Title: Echo Mountain (1/1) Author: Robin Starveling Rating: PG (Language and Adult Situations) Classification: X - X-Files Spoilers/Timeline: This tale falls somewhere late in the first season, between "Darkness Falls" and "The Erlenmeyer Flask." Nothing in this story should adversely affect one's enjoyment of any X-Files episode they have yet to see. Keywords/Misc Descriptions: Though not an "Alternate Universe Story", perhaps this can be used as a partial explanation for any other alternate universe stories in the archives. This is a "plotter" story, not a "shipper." There is NO romance. It deals with Alternate Realities and Missing Persons. Skinner, Samantha and Scully's Father are briefly mentioned. Point Of View: 3rd Person Limited; lending towards Scully's perspective Summary: A puzzle involving a penny with Polk's profile and two missing thrillseekers brings Scully & Mulder to the Colorado Mtns. DISCLAIMERS: The following contains characters owned by Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions. The intent is fan fiction. It is my understanding that Carter and 1013 are under legal restraints NOT to accept unsolicited ideas or manuscripts and this is not written to be considered for the series. If ideas or concepts contained herein are found in similar X-Files episodes in the future, I publically relinquish any rights to seek legal action against Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen or related organizations and corporate entities regarding my publically expressed USENET Newsgroup post. This is for entertainment purposes only. I give my permission for this to be sent to newsgroups & archives as long as this header stays with the work. Events and characters below are fictitious. Any similarity to persons or events living, dead or undead are purely coincidental. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. The Earth Is Flat. Feedback of any sort is appreciated. Please write to bobdobbs@flash.net if you have the inclination. _______________________________________________________________________ "Like,--but oh how different! ...Yes, it was the Mountain Echo." - William Wordsworth Echo Mountain a short story in tribute to "The X-Files" by Robin Starveling _______________________________________________________________________ He stood on the edge of the precipice. She could just reach out to touch him, but as she did he suddenly moved farther away. No, he didn't move. He remained at the cliff. She was moving back. Some force was pulling her away. Some powerful wind of color making it hard for her to see her surroundings clearly. "I have to Scully. I have to find her." "NO! That's not where she is! Can't you see the cliff? Look at me!" He didn't look back. He never looked back. He just stepped away and fell. And suddenly she felt herself plummeting for what felt like - The clock read 11:21 pm. She awoke with a start. It seemed so vivid, and yet it was so blurred and distorted. Of course it was a dream, she thought. How silly of me. Still shaking the sensation of falling from her mind, Dana Scully stood up and sleepily made her way to the kitchen. "Ice Cream," she said dazedly out loud in a near whisper as she opened the freezer door. "I eat too much ice cream." _______________ "Ever been to Colorado?" Mulder asked as she walked in the door to their office, as if picking up from where they left off in a previous conversation, never missing a beat. She missed a beat however, because it didn't sound like part of any conversation they had had before. "I - I don't recall- I-" "Come on, Scully. Don't sound like a politician before a Senate SubCommittee on me now." He gave her his patented sarcastic grin, "Kill the lights." Since she was right by them next to the door, she absent-mindedly flicked the lights off, then self-consciously stood by the door, because she suddenly couldn't make her way to the chairs across the room. Fox Mulder nonchalantly flicked on the slide projector without any discomfort due to lack of sight, and the room was now dimly bathed in light from the white screen he had used countless times to introduce her to various cases. Damn, she thought, and I was so looking forward to a few hours of paperwork before heading home early. The white screen quickly gave way to a beautiful picture of Colorado mountains with two rugged looking figures at the foot of them. They appeared to be dressed in blue jackets and jeans, carrying rock climbing equiptment. Compared to the mountains behind them, the two men she saw looked like toy action figures. A twinge of fear crept up her spine. She and Mulder recently went to the woods to invesigate a case and were almost the main course for a swarm of hungry prehistoric insects. "Oh no Mulder!" Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she took a few steps towards a chair so she could sit down for this one, "I don't care if those two guys found Bigfoot. I'm not going climbing up a rock face risking certain death." "Relax, we'll be taking a jeep. You know, and All Terrain Motor Vehicle. Besides, those aren't 'guys'. They're women." Scully was about to sit down, having found a chair in the dark office, and that statement caught her bending her knees, halfway into the chair. She looked at the slide again, then took a couple steps towards it trying to discern features. She was again taken by surprise when Mulder flicked sharply the slide projector to a close up of the two women. "Yvette and Rosalyn Rutledge. Four time winners of the Colorado Springs Cross Country Skiing Championships. Two time winners of the Boulder Bike-a-thon for charity. They climb mountains in between races, to keep away the boredom, I guess." "Alright, let ME guess. They climbed up that mountain, went down the other side, ran into a young Richard Dreyfus and had a close encounter of the strangest kind, am I right?" "No. Four weeks ago they climbed up that mountain, and never came back." "Well that would have been my next guess." "They happen to be related to a friend of Skinner, which is how I first heard about them." "You've been having power lunches with Skinner? Rubbing elbows with our boss, that's so unlike you Mulder." "No, he came to me about it. Said it was up our alley and I have to agree." "What's so strange about a disappearance in the mountains? Accidents in thrill seeking of that nature are very common. There must be a score of other branches of public service who could better handle this." "There are, and there have. The National Forrest Service. Local and state police. Even the Rutledge sister's own favorite organization; High Adventure Anonymous," they both stifled giggles at that, "and all searches have turned up nothing.. Nothing that is except this." Mulder flicked the slide projector one more time, and revealed a large close up of an old, weather beaten copper penny, with green oxidization on the edges. There was a little 'D' indicating it was made at the Delaware mint. The date was circled: 1937. He looked at her smugly. Scully could never say no to a mystery. "This was found by the local police a few weeks ago on one of their first days of search operations. It was found in the wreckage of a plane that can't be five years old, but there has never been a report of a downed plane at Echo Mountain." There was something odd about the coin, but Scully couldn't quite put her finger on it. "So this was found somewhere on that mountain? An old penny, Mulder. Anyone could have dropped that." "You're right. I'm not speculating either of the Rutledge sisters dropped that penny, Scully. They may have never been around it." "What are you speculating?" "Take a good look at that penny, Scully. What do you see?" "I see alot of oxidization, that's simply explained due to erosion and exposure to the-" "Look again, Scully." She did, and suddenly she put her finger on it. "My God, Mulder. That's not Lincoln." "Right on the money, Scully," he flicked on the lights. "It's Polk. The face on the penny is wrong, or at least, it's wrong for us. Skinner already had metalurgy do a check on it before he talked to me, and they found it to be authentic. That baby was in fact pressed in the late thirties, just as the date suggests. They also found traces of radiation that has until now never been discovered, and still has the guys up there scratching their heads." "What does it mean?" "Who knows? That's why we're taking the case. We head out tomorrow. But first I'd like us to pay a visit to a guy who travelled those mountains twenty-five years ago." Mulder picked up a manilla folder from the desk he had recently been perusing, closed it up and handed it to Scully as he grabbed his trenchcoat. "His experience is an X-File logged during the days of Project Bluebook. You might want to bone up on it while we drive up there." "I need to pack." "What you gonna take to the mountains, Scully? Evening wear? We'll use Uncle Sam's Unlimited Credit Account to stock up on survival gear once we get there. Plane leaves tonight." He opened the door, and Scully began to follow him, "Oh, and I hope you remember your academy training because if the jeep runs out of gas, it's a long walk down." _______________ Gone. Completely gone. No trace. A day and a plane trip later, they stood there at 1356 Islington street, staring at a recently burned house. The police DO NOT PASS yellow strips were still surrounding the lot. The two FBI agents nonchalantly bent over and moved under them. The surrounding area was eerily quiet, even though they were in an inhabited suburb of Brookshire Colorado, just twenty miles from Echo Mountain where the Rutledge sisters had disappeared. "I don't understand this, Scully. I spoke to this man not three days ago over the phone." "Maybe you called him at his place of work?" "He was retired from the military. I called his home." "Oh he was home alright," said a voice behind them. They turned around to see a policeman in a standard black uniform, "And his scorched body is laying on a slab at Brookshire General. I'm Sheriff Gregory Beaumont. Might I ask why you two are disturbing a potential crime scene?" They pulled out their badges from their coats, "I'm agent Dana Scully with the FBI, this is agent Fox Mulder." "We're following up on the Rutledge disappearance and were told Mister Witherspoon could have given us a lead." "Well you're about forty-eight hours too late. This place went up in a blaze of glory day before yesterday." Scully looked the officer over questioningly, "you're thinking arson? Have you any reason to? Suspects? Motives?" Beaumont ignored her queries, "Why didn't you run by the station before poking around up here? Our lab boys say there's strange radiation coming from this place. They're not concerned with passing contact because it's residual, but if you've been around here more than a half hour or so-" "We just got here," countered Mulder, noticing the sheriff was gesturing for them to move away from the site and not responding to it. Scully, like the dutiful soldier, was already leaving his side, approaching the good sheriff, "did you say radiation?" "Yeah. They say it's residual, so it shouldn't be dangerous, but they don't know what kind, so.." "So why take chances? We understand officer. Guess we should have checked downtown first," and Scully turned her head back to make a smirk and almost pouting glace to her partner. "We were actually just going to drop by and pay him a visit on our way to Echo Mountain. Figured we'd meet with your search party up there." "The search party's been called off. We were told your boys would be picking it up where we left off. Just the same, far as I'm concerned. I've got two dozen spooked officers not willing to talk about what they saw up there, and I'm missing two of my men. Have been for over a day now." Sheriff Beaumont motioned one more time for Mulder to join he and Scully as they reached the yellow stripping. "So. You're the cavalry. I was expecting a few more FBI men. No offense." "None taken," said Scully, "We weren't informed we were taking over the manhunt. We were just following up some leads." "Well things took a turn for the worse last night when my men came running out of the woods screaming as if they'd seen ghosts. We phoned the capitol and told them we needed some assistance. They said they'd take care of it." "Funny, we weren't notified," said Scully. Mulder bolted from the wreckage and headed for the rented jeep, moving like a man who just had his wallet stolen, "Come on, Scully, we better get up to that mountain." _______________ "Looks like they ARE taking care of it, Scully." Mulder and Scully sat in the jeep, a drizzle of rain beating on the windshield, observing hundreds of military personel in full army fatigues setting up camp and a roadblock to the only paved road up the mountain. Mulder knew it only went half way up. The rest was hiking trail or forest. Still, it would have made getting up there easier. "Well, guess that's it. The case is out of our hands, Mulder. The military has stepped in." Mulder took a sharp look at her, not believing his ears, "You getting soft on me, Scully?" The look of determination in his eyes startled her. He was thinking about his sister again. Whenever he had that look she knew that was what was going on in his mind. But why? Why now? What could have possibly- Then Mulder turned away from her to look behind them, shifting the jeep into reverse, and when she looked at the back of Mulder's head, the images of that dream which she had disregarded and almost forgotten flooded back into her mind. He never looked back at her. No matter how she yelled and pleaded for him to get away from that cliff, he never looked back. She suddenly felt a terrible dread emerging from the deepest pit of her being. She couldn't understand why, but she suddenly had a horrid fear of the very near future. Mulder spinned the car around and drove back the way they came, he absent-mindedly threw the road map in Scully's face and asked her to look for another road up the mountain. A dirt road, anything. Scully was still reeling from the wind of colors that blurred around her in the dream. No, they didn't blur around HER. The colors were blurring around HIM at the precipice, making it hard for her to see him, just before he stepped over. "Mulder, let's go back." "You ARE getting soft on me. That penny had Polk on it for a reason. I want to find out why." "Whatever's up there, Let THEM find that out. We don't need to. You don't need to find out about it. Let's just let it go." He stopped the car. "If you want out, I'll let you out here. Or I'll drive you back into town and find it on my own. Damn it, Scully. What's gotten into you? I at least expect some kind of scientific explanation for that penny." She stammered, "Could have been a prank penny made back in the thirties. Perhaps a gimmick by some company for a sales campaign or something." "Coined at the Delaware mint? Not hardly. What's wrong with you? You're not thinking clearly." "What's gotten into you? You're about to drive straight up that mountain, make your own road if you have to, facing God knows how many units of infantry. This isn't about saving those two women, is it?" "The engines running. You want out or not?" "...not. Let's go. Someone has to keep you out of trouble." _______________ They had found an old dirt road but it was mostly mudslick from the rains and after Mulder got the jeep's wheels stuck in the brown slush, they started to hike. It was getting close to sundown, and though they both had flashlights, Scully was getting real nervous. She could barely see the trees she kept almost running into. "Let's head back. I'm sure we can get a tow truck to pull the jeep out in the morning." "You had your chance to back out at the foot of the mountain, Scully. It's a bit late to turn back now." The determination in his voice really concerned her. Gone were the wisecracks and witty repartee she had come to expect from him. Gone was any love for the job. He was like a horse with blinders on now; steadfastly determined towards one goal. But it was so ludicrous! Why did he think he could find his sister up here? As if reading her mind, Mulder spoke as they stalked up the mountain, grabbing tree limbs to keep upright on the incline, "You read Witherspoon's report of what happened up there twenty-five years ago. You know what he saw. You saw the Polk penny. Put it together Scully. What we're going to find up here is not like anything else on this Earth." "He said he saw Brigadoon up here, Mulder. He was a man trapped in the wilderness for two weeks without food and probably little water." "Well we won't have that problem tonight will we?" he said half-mockingly, referring to the rains that drizzled down on them both in between the thick foliage. "He thought he saw a town one hundred years old, cut into the rockface like -like something out of a DREAM, Mulder! He was a man on the brink of starvation who witnessed a mirage. An hallucination." "He wasn't the only one." "I saw the crossreferences to other cases, but we'd already left the office. I couldn't check up on them." "Over fifty years ago a man saw what he described as a world of the future, and saw people using things that exist today. He described what we know as cellular phones and laptop computers and walkmans. He described an airport. There's no airport on this mountain, or anywhere in Brookshire Colorado." They continued to climb. Scully had to strain to hear Mulder's voice as she followed him up the mountain. The dark woods made her very uneasy, and the incline was getting so steep, she was getting a sense of vertigo. "Five years ago there were three separate accounts at different times of the year of people climbing up to this mountain and witnessing glimpses into the future and the past. Different parts of our timeline, Scully. But the accounts were wrong. One man spoke of a Colorado that had Nazi flags flying where there are now American flags. Another reported seeing humanoid creatures with tails and fur, but in every other way the Colorado he saw looked normal." "Why didn't you tell me, Mulder?" "You still think I'm crazy. People _saw_ these things, Scully. They might not fit into your convenient view of known scientific reality but they happened." "The air gets thinner the higher up a mountain you get. These could be just different hallucinations." "If one reported Bigfoot and another reported aliens, I'd agree with you Starbuck - " "No, one reported a world of Nazis another a world of monkeys - " " - but they all reported alternate realities, and they all spoke of a portal opening up surrounded by - " " - You called me Starbuck!" "What?" She grabbed the back of his jacket and spinned him around. He grabbed a nearby tree to avoid falling. "Why did you call me Starbuck?" "I didn't. I said Scully." "You distinctly said Starbuck. Don't deny it!" Mulder was taken aback. He saw what appeared to be almost -he couldn't describe the emotion swirling in her sapphire, rain streaked eyes. Fear? Hate? Confusion? Resentment? They had their flashlights aimed in each other's faces now, standing right next to each other. "My father used to call me that! Why did you just call me Starbuck?" "I swear to you I didn't! I-" "FOX! FOX! Help me please!" The voice was feminine and came from above them. The statement was exactly what Mulder heard that fateful night, when they took his sister. "Sam!" Fox left Scully behind and climbed up the steep incline with renewed vigor. Scully started to rush after him when she felt a hand grip her shoulder. She let out an almost mouse-like squeak, and turned around to see her father standing before her in his white military uniform, apparently untouched by the surrounding rain and mist. "Don't go, Starbuck. Let him go. We have so much to talk about. So much to catch up on. I've missed you." Scully closed her rainswept eyes, "You're not real. This is a hallucination. This is not happening!" "Don't say that Starbuck." "You're dead!" She screamed at him, fighting away tears. "In your reality, yes. But where I come from, you were abducted by aliens and never came back. I never died. I miss you Starbuck. Just a few moments here. Could it hurt?" "This is wrong. This is all wrong. I'm sorry Daddy." Were the rain not there, her eyes wouldn't have known the difference, she fled up the mountain after her partner. _______________ He stood on the edge of the precipice. And she understood now why she couldn't see clearly in the dream. Her own sadness at losing her father again coupled with the storm brewing all around them, and that light! There was a swirl of light all around Mulder, emerging from under the cliff face he stood upon. "It's exhilarating, Scully! Do you see it! Look in there!" "NO!" "I can see towns down there, formulating and moving around like clouds! There's Washington D.C.! There's Russia! MY GOD! The Kremlin has the flag of France flying over it! Who would have believed THAT reality was possible!" "Mulder this is an hallucination! We must be thousands of feet above sea level! The altitude is playing tricks on our minds! Please move away from there!" The storm billowed around them now, as if they were the force of it. The large opening into space that hovered over the cliff swirled with color all around them. Scully held fast to a nearby tree, because the vertigo around the opening made her fear she was going to topple inside it. "Don't you understand!? We're standing before a door to thousands of worlds!" "No we're not! It's not real!" He turned back to her, the rain pounding on his face & chest, "Infinite universes where alternate events have occurred! Creating a multitude of possibilities! Think of the science, Scully! Think of what we could learn from this about our history! About mankind!" He looked back into the swirling mass of color and energy, "Wow! Check out Memphis!" Mulder laughed like a mad scientist, "The King LIVES! Scully! You gotta check this out!" She could just reach out to touch him, but as she did he suddenly moved farther away. No, he didn't move. He remained at the cliff. She was moving back. Some force was pulling her away. Some powerful wind of color making it hard for her to see her surroundings clearly. Was the opening moving towards them? Reality and distance were becoming impossible to make out; to understand or comprehend. It was like space and time were suddenly meaningless. "Mulder! Take my hand! Don't step off the cliff!" "I have to Scully! I have to find her!" "The her you'll find isn't the her you'll know! That's not where she is! Can't you see the cliff, Mulder? Look at me!" He didn't turn around. Jesus Christ, she thought. He won't turn around! "Mulder don't leave me alone here!" Then he turned around and faced her. Their eyes met, and suddenly the swirl seemed to pass through them and past them into the woods, and they were in the dark again. Mulder stepped towards Scully. She reached out and grabbed his hand and pulled him towards her. They were both crying now, but for different reasons. Mulder for his sister. Scully for her father. Then they heard two other cries coming from within the woods. _______________ "Great work, you too!" Sheriff Beaumont handed Agent Scully a cup of hot cocoa which she delicately took from him from inside a large comforter. Mulder had a blanket over his back too, but had said no to the cocoa. For some reason, he found more comfort in the cold shivers screaming up and down his spine. "How'd you do it? There were hundreds of military men scouring over that mountain, and you two, in the dark of a Colorado storm, armed with nothing but flashlights, were able to bring back the two ladies who had been lost out there for weeks." "What about your missing officers?" Scully asked. "We found them early this morning. Man. With agents like you two, what do they need the military for?" The sheriff laughed, but neither found comfort in his humor. "We j-just happened upon them, r-r-really," Mulder managed to say. "Pure luck," Scully added. "Many of the military guys said they saw weird stuff up there too. You guys see anything?" Scully looked quizzically at Mulder. "J-j- just... Just gh-gh-osts. Th-that's all." Sheriff Beaumont looked from Mulder to Scully. "Really Sheriff. Just ghosts. I mean we didn't see anything really." _______________ END OF ECHO MOUNTAIN a short story in tribute to The X-Files by Robin Starveling -- Operation Cobweb http://www.flash.net/~bobdobbs/xfiles