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Mulder left the office when Janice Wilson from background
checks came to chat with Scully. Janice evangelized for
the "normal" life like a missionary wanting to carve
two
more notches on her Bible.
The interruption gave him
an excuse to drop in on Violent
Crimes. He'd heard about the series of mysterious patient
deaths at City of Angels Hospital in LA. Violent Crimes
usually welcomed his unofficial peeks into their most
frustrating files. Veteran agents picked his brain for
leads; novices kept their ears perked for patented
"Spookyisms."
Mulder's profiling skills
failed to prepare him for the
scene that awaited his return.
Only a week had passed since
he and Scully had become
lovers. He'd been sunk in a sensual daze. Nevertheless, he
still thought he would have noticed an approaching crisis
of soul-tormenting proportions. So he didn't know what to
make of a suddenly weepy Scully.
She sat crouched over her
desk, her shoulders hunched up as
though she were trying to draw her head into a protective
shell. He heard her give a long shaky sigh before she
realized he was there.
When she did, she gave a quick
swipe to each flushed cheek
with the back of her hand. Tossing back her hair, she
focused her attention on the computer screen.
"What's the matter, Scully?"
he stuttered. He was too new
at intimacy to have a strategy prepared.
Her "I'm fine" rolled
out with the speed and predictability
of a gum ball rocketing out of its chute.
The response "Liar!"
threatened to burst from his lips
before Kim stuck her head in the door. Her excited
announcement would have drowned out his accusation anyway.
"Dana! I thought you
should know. Some hateful people
printed up a list of the worst dishes at the Holiday
Potluck Dinner. They're asking everybody to vote . . . ."
Scully pushed her chair away
from the desk. She stood up
and strode quickly to the door, where she brushed past Kim
and Mulder. Then she walked down the hall and disappeared
into the ladies room.
"Do you think I should
go after her?" Kim asked Mulder.
"I have no idea,"
Mulder replied. "What list are you
talking about?"
"Oh, some creeps with
time on their hands came up with this
idea of having an award for the ickiest food brought to the
potluck. They've stacked forms by all the coffeepots.
Everyone is supposed to vote for the dishes they hated
most."
"And Scully's lasagna
is on the list," Mulder finished with
growing horror.
"Yes. I thought it tasted
fine! Just fine!" Kim asserted.
"Very . . . filling, and healthy."
Years of field-work had taught
Mulder how to ignore what he
was eating. His contribution to the potluck had been a
store-bought cheese ball with Ritz crackers. He remembered
having a vague impression that Scully's lasagna was
unusually dense.
The dinner took place the
week before he and Scully had
succumbed to their mutual lust for the first time. Subjects
other than food had preoccupied him--such as Scully's
breasts bobbing up and down at him under a baby-blue
sweater that looked so soft it might melt away under his
fingertips.
Before the evening ended,
he'd managed to conduct an
informal investigation. When he clasped her shoulders,
the weave felt like a skein of dandelion fluff between
his hand and her skin. Food awareness sank to a new low.
Most brain cells were dedicated to imagining his hands
all over that sweater.
"How can they be so cruel?"
he asked Kim.
She threw out her hands and
rolled her eyes heavenward.
Mulder made the rounds of
the department coffeepots. He
collected every contest flyer and dumped them into a "To
be
shredded" bin. His actions went unchallenged, either
because of his reputation or his thunderous brow.
He kept one copy of the ballot
to examine for evidence.
The first thing he noticed
was that no one claimed the
honor of authorship. His anger grew hotter when he saw the
snippy comment next to Scully's nomination.
"I'd prefer road-kill
to the strange meat we got in her
lasagna. Maybe this cook should retire her cookbook AND her
songbook. She's as deaf to musical notes as she is to
subtleties in food flavor and texture."
When Mulder thought of Scully's
singing he remembered the
comfort he took from it during a shocky night as wounded
prey in a Florida marsh. Sometimes he feigned sleep in the
car so she'd sing along with the radio, forgetful of her
dignity. She might wander the scales for most of the song,
but he loved the confident punch she aimed at the last note
in a phrase.
"I get knocked DOWN
But I get up again,
You're never gonna
Keep me DOWN."
All right, so Scully couldn't
carry a tune. She was no
worse than half the party-goers. It wasn't as though
hearing "Silver Bells" sung in five different keys
would
kill anyone.
These mean people, whoever
they were, had better back off.
The next morning a fresh stack
of flyers turned up in each
coffee area.
This time when Mulder confiscated
the ballots, he left a
well-reasoned letter of rebuttal in their place. He proved
conclusively that anonymous insults merely made victims
paranoid and defensive, that positive reinforcement worked
better to change behavior in the long run, and that the
perpetrators had spent their childhoods behind compost
heaps, pulling the wings off flies.
All that Friday, Scully's
sad face made his throat
constrict with sympathetic tears. At bedtime she only
wanted to be held. Her need for passionless comfort led to
a night as painfully turgid as any he could remember. His
thoughts strayed frequently to the unknown villains who had
complicated his already problematic sex life.
Mulder finally soothed Scully
to sleep with a technical
discussion of devil dolls. She drifted off in the middle of
his questions about her solo trip to Maine. On the verge of
sleep himself, Mulder remembered an odd news story.
Recently there'd been been another outbreak of inexplicable,
self-destructive behavior among the inhabitants of a town
on Ammas Bay. He made a mental note to look into it.
Late Saturday morning, Mulder
woke to find Scully missing
from the bed. He discovered her lobbing cookbooks from the
kitchen shelf into a cardboard box labeled "AmVets."
He
caught "Recipes from the Elkstone Restaurant" in mid
air.
"What are you doing,
Scully? Your Mom gave you these
cookbooks!"
"It's no use, Mulder.
Some people have the gift and some
people don't."
"Hell, one piece of bad
luck doesn't mean a thing. Maggie
told me you fixed a Christmas turkey with all the trimmings
for her and your father that first year we worked
together."
"It was all from Chmiel's
Market," she said. "I threw away
the packages and put the food in my serving dishes." Scully
held her head high but her face flamed with the admission.
"My cooking always turns out wrong. Just now I looked up
techniques for cooking with meat substitutes. If I'd done
more research before I started, I'd have known to do
something more to the tofu than just layer it in."
"Well maybe you should
have re-considered using whole-grain
pasta and that no fat, dairy-free Cheese Pretender. But
that's beside the point. It was free food!"
Scully just shook her head.
The weekend passed with the
agonizing slowness of a poorly
rehearsed play. Mulder knew Scully knew she was supposed to
get over it. So she pretended not to care and he pretended
to believe her performance.
They both faltered when Mulder
tuned in "Iron Chef" during
his channel surfing. Scully fled the room. Mulder followed
her into the bedroom and begged her to call Karen Kosseff
for consolation and advice.
Scully's eyes teared up again.
"Maybe she's one of them,
Mulder. I could be pouring my
heart out to her, and she could be laughing at me inside.
Once I heard her joke about her sister's tough pie crust."
On Monday Mulder found more
flyers at each coffeepot. A
whiny defense of every American's Constitutional right to
inflict emotional cruelty appeared in red letters at the
top.
Mulder went silent and cold
inside. His intellect moved
freely through the frozen landscape of his feelings. A plan
seemed to spring fully formed from his brain.
He left the flyers in place,
taking only a few examples to
use in his investigation.
Next he called the Lone Gunmen
for help. Frohike's voice
was grim as he promised to implement scorched earth policy
against Scully's detractors. In the background Mulder could
hear Langly muttering something about losing their shirts
if they didn't squash that new First Person Shooter bug.
His words ended in a smothered "Don't shush . . .!"
Byers
came on the line and assured Mulder that he had their
undivided attention for as long as he needed it.
Within an hour the Gunmen
sent an e-mail attachment in
response to Mulder's plea for a research tool. He
downloaded an insidious little program they called
"Raptor," because it made "Carnivore" look
overgrown and
clumsy. Mulder unleashed it on the archives of personal
e-mails sent through the FBI LAN.
The greedy "Raptor"
began digesting thousands of messages.
Mulder left the Hoover Building to flash his badge at the
clerks in nearby copy stores. The office copiers didn't do
color. Only Publications had color copiers, and the use of
one required a signed work order. He didn't think the
conspirators were quite that stupid.
At Kwik Klonze he encountered
the nosy, talkative employee
he'd hoped to find. The resulting chat provided Mulder with
many answers.
Back in the lobby of the Hoover
Building Mulder stumbled
across fresh inspiration for his crusade. His glasses were
bent out of shape when he tried to break up a fist fight
between two friends who'd been car pooling together for
months.
"You know how hard I've
been working at toning!" shrieked a
stout woman dressed hopefully in a spandex skirt. "You must
have made that comment that my butt jiggles even more than
my low-brow, gelatin desserts."
"You're insane, Dorothy,"
her stolid, blonde opponent
rejoined. Her serenity didn't prevent her from attempting a
left hook that sent Mulder's glasses flying. "I ate two
helpings of your Miami Mango Surprise. You don't see Eric
making such a fuss, and they completely trashed his
'Poisson Bien Eleve.'"
"Ha! That's all you know.
Eric quit yesterday. He resigned
because he said he no longer knew his friends from his
enemies."
Mulder was thankful when security
guards rushed into the
painful space between the combatants. The stakes had been
raised in this conflict-- the canker of secrecy was eroding
the bureau itself. A personal matter had become a matter of
principle.
When he got back to his desk
he examined Raptor's output to
double-check the copy clerk's information. Everything
jibed. Now he knew the truth. The Lone Gunmen had already
begun to work on consequences. It would all be over before
the voting results could be tallied.
*****************
Glenda Arnold had just prepared
her breakfast when Mulder
entered her office. It surprised him to find a self-
designated gourmet dining on rubbery disks of summer
sausage dotted with squirts of Cheez Whiz.
"Hello Ms. Arnold,"
he greeted her. "I'll bet you've
forgotten all about that raffle ticket you bought at the
Holiday Potluck Dinner."
"I already explained
to the AD that I only took a sip of
the wine punch. I'm just sensitive to alcohol because I
never drink. Of course I remember the raffle perfectly.
What was the prize again?"
"Here's the prize. An
airline ticket and the plastic
surgery procedure of your choice at the City of Angels
Hospital in LA. Unfortunately the certificate expires the
day after tomorrow."
Mulder gave her his best sheepish
grin before he explained.
"See, I was the first
place winner. You got second prize.
You remember-- the Tupperware set. I set my winnings aside
and forgot about them until last night. I can't have the
elective surgery because I'm a bleeder," he said. "You
now
how some people bleed abnormally from slight trauma. You're
not a bleeder, I'm sure."
"No. But wait. I don't
understand. What kind of prize . . . .
This is crazy . . . I don't even . . . ."
"I know. You don't need
anything major done. But what about
a nice face peel? I've heard it takes years off. Anyway,
here you go. A round trip ticket to LA and a certificate
good for a procedure performed by Dr. Franklin Hartman.
Your call. Use it or don't."
Mulder stood back and stared
at Ms. Burr's face. He shook
his head slowly. She was looking into her pocket mirror
before he was out the door.
*****************
Eyes were the theme in Maia
Grimalkin's office. Waif-like
children with huge, sad eyes stared down at him from the
walls. An army of tiny stuffed animals occupied the shelf
over her desk and the top of her bookcase. They gave him a
beady-eyed third degree.
Mulder didn't understand why
anyone would choose to be
surrounded by images of half-starved, abandoned children,
or the kind of toys that come in "Happy Meals." It
was "de
gustibus" all over again.
"Ms. Grimalkin, I heard
you're a doll collector."
"Hmmm. Well, not dolls
exactly. You can see I'm into
collectibles," she crooned.
Mulder made a ceremonious
business out of removing a large
doll from the box he carried. He sat it on Ms. Grimalkin's
desk and made his pitch.
"I want to give this
doll to someone who deserves it. This
little beauty has a long history. The last owner died
tragically during an investigation without the chance to
bequeath her treasured possession. I saved it from the
incinerator. But my apartment is a typical bachelor pad. No
place for a lovable doll like this. She was last sold in
New England, but she might have been imported from Haiti.
Do you think the hair is human?" Mulder asked.
He couldn't bring himself
to touch the head directly. He
made a smoothing motion through the air over it.
"I've got contacts in
the business. I can track down her
provenance," the woman assured him. Her hands moved over
the doll's long hair and pinafore dress with assessing
thoroughness.
"I was told there was
a voice mechanism. I haven't been
able to activate it," Mulder volunteered. "If you handle
her right she might invite you to play."
"I don't think she's
worth much." Ms. Grimalkin's features
morphed from sentimental sympathy to extreme sincerity.
"But I'll take good care of her, for the sake of the poor
dead woman."
"I'm glad." Mulder
mirrored Ms. Grimalkin's expression
right back at her. "I wanted to find the perfect home for
her. Sentimental reasons you know."
Mulder's face was very tired
of being sincere by the time
he backed out into the hall. He saw Ms. Grimalkin pull up
the "Not-Quite-Antique Roadshow" page on her PC before
he
turned away.
*****************
Danny Quisling wore a plaid
flannel shirt, baggy khakis and
a bored stare. Mulder judged from the CD case open in front
of him that Quisling was listening to Eminem on his Walkman
while he played "Puppy Massacre" on his PC.
Mulder tried to look embarrassed
and uncertain.
"Um. Mr. Quisling. I've
gotten this invitation in the mail,
but . . . I didn't think I should accept. I'm just too . . .
well, old, to put it plainly. My reflexes aren't what they
used to be." Mulder let a small, nervous "heh, heh,"
escape. "It's an opportunity to beta test a cutting edge,
virtual reality game called 'First Person Shooter.'"
The young man almost snatched
the paper from Mulder's hand.
His brief animation faded as he read it.
"It's in California.
I can't afford to go."
"Oh, didn't I mention?
There's a round trip plane ticket
included."
Mulder made a show of slapping
possible ticket hiding
places until he pulled the packet out of an inside jacket
pocket.
Mr. Quisling gave him a calculating
look.
"There wasn't any spending
money, was there?" he asked.
"Afraid not," Mulder
shrugged. "But I'm told the game is
rewardingly intense. One minute it's all for fun and then
suddenly . . . ."
Quisling's attention had already
shifted back to his game.
He didn't notice when Mulder slipped out, leaving his
sentence incomplete.
*****************
Mulder's knew from his forays
into personnel records that
Toni Philby was twice Quisling's age. A thick layer of
foundation embossed her wrinkles in orange. There might
have been fewer wrinkles if she hadn't been insect-thin and
tanned like a hide. The yellow streaks in her short black
hair matched the row of enamel studs that curled around the
outer edges of her ears.
"Good afternoon, Ms.
Philby. I'm here because of your new
topographical matching system. I was wondering if you could
show me how it works."
"Of course Mr. . . .
?"
"Mulder. I'm Special
Agent Mulder. But to tell the truth,
this isn't directly work-related. It's about a hobby of
mine. Old maps fascinate me and I've come across a fragment
that might be . . . well, uniquely interesting."
"Do you have a digitized
image? And an estimated scale?"
Ms. Philby asked.
"Yes, right here."
In his eagerness Mulder fumbled and
dropped the diskette he took from his pocket.
"The search could take
hours. Do you have any leads that
would narrow the parameters?"
Mulder looked uncertain. "I
don't like to say. It could
skew the results, but try . . . Florida!"
"Ah, that should help,"
Ms. Philby observed as she slid the
diskette into place. "It's still going to take a while.
Have a seat." She indicated the chair at the corner of her
desk with a sly grin. "Cast your vote while you wait."
A stack of the familiar Pot
Luck ballots occupied the seat
of the chair. Mulder picked them up and sat down. "Vote?"
he echoed. He put on the clueless expression that sometimes
got Scully to smile even after he'd made them so late for
their flight that they didn't have time to fill the gas
tank before returning their rental car.
"For the crummiest dish
at the Pot Luck, of course!" Ms.
Philby said impatiently. Don't you think it's a great idea?
That'll teach people better than to think just anyone can
cook."
"I would vote,"
Mulder mused aloud, "But I can't help
thinking that someone's feelings might be hurt."
"Oh, for heaven's sake!
That's the chance you take when you
go public without proper training and practice. If they
can't take the heat . . . ." she began in a sing-song
diction.
"They should get out
of the kitchen," Mulder finished. "How
clever. But bad cooking is harmless. They may not realize . .
."
"That's where I . . .
I mean the anonymous critics come in.
They'll be shamed into improvement. There are too many
calories in the world already. That's why Americans are
getting fat."
"Don't you think a little
extra weight in the face is
flattering as a woman gets older?" Mulder asked.
"What's that got to do
with anything?" she asked.
"Nothing. Nothing. Sorry,
I misspoke. I was distracted.
How's the search coming?"
"Sixty per cent done.
What's the story of the map, anyway?
"It's probably not a
real map. Just a fantasy of a place,
like Never, Never Land or Pleasure Island. There's a legend
of a fountain. . . . This map was drawn on parchment in
the sixteenth century. The descendant of a Timucuan Indian
discovered it when an antique clay pot shattered. Most of
the paper crumbled, but you can still read 'de la juventud'
next to the destination. Can you believe it? A fountain of
youth." Mulder gave a soft laugh. "It's nonsense of
course.
I don't believe it for a minute. But what if . . . ?"
"You're talking about
the literal Fountain of Youth? It's a
good thing you haven't gotten your hopes up!" Ms. Philby
exclaimed.
"I'm not so foolish.
And yet, I'm pretty sure about the
source of the map. There's a legend among his people about
a tribe of Indians who lived for many lifetimes with
straight backs, smooth, plump faces and hair like the
raven's wing."
Ms. Philby didn't move when
a tone signaled the end of the
map search. Mulder had to repeat her name twice before she
broke her reverie to check the results.
"It's done," she
reported. "With one match."
She clicked on the Map Option
and a graphic popped up. The
image showed a bird's eye view of a nature preserve
overlaid by a transparency of the map fragment.
"Leon County, in western
Florida," Ms. Philby read from the
screen. "Wasn't the Spanish guy who searched for the
Fountain of Youth named 'Ponce de Leon?'"
Mulder ignored her question.
"Could you print that for me?"
Ms. Philby clicked on 'Print'
and asked another question.
"That 'X' is supposed to mark the location of the fountain,
isn't it?"
Mulder had put on his glasses
and was already waiting at
the printer to grab the page as it rolled out. He tilted
his head backwards, forwards and sideways to view the
merged map image.
"My glasses don't fit
right anymore," he explained when he
noticed Ms. Philby's curious stare at his gyrations. "They
got twisted in a fight. You'd be surprised how much a
little change in the lens angle distorts vision."
Mulder began to drift toward
the door, still engrossed in
the paper. "Thank you very much, Ms. Philby. This will add
an interesting footnote to my monograph for the
"Cryptocartography Monthly."
"You're welcome,"
she answered. "Oh, don't forget . . . ."
"Am I forgetting something?"
He looked up but his eyes
weren't focused.
"Never mind. I was going
to . . . remind you to vote. But
you're too busy. Good luck with your article."
When Mulder peeked around
the corner a moment later he
glimpsed Ms. Philby pocketing his diskette while she zeroed
in on Leon County with Trip Planner.
*********************
Completed contest ballots
gathered crumbs and coffee drips
in the coffee areas for several days. When the cleaning
crew got tired of working around them, they fell into
wastebaskets and disappeared.
No one noticed that the early
results of the vote were
never posted. Everyone in the department was too busy
trying to compensate for the sudden loss of four employees.
There was talk of a plot,
but nothing was found to connect
a murder, suicide, accident and disappearance. When Mulder
began raising his eyebrows in polite disbelief, the most
eloquent proponents of conspiracy lost confidence in their
cause.
*********************
An X-File could happen to
anyone. The fact remained that
some people deserved them more than others. Mulder felt
good about balancing out some of the unfairness he'd
witnessed in their past distribution. He considered the
money spent on plane tickets, cosmetic surgery, a doll, and
three floral tributes as his contribution to employee
morale.
When he got home the next
Friday, the delectable smell of
Stouffer's microwaveable manicotti drew him into the
kitchen. Scully was singing as she assembled plates and
silverware for two on the table. She wore the blue,
feather-soft sweater and snug, faded jeans.
Mulder enjoyed the effect
of the outfit while he fumbled
blindly inside a cupboard for the bottle of chianti he'd
stashed there a week ago. He poured two glasses.
He relished the rough zestiness
of the wine as it rolled
over his tongue. It was only the first of many oral
delights he promised himself tonight. His happy baritone
joined Scully's wobbly soprano in the song's refrain.
"You don't KNOW how
far I'd GO
To ease this precious ACHE.
You don't KNOW how much I'd GIVE
Or how much I can TAKE."
********************************************
The End of Strange Meat
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