various forms of musical ecstasy. Mom was sitting next to me, holding my hand. Sharon was seated at the foot of the bed. Dad stood near the wall, keeping the longest distance from me. He had a little smile on his face, but he still looked uncomfortable. "Okay," I said. "What happened?" "You fainted during rehearsal," Mom told me, rubbing her thumb against mine. "But you seem to be all right now." "How...how long was I out?" "An hour or so. Doctor Upton said that there is nothing wrong with you, but theyo recommend that you stay in bed for awhile." "You had us and us all scared," Nora said, looking a little shaken-up. "We don't think we ever prayed to the High Priestess so hard before." I looked at Dad. It was just a reflex on my part. Whenever somebody mentioned the High Priestess, it usually got some reaction out of him -- a twinge of the cheek or a roll of the eyes. I didn't know what made him so disdainful of the Messengers. Not yet, anyway. This time, however, he made no reaction. He just kept looking at me, still trying to smile. This scared me more than my fainting spell. "Dad, are you all right?" "Hm? Us?" "Yeah. Is something wrong?" Mom turned to him. A look passed between my parents and it spoke of things about which I knew nothing. The look lasted for a few moments, then Dad said to me, "We just want to make sure nothing is wrong with our daughter. However, if Doctor Upton says that there's nothing physically wrong with you..." He shrugged, an attempt at a casual movement that only looked forced. Mom turned back to me, also attempting to look casual. "Still, you should do what your doctor says," she told me. I nodded. "Looks like I may end up missing our first gig," I said to Nora. She snorted. "Don't worry about that. The whole band is going to Smoke anyway." Then she smiled, walked up to the head of the bed and touched my cheek. "You just rest and let the High Priestess look over you." She leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. It could have been on the mouth, but Nora didn't want to make Mom and Dad too uneasy. Even when parents accept such a romance, it's always a little difficult to actually see it in action. After Nora had left, Mom asked if I wanted something to eat. I said that I wouldn't say no to a cheese sandwich. She gave me a smile, then exited my bedroom. This left me alone with Dad. I propped myself up on one elbow and stared at his nervous face. "All right," I said. "What is it?" Dad knew when it was time to stop the bullshit. He let out a long sigh as he rubbed a hand over his eyes. I was startled by how weary he looked all of a sudden. He pulled up a chair to my bed, sat down, clutched his hands together and said -- "Miranda...we've told you about what we did before the Message." "You were a Stabilizer. I know." "Yes, but...we haven't told you what life was like for us and your mother before the Message. We haven't told you because...well...we're not proud of the things we did. Not all of them. But you have the right to know about them." I could feel a heaviness in my chest. The man looking at me was so solemn and morose. "And you're going to tell me about them now?" I said. "Soon. But, first, we have to know something." "Why can't you tell me..." "Miranda, did anything strange happen to you while you were unconscious?" My chest was getting heavier. I cleared my throat and said, "Yes." "What?" "I had a nightmare." "Tell us about it." I laid back down on the bed. The only part of me that moved was my mouth as I told Dad all about my nightmare. When I described all the details, he didn't say anything. The first movement he made was turning his head towards the door. Mom had just come in with a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. She saw the expression on our faces and stopped in her tracks. She might have stood there forever if I hadn't said, "Thanks, Mom." I sat up and held out my hands. Walking over to me and placing the meal in my hands, she kept her eyes on Dad. My father got up with an awkward jerk and said, "You and we will talk later. We need to...we need to check on something." He made a fast exit. "Mom, what is..." I started to say, but she was already chasing after him. The next thing I heard was an argument. They were too far away for me and there were too many closed doors for me to hear everything, but I could discern a few phrases. "...has to know..." "...we have to be sure..." "...too long..." I gave up hearing anymore. Placing my hand on the Bio-Player, I told it to put on The Dropkick Murhpys. I don't why, but their loud songs of working-class solidarity and Irish pride always got me in a good mood. Maybe because they represented a world so far removed from my own. Forty-two years of any historical period was enough to change the world dramatically, but the events of the four decades had seen change like none other in Earth's history. Like a lot of people, I wondered what had gotten lost in these changes. I rested on my bed, nibbling on my sandwich and listening to "Hail, hail, the gang's all here..." At one point, I heard my father shouting loud enough to be heard over the music. "Goddammit, give us a straight answer! Can you verify the sighting or not?" That didn't sound like he was yelling at Mom. He would never be that angry with her. It sounded like he was having an argument with someone over the Bio-Communicator. I found myself going to my dresser and getting out a little statue of the High Priestess. Nora had given it to me. The statue depicted the Priestess in her sacred robe, but she was younger than when she delivered the Message. If the statue was accurate, she must have been a real beauty. I was not religious like Nora. She had given it to me more as an act of love. At that moment, though, I was close to praying to that little red-haired woman made of porcelain. If the High Priestess really did have wisdom to share, I sure needed some at the moment. I didn't pray, but I was rewarded in any case. I would meet the High Priestess -- not to mention her friends, her enemies and the man she loved. I would also learn that I was needed to help save the world, which is a fairly heavy burden to put on the shoulders of a seventeen-year-old girl. After all, I was just Miranda Rush, keyboardist in a half-assed band. What kind of freaking Messiah is that? XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (2 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART TWO XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "Come with us, Miranda." It was during a Saturday night when my father asked me to step outside on the porch with him. He looked up at the sky packed with stars. The look on his face was strange. It was as if the sky was right in front of his face instead of miles above. Of course, my father had always seemed a little strange to me. Don't get wrong. I had always loved him. In fact, it was his love of music that got me interested in becoming a musician myself. The same goes for Nora, Alonzo, and Leonard. When we were younger, they would come over and listen to the bewilderingly wide-ranging soundtrack of our house. I once asked my father how did he develop his own personal tastes. He just smiled and said, "We owe it to a friend of mine." That was all he said. Long before my fainting spell, I had suspected that he kept a good chunk of his past secret. Mom wouldn't let me in on what little she knew. "When your father is ready to tell you, theyo will," she would assure me. The biggest clue I ever got was when John Byers died. During the final days before the Message (or the final days of the Seventh Age as it's often called), Byers had been the Representative -- the one government official who could be elected by the public. It had been little more than a figurehead position. After the Message, the Joined government crumbled, but John Byers took on a role of greater importance. He was one of the people who kept things orderly as the Seventh Age ended. You know, helped to restore democracy and all that grand shit. I was one of the people at his funeral. I was ten years old at the time and wondering why I was there. Why did Dad bring me here? Did he know John Byers? "Sort of," he told me. Again, that brief answer was all he would give. It wasn't just my dad's secrets that puzzled me. It was his attitude. He could become distant all of a sudden and stare out the window for hours. Often, he would look at me as if he was expecting something to happen and then seem relieved when it didn't. I used to think that it was because I was still an Alone. Once, I asked him if he would prefer it if I became Joined. "Oh, no! God, no. If you want to stay an Alone, honey, then stay that way." I believed him. So what was the problem? To tell the truth, I wasn't really scared by my dad's eccentricities. Or even embarrassed. Well, one time, I was embarrassed. It was during a re-anactment of the High Priestess's Ascenscion put on by a local Messenger church. Nora was the one playing the High Priestess. She was so excited to get the role. She even shaved her head for it. Like I said, I'm not particularly religious, but it was so neat to see Nora up on the stage in the robes of the High Priestess and declaiming about enlightenment. However, as the play went on, I became more and more aware of a noise. I tried to ignore it, but it was getting louder. By the time the play reached the Punishment of the Smoking One, I couldn't ignore it. I turned to the man next to me in the audience -- my father. He was holding a hand over his mouth and snickering. "O, woman, who are you to deny our might?" the Smoking One sneered. "Do you not know that nations tremble at the sound of our voice and that the world turns on our will?" "The world is not yours to play with, Smoking One," the High Priestess declared. "The lives of humanity are determined by their own will. Your power means nothing." A snort burst out of my father's nose. "Dad!" I hissed. "Do not speak in that way to me!" the Smoking One yelled, pointing at the High Priestess with a cigarette clutched in one of his green claws. "You shall do as we say!" "And what should I do?" she replied. "Give me the Great Weapon or you will receive a horrible vengeance!" My father lowered his head and started to giggle. Other members of the audience were looking at him, wondering what the Smoke was so funny. "Dad, stop it!" I demanded. Even Nora was looking a little distracted as she said the line, "I shall not give it to you." "You shall!" the Smoking Man thundered. "I cannot because it does not exist." The Smoking One dropped to his knees, shock exploding over his face. "What is this you say?" The High Priestess lifted her arms and told the whole audience, "Behold! Even the greatest of deceivers can be deceived! They fill their lives with so many untruths that they can no longer see reality! This is their great weakness! Let it not be yours!" Dad couldn't take it anymore. He stood up and squeezed his way to the aisle, stepping over the feet of offended people. His laughter could be heard from outside the auditorium. I sank down in my chair, mortified. Later on, he tried to apologize to me. "Just what was so funny anyway?" I snapped at him. "Or is that just another thing you can't tell me?" He squeezed his lips together and gave me such a pathetic look that I forgave him on the spot. I have always been able to forgive my father for these little incidents. I couldn't do it now. This was the time to get some answers, and he knew it. To my surprise, the first thing he said was, "Do you remember when we laughed at the Ascension play?" "Uh, yes. I do." "There was a reason why we laughed." "I figured as much. What was it?" Still not looking at me, he said, "Because we knew the High Priestess." Okay. That I didn't expect. It's one thing for your dad to have known America's final Representative. But the High Priestess...even if you didn't consider her a goddess as Nora did, you knew how important she had been to the world. "How?" I managed to ask, despite the dryness in my throat. He smiled and shook his head. "There are...so many details to go into. Let's just say we encountered her as part of an investigation. This was right before the Message." "Well, what do you know about her?" He turned to me. "Among other things, her real name. She was Dana Scully. And we don't think she would have appreciated being deified." I found myself reaching into my pocket for my lighter and cigarettes. A look of disapproval flickered across my father's eyes. "I need this, okay?" I told him as I lit one up. Even in those days when the Smoking One was one of the great symbols of evil, some of us had acquired a taste for nicotine. Boy, you wouldn't believe the face Nora made whenever she caught me lighting one up. My father shrugged, then smiled. "We knew the Smoking One, too," he said in a casual voice. I coughed. "In fact, we were there for theiro 'Punishment.' Trust us, the real thing was a lot more entertaining than the Ascension play." "Is that so?" I said in a raspy voice. "Did the Smoking One have a name?" "You know, we're not sure anybody ever knew it. But theyo were just a man, not a demon." He frowned. "Well, theyo weren't exactly human when we saw themo." "So, you were there when history was made." "Just as an observer, mind you. We did nothing to effect events. Then, again, doing nothing was the best thing we could have..." His voice trailed away as he became lost in his memories. It was only when I snapped my fingers next to his ear that he returned to the present. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Anyway...we knew her. We got to know a lot of interesting people back then." "Like who?" "The Irregulars." I blew out a cloud of smoke. "You were investigating them?" "At first. Then we became one of them." "What?" "We're serious." "A Joined Stabilizer in the Irregulars?" "We weren't Joined for long." I closed my eyes for a second. When I opened them, I asked, "Just how the Smoke did that happen?" "It's difficult to explain. And it's even more difficult to explain...some of the things I...we did. It's not something we're proud of." I shook my head. "Amazing. Well, I have a little surprise for you, Dad. I have one of the old Irregulars in my band." "You mean, Tom?" That gave me another start. Up until now, I had assumed that my dad hadn't even met Tom. The guitarist lived at the far end of town and, like I said, he kept to himself. "Wait a damn minute," I said. "You two had already known each other and you didn't tell me?" "No, I didn't. For the same reason, I never told you that Uncle Robbie used to be an Irregular. Or Virginia Wray was." I felt the cigarette tremble in my fingers. Robbie was an immensely tall and immensely kind old man as well as a friend of the family and an unofficial uncle to me. And the promoter of The Channel Surfers was Virginia Wray -- a sharp-tongued woman who was helping us and many other artists get our first breaks. "Did...did you know them, too?" I asked. "Yes. Back then, Robbie was known as Inspector Bucket. Virginia was Rebecca Sharp. They all were Irregulars. In fact, you were named for one of them." "What?!" "Jane Williams. As an Irregular, she was called Miranda." Jane Williams...the woman who had died before I was born...the woman who had spent her final days with my parents as she died of cancer...the woman I had only known through photos and... It took me more than a minute to take all this in. I just stood there and sucked on my cigarette as Dad watched me like I was a bomb. Then I said, "I think I can understand why you didn't tell me this. It may not be even important. It's all in the past. But why are you telling me this now?" He took a long, long breath. "Because...some time after the Message...Robbie told me something we didn't know. Well, a few things, actually. One was that during the time we were...I was an Alone, I was experimented on." I felt myself turn cold. "What kind of experiments?" "Some blood was taken from me. And then injected back into me after being mutated by scientists." "And you never noticed this?" "Well...no. It's hard to..." His voice trailed away again. I waited for him to speak again. When he didn't, I said, "Why did they do it?" "Because I used...we..." "Just say 'I,' Dad." He nodded. "I was a former member of the Joined. My blood had been exposed to the alien virus over several years. They wanted to use it...use me in their own project." "And that was?" "Creating a new race of Alones. One with the abilities of the Joined." I looked at my father. He walked away from me to the far end of the porch. "In other words," I said. "you were being turned into a breeder." "It never got to that point," he replied with his back turned to me. "The Irregulars were destroyed as a group before then. But...what they did to me...still remained." I leaned against the railing around the porch. My cigarette dropped tiny black ashes onto the wood. Outside, the neighborhood rested comfortably under the stars. "And I'm the product of that experiment, right?" I said, almost too quietly for Dad to hear me. "Indirectly...yes. We think so." "Does this have something to do with my dream?" "We're not sure. We..." I ran over to him and spun my father around with a tight hand. "Well, what do you know?!" I shouted. "We just don't know anything!" he yelled back in desperation. "The experiments were cut off at an early stage! No one knew what the final results could be!" "So, you went and made a fucking child anyway?!" My father's breath became heavy and loud like mine. "Your mother and we...we and we made sure to keep an eye on you...we and we have been watching for...anything. We and we had no idea what would happen to you. You could acquire some kind of advanced ability like telepathy or telekinesis or prognostication..." "Prognostication?" The cigarette slipped out of my fingers to the floor. Smoke formed a thin line between me and my father. He just looked at me, not speaking. "That nightmare I had...it wasn't just a dream, was it?" I said. "You think it's really going to happen? Don't you?" He still didn't talk. He didn't even move his head, but I could see the answer in his eyes. "Why?" He opened his mouth to speak... "Just so you know, we are conducting our own investigation." ...but those words did not come from him. My father was a clean-shaven black man in his late thirties. The man speaking to me was a white man with a beard, though around the same age as my father. Nor was I on the porch of my house. I was standing in a room full of people dressed in somber clothing. They were talking quietly or drinking or just looking glum. "I was starting to think that I was the only one who had suspicions," I said or I felt myself saying. I had a faint sensation of my jaw moving and my vocal chords tingling. The words certainly came from my direction. However, I couldn't think of why I would say them. Then I recognized the man speaking to me. He was much younger than when he had been the Representative, but he was still John Byers. I also recognized the voice coming from my mouth. After hearing the recording of the Message in school so many time, I could figure out whose body I was occupying. I was speaking with the voice of Dana Scully, the High Priestess Herself. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (3 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART THREE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I experienced this vision in a way that was both clear and muffled. I can recall the details -- the dim lighting, the murmur of other conversations, the smell of alcohol, the sight of the coffin. However, when the vision occurred, it came to me through some kind of filter denying the fullness of first-hand perspective. It was like using those old Bio-Stimulators from the pre-Message days. It wasn't just the sights and sounds I was absorbing, though. I could feel the emotions of the person I was inhabiting. They weren't pretty. Anger, confusion, a rising panic -- these feelings were lying on a bedrock of despair. This woman...Dana Scully...the High Priestess...whoever she was...she felt trapped. Something was *wrong*. She was sure of it. She just didn't know what it was. She was now shouting at Byers and the other two men he was with. Both of those men wore glasses. One was dressed in a brown leather jacket and fedora hat, the other in a black T-shirt with the design of a tuxedo painted on it. The former was short with a heavy face. The latter had long blonde-hair and a sharp nose. All three of them looked back at me (or Scully) with a growing discomfort as her (or my) voice became louder. "You three of all people should be all over this and not buying the party line!" I insisted. Another man walked over to us. He was... My God, he was Walter the Sacrifice. In the Church of the Message, he was a saint -- the man who had given up his life for the world. If only Nora could see this, I thought. Walter the Sacrifice was trying to calm Scully down. She was having none of it. "Where is Mulder?" she bellowed. He closed his mouth and just looked at her helplessly. Then his expression turned kind yet cautious. No, it wasn't Walter the Sacrifice. It was Uncle Robbie. "Hello, sweet thing," he said. "How are you?" I looked around me. "Back in my bed," I said, then closed my eyes and groaned. When I opened them again, Robbie was still sitting at my bedside. Of course, Robbie in a chair looked like most people when they're standing. Even in his fifties, he was still an imposing man. When I used to ride on his shoulders as a child, I had felt like I could see the whole world. Getting tossed up in the air by him had been both exhilirating and scary. I called Robbie an uncle because he was the kind of uncle you wanted to have -- big yet tender, strong yet kind. At that moment, though, I wasn't too fond of him. "How long was I out this time?" I asked. "Not as long as before," he said. "Fifteen minutes. We had just arrived a minute after it had happened." I nodded, then I looked into his eyes and said, "Why didn't you tell me about the experiments?" He looked back with his sad brown eyes. The hairs in his grey beard twitched as he sighed. "The last thing we and we wanted...the last thing your father and mother wanted...was to have you or any other member of your generation feel the same weight we and we did. We and we don't want to carry our and our burden if it's not necessary..." "You can't escape history, Uncle Robbie." "You're right," he said in a quiet voice. "So...you actually performed experiments on my father." "Your father wasn't..." He stopped himself. "It's so difficult to explain what it was like to live in the Off-Zone. But we can't use the hardness of that life as a justification for every stupid thing we did. The only thing we can say is...to the Irregulars, your father would always be one of the Joined. At least, to us and Bosola. That made us feel entitled to do whatever felt necessary." "Who was Bosola?" "Second-in-command of the Irregulars." He shivered briefly. "We've come to realize just how hard a man he really was." I let the silence stay in place for a moment. Then I said -- "Was I what you expected?" "It's like you father said -- we and we had no idea what to expect. With the kind of tinkering we and we were doing...there's no telling what could come out." "How about prognostication?" "That was a considered possibility," he said in a solemn voice. I sat up in bed and held my legs against my chest. "Did he tell you what I saw in my vision?" "Theyo did." "Did you think it's going to happen?" "We think it could." "Why?" "Ever since the original Joining, there have been observatories keeping watch on the far reaches of our galaxy. Tonight, your father called up one of these observatories. Theyo were told that a large body of objects is heading in our direction. It will take four days for them to reach this planet." Suddenly, I had to go to the bathroom. Uncle Robbie followed me and rubbed me on the back as I vomited. I didn't need to be told what the objects were. They represented the one fear always lurking in the mind of everybody living on Earth; the dread of a threat once vanquished but always ready to return. The return of the alien colonists. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Some things never change. Before the Message, the social differences between the Joined and the Alones were as stark as the wall separating the Off-Zone from Washington, D.C. The Joined had the power and the money. The Alones just had their discontent. By the time I reached seventeen, the world was no longer so sharply divided, but poverty still existed. In Los Angeles, we still have some run-down places, and a person from my neighborhood shouldn't just wander into them at night. Nora lived in one of those places located far from my well-kept surburban area. At that moment, however, I didn't give a thimble full of shit. I needed to talk to Nora and I needed to do it now. Nora was very surprised to see me at her door. After she opened it, I didn't wait for her permission to come inside. I almost collided with her as I entered. "Uh...hi, Miranda," she said as she closed the door. Nora's apartment looked like a life packed into a few small rooms. Between stained walls were a bed, a small refrigerator, an old and rickety dresser, lamps with colored shades, various articles of clothing cluttering up the floor and a bass guitar. Like my bedroom, posters of musicans decorated the walls, but she also had posters of the High Priestess. "I have something important to tell you," I said. "We gathered," she told me. "There's going to be an big public announcement tomorrow. I wanted you to hear from it me first." She looked at me, then indicated the bed. We both sat down on it. I told her about the colonists but not about my visions. I wasn't ready to talk about that yet. When I was done, she looked out the window at the poorly lit streets for awhile. Then she turned to me and said, "We and you should pray." I came over there to do something other than pray, but...I could understand her impulse. That's why I knelt down at the bed with her. "High Priestess, we and we call out to you in our time of need," Nora said after closing her eyes. "The world you saved is in danger once again. Please give us the guidance..." And on and on. Like I said, I'm not particularly religious. As she prayed, I watched her. I admired her petite nose, her long braids of brown hair, her slim body. I even liked her stubby fingers, the ones suitable for a bass guitar. I leaned forward to kiss her lips as they mouthed the act of prayer. A refrigerator door almost collided with my face. I jerked back and found myself in another apartment. It was plainer than Nora's. Filing cabinets were located in a corner. The refrigerator door closed. I could now see a tall, elderly man. He took a magnetized bottle opener off the refrigerator, popped open the bottle of beer in his hand and took a long drink. When the bottle left his mouth, he sighed. The grimace on his face seemed to be carved into his skin. He looked like a man incapable of being surprised by anything. In fact, when he turned and saw me kneeling on the floor, he just stared at me with no change in his face. Then he said, "You better get off your knees, young lady. Somebody sees us like this, they might get the wrong impression." He walked away from me, muttering "Not to say I wouldn't mind the reputation..." I got off the floor and chased after him. "You can see me?" "Would I be talking to you if I couldn't?" he said. He sat down in a chair as if he never wanted to get up again. "Who are you?" "This is my apartment. You tell me who you are." "Okay. I'm Miranda Rush." "Hello, Miranda. I'm Clyde. Clyde Bruckman." He gave me a little wave of his bottle. "Um...this might be stupid question..." "I had a grade-school teacher who used to say 'There are no stupid questions.' Of course, when we wanted to ask her where babies come from..." "Well, what I want to know is what year this is." "It's 1995," Bruckman said without hesitation. "You were expecting it to be something else?" "Mister Bruckman...I don't know if you're going to believe this...or maybe you will...but I'm from the future." He gave me a brief look, then shrugged. "That's something new, I guess," he said. "Do much time-traveling?" I stared back at his nonchalant face for a moment. "Only recently," I told him, deciding to play it as cool as he was. I looked around the room. "This is new for me, too," I commented. "The last time I experienced something like this, it seemed to be from the viewpoint of someone..." I reached over to touch the desk. My hand passed through it. I tried to stomp on the floor. I could only feel something soft and unseen that kept me from touching the ground. "Well," I said. "in any case, I can actually interact with people this time. Why is that?" "Must be because I'm psychic," Bruckman said, then took another drink of beer. "You are?" "It's not exactly something I'm proud of, but, yeah, I'm psychic." "Then maybe you can help me." A pained smile cracked open on Bruckman's mouth. "Please. I'm already having to deal with some FBI agent with a weird name who wants my help." "But this is important. It's about the future of humanity." "You mean, it's about how the aliens are going to wipe everyone out." Bruckman's voice became dreamy and distant when he spoke that. For a moment, I could see a deeper agony under his deadpan exterior. "You can see that?" I said, stepping towards him. He shook his head as if he was stirring himself from a dream. "I can see how everybody dies," he informed me, looking down into his beer. "You know...you figured the end of the world would be something more...original. Maybe have bowling balls rain from the heavens. Or have the earth engulfed by a flood of cheeze whiz. Or even something Biblical. But to have the whole thing end because of an alien invasion...oh, well." "'Oh, well?' Look, I understand that you'll be dead long before this happens..." "You betcha." "...but that's a future I'm going to have to face. I would like not to." "It's no good, kid. If something is going to happen, it will happen." "Then why even bother seeing into the future?" Bruckman toasted me with his beer. "The dawn breaks." "No." I began to pace around the apartment, my feet making no sound on the floor. "I won't accept that fate crap. I have been getting these visions of both the past and the future. And I feel...I know they're happening for a reason. I'm not meant to just roll over and accept the inevitable." Bruckman watched me pace for awhile. Then he said, "You need to find someone who can help you understand your gift." I stopped pacing. "What do you mean? Who?" "There is someone who can guide you and give you a better understanding of your purpose. Someone who can teach you how to master yourself and find a way of saving your world." "And you can see this person?" "Hm? Oh, hell, no. I just figured there would have to be a person like that. I mean, in all these karate movies, the good guy always meets this old fella eating rice in a hut and the old guy teaches him how to snatch rocks out of his hand. You know, he gives the hero inner peace so he can go out and beat the crap out of the bad guys." I looked at the old man. "You're worthless," I said. He gave me another tight smile. "Again...the dawn breaks." I put my hands on my hips and shook my head. "I don't understand it. Why did I come here? I think I can understand the last two visions...or the first one, but..." I silenced myself. A whole minute went by before I spoke again. When I did, I asked Bruckman -- "How do I die?" He sat there in his chair, giving me a grim look. "You really want to know?" "Yes." He turned his gaze away. Staring at the corner of the wall, he said, "You'll be killed by the Smoking One and his Ticking Crocodiles." "I see." I paused again. "Thanks." "Sure." "I think I'll be leaving now." "Right. By the way..." "Yeah?" Bruckman turned back to me. "Good lu..." "...and bless with your wisdom forever. Amen." I was back in Nora's apartment. Since I came in at the tail end of her prayer, I figured that I had been gone for only two minutes this time. I also noticed that I had remained in my kneeling position instead of slumping to the floor. I guessed this was a good sign. It meant my body was adjusting to the visions. Nora opened her eyes and looked at me. "Miranda? What is it?" "Nora...I need two things from you." "Name them." "One is the name of a really good spiritual guru." She blinked. "Um...all right. What's the second thing?" "I need you to hold me." She did, throughout the whole night. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (4 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE AUTHOR'S NOTE: I forgot to mention someone. Thanks to Abigail Thomas for her beta work. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART FOUR XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Senator Theodore Matheson was your standard member of the Old Joined. In other words, he was a complete asshole. Wait. Let me take that back. That's an unfair thing to say about the Old Joined. You could understand why they regarded...or, perhaps, I should say you could understand why they and they regarded the post-Message world with so much confusion and horror. (It drives the Old Joined nuts when you don't address them with the Joined conception of grammar. However, I've never been able to get my tongue around it, and my parents never tried to force it on me so...) One day, they're the dominant species of the planet. The next day, their entire power structure is falling apart and a lot of their own members are displaying repulsive habits. The fact remains is that my contact with them has been strained at best and often downright unpleasant. I symbolize everything they fear about the post-Message world. First of all, my parents did not propagate me as the result of a Chain Ceremony. That was a carefully controlled social function in which the Joined were temporarily disconnected from the Second Mind (or Purity as the Old Joined call the alien virus.) You see, the Old Joined just didn't know how to have sex. It was a concept they couldn't learn. They needed to become Alones for a short time in order to create the next generation of babies going. The New Joined, however, learned to have sex and even could (horrors!) enjoy it. That was the case with Arthur and Sharon Rush. Second, I had the choice of whether or not to receive the Second Mind. In the old days, they poured that black gunk on your head almost at the moment of birth. On top of that, I was a lesbian. My parents have admitted that they still have difficulty absorbing the idea. Imagine how one of the Old Joined feel. They still haven't even accepted the idea of sex in any position. I admit that I reciprocated the dislike. I didn't care for the Old Joined's love for the most rigid forms of social stratification. Their smug superiority didn't endear them to me, either. Even their term for the Second Mind -- "Purity" -- has unpleasant connotations. Of course, being one of the New Joined did have its disadvantages. What distinguished the New Joined was their need for wider experiences, whether they be social, artistic or sexual. They moved beyond the "psychology of the virus." However, learning to do so changed the virus inside of them. It became more complex, but lost efficiency in certain areas. Abilities like self-healing and the protective Auras were weakened. Judging from the statistics, they were in danger of being lost forever. "If this awful deterioration continues and the New Joined continue to flourish," Senator Matheson declared. "then the Joined race will become indistinguishable from the Alones." Speaking as an Alone, I couldn't see how that was a problem, but it was a ridiculous statement in any case. Even if the Joined lost their enhanced abilities, the Alones and the Joined would always be different. I've learned to tell one from the other. How? It's in the eyes...it's hard to describe. I can't even imagine what's like to be one of the Joined. "You have to experience it yourself," my father told me. "Just believe us when we say that we are, in fact, two people. What you are hearing is the voice of our two minds." None of this really mattered to Matheson. Grabbing power was his main concern and the return of the colonists was giving him his best opportunity to do so. For a long time, he had been warning that Earth had to prepare itself better for the return of the colonists. Now, it was not as if the possibility of their return had never been considered. Plans had been created for such an event ever since the Joining. Whole armies were being readied and the evacuation procedures had been laid out. Matheson wanted even more extreme measures, though. He thought that the emergency demanded martial law imposed for an indefinite period. In fact, he thought the government should shift to military rule even before then. On top of that, he proposed that a high level of the population should be kept among the Old Joined. "The colonists saw what a strong race the Old Joined were and they fled rather than confront them and them. If the colonists even return, wouldn't you want them to see that strong race still flourishing?" Yeah, yeah, I get the point. Screw you, Senator. Unfortunately, the Senator had been using this issue well. Not only had he been gaining allies in Washington, D.C., he had been cultivating support in places where the Old Joined were still in power -- Singapore, Nigeria, Afghanistan, a good chunk of Germany. When the announcement was made of the colonists' return, he was suddenly the man of the hour. People who had despised him in the past started to ask the senator for his advice. All those foreign leaders he had befriended made it clear they thought Matheson should be in charge of Earth's defenses. Even among the Old Joined and the Alones, there was support for him. The situation had become that scary. I never lost my disgust towards him. As he strutted on the Bio-Screens and thundered about "the day I had long warned about," I knew that I would never put my trust in him, even in the face of apocalypse. This is not a viewpoint marred by hindsight. The later revelations I encountered did not surprise me by exposing the depths of the Senator's corruption, but I was astounded by his gullibility. That's for later, though. On the day of the public announcement, I had other preoccupations. However, one thing I didn't think to concern myself with was The Channel Surfers. That is, until I got a call from Virginia Wray. I received the call on the Bio-Communicator after I returned home from Nora's apartment. Neither mom or dad were in the house. He worked for the police and she was a member of the school board. This new crisis had required them to attend their own little meetings. Dad left a note saying, "See us as soon as possible." I was about to leave when the yellow cube hummed and I pressed my hand against it. My mind was suddenly invaded by the raspy, cigarette-roughened voice of Miss Wray. "What's with the fainting, honey?" she asked. "Did you catch some kind of strange dyke virus or something?" "Yeah, but don't worry. Senile old harpies are immune to it." Wray chuckled, though not in the kindest way. It was more like "I'll remember that" rather than "Oh, good one!" Virginia Wray was one of the more abrasive people I had ever met. She was also rude, bossy and under-handed, all of which made her an excellent agent. She also took pride in the acts under her wing or, at least, she wanted to take credit if one of them made it big. Before the Joining, Wray had been a rich woman and she longed for those days with all of her hard heart. Now she was trying to reclaim a future by carving out a niche in the entertainment industry -- a revived business in those post-Message days. "I'm calling to tell you..." she started to say. "How long were you an Irregular, Virginia?" I asked. Silence was heard first from the Bio-Communicator. Then a voice said in an even voice, "Too damn long. I take it your father has told you about the good ol' days." "He told me about you, Uncle Robbie and Tom. Now, Robbie and Tom...I can see them as terrorists, but you..." "We were revolutionaries, you twerp." "Whatever. But why the Smoke would they use a former rich bitch like yourself?" "Because nobody knew more ways to get in and out of designated Alone areas, my lovely lesbian. Every wall they put around the Alones...I could get around them. I understood security." "How so?" "I used to depend on it to keep people like you away." "Ah. Well, I see you went back to being an Alone." "There's only room for one mind in this body, sugar tits, and it belongs to Virginia Wray." I heard the rush of smoke leaving a mouth. "It's the past, Miranda. Don't bother me with..." "I know about the experiments done on my father." Such a long period of silence followed that I said, "Virginia?" "What are you talking about?" she said and I heard enough shock in her voice to know that she wasn't acting. I told her about the experiments, though I left out recent events. "Jesus," she said. I had never heard nor would I ever hear again that woman's voice sound so moved. "Miranda, I knew nothing about that. Believe me." "I do." "Your father is...or are...hell, he's a good person. Nobody deserves to have that done to them, but your father especially." That ranked as the nicest thing I ever heard Wray say about anybody. The response I could give was "I know." I heard a snap as Virginia lit up another cigarette. "Why the hell is he bringing this up now?" "It's...complicated." "Hmmm." I could sense the armor pulling around Wray. Say bye-bye to the nice Virginia. "Well...turning to simpler matters, the concert is still set for..." "Whoa, whoa. The concert?" "Right. You, your dyke lover, your blowhard singer, the scary guitarist and the Hispanic drummer who think he's British are going to have a premiere concert at..." "Uh...Virginia, I don't know if you've paid attention to the news lately." "You mean about those fucking aliens? Yeah, I've heard about them." "Well, chances are that the civilian population is going to be...you know...hiding somewhere when we perform." "The Channel Surfers won't be." "But that's crazy!" "Probably is, but your band leader insists..." "Our band leader?" "Yeah, Leonard." "He is *not* our band leader." "Maybe not, but he says that he speaks for everybody. I assume that he meant you." "That is the most...we are not playing...are you actually encouraging this?" "Honey, if there is one thing I've learned in life, it's this -- the show must go on." Before I could reply to that, Wray said, "Look, your band is meeting at Leonard's house today. Bitch to *them* about it. I've got other things to do." "Like preparing for the end of the world?" "Something like that, yeah. Yes, indeed." That finished the call and I left for the Los Angeles police department. It had been a couple of hours since the news announcement about the returning colonists. As I drove to the department headquarters, I saw people walking down the sidewalk in an aimless manner. One man was standing at a corner and screaming while pointing his finger at the sky. There were also a lot of people holding each other in public. More than once, a wailing ambulance sped past me. The meeting at the police department was still going on. I waited in my father's office until it was over. Officially, my father's position with the LAPD was 'consultant,' another one of his life's vague aspects. "He's a good man," Wray had said. Did I really believe that? What else about his life was he going to tell me? When he came into his office, he looked nervous and tense, as you might expect. He sat down at his desk, folded his hands together and said, "We understand you've had another vision." I nodded. "Two, in fact. The second happened at Nora's." "Tell us about them." I told him about the first one. His face hardened as he thought about my story, then he pressed a Bio-Cube. He kept it there for awhile, then he pulled it away and said, "You were right. You were seeing something through Scully's eyes. An event from her past. Well, sort of." "What do you mean?" He leaned back into his chair, looking at the wall behind me. "Before the Joining...Dana Scully worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Specifically, she worked in a section called the X-Files. This section concerned itself with investigating crimes of a particularly unusual nature -- ones that suggested explanations beyond the scope of accepted science." "Such as?" "Ghosts, telekinesis, vampires..." He glanced at me. "Aliens." He looked back at the wall. "I see. And who was this Mulder guy?" "Her partner. Agent Fox Mulder. In fact, the X-Files was really his baby. She had been assigned as his partner in order to debunk his work." "Huh. Well, I guess I witnessed his funeral..." Dad shook his head, almost smiling. "I didn't?" "What you witnessed was a hallucination. In one of their cases, Mulder and Scully encountered a giant fungus which put them in a trance as it attempted to devour them." "But...how did I experience the same hallucination?" "We don't know," my father said in a quiet voice. "What about the other vision?" "I saw, uh...I saw this man. Clyde Bruckman. It was different this time. I wasn't experiencing it though someone else. I could talk with Bruckman." My father pressed his hand on the cube again. When he pulled it off again, he said, "Clyde Bruckman was a psychic." "That's what he told me." "Did he tell you that he was once involved in an X-File?" "No, he...he didn't." I almost laughed. "But he did mention some FBI agent who was bothering him." "Mulder again." I rubbed my hands down my face. "Why am I seeing these things?" My father said, "It was so difficult back then...so complicated. The choice that had to be made." "What choices...Dad?" I asked in a heavy voice, but not my voice, it was the voice of a man, a man who sounded like he was going drop to the floor, just like the old man sitting in front of me with the pale skin and the red-lined eyes, he's now standing up and saying, "You're a smart boy, Fox. Smarter than I ever was" and I feel so confused and there's a deep pain in my skull and my father says, "You're going to learn things, Fox. You're going to learn the words. And they'll come to make sense to you," what words, it doesn't make sense, the world doesn't make sense, nothing has made sense since Samantha vanished, I need Scully, my head hurts, "The merchandise," my father says and now he's leaving, don't go, Dad, don't go, I hear a shot... "Miranda?" A twitch crawled over my cheek, but I no longer felt the pain experienced in my vision. "Are you all right?" my father asked. "How long was I out?" "Um...you weren't 'out.' You just looked...distracted. And only for a few seconds." He stood up and walked towards me. "Did you have another vision?" "Yes. They're getting easier to manage. Sort of." He knelt down to me and squeezed my hand. I was tempted to pull away from him, but I didn't. "What did you see this time?" "I saw something from Mulder's viewpoint. He was talking with his father. Something about 'the merchandise.'" My father grimaced. "What is it?" I asked. "Mulder's father was a collaborator with the alien colonists. 'The merchandise' were the human subjects experimented on to create an alien-human hybrid." I gripped my father's hand tighter. "Jesus..." "Bill Mulder had his doubts about the project, though. He was killed for it." "Yeah, I...I think I witnessed that." I closed my eyes and sighed. "There is some specific reason why I'm seeing these exact moments. I just don't know what it is." "How did Mulder feel? When you were in his mind, we mean." "Well, distraught, of course, but...it was strange. It was like he was drugged." "Then that's one connection." I opened my eyes. "Hm?" "You shared an experience with Mulder and Scully while they were under an influence of a drug. Perhaps that makes it easier for you to contact their minds." I slowly nodded. "Yeah. And Bruckman was a psychic so that enabled me to contact him." "Right. Of course, in regards to your vision of the future, we still don't know whose viewpoint you were..." "That was me. I was giving myself a warning." "Oh. We see." "There is something I'm supposed to learn, Dad. It might be the very thing that stops the colonists." He looked down at my hand. "Miranda, we never wanted this..." "I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, either. But here we are and if my gift can help people, then let's use the damn thing." He nodded, biting into his lip. "There's something else, Dad. Bruckman told me how I was going to die." My father quickly lifted his eyes back to me. "He said that I was going to get killed by the Smoking One and his Ticking Crocodiles. Do you understand what that means?" Despite the pain in his face, my father looked me in the eye and said, "Yes. We're afraid we do." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (5 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART FIVE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I will survive. They will hurt me, but I will survive. My body will be tortured, but I will survive. This black and smelly room may become my home, but I will... She is here -- the one who captured me, the one who has shaved off her pretty red hair, the one who looks at me with hard, cold eyes. "Hello, Alex," she says. I make a slight motion of my head. She looks at my chained body, studying the sweaty skin and the stump where my left arm used to be. I remember that expression on her face. It was the same kind she had when she was dissecting a human body. I also remember how determined and forthright she could be. I had a certain amount of respect for her even as I was engineering her abduction. I try to connect that woman with the person standing above me now, but there is something new here -- the distant look of the mad. I will survive, I tell myself. I will survive. "How many people have you killed, Alex?" she asks. Her voice is so quiet that I almost miss hearing the question. "How...many...?" "Do you know how many?" I clear my throat. It feels rough and tender from the lack of water. "I'm...I'm not sure." "Well...there are only three of your victims that I'm concerned with. The first is my sister..." "I didn't kill her. It was Luis..." "Shhhh." She touches my mouth briefly with a finger. "The other two are Langly and Frohike. Now, I can't quite remember -- why did you kill them?" I look away. "It was an assignment." "And the assignment's purpose was...?" I can give no answer. I can't remember the reasons behind most of my assassinations. I never bothered to find out. All I remember about Frohike and Langly was the short one saying "Hey, now, wait..." before I shot the two of them. She listens to my silence for a minute, then says, "Ah, well. That was part of a world long gone, hasn't it?" It was, indeed. The viral outbreak has changed humanity, albeit not in the way expected. It has been two years since ...what are they calling it?...the Joining. After that, I lost contact with the smoking man, who is probably still playing his own little games. I went underground again, doing everything necessary for survival. Except becoming one of the Joined. I have just enough pride to resist "receiving Purity." However, as I watch this woman stand over me in her white robe, I wonder if I should have swallowed my pride. Or maybe it wouldn't have mattered. I doubt that even the protection of Joined would have kept her from imprisoning me. "I must say, Alex...I don't like this new world. I think it has to change." "And you and Mulder are going to change it?" I say in a sarcastic voice. Her hand shoots towards me, welding a long, steel clamp. She holds the clamp in place for what seems like a year as I scream and scream. When she releases the clamp, she leans down to my ear and whispers, "That man is dead. Don't ever mention that name again." I nod, crying like a baby. "I will change you like I will change the world, Alex. From now on out, your name will be Alex the Traitor. You will acknowledge your sins and bear the scorn of others because you deserve it. I will force you to see the darkness in your heart. Only then can you earn your redemption. You do not understand this now, but you will. I promise you will." She kisses me on the forehead. I have a terrible feeling that I will become exactly as she says. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Even if you weren't one of the Messengers, everybody knew most of the lore around the High Priestess. One of the minor characters in her saga was Alex the Traitor. He never had a direct influence on events. He served as a symbol of everything you shouldn't be, just as Walter the Sacrifice was what you aspired to become. That last vision happened when I was in the basement of Leonard's house. It gave me an understanding of how Alex the Traitor came to be and why Dana Scully had forced him in the role. I understood but didn't exactly sympathize. Everybody in my generation grew up watching the Message in history class. We were taught how it was the proclaimation of freedom against the old order. The mysteries around the life of the High Priestess allowed her to become a legend and eventually a saint in the eye of people like Nora Konsinki. What would Nora say if I told her about the cold-eyed woman torturing a man with a pair of clamps? I always suspected that the High Priestess had a human side. Was there an inhuman side as well? Dad must have known about this and maybe even more. With each new vision, what was I going to learn? These solemn thoughts were shaken from my head by the boom of Leonard's voice. "We have a responsibility here!" he thundered to us as he shook his fist. "To ourselves and to our community!" I said, "Leonard, for God's sake, we're just a fucking band." "No! At this moment of time, we could be...we have to be so much more!" I rolled my eyes and looked at the rest of The Channel Surfers gathered in Leonard's basement. To my horror, they had serious looks on their faces, even Alonzo. "You can't be honestly considering this!" I said to them. "Why not?" Nora replied. "Besides, what else should we and we be doing?" "Oh, I don't know. Clearing out of town. Joining the evacuees. Overall, just preparing for a damn alien invasion." "And where should we and we go? Where could we and we be safe?" "Now, wait. I know this is scary. But you can't just give up hope..." "Who is giving up hope? I think Leonard's idea is very life-affirming. In the face of the doom, we and we will stand up for what makes the world beautiful. We and we will play music to celebrate humanity." "Nora, don't start this mystic shit! I don't want to see you risking your life for..." She fixed a hard look on me and said, "It is our life to risk." At this point, I could have started screaming at her. Didn't she understand how she would be hurting me by risking her life? My anger was cut short when I heard Tom say in his cool voice, "We're not leaving, either." I turned to him. He looked at me with his arms crossed over his chest. "When we were an Irregular," he said. "we did nothing but hide. We waited for the day when we wouldn't have to hide anymore." "Well, Tom, it came. But maybe now it's over." "It's not over until we say it is. Besides...if we and we evacuate, then we and we might not get to see each other again. If this is it...if we and we are headed for the final days here...then you are the people with whom I want to be." My jaw dropped. There had been nothing for Tom to ever indicate that our guitarist might actually consider us his friends, but, apparently, he did. I could see his mind and Nora's were made up. I looked to Alonzo. "What about you? You've been quiet for five minutes, which has to be a record for you." "What I think..." Alonzo drawled. "...if this is the bleedin' end of the world...then I wanna go out like I lived." He held up his drumsticks into the air. "Playin' my fuckin' drums!" "That leaves just you, Miranda," Leonard said. "Tell me...are The Channel Surfers going to play without their keyboardist or not?" Even though Leonard was trying to look imposing, I could see the plea in his eyes. Alonzo and Tom also wanted to me stay. And then there was Nora... I came close to telling them about my visions, but then I thought -- what would that change? If these were the final days of humanity, how did I want to go out? Like Tom, I wanted to be with my friends. "Okay," I said. "I'll stay." Leonard shouted, "Then we go on!" Alonzo whooped, tossed his sticks in the air and caught them on the way down. Something close to a smile formed on Tom's face. Nora hugged me and whispered "Thank you" in my ear. The Channel Surfers were finally coming together as a band. And all it took to unite us was the end of the world. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Later on, Tom was driving me to my house in his pick-up truck. On the way there, I told him that I knew about his days as an Irregular. He gave me the briefest of looks, then said, "Do you now?" "And I know that my father was involved in your group." "Hm." He hesitated, then asked, "Are you mad at us and us?" "I'll let you know when I've heard the whole story. Which I haven't." Tom kept his eyes on the road. "That will be up to your father to tell you." Silence filled the cab for a few moments, then said, "Well, I think there are a few things you don't know, either." "Like what?" "Such as that Bosola was performing experiments on my father." Tom pulled the truck to the side of the road, turned off the engine, looked at me and said, "What?" I explained. Then Tom pressed a hand over his eyes. "That bastard..." he muttered with the kind of anger I never wanted to have directed at me. When he lowered his hand, he said, "We didn't know. But we admit...at the time, we wouldn't have cared if we had known." "Why not?" I asked in a tight voice. "Because we figured that anything done for the revolution was excusable. The trouble was...the revolution wasn't even a revolution. The Irregulars were created by a Joined insider who was using us to do their dirty work." "I know. My father told me about the smoking man." "Yeah, they played us good. We wonder if Bosola knew how he had been used. At the end, I mean. Right before he blew his brains out." "I guess we'll never know." "No. Guess not." Tom looked me straight in the eyes. "Your father are a good man. And you damn well shouldn't have to pay for the past." "Can't help it, Tom," I said quietly. "One way or another, we always pay." Tom looked away. "Yeah..." he muttered. There were another few moments of silence. "Tom...have you heard of something called the Ticking Crocodiles?" "Hm? Is that a band?" I almost smiled. "No. It was another one of Bosola's hidden projects." "Well, we never heard of it. What was it supposed to be?" "The only one who knew was Bosola. Uncle Robbie knew about its existence, but only by name." "Wait. You know that Robbie were...of course, you do. Stupid question." "Yes, well...Robbie was only told that it was 'a last resort measure.' Something the Irregulars would unleash if their backs were slammed against the wall." "You mean, something Bosola would unleash." Tom shook his head. "Why didn't Robbie find out what it was?" "Because he trusted Bosola. So did you, remember?" "We did, didn't we? Why are you bringing this up?" "I'm afraid that's going to be my secret for now." "Miranda..." "It's more difficult to explain than you can imagine." Tom drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he looked at me. Then he stopped drumming and said, "Okay. If you feel that it's best..." He reached for the ignition key. (Tom's truck still used the old technology. He never used Bio-Tech. It just didn't suit him.) "Do you remember the High Priestess?" His hand froze. "Uh, yeah. We do. In fact, we used to be a member of The Church of the Seventh Age." "You don't strike me as being the religious type, Tom." Tom smiled (or did a close approximation.) "We're not. But, back then, The Church of the Seventh Age was becoming as powerful as the Irregulars. Bosola was a member, just to keep up appearances. Judging from what we and we know now, he was probably getting ready to do a power grab on the High Priestess." "What was she like?" "We never got to know her. We mean, we only saw the disguise. Remember the Church was just a front for her real efforts..." "I know. But...what if it wasn't a disguise? Not completely?" "What do you mean?" "Scu...The High Priestess pretended to be this cold harbinger of doomsday. But what if she really was that cold in some part of her?" "It was a cold world, Miranda." I said nothing. "You're asking a lot of strange questions." "I know." I closed my eyes. "Drive me home, Tom." He said nothing, but did as I asked. On the way home, I had another vision. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I am lying on the floor, breathing hard. I am aware of three smells -- the sweat on my skin, the dried pool of black oil next to me and the scent of moist semen on my penis. The world looks strange to me. It's as if I'm suddenly aware of colors that have been in front of my eyes for years. For instance, the color red. There's a lovely copper shade of it on the hair of the naked woman next to me. There's also a fine blue in her eyes and a smooth whiteness to her skin. She lays a hand on my bare chest. "It's all right," she says in a low, sensual voice. "Just take it in slowly." I turn my head to the left and the right. This unassuming room with chairs in front of a wide white screen shouldn't look extraordinary, but it does. That's because I'm seeing it without the grip of another consciousness around my mind. It is both scary and exhilarating. "Welcome to the world of the Alones," the woman tells me. "What do you want to do first?" I look to the woman and my penis suddenly rises. "I want to fuck," I growl. As the woman smiles and accepts me into her arms, I realize with a shock that I'm speaking with the voice of my father. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (6 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART SIX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Mom was sitting in the living room of our house. She held a cup of tea in her hand as she stared at the window. Her posture was very awkward as if she was looking at herself and finding everything she did to be ridiculous. I walked up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She gave me a tight smile. "How did the meeting go?" I asked. She shrugged. "Pretty much like you would expect. We and we are supposed to pull together as a community and all that." I sat on the couch next to her and asked, "Did Dad ever cheat on you?" Her head abruptly turned to me. "Wh-where did that came from?" she stammered. "Did he?" The cup was shaking in her hand. She laid it down on a coffee table and folded her hands in her lap. She took several long breaths before she answered. "We think theyo did. Yes." "With who?" "One of...one of the Irregulars. We're not sure. Your father has never talked about that part of theiro life, but...we were told that a woman had lured themo into the group." "I see." She looked at me. I imagined my face looked as cool as my voice sounded. "We don't hate your father for what theyo did," she said. "And why not?" "Because we were hiding things from themo as well." "You mean, you were having an affair, too?" Mom cleared her throat. "No. We had fallen into this group of other Joined people. Together, we and we just met and...talked about things. We and we said all the things we and we were too afraid to say in public. There were a lot of groups like that at the time. It was only after the Message..." "I know this, Mom. It's history. But Dad was doing something even more extreme." She closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them, she gave me a strong, hard look. "Don't judge your father so quickly. You don't understand what was it like to be one of the Joined back then. What happened to your father...confused themo. It would have confused anybody." Her hard look didn't affect me. I said, "It confused him enough not to notice the experiments being performed on him." I leaned forward to her. "You know why he didn't notice? Because he was too busy getting his brains fucked out." I stood up and said, "Is that why you went ahead and had me? Did you have to get some, too?" My mother's mouth became wide and wordless. I left the living room for my own bedroom. I locked the door. As I laid on the bed, I wished for another vision. I needed any kind of escape from... "Sorry, nobody here but the FBI's most unwanted!" ...walking through the door, seeing him at his desk, looking up at me, his face attractive despite the suspicion in his eyes, he's probably going to be a handful... ...she approaches me, a polite smile on her pretty face, a real go-getter from the looks of it, probably shits FBI protocol... (I laugh.) ...she holds herself to me in a dark hotel room, I can feel her body through a white robe, as God is my witness, I have no idea what to do... ...he says "If there's iced tea in that bag, it could be love," I look down and I'm tempted to say... (I am aroused.) ...Mulder is lying on an operating table, he is there because I convinced him to accept the word of a death row inmate, he may be dying because of me, that Boggs, I'll see that he burns in hell.. ...Scully is lying in a hospital bed, she's there because of the schemes of powerful men, she's there as a sacrifice to my cause, that smoking bastard, I'll kill him... (I am angry.) ...I have nowhere else to turn now except to my faith, I can't rely on science or Mulder, I have only God to keep me from death, I am so scared... ...my father is dead, what was he trying to tell me, I am so confused... (I cry.) They step out of the shelter whose gray walls have been the borders of their world during the past five months. As expected, the sunlight is painful to the eyes. They have left the shelter because strange messages are coming over the radio and they have to verify their truthfulness. With backpacks over their shoulders, they walk through the forest where the shelter was located. No word is exchanged between them on the way. They find a road covered with black asphalt. They follow this road. The first person they see is the driver of a passing truck. He waves at them as he passes by. In the back of the truck are piles of grey bodies with long claws and hollow, black eyes. They reach a town. A lot of damage has been done to the buildings, but they are being efficiently and quickly repaired. No person in sight appears gloomy. In fact, they all have smiles, albeit with strange looks in their eyes. Not everybody is working. They pass by a group of children who are throwing a ball between each other. One boy tosses the ball over a small girl's head. It lands in the grip of a red-haired woman. A brown-haired man stands by her. The little girl goes up to the red-haired woman. "Hello," she says in a cheerful voice. "We are Alice. Have you received Purity yet?" The ball drops to the ground. The woman stares at the little girl in horror. The brown-haired man reaches out to her, but she slaps his hands away. "Keep away from me!" she screams. "Keep away!" Then she runs. The brown-haired man stands there, watching her disappear from his sight. He looks ready to lay down on the ground and die. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I didn't answer the knocking at my door, but I couldn't ignore the voice. "Miranda? May we come in?" I hauled myself off the bed and unlocked the door. Nora entered, edging her way around me like I was made of glass. I locked the door again. "We found someone," she told me. "Hm?" "You said you wanted a guru. A spiritual advisor of some sort." I almost laughed. "I did say that, didn't I?" "Yes. You did." I closed my eyes and placed my hands on my hips. "I'm not sure what I was thinking at the time." "We don't know, either. But we're sure that it was the right thing." I opened my eyes, starting to say something. "We know, we know," Nora interrupted. "You don't like that mystic shit, but..." She smiled. "...it's just another way of seeing the sword of Damocles above your head." Now, I laughed. Hearing Nora quote a Lou Reed song will do that to me. I embraced her, once again taking comfort in her warmth. I was still holding her when another person knocked on the door. "Miranda?" my father said behind the door. Slowly, I pulled away from Nora, then unlocked the door for my father. He looked behind me and said, "Hello, Nora." "Hello, Mister Rush." I would look back at these encounters between Nora and my father, wondering if I should have picked up hints of the revelation to come. Wasn't there a certain tone in Nora's voice whenever she was in his presence -- something other than her usual friendliness? This is just hindsight talking, though. At that time, neither my father nor I knew her secret. "What do you want?" I asked him in a blunt tone. "Robbie...Uncle Robbie are here. Could you, uh...could you come talk with us and us for a moment?" I walked out with him to the front porch. Robbie and mom were waiting there. I faced them all with my arms crossed over my chest. "Well?" I said. It was Robbie who spoke first. "None of us and us truly understood how you are able to see these things, but...the fact remains that you can." "It does, indeed." "We think it's also safe to assume that you are somehow being given information which can aid us and us in the face of the colonists' return." I spread out my hands. "Well, golly, Uncle Robbie, we are running on the same track after all." Robbie looked briefly at my parents, then turned back to me. "It's hard to figure out exactly what you are being told," he said, ignoring my sarcasm. "But it sounds like the smoking man are back again. And theyo are in league with the colonists." "Hm. Tell me, what's really true about him? Was he really ageless?" "Yes," my father said. "Well, theyo had found a way to reverse the aging process, anyway." "So, we are to assume that he has somehow made contact with the colonists and they are all plotting against the world?" "We have contacted many of the radio observatories in the country," Robbie said. "They and they report unusual signals being transmitted *from* this planet. No one can pinpoint their origin yet. For all we and we know, they might be nothing more than some random static. Your own information adds suspicion to them, however." "Yeah, these are suspicious times," I commented. "Miranda..." My mother said, "She's right, Robbie." I had never seen her look at Robbie with so much contempt before. He looked down at the ground, ashamed. No one spoke for a minute. We just remained in our awkward poses. The sounds of helicopters, fighter planes and large trucks could be heard in the distance. These were getting to be common noises to be heard. I said -- "I never asked this to happen to me. Of course, none of us asked to be in this situation. I have become convinced that I'm supposed to learn something through these visions. I am going to do my damnedest to find out what it is. In the meantime...I expect you to do everything you can. You seem to have your own little avenues of information. Anything you find out, let me know immediately." "Of course," Robbie said. "Now, if you would excuse me...Nora and I have to go." "Where are you going?" my father asked. "We're off to see the wizard." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (7 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART SEVEN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The Messengers formed as a church two years after the High Priestess (or Scully or whoever) delivered her proclamation to the world. I have never known what to make of them, even after everything I learned about their own little goddess. I suppose that's because I don't have "religious impulses" or "spiritual needs" or whatever the Smoke you want to call it. Nothing has changed that, not even my experiences with Mrs. Knight. It was late in the evening when Nora took me to see her. She drove us together in a beaten-up old car that lacked Bio-Tech. "We can't afford anything better," she had explained to me once. "Besides...we've learned to appreciate the past." Lord knows I had. On the drive to Mrs. Knight's home in Burbank, I thought about mistakes that could never be erased and paths that we could not leave. I also thought about Mulder and Scully -- two people whose lives had been filled with more love and pain than I imagined. It made me uncomfortable to look in on their intimate moments and private despair. Why did my visions involve them so much? What was I supposed to learn from them? And will this Smoking traffic ever move? The evacuation of Los Angeles had begun. Roads and highways had become crawling metal snakes. The white headlights behind us and the red taillights in front of us looked like ghosts lining up for their judgment. I could see the faces of drivers staring ahead with grim concentration and children trying to sleep in the back seat. Besides the police, I saw soldiers manning the checkpoints and regulating the traffic flow. I noticed each soldier wore a black uniform with white circles imprinted on the chest. I pointed this out to Nora. "Yeah," she said in quiet voice. "We've been seeing a lot of them and them in our neighborhood. They and they are Stabilizers -- the new and improved model." "You're kidding." "Nope." "Why the Smoke would they want to revive that old..." Then I realized the answer. "Senator Matheson." Nora nodded. I sighed and put on a Van Morrison tape. We listened to that instead of talking. Mrs. Knight lived in the lot of an abandoned movie studio. I forget the name. It was the one with the big water tower. After the Joining, all the studios shut down since the Joined relied on Bio-Stimulators instead of the old forms of entertainment. People were now trying to bring back the entertainment industry, but this was one movie lot which wouldn't be used. Soon after the Message, Mrs. Knight had bought the whole place when it was very, very cheap. A mile of old buildings and parking space was under her control. A rumor said that some wealthy investors wanted to buy it off her, but she refused. The whole place was hers to use. After the tight traffic of the highways, the wide spaces and empty buildings of Mrs. Knight's lot felt strange. Nora drove the car through unimpeded space until we reached Building Five. It loomed above us with a curved top making it resemble a tombstone. Nora put the car into park, turned to me and said, "We have to stay here. Mrs. Knight will only see you alone." "Figures." She touched my cheek. I pressed her fingers against my skin for a moment. Then I got out of the car. I went up to the door, the lights of Nora's car pressing my shadow against the building. Inside was mostly nothing. There were a few weak lights stuck on the walls, just enough to keep a modicum of visibility. As I walked towards the studio's center, my footsteps and my voice became a drawn-out echo. "Hello?" I called out. "Mrs. Knight?" The echo replayed my words for me. I stopped in the center, looking around me and feeling foolish. In fact, I said out loud, "I'm a damn fool." "We and we all are, at one time or another." I spun around. Standing ten feet away from me was an old woman wearing a long brown skirt with a grey shawl draped over her shoulders and a black handkerchief tied around her head. Her feet were bare. A cane held up her thin and wrinkled body. "Why do you feel foolish now?" she asked. "Are...are you Mrs. Knight?" She smiled. "How did you sneak up on me like that?" "We could teach you that...but it's not the answer you came for." I looked at her, then rolled my eyes. "Aw, Christ..." "What's the matter?" "You're just what I expected. Some crazy old lady talking like a fortune cookie." "An interesting comparison. We've noticed that while people mock fortune cookies, they are always interested to see what's inside them. But if you think there is nothing we can teach you..." Mrs. Knight started to turn away. "Wait," I said. "M-hm?" "I really don't know why I came here. You were just...recommended to me." "Yes. Through Nora." "How do you know her, by the way?" "We and we are members of the same Church." "Oh, you're a Messenger." Mrs. Knight's eyes twinkled. "We were the first Messenger." I nodded slowly. "You don't seem surprised." "Lately, history and I seem to keep running into each other." "Oh, that happens to everyone." She tilted her head to the side. "Tell us...why do you need our help?" "Again, I don't know." She looked down at the floor, twisting her cane a few inches in her hand. Then she said, "Why don't you tell us what's been going on in your life?" I told everything. I didn't leave out a single detail. It was strange that I had been so reluctant to describe my visions of Scully to Nora, but I was able to tell this other Messenger and not care how it affected her. Maybe I just needed to unburden myself. Maybe it had something to do with the look in her eye. Maybe Mrs. Knight seemed tough enough to take it. After I was done, she looked up at me. "So...you have seen the High Priestess in her younger days." "I have." "Do the things you saw disturb you?" "Doesn't it disturb you? I mean, you're the one who worships this woman." "We do. But that doesn't mean we think she was perfect. Does it surprise us that the High Priestess could be mean or vengeful or despairing or lonely? She was, after all, a human being." Mrs. Knight walked toward me."But you have not come here to discuss this. You want to know how you can see these things in the first place." "Do you know?" "Yes." She stopped in front of me. I couldn't look away from her sharp grey eyes as she placed a hand on my shoulder. Those frail fingers kept me in place as surely as if they were chains. "The answer is...there is no such thing as distance. "There is no here or there. "There is no space that separates you from us. "All of humanity -- Alones, Old Joined, New Joined -- is connected by a thread of life. This connection transcends every obstacle placed in front of it... "...even time itself. "The past and future can be held in your hands like bright gems dug out of the ground. You can see what was and what will be as easily as our face. If you understand this, then you will learn more than you can ever dare to dream. "Grasp onto the thread of life, Miranda Rush, and the truth shall be known." I kept my mouth shut for many seconds. Then I said, "I suddenly have this urge to beat you with a monkey wrench." And Mrs. Knight laughed. Her hand slipped off my shoulder. I took a step back from her. "I mean it," I told her. "This is not what I wanted to hear." "No, no," Mrs. Knight replied, still giggling. "We suppose not. But is it possible for you to find the truth in our 'mystic shit?'" "And just what could that possibly be?" Mrs. Knight stopped laughing. Her gaze stilled my body again. "Ask yourself that question." She stepped forward and placed a hand on my forehead. "Ask," she whispered. Against my own will, I closed my eyes. (...no distance...) I was now in a cave full of ice and darkness. I was fighting for my life. My opponent had grey skin, large black eyes and a mouth screeching loud enough to hurt my ears. A hard swipe with a rock made me the winner, but then a black oil poured from my victim's wounds. It slithered over my body. I screamed. Then I stopped screaming. (...no space that separates...) I was standing on a long field of snow. With me were people dressed in crude fur clothing. They were staring at lights ascending from the horizon and vanishing in the sky. (...a thread of life...) I can see nothing, but I can feel. My thoughts are no more complex than move, eat, multiply. Then something pierces my membrane. My attempts to repel the invader are useless because this invader *is* me. It's a brother, a second self buried in my core, a message waiting to be read. (...grasp onto the thread of life...) Everyone has this dark brother in themselves. Everyone. It is a bridge between every soul. You may walk across it to any moment of time and into any mind. The story of Earth is yours to read. (...and the truth shall be known.) XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX When I opened my eyes, Mrs. Knight was gone, not surprisingly. I left the building, feeling a lot more steady on my feet that I probably should have been. "What happened?" Nora asked. "I learned how I am able to have these visions." A smile stretched on Nora's face. "Oh, really?" "Yeah. I guess mystic shit is like any other kind of shit. Spread enough of it around and something grows." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (8 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART EIGHT XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX When I arrived back at my house, Mom told me that Dad was on a plane trip to Washington. "Why's that?" I asked. "Theyo are going to see Senator Matheson." Yikes. My father *did* have connections. I wasn't sure what he was planning to do with the little information we had, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt here. My mother then asked me a question. "How did...how did it go? With this woman?" I thought about what answer to give. I ended up saying, "It went well. Good night, Mom." With that, I went to bed. It was a strange and cruel thing to do to my mother, even though I was not in a cruel mood. I'm not sure what kind of mood I was in. If you're still wondering, my visions could be explained like this -- The attempted colonization of 2005 was an attempt by aliens to reconstitute a virus on our planet into a new race, using humans as the means of gestation. However, what no one has ever explained is how the virus came to be here in the first place. After my encounter with Mrs. Knight, I had the answer. The virus was here because that's where the "aliens" originated. They were born here, a brother race to humanity. Somehow, they obtained the means to leave this world, but later chose to reclaim it. The virus was the aliens. It was also us. Lodged in our own DNA are traits shared with the aliens. Everyone has these extra genes inside of them, waiting to be transformed by the virus into a new entity growing in our bodies. Furthermore, it is a commonality across the whole breadth of humanity from the beginning of time to the present. The thread of life. Now, it comes down to me. Whatever fiddling they did with my father's own DNA, it unleashed something quite unexpected. I am a woman with the ability to...what is the right word? Contact? Connect? I don't know how to describe it, but the fact that every person ever born has had this alien gene enables me to enter the minds of those dead and those yet to be born. Perhaps this explains how Clyde Bruckman got his own precognitive abilities. Or not. This is an answer with a lot of its parts missing. I don't think those missing parts will ever be found. However, this answer is the best that I can provide for how my visions occurred. Why they were happening at this moment still remained a goddamned mystery. The reason had to be connected with the return of the colonists, but what was setting the visions off? How was it decided that I would see this and then this? Was anybody deciding it at all? I had begun to understand the pessimism of Bruckman. When faced with an enigma so incomprehensible and with events that seemed unstoppable, the temptation to throw up your hands in defeat was great. I was facing the mechanisms of eternity and you can't do that without having doubts, let me tell ya. My doubts hadn't overwhelmed me yet, though. I still longed for more visions. Having seen the cause of them, I was eager to see what would happen next. Lying on my bed, I waited. Nothing happened. I was still awake after midnight, rolling in my sheets, still expecting to be lifted from my body. I couldn't hold back sleep, though. It came and I had no dreams that I recall. Waking up the next morning brought a feeling of discouragement. I had gained no new information and the colonists were due in three days. The morning also brought with it a smaller brand of crisis. "They've closed the fucking club!" "What?" "The Preserver! Those fucking Stablilizers closed it down!" Virginia Wray's voice was not a pleasant thing to hear in the morning, especially when she's mad about something. The Preserver was the club at which The Channel Surfers would have their first concert. Or not, apparently. "Did they explain why?" I asked. "Those assholes don't think they need a reason. All they said was that it was 'unnecessary for public safety to keep the establishment open.' Pricks!" "Well, we should have expected this, Virginia..." "Yeah, but we sure as hell don't have to take it lying down on our sweet asses." I sighed. "This is a federally mandated group. There's nothing we can do against them." "No, but your father can do something." "Oh." I paused. "Can he?" "He has connections." "So I've gathered. But I don't think this is a problem with which to bother..." "Goddammit, Miranda, I thought you wanted to do this." "Well, why the Smoke should it matter to you?" I heard smoke blow out of Virginia's mouth. "Because I believe in what you're doing. I believe in your trifling, piddling gesture of defiance. All right?" I closed my eyes and rubbed my free hand across my nose. "All right?" Virginia repeated. "All right," I said. "Good. Now talk to your father." That would wait until the afternoon. Around that time, Senator Matheson was delivering a message being televised all over the world. I won't bother to summarize his speech. It was full of phrases like "protecting our and our sovereignty over this planet" and "standing up to aggression" and "proud and firm." He also made quite a few references to the Old Joined and kept implying that we were going to find out just how superior they were. The speech's real purpose, however, was to let everybody know who exactly was going to represent Earth in this crisis. One thing was notable, but maybe only in retrospection. "If the colonists think that we and we are going to be a pushover...well, we and we have a few surprises ready for them." Wasn't there a little twinkle in the Senator's eye? Hadn't his smile implied a secret only he knew about? In any case, the Bio-Communicator buzzed during the speech. I pressed my hand against the cube and I heard my father's voice in my head. "Miranda, this is your father. Are you watching Matheson?" "M-hm. So is everybody else, I imagine." "Well, we got a chance to talk with themo beforehand. We learned...a few interesting things." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX This was what happened to my father -- I can imagine him walking into the Senator's office and being greeted by that smug face. "Hello, Mister Rush. Please sit down." My father did so, taking a chair in front of Matheson's desk. Matheson remained standing, however. "Now," he said. "could you give any explanation why the most important man in the world should talk to you?" That threw my father off-balance. "You are not a modest man, Senator," he replied. Matheson waved his hand around his office. "You hear how quiet it is now? For the past day or so, we can't tell you how many ambassadors have been through here, how many calls our secretaries have gotten, how many decisions need to be made. Yet we have cleared out a few minutes...just a *few* minutes...for you." "Yes, well...we thank you." "You should. We still have a little trouble understanding why we have to make time for an ex-Stabilizer. You do, however, have some measure of clout here in Washington. Just how does someone like you get that clout?" "That's not important. What's important is the information we've brought." "And that is?" "We believe the smoking man is back. And theyo are working with the colonists." The senator looked at my father for a moment, then nodded his head. "That *is* interesting information. And how did you acquire it?" This posed a difficulty for my father. He wasn't eager for Senator Matheson to know about my gift because he didn't trust him fully yet. Furthermore, my father didn't even know how to explain my visions. And he just didn't want to drag me into trouble. That's why he said, "We are not at liberty to divulge that." Matheson raised his eyebrows. "Oh, really?" he said, amused. "To be honest, sir...our information is not exactly concrete." "Ah. Well, then...unless you need help in opening a door, we suggest..." "It has something to do with the Ticking Crocodiles." Matheson kept his mouth shut for a second, then said, "How do you know about them?" "So you know about the Crocodiles already." The senator examined my father again, then he sat down in his own chair. "We did," he said. "But we were only told that they still remain a mystery." "Yes, sir. But maybe not to the smoking man. We think it's possible that theyo are reorganizing a second attempt at colonization and the Ticking Crocodiles will be a weapon used against us and us." "That...that is an uncomfortable scenario. It makes us want to know where you got the whole notion." "Again, sir, it's hard to explain." The senator looked at my father for a long time."It made us feel like a bug under a magnifying glass," he told me. "Or under a raised boot." "Mister Rush," Matheson finally said. "since you did seem to have some pull in Washington, we are going to let on a secret -- one you won't be able to prove and one that we will never admit to." My father nodded. "You say that the smoking man are collaborating with the aliens again. We say that this is impossible." "Why is that?" "Because the smoking man are dead." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "He was lying," I said. "Theyo were not lying. Theyo showed us the body." "The what?" "They and they have the bastard in cold storage right here in Washington." "Okay. Two questions. One -- how did he die? Second -- why haven't they told anybody he's dead?" "The answer to the first question is that theyo poisoned themselves. The second question's answer is -- they and they have been experimenting with the body." "How?" "Remember I told you that the smoking man found a way to reverse the aging process. The senator's people are and are trying to duplicate that feat." "That doesn't excuse anything." "We are not arguing with you there. However, Matheson says that the work is necessary for the survival of the New Joined." "What?!" "Theyo said that theyo are trying to arrest the decline of healing abilities among the New Joined using the smoking man's discoveries." "Crap." "Maybe. Or maybe not." Using my free hand, I pulled out a pack of cigarettes and yanked out a cigarette with my teeth. "Are you sure that was the real body?" "We are. You also have to keep in mind that it would be in Matheson's interest if the smoking man were alive. Imagine it...the return of one of the most dangerous men who ever lived. That would scare up even more support for the senator." "Well, he's got as much as he'll ever get now." I lit up a cigarette, blew out a long cloud of smoke, then said, "I think the smoking man is still alive." "Miranda...I know what Bruckman told you, but it's impossible." "At this point, I'll believe anything is possible." "I'm just saying that I don't completely trust you visions." I paused, then said, "You don't, huh?" "Look, I understand that you are confused..." "No, dad. You don't. When you get a vision of your father having sex with a woman who looks just like Dana Scully, then you can understand.." For a long time, the sound of low static echoed in my mind. "That's something we have to explain face-to-face," my father eventually said. He sounded like a man submitting himself to the whip. "Sure. Fine. Whatever." "We'll be heading back to Los Angeles on the first flight out of here." "Not yet. There's something I need you to do." "Of course," my father said in an eager voice that made me flinch. "Anything." "The Stabilizers closed down The Presever club. See what you can do about opening it up again." "We...yes, we can swing that." "Good." With that, I released the cube. I couldn't help it. I felt pissed. What, he couldn't trust *me*? He couldn't give *me* the benefit of the doubt? He, mom, Robbie, Virginia, Tom...they all had been keeping secrets. I was surrounded by liars and deceivers who expected me to explain things that were beyond explanation. I know a little better now. Describing an ability to transcend space and time is tough, but so is telling the truth. This realization is colored by a lot of guilt. I regret that I had ended my conversation with my father so abruptly. Especially since it would be the last time we would ever speak together. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (9 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART NINE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX One of the worst things about this whole mess was the waiting. I had this gift which promised so much, but I had no control over it. (No apparent control, it seemed.) Pieces of a puzzle were arranged before me, but I lacked the necessary ones to complete it. All I could do was wait for a new vision or for more information from my father. So, what do you then? What do you do when you feel helpless in the face of armageddon? What do you when you have an alien attack on one hand and a rising fascist regime on the other? You get funky, that's what. More and more, I was understanding why the rest of The Channel Surfers needed to go on -- why they needed to play even in the face of a global crisis. When we made music, it was the only time when anything made sense. Still, a harder reality managed to intrude on our little musical cocoon. We had ourselves a rehearsal that night. Alonzo showed up late with a couple of wide bruises on his face. "What happened?" Nora gasped. "Those fuckin' Stabilizer cunts, that's wot 'appened," Alonzo growled. "They pulled me over, see? And they say, ''Ere, where are you goin'?' I say, 'I'm goin' to band practice.' They say, 'You 'spect us to believe that shit?' I say, 'Why would I make somethin' like that up?' They say, 'Lissen, you bloody ingrate, you better have more respect for us and us. We and we are your bloody protectors.' I say, 'Look, you stupid prick, do I look like a bloody alien to you?'" "You shouldn't have said that," Tom said in a quiet voice. "I know that! So, they take me out of my bleedin' car and smacked the shit out of me! Then they let me go and said, 'Next time you won't be so lucky, Null-sucker.'" He touched his face and winced. "Fuckin' Stabilizers..." "Are you going to be all right? Maybe you ought..." "The one thing I want to do now is beat the shit out of some fuckin' drums. Let's do it." So, we launched into "My Generation," a perfect outlet for Alonzo's rage. It was amazing that the drums were still intact after he was done. I also have to say that the lyric "People try to put us d-d-down" took on a special meaning for us, but I wasn't too keen on "Hope I die before I get old." Alonzo still hadn't worked out all his anger by the end of that tune so with our ears ringing, we launched into "I Can See for Miles." "I know you've deceived me so here's a suprrizzze..." Leonard sang with a voice dense with threat, holding his saxophone like a gun. "I know that you have 'cause..." Then another strange thing happened. "...there's magic in my eyes..." I could see the basement, the band mates and the keys under my fingers. Yet I could see other things as well. "I can see for miles and miles and miles..." Leonard declared, lifting his saxophone in the air. Tom's guitar sang like a crazed bird as Alonzo charged all over his drums. Nora and I kept the rhythm in check. I was doing a pretty good job of that considering that... ...I was seeing through a hundred other eyes as well. I could feel with a hundred hands, only these had claws. Some of these hands were digging into piles of meat and feeding them into sharp mouths. Some were slashing open large dummies full of cotton. I felt so strong and my senses were so sharp that I could hear... ...Leonard yelling at Tom as he performs his solo. "Goddammit, Tom, you're still holding back!" This is ridiculous, I thought. This song demands a one-note solo. Leonard is just being stupid... ...like those men watching me from catwalks. Didn't they realize that I could rip them apart with my many hands? Then I noticed the feel of a hundred collars around my hundred necks. Every once and awhile, I felt it sting me if one of the men thought I was being uncooperative. They watched me, their faces impassive in the green light... ...as impassive as Tom's face while Leonard yelled at him. Leonard shook his head and turned to the mike. "You thought you would take advantage while I was so far away..." ...so far away, lost in a hundred heads at once, an army locked away in cold, green rooms, waiting to be released, waiting for their orders from... "Well, here's a poke at you, you gonna choke on it, too..." ...someone... "You're gonna lose that smile..." ...someone who was looking at me and saying, "Who are you?"... "Because all the while..." ...and I said "Miranda"... ...the guitar screeched, the drum pounded, the bass rumbled, the singer roared... ...and my companion became mad. "You're not Miranda!" he screamed. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" ("I can see for miles and miles...") Frightened, I tried to escape, but he grabbed me and I felt ("..and miles and...") a pain that was my own and not of the hundred bodies I was inhabiting. "Who are you?" the stranger demanded. "Tell me now!" "I'm Miranda!" I scream. ("...and miles and...Miranda?") "I'm Miranda!" Impatient, the stranger ("Miranda, what is it?") sunk his own claws into my mind and I stood up in the basement, screaming. ("'Cor, she's flipped!") The stranger was raping my consciousness and tearing out the knowledge he wanted. ("Grab onto her!" "Call her mom!") I felt other hands take ahold, ones that wanted to protect me. They couldn't help me, though. I had to find my own escape from this torture. There was no refuge to be found ("Oh, High Priestess, help her..") in this world. I had to leave for somewhere else, even if it met leaving the woman who was weeping over my convulsing body. Forgive me, Nora, I thought, then leapt from the stranger's grip. I had no idea where to go. A decision had to be made fast. ("Miranda?") I found myself thinking of a brown-haired man and a red-haired woman. There was such a wonderful love between them. Perhaps that could be my refuge. I would find protection between their two souls. I escaped, but I felt a piece of me being torn away in the stranger's hands as I flew off into the distance. I was vaguely worried about getting that piece of me back. ("Christ, she's...") XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The walls were covered with photos and newspaper clippings. They told stories about vanishing people, unknown creatures seen in the woods, lights flying impossible patterns across the sky. A slide projector lay on a table. Filing cabinets were to my left and a desk occupied the space in front of me. I sat behind this desk, not knowing where I was. Despite that, I felt comforted to be in this room. Even the fact that I was naked did not bother me too much. I kept still in the chair, waiting for something to happen. I heard people approaching the room's door -- one woman and one man. "You would think with a hundred people visiting the lake every year, someone would manage to adequately document this creature." "Well, there has been photographic evidence..." "Yes, Mulder, but of what? A few vague shapes in the water which could be interpreted as anything?" The door opened. Two people walked in. The man was tall and brown-haired. The woman was short and red-haired. They both stopped in their tracks when they saw me. For a few seconds, they did nothing but stare. Then the man said, "Hello." "Hello," I replied. The man looked at the woman, wondering what she made of this. She looked back at him with the same confused expression. Then he turned back to me and said, "What's your name?" That's when I became conscious of the white spaces in my head. I poked at them. They gave nothing in return. "I don't know," I told the man. He took a long breath, then he gave a slight smile to the woman. "Don't you just love it when the work comes to you?" XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (10 of 12) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART TEN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX One of the first things they did was get me some clothes. Then the woman whose name was Agent Scully drove me to the hospital. The man whose name was Agent Mulder stayed behind. "We need to find out just how she got in here," he said. The woman didn't ask me any questions as she drove me through the crowded streets of a city. I was the one with the questions. As I looked out at the buildings and monuments passing by, I felt something familiar about them. "Where am I?" I asked. "You're in Washington, D.C." I mulled over that name. "I think...I think I know somebody here." The woman glanced at me. "Or somebody who used to live here. I'm not sure." "Don't worry about that now. Just relax." Actually, I did feel relaxed. My memory loss didn't scare me. Instead, it just numbed me. I was content to do whatever Mulder or Scully wanted me to do. After forty-five minutes of driving through the "damn D.C. traffic" as Scully called it, we arrived at the hospital. They did a lot of tests. Blood was taken from my finger and they put me in this machine which could examine my brain. The tests took up most of the day. Afterwards, I was given my own hospital room. Scully came to see me. Mulder was with her. "How you doing?" he asked. "I'm well. I guess." I looked to Scully. "Am I?" There was just the slightest hesitation on her part before she answered. "Yes. There is nothing physically wrong with you." Mulder noticed the hesitation as well. He said to me, "I'm going to talk with Agent Scully in private. Do you need..." He frowned. "You know, it would be better if we could use a different name than 'you.' Is there a name you prefer?" I thought about it, then said, "Jane." Mulder nodded. "Jane it is." "Jane Williams." He blinked. "Why 'Williams?' Do you think that might be your real name?" "No, it's...it's not." "Might it be someone you know?" I stared at the white spaces in my mind again, but nothing became clear. I shrugged at Mulder. "Well, Jane...you just rest now," Scully said, then left the room with Mulder. I watched them leave, feeling a deep need to know what they going to say about me. ("What did you find out?") My heart almost stopped. I found myself looking out of the eyes of Agent Scully. I could see the other people in the hospital hallway. Agent Mulder was facing me...her...both of us directly. His expression was subdued, but you could see an excited curiosity in his eyes. Throughout this whole conversation, I held my breath. ("Just what I told her. There is nothing physically wrong.") ("I can hear a 'but' coming.") ("But...there are some unusual biological aspects to her.") ("Let's hear it.") ("Well, it's nothing we can define precisely. At least, not yet. However, there is unusual activity in parts of her brain. We also found some abnormality in her blood. Further tests are going to be needed before any conclusions can be drawn. What did you find?") ("More mystery. There is nothing -- and I mean, nothing -- that indicates how this young woman got into Bureau Headquarters. Nothing on the surveillance tapes, no hints of a security breach. You would think a naked woman would attract more attention than that.") There was a little smile on Mulder's face. I felt Scully's wariness, but also her interest. ("What are you thinking, Mulder?") ("Oh, all kinds of things. We've got elements here that correspond with a lot of different X-Files. It's now a question of narrowing it down.") ("Well, we have to find a way to account for this woman. She is our responsibility.") ("You don't think I know that?") ("What I mean is that Skinner will want answers. And he's obviously under a lot of pressure to keep us in line.") ("Meaning he's getting his chain yanked. He's been on us ever since Eugene Tooms got out of his prison. And just who the hell is that smoking chump...") ("Mulder...please focus. Let's help this woman. And I think we should start by looking for 'Jane Williams.'") ("Not much of a start, Scully.") ("On the way here, she said that she might have known somebody here in Washington. We can look for Jane Williams here.") ("Sounds good. Why don't we go check on our mystery woman?") I released my breath just as Mulder and Scully stepped back into the room. Scully said, "Jane, I think...are you all right?" "I...I feel a little dizzy." What could I tell them? I didn't want Mulder and Scully to be as confused as I was. I needed them to be sure and strong. At that moment, I depended on them more than anyone else in the world. "I'll be all right," I assured Scully. "Well, let me know if you feel bad in any way. In the meantime, you will be staying here in the hospital until..." "No!" The panic in my voice surprised the two agents as much as myself. "What's the problem?" Scully asked. "I...I want to stay with you." Her blue eyes became nervous and uncertain. "Uh, Jane...you're better off staying here. The hospital can..." I grabbed her hand. She fought off the urge to pull away. "No," I insisted. "I need to stay with *you*." Scully just stared at me in incomprehension. With a gentle voice, Mulder said, "Is there any medical need that requires her to stay here?" Scully shot him a testy look. He rolled his shoulders in an expression of discomfort, yet his eyes did continue their plea. They were remarkable eyes, capable of looking like a lost child's. Having both of us looking so pitiable was too much for Scully. "All right," she sighed. "You'll stop by, won't you, Agent Mulder?" I said. "Of course." You didn't need to be telepathic to know what was on Scully's mind then. Great, she must have been thinking. Now I have to clean up after both of you. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX A tall pointed monument...a building with white pillars on its front...an enormous statute of a man sitting in a chair... Scully and I were seated at a table in her apartment. She was flipping through a photo book of sights in Washington, hoping it might stir my memory. "There," I said. "That place." I pointed at one photo. "The FBI Headquarters?" I leaned forward and examined the photo. "Is that what they call it?" "Yes." "I seem to remember it being...something else." I touched the smooth page of the book. "It changed. But then it changed back." I looked up at Scully. "I think the person I knew used to work there." Scully just nodded. I continued to look through the photos. "Something is missing," I said. "What?" I pushed and pushed against the white spaces. Finally, they gave me a few small gifts. "There was a building. A large brown building. All the people in charge of the country had their meetings there. There was also a..." I thumped my hand on the table as if I was trying to shake out my memories. "...a wall. A giant wall that kept the city divided." "Jane...there is no wall like that here. There used to be one in Berlin..." "No, you're right. This wall doesn't exist anymore. It's in the past. So was the large brown building. They tore them down after..." The white spaces overcame me. Placing my elbows on the table, I covered my face with my hands. I felt Scully's touch on my shoulder, giving it gentle rubs. "Take your time, Jane." A person knocked on the door to her apartment. She gave me one last squeeze on the shoulder and left to answer the door. I lowered my hands to watch her. When she opened the door, Mulder was seen. "Hello," he said. "Did somebody order a strip-o-gram?" Scully tried to look irritated, but she couldn't help smiling. I noticed that they looked...right together. His long, lanky body complimented her short, petite figure. The comical size of his hefty nose provided a counterpoint to her austere face. They were different, yet able to blend together. "No?" he said, hearing nothing in reply. "Then how about a pizza?" He held up a long cardboard box. After we all dined on cheese and bread, Scully told Mulder that 'Jane Williams' might have been an FBI agent. "Really? Well, I've just finished a check on the population of D.C. and there was a Jane Williams who used to..." "No," I said. "Jane Williams...she's not the person here that I knew. I think it was a man." "Oh. I see. Then who is Jane Williams?" I rubbed at a piece of cheese stuck to my fingers. It took me a minute to retrieve an answer. "A friend of my family. In fact...my parents named me after her." "So your name *is* Jane Williams." "No." Mulder and Scully looked at me. I squirmed in my chair. "I'm sorry, I just can't...there are some things that I just feel sure about and...I don't know why..." "Don't worry," Mulder said, giving me a brief squeeze on the arm. "It will come back to you. I promise." He smiled at me and I found myself smiling in return. I could see what Scully found irresistible about his mouth. "The truth is out there," Mulder assured me. "Somewhere 'in the dark backward and abyss of time.'" "The what, Mulder?" Scully said. "Oops. Sorry. Got all literary there. 'The dark backward' is a quote from 'The Tempest.' Actually, it's one of Shakespeare's more awkward phrases, though not as clumsy as 'But, sir, methinks you walk like a stranger.'" "How does one 'walk like a stranger?'" "I do," I said. "I feel like nothing but a stranger in..." That's when I heard the song. ("If I should venture into the slip-stream...") I looked around, trying to locate its source. When Scully asked me what was wrong, I realized that I was the only one who could hear the song. ("Between the vine-dex of your dream...") The music was as clear as the voices of Mulder and Scully, yet it went no further than the space between my ears. I pressed my hands against my forehead. I wasn't sure if I wanted the music to stop. ("Where the mobil-steel runs crack...and the ditch in the back roads stop...") The man singing was so intense as if nothing mattered more than this song and the person he was addressing. Who was he singing for? ("Could you find me...would you a kiss a my eyes...") Was it for me? ("And lay me down in silence easy...") I felt a strange sensation in my fingers. There were flexing and bending as if they wanted some activity. "Jane, tell me what's wrong," Scully insisted, concern rising in her voice. ("To be born again...") I looked at her and said, "Do you have a piano I could use?" Naturally, the question took her and Mulder back. However, after a moment's pause, she said, "I'll be back." She left the apartment. Mulder kept silent while she was gone. He just looked at me with fear and fascination struggling in his eyes. Scully returned. She carried a portable electronic keyboard. "I borrowed this from the family next door," she explained as she placed it in front of me. She switched it on and put it in 'piano' mode. I looked at the keyboard. Then I held my hands over it as if it was a hot fire. I lowered my hands, slowly. When my fingers touched the plastic keys... ("...in another world, in another time...") ...I played the melody whispering in my consciousness, keeping rhythm on the lower keys and my right hand moving with a fluidness that surprised me. ("...got a home on high...ain't nothin' but a stranger in this world...") I kept my eyes on the keyboard, but I could tell Mulder and Scully were looking at me. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Scully place her hand on his shoulder. He reached up to touch her hand. ("...in another time...in another place...") I closed my eyes. I no longer needed to watch my fingers. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I saw a woman. ("...and another face...") She was my age. It hurt me just to look at her because I knew she needed me and there was no way I could... I jerked my fingers off the keyboard. Keeping my eyes closed, I said, "That was a message. I need to get back somewhere. I need to..." A sob overcame my voice. I spent the night at Scully's apartment. So did Mulder. They took turns comforting me until I fell asleep. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (11 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART ELEVEN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I was seeing things through Mulder's eyes. He was sitting in a chair. Two men were watching him. One was seated behind a desk, looking at Mulder through glasses. He was bald-headed and looked as hard as a brick wall. He also seemed familiar -- another clue that merely hinted at the truth. The other man... He frightened me. I knew this man as well. He had hurt me. I was sure of it. As his heavy face studied Mulder, I wanted to run off, but I was trapped in another person's head. "You still have no idea who this woman is?" the bald-headed man asked. "No, sir. Jane...that's what we call her...has only a recollection of stray details from her life and we're not sure if those are accurate." "What do you plan to do next?" "Take her around D.C. and see if that stirs her memory." The bald-headed man gave Mulder a slight nod, then said, "And her mysterious appearance in your office? How do you explain that?" Mulder glanced towards the man standing near the window. Smoke from the man's mouth dirtied the sunlight passing through the glass. "I have no theories at this time, sir," Mulder told the bald-headed man. This got another slight nod from the bald-headed man. "You are dismissed then, Agent Mulder." Mulder stood up from his chair. He was about to head for the door, but then stopped. "Sir, did you read my report about Eugene Tooms?" "Yes, Agent Mulder. I did." "What was your evaluation?" The bald-headed man looked at the smoking man. He received a cool look, then turned back to Mulder. "I thought it was an interesting story...but one meant for a select audience." Mulder said nothing. He turned to the door. I woke up. The vision was gone, but I felt cold as if the eyes of the smoking man were still on me. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Just as he had said, Mulder took me out on a guided tour of Washington, D.C. I ended up learning more about him than myself. As we walked together through a district full of stores, I asked. "How long have you known Agent Scully?" "Oh...getting close to a year now, I guess. Why do you ask?" "Just wondering. You two seem...very close." A tiny smile lifted Mulder's lips. "But for a cup of root beer..." "What?" "Nothing. No, we've learned to trust each other. And we've been through some tough times." He paused, then added, "I suspect the toughest have yet to come." "Um...if you don't mind me asking...what exactly do you do for the FBI?" Mulder gave me a grin. "Sometimes, I ask myself that very question. Officially, my job is investigating X-Files. These are cases with unusual elements that often require explanations beyond the confines of acceptable knowledge." "You mean, like me." "Yes. Exactly like you." "How did you get chosen for a job like that?" "I sort of...chose it for myself. The Bureau doesn't exactly enjoy having this section active. They don't think it gives the FBI a good reputation. At least, that's their official position." "But you're still working on them." "More like clinging onto them with bloody fingernails," he sighed. "They must be important to you." It took awhile before he could reply to that. "I'm not sure what's important to me," he said. "I don't know where my priorities should be." "Well...there has to be a reason why you chose this work in the first place." Mulder looked at me, his face neutral. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to..." "No, no, it's..." He seemed to be thinking over something, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. He took a photograph from the wallet and handed it to me. A young, dark-haired girl smiled from the photo. "She's my sister," Mulder told me. "Her name was...her name is Samantha." "She's beautiful," I said, handing back the photo. Mulder nodded, tucking the photo back into the wallet. "When I was twelve, she disappeared. Awhile back, I went under hypnotic regression. What I learned has convinced me that she was abducted by aliens." Naturally, I was unable to say anything at first. Then I told Mulder, "Considering what has happened to me...I can't dismiss that out of hand." He nodded. "So, you are looking for her through the X-Files?" "Again, I have to say...I don't know what I'm looking for." We continued to walk in silence until I spotted a bookstore. I told Mulder that I wanted to go inside. "Why?" "I want to look up 'The Tempest.'" "Oh. Well, sure, why not?" The store was small but well-stocked. I found myself wandering around the shelves, just taking in the titles. I notice Mulder was doing the same thing and pointed it out to him. "I haven't been in a bookshop for quite awhile," he said. "Well, not a 'normal' bookshop anyway." He reached out and ran his hand across the bindings. "There's something about seeing all these books together..." I had the same indefinable feeling. There they were, all lined up and ready to speak to you. 'Bleak House.' 'Vanity Fair.' 'The Duchess of Malfi.' "Moby Dick.' 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.' 'Ender's Game.' Ender...another name so distressingly familiar... For no apparent reason, I found myself thinking about all these books vanishing. I imagined an inferno devouring every last piece of written paper. What if all of this would be forgotten? What if even the greatest of writers would disappear into a void -- the same void into which my own memory had fallen? The thought left me sad. And a little frightened. I found 'The Tempest.' I flipped through its pages as Mulder browsed through the anthropology section. Here we are, I thought. "What seest thou else in the dark backward and abyss of time?" Prospero asked. "If thou rememb'rest aught ere thou cam'st here, how they cam'st here thou mayst." "But that I do not," replies... I dropped the book. I stood there in the store, trembling. Then I yelled, "Agent Mulder!" He bolted towards me. "What? What is it?" I lifted the book off the floor and opened it. I pointed at one of the words inside. "That's my name," I whispered. Then we heard footsteps -- heavy and determined. We looked up and saw four men approach us. They all wore dark clothes and sunglasses as inexpressive as their faces. "What do you..." Mulder started to say before two of the men grabbed him and slammed him up against a bookshelf, knocking paperbacks from their secure positions. The cashier clerk and other customers look upon this, too stunned and afraid to intervene. Mulder yelled and cursed, but was held tight. The other two men each grabbed one of my arms. "Don't make trouble," one of them advised me. I didn't. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX A blindfold kept me from seeing where I was taken. The car ride was long and the engine was the only sound I heard. When the car stopped, I was led from the car, still blindfolded. At first, I felt the air of the outdoors on my face. Then a door opened and the footsteps of me and my company echoed against narrow hallways. Then another door opened. I was forced to sit in a chair. I heard my captors leave. The door closed. My hands were unbound, but I was too scared to take off my blindfold. I just sat there and waited, counting my breaths. A thousand breaths later, the door opened, then closed. The blindfold was gently removed from my eyes. I found myself in a grey room with no windows. Standing over me was an old man in a suit. He had a strained smile on his face as if he was trying to give me as much kindness as he could. He reached into his coat pocket and said, "This might be a little condescending to someone your age, but..." He pulled out a thin object wrapped in brown-and-silver paper. "Candy bar?" he offered. I took it and ripped off the wrapping. I was feeling very hungry. The man watched me devour the candy bar, pleased by my enjoyment of it. When I finished off half of it, I stopped and looked up at the man with suspicion. "Who are you?" The man cleared his throat. "Believe it or not, that's one of the hardest questions for me to answer." "All right. Can you tell me why I'm here?" "You're here..." The man tucked his hands into his pockets. "...because no one knows who you are and that bothers certain people to a painful degree." "Why should that bother them?" "Because these people pride themselves about being in control and not letting any details slip by them." "Does that make me dangerous?" "That makes you an unknown factor. And that could be dangerous." I rolled the candy bar in my hands. "What about Agents Mulder and Scully?" "I'm afraid they can't help you." "Then what about you? Are you here to help me?" The man considered that question for a long time before he answered it. "I can try. But I need to have a better understanding of who you are." A bitter laugh popped out of my mouth. "Then I'm in trouble. Because I don't know who I'm supposed to be, either." "Yes, I know. That is a problem. But what can you tell me?" I opened my mouth. Then I saw the man at my feet. He was lying on black asphalt. Above us was a night sky. I dropped to one knee and opened up his jacket. I saw a red stain spreading across his shirt. The man croaked a word. I placed a hand behind his head and raised it. "Trust...no one," he whispered. Then his eyes turned blank and one last breath flew from his lips. "What happened?" the man asked. I pressed my lips together. He stepped forward and repeated in a forceful voice, "What happened?" "I...I've been having these visions. I just had one with you in it." The man took a step back. "Did you now?" "Yes." "And...what did you see?" I swallowed and said, "Your death." He looked at a corner of the room for a few seconds, then turned back to me and asked, "I suppose it would be impolite of me to ask for details." "I didn't see many details. But it looks you were killed." "Ah." The man let out a breath. "Well...that is to be expected, I guess." He took another few moments to consider everything, then said, "Do you remember anything of the events right before your memory loss?" Again, I probed my fractured memory. I managed to find an answer and it smelled of cigarettes. "I was trying to get away from someone." "Did it work?" "Yes. I think I did." The man looked behind him at the door, then got down on one knee before me. "Whatever you did the last time," he whispered. "do it now. My people have intercepted the lab reports Scully did on you. They reveal the presence of...something in you that shouldn't exist. Not yet. So, whatever magic you've got, I suggest you use it now or..." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I was sitting on a couch. I looked around and saw that I was in an apartment. The lights were out, though some illumination came through a lampost shining through a window. I noticed a desk, a television, an aquarium. The front door opened. A man walked with slow movements through another room and into the living room. He turned on the light. Agent Mulder saw me on the couch. He had the appearance of a man who hadn't slept in weeks. "Oh," he mumbled. "It's you." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (12 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART TWELVE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "I see you remembered your clothes this time." I did. I was wearing the same clothes that Mulder and Scully had gotten for me. "I suppose you can't tell me where you've been," Mulder said in a dispassionate voice. "I was... taken by some men..." "I know. I saw that." "One of them told me that I was in danger. That I had to escape. And then I was here." "Hm." Mulder sat down on the couch, looking like he had been struck in the stomach with a baseball bat. I realized what could hurt him like this -- what could leave him looking so desolate. "Did something happen to Scully?" I asked. He didn't answer. He didn't even look at me. "Mulder...?" "They couldn't let me have her," he said as if he was talking to himself. "Everything good in my life they take away. The one person who could..." He covered his face with his hands, elbows pressed on his knees. I touched him on the shoulder. The moment I did that, he jumped from the couch, suddenly full of some violent energy. "Why are you here?" he shouted. "Why have you come back now?" "Mulder, I...I don't know..." "Don't give me that! I'm tired of all these fucking mysteries! I want a clear answer for once in my goddamned life!" My nervousness evaporated in a flash of anger. "How do you think I feel?" I shouted. "At least you can stay in one damn time period! At least you know who you are!" Our anger vanished as quickly as it had risen. Mulder's face softened as he apologized. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it, I know..." I didn't let him finish. I ran across the room to embrace him. He wrapped his arms around me in return. "I just want her back..." he said. "I know." Then I heard the music again. ...in another time...in another place... The woman's face appeared to me, still sad and anguished. Who are you? I asked as I held Mulder. Then I realized that I was no longer in his apartment. Mulder was not standing, but lying across my lap. Around us both was nothing but a landscape of ice and snow. An enormous crater was cracked open in the ground next to us. As a lock of red hair brushed over my eyes, I realized that I was in someone else's body and this person was so confused yet so grateful to be with Mulder. The apartment reformed around me. I was back in my own body. I didn't feel frightened by this vision. In fact, I was glad because I could look up at Mulder and say with confidence, "She will come back." In his eyes, I saw the uncertainty but also the willingness to believe. "How do you know?" "I know." ...if I should venture into the slip-stream... I was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car. Before I could adjust myself to my new surroundings, the door was flung open. I looked up to see a black man with the most uncaring eyes I've ever seen. "Who are you?" he demanded in a voice like distant thunder. Nothing could come out of my mouth. The only thoughts in my head were "Please don't hurt me" and "He's going to hurt me." Then his face became less threatening, though no less wary. "I recognize you," he said. "We had you contained for awhile, but then you vanished." "I...I guess you did." The black man looked around him. The car was located in a parking lot next to a large grey building. Seeing no else around, he got behind the driver's wheel and drove the car into the street, taking us far away from the building. "Why are you here?" he asked. There was only one reply I could say. "Do you know Mulder or Scully?" He glanced at me, then said, "Yes." "Is there...anything strange happening to them now?" "Well, Agent Mulder is locked in a train car with a bomb. Of course, that's not a particularly strange event for him." After pausing to take that in, I said, "You have to help him." "No." "Why the hell not?" "Because he serves my purposes. I don't serve him. I will not risk myself to save him from his own recklessness." "But you have to save him!" "Give me a reason why I should." I said the first thing that came to mind. "Because I'm from the future and Mulder is very important." With a squeal of rubber and metal, the black man jerked the car to the side and parked it. He turned to me and said in a blunt tone, "Really?" I managed to look him back in the eye. "Yes. Really." I have no idea if what I said was true or if I was just making it up. The words just came out. "Where is your proof?" "I'm your proof. How else do you explain me?" He turned towards the engine and gripped the wheel with his hands. He remained still as a rock for a long time. Finally he said, "All right." ...between the vine-dex of your dream... The woman wanted something from me. I didn't know what it was, anymore than I understood the tears on her face. I saw another woman's face. It was pale and wan. I realized that I was looking at the face of Scully. She was lying in a hospital bed, looking like she would never wake up again. I reached over to touch her cheek. ...could you find me... Then I was back on the couch of Agent Mulder's apartment again. This time, he was sitting next to me, so deep in thought that he didn't notice me at first. When he finally noticed me, he smiled. "Hi. It's been awhile." I held back a shudder. "I'll take your word for it." "You know, the last time I saw you, I wasn't sure if you had been there. I thought maybe I was going insane." "I know the feeling." I leaned back on the couch, very tired. I saw a piece of paper in Mulder's hand. "What is that?" I asked. "This? It's a message from a...person I know. I think it's telling me to take up an old cause -- one that I abandoned." "Why did you do that?" "Because I stopped believing in it." He frowned. "No. Deep down, I never stopped believing in it. What happened is that someone next to me was being hurt and I could have been the one hurting her." I grabbed onto his arm. "Scully...is she all right?" He patted my hand. "To quote her, she's fine. Or as well as she can be under the circumstances. What about you?" ...could you find me... I screamed at the crying woman. What did you want from me? I demanded. My screams were overwhelmed by the screaming of other people. These people -- men, women, children -- were being set on fire. A circle of large men surrounded them, holding long rods in their hands. When the rod touched a person, flames exploded all over his body. The red light of the fires illuminated the attacker's faces. I saw mouths and eyelids mutilated into closed slits. I dropped to the floor and held my hands over my ears, begging for the screams to stop. High Priestess, please save me. High Priestess? Who... ...in another time...in another place... The screaming did stop. In its place, I heard the hiss of a slight wind and a distant hum. Instead of cold cement under me, I felt dirt and leaves. Sunlight touched upon my neck. "Miranda!" I looked up. I saw a forest around me. Mulder was calling out to me from the door of a steel shelter. "Get inside now! The swarm is coming!" The hum was getting louder. I turned and saw a dark cloud filtering through the trees. I had a vague idea of what was going to happen. I turned to Mulder and shook my head. He gripped the edge of the doorway, not knowing whether to go inside or rush towards me. "Mulder!" a voice yelled from inside the shelter. That forced his decision. He gave me one last pained look, then closed and locked the door. The cloud was twenty feet away. Its hum sounded like a drill big enough to carve a hole in the world. I saw the tiny little dots inside the cloud circling and turning around each other. A rain of yellow pollen covered the ground. I closed my eyes. I crossed my arms over my chest. ...could you find me... Well, you can guess what happened. I didn't die. However, I didn't open my eyes, either. Sight just came to me. I was now looking in a mirror and seeing a face not my own. The face belonged to a young woman, maybe twelve or thirteen. The first signs of growing breasts could be seen under her shirt. Her skin was hovering between the softness of youth and the hardness of adulthood. The same could be said for her eyes which showed both innocence and experience. She studied her face, turning its reflection left and right. Then she looked right into her eyes. They changed from the color blue to the color brown. She smiled. ...would you a kiss a my eyes... A larger mirror and a woman in her early twenties appeared before me. She was undressing and so was the man seen behind her in the mirror. Even though the woman had a different shape of nose and color of hair, I knew that this was the same person as the younger woman I had seen before. ...would you... A man was facing me, shifting on his feet and turning his hat in his hands. His suit looked more expensive than the apartment he was visiting. "We represent...a certain group of Joined who are and are in need of...certain services," he said, not looking at me. "Do they?" I heard myself say. "Yes." The man raised his head and gave me a meaningful look. "This job will have to be done in the strictest secrecy." "That's fine. Secrecy is what makes it good." The man looked away again. ...in another world, darling... A quick procession of images and sensations flowed over me...velvet cushions, candles, a scent of jasmine and ginger...faces of people nervous at first, then flushed and excited...my body changing to meet a hundred different needs...men and women entwined around me, a whole crowd... I could feel myself slipping away. The memories I had gained were tearing apart. I was being reduced to a parasite in another woman's mind. ...from the far side of the ocean... Then I was in another crowd, silent and still. An old woman was talking to us. She had a shaved head with symbols carved into her skin. Her voice was low, but with so much intensity that I was fixed on every word. My host was experiencing a feeling as great as sexual arousal. I almost didn't recognize the old woman. Then her blue eyes made me recall a younger woman with a kinder face. ...I put the wheels in motion... I was closer to the woman now. We were in a room full of discarded scientific equipment -- microscopes, beakers, electronic scanners -- molded into surreal sculptures. She was holding a chain wrapped around the neck of an elderly one-armed man. He was done on all fours, his tongue lapping at a bowl of water. "So...you wish to join the Church," she said. "Yes." "What use would we have for a whore?" "I'm a whore who can do this..." My skin turned to liquid and then solidified. The old woman raised an eyebrow. "Yes," she said. "That can be useful." ...in another time...in another place... Two men appeared, one after the other. I was making love to them both. The first was a white man ravaged and beaten by age. He barely moved and didn't open his eyes as I dragged his penis inside me. I didn't recognize him until he moaned the word "Scully..." The other man called me different names -- slut, whore, cunt. He was a nineteen-year-old black man. I came close to recognizing him as well. The name couldn't come to me, though. However, his physical contact made me very uneasy. That uneasiness was the last bit of myself left. The visions were flowing over me like water over a rock. I had become hollowed out, bereft of memory and identity. I simply felt whatever this woman felt. I was a nameless phantom floating through her life. ...if I should... I walked down a flight of stairs into a basement. Music greeted me as I descended. The music's source was a young woman sitting at a keyboard. Her right hand played a jaunty tune while her left hand beat down the rhythm. (Professor Longhair-style, I found myself thinking.) The keyboardist had skin of a dark tinge, sharp green eyes and a long, graceful neck. She stopped playing when she noticed my arrival. "Hey, I'm here to audition for the bass-player job," I said. The keyboardist nodded and held out a hand as she reached into her shirt pocket for her cigarettes. "Miranda Rush," she introduced herself. "Nora Konsinki," I respond. "You know, you shouldn't smoke." Miranda lifted an eyebrow. "What are you, some kind of goddamned doctor?" I smiled. So did she. ...could you find me... There was a series of firsts. The first shared look as Miranda's fingers danced over the keys and I thumped my bass. The first confession. The first kiss, quick and fleeting. The first night spent in each other's arms. ...would you kiss a my a eyes... I felt envious of Miranda. Who wouldn't want to have that kind of love? Who wouldn't want to feel what she felt in Nora's arms? I had seen this kind of love rarely -- between Mulder and Scully, sometimes between my mother and... ...and lay me down in silence easy... ...my father? ...to be born again... I am more than a parasite, I thought. I have a mother and a father. I have a past which was stolen from me. I have a lover. ...in another time... The woman cried. "Come back to me," she pleaded. A song was being played just for me. ...in another place... I looked up at the woman. She caught her breath when she saw my eyes focus on her tear-streaked face. We were both in the back seat of a car. My head was resting in her lap. Van Morrison sang on the tape player. "Got a cigarette?" I asked. New tears burst from her eyes as she bent down to touch her forehead against mine. I started to cry, too. "Got a home on high," Morrison sang. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (13 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART THIRTEEN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX We spent a lot of time just crying and holding each other. When he had finally spent ourselves, we sat up in the back seat, wiping our eyes and holding hands. "We thought we had lost you," Nora told me. "I was lost. For a long time." I looked outside the window. I saw a night sky revealed in all of its wide glory without the impediment of a city skyline. I also saw a desert full of stiff bushes and smooth rocks. It stretched out in all directions from our car. "Where are we?" "Near the Arizona border." "And why are we here?" "You had just...collapsed during practice. Nobody could get you to wake up. And then..." She took a breath. "...the Stabilizers came. For you." "Why?" "Your father..." She cleared her throat. "Theyo told us about your visions. And about Senator Matheson. It looks like the senator wanted to know how exactly your father was getting his information. Somehow theyo must have found out about your visions so theyo sent the Stabilizers after you and everybody else." "When you say 'everybody else...'" "You, your mother, your father...of course, you were the important one so we and we had to get you out of town. You were carried to our car and we drove you out of L.A. as fast as we could. We stopped for a rest here." I looked to the tape recorder where Van Morrison was singing to his sweet thing. "I see you didn't forget your tunes." "The tape was just in there when we and you escaped. We thought that...we don't know...if we played some music..." I brushed my hand across her cheek. "In this case, it wasn't just mystic shit." She kissed my hand as it passed over her face. "We missed you so much." "I missed you...Julia." Her hand almost escaped mine, but I held on tight. I looked into her shocked eyes and said in a calm voice, "I saw many things when I was gone. I saw your past. I know about your relationship with my father. You're a shapeshifter, aren't you?" She nodded. "Hm. Interesting. You seem to be able to change your age as well." "Sort of," she whispered. "After the Message, we bonded with the Second Mind. It gave us the ability to take on younger forms. But a part of us still ages. One day, we will die." "Yeah. We all gotta do that." It took a long time before anything else was spoken. I said, "Are there any other secrets you want to tell me?" She let out a breath and turned her face to me. It shifted and aged until I was looking at the face of Mrs. Knight. She allowed me to look at it for a second, before she changed back. "Don't that beat all," I commented. "So, it was you who formed the Messengers." "We did. We wanted to honor the memory of the High Priestess and what she did for the world." "I imagine. And just what happened to me back on the studio lot? What did you do to me?" "We didn't do that much. We just bonded our Second Mind to your consciousness and guided you to a better understanding of your gift." "You've been watching me for some time, haven't you?" Nora looked away. "Haven't you?" "We should have known what they were doing to Arthur," she said. "It was happening right under our nose, but... when we learned about it...we just had to make sure our mistakes wouldn't turn into a disaster." "Did my father know you were watching me?" "No. Theyo never knew who we are." "Well, I think he has a right to know." Nora was silent. "Nora?" "We...we can't tell themo." "Why not?" Nora turned to me with new tears leaving her eyes. "Your father are dead." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX There was this one song my father always played on the stereo. It was a good tune but it drove me nuts to hear it so often. "If no one else believes in you...I'm completely yours...I've got so much faith in you...Whatever life puts in front of you...you can save this world...I've got so much faith in you..." My father danced with me once to that song. Actually, he just picked up my two-year-old body and held me gently to his chest as he swayed to the beat. I remember how safe I felt in his arms. This was the memory filling my mind as I looked up at the stars. I had walked away from Nora. Silence and space kept us apart. In that moment, I felt closer to the stars than anyone else in the world. Those bright sparks were just as solitary as I was, though. Great black expanses isolated them even as their light touched upon your face. Nora couldn't just leave me out there alone. After several minutes had passed, she got out of the car and walked up to me. Before she could speak, I said -- "I wonder if you can see them." "What are you...oh. Yes. Them." "What day is it?" She told me. "Hell," I said. "I've been out for over twenty-four hours." "Yes. The colonists should reach us by late night tomorrow." "So they should be visible in our skies by now, I would think." "Yeah." "You know, I once read this quote by a science-fiction writer. I forget his name. He said that the greatest pain doesn't come from space. It comes from our own hearts. Of course, both things could happen. Your wife could leave you *and* the Martians could attack." "We guess...that's what's happening right now." I nodded, then looked away from the sky towards Nora. "Was the sex just a side-benefit?" I asked. "Just something that came out of your surveillance of me?" "No!" Nora shot back. "That wasn't..." "I've seen your past. Looks like to me you just gotta have it." She flinched. "That may have...that was true once. We saw ourselves as...we don't know...someone who was bringing back love to the world. But..." She looked straight at me. "...we didn't understand love until we met you. We'll never stop loving you. We..." Her mouth shut up and she looked down at the dry land. I was silent for two or three seconds, then said -- "I'll never stop loving you, either." She looked back up at me, not sure if she really heard that but hoping it was true. My voice was very calm as I continued to speak. I didn't even touch her. I meant everything I said, though. "What we have is above everything that might come between us. I know this because...I've seen it elsewhere. Whatever lies and misdeeds might get in the way, there are things that transcend everything rotten and demand forgiveness simply because of what they are. That is what we have." She swallowed and said, "Thank you." I never seen her look more beautiful than at that moment. I suppose that I should have hugged her. Instead, I said, "Let's go." "Where are we going?" "Back to Los Angeles." "But...Senator Matheson..." "If he kills me, then he'll be killing himself. Because I know what the Ticking Crocodiles are. I know what their connection is to the colonists. We have to go back and warn him." She wanted to say something that would change my mind, but couldn't find the words. "It isn't just love that transcends us, Nora. There are certain causes, too. I don't know if I was given this responsibility through fate or design, but I have to fulfill it. "Now...let's go." Before we headed back to the car, I looked at the sky. I wondered if one of the brighter stars had just moved. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (14 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART FOURTEEN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX We met in a garage. Figures. Los Angeles was completely under Stabilizer control when we arrived at the city limits. It didn't taken long for Nora and I to get pulled over by a Stabilizer unit and for my description to be matched to an all-points bulletin. "Ma'am, would you step out of..." "No." The Stabilizers froze, definitely not used to being addressed like that. Nora squirmed on the seat next to me. "You go send a message to Senator Matheson. Tell him I want to arrange a meeting. Tell him if he doesn't show up with my mother, I'm going to let everyone know what the Crocodiles are. And tell him if he wants to keep from making the biggest mistake of his stinking, worthless life, then he should listen to what I have to say. Tell him that *now*." I must have sounded really pissed-off because the Stabilizers backed off. They also relayed my message. That's how I ended up in a garage around noon on possibly the last day of humanity. Coming to this garage, I had been struck by how quiet the city had gotten, except for the rumble of tanks and the occasional voice heard over a Stabilizer radio channel. The world does not end with a bang or a whimper, I thought. The end makes no sound at all. When the senator's car showed up, I caught a glimpse of my mother's face before the car pulled into a shadow-covered space. Matheson got out of the car and walked towards me, his bright shoes sounding loud on the concrete. And he had this *look*...this tense, worried expression...as if he was actually concerned about my welfare. Have I mentioned this man made me sick? "We know you won't believe this," he said. "but what happened to your father and Robbie Turner was an accident." I said nothing. "When the Stabilizers came, they and they were...caught a little off-guard by how vigorously Mister Rush and Mister Turner reacted. We are sorry that it happened." Still, not a word from me. "We can only imagine what you think of us, Miss Rush. Sometimes, we don't know what to think. However...we are all trying to work our best within the restraints of the past. We have to learn from history. My grandfather was a senator in the pre-Joining days. He had to chose whether or not to stand by a certain man. In the end, he..." "Oh, shut the Smoke up, will you?" Matheson's face tightened as if he had just tasted a sour fruit. "I'm not interested in hearing your story. You're going to stand there and hear me tell my story." That's what I did. I told him everything -- the experiments on my father, the visions, all of it. After I was done, I said, "Any questions?" Matheson cleared his throat twice. "Well...yes, quite a lot. For instance, are you saying that you can actually interact with the past and not just observe it?" "I don't know how I do it, but...yeah." "Amazing. You have become quite a wonder. Have you considered that you might be very useful against the..." "I'm not going to be your secret weapon, Senator. Besides, you've already got one of those, haven't you?" The cold soul of Matheson could be seen in his eyes now. "How much do you know?" "Enough, I believe. I know what you've been breeding. And I know how it got started." "Well, tell me, Miss Rush. It's your story." Indeed. And for you to understand it, you have to go back to the days of the Joining. The spread of the virus created the Joined, but in some cases, it fulfilled the original purpose of colonization. It mutated and gestated into a new extraterrestrial biological entity. These new creatures were the larvae stage of the new alien race -- a very mean and very tough breed. However, they were not so tough as to withstand the extermination of them by the Joined. "Not all the Errors were killed, were they?" I said. "A few must have found some hiding places. Maybe they went into hibernation or spread a few seeds around. In any case, the leaders of the Irregulars found a nest of them...and they began to breed a new crop of Errors." Matheson nodded slowly. "It was a plan of last-resort. Breed and train the big grey buggers, then set them loose on the Joined. But the Irregulars never got to that point. Skip a few years later. Your people find the body of the smoking man. You also find evidence that leads you to...I don't know, some remnants of the old breeding program..." "Some tissue samples in cold storage, to be exact." "Whatever. Anyway, you get the idea to take up the program again. Only this time, you would create your army of trained creatures to be used against anyone considered an enemy." "Against the colonists. We have been planning for their return..." "I'm not interested in your excuses. I'm just here to prevent you from fucking the planet over." He put his hands in his pockets. "And just how are we doing that? The Ticking Crocodiles are our and our ace-in-the-hole. If the colonists manage to get through our and our defenses and put one skinny grey foot on Earth, then they will receive quite a rude shock when the Crocodiles attack them. As for what people might think about breeding them in the first place, we're sure any doubts will be eliminated once their effectiveness is seen." "Maybe. But there's one problem, Senator." "We know what you're thinking. Can we and we control the Crocodiles? We assure you that they are under the strictest..." "You won't be able to control them. You don't control them now." "Oh? And who does?" "The smoking man." He looked at me. I wanted to slap the condescending, weary expression off his face. "Miss Rush, unless you haven't heard it by now...well, we'll repeat it anyway. The smoking man are dead." "You just found the body. The mind lives on." Matheson closed his eyes and rubbed them. "Miss Rush...we have believed your story up until now, but now we..." "I entered the minds of the Ticking Crocodiles. There is some force joining their brains together. When I encountered this force, it tried to kill me. My only means of escape was fleeing to another time. It's that nasty." Matheson gave me another look. "And you're saying...that force was the smoking man?" "Here was a man who figured out how to defeat old age. Could we put it past him to discover a way of implanting his consciousness in the genetic samples you found?" "Well...actually, yes, it is possible, but..." "Just how did your people find the smoking man's body? What lead them to it and the data on the breeding program?" "We...we don't know. We haven't..." "Consider this, Senator. What if the smoking man had been watching you? What if he knew that you couldn't resist the opportunity to get your own secret weapon? What if he played you step-by-step towards creating this army? Now, consider this. What if the colonists invade? And instead of fighting them, the Crocodiles turn on us. Would we be able to survive against both of them?" The Senator turned a little pale. Then he shook his head and said, "No. This is all conjecture. You only have the proof of your so-called 'visions.'" "What about those signals being transmitted from Earth? Where are they coming from? I suggest you get started on tracking them. My bet is...they're coming from your own breeding center." Matheson pulled his head down to his shoulders. "We...and we...have several centers actually." "Go check it out, Senator. And you'll find out that you've been the victim of history's sickest practical joke." Matheson swayed on his feet. He looked like he was ready to fall over. "My mother," I said. "What?" "What about my mother?" He shook himself, then he made a quick motion towards the car. A door opened and my mother pulled herself out. As she walked towards me, her body was stiff and her expression blank. She embraced me like a wrench grabbing onto a bolt. Matheson walked to the car. "You do what I said, Senator," I yelled at him over my mother's shoulder. "You find out just what you are dealing with." He didn't look back. The car left the garage with him. "Theyo are dead," my mother whispered. "I know." "Our husband are dead." It was just me and her in that garage for a long time, holding onto each other. Then she said, "We are sorry." "Why?" "Because your father and we didn't give you a better world to live in." "You gave me all you could. That's all that matters." We pulled away, still holding each other by the arm. "What are you going to do now?" she asked. "The only thing I can do left." I smile. "I'm going to get as funky as I want to be." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (15 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART FIFTEEN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Located in downtown Los Angeles, The Preserver didn't stand out as a club. Its capacity was around two-hundred people. It served cold beer and cooked mediocre food. The inside walls were decorated with old road signs and the writings of vistors in magic markers. However, on the day of the colonists' arrival, it had a unique standing in L.A. It was one of the few public places still open for business. When I arrived there at five o'clock, Tom was waiting. He did something that I had never see him do before. He hugged me. He didn't say anything; the hug was all he needed to say. Virginia was there and, of course, she had plenty to say. "They're going to pay for what they did, Miranda. I promise you. They're not going to get away with what they..." "Virginia...stop. There's nothing you can do. Besides, why are you talking as if there is going to be a tomorrow?" Virginia lit up a cigarette with trembling fingers. "Because these things count, even in the face of armageddon. I'm tired of seeing my friends die." "I understand. But, tonight, let's think about the living." She looked at me with her familiar suspicious expression. "Did something happen to you? You seem...different." "Let's just say that I've been talking with a lot of ghosts." Her mouth shifted to the side, pointing the cigarette in a new direction. "Hm. Well..." She plucked out her cigarette and pointed at the empty club. "...I think you won't be playing for anybody but ghosts tonight." "No," I said. "They'll come." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX They did. They arrived, either talking too loud or not talking at all. They came in large groups who seemed to be on the look-out for danger or as a solitary person who stayed in the back like a shadow. I saw young men and old ladies; Armani suits and sweaters pulled out of a trash can; races of every kind. I even saw parents with their children. However, one thing they all had in common was an air of desperation. They came because they heard the place was open and they didn't know where else to go. Soon The Preserver had exceeded its crowd limit. Some of the customers were out at the street, just hanging around and trying to listen to the sound inside. Virginia was in charge of handling this crowd. The club owner had ducked out of town along with the bartender staff. She stood behind the counter and dispensed the drinks and bowls of chips. Many customers were outraged that they had to actually pay for the refreshments, but their complaints were cut short by a comment Virginia reserved for any displays of temper -- "Don't...fuck with me." It worked surprisingly well, especially when she indicated the guitarist tuning up on stage. The belligerent customer would look at Tom and Tom would look back with the ice cubes in his eye sockets. Still, if The Channel Surfers didn't get its music started up, then the crowd was going to lose control. Unfortunately, our singer hadn't arrived yet. Tom was there, I was there, Nora was there and Alonzo was there, albeit already drunk. Leonard was nowhere to be seen. We could have tried to play straight instrumentals, but we would have had no idea where to begin. When we had played before, we had always done it around Leonard's vocals. If we had tried to perform without him on that night, we would have probably fallen apart and this night had been demanding quality from us. So we waited. And we waited. When it reached ten minutes past our official show time, the crowd was getting a mite testy. "Start the fucking show!" and "Play, goddammit" were phrases frequently heard. The desperate faces in the dim lighting of The Preserver looked like apes in a cave. My mother was standing in a corner, looking as frightened as I felt. Virginia stared at the silent band on the stage, demanding that we take action *now*. Tom walked up onto the stage. He had just gone to make a call to Leonard, attempting to find out just where the hell our singer was. He shook his head at us. We were facing the possibility that our lead singer had met some obstacle (a Stabilizer, some citizen maddened by doomsday) or he had just skipped town. We were now faced with two options. We could try to play and do our best. Or we could flee out the back door. Neither option felt particularly welcome as the crowd began to stomp its feet, shake its fists and make a din no sound could penetrate. Except for the wail of a saxophone It was like a cannon had been fired behind them. The crowd silenced itself and I saw a hundred heads turn at the same time. Another fat note burst from the saxophone, then spiralled down into a quiet, improvised melody. Then a man moved towards the stage, eyes closed and the horn of his saxophone leading the way like the prow of a steamer. The audience cleared a way. Somehow, enough space was created in the tightly packed club for a path. Leonard walked at a slow, casual pace. This big man played the saxophone as if he was alone on top of a building and had the whole city listening (which was possible.) The air came out of his lungs in intricate patterns of sound, breaking down a musical idea into the complex symphony contained inside. Notes-within-notes, Dizzy Gillepsie would have called it. Everyone watched, hypnotized by his calm. He took their fascination in stride as he got closer and closer to the stage. Without pausing in his music, he placed one boot on the stage, stepped up, turned and completed the symphony he was creating. He lowered his saxophone and looked over the audience, apparently coming to a decision. The audience looked back at the singer towering over them. He snapped his fingers in front of his microphone. The snap came out loud and short over the speakers. Then he leaned forward to the mike and sang -- "At first, I was afraid...I was petrified..." What the Smoke? I thought. I looked to the others and they were as confused as I was. Leonard was singing *this* song? To *this* audience? Again, I was considering a quick escape with my mother. Then I looked at the faces of the audience. They were completely fascinated by this enormous man singing an old disco tune. That's when I realized that I was hypnotized, too. Leonard was singing as quietly as I had ever heard him. His eyes were closed, his shoulders were hunched and his mouth was almost touching the microphone. He sang the lyrics at half the original beat. His voice still had that deep rumble, but it was a strength fighting against a terror. The words "I grew strong...I learned how to get along..." became a mantra spoken to himself and not a rebuke to a careless lover. It was a prayer for strength. He fell silent, his final note cut short. With his eyes still closed and his body as immobile as a rock, he waited for...what? Then Nora tapped the strings of her bass, quickening the tempo just a little bit. The heavy sound was joined by Leonard's equally heavy voice, now gaining a confidence in the face of his terror. He straightened out his shoulders and held his saxophone to him like a rifle. And when he sang "And so you're back from outer space," we all knew whom he was addressing. A few cheers broke out when he snarled "I should have changed my stupid lock...I would have made you leave your key." I had also joined in the song, punctuating each of Leonard's defiant statements with a short chord. "If I'd have known for just one second..." A brief pause from him. Then he came back with -- "You'd be back to bother meeeeeeeee...." He drew out that final note and the Leonard Suderman we knew was back, full of confidence and swagger. As he hung on that note and raised his fist in the air, he opened his eyes. He looked at the audience as if he was the leader. From the sound of cheers now coming from every throat, there seemed to be no doubt that he was. Alonzo grinned as he rattled his cymbals under Leonard's voice, letting everybody know that the shit was going down *now*. And it did. The Channel Surfers crashed into full up-tilt boogie. It sounded like disco, but disco by way of punk. I leaned to the right and saw Tom playing rhythm, but rhythm full of feedback -- big ol' power chords a la Pete Townshend. He actually had a little smile on his face. That son-of-a-bitch Leonard. He knew just what to do that night and what to give the crowd. As the audience jumped, waved their arms and screamed, he looked up at the ceiling and shook his fist. "Oh, now go," he shouted. "Walk out the door...Just turn around now...You're not welcome anymore." As I watched this, I was convinced that Leonard should lead our armies against the colonists. I was also convinced that The Channel Surfers was the best damn band in the world. Leonard looked back to the audience. "I will survive!" he declared. "As long as I know how to love, I'll know I'll be alive..." Nora turned to me and smiled. As I smiled back, I thought -- I forgive you. I forgive you and mother and father and everybody. I don't care anymore about the mistakes that were made. I don't care anymore about what was not said. I only care that I love you. Those thoughts must have been written on my face because Nora crossed over to me. When Leonard sang "I've got all my life to live...I've got all my love to give", she leaned across the keyboard and I stood up. Without missing a single note, we kissed each other. The audience went nuts. "Cor!" Alonzo shouted out as he played more tightly than ever before in his life. "Lesbian love! This band has got everythin'!" At this point, the time had come for Leonard's sax solo. However, as he lifted a reed to his lips, a most peculiar and wonderful noise shot out of the speakers. Imagine Stevie Ray Vaughn playing disco. Rapid-fire notes followed each other in smooth patterns like a school of fish. We stared in amazement as the fingers of our introverted guitarist ran a pick up and down his strings. "That's what I'm fucking talking about!" Leonard declared. Tom just smiled. I didn't just think we were the best band in the world. At that moment, it was a fact. I couldn't imagine anywhere else I wanted to be and any other people I wanted at my side. This is my defense, I thought. This music is my shield against evil and destruction. There's one problem with music, though. It has to stop. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "Ever since the world ended "I don't go out as much. "People that I once befriended "Just don't bother to stay in touch." The audience laughed. Even my sad, tired mother showed a smile. It was yours truly who suggested that we do this song. After "I Will Survive," we segued into "Without a Doubt" (Leonard was a pretty good rapper for a white guy), "The Gang's All Here" (Oi! Oi! Oi!), "Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself Again" ("Lookin' at the devil...grinnin' at his gun...") and then kicked things up again for "My Generation" (on which Alonzo almost destroyed his drum kit.) After expending a lot of energy on that number, I motioned Leonard over and whispered that we should try a quieter number. "Got any in mind?" he asked. This old Mose Allison tune seemed appropriate. Its sardonic viewpoint went over well with the crowd which had reached the point where it just didn't care anymore. They didn't care about the colonists, the war, the apocalypse, nothing. They were just dancing and drinking and sweating and cheering for us. They were ecstatic even as Leonard delivered the song with the weariness of a soldier sitting in a trench. "Things that used to seem so splendid "Don't really matter today. "It just as well the world ended. "It wasn't working anyway." He then did a nice solo which was supposed to be followed by my own turn on the keyboard. It was going to be my first public solo and I was all ready for it. However, just as Leonard blew his last note, something interrupted. It went pop. If the music had been louder, we wouldn't have noticed it. The noise came from a distant point. It was indefinable and rather unthreatening. You would have wondered what it was, but not gotten worried. I stopped playing, though. So did the rest of the Channel Surfers. Virginia stopped pouring drinks. My mother looked up. So did everybody else. . Pop. So, *that's* the sound of the world coming to an end, I thought. Not a bang or a whimper. Pop. Then...whoosh. No one went outside. We just stared at the ceiling as if we could see through it. What would we have seen? What was now flying in our skies? I heard a louder sound, more recognizable. Jets and helicopters were rushing overhead. They sounded full of purpose. Pop. Both of my hands were grasped. My mother had my left and Nora was holding my right. I held onto those hands as tightly as they held mine. I closed my eyes. I thought about everything that had happened to me. What had been the purpose of my visions and my time travelling? Did they have any connection to what was happening now? Was there anybody who could explain it to me? Would it surprise you to know that I stopped feeling the hands of my mother and Nora? Of course not. I was no longer in The Preserver. Before I opened my eyes, I was aware of a bizarre smell. It reminded me of grass after a rainstorm, but mixed with the scent of burning rubber. I wouldn't describe it as being pungent -- just odd. Opening my eyes revealed a long metal corridor. The walls and floor were green. They gave off a glow to light your way. Rust and rot seemed to be covering the walls, but they didn't seem to weaken the metal. It didn't take me long to realize that I was on a goddamn alien space ship -- one of the very ships orbiting my planet right now. When I heard footsteps, I didn't run. Where could I go? Besides, I knew there had to be a reason why I was here right now. I was right. She came around the corner, dressed in a grey uniform. Her stride was quick but not confident. She had an anxious look in her eyes as if she had a task to be performed immediately. When she saw me, she jumped back a step and gasped. She stared for just a moment, then turned to run. That's when I recognized her face. I had seen it in a photo. This woman had been younger then; fifteen years younger from the look of her now. She had also been smiling in the photo. She didn't look like she could smile now. "Samantha?" XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (16 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART SIXTEEN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "How...how did you know my name?" What else could I say? "I knew your brother." The pain which appeared on Samantha's face was like a knife cutting my flesh. I had to look away from her. I was seeing too much in her eyes -- too many years spent in captivity, too much time separated from her loved ones, too many days spent in this world of iron and darkness. "How is he?" She spoke so quietly and so meekly, giving a depth of fear to her banal question. I forced myself to look back at her. "I don't know. I met him...a long time ago. I haven't seen him since." She looked down at the green floor. "He's probably dead by now," she said. I made no response. I just waited for her to speak. When she lifted her head, she said, "You still haven't explained how you got here." I sighed. "You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to answer that question." Samantha looked both ways in the corridor. "Come with me. We need to talk in private." She led me through another few corridors. Luckily, we met no one else on the way. I don't want to think about who (or what) we could have encountered. She stopped before an iron door and pressed her hand against it. Despite its size and weight, it slid out of the way without a sound. After we walked through the doorway, Samantha touched her hand against the wall. The door moved back into place. The room looked like a cell. A cot jutted out from one green wall. A table was shoved into one corner with a plate and utensils sitting on it. There was a tall alcove which I assumed could be used to clean yourself. She sat down on the cot and said, "Now what is so difficult to explain?" "Let's just say...that while I'm here, I'm also somewhere else." "And where is 'somewhere else?'" "Earth." Samantha paused. Then she said, "Oh." "Yeah," I replied. I looked around the cell. "I take it this is one of the colonists' ships." Samantha nodded. "One of many ships." "All of them circling my planet right now. Excuse me, our planet." "Earth hasn't been my planet for a long time," she said with the tiniest of smiles. We both fell silent. A faraway hum occupied our silence. Then I spoke up. "Can you explain something to me?" "I can try." "Just why the hell do the aliens want to take over Earth anyway?" Samantha took a breath, then said, "Pride." "Hm?" "It's being done for the pride of their whole species. When colonization was first planned, there was a power struggle going on for control of their government between the leaders and a rebel faction. To quell rebellion, a project was created to raise the reputation of the leaders. They would reclaim the 'homeworld' -- the origin of their species. Earth became a symbol to them. It was used to diffuse rebellion and to distract other members of their species from more urgent problems." It was a long, long time before I could make any comment. "You mean," I said. "they are out to massacre and enslave billions of people as a *publicity stunt*?" "That...is essentially their intent. Yes." I wanted to hit something. I want to kick over the table, pound the walls, find the aliens and stand on their heads. My feelings showed in how I started to pace and clench my fists. "It's not behavior far removed from what humans have done," Samantha said in a quiet voice. "How many politicians have arranged executions to save their political campaigns? How many kings have waged wars just to keep the weapon-makers rich and their population distracted?" "That's...that's nothing compared to what...to what they're doing!" My throat was tight and strangled. I could feel the pulse hammering in my neck. "This is...this is beyond..." "Evil is evil. Sometimes, scale doesn't matter." For a moment, I wanted to attack Samantha. How dare she speak so calmly about this? I thought. Then I looked at a woman who had been to the far end of the universe and had lived with a race of beings as distant from her as humans were from bugs. I turned away and gripped the edge of the table, pushing down my rage. After I had calmed myself down enough, I said, "Well...the results of the first colonization didn't go as planned. Why have they come back again?" "After the failed colonization, a final war broke out between the leaders and the rebels. The leaders won, but their empire is broken and weak." "So they're using Earth for the same reasons as before. As a distraction." "That's right." I turned back to her. "They have help this time." Samantha's expression had been subdued throughout this conversation. It must have been the expression she usually showed to her masters. Now, however, her eyes brightened with anger. "Yes," she said. "The smoking man." "Do you know about him and the..." "I know." "How did he do it?" "Does it matter? He always finds a way to do what he wants. He always finds a new plot or a new angle. It's what he exists for." "And he would send so many people to their death because...why exactly?" "Because it's his will. That's all you need to know." I let out a breath and sat down next to Samantha on the cot. "Well...if we're lucky, then one-half of his battle plan has been dismantled." Samantha almost jumped off the cot. "What do you...what are you talking about?" "It's a long, long story. Let's just say that I may have convinced somebody to stop the smoking man. If that happens, then the colonists will find their ground troops have been eliminated." "But...if that's true, then that means..." A hopeful look rose on Samantha's face, but then she sunk back into her gray demeanor. "No. The colonists are not going to turn back now. They have too much at stake." "So I figured. But, at least, Earth has a fighting chance this way." I paused. "Doesn't it?" "It does." "Only...what?" "The colonists were frightened off when the virus became a new sentient life form. They are prepared this time." I had no optimistic words with which to contradict her. I leaned back against the green wall and closed my eyes while Samantha sat at the cot's edge with erect posture. Again, it became quiet. This time, it was Samantha who broke the silence. "I'm sorry, but...what is your name?" I smiled. "Miranda. Miranda Rush." "You know, you don't look quite old enough to have known my brother." "Yeah, well, you're looking pretty well-preserved yourself." "The aliens have done this to me. They've kept me alive and young so I can...I can serve them better." I reached over and held one of her hands. She squeezed back. "Ow!" "Oh, I'm sorry," she apologized, easing her grip. "The aliens gave me..." "Advanced strength. I noticed." For yet another time, both of us became silent. Just being on that ship...something about it just sapped your will. You started to feel helpless. I could only imagine what decades spent on it could do a person. "Do they hurt you?" I asked. She shook her head. "Not anymore. I'm just their servant now, not their test subject." "What do you do for them?" "Cleaning. Maintenance." She shrugged. "I'm essentially a maid." She looked at me. "You must be thinking -- if she could escape, would she?" "Something like that." She let out a long breath. "I don't think about that. Because I doubt I'll ever get the choice. Besides...this is the only life I know. My memories of Earth are so faint now." "Including your brother?" Her head sank. For a moment, she looked close to breaking out into tears. Then she lifted up her head and said, "No. I still think about him." She cleared her throat. "When you last saw him...how was he?" At first, I didn't know what to say to her. How could I explain that my knowledge of her brother was fragmented and non-linear? What could I say based on the little I knew? I needed a better answer. I got one. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX A cool wind blew in through the open window. It touched my head as softly as the hand that was stroking my hair. I took pleasure in the comfort given by the wind and the woman sitting next to my bed. She was an old woman. Despite her cracked skin, bony hands and a head with only a sparse clump of grey hair, she was beautiful. It was the look in her blue eyes that warmed your heart. They were looking at me with so much love. And sadness. "I have a regret..." I said. My voice was small and weak. "What's that?" the woman asked, her voice stronger but lowered to match mine. "I never got a chance...to see your red hair again..." The woman smiled in a embarrassed way. She brushed a hand through the grey locks on her head. "Does it matter?" she asked. "You're red-green deficient, aren't you?" "I always knew...it was red..." Her hand strayed from my hair and rested on my cheek. I felt my eyelids start to fall, but I wanted to keep looking at her. "Thank you," she whispered. "For what...?" "For these last few years." I shook my head, just a slight movement. "I could have given you...more..." "One day would have been more than enough." Tears blur my eyes. "No. I should have..." "Shhh. Don't think about that. We were just confused back then. We were facing a world we didn't make." Despite the tears, I find myself smiling. "How...how can you say that? You've made...the world twice." She shook her head. "I was just a tool." "Whose tool? God's?" "If you like. But the world doesn't obey a single will. We are all part of a story much larger than any..." "Scully?" "What?" "I get it. You don't need to...make a speech." She smiled, then bent over and kissed me on the cheek. My eyelids were almost closed now. Except for the hand on my cheek, all the other sensations in my body were distant and numb. "I always... wondered how I would...would feel...when my time came. I wondered if...I would be scared. But I'm not. I'm not...scared at all..." "I won't be scared, either," the old woman said, her voice choking. "Because I know you'll be waiting for me." "Scully, I don't know...if there is a place..." "There is, Mulder. There is." I sighed. "There you go again. Always...second-guessing me..." My eyes were now closed. I felt Scully's hands leave me. I wanted to cry out for their return. Then I realized that they were still there, but I just couldn't feel them. My ears had become deaf and my mouth could taste nothing. I felt like a hollow tube. The only connection I had with the world was the air I continued to breath. That was slipping away as my lungs weakened. I became conscious of every mouthful of air entering and leaving me. I counted them. One...two...three... And four. Scully. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "Miranda?" I hesitated before I said, "Yes?" "Is something the matter? You looked so strange for a moment." "I imagine." I looked Samantha right in the eyes. "Fox was very, very happy when I saw him. And he was with someone he loved." She stared at me, judging my truthfulness. When she accepted my words, she sighed. "Good. That's something they can't take away from me." I nodded. "No. They can't. Because they don't understand..." When I didn't complete my sentence, Samantha said, "What is it?" I just sat and looked at the wall for a full minute before I said, "Maybe it's time they do understand." "What does that mean?" "It means I know why I'm here. Why I've been...seeing certain things. I don't know who has been responsible for what's been happening to me, but there has been a purpose to it all. And this is it." With that, I stood up, my hand still touching Samantha's. "Get up," I told her. She did, not knowing what I had in mind. No one could have. I sighed. "Man, I can't believe I'm going to say this..." "Say what?" "Take me to your leader." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (17 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART SEVENTEEN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic. Mister Wells, you didn't know the half of it. Imagine eyes that only show your own reflection. Imagine a face as white and cold as the moon. Imagine a sensation in the air like a poisonous fog -- the same feeling a man might get if he laid his head on a chopping block. It was like looking into the face of God. I glanced away from God for a moment to the face of Samantha Mulder. She did not look scared even though she was risking punishment by bringing me to the heart of the spaceship. Maybe she was that brave. Or maybe she had reached the point where she didn't care anymore. Then I was asked why I was here. I turned back to those facing me. I had one brief moment to consider my answer and to comprehend everything that was riding on it. I said -- "I've come to show you something." And why should we look at it? "Because you'll learn an important thing about humans." What would we gain? "What could you lose?" It was a long time before I got a reply. The answer was -- Show me. I knew what I wanted to do. I just didn't know how to do it. My assumption was that it would just happen for the same reason everything else did. Because it was supposed to. As it turned out, this moment was no exception. I felt the back of my head open. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The world came charging through it. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX History followed. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The two sons find it so hard to keep still. They are too jittery with the rash energy of youth. However, the stern yet quiet face of their father is enough to prevent them from doing anything foolish. They wait in the bushes which barely provides cover for them from the antelope's eyes. This fast and alert creature just has to know that they're stalking it. Their father has told them beforehand that no human cannot sneak up on any animal. "Then how do we kill it?" one of the sons asks. The father smiles and said, "Humans are the only creatures which can hide their intentions." As they watch their father move away from the bushes, they wonder how he is hiding his own intentions. The spear is in his hand. His movements are slow and careful, his shoulders are arched, his arm is raised. They can see that he is ready to kill, but the antelope remains in its spot and chews on the grass. After the spear is thrown and the animal is dead, the father gathers his sons around the animal. He leads them in a prayer to the antelope's soul so that it might understand why it had to die. Then the father leads his sons back to their village, carrying tonight's dinner over his shoulders. "Father?" "Yes?" "How did you do it?" The father just smiles. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX She sits in a hut with the cold wind blowing outside. The wind has been blowing for months now, streaking across the ice which never leaves the land. A satchel lies on the fur-covered ground. She has made it herself and has filled it with food and clothing. She is wondering if she should pick it up, leave the hut and then walk far away from her village. Soon her husband will come. Well, he's not her husband yet. Their marriage has yet to be consecrated by the elders. There is still time to leave. She wants to leave because she can no longer stand the disgust in her future husband's eyes. She is tired of him thinking what an ugly witch she is. He accepts that the marriage is necessary to bring together two families, but he wonders if the spirits are punishing him. Running out on him and her family would be a foolish choice. The land of ice around the village is without mercy. She has only a crude knife to protect her from the wolves. Wouldn't it better to live in the security of this arranged marriage? Isn't living with another man's disgust a small price to pay? She looks at her satchel and wonders. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "Do you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?" The question is asked in a quiet voice. An answer is waited for in patience. However, the dark-skinned soldier says nothing to the pale-skinned priest. The soldier doesn't look back with anger. His eyes just say that a new faith cannot be exchanged for an old one as easily as you change your clothes. The priest looks back, also not in hatred. He regards the captive as a problem to be solved and not to be despised. He motions to the pale-skinned soldiers surrounding the prisoner. They hold the dark-skinned soldier down and place a hot metal rod to his chest. The prisoner screams out to Allah as his dark skin sizzles. His torturers do not have the cool face of the priest. They are enjoying this. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The crowd is yelling and cheering and shaking their fists. Every person in the crowd has lost their personal identity. They're now one organism at the command of the man shouting back at them. The man is bald with a pointed beard. "Workers of the world, unite!" he declares. The crowd roars back its approval, ready to do anything. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The businessman is waiting for a taxi when he sees the boy. He looks to be five years old and he has that aimless quality children have when they walk unattended; like a cork floating on water. The boy moves across the sidewalk on his chubby legs. The man notices that the boy is heading for the street. His path will take him right between two parked cars. Another car is rushing down the streets, its driver unable to see the boy. It is doubtful that the thirty-five-year-old businessman has ever moved so fast or will ever move so fast again. When the driver finally sees the boy, brakes squeal but it's too late to stop. Then the boy is yanked out of the way. A woman runs out of the store. She's crying. So is the boy in the businessman's arms. So is the businessman. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX And there were a billion other stories just like those. It should have hurt -- all that history and all those people rushing through my head and into the collective mind of the colonists. Yet it flowed as easily as water through a spigot. I just closed my eyes and let them all pass through me. I saw Aztecs building pyramids, Puritans sailing across the Atlantic, Muslims and Hindus fighting in the streets, Africans being put in chains, Englishmen riding horses. There was Fyodor Dostoyevsky dictating to his wife, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk talking long into the night, Napoleon Bonaparte leading an army, John Adams scribbling in the margins of a book, Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar. Every act of kindness ever performed, every cruelty ever done, every night of loneliness and every crowd cheering in the theater was fed to the colonists. I made them suck every last drop of my world's history. I saw my father. From his first bondage with the Second Mind to the bullets than ended his life, the moments of his existence poured over me. I experienced his days as a Stabilizer -- those days when he never doubted his purpose in life. Then he met a man named Fox Mulder and everything changed. The world was turned upside-down. He began to have dreams he couldn't explain. He pulled away from the Second Mind until he turned revolutionary and bedded down with a shape-changing whore. He was later captured after shooting an old friend. He linked again with the Second Mind, but he still had no certainty about his purpose. A message was given. The world changed. That's when Arthur Rush found a new purpose in life; something that gave it meaning. He held a newborn baby in his arms and knew that he would do anything to protect her. Yes, he made mistakes. Yes, there were things he should have told her. The greatest damage done, however, was that these secrets kept his daughter from knowing just how much he loved her. You can't really blame me for crying. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "It's time to go back, Miranda," Samantha said. "You've done well. Peace be with you." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Nora reached up and brushed a tear off my cheek. I turned to her. The look on my face surprised her. She was even more surprised when I said, "It's over." I let go of their hands. I walked off the stage and passed the audience to the door. My mother and Nora watched me, too confused to follow. They were still hanging in the sky when I stepped outside. Those great metal discs remained up there for a few more seconds. When they left, they became tiny sparks among the stars, becoming fainter and fainter with each passing second until they disappeared. "Good-bye, Samantha," I whispered to the stars. I just stood there, looking up at the sky with a chilly wind streaking across me. It took awhile for the others in The Preserver to realize what was going on. One by one, they stepped outside. They looked at the sky with me, seeing nothing but the stars and planets. When it became apparent that the colonists had left, no one cheered. We just stood on the street -- some alone, some holding hands with another person. They could have walked away in a dozen directions, but no one could believe they had the freedom to do so. The reward of another day to live was too bewildering. My mother found me. The moment I saw her, I embraced her. "I wish Dad could be here," I said. She said nothing. She just embraced me in return. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I like to think that I had found the conscience of the aliens. I want to believe that I had shown them the evil of what they were attempting to do. However, I don't think that was the reason they returned to their world. It was the enormity of the act that frightened them. I showed them the entire history of my planet. I forced upon them the accumulation of every human life that had existed there. They realized that exterminating us would render that collective story into nothingness. In theory, they could do that. Yet when they saw the real thing, they hesitated. I don't know if they have their own gods. However, they must have wondered if some kind of judgment was waiting for the kind of sin they wanted to perform. This was a risk they balked at taking. So I guess I kinda saved the human race. That sounds pretty blithe, doesn't it? Well, there are two reasons for that. One is that I still don't know if I was guiding myself to that moment on the spacecraft or...well, pick the transcendent force of your taste. Was I being directed by someone else and being shown the knowledge I had to understand in order to save us all? Or did I sense on an unconscious level what needed to be done? I have no answer there. What I hope is that whatever means helped me achieve my goal hasn't deserted me. This brings me to my second reason. You see, it isn't over yet. Even as I tell this story, another threat has risen. Want to guess what it is? XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TITLE: SLIP-STREAM (18 of 18) AUTHOR: DAVID HEARNE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX PART EIGHTEEN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX We had barely started celebrating when the first reports came in. There were stories of something coming out of Tunisia...then South Korea...Brazil...Australia...New Mexico, U.S.A.... The stories were about a band of animals invading towns and attacking anyone in sight. It didn't take us long to find out they were more than just animals. When we realized what was on the loose, everyone felt chilled to the bone. Our fear got worse when we heard that the invaders knew how to use guns and were as well-organized as any army. And when we heard that they were using human carcasses as incubation chambers, everybody started to panic. Where was Senator Matheson? some asked. Why isn't he doing something about this? Senator Matheson was dead -- killed by his own creation. The Errors, on the other hand, were alive and well. When all this started up, I decided to pay someone a visit. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "Oh. It's you again." "Yeah. It's me. Don't try anything. I'm ready this time." "I figured you would be." He reached into his coat pocket, looking at me as if he was memorizing every pore on my skin. "Your name is...Miranda, right?" "Yes." The man nodded and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He extracted one, placed it in his mouth and lit it, all done with a casual familiarity. He offered the pack to me. "Want one?" "I just quit." A little smile rose on his face. "I once knew a Miranda," he said as he blew out a plume of smoke. "Her name was Jane." The casual arrogance on his face hardened into caution. "How did you know that?" "She lived with my parents during the final days of her life. They named me after her." His hand tightened around the cigarette. "You're Arthur Rush's daughter," he said in a grim voice. "Yep." "So...how is Arthur Rush?" "He's dead. Senator Matheson had him killed." "Ah." He pressed the cigarette into his mouth again. The tiny smile returned to his lips. "Tit for tat, then." "Oh, so you blame my father for Jane leaving you?" "I treated her like she was my only daughter. Arthur poisoned her mind against me." I looked at the man for a long time, then said, "You know the colonists have left?" "Yes. I'm not sure why." "They finally understood the consequences of what they were doing. They couldn't handle it." "Hmmm." The man blew out another cloud. "Yes. Figures. Really, colonization was based on very short-sighted goals -- the temporary placating of their own empire. They never understood the full implications." "You do." The man nodded, still giving me that smile I wanted to rip off his face. "So now you've unleashed your own little army," I observed. "Matheson thought he controlled the Ticking Crocodiles. Imagine his surprise." "I imagine it will be just as big as yours when I stomp your freak show into the dirt." It became silent in that dark ether where we both stood. It was awhile before the smoking man broke the silence. "You know...I was told once there would always be someone in my way, no matter what I was planning. Are you that person now?" I crossed my arms over my chest. "How disappointing," the smoking man said. "You don't look like much." I still didn't say anything. The man tossed away his cigarette and walked towards me. I stood my ground even when he was just a few inches away from my face. "I've been playing this game for far longer than you can imagine, young lady. I don't care what special gifts you have. It's nothing against my means and my motivation." "What is your motivation?" "Weariness. Weariness of the human race. A long time ago, I tried my best to preserve it. And what did I get in return? Nothing. Just misery and condemnation. I've become a hated icon in a religion, you know that?" "Did you ever consider that you got what you deserve?" "No. I haven't considered that at all." "Well, then...I want you to consider my motivation..." "Yes, yes. You want to save the human race." "And I'm going to get you for what happened to my father." "Huh. Revenge. So maybe you do understand me." "No. But there's one thing we both understand." "What's that?" I lifted up my middle finger and said, "Payback's a bitch, motherfucker." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX She was kneeling at a grave when I appeared. I didn't say anything to her until she heard my breathing and turned. She smiled, not too surprised to see me. "Hello, Miranda," she said. "It's been awhile." "Not for me, actually." I knelt down at the grave with her. Roses were laid across the long mound of dirt. "He died a happy man," I said. "I'm glad," she replied. "I'm also glad that I can die happy, too." I sighed. "What's the matter?" "I've just been given...this huge responsibility. I really don't know if I'm up to it." "Is that why you've come to me? Do you want advice?" "I guess so. You handled your own responsibility well." She shook her head, still smiling. "It wasn't mine to handle." "But you..." "It was too big for one person to take on. I tried to shape the world according to my will, but that only created new problems. It was only when I told others to take responsibility that the problem was solved. I reminded the world that it had a choice." "Does it? Do any of us have a choice in anything?" She turned to me and said, "We can choose whom to love." She plucked a rose off the grave and handed it to me. I took it. She pressed a hand to my cheek and said, "A leader is just another tool. Surrender yourself to the path life creates for you. But you can chose who travels on the path with you. I think that's the difference between good and evil. "Do you know who is travelling with you, Miranda?" XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Yes. I think I do. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX It was at a local Church of the Message that the meeting was held. A lot of people came, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The word had gone out that somebody was taking charge. In a situation like this, anybody who just steps up and plays the leader is given the benefit of the doubt. As I looked at the desperate faces in the church, I hoped that I could teach them not to depend on me. I would give them guidance, but I had to make them understand that this struggle and this story were bigger than any one person. I stood by the front podium. I turned to look at my mother. She was nervous, but I still remember the words she told me beforehand -- "Your father would have been proud of you." I looked at Nora, my lover, my father's lover, the woman who had created the religion this church represented. She had been the servant of so many other people's desires. As she smiled at me, I was humbled by the fact that I was the first person she could truly love -- the first person who made her feel human. Then I looked behind me at the stained glass window. The High Priestess looked back at me. I touched the rose pinned to my sweater. I turned to the people and said, "All right. This is what we have to do..." XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Nowadays, I expect every hour to be my last. The smoking man is a hard opponent. All it will take is one small opportunity for him to kill me. He can't kill what I represent, though. Something you should know about the Ticking Crocodiles. They got their name from an old children's tale. A crocodile has swallowed a clock and its presence is announced by a ticking sound. In the story, the crocodile longs to eat the villain, but only because it has acquired a taste for him. The ticking crocodile is a force without morals. It simply destroys what it longs to destroy. Hope is a ticking crocodile. And one of these days it's going to bite the smoking man on the ass. He can't take away hope from me. This is a part of the human soul he can't reach. He couldn't destroy the love between Mulder and Scully. He couldn't take away the love Samantha had for her brother. And he can't stop the love I have. My mother, Nora, the memory of my father -- these people all live in the house of my heart. This is the home no evil can ever penetrate. I got a home on high. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX AUTHOR'S NOTE: Among the songs used were "I Can See for Miles" and "My Generation" by The Who, "The Gang's All Here" by Dropkick Murphys, "Faith in You" by PM Dawn, "Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself Again" by Sly and the Family Stone, "Ever Since the World Ended" by Mose Allison, "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor and "Astral Weeks" by Van Morrison.