Tachyon

"Our time is a very shadow that passeth away."

The Book of Solomon

Part Two: Discovery

IV.

Having the phone ring at two in the morning was never a good thing. When you were assistant director of one of the largest investigative units of the FBI, it was a regular, yet still ominous, occurrence. Walter Skinner reached for the ringing phone at the same time he slipped on his glasses, mentally running down a list of his agents and their current status.

Madsen and Suarez, on assignment in New York, scheduled to return to DC in the morning. Horton, consulting in Pennsylvania, but he had just spoken to her yesterday afternoon and everything seemed to be progressing normally. Lindsey and Greer, writing up the report from their latest kidnapping case in California.

Mulder and Scully. They were off investigating a case in Mississippi. Somehow, he knew their names would be the subject of the early morning phone call. Despite Scully's steadying influence, Mulder's propensity to engage in the bizarre had landed the two in strange predicaments over the last four years, and had caused his phone to ring numerous times in the early morning.

No wonder Skinner was going increasingly bald.

"Skinner," he mumbled into the receiver, the slight husky tone to his voice the only hint that he had been asleep.

"Assistant Director Skinner, this is Beverly White in the communications department. I am sorry to disturb you so early in the morning, but I have an urgent call on the line from the field office in Mississippi." Funny, he felt no victory in being right about this one.

"Transfer," he said briskly, sitting up in bed and switching on the table lamp.

There was brief moment of silence, and then a thick Southern accent reached his ears. "AD Skinner, this is SAC White from Jackson. I hate to be calling you at this hour, sir, but we have a situation here that you might need to be aware of."

Yes, Mulder and Scully were certainly capable of being called a situation. "I assume this is in regards to Agents Mulder and Scully."

"Yes, sir. They called us a few days ago when they arrived in town, and I spoke to Agent Scully once by phone after they traveled to Faunsdale. But I received a phone call from the sheriff this evening telling me that they haven't checked in for two days. He assumed they left town, but then he saw their car parked in front of the station. I was hoping they had checked in with you."

Such an answer would be too simple, and he could well imagine Mulder getting the urge to run out of town following up a new lead, but he instinctively knew that something was amiss. "No, Agent White, they are not here in DC. And no one at your office has spoken to them in the last few days?"

"No, sir. I just didn't want to let this one go, in case …" His voice trailed off, and Skinner silently filled in the blank. In case something was seriously wrong. Mulder and Scully had been investigating a string of missing persons, he remembered, the bizarre underscore to the case being that the victims had vanished into thin air, with no evidence to be found related to their disappearance. "When were they last seen?" he asked.

He heard the younger agent shuffle through some notes before he answered. "Two days ago, in the morning. They were interviewing a suspect in the latest abduction at the local police station. Seems that no one saw them leave, and no one has seen or spoken to them since."

Skinner felt the small hairs on his neck stand on end. His instincts had saved his ass more than once in his professional career, and his instincts were screaming at him that something was very, very wrong. "Thank you, Agent White. I'll be in touch," he murmured, dropping the phone back onto the receiver and throwing off the bed sheets. He prepared for his flight to Mississippi as soon as the sun came up.

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"This is better than my home movie collection." Mulder's voice was earnest and just a touch wistful.

She shot him a quick glance, and smiled at his sincerity. "That's saying a lot, Mulder, considering how attached you are to some of your … special … videos."

They sat on the floor facing the open window, watching the clouds dance above them in the sky. She had to agree with Mulder. There was something fascinating and hypnotizing in the way the clouds were rushing by. At first, it was almost nauseating, the speed at which the sky traveled. But, after watching for some period of time, she felt relaxed, lulled.

Their cell phones lay on the floor between them, useless, although they had been trying them periodically. Mulder had left the television on, but it was silent. There was no static and no sound.

"Pass me the chips, will you?" She handed Mulder the open bag of chips near her leg and settled back against the bed, comforted by the warmth of his body next to hers. "Should we be tired yet, Mulder?" Her wristwatch showed that it was nearing midnight, but there was no sign of darkness in the sky. Her body was giving her mixed signals. While her eyes were beginning to droop with exhaustion, she could feel the tension and nervous energy in her body from the anxious atmosphere.  

"Maybe," he answered. "But I'm not tired." He paused for a brief moment, and she heard him munch on a chip before he crumbled the bag into his hands and tossed it into the air in the general vicinity of the trashcan. "He shoots, he scores," he proclaimed in a stage whisper, slinging his hands up above his head.

"Hey, Scully," he finally asked, twisting his body over to look at her. "I know you don't believe in time travel, and I know you think what I said outside was crazy. But what do you think about the actual subject, from a scientific perspective?"

She hated to even say the words, feeling that, by doing so, she would somehow give credibility to an idea that was simply impossible. But she had nothing better to offer as a hypothesis at the moment. She was disoriented, and debating with Mulder was the only immediate way she could think of to construct her normal version of reality.

"Time travel, Mulder," she began, after picking at the worn carpet beneath her fingers for several moments, "is one of the great scientific hoaxes of our time. People want to believe, to change their mistakes of the past and learn the mysteries of the future, so we have been subjected to a grandiose Hollywood version of something which cannot exist."

Her words sounded too fervent even to her own ears.

"Why can't it exist, Scully?" His look was intense, and so incredibly Mulder, that she relented.

"Mulder, even though I may have rewritten Einstein, I am not a quantum physicist. My interpretation of his whole twin paradox idea is that, while intriguing in theory, it is impossible in practice."

"You may not be a physicist, Scully, but you are familiar with the laws that govern the universe. You can't just rule it out of hand, and I believe, at one time, you didn't. I know we have seen some impossible things happen since we've been together. Things that don't always fit into a neat category. But wouldn't you agree that the laws of physics can often be distorted in our work?"

"Mulder, you don't distort them. You discard them all together." She earned a derisive laugh, but kept going. "I believe that time as we know it is not multi-dimensional. It exists in the moment we draw our breath, and then it is gone, never to be recovered. What Einstein wrote about may follow the laws of theory, but not the laws of reality."

Hearing her thoughts in the stillness of the motel room saddened her. "Of course, there are things I would like to change, Mulder. I would want to be there for my father one last time. I would stop Missy from ever going into my apartment. I would relive the first day we met." She wasn't surprised to feel the warmth of his hand covering her hand. "But I can't, Mulder, because those moments don't exist except in my memory, and I can never physically go back there."

"And the future?" he asked.

She sighed. "We both know that the future could hold some ominous things, Mulder. I don't know if I want to see how the world turns out, but even if I did, I can't. Not beyond my biological lifetime, anyway."

God, she was so very tired. Whatever had happened to them, it had drained her of her strength, and she realized that she just didn't give a damn anymore. Without asking, she laid her head down in Mulder's lap, and closed her eyes, blocking out the dancing clouds from her view.

Mulder never flinched. Hesitating only a moment, he reached up to stroke her hair with a gentleness that surprised her. "In theory, Scully, I might agree with you." She made a mental note to jot down the day's date, whatever it happened to be, on her palm pilot. Mulder actually agreed with her that day, not once, but three times.

"But, what if, Scully? What if, somehow, when we walked out of that room into the police station, we walked into some sort of alternate dimension? Forward, backward. I don't know. But isn't it somehow possible that we encountered some sort of transport of sorts? Something that affected only the two of us? You said it yourself, when we were in the store, that the town as we saw it this morning still exists. You and I are the only ones who have been affected."

"In Faunsdale, Mississippi," she replied, her sarcasm thick. "A time transport, a shift in the speed of light that caused us to be bumped forward, or backward, in time. From the police station. It makes perfect sense, Mulder."

Mulder's words were ludicrous, yet they throbbed against her closed eyes, creating another soon to be pounding headache. She felt herself drift along his words, and was unsure if he was still talking, or if she was dreaming. She slept restlessly. Mulder's voice was distant. "A transport, Scully. Einstein himself predicted it. You wrote about it. A shorter dimension connecting two points in space, in time."

Time. Her father stood over them. His body was slightly decomposed, and she drew back from him in fear, feeling a cold sweat drip between her breasts. "Dana Scully, what have you done?" he whispered, yet his voice echoed loudly in her ears. What have you done, she asked herself.

What have you done?

The vision of her father disappeared as Mulder jerked to his feet, crouching down low on the ground. She rolled onto the carpet, a muffled "humph" coming from her parched mouth. "What…" she managed to murmur as she pushed up to her elbows, before he leaned over and put his finger to her lips. "I heard someone," he mouthed silently, jerking his head toward the open door.

Oh, Jesus. It was her father. He was outside.

The haze of her dream disappeared and she took a deep steadying breath. Her father was dead. She was here, somewhere, with Mulder. They hadn't seen another soul all day, besides each other. And now someone was outside.

With a quick nod to him, she pulled her Sig from her holster, absently wondered if the damn thing even worked, and stepped in front of him into the parking lot.

V.

She closed her eyes briefly against the blinding sun, and she felt Mulder’s hand pause momentarily on her back as he came up behind her. It seemed that, no matter how often they played this little game, the thrill of the hunt never went away. She felt that thrill again today, but she was dismayed to realize it was accompanied by something else she rarely, if ever, experienced. Fear.

“Where did you hear the voice coming from?” she asked Mulder, her tone low and urgent. They had been stranded in this place, wherever it was, for too long for them to miss out on this opportunity to find someone, anyone, who might know what the hell was going on. 

“Over there,” he answered after a brief second, nodding his head toward the main office. She absently noticed that his hand never left her lower back, staying there for longer than was really necessary. At this point, she didn’t care. She craved the touch, and it made her feel safe, everything that their surroundings did not.

They walked silently together under the overhang, their footsteps making an even cadence on the concrete. Scully jumped when Mulder grabbed her arm. “Do you hear that? It’s the voice I heard before.” She watched him with squinted eyes. Was Mulder losing touch with reality? She hadn’t heard a single sound other than the persistent and eerie echo of their footsteps. “Mulder, I didn’t…” she started before he reacted.

“There it was again,” he exclaimed, walking quickly toward the motel office. She hung behind for only a moment, long enough to admit that she had heard a faint laugh coming from the building. A woman, maybe the manager? But it was faint, and distant. It didn’t sound right.

Scully trotted up behind him as he pushed the door open with his foot, and she raised her Sig to her shoulder, surveying the surroundings. It was as empty as when they saw it this afternoon, the pitiful fern still occupying the dubious place of honor by the front window. “Mulder, there’s no one here. Was it the television you heard? Or the radio?” she asked, walking over to where the radio sat behind the counter.

He stood in the center of the empty room. “I heard a voice, Scully. It came from here. I heard it all the way down in our motel room.” He was defensive, which made her worried. If Mulder was hearing voices, and she was agreeing with him, then neither of them could be expected to be rational in this situation. And that was exactly what they needed. But it was obvious that no one had been in this office for some time.

“Mulder, I think your mind is playing tricks on you,” she said reluctantly, walking back out to stand before him. She instinctively put her hand to his face and leaned closer to check his eyes. Bloodshot, but not overly dilated. His skin was warm, but not feverish. Taking care of Mulder was as second nature as her own name. “I’m fine, Scully,” he said, pushing her hand away with irritation.

A sudden movement from outside caught her attention. There was a female figure standing by the window, and Scully clearly saw her blonde pigtail hanging down her back. “Hey,” she shouted as she pushed Mulder to the side, running toward the open door. “Stop,” she added, her voice shrill to her own ears. She felt a rush of oxygen into her body as she stepped outside, reaching her hand toward the woman.

Then she was alone. The figure that she saw so clearly in front of her, the petite blonde wearing jeans and a ponytail, vanished. Her hand grasped into nothingness, and she nearly lost her balance, falling against the brick wall in an effort to keep upright. Looking into the office window, she saw that Mulder was gone. He wasn’t there.

She gasped, panicking. “Mulder!” she shouted, turning quickly to see if he was behind her. “Mulder!” she shouted again, carefully holding her weapon in front of her as she retraced her steps back into the office. Dear god, no. She could not be alone. She had left him standing right behind her, had stepped outside for only a moment. There was no time for him to go anywhere.

Just as there was no time for everyone in the town to disappear this morning. 

She began to shake and felt her knees buckle, bringing her body down upon the green shag carpet. “This is not happening,” she muttered, over and over to herself. “I am at home in Georgetown, I am in my bed, I am safe.” The words rang out unconvincingly, and she fought the waves of nausea rippling through her. “What is happening to me?” she whispered, her question going unanswered.

A sharp clatter from the parking lot caused her to jump, rolling up and bringing her gun instinctively in front of her. “Mulder!” she shouted again, forcing her legs to support her and walk her to the door of the office. “Where are you, Mulder? Talk to me, damn it!” She was screaming, her voice hoarse. Scully knew she was panicking. She catalogued her body’s reactions with the patient efficiency of her medical training, and remembered the first rule of engagement from the academy. Maintain the upper hand.

“Oh my god,” she whispered as she walked into the parking lot. Something was changing. The sky was darker, and she saw the clouds whipped into a fury. They were mocking her, dancing over her head. She swore they were like tap shoes, and she could feel the pounding in her head behind her eyes. Even the tops of the tall pine trees across the road were moving in rhythm to the increasing chaos, and she felt the weakness flow through her as she became immersed in the turmoil.

Suddenly, a strong hand gripped her shoulder, and she turned, firing her weapon into the air before she focused her eyes.

“Jesus, Scully,” Mulder exclaimed, grabbing her as she fell forward against him. “It’s me, Scully. It’s Mulder.” He took the gun out of her hand and slid down to the ground with her, holding her tightly.

“Where did you go, Mulder?” she asked, desperately trying to focus on his face. His eyes were blazing with concern, and she felt an instant remorse that she had caused him such agony. “I’m sorry I almost shot you,” she added with sincere regret.

He was silent, the irony of her statement obvious even to her. “I imagine you are, Scully.” He pushed her hair away from her eyes, and she could tell from the trembling of his hands that he was more frightened than he would admit. “I was right here. I never left the office. You ran outside and just vanished, and when I walked out to look for you, I saw the sky. It was dark, like a thunderstorm coming in. And then you were there in front of me.”

“I saw someone, Mulder. I saw a woman standing there, and when I ran out to see her, you vanished.”  She saw the doubt flicker in his eyes before he gave her a solemn nod. “But I did, Mulder. I saw her, just like I am here with you right now. She was standing right here, looking out at the road…”

Her voice trailed off as his gaze followed her hand, and they both saw that the sun had once again returned, and the clouds had slowed their demonic dance. It looked just as it had when they first arrived at the motel. The trees were still, and the glare from the two-lane asphalt caused her to squint. “I need to lie down,” she admitted, feeling no shame from her weakness. Something had affected her differently than it had Mulder, and she knew she needed all her strength to help get them out of here.

“C’mere,” he managed, hoisting her up against him and leading her back the sidewalk to their room. “You know, Scully,” he said, supporting her under her arm and grasping tightly onto her hand, “I always imagined that if I was leading you to bed like this, we would have been having a lot more fun beforehand.” She gave him a light shove in the rubs. “Before we even got to bed, or after?”

He helped her into bed without comment, placing the thin pillow beneath her head. “Water?” he asked, and she nodded. Her throat was so dry, and she felt like she had just run a marathon. Even her toes were tired. “Hey, Mulder,” she finally asked after she emptied the water bottle, sitting up slightly so she could see his face. She imagined what she was about to say was going to shock him.

“I think I know what happened to us,” she continued, and he leaned forward slightly, encouraging her to go on. It sounded so preposterous to her ears, but, after what happened to her in the parking lot, she was ready to believe anything that was even the slightest bit tangible. She took a deep breath. He made her believe, made her remember the Dana Scully she once was, hunched over physics books, examining the possibilities through eyes that were unjaded and open. She used to believe. Maybe, in their current crisis, she could believe again. “Somehow, Mulder, you and I were caught up in a warp, an atmospheric disturbance. Einstein predicted that the faster a person travels, like at the speed of light, the more time slows down for them relevant to someone standing still.”

Oh, god. She sounded just like Mulder at his most fervent. He was never going to let her live this down. “And?” he prompted, his face expressionless. “And, I think that this transport has placed us forward in time. The woman I saw, and I did see her, Mulder, she was the image of someone from another moment in time, standing outside that window. I don’t know why we saw her, or where I went to when I walked out that door. But this is the only thing that makes sense.” And it makes damn little sense at that, she thought. But she believed, she had to believe.

He took the water bottle from her, and could hear a thousand offhanded time travel jokes running through his mind. But he believed, too. He had from the moment she first woke up in his bed, and he was waiting for her to accept the same conclusion.

“A future that does not yet exist?” he solemnly asked, reading her thoughts. She nodded soberly. “It only exists for us,” she whispered. For all they had encountered, and all she had seen, this moment might be the most profound. A world with only she and Mulder. The concept was almost impossible for her to fathom.

“I agree with you, Scully. I don’t know how we got here or why, but something has changed.” They both knew the dilemma. She sat up and grabbed onto his hand before she spoke. “But the question is, Mulder, is not how or why we got here. How do we get back?”

VI.

Skinner stepped out of the dusty Dodge, and felt like he just walked into a sauna. It amazed him how it could be this hot at six in the evening. The sun was setting in the field across the highway, but the thick Mississippi humidity caused his dress shirt to stick lightly to his lower back and a persistent drizzle of sweat to inch down his neck. Damn, it was humid.

He had arrived in Jackson early that afternoon, after missing the flight out of Dulles and being shuttled through Atlanta for some god awful connecting flight. Agent White met him at the small terminal, and briefed him on the situation during the drive to Faunsdale. Seemed as if Mulder and Scully had really done a number this time around.

From all accounts, the two had simply vanished. The police reports showed they had arrived at the station early in the morning to interview a suspect in their case. The young officer at the desk let them into the room, and then watched as they questioned James Everett at length. He escorted Mr. Everett from the room, leaving Mulder and Scully talking by the window. And that was it. No one saw them leave; no one had spoken to them since. Their car sat parked in front of the station, and their motel rooms were empty.

The nagging suspicion that something was wrong, that he first felt in his bed in DC that morning, was now pounding, causing a massive headache to build behind his eyes.  

“This is the motel where your agents were staying, sir,” Agent White said, leading the way towards a plain one-level motel set back from the two-lane road by a large parking lot. “The manager saw them leave in the morning with Agent Mulder driving, but they have not returned. Their rooms have not been entered, and—” 

A petite woman came walking towards them from the office, her long blonde ponytail bouncing with each stride. She greeted them with a wide smile, her hand extended. “Ya’ll must be the FBI agents from Jackson. I’m Sheryl. My grandfather owns this place.” They exchanged pleasantries, and, while Agent White spoke to Sheryl, Skinner turned to survey the building. 

It looked like a million other ramshackle motels where he had stayed during his own stint as a field agent, and the forest behind the building reminded him of the acres and acres of pine trees he saw from the airplane as he flew into Jackson. But there was something ominous in the air and he knew, if he sensed it, then Mulder and Scully definitely had. They had an almost uncanny perception of the world around them at times, a perception that, while he couldn’t pretend to understand, he certainly respected. 

“Can I see their rooms?” he asked, interrupting Agent White’s question. “Of course,” Sheryl answered, extending her hand with two silver keys. He took them, and then walked toward the building, his shoes crunching on the loose rocks in the parking lot. 

He was so focused on the job that it took a moment for the sound to register with him. His steps, and the soft echo. He glanced behind him, expecting Agent White to be following, but was surprised when he saw the young man standing where he had left him, by the rental car near the road. The echo accompanied him the remainder of his walk to the door. 

He opened the first door with a small click, and knew instantly it was Scully’s. The bed was neatly made, even though Sheryl had mentioned that the housekeeper had not entered either room since the night before they disappeared. A few toiletries were stacked near the sink. In a strange way, Skinner felt as if he were violating Scully’s privacy, and walked lightly towards the bathroom mirror, turning back to face the door. 

The man silhouetted in the doorframe surprised him, and he unconsciously reached for his holster before he spoke. “Can I help you?” he asked, his voice even, betraying none of his anxiousness. This case was too strange, and he was jumpy. “I believe you can, Mr. Skinner,” the man replied, as he stepped into the room, leaving the door open behind him. Across the road, Skinner saw the last of the sun setting behind the trees, and the room was dimly lit with the emergency lights from the walkway. 

Flicking his cigarette out the open door, the man stepped toward him, dropping a bundle of loose papers on the bed. “What are those?” he asked, his suspicions on full alert and his hand still resting on the handle of his Sig. “These papers, Mr. Skinner, are the explanation to your missing agents. You should be able to put the pieces together, but I don’t think you will be able to find them. Your presence here is unnecessary and dangerous.” 

Skinner walked to the bed, glancing down at the letterhead on the top sheet. “NASA?” he asked. “What the hell does the space agency want with Mulder and Scully?” The papers were crude copies, streaked in black ink, but he could clearly make out the NASA logo on the subsequent pages as he thumbed quickly through them.  

The man’s answer was as dark and ominous as his expression. “Nothing, Mr. Skinner. Yet your agents came across something they shouldn’t, and now they are gone.” Gone? This made no sense. “Explain,” he growled, glaring at the man lounging by the window. 

“You wouldn’t understand even if I did, Mr. Skinner. But I assume you are familiar with the Stedman Space Center?” Skinner nodded impatiently. Stedman was one of the ten NASA field centers, located not too far from Faunsdale, near the Gulf Coast. “I know where Stedman is,” he answered. “Tell me what the hell is going on.” 

“Stedman is in charge of research for the rocket propulsion systems for the shuttle, Mr. Skinner. Stedman was also chosen as the site for research that relates to your missing agents.” Skinner glanced down at the top sheet a little closer, and saw “Project Tachyon” staring back at him. 

The man continued. “A tachyon is a particle that can travel faster than the speed of light, Mr. Skinner. It has always been presumed to be hypothetical, of course, until now. Scientists believed not enough energy existed to propel a particle that fast. Do you know what happens when a particle travels faster than the speed of light?” 

Skinner tried hard to remember his basic physics classes from college. He frowned. It was impossible. “Traveling faster than the speed of light means traveling faster than time.” But time travel was a science fiction concoction, an impossible scenario. The man read his thoughts. “Nothing is impossible, Mr. Skinner, not when the federal government and infinite amounts of money are involved. Who needs infinite energy when you can siphon tax dollars?” 

Skinner stood very still, holding the papers in his hands. Despite the humidity, he felt the sweat chill on his neck, and his hands felt clammy. “Are you telling me,” he said slowly, enunciating each word carefully, “that Mulder and Scully have traveled in time?”

The words were ludicrous, but the man’s intense gaze spoke of his utmost sincerity.  

“The project went awry, Mr. Skinner,” he concluded, walking towards him and stopping a few short inches from his face. “The ability to transport articles into the future became uncontrollable. They shut it down, but it was too late. Ripples of the effect have already gone out. There’s nothing you, or your agents can do.” 

With that, he turned toward the door. Skinner felt like a suffocating fish, his mouth slightly agape, the papers clutched firmly in his hand. Despite his belief that time travel was impossible, he knew the man was telling what he believed to be the truth. It was instinctual, and he trusted people so rarely these days that he went with his instinct. 

“What’s your name?” he asked, and his voice dropped off as he saw the figure of the man in the doorway, the edges hazy and undefined. “I’m simply a friend, Mr. Skinner. Go home. There’s nothing you can do here.” Skinner blinked, and the man was gone.

A few seconds passed before he ran to the door, bumping into Agent White coming down the walkway. “Sir!” the younger agent exclaimed, stepping backwards as the papers scattered across the parking lot. Kneeling down to pick them up, Skinner took a deep breath. Barely glancing up, his voice was low and urgent. “Did you see anyone leave the room?” 

Agent White hesitated, trying to follow Skinner’s train of thought. “No, sir. I was talking to Sheryl and then walked directly here. There was no one—“

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Part Three: Flight