By Melannen
Melannen@yahoo.com
 

FANDOM: X-files/ political fic crossover
ARCHIVE/FEEDBACK: Yes please. This has real people, so I don't
think Gossamer will take it, though, sadly.
KEYWORDS: Mytharc. Crossover. Marita/Alex romance.
SPOILERS: All Mytharc. The G. W. Bush administration.
RATING: Call it PG, for politics, evildoers and kissing
LENGTH: 2500 words
Disclaimer: X-Files characters and concepts belong to FOX
corporation. Other people who appear are used in the spirit of
parody.
Notes/Summary: Remember the old, innocent days, when people were
 looking forward to an administration of honesty and openness
 and the most we had to worry about was arsenic in our drinking
 water? Yeah, me too. The science here is dodgy but plausible;
 the mytharc stuff is mostly right out of The Truth; the
politics are as bipartisan  as I could possibly get, and I'll
hopefully end up writing something equally cynical about President
Kerry.

Conflict of Interest
 or, That Explains A Lot

February, 2001
Washington, DC.

Marita stepped into the spacious, round room, keeping her
business face on, as Dick dealt with the security people and
shut the door behind them. The office was sunny and airy; its
new occupant had swept it clean of his predecessor's overstated
elegance, and Marita felt far too exposed in the Southwestern
warmth of it.

The man himself was slouched behind his desk, absorbed in
something on his laptop; he'd shown no sign of noticing their
arrival until Dick went to him and tapped his shoulder. "George?
 The UN person is here."

George sat up straight, closed the laptop with a click, and gave
 her a boyish, friendly smile. "How d'you do, ma'am? Pleased to
 meet you."

Marita took the hand he'd offered and shook. "Marita Covarrubias,
sir. And may I say it's an honor? I'm glad to see that all our
hard work getting you into this office has paid off."

Dick, standing behind him, caught the implication of that and
glanced sharply at her. George just grinned, sincerely pleased.
"Well, that's very kind of you, Miss Cova-- Cov-- d'you mind if
I call you Ruby? So how are things back at the UN?"

Marita smiled thinly and seated herself in one of the chairs.
"Well, sir, I have to be honest with you: I'm not here today
simply in my capacity as a United Nations employee."

"Oh? Just come by to check out the new boss?"

"George," Dick muttered, "Listen to her. This may be the most
important meeting you'll ever have."
"Thank you, Mr. Vice President," Marita said, "Although I hope
that's not true, it is vital that you understand what I have to
tell you. Mr. President, along with my career at the UN, I work
for a secret organization which sometimes refers to itself as
the Syndicate. We work both within and in loose association with
 the federal government in an effort to eradicate the greatest
threat this nation, indeed, our world, has ever faced."

George shook his head, eyes sparkling with good humor. "A vast
secret conspiracy? You gotta be kidding me."

"I suppose you could call us that," Marita said, "But we have no
 desire for power or anything beyond our single purpose, and the
 secrecy is absolutely necessary. We prefer to think of ourselves
as merely a group of concerned citizens who sacrifice ourselves
to do things which are necessary, but which this government, by
its very nature, cannot."

"And what is this shadowy, evil threat you're fighting?"

"Alien invaders." She raised a hand to curtail his inevitable
protests. "I realize it sounds implausible, sir, but as long as
Americans can sleep safely in their beds, believing that the
biggest threat they face is a few pissed-off fanatics with a
bomb, my organization is doing its job. I have here," she reached
 into her briefcase and pulled out the dossiers, "over fifty
years' worth of records and evidence, which we invite you to
check at your leisure."

George looked at the stack of folders she'd dropped on his desk
as if he were afraid they were going to bite. Dick stepped up
and broke the silence. "I've seen the evidence, George. It's all
true. They're really out there."

George glanced from one of them to the other, then back again,
and visibly pulled himself up. "Okay then. Alien invaders. So,
what are we doing to stop them? And why haven't I heard any of
this before now?"

Marita shook her head. "It's not that simple, sir. As to why
this wasn't mentioned in the transition, your predecessor never
got this briefing. We didn't believe his administration could be
trusted to do what was necessary to win the war, or to understand
that certain things need to be kept secret for the sake of
national security and the sake of everyone's peace of mind."

George preened, flattered by the implied compliment. Marita
leaned toward him, intense. "This isn't going to be like
_Independence Day_, Mr. President. It won't be as easy as setting
 off a few bombs or letting a hastily programmed anti-virus do
our work for us. The enemy are immeasurably older and more
powerful than we are; they have the resources of a galaxy behind
them; they have infiltrated our society at every level. They are
capable of subverting anyone; they can take over a human's body
or shapeshift or kill by a thousand methods we barely understand.
They're completely evil and completely beyond our comprehension.
There can be no treaty and no compromise. They created us to be
a slave race, tens of thousands of years ago; they ruled the
world absolutely then, and they will again. No human agency can
stop them."

She had expected disbelief, fear, anger, or ridicule; but instead
he was frowning in thought. "If they're so unstoppable, and they
ruled the world a long time ago, why aren't they still in charge?"

He'd caught the gap in the logic, then, and quickly. He wasn't
nearly as stupid or inflexible as he gave the impression of
being. Good. Marita felt herself relaxing, truly optimistic for
the first time in years. "I said that no human agency could stop
them, Mr. President. The first time, it wasn't humans; it was
the earth itself. Their biggest weakness is cold; we humans can
survive with relative comfort in temperatures that kill the
alien organisms outright. That is our only hope, sir, our only
strategy that offers a real chance of victory-- we have to induce
a new ice age."

George was clearly fascinated; he gestured eagerly to her, while
Dick stood protectively behind. "And how do we do that?"

"Our original plan, for the first twenty years or so of our work,
was nuclear winter. The Syndicate was formed after WWII; you
understand the fascination we had then. But it became clear that
would be a Pyrrhic victory at best; we would be as weakened by
the radiation as the aliens would be by the cold, so since the
late sixties that has been relegated to our last-ditch backup
plan. We're currently attempting a more gradual method, by
increasing the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
By the calculations of our scientists, who are significantly
ahead of their colleagues who don't have access to extraterrestrial
data, if the globe warms enough to melt a relatively small
amount of Arctic ice, the ocean circulation patterns will change
enough to start building up continental ice sheets in Europe and
restart the feedback loop. Within ten years the earth will be
inexorably headed into an ice age; within fifty most of the
surface will be uninhabitable to the aliens--"

"Wait just a minute, little lady," George said, having picked
one fact out of the torrent of science. "There's no such thing
as global warming. I've looked at the reports."

"I'm sorry, Mr. President, but I'm afraid there is. Anything you
 may have read denying it was probably the fruits of our dis-
information campaign. We have to keep doubt out there until we
go public; we've lost too much ground already to the combined
efforts of the environmentalists and extraterrestrials. You've
been briefed on the Kyoto Protocols?"

George nodded slowly.

"They're set to have reduced greenhouse gases by the year 2012.
This is not a coincidence. 2012 is the date set for the final
conquest. The protocols are a brazen attempt to slow us down
enough that we will lose."

Dick made a sudden movement. "That's not possible! The Kyoto
treaty was a joint effort of the governments of most of the
developed world--"

"Any of which may be under the control of the aliens. They can
be *anyone*, sirs, in any position. The only way we can win this
is to trust no one. Any victory we win will have to be ours
alone; any war unilateral, because any ally is a potential
traitor. We are already critically behind schedule after eight
years of a non-cooperative, democratic administration, and even
 if we win this, there's no time left to make the victory neat
or pretty."

George nodded. "So what do we need to do?"

"The critical first step is to undermine the Kyoto treaty, and
all the other air pollution initiatives they have introduced to
prevent us from causing the change. If we can do that success-
fully, the next step is to prepare for damage control. We need
to be able to win the peace, not just the war."

"And that means--"

"The first task is to make sure the aliens are really gone, for
good this time, and not just in hiding. After their first
retreat, many of them simply went underground, and that's put us
in a very bad position right now. Take away their hiding places,
and we make the victory permanent."

"And how do we do that?" asked Dick, skeptically.

"The alien organism is capable of achieving a resting state in
the form of a prosentient virus," Marita said, "which can sustain
itself in any sufficiently large hydrocarbon reservoir." She
paused. "We will never truly win this war until we burn up all
our oil reserves. Fortunately, the colder temperatures should
help with that eventually."

"And in the meantime it will also pump more greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere," Dick breathed. "That's brilliant."

Marita contented herself with a nod. "The two of you have
background with the oil. I'm sure you'd be familiar with the
tried and true methods for increasing consumption and securing
control over foreign oil supplies. But at the same time, we will
need to prepare the people for what's coming. We can't risk
telling them the truth, at this point; it would tip our hand and
introduce too many random factors. But no matter how this comes
out, there will be drastic and sudden changes, in society and in
the earth itself; disasters and panics are inevitable, even
without the destruction the aliens will inevitably cause. We
need to be able to prevent outright chaos. So we need to get
people onto an emergency footing, now. Prepare the country to
accept martial law on short notice. Build a powerful executive,
improve the military's preparedness, shape a culture of secrecy,
order, and security that can withstand terrible blows. Give the
country a firm foundation of faith which will keep them stable
as their world ends around them. Prepare them to face a nebulous
enemy who may be hiding among them now, and unite them against
that enemy.All the while keeping the aliens confused as to what
we're really doing."

"And how do we do *that*?" George asked.

"Well, we have some preliminary outlines here, although events
as they occur will create new circumstances and of course, we'd
prefer to leave as many of the details as possible up to your
greater resources and ability--"

Eventually, Dick showed her out again, sticking by her until
they were well out of George's range. She turned to him just as
they came back to a more populated area of the White House. "Do
you think he'll do it?"

"We'll do our best, ma'am," he said, shaking her hand firmly.
"You just keep doing yours."

If she'd turned to look at him as she left, she would have seen
him watching her with an odd smile on his face. She might even
have noticed the way he blinked, and the film of black which
covered his eyes for half a second. But she didn't look.

***

Alex got back to the apartment to the sound of the kitchen sink
running. "Marita?" he called. "I'm home."

She came into the living room, drying her hands on a flowery
orange towel, and found him dropping his coat and bag over the
chair. She offered him half a smile and a peck on the cheek. "So
how was your day?"
"Well, nobody lost a limb, so I'll count that one as a success."
Alex grinned. "How did your meeting go?"
 
"It went well," she said, then shuddered. "Extraordinarily well,
in fact. I have no doubt they'll be willing to do everything we
need. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to fall, at this point."

He caught one of her hands in his and turned it over. It was
scrubbed and pink as if she'd been washing it repeatedly.
"You're not worrying about keeping your hands clean at this late
date, are you, Marita?"

She pulled at him half-heartedly and then gave in and leaned
toward his embrace. "I know, I know. We're doing what we have
to, and that means doing things that would be inconceivable if
we had any choices left. But I feel so dirty-- since I shook his
hand. It's like engine grease-- *you* know-- it gets in the
pores and it won't wash out."

"Yeah, I know," Alex murmured into her hair.

She turned in the half-circle of his arm and smiled ruefully.
"Yeah, well, all you have to do is murder a defenseless little
baby. Want to trade jobs? God, Alex, I didn't even have to try
very hard; it was as if I was just giving them an excuse to do
what they wanted anyway-- and it's not like we didn't design
things so they would want to-- but I didn't even have to
threaten them with exposing our election tampering. They wanted
everything I offered, and they didn't want to think about what
it will mean, to people and families and, and *everything*, so
they didn't think about it. We're destroying the world to save
it, Alex, and they didn't care."

"We have no more choices, Mari--"

"Yes, we do. We do. They're just even more unthinkable than the
ones we've chosen. Sometimes I think we should just go back to
the old plan. Nuclear sterilization. Kill them and us and leave
the Earth clean--"

"Mari, we'll get through this. We will. You have to believe
this. It will work. Only twelve more years, and it's decided one
way or the other. The old men didn't even have that to look
forward to."

"Only twelve more years," she said, rocking back against him.
"Twelve more years, and then, forever."
 

ENDNOTE 1: If you're American, (or a citizen of any democracy,
really) vote, one way or another. If you can't do that, join
your local vast conspiracy. Remember, only we can save the world.
ENDNOTE 2: If that doesn't work, remember that it doesn't matter
anyway, because the aliens will be here in less than two terms,
and stop worrying.
 
 
 
 
 

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