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It's the last weekend before Christmas. I for one have done almost no shopping. Actually, I've done no shopping. I did buy a new printer but that's because my old one crapped out on me. It's funny, because I was trying to get the darn thing fixed but after spending too much time on a long distance phone call that I'd neglected to use my cell phone to make, and numerous attempts to try to clean the printer using the printer's own cleaning mechanism I had to call back and get a name of a professional cleaner. The printer would not print black the yellow barely showed and the graphic I tried to print came out pink. Anyway, I call the professional cleaner and he tells me it'll cost me 30 bucks. He can't guarantee it'll help and if it doesn't I'll have to buy a new printer anyway. So I skipped the 30 buck gamble and headed to Office Max. I like my new printer (although I'm sure I'll be more impressed when I actually hook it up) but there is something that's bothering me. (and it's not the half empty ink cartridges that come with it.) I neglected to look up the price of ink cartridges. Now I can buy individual colors which is a good think but I don't know how much it costs which is bad because it could end up biting me in the ass later.
It used to be that a printer was an investment. Now it would seems like the printers are treated like shavers. Shavers are sold at a loss but the replacement blades are sold at a huge mark-up. The companies that put out razors actually make money on the blades not the shavers. It looks as though the printers are being sold the same way. When I got my first printer it came with a full ink cartridge. I don't actually print all that often so it was pretty cool. Especially since the price of ink wasn't so great. Now, the price of printers have gone down but the ink still costs an arm and a leg. It's gotten ridiculous when it's actually cheaper to throw out a printer than it is to buy ink. That's not exactly environmentally friendly or ecologically responsible. <Sigh>
On a completely unrelated note I'm seriously considering changing the style I use for the rants. I still plan the same color scheme and bold/regular text format but I'm thinking that perhaps the font should change for better readability.
Anyway on to the "show"
Two Fathers (5): Something X-Filean This Way Comes… Not Exactly
Abbreviations to date:
Dr. Eugene Openshaw: DO
Nameless Doctor: ND
Cassandra Spender: CS
Cigarette-Smoking Man: CSM
Agent (Return to Sender)Spender: RTSS
A.D. Skinner: SK
Nameless Basketball Player: NBP
Mulder: M
Scully: S
Second Elder: 2ndE
Faux Dr. Openshaw: FDO
Number of times I refer to (Return to Sender) Spender by
Mulder's usual epitaph: 2
Number of times Mulder calls Scully by her last name:
1
Number of times Scully calls Mulder by his last name: 2
9:42 PM
FBI bullpen
A nameless FBI agent exits leaving M all alone. M is currently sitting alone at his desk looking at computer images of the burned doctors from the train car. S enters.)
S: Didn't expect to find you here.
M: Where did you expect to find me? <Offhand, the local porno theater>
S: I thought Agent Spender offered you an X-File assignment.
M: It wasn't exactly an offer.
S: But isn't it just the opportunity you've been waiting for?
M: It is an opportunity made to order for the powers that be.
S: You think it's a setup?
M: This is exactly the kind of mistake they've been waiting for to come down on me full force. <And yet you'll forget this in about two seconds. Whatever happened to your eidetic memory anyway?>
S: But Agent Spender asked you.
M: Like I said, not exactly.
S sighs then comes around as she notices what M is looking at on the computer.
S: We've seen this before. Bodies set aflame with no conclusive cause of combustion.
M nods
S: Mulder…
M: [looking at her, gently] I know.
S: I was with Cassandra Spender when she disappeared. You sat with me while I was under hypnosis when I spoke of just these sorts of details.
M: I have no doubt that what Cassandra would tell us would expose more than just what happened to her.
S: I was taken to one of those train cars. I was tested, just like Cassandra. What if what she tells us could expose who did this to me? Mulder, Agent Spender doesn't have to know. <Besides, it's not like RTSS is a good investigator or something.>
[M looks at her, then considers it.]
Close up of something green and slimy. Camera pulls back to show that it is a bowl of lime Jello. <This is a healthy sized bowl. This is a most unusual hospital. When I was hospitalized and on a clear liquid diet to boot, the Jello came in single serving cups. Thankfully, I was never given lime Jello.> CS lying in bed eating said Jello. <Wait a minute. This is still the same day is it not? It is way past dinner hour. Why the hell is the Jello still there anyway?> There is a woman with very short dark hair sitting with her. I'm not sure who she is. She could be a consortium plant for all we know. CS looks up happily as S enters the room.
CS: [swallowing a mouthful of Jello] Oh, my God. My God…
S: [embracing her] Cassandra.
CS: Oh, Dana. Oh, my God.
S: It's so good to see you. [to the dark haired woman] We're old friends. [to CS] If I can get a hold of a wheelchair you want to go out for some fresh air?
CS: [smiling] I don't need a wheelchair.
CS gets out of bed and wiggles her toes on the floor. S stares in amazement. CS puts on a robe. <Yet she hasn't put on any socks. Walking around a hospital with the myriad of bodily fluids which could end up on the floor is not wise. Besides, the hospital gives you socks. They're not bad they have thingies on the bottom so that you don't slip and bust your ass.>
CS: But I am dying for a cigarette.
They go out into the hall. The woman who was sitting with CS follows them into the hall. She's just standing in the middle of the hall watching S and CS as they walk away. Not exactly effective bodyguard behavior. <Frankly, she's starting to creep me out.>
CS: It feels so good to walk. The doctors don't know what to say. I told them they wouldn't believe how it happened and they wouldn't. No, I'm not going to tell anybody this time because nobody believes you anyway. They want to hear it but they just think you're crazy. I guess I wouldn't believe it either except that it happened to me. No, I'm only going to tell somebody I can trust and who can do something about it. I was hoping when I saw you that Agent Mulder was going to be coming in the door behind you.
S: [smiling] I've got a surprise for you, Cassandra.
Short time later, CS enters a deserted lab/storage room, followed by S. M sticks his head out from behind a shelf. <Personally I'd prefer Krycek but well that's just me.>
CS: [too loudly] Agent Mulder?!
M: Shh. Shhh. Shhhh.
CS: Oh, my God. [laughing] Oh, my God, I think I'm going to pee the floor.
M: [nervous chuckle] Don't… don't do that. <It could be a bit messy and no one wants to explain how it happened.>
CS hugs M warmly.
M: Look at you.
CS: I told you about their power. You said you didn't believe it.
M: Well, I had reasons for doubt when I met you, Cassandra.
CS: You just doubted yourself. <No actually he just had his head shoved firmly up his butt. It's not easy to remove one's head from one's anus.> You were just doubting you'd ever see her again, weren't you? [M looks up at S] Your sister.
S: Agent Mulder told me he believed he saw his sister… last year.
CS: That wasn't her, Agent Mulder. <I told you she was a clone!>
M: Then where is she?
CS: [lighting a cigarette] Out there, with them. <Shouldn't someone at this point point out that one should not smoke. Especially in a hospital> The aliens.
S: Cassandra, you were found in a train car. You'd been operated on by doctors. <Butchers is more like it.>
CS: Yes, that's right.
S: And these are the doctors who cured you?
CS: No. The aliens cured me. The doctors were working with the aliens. That's what I wanted to tell you.
M: What?
CS: I told you that the aliens were here to do good and that I was being used as an oracle to spread the word. Only now I know what the aliens are here for and it isn't good. <See it's not hard to figure out. CS can see that the extermination of human life on earth is a bad thing and she doesn't claim brilliance.>
M: What are they here for?
CS: To wipe us off the planet. They're taking over the universe. They're infecting all other life-forms with a black substance called Purity. It's their life force. It's what they're made of.
M: It's the virus -- the black oil. <Which version?>
S: But, Cassandra, the doctors weren't infected. They were burned.
CS: By another race of aliens. A rebel force that are mutilating their faces so that they won't be infected. This is what I couldn't tell my son Jeffrey. <Because Jeffrey, aka RTSS still has his head stuck in his rectum.>
S: Why couldn't you tell Jeffrey? <Is it really necessary for S to ask this question? Surely she already knows the answer to that question.>
CS: Because he doesn't believe me… even though his life is in danger by these same rebel aliens. <Anyone up for alien fried weasel?>
S: Spender's life's in danger? <You mean chronic stupidity isn't fatal?>
CS: He's in with the men that have been working with the alien colonists for 50 years.
S: Working to do what? <To hide the truth about aliens, to screw up the X-Files just to name a couple of possibilities. Remember?>
CS: Whatever it is they did to me… and to you, Dana.
M and S look at each other.
M: And you know who these men are?
CS: [bitterly] Oh, sure. One of them's my ex-husband… Jeffrey's father. <How did a nice woman like CS end up married to a bastard like CSM? I know there's no accounting for taste but still…>
CSM is still talking to his offscreen friend
CSM: Cassandra was beginning to realize her role in the greatest science project that man had ever known. She was the center of 50 years of work… The key to all of our plans… something even my colleagues didn't realize yet. I killed to keep them unknowing. I killed Dr. Openshaw so they wouldn't discover her. When it's Cassandra I should have killed… Cassandra who needed to die. I couldn't do it. With all the blood on my hands I couldn't kill the mother of my own son, a woman I never even loved. <Oh come on now! What a load of self serving crap! Who does he think he's fooling? Oh that's right the person he's talking to. I suppose someone as to play the fool.> My colleagues never knew, focused as they were on the new threat -- the faceless alien rebels who'd burned our doctors alive… But my colleagues had become old men… blind to the fact that the faceless rebels already held the upper hand… that they'd used their powers of disguise to infiltrate our group.
To be continued…
Who is that dark haired woman who was doing a very poor job of playing bodyguard? Anyone could walk in and say they were a friend of CS. Granted I really didn't want to see her give S a hard time but still what the hell is she in there for?
Hmph! CSM waxing regretfully about CS and the other people he's killed or should have killed sounds ridiculously self-serving. I'm sure even the person he's talking to doesn't buy that line of crap.
Okay, I have a problem. At this point in time we now have three versions of that black oil. In season three we have the PiperMaru/Apocrypha version which appears to be a sentient being which takes over the body of its hosts until it gets where it wants then exits. In season four we have the Tunguska/Terma version which seems to turn you into a zombie until you died then it exited. Now in post FTF we have the oil which uses you as food until a new alien is born. So which oil is it? Surely it couldn't have evolved in the period of two years. Sometimes it's painfully obvious that Chris Carter makes stuff up as he goes along with not much of a plan during the process.
How much time do you think Chris Carter spent reading up on his Greek Mythology. In Greek Mythology, Cassandra had the ability to predict the future. But no one ever believed her. Now we have CS, oracle of sorts of the aliens but first M doesn't believe her then later after M believes her RTSS refuses to. Not subtle are we CC?
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