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Free
by PlentyOHok
(except Dream Sequence by MarkSt)
RATING: R
SPOILERS: Arcadia, Clickomania
CATEGORY: Humor, MSR, XF/Clickomania Crossover!
FEEDBACK: Of course! PlentyOHok@aol.com
ARCHIVE: Sure, if you tell me about it
DISCLAIMER: This was written really fast, as you can probably tell. What
this means is that, if you think it's funny then I accomplished an amazing
feat in a very short time, but if you think it's lame, it's not my fault
because I was so rushed! Get it? Oh, and of course, duh!, none of the
characters is mine.
…Although some may deny you
I’d really love to try you
I need this opportunity
My past has been divided
My future I’ll rewrite it
Change my life if it need be
Which way’s it to free
Which way’s it to free
Free - can anyone show me the way to free
Free - does anyone know which way is to free
-Suicidal Tendencies
"FREE" by PlentyOHok (1/1)
The idea had come to him in a dream, but the Plan itself was plucked right
from an X-file. The one where Donald Gelman had been set up for the hard
fall by his own computer virus. Invent a false premise to gather all your
enemies together in the same place at the same time and then click:
"POW!"
A phone call to The Lone Gunmen had started the ball rolling the morning
after his dream. *That let the mouse out of the bag* Mulder chortled as he
paced along the roof line of the old three-story brick building in a
Virginia suburb, waiting for Scully.
Byers had been especially nervous in the beginning. "Mulder, I
don’t know if you should be fooling around with that particular
game," he cautioned seriously. "An obsessive personality like
yourself…"
"It could get ugly…" Langley chimed in.
"Very ugly, very fast…" Frohike agreed.
But eventually they had come to believe in the Plan. After weeks of
consulting with virtual reality experts from around the globe, the Gunmen
had finally found the breakthrough they’d been looking for. Of course,
Scully had been typically skeptical.
"We haven’t been able to touch even one of these men in six years
of trying, Mulder," she reminded him over bagels at Big Schatz’
Deli down the block from FBI headquarters. "Why is gathering them all
together going to make a difference?"
"It’s the way we’ve been going about it that’s the problem,
Scully," he explained. "We’ve been trying piecemeal, one at a
time."
"Mulder, there’s no way this can work," she scowled. "It
violates all the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, not to mention
common sense and real life."
"All the *known* laws, Scully," he corrected her in his patient,
midwifing-extreme-beliefs kind of way. Though, hell, he’d been pretty
damned skeptical too. "The Gunmen have been working around the clock
with this young guy from Switzerland. They’re convinced that they’ve
finally solved the last hurdle in mastering this thing they call the
Clickomania-RL interface."
She didn’t say anything for a long time, just sat there chewing on her
bagel.
"Look at it this way, Scully," he finally said. "What harm
could there be in trying it one time? After all, it’s free. Right?"
They’d begun that night making preparations for what Mulder had come to
think of as the Grouping. There wasn’t much to it, really. He and Scully
knew by heart the names of the traitors, conspirators, and collaborators
against them. It was just a matter of making the list, then splitting it
between them, of the men he and Scully would track down and summon to The
Grouping using various hoaxes.
Always, he kept coming back to that same word: *free*. The word had even
lain at the heart of his dream--the horrible dream that had originally
sparked this half-mad, half-genius endeavor. He’d never had a dream like
it before, so heavy and dark with symbolism. He’d recognized it
immediately as a sign. An omen. A portent.
…The Lone Serpent slowly slithers down the main street of our fair
metropolis when suddenly....
"Psst, hey snakeboy", a husky voice furtively whispers from the
darkened recesses of the alley. He flicks his tongue, testing the air,
searching for the source of this unwanted yet strangely seductive come-on.
"Who ssssaid that", he answers quickly.
"Over here", the voice replies. The serpent wrinkles his
forehead causing his preternaturally beady eyes to become supernaturally
beady as he slides his way toward the mysterious yet strangely appealing
stranger.
As he oozes his way closer to the figure, he squirms over the remains of
discarded video games...a Tetris here, a Slingo there, ouch, damn that
Rubik's cube.
"I've got something for you", the dark figure whispers, reaching
into the inner pocket of his spacious black-grey overcoat with the high
collar.
"What issss it?", ths serpent replies, cocking his head to one
side to hear the man better... a tactic which might actually work if the
serpent actually had ears.
"It's a new game and I want you to have it", the stranger
answers, thrusting the game out to the serpents outstretched arms, a
tactic that might actually work if the serpent had arms.
The serpent, silently cursing his lack of useful body parts, gazes at this
wondrous gift laid out before him.
"Clickomania", he says, turning the innocent-sounding yet
strangely intoxicating word over and over in his mind.
"How much issss it?", the serpent hissily inquires.
"It's free", answers the shadowy figure, retreating back into
the dark, dank, dirty alleyway.
"But what's the catch?", shouts the serpent.
But all he hears is the sound of the mysterious strangers' peals of
laughter as he slips into the shadows vanishing out of sight.
*Free*
That was the keyword. The technology of their new secret weapon had been
free, floating in cyberspace just waiting to be picked up and perfected by
technogeeks like The Lone Gunmen. The world would be free once the evil
men behind the Conspiracy had been eliminated. Most importantly, free is
what he and Scully would be after today; free of the chains of destiny
that had kept them from experiencing the truth about themselves and what
they might mean to each other.
Mulder stopped pacing the rooftop for a moment, thinking he heard Scully
rattling the doorknob of the access door. But no, it was only the wind
picking up as the sun slipped behind the tall oak trees in the park across
the street. Resuming his pacing, Mulder thought back to their weeks of
determined effort to Group all their enemies together on this fateful day.
Cancer Man had been first on his list. He’d reached him at home, and the
SOB had answered the phone after just one ring, sounding breathless and
pained. *Fucking bastard, I hope you’re as miserable as you sound*
Mulder imagined him sitting in front of the TV in his underwear, drinking
cheap beer and fondling the phone on his lap, waiting for someone, anyone,
to call and break the monotony of his lonely existence. Surprisingly,
though, the first voice he’d heard on the line had been a woman’s.
****
"Just who the hell are you trying to impress with that thing?"
Diana Fowley slid her lips from around the old man’s pathetic erection.
If there’d ever been any real doubt about Fox Mulder’s lineage, she
knew a quick comparison of that particular male feature would’ve
certainly ruled out CGB Spender in the role of daddy. But she was actually
referring to the gold-plated .38 the old man was pointing towards his
mouth. He pulled the trigger and a finger of flame erupted to light
another cigarette in the endless chain.
"Shhh," he whispered sharply, covering the phone, but his cold
eyes were what quieted her and bent her head back to his lap.
****
Mulder drew in a sharp breath. *That sounded just like Diana* He shook his
head. No, it wasn’t possible. She hadn’t been seen since the
incinerations at the hangar and was presumed dead. By everyone but Scully,
that is. He put aside the thought and told Cancer Man the story he had
concocted to bring him to the park as the Plan required.
Next he had made contact with Senator Matheson, that effete sonofabitch
prick, as well as a handful of men whose names Marita Covarubius had
provided him with after finding her way out of the research lab and
getting her eyes used to sunlight again; men within the upper echelons of
the government’s bureaucracy who had kept the Project funded and
operating secretly for so many decades. And last but not least, he’d
summoned Alex Krycek,. *That goddamned evil man-kissing freak * He’d
taken special joy in spinning a web of lies big and sticky enough to
ensure Alex Krycek’s appearance in the park across the street in a
mere… Shit, ten minutes? Where the hell was Scully?
Scully had insisted on being responsible for summoning the few surviving
Department of Defense honchos who’d been involved in the research arm of
The Project. She’d also been the one to hunt down Dr. Scanlon,
surprising him at the Fredericksburg veterinary hospital where he’d been
working incognito since being blacklisted by the AMA. *Poor god-forsaken
animals* But if everything went according to the Plan, even the dogs and
cats would have their vengeance today.
The final name on Scully’s Grouping list had been the most important, as
well as the most illusive: the mastermind and overseer of the entire
conspiracy, Conrad Strughold. As of yesterday, she had tracked down the
phone number of his Tunisian residence, but had not yet managed to talk
her way through the tangle of servants and bodyguards that protected his
privacy.
Mulder again halted his pacing to survey the grassy knoll of the park
below, the appointed Grouping place for the men on their list. They would
be arriving at any minute. Where the hell was Scully? Just as this thought
took form, she burst through the access door, breathless from her bolt up
two flights of stairs.
"Sorry I’m late," she panted, pulling her overcoat closed
against the chilly wind. "I had a last-minute phone call to
make."
For a moment, she averted her eyes with a guilty look that Mulder would
have immediately recognized as guilt if he hadn’t also been guiltily
averting his eyes at the same moment. He was thinking of his own
last-minute phone call. Unbeknownst to each other, each had succumbed to
temptation and ventured slightly beyond the list of names they’d shared
with each other. Each was hoping fervently that the other would not find
out.
After this motionless moment of mutual--though mutually
unrecognized--guilt, Scully moved to the edge of the roof and stood
alongside Mulder, surveying the park three stories below. Still no sign of
their invited guests; but then they had been given strict orders to appear
not one minute before or after 4 PM.
"Did you contact Strughold?" Mulder asked.
Scully grimaced at the memory of her conversation with the demonic German
the day before. After posing as a pollination expert, she had finally
convinced some guileless girl—a young research assistant, perhaps?--to
put her through to him. In the time it took for the girl to find Strughold
and convince him of the need to take her call, Scully had pictured a
scholarly madman isolated within the depths of labyrinthine laboratories,
obsessively poring over sheaves of research papers in a relentless search
for better methods of hybridization and bee husbandry to spread the deadly
alien virus. At last, Strughold had picked up the phone.
****
Strughold belched without covering his mouth. The costumed Tunisian
servant girl had brought the phone to him as he reclined in bed, eating
dinner Roman-style and watching Benny Hill. His corn husk mattress rattled
noisily as he sat upright and set down the huge ear of corn slathered in
fresh honey which he’d been enjoying.
The servant girl handed him a warm wet cloth and as he wiped his sticky
fingers he asked her to turn down the television before leaving the room.
He watched her go, pleased at the tight fit of her bee-striped yellow and
black leotard and the sexy bounce of the wire-and-fabric wings that
adorned her delicate shoulders. Ach, how he loved that costume! He felt
not one iota of self-consciousness at his steadily escalating
eccentricities. After all, if in the cornfields of Tunisia he had acquired
tastes for certain pleasures with which he did not wish to live without,
and he could afford not to live without them, then why shouldn’t he
enjoy that with which he wanted to be pleasured with? With that thought,
he picked up the phone, pressed the "flash" button to release
the lady bee pollination expert from hold, and unknowingly said "Halloh?"
to Agent Dana Scully.
****
Scully nodded in answer to Mulder’s question. "Strughold’s
confirmed. He boarded a Tunisian Airways jet bound for Washington one hour
after I spoke with him and landed at Dulles two hours ago. He’ll be
here."
Mulder nodded in return. "Good."
"So, is that the…the equipment?" Scully pointed to the
odd-shaped implement at Mulder’s feet.
"The clicker-gun." Mulder acknowledged, reaching down to lift
it. "This is it."
"May I?" she asked, hand outstretched.
Fighting an absurdly strong feeling of reluctance to surrender the
clicker-gun, he laid it in Scully’s hand. She held it up carefully,
pointing it downward at the park and sighting through a scope set atop a
short aiming guide which looked somewhat like the barrel of a small
caliber handgun.
"Huh, no cross-hairs." she noted. "Just a white arrow that
looks like a cursor…"
"Don’t touch the left click button," he warned nervously.
"Mulder, I’m not going to touch the damned button!" she said
testily. "Besides, I thought it wouldn’t work until everyone was
Grouped together just right."
"Well, let’s not take any chances, okay?" he snapped,
snatching the clicker-gun back before Scully could stop him. He felt
strangely possessive of this new weapon. Perhaps it was due to all the
hours of practice he’d been putting in. A lot more practice than even
The Gunmen were aware of, in fact: clicking through the night on uniform
stacks of brown cardboard boxes, rows of sea-green beer bottles, spreads
of white Fruit of the Loom t-shirts… After all, he had to be sure he was
ready for the one click that would really count. Right? He had to be
ready, and to be ready he needed practice. Right? Lots of practice. Right?
"You know what?" Scully glared. "You’re acting just like
my brothers used to act whenever they got a new toy."
Mulder didn’t answer, merely narrowed his eyes and clutched the
clicker-gun protectively to his chest. Suddenly, a movement on the street
caught his eye. "Hey, something’s happening."
Scully checked her watch. "3:59, Mulder. It’s time."
They pressed against the low wall that ran around the perimeter of the
rooftop and watched as events began unfolding quickly on the street below.
Four black limousines pulled up in a convoy, followed by a white Cadillac,
two blue Mercedes, and a tan BMW. Mulder figured these carried the DOD and
other government conspirators, plus Scanlon, Cancer Man and Strughold.
Suddenly a motorcycle roared around the corner from the opposite
direction, driven recklessly by Alex Krycek no doubt. A rented Ford Tempo
trailed behind the motorcycle.
At the sight of the rental, Mulder shot a sideways glance at Scully. She
hadn’t noticed it yet, and he didn’t intend for her to. When Ed Jerse
climbed out to join the others on the grassy knoll, he wanted Scully
looking elsewhere. "Ed Jerkoff" he’d secretly taken to calling
the homicidal-maniac-with-a-sensitive-streak after finding out Scully had
made several inquiries to the mental hospital about his recovery in the
years since that horrible incident. Well, never again! As soon as he'd
heard Jerse was being released, he'd made the decision to include him in
the fateful Grouping. After today, he'd be able to pretend the whole
painful and disgusting episode had never happened.
"Watch the limos and make sure Strughold’s here," Mulder said.
But he didn’t need to distract her from Ed Jerse's arrival. She wasn’t
even watching any of the cars that had pulled up to the park. Instead, her
eyes seemed to be searching up and down the street in either direction,
becoming more worried by the second.
Mulder shrugged and turned his attention back to the street as men began
unfolding from the vehicles. Obviously they’d all received his early
morning telegram, for they’d heeded his instructions to the letter.
Sixteen men now roamed towards the grassy knoll, all wearing identical
pastel pink shirts. What the hell must they be thinking, looking around at
each other? He hoped Scully would appreciate the twisted humor of this
last-minute pink Izod touch.
Scully, meanwhile, sagged against the wall in relief as a white compact
rounded the corner and swung in behind the BMW. *That’s got to be her*
She felt the adrenaline pumping through her nervous system, heightening
every sense. It hadn’t been easy tracking down the bitch. Not until
she’d discovered the revolting relationship The Fowley Wench had
cultivated with Cancer Man had she figured out that to find CGB Spender
was to find Diana. But it had been worth every moment of trouble, for the
brazen hussy was here now to join the rest of the Group.
It wasn’t until Mulder picked up the clicker-gun and checked to make
sure it was turned on that Scully actually *looked* for the first time at
the men milling around the park. She let out a shriek, causing Mulder to
bash the clicker-gun into his eye-socket.
"Goddammit! That hurt!" he swore, rubbing his eye.
"Mulder," she rasped urgently, "You told me everyone would
be wearing black!"
"Surprise!" Mulder grinned mischievously. "I thought
you’d enjoy the pink Izod theme."
"Argghhh," Scully shrieked again, looking down at the white
Saturn from which Diana Fowley now emerged dressed from head to toe in
black.
Mulder followed her line of sight and gasped. "Diana? Scully, you
didn’t -- you wouldn’t have--"
She cut him off with a hard punch to the arm. "Mulder hurry up,
they’re Grouping."
He quickly got down to business, raising the clicker-gun and sighting on
the transmogrifying pinkness of the Grouping of men. They were so close
together now, his index finger itched to press the clicker, but one stray
pink blotch seemed to dance around just outside the border of the Group.
"Someone’s missing," he spat out angrily. Then with a sense of
dread, he saw who it was. And so did Scully.
"Ed Jerse?" Scully asked incredulously. "Mulder, what’s
Ed Jerse doing here? You didn’t--you wouldn’t have--"
Mulder felt her glare burning into the side of his face, but although he
half-expected a blow to follow, he refused to shift his eyes from the
clicker-gun’s scope. He had to be ready to click the instant a viable
configuration formed.
"Ed!" Scully shouted in desperation, and the stray pink blob
faltered just slightly towards the Group.
That was all he needed. In that instant, as the pinkness reached maximum
area, Mulder placed the white cursor in the middle of the Group, channeled
all the energy and psychic force of his entire being through his right
index finger, and pressed down the left button of the clicker-gun.
Click.
POW!
Where sixteen men had stood one instant, animated puffs of smoke appeared
in the next, and then there was... nothing. Mulder looked over the top of
the clicker-gun to make sure the view was the same without the scope.
Still nothing--except for the black-clad figure of Diana Fowley spinning
wildly as she tried to figure out what had happened to the block of
pink-shirted men she’d been standing next to.
"Diana," Mulder shouted, lowering the clicker-gun and loosening
his grip. As Diana turned to search for the location of his voice, he
waved, and she began moving towards them.
Scully watched Fowley’s black shape approach the long block of blackness
formed by the four limos parked bumper-to-bumper. Suddenly a fierce urge
gripped her. She wrenched the clicker-gun from Mulder’s hand and pointed
it towards the street, positioning the white cursor over the block of
blackness just as Diana’s shape melded with it to maximize its area.
"Scully, no!" Mulder cried out, but her index finger had already
contracted over the button.
Click.
POW!
Where the limos and Diana Fowley had stood in a black block one instant, a
puff of animated smoke appeared the next, and then... nothing. Scully
couldn’t keep away a slight but satisfied smile.
"Well, Mulder?" she said, dropping the clicker-gun and turning
to face him. "Have we done it? Have we reached the zero mark in our
Clickomania-RL interface?"
Mulder stared at her, his mind scrambling to grasp the reality of what had
just happened. Scully was right. They had reached zero. After six years of
chasing the Truth, six years of dodging the schemes and plots of those who
had sought to ruin them or rend them apart, six years of holding each
other at arm’s length because of the danger it would mean for them to
move any closer… They were free!
Epilogue:
As they stood on the rooftop, free at last, Mulder couldn’t help but
notice the way Scully’s brown coat blended perfectly with the
surrounding bricks, maximizing their area of brownness. He felt a strong
urge to seize the clicker-gun from Scully, position the cursor in the
middle of that brown block, and… He resisted. Was this some kind of
carryover effect from the intensity of the battle they’d just fought?
Surely he wouldn’t keep focusing on colors blending into blocks this
way…
Scully didn’t notice Mulder’s temporary distraction. She was too busy
noticing the way the blue-gray of his shirt blended perfectly with the
blue-gray of the late afternoon sky behind him, maximizing the area of
blue-gray. She felt the strong urge to point the clicker-gun at the center
of that block of blue-gray and… She resisted. Surely these urges would
pass, she thought, once they’d had the chance to adjust to being so
free…
Just as surely would pass their compulsive need to keep one hand apiece on
the clicker-gun as they carried it downstairs. And to ride back to FBI
headquarters together in Mulder’s car, with the clicker-gun positioned
squarely between them on the front seat. And to spend the next night and
the next--their first nights together-- with the clicker-gun laying
between their warm and finally sated bodies.
For several days afterwards, the Gunman had coordinated their outlandish
wardrobes to ensure they never wore the same color at the same time, until
at last Byers had managed to sneak up on them and disarm the clicker-gun.
From then on, they’d had to settle for playing the computer game.
The funny thing was, they could never have imagined that being free would
make them so happy. There was an endless variety to the games they could
play. They could change their surroundings via the background picture,
change the music by rotating CD’s in their Mini-Pilots, change the width
and height and colors of the rows of blocks. And with side-by-side
computers, they usually climaxed together, reaching zero at exactly the
same time. Best of all, there was no recovery time. They were ready to do
it again immediately.
Truly, Mulder and Scully came to believe, nobody would ever understand the
value of *free* better than they did...
END
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