In lieu of a commentary track, I thought I'd post parts of the emails ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mustangsally78 and I exchanged soon after she proposed what would become Iolokus. Sadly, I don't have the initial emails, only my replies. At least I quoted a lot. Herewith, portions of the correspondence labeled "As Sure as Eggs Is Eggs," December 1997. Original summary by MS is black. MS's replies to me are in blue. RT is in red. (I'm Heather Chandler!) I think there's interesting stuff here, about the false starts and surprises of writing, collaboration, feminism and reproduction, and (for cathexys) intertextuality, both with fannish and nonfannish texts.
MS: Hardworking fan-fic author ISO the right Usual Suspect to collaborate on post-Emily story with.
RT: Sounds like fun! Can I use tongs on the uniblonder, or is it to be sharp objects only? (so many possibilities, so little time...) I'm about to start vacation, so this would be a good time for me.
MS: You know, I was really hoping that you would be interested. [Personal info omitted.] Is the world ready? Below you will find what I have roughed out. Let me know what you think. The numbers just indicate "beats" of the story, not necessarily segments or anything.
[Note: at this point I am interleaving my initial comments and MS's initial responses, rather than reproducing them twice. I hope this is understandable.]
Scully goes up against the Consortium because she is furious with them for stealing her ova and the uses to which they put them - creating monsters. It centers on the woman's right to choose to have children or not - she hadn't made a definite choice yet and is OFFENDED that the decision had been taken away from her. The entire plot would mirror Medea. Scully sets off to destroy all the embryos that they have created from her ova. Very tough, very cold & angry Scully. The Lone Gunmen are forced into helping her and function as the chorus - they are appalled that she wants to destroy what they perceive as her children, but give her information and comment on the action. Mulder is about three steps behind her and is horrified. He is Jason in the story. Which leaves Marita as the new bride of Jason that Medea kills. (Heh heh) and that leaves Skinner as Kreon but he doesn't have all that much to do.
RT: I have a friend who always wanted to name her girlchild Medea, because of that line where someone (forget who, maybe Jason) says "what you've done is so awful that people will stop naming their daughters Medea."
MS: I've always favored Jocasta myself - but that's a HEAVY burden to carry <g> Speaking as one "Handmaiden of God" to the other. <bg>
On the MSR side, Scully and Mulder have been involved since late season four - during the cancer arc and the pressures of the Emily affair have made a serious schism in their relationship. She is angry that he didn't tell her that he knew about the ova before.
RT: When do you see that happening? I have to admit, late season 4 stomped on all my hard-won 'shipperness. I could see it after Redux II when everything's all gooey. Either that, or during season 4 they might just fuck without talking about it. Which could be fun to write.
MS: For the purposes of this story, I see it as being season 4 - say after Demons so it's really dark and really scary. He's all fucked up from "Vitamin K" and she's feeling needy because she feels like she's going to die at any minute. I knew a woman in college whose son died of a brain tumor at age 22 and he apparently went on this extended binge of sex & drugs when he found out that he was going to die but wasn't actively dying yet. No, I don't think they talked about it afterwards - hell, they hardly know how they feel themselves & I don't see either of them making extended "Mad About You" conversations about the future.
=== The segments with the quotes from Medea are Scully-centric. I see 3rd person Omnicient here. Mulder doesn't get any quotes and some of his sections are rather sketchy. I have no idea how to divide this up in terms of who writes what, I generally don't collaborate, but at least I don't have any preconceptions either! If you think I have missed anything important or find a plot hole, sing out. It also doesn't have an ending, but I'm enough of a Classicist to want the Chain of Being restored at the end. I also haven't quite figured out what Scully's hubris is here. I know Mulder's is intellectual pride.
RT: Scully's is, in my opinion, a combination of unwarranted faith in her ability to control what happens to her and belief that strength means isolation. I don't know how you'd distill that, but it certainly fits into the story outline.
MS: I can go along with that. She's caught in that Boy's Club mentality to be in the boy's game you have to act like one. Maybe she saw too many Clint Eastwood movies as a child.
RT: After all, one radical feminist dream has been to control completely the process of reproduction, even mechanizing it to liberate women from its tyranny. From what you've said elsewhere, you think that's a mistake; the kind of control we should exercise over reproduction is bounded by some set of unaided human possibilities.
MS: Well, let me just say that I believe in TOTAL choice. Choice to have, choice to abort, choice not to have, etc. I think that it's a narrow ethical line to draw between having a child because you want to and bearing a child that is unable to live without extreme medical actions. Again, anecdote, my neighbor across the street has a daughter who is microcephalic and autistic. She had no sucking reflex when she was born and we had to pump formula into her around the clock, she's 17 now and she still has to be force-fed, she's had several operations to correct birth defects and I suspect she is in pain most of the time. I don't know if I would have continued the pregnancy if I had known things were going to work out like that. On the other hand, she's a great kid and I love her to death, but my cat is more responsive and can feed & clean himself where she cannot.
RT: To the extent that Scully requires her life to happen exactly in the right order, she shares some of the mentality of the men who've experimented on her. And in going further--destroying the lab and so forth--she's appropriated some of their methods, their willingness to assert their will over that of others who resist.
MS: Exactly. She has to "become" one of them to "win".
Read on citizen! =====
1
Oh, unfortunate one! Oh, cruel! Where will you turn? Who will help you? What house or what land to preserve you From ill can you find? A god has thrown suffering Upon you in waves of despair.*
Requisite Skinner office scene - he is sorry and offers her time off. Brief re-cap of events in cc/Emily. Feeling frozen on the outside, fire in the inside. Does paperwork at her desk with a feeling of unreality, thinking and flashing back the whole time. Breaks her pencil, claims a headache and goes home. Sets up her frame of mind and the tension.
2
She frightens him, he wants to talk to her and to comfort her but he is afraid, he doesn't like the look in her eyes and is holding his secret close to his chest. Goes to her apartment and finds her sitting on the floor looking at old family photo albums. He tries to be comforting but she rebuffs him.
RT: I assume you mean the secret that he's still got some ova?
MS: Exactly.
RT: This provides the possibility of either a cop-out or an ambiguous ending--if she doesn't destroy the ones over which she (or Mulder) still exercises control, she's not giving up every chance of procreating.
MS: I like ambiguous endings. Maybe he tells her where/gives the ova to her and tells her she can do with them whatever she wants because they are hers.
RT: I imagine that Mulder has a dream in which, maybe through GIFT or something like that, he & Scully actually do have kids together.
MS: I sort of like the idea of him dreaming of a rose-covered cottage rather than her.
RT: At the same time, he knows it's a stupid dream but he can't stop himself from thinking about it. He knows the ova probably died (or whatever you call it) when he took them off ice and carried them around for a while, but he can't bring himself to find out because he wants to remain tantalized by the possibility.
MS: Hey, if they can keep the dinosaur embryos viable in Jurassic Park, I say we've got an infinite shelf-life on ova!
RT: Raises an interesting question about their first sex scene--maybe that's how she finds out, as she tells the investigator, that she can't have kids the normal way.
MS: I think it's more likely that given the TOTAL removal of her ova ceased her menstrual cycle.
3 God, and God's daughter, justice, and light of Helios! Now, friends, has come the time of my triumph over
My enemies and now my foot is on the road. Now I am confident they will pay the penalty.*
Goes through his desk the next day and finds the infamous Rolodex card with Marita's name and phone number on it. She checks this against the phone system and finds that the calls made from his phone to that number have all coincided with the information he has gotten about the big Consortium in the past. Copies down the number just as he comes back into the office. Goes to a pay phone at the food court across the street and makes phone call to Marita and suggests that they meet the next day for lunch. Wants all the information on the company that has been doing the drug trials. It is the same company that has been doing the cloning experiments that was mentioned in Redux. He is staring at her the whole afternoon.
4
Worried he tails her at lunch the next day and sees her meet Marita for lunch somewhere and just about pees his pants, shadows her back to the office and when she gets up to got get more coffee he tries to get into her briefcase but its its' locked and he doesn't have time to jimmy it open. He almost is caught during this. That night he goes to her apartment again and they have strange sex and he tries to find whatever Marita gave her at lunch but she as hidden it too well. He wakes up in the morning and she s gone.
RT: So do we see Marita give her info? How would Marita have it ready at the meeting? Maybe they go somewhere for Marita to give her the info, or perhaps a second meeting would be in order.
MS: Marita could approach her. She got the report about Emily through her usual information channels where she gets all her expository information. So we don't know WHY she's doing it. Maybe Marita gives her a "sisterhood" speech and Scully doesn't buy it as much as she wants to know what Marita knows.
RT: If we want Marita/Scully UST that could be a good setup. I love the "strange sex" idea. I read Dawson Rambo's "Convection" a while back, and I found it a fascinating idea with an utterly implausible denouement. The idea is that M & S do the nasty, and M thinks it's love and S thinks it's sex. Dawson ends with M sort of bewilderedly accepting S's terms for the relationship. I can see the first set of events happening, but I think M would be incredibly angry and betrayed in such a situation, and I've been playing around with that idea a little bit. Sex without trust between those two would be ... shuddering.
MS: (oh go re-read your own Fugue for crying out loud, that last sex scene where he has his memories and she doesn't - gave me the willies) Scully has love - she has what's left of her family. She's interested in having sex. He's hungering for love & security since he has none. I can see her sleeping with her that night for reassurance and midway he realizes that she's basically using him as a tension-reliever. (Insert 2 AA batteries and re-mousse hair)
5
O where will you find the courage? Or the skill of hand and heart, When you set yourself to attempt A deed so dreadful to do?*
The Lone Gunman off ices and she is explaining the entire situation to them and ties to get Frohike to hack into the data base and see if there are any files in the information about he company that correspond to the file number that had been on her index card. He has the name of a facility somewhere where the experiments are being done. She takes the information and calls Sinner to tell him that she has reconsidered and taken some personal time after all. She calls her voice mail and gets a snippy message from Mulder. She goes to get her car and Marita follows her and tries to stop her. Scully handcuffs Marita to the door of the car and takes her prisoner.
RT: She got the file number from Marita? Or did Mulder cough it up under her questioning?
MS: It was on the little thingy with the microchip in it - I think. So the Gunmen even have it. I think Mulder told her all about that part.
RT: What if...Marita gave Scully a surveillance tape from when Mulder was in the DARPA/Pentagon facility, with closeups so that she could see what he'd seen (and not told her)?
MS: And what does that do? Make Mulder suspect? drive a deeper wedge between them?
RT: What's Marita's deal? Why help Scully first and then pull out?
MS: Marita really wants to help Scully and end that part of the project. She was a hybrid and she knows how rough it is to be chemically incompatible with the rest of the world and the psychological implications of being truly "other". Marita pulls out because she doesn't want to do the dirty work.
6
Mulder is in the awkward position of not knowing that she is on leave when he sees skinner the next day and feels like an ass. He goes to the gunmen and demands to know what they and Scully met about the day before. Is mildly threatening and macho with them, just as Scully had been.
RT: Perfect! I wonder if we could replicate the "Jose Chung"/Rashomon effect in prose?
MS: Sure. Have Mulder repeat almost exactly the same dialog and go through the same physical actions in the office, while the Gunmen react.
They suggest that she is going to the facility to destroy the embryos. Suggest that it is murder and that she has finally taken a ride on the disoriented express. Byers reminds Mulder that he still has the ova on ice at the cryo unit at the University. Mulder admits that he has not told her about it.
7
I know indeed what evil I intend to do. But stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury,
Fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.
She is traveling across country to the lab and Marita tells her that her daughter was actually one of the hybrids and she was taken away from her so she understands how Scully feels. Tells her whole sad little story about how the Consortium is continuing the eugenics experiments that were begun during WWII with the Nazis and that the hybrids are the best form yet and how they are going to re-populate the world with them as a master race. Not with my ova they don't. Marita explains that 98% of all the medically assisted pregnancies are part of the projects and why does Scully think that there are so many infertility problems among healthy, bright, white folks?
RT: Oh, I like it. Why are the hybrids better, though? Possibilities: (1) disease resistance, but that seems like a lot of effort for just that, especially since evolution would quickly catch up and create fun new plagues.
MS: Okay, there are two factions in the underworld The Consortium - who are developing the shapeshifters and the killer bees. A nameless group is developing the hybrids and the Jeremiah Smith clones. The nameless group is under the control of the consortium - rebels, really.
[Current commentary: Good to see MS was untangling the snarled ball of string that was XF mythology before CC got around to it.]
[Reason (2) is lost to history.]
RT: (3) strange unexplained powers. (My favorite pet theory is that Mulder's part-hybrid but he didn't work that well, which is why Sam was taken instead.)
MS: Works for me. "There's something wrong with that boy." He was a prototype where the hybrid has more human characteristics than alien. There are probably a few more running around out there, too.
RT: Emily's odd self-possession as she gassed the doctor doing the biopsy could work in here.
MS: I thought she was just dim.
RT: Maybe some are telepaths, some telekinetics, & so on. Some are just superbrains like the doctors and the Kurts, and they're the ones most likely to have attacks of conscience & try to expose the Project. Sometimes ordinary humans get strange powers like pyrokinesis (Cecil L'Ively) & mind control (Pusher), but there's no way to predict it and it often goes along with deadly medical conditions. With the hybrids, by contrast, the well-mapped alien DNA allows the creators to know what they're making--at least after a few hundred trials & errors, of which Emily might be one.
MS: All right. You can write the scientific speeches then!
8
Mulder on the road following them.
9
Can you tearlessly hold the decision For murder?
You will not be able, When your children fall down and implore you,
You will not be able to dip Steadfast your hand in their blood.*
They get to the lab and find that there is far more security than there should have been under normal circumstances and threatening as hell. Scully demands to know if Marita is going to help her or not. Marita promises that she will and they check into a hotel for the night. During the night, Scully can't sleep and since she and Marita are sharing a bed she sees that Marita has one of the green things on the back of her neck too. She decided to go through with it anyway. (***Hey, this is your big chance for the Scully slash, huh?) In the morning, Scully siphons gasoline out of the car and fills Evian bottles with gas.
RT: Marita needs more motivation--what if they dodged some Consortium baddies and M. knew (or appeared to think) that her status as an informer had been discovered?
MS: Works for me.
10
Suppose that the children have grown into youth
And have turned out good, still, if God so wills it,
Death will away your children's bodies,
And carry them off to Hades.
Scully and Marita get into the lab with fake ID's and down to where all the embryos are stored in vats of green fluid. Very creepy. Scully walks up and down the aisles and has second thoughts, remembers the quality of life that Emily didn't have when she was alive and decides that she is doing the right thing after all. Takes a crowbar or an axe and starts breaking the containers until she is standing in a puddle of green fluid surrounded by all the embryos. Should be very dramatic. [Current commentary: Ya think?] Mulder makes it to the lab and runs after them. Figure out what to do with the guards/security. Fake drill courtesy of Frohike maybe.
RT: It would be cool if they recognized him and treated him like an important figure in the hierarchy. Mulderclones, anyone?
MS: Well, there would have to be a Mulderclone introduced earlier in the story somewhere. You have to establish that earlier on so you're not pulling T. Rex's out of hats. (I don't care what CC does, I like rules of logic!)
11
Come, children, give me your hands, give your mother your hands to kiss them,
O the dear hands, and O how dear are these lips to me, And the generous eyes and the bearing of my children!
I give you happiness but nowhere in the world.*
Marita tries to stop Scully from blowing up the containers at the last minute and Scully PLAMs her. Marita melts like the wicked witch of the West and gets to make a dead gal speech.
RT: I take it that Scully's wearing a mask at this point? Or maybe she could just stand there, part of her death wish, but it turns out that whatever they did to her gave her partial immunity--the remnants of the branched DNA?
MS: Either that or she's far enough away in a well-ventilated area so she only gets temporary coughing or something/swollen eyes. Which also means that if Mulder was alien how do you explain his gag attach in the E. Flask?
Just as Mulder runs in, Scully pours the gasoline (Whatever) on the floor and the green liquid is flammable and she is standing in a pool of fire when Mulder bursts in. She is quite willing to go up with the embryos but he manages to get her out somehow and they stand outside and watch the place explode. Finally, she starts to keen because of what the Consortium had done to her. He has no idea what to say or do. So they stand there while the future burns.
RT: Oh yeah. Maybe in a reversal of type, she could reach out and he could rebuff her, horrified by what she's become (by what he's made her?). [Current commentary: Wow, what a bad suggestion. Thanks for nixing it, MS!]
MS: But then he's rejecting her because she's no longer stereotypical feminine. Maybe he likes her being tough - because he can't burn his bridges and say "okay, you have Sam, fuck you. Kill her, I don't care." The Consort. has power over him because he gives it over. Scully could remove the last hold that they have over her and be free. Or he tells her about the remaining ova and she knocks him on his ass? Can she deck him? Please?
12
I will bury them myself,
Bearing them to Hera's temple on the promontory;
So that no enemy may evilly treat them By tearing up their grave.
RT: Let me know how you want to make this happen.
MS: I dunno. You want to pick a segment or two that you like, let me know which ones, and write them, and I'll write another couple, etc. When we get the whole thing grafted together, we'll see where the major problems are, bang them out, and send it off to a non-biased third party for literary editing, (I suggest [deleted] since I trust her, and I understand that you guys correspond), and then a super-unbiased copywriter for final proofing and then scare the shit out of the mailing list. <vbg> I need to write some Mulder. He confuses the hell out of me and I need to get a handle on him, just keep me honest. I'm really excited about this. This is my holiday gift to myself.
mustangsally78 and I exchanged soon after she proposed what would become Iolokus. Sadly, I don't have the initial emails, only my replies. At least I quoted a lot. Herewith, portions of the correspondence labeled "As Sure as Eggs Is Eggs," December 1997. Original summary by MS is black. MS's replies to me are in blue. RT is in red. (I'm Heather Chandler!) I think there's interesting stuff here, about the false starts and surprises of writing, collaboration, feminism and reproduction, and (for cathexys) intertextuality, both with fannish and nonfannish texts. MS: Hardworking fan-fic author ISO the right Usual Suspect to collaborate on post-Emily story with.
RT: Sounds like fun! Can I use tongs on the uniblonder, or is it to be sharp objects only? (so many possibilities, so little time...) I'm about to start vacation, so this would be a good time for me.
MS: You know, I was really hoping that you would be interested. [Personal info omitted.] Is the world ready? Below you will find what I have roughed out. Let me know what you think. The numbers just indicate "beats" of the story, not necessarily segments or anything.
[Note: at this point I am interleaving my initial comments and MS's initial responses, rather than reproducing them twice. I hope this is understandable.]
Scully goes up against the Consortium because she is furious with them for stealing her ova and the uses to which they put them - creating monsters. It centers on the woman's right to choose to have children or not - she hadn't made a definite choice yet and is OFFENDED that the decision had been taken away from her. The entire plot would mirror Medea. Scully sets off to destroy all the embryos that they have created from her ova. Very tough, very cold & angry Scully. The Lone Gunmen are forced into helping her and function as the chorus - they are appalled that she wants to destroy what they perceive as her children, but give her information and comment on the action. Mulder is about three steps behind her and is horrified. He is Jason in the story. Which leaves Marita as the new bride of Jason that Medea kills. (Heh heh) and that leaves Skinner as Kreon but he doesn't have all that much to do.
RT: I have a friend who always wanted to name her girlchild Medea, because of that line where someone (forget who, maybe Jason) says "what you've done is so awful that people will stop naming their daughters Medea."
MS: I've always favored Jocasta myself - but that's a HEAVY burden to carry <g> Speaking as one "Handmaiden of God" to the other. <bg>
On the MSR side, Scully and Mulder have been involved since late season four - during the cancer arc and the pressures of the Emily affair have made a serious schism in their relationship. She is angry that he didn't tell her that he knew about the ova before.
RT: When do you see that happening? I have to admit, late season 4 stomped on all my hard-won 'shipperness. I could see it after Redux II when everything's all gooey. Either that, or during season 4 they might just fuck without talking about it. Which could be fun to write.
MS: For the purposes of this story, I see it as being season 4 - say after Demons so it's really dark and really scary. He's all fucked up from "Vitamin K" and she's feeling needy because she feels like she's going to die at any minute. I knew a woman in college whose son died of a brain tumor at age 22 and he apparently went on this extended binge of sex & drugs when he found out that he was going to die but wasn't actively dying yet. No, I don't think they talked about it afterwards - hell, they hardly know how they feel themselves & I don't see either of them making extended "Mad About You" conversations about the future.
=== The segments with the quotes from Medea are Scully-centric. I see 3rd person Omnicient here. Mulder doesn't get any quotes and some of his sections are rather sketchy. I have no idea how to divide this up in terms of who writes what, I generally don't collaborate, but at least I don't have any preconceptions either! If you think I have missed anything important or find a plot hole, sing out. It also doesn't have an ending, but I'm enough of a Classicist to want the Chain of Being restored at the end. I also haven't quite figured out what Scully's hubris is here. I know Mulder's is intellectual pride.
RT: Scully's is, in my opinion, a combination of unwarranted faith in her ability to control what happens to her and belief that strength means isolation. I don't know how you'd distill that, but it certainly fits into the story outline.
MS: I can go along with that. She's caught in that Boy's Club mentality to be in the boy's game you have to act like one. Maybe she saw too many Clint Eastwood movies as a child.
RT: After all, one radical feminist dream has been to control completely the process of reproduction, even mechanizing it to liberate women from its tyranny. From what you've said elsewhere, you think that's a mistake; the kind of control we should exercise over reproduction is bounded by some set of unaided human possibilities.
MS: Well, let me just say that I believe in TOTAL choice. Choice to have, choice to abort, choice not to have, etc. I think that it's a narrow ethical line to draw between having a child because you want to and bearing a child that is unable to live without extreme medical actions. Again, anecdote, my neighbor across the street has a daughter who is microcephalic and autistic. She had no sucking reflex when she was born and we had to pump formula into her around the clock, she's 17 now and she still has to be force-fed, she's had several operations to correct birth defects and I suspect she is in pain most of the time. I don't know if I would have continued the pregnancy if I had known things were going to work out like that. On the other hand, she's a great kid and I love her to death, but my cat is more responsive and can feed & clean himself where she cannot.
RT: To the extent that Scully requires her life to happen exactly in the right order, she shares some of the mentality of the men who've experimented on her. And in going further--destroying the lab and so forth--she's appropriated some of their methods, their willingness to assert their will over that of others who resist.
MS: Exactly. She has to "become" one of them to "win".
Read on citizen! =====
1
Oh, unfortunate one! Oh, cruel! Where will you turn? Who will help you? What house or what land to preserve you From ill can you find? A god has thrown suffering Upon you in waves of despair.*
Requisite Skinner office scene - he is sorry and offers her time off. Brief re-cap of events in cc/Emily. Feeling frozen on the outside, fire in the inside. Does paperwork at her desk with a feeling of unreality, thinking and flashing back the whole time. Breaks her pencil, claims a headache and goes home. Sets up her frame of mind and the tension.
2
She frightens him, he wants to talk to her and to comfort her but he is afraid, he doesn't like the look in her eyes and is holding his secret close to his chest. Goes to her apartment and finds her sitting on the floor looking at old family photo albums. He tries to be comforting but she rebuffs him.
RT: I assume you mean the secret that he's still got some ova?
MS: Exactly.
RT: This provides the possibility of either a cop-out or an ambiguous ending--if she doesn't destroy the ones over which she (or Mulder) still exercises control, she's not giving up every chance of procreating.
MS: I like ambiguous endings. Maybe he tells her where/gives the ova to her and tells her she can do with them whatever she wants because they are hers.
RT: I imagine that Mulder has a dream in which, maybe through GIFT or something like that, he & Scully actually do have kids together.
MS: I sort of like the idea of him dreaming of a rose-covered cottage rather than her.
RT: At the same time, he knows it's a stupid dream but he can't stop himself from thinking about it. He knows the ova probably died (or whatever you call it) when he took them off ice and carried them around for a while, but he can't bring himself to find out because he wants to remain tantalized by the possibility.
MS: Hey, if they can keep the dinosaur embryos viable in Jurassic Park, I say we've got an infinite shelf-life on ova!
RT: Raises an interesting question about their first sex scene--maybe that's how she finds out, as she tells the investigator, that she can't have kids the normal way.
MS: I think it's more likely that given the TOTAL removal of her ova ceased her menstrual cycle.
3 God, and God's daughter, justice, and light of Helios! Now, friends, has come the time of my triumph over
My enemies and now my foot is on the road. Now I am confident they will pay the penalty.*
Goes through his desk the next day and finds the infamous Rolodex card with Marita's name and phone number on it. She checks this against the phone system and finds that the calls made from his phone to that number have all coincided with the information he has gotten about the big Consortium in the past. Copies down the number just as he comes back into the office. Goes to a pay phone at the food court across the street and makes phone call to Marita and suggests that they meet the next day for lunch. Wants all the information on the company that has been doing the drug trials. It is the same company that has been doing the cloning experiments that was mentioned in Redux. He is staring at her the whole afternoon.
4
Worried he tails her at lunch the next day and sees her meet Marita for lunch somewhere and just about pees his pants, shadows her back to the office and when she gets up to got get more coffee he tries to get into her briefcase but its its' locked and he doesn't have time to jimmy it open. He almost is caught during this. That night he goes to her apartment again and they have strange sex and he tries to find whatever Marita gave her at lunch but she as hidden it too well. He wakes up in the morning and she s gone.
RT: So do we see Marita give her info? How would Marita have it ready at the meeting? Maybe they go somewhere for Marita to give her the info, or perhaps a second meeting would be in order.
MS: Marita could approach her. She got the report about Emily through her usual information channels where she gets all her expository information. So we don't know WHY she's doing it. Maybe Marita gives her a "sisterhood" speech and Scully doesn't buy it as much as she wants to know what Marita knows.
RT: If we want Marita/Scully UST that could be a good setup. I love the "strange sex" idea. I read Dawson Rambo's "Convection" a while back, and I found it a fascinating idea with an utterly implausible denouement. The idea is that M & S do the nasty, and M thinks it's love and S thinks it's sex. Dawson ends with M sort of bewilderedly accepting S's terms for the relationship. I can see the first set of events happening, but I think M would be incredibly angry and betrayed in such a situation, and I've been playing around with that idea a little bit. Sex without trust between those two would be ... shuddering.
MS: (oh go re-read your own Fugue for crying out loud, that last sex scene where he has his memories and she doesn't - gave me the willies) Scully has love - she has what's left of her family. She's interested in having sex. He's hungering for love & security since he has none. I can see her sleeping with her that night for reassurance and midway he realizes that she's basically using him as a tension-reliever. (Insert 2 AA batteries and re-mousse hair)
5
O where will you find the courage? Or the skill of hand and heart, When you set yourself to attempt A deed so dreadful to do?*
The Lone Gunman off ices and she is explaining the entire situation to them and ties to get Frohike to hack into the data base and see if there are any files in the information about he company that correspond to the file number that had been on her index card. He has the name of a facility somewhere where the experiments are being done. She takes the information and calls Sinner to tell him that she has reconsidered and taken some personal time after all. She calls her voice mail and gets a snippy message from Mulder. She goes to get her car and Marita follows her and tries to stop her. Scully handcuffs Marita to the door of the car and takes her prisoner.
RT: She got the file number from Marita? Or did Mulder cough it up under her questioning?
MS: It was on the little thingy with the microchip in it - I think. So the Gunmen even have it. I think Mulder told her all about that part.
RT: What if...Marita gave Scully a surveillance tape from when Mulder was in the DARPA/Pentagon facility, with closeups so that she could see what he'd seen (and not told her)?
MS: And what does that do? Make Mulder suspect? drive a deeper wedge between them?
RT: What's Marita's deal? Why help Scully first and then pull out?
MS: Marita really wants to help Scully and end that part of the project. She was a hybrid and she knows how rough it is to be chemically incompatible with the rest of the world and the psychological implications of being truly "other". Marita pulls out because she doesn't want to do the dirty work.
6
Mulder is in the awkward position of not knowing that she is on leave when he sees skinner the next day and feels like an ass. He goes to the gunmen and demands to know what they and Scully met about the day before. Is mildly threatening and macho with them, just as Scully had been.
RT: Perfect! I wonder if we could replicate the "Jose Chung"/Rashomon effect in prose?
MS: Sure. Have Mulder repeat almost exactly the same dialog and go through the same physical actions in the office, while the Gunmen react.
They suggest that she is going to the facility to destroy the embryos. Suggest that it is murder and that she has finally taken a ride on the disoriented express. Byers reminds Mulder that he still has the ova on ice at the cryo unit at the University. Mulder admits that he has not told her about it.
7
I know indeed what evil I intend to do. But stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury,
Fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.
She is traveling across country to the lab and Marita tells her that her daughter was actually one of the hybrids and she was taken away from her so she understands how Scully feels. Tells her whole sad little story about how the Consortium is continuing the eugenics experiments that were begun during WWII with the Nazis and that the hybrids are the best form yet and how they are going to re-populate the world with them as a master race. Not with my ova they don't. Marita explains that 98% of all the medically assisted pregnancies are part of the projects and why does Scully think that there are so many infertility problems among healthy, bright, white folks?
RT: Oh, I like it. Why are the hybrids better, though? Possibilities: (1) disease resistance, but that seems like a lot of effort for just that, especially since evolution would quickly catch up and create fun new plagues.
MS: Okay, there are two factions in the underworld The Consortium - who are developing the shapeshifters and the killer bees. A nameless group is developing the hybrids and the Jeremiah Smith clones. The nameless group is under the control of the consortium - rebels, really.
[Current commentary: Good to see MS was untangling the snarled ball of string that was XF mythology before CC got around to it.]
[Reason (2) is lost to history.]
RT: (3) strange unexplained powers. (My favorite pet theory is that Mulder's part-hybrid but he didn't work that well, which is why Sam was taken instead.)
MS: Works for me. "There's something wrong with that boy." He was a prototype where the hybrid has more human characteristics than alien. There are probably a few more running around out there, too.
RT: Emily's odd self-possession as she gassed the doctor doing the biopsy could work in here.
MS: I thought she was just dim.
RT: Maybe some are telepaths, some telekinetics, & so on. Some are just superbrains like the doctors and the Kurts, and they're the ones most likely to have attacks of conscience & try to expose the Project. Sometimes ordinary humans get strange powers like pyrokinesis (Cecil L'Ively) & mind control (Pusher), but there's no way to predict it and it often goes along with deadly medical conditions. With the hybrids, by contrast, the well-mapped alien DNA allows the creators to know what they're making--at least after a few hundred trials & errors, of which Emily might be one.
MS: All right. You can write the scientific speeches then!
8
Mulder on the road following them.
9
Can you tearlessly hold the decision For murder?
You will not be able, When your children fall down and implore you,
You will not be able to dip Steadfast your hand in their blood.*
They get to the lab and find that there is far more security than there should have been under normal circumstances and threatening as hell. Scully demands to know if Marita is going to help her or not. Marita promises that she will and they check into a hotel for the night. During the night, Scully can't sleep and since she and Marita are sharing a bed she sees that Marita has one of the green things on the back of her neck too. She decided to go through with it anyway. (***Hey, this is your big chance for the Scully slash, huh?) In the morning, Scully siphons gasoline out of the car and fills Evian bottles with gas.
RT: Marita needs more motivation--what if they dodged some Consortium baddies and M. knew (or appeared to think) that her status as an informer had been discovered?
MS: Works for me.
10
Suppose that the children have grown into youth
And have turned out good, still, if God so wills it,
Death will away your children's bodies,
And carry them off to Hades.
Scully and Marita get into the lab with fake ID's and down to where all the embryos are stored in vats of green fluid. Very creepy. Scully walks up and down the aisles and has second thoughts, remembers the quality of life that Emily didn't have when she was alive and decides that she is doing the right thing after all. Takes a crowbar or an axe and starts breaking the containers until she is standing in a puddle of green fluid surrounded by all the embryos. Should be very dramatic. [Current commentary: Ya think?] Mulder makes it to the lab and runs after them. Figure out what to do with the guards/security. Fake drill courtesy of Frohike maybe.
RT: It would be cool if they recognized him and treated him like an important figure in the hierarchy. Mulderclones, anyone?
MS: Well, there would have to be a Mulderclone introduced earlier in the story somewhere. You have to establish that earlier on so you're not pulling T. Rex's out of hats. (I don't care what CC does, I like rules of logic!)
11
Come, children, give me your hands, give your mother your hands to kiss them,
O the dear hands, and O how dear are these lips to me, And the generous eyes and the bearing of my children!
I give you happiness but nowhere in the world.*
Marita tries to stop Scully from blowing up the containers at the last minute and Scully PLAMs her. Marita melts like the wicked witch of the West and gets to make a dead gal speech.
RT: I take it that Scully's wearing a mask at this point? Or maybe she could just stand there, part of her death wish, but it turns out that whatever they did to her gave her partial immunity--the remnants of the branched DNA?
MS: Either that or she's far enough away in a well-ventilated area so she only gets temporary coughing or something/swollen eyes. Which also means that if Mulder was alien how do you explain his gag attach in the E. Flask?
Just as Mulder runs in, Scully pours the gasoline (Whatever) on the floor and the green liquid is flammable and she is standing in a pool of fire when Mulder bursts in. She is quite willing to go up with the embryos but he manages to get her out somehow and they stand outside and watch the place explode. Finally, she starts to keen because of what the Consortium had done to her. He has no idea what to say or do. So they stand there while the future burns.
RT: Oh yeah. Maybe in a reversal of type, she could reach out and he could rebuff her, horrified by what she's become (by what he's made her?). [Current commentary: Wow, what a bad suggestion. Thanks for nixing it, MS!]
MS: But then he's rejecting her because she's no longer stereotypical feminine. Maybe he likes her being tough - because he can't burn his bridges and say "okay, you have Sam, fuck you. Kill her, I don't care." The Consort. has power over him because he gives it over. Scully could remove the last hold that they have over her and be free. Or he tells her about the remaining ova and she knocks him on his ass? Can she deck him? Please?
12
I will bury them myself,
Bearing them to Hera's temple on the promontory;
So that no enemy may evilly treat them By tearing up their grave.
RT: Let me know how you want to make this happen.
MS: I dunno. You want to pick a segment or two that you like, let me know which ones, and write them, and I'll write another couple, etc. When we get the whole thing grafted together, we'll see where the major problems are, bang them out, and send it off to a non-biased third party for literary editing, (I suggest [deleted] since I trust her, and I understand that you guys correspond), and then a super-unbiased copywriter for final proofing and then scare the shit out of the mailing list. <vbg> I need to write some Mulder. He confuses the hell out of me and I need to get a handle on him, just keep me honest. I'm really excited about this. This is my holiday gift to myself.
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Heh
I should know. I'm Dawson. :)
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Re: Heh