By Ann Ripley
annripley@hotmail.com
 

Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999
Rating: PG
Classification: V
Spoilers: Everything up until "Field Trip"
Keywords: Alternate Universe

Disclaimer: The characters and situations belong to Chris
Carter or do they? Duke Miller would have you belive
otherwise. In any case, I am not making any profit from
writing this story and hope not to be hunted by 1013
Productions for borrowing their creations.

Summary: There is a fine line between fiction and reality,
even in the case of science fiction. At least according to a
man named Duke Miller who claims to be the real Fox Mulder.

x x x

Any Resemblance...
By Ann Ripley
 

Years ago, I remember listening to a debate the Gunmen were
having over the role Hollywood plays in sustaining the
folklore of aliens. Frohike claimed to have seen proof the
CIA financed Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third
Kind. The goal of productions like Close Encounters was for
audiences to become familiar with the idea of visitors from
other worlds. It was hoped that when contact with alien life
was finally revealed to the public, the majority of Americans
would already be acquainted with the concept as they had been
slowly seduced into complacency through fictional tales of
sightings, abductions, and invasions.

The Gunmen believed the government and other interested
parties were sending a clear cut message about the future via
Hollywood. Those watching the progression of science fiction
movies and television shows made in the last twenty years
noticed that for every sweet and bumbling Mork, Alf and E.T.
there were more bleak Ridley Scott, "V", and Independence Day
scenarios. While film critics identified the alien as enemy
trend as a cinematic way of filling the villain gap left by
the end of the cold war, conspiracy buffs saw it as a way of
introducing society to the idea that they would soon have to
fight for their lives.

I did not contribute much to this line of discussion. Having
consumed a substantial amount of Langley's homemade beer, I
proposed an even more radical theory; what if fantasy and
science fiction stories were actually true? What if the
creators and authors of our most cherished fables were
actually chronicling their own paranormal experiences but
disguising it as fiction. If Ian Fleming was a real life
James Bond, why couldn't H.G. Wells be a true time traveler?

As the beer flowed freely, the examples I conjured up became
more outrageous. What if George Lucas actually came from a
galaxy far far away? What if  C.S. Lewis really discovered
the land of Narnia through a wardrobe?  What if Gene
Rodenberry beamed down from the U.S.S. Enterprise and became
trapped on a parallel earth? What if Jerry Siegel actually
came from another planet but did not feel confident to
reveal his amazing strength and became a mild mannered comic
book writer?

After a while I realized how depressing my line of thinking
had become. I had turned some of the most creative and
talented minds into hacks, covering their secrets and turning
them into profit. I truly did not believe what I was saying.
I was really just playing devil's advocate to counter-balance
the Gunmen's paranoid rambling. Nevertheless, future
developments in my life led me to believe if we were not
right then, both of our theories were revealed to be all too
true later on, triggering the devastating final chapter in
the lives of the people I love.

Why didn't they just kill us?

This is the question I have asked myself daily for the past
twelve years. They had many opportunities: the abductions,
the viruses, the bullets, the cancer... We narrowly escaped
death countless times either by luck or when one of us took
it upon ourselves to play guardian angel. Sometimes it
appeared our lives were actually protected by the men we
hunted. I never understood if this was out of a curious
respect or hidden benefit. I have come to believe they enjoy
torturing the living. They prefer mind games to land mines.

John Steinbeck once said the most wonderfully complex
fictional character is much less complicated than the most
boring actual person. While I still think Hamlet is more
interesting then my mailman, I understood Steinbeck's point
about the limitations of fiction. Even biographies fail to
convey people's true behavior and beliefs as history usually
does not record everything needed for a solid professional
and personal profile. But after five years of constant
surveillance of our work, homes, and relationships, there
were few artistic or documentary boundaries in the creation
of Mulder and Scully.

The X-Files has a catchy ring to it. I wish I had thought of
it. Our department never really had an official name.
Although I heard it referred to as pointless, pathetic, and
ridiculous just as I have been called irrational, loony, and
yes, even spooky. It started when I began researching
unsolved cases similar to my sister's disappearance, and
after awhile it became routine that the weird cases were
directed to me. My caseload soon dictated another person, and
a scientist was assigned to debunk my work. With the
permission of our AD we eventually drifted away from Violent
Crimes and found our own space in the basement.

They saw to it that there are no official records that Duke
Miller or Anna Spriggs ever worked for the F.B.I., although I
am sure there are some colleagues left who remember us, and
maybe even a few who saw a vague resemblance in the
characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. But the ones who
knew us well and would have been flabbergasted at the
audacity of a television show called The X-Files had already
become causalities. My academy roommate was killed in a
hostage situation, Anna's pathology assistant died in a car
accident, and our greatest ally, our Assistant Director, had
been murdered.

They changed our names of course. Miller became Mulder,
Spriggs became Scully, Dennis Hatcher became Walter Skinner,
and so on. I did insist Anna call me Miller. While it does
not roll off the tongue in the same sensual way Mulder does,
it is still better than Duke. However, I rarely referred to
Anna as Spriggs after our first year together. It seemed too
impersonal after everything we had been through. To me, she
will always be my Anna.

Ironically, the only names they did not change belonged to
the Gunmen. It is an understatement to say they reacted to
this poorly. The boundary between loyalty and self
preservation was always thin and I have not seen or heard
from them since their introductory episode aired in the first
season. I assume they burrowed deeper underground. I hope
they managed to stick together.

I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted by the actor
they chose to play me. I am more Eddie Van Blundht than Mr.
GQ. Just under six feet, I could stand to lose about fifteen
pounds. Three years into our partnership I began to lose my
hair and what was left behind turned from brown to ash. Anna
tried to convince me I was not rapidly tumbling into middle
age and insisted it was a follicle expression of sympathy
pain to what the chemotherapy and radiation did to her amber
locks. I chastised her for such an unscientific comment but
later cried at how even in her darkest hours she was trying
to lift my spirits.

Anna's inner and physical beauty often shone like a beacon to
guide me home. The excellent actress they chose to play
Scully is lovely but she will forever pale to the real deal.
I cannot feel Anna when I look at her, but the coloring,
size, voice, and movements are so similar, if I squint, I can
almost pretend she is Anna. I try not to do this too often.

Like a bystander gawking at an accident, I watch the show
every Sunday night, emotions fluctuating between fits of rage
and awe. And while I have laughed at the dead-on mockery spun
by a man named Jose Chung and the two perspectives shown in a
town full of vampires, the majority of the tales are more
painful than nostalgic. I feel protective of our mirror
images and whisper instructions to Mulder and Scully through
my television screen. "The blood is toxic," "Don't go in
there," "Trust no one," as if my hindsight will save the one-
dimensional images on the screen when they failed to save me.

My stomach churns at scenes I never witnessed in real life
but get to see reenacted years later. Through the magic of
television I am privy to viewing Anna's terror at being
stuffed into a trunk by a lunatic, Mrs. Spriggs' agony at her
daughter's constant peril, and the tightrope Hatcher
constantly walked for us. I am finally the fly on the wall to
the twisted backroom antics of the Cigarette Smoking Man and
his cronies. All I can say, is it's too little, too late. I
also see myself in ways I did not see clearly before, my
manipulation at the hands of a vacuum selling serial killer,
how easily and often I trusted the wrong person when I
claimed not to trust anyone, and how my blindness to Anna's
feelings was often annoying and rude.

The show has been forced to make some changes in the way our
story is told for the purpose of artistic license and fear of
discovery. There are simple discrepancies like my true
abhorrence for sunflowers seeds, the fact I always wear my
glasses, and have a background in literature rather than
psychology. Anna is actually Baptist, her father was a
policeman, and she only had one sibling, Lydia, who I regret
did die in a misdirected assassination attempt.

I have witnessed amazing and unexplainable people, creatures,
and events, however not every episode reflects an actual case
file. There never was a giant flukeworm, Donnie Pfaster, or
the Great Mutato, but I will testify to the encountering
people like Eugene Tooms, Max Fenig, and Clyde Bruckman. Not
everything revolved around conspiracies and aliens, but it
formed the backbone of our work. We certainly had our share
of cross-country adventures and came back from each with a
fresh set of scars, both mental and physical. However, in
between the mutants and men in black we found time for
laughter, loyalty, and love.

The so-called "mythology" episodes followed pretty much the
same chronological course as our own discoveries with the
blessing of one small exception: we never met an Emily. Anna
never spent a Christmas rejoicing and mourning over a lost
daughter. Still, the existence of those chilling episodes
taunt me as if they are revealing a piece of information we
never discovered.

As for my sister, Rebecca, I have come to know the woman I
met one night in a roadside diner. We both have doubts that
she is the original Rebecca, but out of similar longings for
family we have formed a relationship. I am no longer driven
to discover the truth behind my sister's disappearance. I
have learned to appreciate what I have rather than crave for
things I am missing. Although I admit, I am curious to see
how the writers resolve that storyline.

There are some things I know were never discovered and the
program was forced to resolve falsely. I never saw Ethan
Trask after he disappeared off the back of a truck into the
Tunguska woods, but I doubt anyone on this side of the globe
did either. Four years ago I received a postcard, postmarked
Dublin, with a quote from Shakespeare scrawled in Russian on
the back: "Cowards die many times before their deaths/the
valiant never taste of death but once," signed, "A Friend". I
suspect Trask is still out there somewhere stirring up
trouble and enjoying his Internet reputation as the ambiguous
Ratboy. As for his arm, I would not want to speculate.

This past season was pure fiction. Body switching, repeated
days, meddling ghosts, shared hallucinations, and trips back
in time to a 1930s luxury liner and a 1950s baseball team
were all ways of continuing Mulder and Scully's adventures
without anything actually happening. This is because nothing
really did happen. Our story ended after the motion picture
extravaganza. I am guessing the lack of usable material
forced them to depend heavily on the theme of alternative
realities, with an old case file thrown in for good measure
and promises to disclose "the truth" during February sweeps.

I have not seen Anna since the week following our Antarctica
adventure. However, I must say the last days were some of the
best. Huddled together for warmth in the stranded Snow Cat,
we finally came clean about our feelings toward each other,
and after our rescue, finished what we started in my hallway.
For a brief moment, we had everything before our utopia was
shattered with the discovery of Assistant Director Hatcher's
mysterious poisoning.

Anna and I began the investigation into his death with sudden
fury only to be halted by worse news: Anna's cancer had
returned with a vengeance. One morning she complained of a
horrible headache, which we dismissed as stress over
Hatcher's death. Hours later, she was admitted to Intensive
Care. Apparently sometime between the bee sting and rescue,
the chip had been removed.

Two days later she slipped into a coma. The doctors shook
their heads and would not look me or Mrs. Spriggs in the eye.
I harassed every contact I knew to find the Smoking Man.
Hoping my mother knew something, I left Anna's bedside and
traveled to Massachusetts to see her, but as usual she
claimed ignorance. I got down on my knees and begged the
weasely Agent Carter for help only to have the door to my old
office slammed in my face. I even tried looking for Ethan
Trask. I was ready to sell my soul to the devil.

The Gunmen were busy trying to replicate another chip when my
mother visited me with a message. A meeting was arranged and
a deal was made. He called it a peace offering and out of
desperation, I took it. Mrs. Spriggs was shocked, but like
me, had reached the end of her rope and was willing to turn
Anna over to the men who already put one of her daughters in
a grave.

The chip was reinserted and her health steadily improved. I
know this because I was able to watch the process through a
two-way mirror. Before she was released, they allowed me to
see her in person. I pretended to be a doctor interested in
her case. She smiled and even joked a little with me, but her
eyes were devoid of recognition. They cured her but also
filtered out all her memory of our work, our partnership, our
love.

Anna's recovery and future safety was the price I paid
for my silence. Any subsequent investigation into the
consortium or revelation of colonization plans would result
in the cancer's return. It was not too high a price to pay. I
would do it again in a second.

They forbade me to have any future contact with Anna. I would
have stayed away even if that had not been part of the
agreement. I was ashamed of what I did to her. I allowed them
to steal her memories. I made a choice for her that I know
she would have refused if given the opportunity.

The show debuted a year after Mrs. Spriggs wheeled Anna out
of the consortium-run hospital and started a new life. I know
Anna works as the chief coroner for the city of San Diego. Her
mother writes me once a year, but I have left the letters
unopened since I learned Anna married a man named Benjamin
two years ago.

I often wonder if she watches the show. If so, does she feel
anything? Would it trigger a sense of deja vu? Would it be
like waking up and trying to remember a dream? Or does she
watch it with the same empty eyes that looked right through
me the day I said good bye?

As I sit in my hollow Seattle apartment, lit by the glow of
the television, I often wonder if I am crazy. That perhaps I
am suffering from paranoid schizophrenia or a twisted
inferiority complex that makes fantasize I am Fox Mulder when
really I am just some lonely and bored high school English
teacher. My insanity would be a blessing. It would mean Chris
Carter is a genius and not the vile son of the Cigarette
Smoking Man. It would mean the world is not coming to an end.
It would mean my world did not come to an end five years ago.

The X-Files is our legacy. A punishment and an honor. They
depicted us as heroes but we are really just pawns, the final
step in their seductive and lucrative propaganda game. Like
no other piece of recent popular culture, the X-Files stirred
up a fascination with the paranormal, brought conspiracy
theories to the mainstream and made the belief in alien life
attractive. It is also a story of two people who worked hard,
and despite frequent difference of opinion, believed in each
other.

Perhaps the show's series finale will reveal the truth and
the opening tag line will read, "What you are about to see is
based on a true story." Maybe they will even ask me to be a
guest star. If that happens, a few paranoid fans might buy
it, but everyone else will think it is a clever joke; like
when Newheart woke up and everything was a dream. I think I
would rather let them continue their fictional course and
maybe they will allow Mulder and Scully to live happily ever
after.

x x x

Author's notes: This story would not have been possible
without the conspiracy theories supplied by my real life Lone
Gunman, my brother-in-law Dereck. I probably would not had
the courage to post this had it not been for the
encouragement given by my betas Vyper, Andrea and Lavinia's
Premonition. A special thanks goes to Andrea, my grammar
queen, who saved me from embarrassment by enlightening me on
the proper place for semi-colons and commas. Thanks also go
to my husband for not teasing me too much when I showed him
what I wrote.

Please send any feedback to annripley@hotmail.com