The Beginning Of The End

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm in the process of baking so I won't go to J.T.'s empty-handed but I thought I'd leave everyone with a holiday deconstruction. So without further ado… on to the "show!"

Two Fathers (2): The Beginning Of The End

Abbreviations to date:
Dr. Eugene Openshaw: DO
Nameless Doctor: ND
Cassandra Spender: CS

A cigarette lighter is lit and is being brought slowly to a cigarette. Not surprisingly, it turns out to be the Cigarette-Smoking Man (CSM). He begins speaking to someone offscreen.

CSM: This is the end. I never thought I'd hear myself say those words after all these years. You put your life into something… build it, protect it… <Kill people to cover it up.> The end is as unimaginable as your own death or the death of your children. <Humph! With the ease with which he pulls the trigger on anyone… Sorry I'm getting ahead of myself.> I could never have scripted the events that led us to this. None of us could. All the brilliant men… the secret that we kept so well. <Uh, not for nothing, far be it for me to interrupt yet another Carterlogue but exactly how well was the secret kept? Did they change the definition of the word secret and no one told me?> It happened simply, like this. We had a perfect conspiracy with an alien race. <Yeah right! Perfect my ass!> Aliens who were coming to reclaim this planet and to destroy all human life. <Wouldn't all include, well, you? I never understood why these so-called brilliant men would think that they were so special that they would be allowed to live while all the other earthlings were exterminated. It is always the most venal who seem surprised when such venality is turned in their direction.> Our job was to secretly prepare the way for their invasion. To create for them a slave race of human/alien hybrids. <Back to the so-called brilliance again. Did none of these "geniuses" learn anything from High School History class? Slavery is just plain evil.> They were good plans… right plans. <Never mind I answered my own question.> Kept secret for over 50 years, ever since the crash at Roswell. Kept secret from men like Fox Mulder. Plans that would have worked had not a rebel alien race come to destroy them. <Thank God!> Had not my own son chosen betrayal. Or chosen to betray more wisely. <Most people get pissed at the betrayal. Only the truly twisted would critique betrayal styles.>

The camera pans over as if to show the other person, but instead fades into…

The X-Files office

(Return To Sender) Spender (RTSS) is writing on a piece of paper. Presumably, it's a report of some sort. Somehow I doubt it. Skinner (SK) enters.

RTSS: A.D. Skinner… I… I didn't hear the elevator. I was working here.

SK: Working on what, Agent Spender? <Do enlighten us. Enquiring minds want to know.>

[RTSS clears his throat uncomfortably.]

RTSS: Progress report on the X-Files. <Wouldn't one have had to make some kind of progress in order to make out a progress report?>

SK: Progress report to who?

RTSS: Just to file. <Really? I was under the impression that tossing stuff in the shredder was more your style.>

SK: I wasn't aware that you'd made any progress. In the months since your assignment, I've received but one memorandum. Were you planning to hit me all at once?

RTSS: Deceiving, inveigling, and obfuscating is busy work. It doesn't translate well into memos.

SK: wasn't aware that you'd made any progress. In the months since your assignment, I've received but one memorandum. Were you planning to hit me all at once?

RTSS: Uh, it's been slow going. <Especially since more items end up in the shredder than not.>

SK: Truth is your purpose here is not to make any progress, isn't it? <Ya think?> Truth is you have no interest in the X-Files. Beyond a certain… [He picks up an open file. There is a picture of CS from her younger days.] …personal case. [He tosses it back on Spender's desk] Your mother's abduction.

RTSS: Alleged abduction. <An alleged abduction being investigated by an alleged agent. He'll be lucky to get real results.>

SK: That's what I'm here about. <Someone found your mommy Spender! Talk about having things fall right in your lap.>

Potomac Yard
Arlington, Virginia

Back to the scene of the crime. It is much later while the operation took place in the dead of night (more or less) the crime scene is being investigated during the day. SK and RTSS arrive at the train car from the teaser. SK was driving, <For the trivia interested the license plate of the car is Virginia SBF-687. Apparently, the car du jour is a dodge. I guess the Oldsmobile was only for the movie. No point just an observation.> There are police and fire men, and ambulances around. A fireman is still putting out a small fire in the van. <What the hell do the rebels use as accelerant that the fire is still burning oh so many hours later. It's not like we're talking forest fire here.>

RTSS: What happened here? <Campfire out of control?>

SK: No one knows yet. A group of people were burned alive here. Another man's on life support. Only your mother survived. <Hmm. A fire burned so long hat there are still flames (Okay small flames but flames nonetheless) but DO managed to survive? I guess that's the problem with alien accelerant. Too unreliable.>

RTSS: Where is she? Where is she? <Where's my Mommy? Wah!>

SK: They've got her outside.

RTSS pushes past SK in his haste to run and find his mommy. He goes over to an ambulance where an EMT is giving oxygen to CS who is wrapped in a blanket.

RTSS: Mom? [The EMT leaves, RTSS takes his place across from her] Mom… It's me, Jeffrey. <I'm so bland a son that I must remind you of who I am.> Mom, what happened to you? You've been gone so long I thought I'd never see you again.

CS: Oh… Don't cry, honey. <Cowboy up you punk!>

RTSS: Where have you been?

CS: Trying to get away from you. God could you be a more whiny git?!

Okay, so that's not exactly how it went.

RTSS: Where have you been?

[CS sighs. RTSS moves over next to her.]

RTSS: What did they do to you?

CS: Annoyed me less than you have that's for damn sure.

RTSS: What did they do to you?

CS: I need to talk to someone.

RTSS: You can tell me. <Then I'll tell daddy and Colonization can begin. Or I can just bungle it. Which would you prefer?>

CS: I need to speak to Agent Mulder. <You know the real X-Files agent. You're just a piss poor substitute.>

RTSS angrily gets out of the ambulance and follows SK who overheard the conversation.]

RTSS: I don't want him talking with her.

SK: Why?

RTSS: He's forbidden from the X-Files. He's to stay out of this.

SK: She's asking for him.

RTSS: She's my mother. <I see no reason to hold that against her. It's not her fault you're an annoying git!>

SK: What are you afraid of, Agent Spender?

RTSS: That Mulder will make me look like a chump.

SK: You already look like a chump. You're just the only one who can't see it.

<Okay, okay, I'll stop. Here's the real lines:>

SK: What are you afraid of, Agent Spender?

RTSS: Of Agent Mulder filling her head with alien-abduction nonsense. <What is CS a mental defective? She seems perfectly capable of filling her own head with alien-abduction stuff.>

SK: Are you afraid of the truth?

RTSS: I want to know who did this to her and why. That's all I want.

SK: Then why not use every resource available to you? <Dumb ass!>

[Long pause.]

RTSS: I'll send you a progress report. <Don't you mean a non-progress report?> RTSS walks away. SK shakes his head <In disgust perhaps?> and follows.

To be continued…

Is there a scale large enough to correctly gauge how utterly annoying RTSS is? The man needs a slap! Why can't Krycek just put us out of our misery and whack this git? You wouldn't hear ME complain about it.

I don't get the Syndicate. Okay, so the aliens are coming to wipe out all human life and take over the planet. What part of all did they not understand? The "A" or the "LL"? Surely, they didn't think that they were so special that the aliens would leave their sorry asses around to do what? Run the slaves? I'm sure that the aliens are perfectly capable of doing that themselves. A good plan? Here's a hint to whether or not a plan may or may not be good. If the successful completion of a plan means the extermination and/or enslavement of an entire planet it's probably a bad plan. And perfect? Exactly how was their ability to keep the secret perfect? Krycek (Woo Hoo!) sold off some of the secrets. Mulder and Scully uncovered evidence of some of their misdeeds. If other people know something that you're trying to hide from others it's not a secret anymore.

I gotta say it again. It takes a special kind of twistedness to critique the way one is betrayed.

That damn RTSS has no respect for his mother. He treats her like she's an imbecile. She's a grown woman yet he acts as though she's a child being fed things to believe by Mulder. She believed in aliens before she met Mulder. It's certainly not fair to accuse Mulder of filling the woman's mind with such ideas. What a jerk!

Just for the record I went to a convention a few years ago and met Chris Owens. He was most gracious and very nice. Although we had originally gone to see Nicholas Lea, meeting Chris Owens was definitely the highlight of what was otherwise a not worth the money convention. But God how I hate RTSS!