~~~ February 23, 1998 ~~~

This time he remembered her birthday with only two hours of 
the day remaining.  His home computer he had programmed to 
alert him, but he wasn't home.  He was with Scully in a cheap 
motel on the outskirts of Nowhere, Nebraska, where a man in a 
coma was the chief suspect in a recent spate of bank 
robberies.

Mulder was flipping channels, his sunflower seeds open on the 
bed next to him, when he happened across CNN and their date 
stamp in the right-hand corner.  

"Aw, hell," he said, sitting up and checking his watch.  It 
read ten-oh-two.  There was a good chance Scully was in bed, 
possibly even asleep already since they had taken such an 
early flight out of D.C.

He had no cake or presents.  At this hour, he wasn't even 
sure he could lay his hands on some flowers.  Perhaps an all-
night supermarket might have a bouquet that wasn't too ratty?  

He pulled back the curtain and made a face at the frigid 
Nebraska winter night.  There were piles of snow outside as 
big as haystacks and Mother Nature was busy adding to her 
handiwork with a fresh coating.

Mulder debated waiting until morning or even pleading 
ignorance.  He could find a nice breakfast place and buy her 
some waffles.

But even as he raised the suggestion to himself, it sounded 
like a lame copout.  This was the birthday Scully was not 
supposed to have, and he had dragged her halfway across the 
country in the middle of a snowstorm.  The least he could do 
was acknowledge her in some way.

He heaved a sigh and pulled on his parka, resolved to finding 
some store, somewhere, that would sell him some flowers or 
candy not leftover from Valentine's Day. 

Wind hit him square in the face as he headed out to the 
parking lot.  It was lit well, but the snow had begun erasing 
the cars from view.  It had succeeded exceedingly well with 
Mulder's rental car.  

He craned his neck around, looking for his missing 
automobile.  "I left it right here," he said to the desolate 
lot.  "I know I did."

When he turned all the way around, he noticed the light was 
not on in Scully's room, which probably explained where the 
car had gone.  It did not explain why.

Mulder took out his cell phone, blowing steamy breaths on it 
as the connection rang through to Scully.  When she answered, 
he heard music in the background. "Scully?  It's me.  Where 
are you?"

"Mulder," she said, sounding resigned that he had found her.  
"I'm at..." He could hear her checking.  "The Brew Moon."

"A bar?"  

"Mmm," she said in the middle of a sip.

"It's fourteen below and snowing."  

"Is it?"

The wind picked up, whistling past his ears and making it 
hard for him to hear her.  "Scully, what's going on?" 

"I don't know.  You're the one who called me.  Did you need 
something?"

"I, uh, I just wanted to know where the car was."

"Are you going someplace?"

"I guess not," he said, suddenly irritated, "since there's no 
transportation available to me.  But I guess now I don't have 
to report the car stolen or anything."

"Stolen?" she said in her best Mulder-you-have-lost-your-mind 
voice. "My name is on the rental too, you know.  I didn't 
realize I needed to file a report with you before using it.  
Besides, I was under the impression our investigation had 
concluded for the evening."

A good thing, too, because apparently she had other plans.  
How many other times had she left to go bar-hopping in the 
middle of the night with their sensible rented Taurus?

He had a flash of her in a Pennsylvania hospital, bruised and 
cut from her night with Ed Jerse.  It had been snowing then 
too.

Mulder swallowed and pressed the phone tight to his frozen 
ear.  Scully, tell me... are you alone?  He couldn't make 
himself ask the question.

"I'll be back in a while, Mulder," she said, and then paused.  
"Don't wait up."

She broke the connection, and he folded the phone back into 
the depths of his winter coat.  He tilted his head back, 
forcing his eyes to remain open against the icy flakes that 
clung to his lashes.  The sky was invisible behind a frenzied 
swirl of snow.

He could go back into his heated room, turn on the TV and 
pretend he wasn't listening for the sound of the car outside, 
for the slam of her door or, God help him, a male voice on 
the other side of the wall.  

He tried to picture the Sheriff's deputy who had walked them 
through the case that morning, an older guy with graying 
temples and leathered hands.  Mulder usually didn't pay much 
attention to the local law enforcement because they didn't 
usually have much to offer him; he counted on them to point 
him in the right direction and then he was all about the 
case.  He was the one sticking his hand in the proverbial goo 
while Scully hung back and made nice with local law boys.  
Maybe too nice?

Scully hadn't been the only one tattooed last year in Philly.  
He lived forever with the image of her raw and angry, burned 
like fiery ink in the back of his brain.

This was his chance to see what he had missed, the "before" 
to his "after" picture, Scully with tequila-shooter eyes and 
the clothes peeling off her.

In the quiet snow, he punched the phone back on and dialed 
information.  "Yeah, I'm at the Warrendale, Nebraska Motel 6. 
I need the number for a taxicab company."

Mulder blew in the front door of Brew Moon about an hour 
later, snow melting from his boots as he surveyed a 
disappointing picture: the answer to his question, if he'd 
asked it, was yes.  Scully was alone.  In fact, she was damn 
near the only person in the whole bar.

She sat on a stool at one end while a corn-fed young man who 
didn't look old enough to be drinking alcohol, let alone 
serving it, wiped off glasses and hung them on the overhead 
rack.

If Scully had been looking for trouble, she would be hard 
pressed to find it because apparently trouble had the sense 
to stay home in the rotten Midwestern weather.  You had to 
bring your own psychopath to this dance or you were out of 
luck.

As he stood there dripping, she turned around slowly, and he 
saw she had a red stirrer tucked in the corner of her mouth.  
She saw him, looked him over once, and turned around again 
without a word.

He shucked his coat and joined her.

"I gather you solved your transportation problem," she said 
darkly as he took over the stool to her right.

The young man draped in a bar towel ambled over to get his 
order.  "What can I get for you tonight, sir?"

"Whatever light beer you have on tap is fine."

"Coming right up for ya."

Mulder gave Scully a sideways look.  "How did you find this 
place?" he asked.  It wasn't like it was right on the main 
road.

"Deputy Fullman told me about it," she replied, and Mulder 
had his answer about the kind of chit-chat she made while he 
wasn't listening.

She took a sip of her drink -- he'd imagined correctly about 
the hard liquor -- and rolled an ice cube around in her 
mouth.  Her blouse was undone partway to her waist, but other 
than that, she looked just the same as when he'd said 
goodnight to her five hours earlier.

"So what are we drinking to?" he asked her when the barkeep 
dropped off his beer.

The cube cracked between her teeth. "Solitude," she said 
pointedly, and then took another sip.

"Not many happy returns?"

She looked at him then.  "Is that why you're here?"

He shrugged.  "The roads are getting pretty nasty out there.  
You're here in a bar, in unfamiliar territory.  Maybe I was 
concerned."

She narrowed her eyes.  "I know my limits, Mulder."

He swallowed several mouthfuls of the bitter alcohol.  Maybe 
that was why he was here, he thought, to see her limits for 
himself.

She had one drink in front of her, but a second green 
cocktail napkin with a ring on it told him it was not her 
first.  He studied the teeth marks on her stirrer and watched 
her turn the glass in circles with short, manicured nails.  

He looked around at the walls, which boasted poor copies of 
sports memorabilia and few Norman Rockwell rip-offs.  Towards 
the back, however, he thought he spotted a genuine article.  
"Hey, is that an original Pac-Man machine?"

"It sure is," said the bartender.  Or rather, "It shore is."  
"Been here since 1985."

"I might have to demonstrate my ghost-chomping prowess," 
Mulder told Scully.

She eyed him.  "You're not concerned it might be involved in 
some technological experiment in artificial consciousness?"

It has been six days since their last contact with Esther 
Nairn, since the supercomputer had tried to upload him 
permanently into cyberspace, and Scully had a better memory 
than he did of what had happened to him.

"Is that why you've been angry with me?" he asked quietly.

"I'm not angry with you." She rubbed her forehead with her 
fingers.

"No?"  She had not said much to him beyond the necessary in 
the last few days, and more than once, he had caught her 
staring out the window into space.

At the moment, though, she was staring at her hand.  He was 
just beginning to wonder exactly how many drinks she'd 
belted, when she spoke again.  "Actually the principle of 
artificial intelligence makes a certain amount of biological 
sense.  Our bodies are almost an illusion, a cheap parlor 
trick put on by our brains to fool us into thinking we take 
up more space than we actually do."

"Try telling that to the 300 pound man trying to squeeze into 
an airplane seat."

She smiled faintly and dropped her hand on the bar.  "If the 
brain didn't need blood, sugar and oxygen, it could conjure 
up quite a realistic existence all on its own.  Look at 
people who've undergone an amputation; many of them 
experience their lost limbs as though they were still present 
because the brain continues to project the missing arm or leg 
like a hologram."

He winced, recalling suddenly his quadruple -- thankfully 
imaginary -- amputations.

Scully didn't seem to notice his reaction.  "If the brain can 
create a believable arm from nothing, I suppose it's not 
wholly unimaginable to believe it capable of simulating an 
entire existence.  And if you could, in theory, translate 
that wiring to a computer, you might be able to achieve not 
just artificial intelligence, but an artificial life."

So she was conceding that Esther might have a point, that 
uploading her brain could give her some form of infinite 
existence, but Scully didn't seem too excited by the 
prospect.  Actually, she sounded sort of depressed. 

"You know, I think I've seen that movie," he teased.  "Didn't 
it star Steve Martin?"

"But it would be like a never-ending dream," she said.  "The 
cheap parlor trick would just go on and on."

"If it's a good trick, maybe it'd be worth it.  Think about 
it, Scully.  It's a chance to make your own reality."

"You can't make reality, Mulder. What we're talking about is 
losing touch with it entirely."

"Well, there has to be a limit somewhere, right?"  He took a 
sip and pulled the beer bottle from his mouth with an audible 
pop.  "The magic trick only works so far. It's not like your 
brain invents arms that aren't there."

"So you say."

He looked sideways at her.  "I know the brain has some rules, 
Scully.  You're the one that's always telling me what's 
biologically implausible."

"Your body feels like it's in a defined space, right?"  She 
took his arm and touched her palm to the ends of his fingers.  
"Your arm ends here.  Your feet go to the floor and no 
farther."

"Yeah."

"I can make your brain think my hand is part of your body."

He leered at her.  "Your hand can be part of my body anytime, 
Scully."

She ignored him and put his hand on the bar.  "Start tapping 
one finger in a random pattern."

As he did so, she brought her hand to his face.  "Hey, what 
are you doing?"

"I'm tapping your nose."

"You didn't say anything about the nose being involved."

"Just keep tapping."

He sighed and did as she ordered, drumming his index finger 
on the wooden bar at odd intervals.  Scully's index finger 
touched his nose gently in time with his taps.  "The 
bartender is looking at us funny," he told her out of the 
corner of his mouth.

She shushed him.

Mulder rolled his eyes and kept tapping his finger.  Just as 
he was about to tell her it wasn't working, that it was, in 
fact, exceedingly annoying, something shifted and it felt 
like he was drumming his own finger on his nose as well as 
the bar.  He had three hands, and Scully's was one of them.

"Oh my God."  He drew away from her in shock, a little 
horrified.  

There was a grim look of satisfaction in her eyes.  "Told 
you."

"That is seriously disturbing."

She slipped another ice cube in her hand and nodded.  "That's 
not the worst you can do.  With a little coaxing, I could 
have you believing that a plastic hand was yours.  I might 
even be able to convince you this bar was part of your body."

He hugged his beer bottle to his chest, still creeped out by 
the idea that his body might really be an illusion.

"The brain will make up all sorts of lies if left to its own 
devices," she said.  "The only check in the system is the 
information streaming in from the outside world.  If you 
remove that world, you can live in a reality of your own 
making, but you'd be living there alone."

He was not willing to give up the romantic idea so easily.  
"That wasn't the idea at all," he protested.  "Esther didn't 
do what she did to be alone.  She did it to be with David -- 
both of their consciousnesses together forever."

Scully looked sad as she stirred her drink.  "That's all well 
and good.  But there's just one problem.  The magic trick 
only works in one direction.  My hand can become yours, but 
there's nothing you can do to make your touch seem like 
mine."

He coughed on his beer, nearly choking.  "I, uh, I wouldn't 
know about that."

She lifted a brow and downed the rest of her drink.  Mulder 
sighed.

"So what you're saying is that their love would be 
unconsummated, physically *and* mentally speaking," he said 
to her.

"I'm saying imaginary friends make rotten lovers," she 
replied as she took out some folded bills from her pocket.  
She paid for his beer without asking.

As she got down from the stool, he saw her wobble a bit on 
her heels before she steadied herself against the bar.  "I 
bet they make terrible designated drivers too," he said as he 
plucked the car keys from her hand.

She made a gesture of surrender and followed him to the door. 
The snow had picked up to a near blinding level, peppering 
them with tiny frozen bullets as they staggered to the car.  
Mulder brushed the accumulated crystals from the windows with 
his sleeve while Scully climbed inside.

He joined her moments later and started the engine.  They sat 
in a semi-cave, the engine groaning beneath them as it 
warmed.  Scully laid her head back against the seat and 
closed her eyes.

Before he could think not to, Mulder reached over and stroked 
her cheek several times.  Her skin was cool but soft, and he 
let his fingers linger for one last pass over her jaw.

As he moved to draw away, she grabbed his hand tight and held 
it in midair between them.  Her leather glove felt foreign, 
almost inhuman, against his bare skin.  She still had not 
opened her eyes.

"My mother forgot my birthday," she murmured.  "She's out in 
California with Bill and Tara and the baby."

He didn't know what to say.  "Scully..."

She let him go abruptly and sat up.  "It's okay.  None of 
them know what to say to me anymore after the situation at 
Christmas.  It's almost easier this way."

The heat began to fog up the windows.  Mulder gripped the 
wheel, feeling helpless.

"I used to think maybe it would have been better if I hadn't 
found her," Scully said, and the words cut through Mulder, 
lancing a secret hardened pain he had barely acknowledged was 
ever there.  He'd wondered the same thing himself about Emily 
on numerous occasions.

"Used to think," he repeated slowly.  He turned his head to 
look at her.  "You don't think that anymore?"

She met his gaze, her eyes shining from the streetlights 
outside.  "If you knew you would find Samantha only to watch 
her die three days later, unable to stop it, would you keep 
looking anyway?"

"Yes."  He didn't think twice.

She nodded to herself and looked out the window again.  He 
wished he knew was she was searching for.  

He shifted the car into gear and pointed it back towards the 
motel, where the parking lot was as quiet as the grave.  They 
hurried to their doors, leaving Mulder- and Scully-sized 
prints side-by-side in the snow.

At her room, he hovered over her, trying to find the right 
thing to say.  Her nose was pink and her eyes were tearing 
from the cold.  She had ice crystals in her hair.  

"I'm sorry for interrupting your solitude," he said.

A ghost of a smile crossed her face, and she reached one 
gloved hand up to cup his cheek.  "I'm not," she whispered.  
"Not anymore."

Then she touched his nose lightly one last time and 
disappeared into her room.

~~~~~~

syn_tax6@yahoo.com

The trick with the nose IS seriously disturbing and also 
real.  It's harder to achieve than Scully made it seem, 
though.