"The First Meeting" ... The hallway was deserted but for one man passing out of her sight just as Dana Scully turned the corner. On her left side were shelves loaded with boxes, on her right, doors leading to who knew where? As she reached her destination, she paused for a moment before the slightly ajar door and then knocked lightly.

      "Nobody down here but the F.B.I's most unwanted," a male voice -- belonging to one Fox "Spooky" Mulder -- called out as she pushed open the door. Sitting in a chair, with his back to her, sat a man intently poring over something on his desk. Her eyes flitted about the room as she entered, noting a poster with the words I WANT TO BELIEVE emblazoned above a flying saucer. Her gaze traveled along the wall, passing over assorted photos -- most seeming to detail UFO-related events -- before resting upon the man she'd been sent to work with.

     She could see a pair of wire-rimmed glasses resting upon his face as he carefully slid slides into a projection wheel. He turned to her, a look of patronizing amusement on his face. Ignoring his expression, she schooled her own in a friendly, but professional smile.

     "Agent Mulder," she stepped forward and held out a hand, "I'm Dana Scully." He took her hand and carelessly shook it. "I've been assigned to work with you," she continued. His expression remaining the same, with just the hint of a condescending smile on his face, he spoke in a high-handed tone. "Oh, isn't nice to be so suddenly highly regarded."

     She returned his comment with a look of bemusement. This could be interesting or a disaster, she thought. "So, who did you tick off," he looked away and returned to his slides without losing a beat, "to get stuck with this detail," he looked up at her once more and uttered her name for the first time, "Scully."

      With a smile, she decided to play along with his little game of trying to scare away the green agent. "Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you. I've heard a lot about you," she told his back. He swiveled around in his chair and met the smile on her face with an almost amused, if slightly contemptuous, look of disbelief on his face and in his tone. "Oh, really," he questioned and turned away from her again, a sly note entering his voice, "I was under the impression that you were sent to spy on me."

     She quelled a rush of irritation and mustered her professionalism to respond. "If you have any doubt about my qualifications or credentials . . ." she trailed off as "Spooky" interrupted with that damn smiling disdain in his voice. He removed his glasses and looked intently at her, a smirk in his tone. "You're a medical doctor," he stood up and she resisted the urge to step back at the irritatingly notable height difference between them. She merely raised her eyes and chin as he continued.

     "You teach at the Academy," he leaned in towards his desk and began rifling through a metal stand of folders on his desk all the while regaling her with the research he'd obviously done on her. "Did your undergraduate degree in Physics," he held a sheath of papers before him and read from the top sheet, "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation," he raised his eyes, a smile alight in his eyes, "Dana Scully's senior thesis. Now that's a credential, rewriting Einstein."

     He resumed his seat and she looked upon him with amused tolerance. He was just playing with her, testing her. There was no need to get upset. "Did you bother to read it?" she asked, expecting and receiving a positive answer.

      Picking up the projection wheel and walked towards a projector sitting in the middle of the room. "I did. I liked it," he offered, putting the wheel neatly into place. Turning towards her, he continued, "it's just that in most of my work, the laws of physics rarely seem to apply." He walked past her, meeting her gaze and holding it as he switched the light off and returned to his projector.

      "Maybe, I can get your medical," she heard the sneer in his voice and momentarily wanted to hit him, but she restrained the urge, "opinion, on this though." Flipping the projector on, an image of a young woman in a nightgrown laying upon a forest floor appeared on the projector screen. She turned her attention away from Mulder and looked at it as he began to speak. "Oregon female, age 21, no explainable cause of death. Autopsy shows nothing, zip," he paused and went to the next slide. This time the screen held a picture of a lower back blemished by two small marks on the skin.

      "There are however, these two distinct marks on her lower back. Dr. Scully, "he began, condenscension clear in his tone, "can you I.D. these marks?" She moved closer to the screen, creating a silhouette of dark against the image there. "Needle punctures, maybe?" Her voice rose slightly, a question evident. "An animal bite?" She turned to look at him, expecting him to give her an answer and enthrall her with his acumen. When he didn't answer, she hazarded another guess, "electrocution of some kind?"

      Again without responding he moved to the next slide, an image of a chemical compound appeared. "How's your chemistry?" Scully turned her attention back to the screen.

      "This is the substance found in the surrounding tissue," he offered. She paused, studying the compound, her eyes alight with intelligent curiousity, "it's organic. I don't know, is it some sort of synthetic protein?" She once again turned to him. With a look of cheerful insouciance, he responded, his tone matching his expression. "Beats me, I've never seen it before, either. But here it is again in Sturgess, South Dakota and again," his voice hardened slightly, the false indifference fading as the importance of this question overtook his need to unsettle and patronize her, "in Shamrock, Texas."

      She was silent for a moment, looking at him and then she returned her attention to the projector screen. "Do you have a theory?" she asked. He moved towards her, condescending once more. "I have plenty of theories." He stood in front of the screen, face to face with her. "Maybe what you can explain to me is why it's Bureau policy to label these as unexplained phenomena and ignore them."

      She opened her mouth to speak, and then paused, truly at a loss for what to say. He leaned in slightly and spoke in a spooky, spacy voice. "Do you believe in the existence of," his voice dropped to a whisper, "extraterrestrials?"

      For the first time since entering the domain of "Spooky" Mulder, Dana Scully allowed herself a condescending smile of her own, one that "Spooky" was no doubt used to. "Logically, I'd have to say 'no.'" He began to nod his head, a smile of sardonic expectation on his face as he looked away, barely listening to her explanation, apparently knowing the tune and lyrics already.

      "Given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed a space craft's capabilities --" Mulder cut her off with another nod of his head and more than a hint of exasperation in his voice. "Conventional wisdom," he pointed to the projection screen, "you know this Oregon female? She's the fourth person in her graduating class to die under mysterious circumstances."

      He leaned against a table and looked intently at her, "now when convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility."

     A look of umbrage at his careless dismissal of her science crossed her face and there was a bite to her words. "The girl obviously died of something. If it was natural causes, it's plausible that there was something missed in the post-mortem. If she was murdered, it's plausible there was a sloppy investigation."

     She paused and a certain amount of fire and ringing intelligence entered her tone. "What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science." Once again she paused, her voice lowering a shade, "the answers are there. You just have to know where to look."

     Moving away from the desk, Mulder rose and leaned towards her with a smile of slight admiration on his face, "that's why they put the 'I' in F.B.I." Walking away with a broader smile, he spoke over his shoulder, "we leave for the very," sitting down, he sent a look her way momentarily, "plausible state of Oregon."

      A genuine smile of her own lighting her features, she gazed at his back, noting and pleased with the slight shift in his attitude.