Diamonds are forever!
Feb. 11th, 2007 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maypirateSo the sad story is that when I finish this, I'm going to AMST and will probably not be back at my house until around 4 AM or whenever I finish my work.
The less sad story is that I have been looking for something to do for/give to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
poisontaster, and since fandom is kicking my ass, I can't write for SPN, and I no longer know where they sell GIR!! slippers, I decided to offer her this.
Sophomore year, I had an X-Files class at Oberlin (I am so serious, it was unbelievable), and for the final, we had to write a fanfic. Thus, in honor of **ERIN** I present, revealed to the public for the first time, an episode-style X-Files fic that 1) was NOT written in 8th grade, 2) actually pays attention to characterization (inasmuch as one can while simultaneously tossing it out the window), and 3) isn't about Mulder having various pets named after breakfast foods (...yeah, um...let's not go there).
I don't promise that this is stellar writing, but I had a ball with it, and it's one of my favorite things I've done. :) I offer it now with great love and affection.
Title: Diamonds in the Rough
Fandom: X-Files
Pairing: Mulder/Scully ? I don't really know...
Rating: X! FOR X-FILES! No really, it's more like...silly PG - R, I dunno.
Summary: When a Nebraskan farmhouse disappears, Mulder and Scully trace the answers to the diamond industry in Canada, and find more than they anticipated.
Notes: Blatant disregard of seasons 8 and 9, gratuitous ridiculousness, and abuse of all manner of pop-culture references. ♥poisontaster
Diamonds in the Rough
Stars beamed down from the Nebraska sky as the lone car turned off the dirt road onto an almost completely overgrown driveway. The car’s headlights burned brightly for a moment before going out, and the sound of two doors opening echoed across the empty pastures.
“So.” said Scully.
“So?” Mulder said back. “Here it is.”
“Here what is?”
“The site I was telling you about.” He took a few steps forward and looked into a thick tangle of trees. “Somewhere in this mess is a gate, and that leads to the foundations that I was telling you about.”
“The foundations of what again?”
“Of a farmhouse that just up and disappeared, taking all the cattle and people with it.”
“Yeah. Um, and this farm disappearance concerns us because....?” She trailed off, folding her arms across her chest and eying him, as she often did, with sheer incredulity.
He turned around and smiled.
“Scully, if you don’t know the answer by now, you obviously haven’t been paying attention for the past seven years.”
“The show went for nine years.”
“We’re cutting out the last two. They were problematic. Okay? So you haven’t been paying attention. I-”M ulder was cut off as he suddenly tripped forward into the trees. “Hey, I think I found the way in! Come on, Scully!”
“I think I’ll wait here for you to have a breakthrough.”
“You’re no fun. You gotta see this! The foundations are still-WHOA!”
“Mulder?”
Silence.
“Mulder?”
And thus, Scully was forced to dash into the trees.
Cue theme: Doo doo doo doo doo dooooooo
Doo doo doo doo doo dooooooo
THE X-FILES
Goddamn it, where is that stupid truth?
Scully found the gate and carefully navigated her way up the crumbling stone steps to the empty foundations of a farmhouse. As she swung her flashlight around, it fell on a battered metal sign, which she leaned down to inspect for a moment.
“Mulder?”
“Mmmrphg.”
“Where are you?”
“Mrrrrr.”
Scully followed the sounds forward then caught herself as she nearly pitched forward into a deep hole.
“Mulder are you down there?”
“....I think I found the basement...” A hand appeared by her feet, and Mulder, scratched and dusty, hauled himself up. “It’s full of tumbleweeds, so they kind of broke my fall. In a really sucky way.”
“And it’s no wonder, Mulder, this house has been gone for at least thirty years now. Check out that sign back there. It’s from a construction company. I’m willing to bet that the house was simply moved to another site if not simply knocked down.”
“...so you’re agreeing that it was moved.”
“Yes, but it was moved by people who frequently move houses.”
“How frequently do you see people moving houses around?”
“Shut the hell up Mulder and listen to me.”
“I’m listening, I just think...I just think....”
“That thirty years ago aliens just picked up a farm house and some cows for fun?”
“They do strange stuff like that.”
“.............right.” Scully turned on her heel and began looking for the gate with her flashlight. “I am going to get in the car. If you are not in the car by the time I count to zero, I am leaving you here to with the tumbleweeds.”
“You’re not the least bit interested in what happened to the house?”
“I know what happened to the house! It was moved away! The people moved! And they moved the cows too! And it’s Nebraska, Mulder! NEBRASKA! As if anyone or anything that disappears in Nebraska is worth worrying about, especially if it’s been gone long enough for the basement to fill up with tumbleweeds.” Finding the exit, she stomped out.
Mulder made a face after her, then heard a faint ringing.
“Scully, answer your damn phone.”
“It’s not my damn phone, it’s your damn phone!”
“No it isn’t, my phone’s not...” he reached into his jacket to find his phone missing.
His phone rang again, clearly somewhere in the midst of hundreds of tumbleweeds.
“Fuck me.” Mulder sighed.
“What?” shouted Scully.
***
Several hours later found the tattered and scraped Mulder at the wheel of their car talking to the Lone Gunmen on his battered and dirty cell phone.
“Slow down, boys, there’s a what in a where?”
“Frohike was checking some of our online resources tonight,” Byers explained. “And found an article about suspicious findings in a Canadian diamond mine.”
“Waitwaitwait...a Canadian diamond mine? Don’t most diamonds come from Africa?”
“This is true.”
“The ones you don’t want to buy because they’re soaked in the blood of the innocent.” Langley interjected as Byers sighed audibly.
“Anyway, yes, most diamonds are found in Africa, but in 1985 a geologist found diamond indicator minerals in Canada, which led to the establishment of the Ekati Mine near Lac de Gras.”
“Like Mardi Gras?” Frohike asked facetiously.
“I can’t wait until you die.”
“What was that?”
“Guys,” Mulder swerved to avoid a random scythe-wielding Child of the Corn in the road. “Get to the damn point.”
“The point is that there is a very important diamond mine in Canada, and according to this website, it seems to contain something other than diamonds.”
Mulder was suddenly very attentive.
“Is it the black oil?”
“Not in this case.” Byers answered. “It seems to be the possible skeletal remains of some kind of EBE... We can’t be certain, but this has been pretty well hidden and if this evidence is still there, it might not be around much longer. And the diamond industry is a tough one to get anything out of. De Beers Consolidated Mines controls almost seventy percent of the world diamond trade, and if they find you infiltrating a place where they have an interest, they won’t take it lightly.”
“Since when has that ever stopped me from doing anything? So where am I going, Byers?”
“You need to get up to Yellowknife Canada. From there it’s 300 miles to the mine.”
“‘S a long road trip.” Langley said. “You got any good tunes with you?”
“I’m sure Scully will keep the car active enough.” Mulder said, and hung up.
Entering the city limits of Lincoln Nebraska, he headed immediately for the airport. Scully had slept through the entire conversation, but there would be plenty of time to tell her what was up on the flight to Canada.
With any luck, she would be too tired to try to throw him out the emergency exit.
***
Nope. Scully had, in a remarkable show of strength very nearly opened that emergency exit and hurled Mulder out into the wild blue yonder before being restrained by three flight attendants and one small child. She had been coaxed back into her seat with the promise of a stiff drink and spent the rest of the flight fuming, occasionally positing various threats such as “You’d better be getting me diamonds for putting me through this,” and “I swear that once we land I’m going to kick you in the crotch until you bleed from the mouth.”
The latter was avoided by Mulder running very, very fast through the Canadian international airport, tailed by the shrieking red head. How the hell did she run in those heels? he wondered as he vaulted over a pile of suitcases.
Approximately 24 hours after their Nebraskan tumbleweed adventure, they paused to rest in ARCHIE’S MOTEL on the very outskirts of Yellowknife. Scully knocked back a few Harvey Wallbangers to soothe her murderous rage and Mulder made a few phone calls, first to the Gunmen to get a lead on their source, and second to said source, a worker at the mine named Eric Ashleigh who promised to take them to the site.
In the morning, they began the drive up to the mine, Mulder informing Scully of the story he and Eric had fabricated the night before.
“We’re buyers from De Beers. In honor of...you know, something...big...that’s... happening...we’ve been sent up here to look at some high-quality Canadian diamonds to showcase at the event.”
“But you haven’t yet figured out what this event is.”
“Probably a celebration for some movie star or something, I can’t always be the creative one. Why don’t you pick it out?”
“Fine. And I get to choose the names this time too. No more Rob and Laura Petrie.”
“It’s pronounced pee-tree, like the-”
“Yes, you asshole, like the dish! I know, I was there!”
“Anyway, so that’s our story.”
“Brilliant. And what gives us the semblance of being from De Beers?”
“Why copious amounts of diamonds of course.”
“Which we don’t have.”
“Ah-ah-ah. Check the bag at your feet.”
Scully reached down and pulled the bag up into her lap, rummaging through it.
“....................did you go to a costume jewelry store or something?”
“Antique shop, actually, pounded on the door until they let me in early.”
“Mulder, these are ridiculous! These are actual diamond miners! It’s going to be very obvious when we show up wearing...wearing...whatever the hell this is!” She held up a rhinestone encrusted tiara.
“Well with any luck Eric can get us past these people with minimal questions, being as he works there. So just suck it up and we’ll get through it.”
“...you’d better get me real diamonds for this.” Scully muttered again.
***
Pulling up to the headquarters of Ekati Mine, Mulder and Scully were met by Eric Ashleigh, a wiry young man with brown hair and a pointy nose.
“Agents Mulder and Scully,” the former told him, “But if anyone asks, we’re-”
“Howard and Marion Cunningham, from De Beers.” Scully smiled at him, ridiculous earrings and tiara glinting wildly in the early afternoon sunlight.
“Right. Gotcha. Come on this way then...” Eric began walking toward the mine entrance as Mulder looked at Scully.
“Howard and Marion Cunningham?”
“Hey, you watched The Dick Van Dyke Show, I watched Happy Days. Now move your butt.”
***
Imagine a diamond mine. Good. Because I don’t know how to describe one. Whatever it looks like, there they were. Eric led them...through? Down into? the mine, farther and/or deeper than they expected, finally stopping at a dark space in the wall.
“What you see here is gonna blow your mind.” Eric pointed his flashlight at the wall to reveal a strangely shaped skull with a large piece of wood sticking out of it. “What the do you make of that?”
Mulder leaned close and Scully resisted slapping his ass just for kicks.
“It’s certainly...not something one would normally expect to find underground in Canada. Large eye sockets. These ridges at the end of the skull here look to be teeth. What do you think, Scully?”
“I think it’s a skull. In the ground. I think it’s an animal that died a very long time ago and was fossilized like so many others. I don’t see what’s so remarkable about it, aside from the fact that it’s in a diamond mine in Canada.”
“There’s a piece of wood through it!” Eric said in a voice bordering on a little too excited. “How the fuck would that happen?!”
“....Okay, I don’t know, but perhaps it got...stuck through it during a mine collapse or something.”
“Do diamond mines even have wooden supports?” Mulder looked puzzled.
“I don’t know. Clearly the script writer doesn’t either, since she’s writing in her confusion.”
“It is 10:41 and she’s tired, so give her a break.” Eric said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be near hysteria?” asked Mulder.
“Right. GYAAAHHH!!!!” Eric flailed around a little.
“In any case, the obvious thing to do would be to take this out and have someone analyze it.” Scully tugged on it a little. “It’s not even embedded very firmly in the wall...”
“Oh no, you can’t do that.” the diamond miner stopped her. “Everything in the mine has to go through an inspection on the way out. There’s no way we’ll be able to get this through without it being nabbed by covert government spies. I know they’re around here somewhere. I mean, they’re everywhere you want to be.”
“Isn’t that Visa?” Mulder quipped.
“Cheap shot, jackass.” Eric glared.
“I’ll kill both of you, I promise.” Scully snapped. “Now we need to either get this skull out of here or at least get some samples of it and the wood to take to someone who can analyze them.”
Eric reached up and tugged on the wood, snapping off part of it along with a few skull bits.
“That’ll do.” Mulder nodded.
“And by sheer coincidence, we just happen to have a lab you can test this FOR ALIEN STUFF only a few paces away...”
“How convenient.” Scully eyed him warily.
“Let’s do this.” Mulder nodded again.
***
Security coming out of the mine was indeed tough -wait a minute..how did they get in there in the first place? Hmmmmm...anyway...- and it was only by the quick thinking of “Marion Cunningham” that the De Beers fraud was pulled off at all. Scully distracted the guard and...um...on-duty diamond staff with more questions about diamond type and quality than Mulder would have thought her capable of knowing. The only person who seemed unimpressed was the apparent acting staff manager Rebecca Framer, a small brunette woman with absolutely enormous brown eyes who seemed unnaturally nervous and kept snapping her fingers.
Once the skull shards and wood chips were safely in the hands of the conveniently-located scientist, Eric treated Mulder and Scully to some very bad coffee and some even worse puns. In an effort to keep from killing him, the agents attempted to divert his topic of conversation to something else.
“What do you know about Rebecca Framer?” Scully asked, dumping her coffee into a nearby plant. “How long as she been the acting staff manager around here?”
“About thirty years or so, I guess. I dunno, she’s just sorta always around. Comes and goes. Sometimes she goes for a really long time and she comes back and she has trouble forming words, like she’s been way out of town or some shit like that. And speaking a weird foreign language. That has no vowels.”
Scully and Mulder each raised an eyebrow.
“Right.” said Scully. “And has she always been that twitchy?”
“Oh yeah. Always twitching like her skin doesn’t really fit right or something like that.”
The conversation ended abruptly with the entrance of the convenient scientist.
“I ran a battery of tests,” he declared, “All of them are very scientific and only Agent Scully would understand them, upon which she would respond with other scientific jargon. However, we’ll spare you that this one time. The skull and wood are not from this part of Canada, or any part of Canada.”
Scully’s mouth dropped open as Eric and Mulder each pumped their arms in the air and yelled “WOOO!”
“They are,” the convenient scientist continued, “From western Nebraska. The skull is that of a Hereford cow.” The excited WOOO-ing died down immediately. “Hereford cows have white faces and reddish bodies. Just so you know. The wood has been treated and I would suspect it to have been part of the foundations of a house.”
“What did you say?” Mulder got very, very close to the convenient scientist and looked into his eyes with a burning intensity.
“Your face is really close, freaking me out. I said that-”
“Basically he proved my point, Mulder. It is from an animal that was buried in sediment a long time ago. How it got here from Nebraska I don’t know, but-”
“Oh it wasn’t actually that long ago.” said the convenient scientist trying to get away from Mulder. “It’s only about thirty years old.”
“Thirty years...” Eric repeated.
“Western Nebraska...” Mulder looked at Scully.
“What?” Scully said, missing the point.
“Rebecca Framer has worked here for thirty years!” Eric flailed once again. “She’s twitchy like she’s not cool with her skin! FAKE SKIN! Maybe.”
“We were in western Nebraska two days ago!” Mulder turned his intense gaze on Scully.
“Investigating the disappearance of a house that you theorized was moved off its foundation....”
“...about thirty years ago.” Scully finished in wonderment. “But how...?”
“I think you were right about it being moved, only it was moved here. I bet if we go deeper, beyond the skull, we’ll find the whole house, and maybe more than we bargained for.”
“My job here is finished.” said the convenient scientist, who was then shot just for effect.
Nobody noticed, as Scully, Mulder and Eric were already booking it towards the entrance to the mine.
***
Arriving at the mine, the three found it suspiciously deserted and unguarded. The agents took out their flashlights and guns and moved forward, and Eric was about to follow them before being socked in the face. He was out cold, and out of the episode. Mulder and Scully proceeded down into the mine, working with their vague memories of the way Eric had taken them.
When they reached the spot where the skull had been, there was nothing but a large gaping hole.
“What the fuck!?” said Mulder. “Someone got here before us! They’re covering up the evidence! Like usual! I hate this shit!” Reaching forward he began to claw at the wall, hoping to dig up a few trace remains.
“I’m baffled as to what this means.” Scully mused, watching him dig. “A strange woman who’s uncomfortable in her skin has worked here for thirty years, the same amount of time since that house in Nebraska was removed, and lo and behold, a cow and a board from Nebraska turn up here...”
“It means she’s an alien, stupid. She stole the house and the people and the cows and buried them here.” Mulder rolled his eyes.
At that moment, Rebecca Framer brained Scully with the cow skull and board, and she fell forward into Mulder as he turned around.
“Whatever you say, Keeboo!” Scully said brightly, then passed out.
“What the-”
And then Rebecca Framer smacked Mulder with the cow skull and board too.
When they finally awoke, there was nothing left around them but a giant hole and the smoking remains of the Ekati Mining Co. building.
***
A few days later, Mulder opened the door to his apartment and found Scully with her fist raised, about to knock.
“I was just coming over to your place.” he stepped aside to let her in. “I wanted to apologize about that whole...thing.”
“Which part? The part where you virtually kidnapped me to Canada, the bit where I nearly got a concussion from a cow skull or the part where you swore continuously until we arrived back home?”
“Uhh...all of the above.”
“Oh. Well. I’m sorry too.” She held out a large paper cup with a plastic lid and straw. “I brought you a shake. It’s cookies and cream. I thought you might like that.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Mulder took the shake.
Shrugging off her coat, Scully walked further into the apartment and sat down on the couch.
“I was feeling badly for you because you were onto something there for a moment. What it was, I’m not exactly sure, but...it was something.”
“Rebecca Framer was a house-stealing cow-thieving skull-burying alien. That’s what I was on to.”
“Yeah, well, whatever. In any case, everything disappeared again as usual, so I thought a shake might cheer you up.”
“A shake? Just a shake?”
“Well yeah.” she sipped her own. “I mean, it is cookies and cream, after all.”
“....Good point.” said Mulder and sat down beside her. “I, uh, I got you something to...for dealing with this whole fiasco like so many others.” He handed her a small velvet box.
“Mulder?”
“Go on, open it.”
Scully did so, and found a lovely pair of diamond earring glinting up at her from the black fuzzy interior.
“Oh my...Mulder, when I said...I didn’t really think...”
“Yeah, well, I knew you wouldn’t expect it. So thanks for coming to Canada with me....Keeboo.”
“Keeboo?” she raised her eyebrow just once more for this story.
Mulder smiled.
And then they made out like crazy people.
The Ever-Lovin’ End
Notes:
This story a documentary, and the events were filmed in real time. To wit:
1-My mom grew up on a farm in western Nebraska. After her family moved away and sold the house it was taken off its foundations and moved about 50 miles away.
2- They raised Hereford cows on said farm. Hereford cows have white faces and reddish bodies.
3-There really are diamond mines in Canada. The Ekati Mine really does exist.
Credit is due to my mom for suggesting the moving house idea, todonburi for telling me I should write about diamond mines in Canada and finding aliens therein, and to my college roommate for being psychotic and providing the model for Rebecca Framer. I love her dearly, but I would not put it past her to beat people with cow skulls.
Mulder and Scully belong to Chris Carter and the Fox Network.
A Finished at 11:38 Production
I MADE THIS! ME!
The less sad story is that I have been looking for something to do for/give to
poisontaster, and since fandom is kicking my ass, I can't write for SPN, and I no longer know where they sell GIR!! slippers, I decided to offer her this.Sophomore year, I had an X-Files class at Oberlin (I am so serious, it was unbelievable), and for the final, we had to write a fanfic. Thus, in honor of **ERIN** I present, revealed to the public for the first time, an episode-style X-Files fic that 1) was NOT written in 8th grade, 2) actually pays attention to characterization (inasmuch as one can while simultaneously tossing it out the window), and 3) isn't about Mulder having various pets named after breakfast foods (...yeah, um...let's not go there).
I don't promise that this is stellar writing, but I had a ball with it, and it's one of my favorite things I've done. :) I offer it now with great love and affection.
Title: Diamonds in the Rough
Fandom: X-Files
Pairing: Mulder/Scully ? I don't really know...
Rating: X! FOR X-FILES! No really, it's more like...silly PG - R, I dunno.
Summary: When a Nebraskan farmhouse disappears, Mulder and Scully trace the answers to the diamond industry in Canada, and find more than they anticipated.
Notes: Blatant disregard of seasons 8 and 9, gratuitous ridiculousness, and abuse of all manner of pop-culture references. ♥
poisontasterStars beamed down from the Nebraska sky as the lone car turned off the dirt road onto an almost completely overgrown driveway. The car’s headlights burned brightly for a moment before going out, and the sound of two doors opening echoed across the empty pastures.
“So.” said Scully.
“So?” Mulder said back. “Here it is.”
“Here what is?”
“The site I was telling you about.” He took a few steps forward and looked into a thick tangle of trees. “Somewhere in this mess is a gate, and that leads to the foundations that I was telling you about.”
“The foundations of what again?”
“Of a farmhouse that just up and disappeared, taking all the cattle and people with it.”
“Yeah. Um, and this farm disappearance concerns us because....?” She trailed off, folding her arms across her chest and eying him, as she often did, with sheer incredulity.
He turned around and smiled.
“Scully, if you don’t know the answer by now, you obviously haven’t been paying attention for the past seven years.”
“The show went for nine years.”
“We’re cutting out the last two. They were problematic. Okay? So you haven’t been paying attention. I-”M ulder was cut off as he suddenly tripped forward into the trees. “Hey, I think I found the way in! Come on, Scully!”
“I think I’ll wait here for you to have a breakthrough.”
“You’re no fun. You gotta see this! The foundations are still-WHOA!”
“Mulder?”
Silence.
“Mulder?”
And thus, Scully was forced to dash into the trees.
Doo doo doo doo doo dooooooo
THE X-FILES
Goddamn it, where is that stupid truth?
Scully found the gate and carefully navigated her way up the crumbling stone steps to the empty foundations of a farmhouse. As she swung her flashlight around, it fell on a battered metal sign, which she leaned down to inspect for a moment.
“Mulder?”
“Mmmrphg.”
“Where are you?”
“Mrrrrr.”
Scully followed the sounds forward then caught herself as she nearly pitched forward into a deep hole.
“Mulder are you down there?”
“....I think I found the basement...” A hand appeared by her feet, and Mulder, scratched and dusty, hauled himself up. “It’s full of tumbleweeds, so they kind of broke my fall. In a really sucky way.”
“And it’s no wonder, Mulder, this house has been gone for at least thirty years now. Check out that sign back there. It’s from a construction company. I’m willing to bet that the house was simply moved to another site if not simply knocked down.”
“...so you’re agreeing that it was moved.”
“Yes, but it was moved by people who frequently move houses.”
“How frequently do you see people moving houses around?”
“Shut the hell up Mulder and listen to me.”
“I’m listening, I just think...I just think....”
“That thirty years ago aliens just picked up a farm house and some cows for fun?”
“They do strange stuff like that.”
“.............right.” Scully turned on her heel and began looking for the gate with her flashlight. “I am going to get in the car. If you are not in the car by the time I count to zero, I am leaving you here to with the tumbleweeds.”
“You’re not the least bit interested in what happened to the house?”
“I know what happened to the house! It was moved away! The people moved! And they moved the cows too! And it’s Nebraska, Mulder! NEBRASKA! As if anyone or anything that disappears in Nebraska is worth worrying about, especially if it’s been gone long enough for the basement to fill up with tumbleweeds.” Finding the exit, she stomped out.
Mulder made a face after her, then heard a faint ringing.
“Scully, answer your damn phone.”
“It’s not my damn phone, it’s your damn phone!”
“No it isn’t, my phone’s not...” he reached into his jacket to find his phone missing.
His phone rang again, clearly somewhere in the midst of hundreds of tumbleweeds.
“Fuck me.” Mulder sighed.
“What?” shouted Scully.
Several hours later found the tattered and scraped Mulder at the wheel of their car talking to the Lone Gunmen on his battered and dirty cell phone.
“Slow down, boys, there’s a what in a where?”
“Frohike was checking some of our online resources tonight,” Byers explained. “And found an article about suspicious findings in a Canadian diamond mine.”
“Waitwaitwait...a Canadian diamond mine? Don’t most diamonds come from Africa?”
“This is true.”
“The ones you don’t want to buy because they’re soaked in the blood of the innocent.” Langley interjected as Byers sighed audibly.
“Anyway, yes, most diamonds are found in Africa, but in 1985 a geologist found diamond indicator minerals in Canada, which led to the establishment of the Ekati Mine near Lac de Gras.”
“Like Mardi Gras?” Frohike asked facetiously.
“I can’t wait until you die.”
“What was that?”
“Guys,” Mulder swerved to avoid a random scythe-wielding Child of the Corn in the road. “Get to the damn point.”
“The point is that there is a very important diamond mine in Canada, and according to this website, it seems to contain something other than diamonds.”
Mulder was suddenly very attentive.
“Is it the black oil?”
“Not in this case.” Byers answered. “It seems to be the possible skeletal remains of some kind of EBE... We can’t be certain, but this has been pretty well hidden and if this evidence is still there, it might not be around much longer. And the diamond industry is a tough one to get anything out of. De Beers Consolidated Mines controls almost seventy percent of the world diamond trade, and if they find you infiltrating a place where they have an interest, they won’t take it lightly.”
“Since when has that ever stopped me from doing anything? So where am I going, Byers?”
“You need to get up to Yellowknife Canada. From there it’s 300 miles to the mine.”
“‘S a long road trip.” Langley said. “You got any good tunes with you?”
“I’m sure Scully will keep the car active enough.” Mulder said, and hung up.
Entering the city limits of Lincoln Nebraska, he headed immediately for the airport. Scully had slept through the entire conversation, but there would be plenty of time to tell her what was up on the flight to Canada.
With any luck, she would be too tired to try to throw him out the emergency exit.
Nope. Scully had, in a remarkable show of strength very nearly opened that emergency exit and hurled Mulder out into the wild blue yonder before being restrained by three flight attendants and one small child. She had been coaxed back into her seat with the promise of a stiff drink and spent the rest of the flight fuming, occasionally positing various threats such as “You’d better be getting me diamonds for putting me through this,” and “I swear that once we land I’m going to kick you in the crotch until you bleed from the mouth.”
The latter was avoided by Mulder running very, very fast through the Canadian international airport, tailed by the shrieking red head. How the hell did she run in those heels? he wondered as he vaulted over a pile of suitcases.
Approximately 24 hours after their Nebraskan tumbleweed adventure, they paused to rest in ARCHIE’S MOTEL on the very outskirts of Yellowknife. Scully knocked back a few Harvey Wallbangers to soothe her murderous rage and Mulder made a few phone calls, first to the Gunmen to get a lead on their source, and second to said source, a worker at the mine named Eric Ashleigh who promised to take them to the site.
In the morning, they began the drive up to the mine, Mulder informing Scully of the story he and Eric had fabricated the night before.
“We’re buyers from De Beers. In honor of...you know, something...big...that’s... happening...we’ve been sent up here to look at some high-quality Canadian diamonds to showcase at the event.”
“But you haven’t yet figured out what this event is.”
“Probably a celebration for some movie star or something, I can’t always be the creative one. Why don’t you pick it out?”
“Fine. And I get to choose the names this time too. No more Rob and Laura Petrie.”
“It’s pronounced pee-tree, like the-”
“Yes, you asshole, like the dish! I know, I was there!”
“Anyway, so that’s our story.”
“Brilliant. And what gives us the semblance of being from De Beers?”
“Why copious amounts of diamonds of course.”
“Which we don’t have.”
“Ah-ah-ah. Check the bag at your feet.”
Scully reached down and pulled the bag up into her lap, rummaging through it.
“....................did you go to a costume jewelry store or something?”
“Antique shop, actually, pounded on the door until they let me in early.”
“Mulder, these are ridiculous! These are actual diamond miners! It’s going to be very obvious when we show up wearing...wearing...whatever the hell this is!” She held up a rhinestone encrusted tiara.
“Well with any luck Eric can get us past these people with minimal questions, being as he works there. So just suck it up and we’ll get through it.”
“...you’d better get me real diamonds for this.” Scully muttered again.
Pulling up to the headquarters of Ekati Mine, Mulder and Scully were met by Eric Ashleigh, a wiry young man with brown hair and a pointy nose.
“Agents Mulder and Scully,” the former told him, “But if anyone asks, we’re-”
“Howard and Marion Cunningham, from De Beers.” Scully smiled at him, ridiculous earrings and tiara glinting wildly in the early afternoon sunlight.
“Right. Gotcha. Come on this way then...” Eric began walking toward the mine entrance as Mulder looked at Scully.
“Howard and Marion Cunningham?”
“Hey, you watched The Dick Van Dyke Show, I watched Happy Days. Now move your butt.”
Imagine a diamond mine. Good. Because I don’t know how to describe one. Whatever it looks like, there they were. Eric led them...through? Down into? the mine, farther and/or deeper than they expected, finally stopping at a dark space in the wall.
“What you see here is gonna blow your mind.” Eric pointed his flashlight at the wall to reveal a strangely shaped skull with a large piece of wood sticking out of it. “What the do you make of that?”
Mulder leaned close and Scully resisted slapping his ass just for kicks.
“It’s certainly...not something one would normally expect to find underground in Canada. Large eye sockets. These ridges at the end of the skull here look to be teeth. What do you think, Scully?”
“I think it’s a skull. In the ground. I think it’s an animal that died a very long time ago and was fossilized like so many others. I don’t see what’s so remarkable about it, aside from the fact that it’s in a diamond mine in Canada.”
“There’s a piece of wood through it!” Eric said in a voice bordering on a little too excited. “How the fuck would that happen?!”
“....Okay, I don’t know, but perhaps it got...stuck through it during a mine collapse or something.”
“Do diamond mines even have wooden supports?” Mulder looked puzzled.
“I don’t know. Clearly the script writer doesn’t either, since she’s writing in her confusion.”
“It is 10:41 and she’s tired, so give her a break.” Eric said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be near hysteria?” asked Mulder.
“Right. GYAAAHHH!!!!” Eric flailed around a little.
“In any case, the obvious thing to do would be to take this out and have someone analyze it.” Scully tugged on it a little. “It’s not even embedded very firmly in the wall...”
“Oh no, you can’t do that.” the diamond miner stopped her. “Everything in the mine has to go through an inspection on the way out. There’s no way we’ll be able to get this through without it being nabbed by covert government spies. I know they’re around here somewhere. I mean, they’re everywhere you want to be.”
“Isn’t that Visa?” Mulder quipped.
“Cheap shot, jackass.” Eric glared.
“I’ll kill both of you, I promise.” Scully snapped. “Now we need to either get this skull out of here or at least get some samples of it and the wood to take to someone who can analyze them.”
Eric reached up and tugged on the wood, snapping off part of it along with a few skull bits.
“That’ll do.” Mulder nodded.
“And by sheer coincidence, we just happen to have a lab you can test this FOR ALIEN STUFF only a few paces away...”
“How convenient.” Scully eyed him warily.
“Let’s do this.” Mulder nodded again.
Security coming out of the mine was indeed tough -wait a minute..how did they get in there in the first place? Hmmmmm...anyway...- and it was only by the quick thinking of “Marion Cunningham” that the De Beers fraud was pulled off at all. Scully distracted the guard and...um...on-duty diamond staff with more questions about diamond type and quality than Mulder would have thought her capable of knowing. The only person who seemed unimpressed was the apparent acting staff manager Rebecca Framer, a small brunette woman with absolutely enormous brown eyes who seemed unnaturally nervous and kept snapping her fingers.
Once the skull shards and wood chips were safely in the hands of the conveniently-located scientist, Eric treated Mulder and Scully to some very bad coffee and some even worse puns. In an effort to keep from killing him, the agents attempted to divert his topic of conversation to something else.
“What do you know about Rebecca Framer?” Scully asked, dumping her coffee into a nearby plant. “How long as she been the acting staff manager around here?”
“About thirty years or so, I guess. I dunno, she’s just sorta always around. Comes and goes. Sometimes she goes for a really long time and she comes back and she has trouble forming words, like she’s been way out of town or some shit like that. And speaking a weird foreign language. That has no vowels.”
Scully and Mulder each raised an eyebrow.
“Right.” said Scully. “And has she always been that twitchy?”
“Oh yeah. Always twitching like her skin doesn’t really fit right or something like that.”
The conversation ended abruptly with the entrance of the convenient scientist.
“I ran a battery of tests,” he declared, “All of them are very scientific and only Agent Scully would understand them, upon which she would respond with other scientific jargon. However, we’ll spare you that this one time. The skull and wood are not from this part of Canada, or any part of Canada.”
Scully’s mouth dropped open as Eric and Mulder each pumped their arms in the air and yelled “WOOO!”
“They are,” the convenient scientist continued, “From western Nebraska. The skull is that of a Hereford cow.” The excited WOOO-ing died down immediately. “Hereford cows have white faces and reddish bodies. Just so you know. The wood has been treated and I would suspect it to have been part of the foundations of a house.”
“What did you say?” Mulder got very, very close to the convenient scientist and looked into his eyes with a burning intensity.
“Your face is really close, freaking me out. I said that-”
“Basically he proved my point, Mulder. It is from an animal that was buried in sediment a long time ago. How it got here from Nebraska I don’t know, but-”
“Oh it wasn’t actually that long ago.” said the convenient scientist trying to get away from Mulder. “It’s only about thirty years old.”
“Thirty years...” Eric repeated.
“Western Nebraska...” Mulder looked at Scully.
“What?” Scully said, missing the point.
“Rebecca Framer has worked here for thirty years!” Eric flailed once again. “She’s twitchy like she’s not cool with her skin! FAKE SKIN! Maybe.”
“We were in western Nebraska two days ago!” Mulder turned his intense gaze on Scully.
“Investigating the disappearance of a house that you theorized was moved off its foundation....”
“...about thirty years ago.” Scully finished in wonderment. “But how...?”
“I think you were right about it being moved, only it was moved here. I bet if we go deeper, beyond the skull, we’ll find the whole house, and maybe more than we bargained for.”
“My job here is finished.” said the convenient scientist, who was then shot just for effect.
Nobody noticed, as Scully, Mulder and Eric were already booking it towards the entrance to the mine.
Arriving at the mine, the three found it suspiciously deserted and unguarded. The agents took out their flashlights and guns and moved forward, and Eric was about to follow them before being socked in the face. He was out cold, and out of the episode. Mulder and Scully proceeded down into the mine, working with their vague memories of the way Eric had taken them.
When they reached the spot where the skull had been, there was nothing but a large gaping hole.
“What the fuck!?” said Mulder. “Someone got here before us! They’re covering up the evidence! Like usual! I hate this shit!” Reaching forward he began to claw at the wall, hoping to dig up a few trace remains.
“I’m baffled as to what this means.” Scully mused, watching him dig. “A strange woman who’s uncomfortable in her skin has worked here for thirty years, the same amount of time since that house in Nebraska was removed, and lo and behold, a cow and a board from Nebraska turn up here...”
“It means she’s an alien, stupid. She stole the house and the people and the cows and buried them here.” Mulder rolled his eyes.
At that moment, Rebecca Framer brained Scully with the cow skull and board, and she fell forward into Mulder as he turned around.
“Whatever you say, Keeboo!” Scully said brightly, then passed out.
“What the-”
And then Rebecca Framer smacked Mulder with the cow skull and board too.
When they finally awoke, there was nothing left around them but a giant hole and the smoking remains of the Ekati Mining Co. building.
A few days later, Mulder opened the door to his apartment and found Scully with her fist raised, about to knock.
“I was just coming over to your place.” he stepped aside to let her in. “I wanted to apologize about that whole...thing.”
“Which part? The part where you virtually kidnapped me to Canada, the bit where I nearly got a concussion from a cow skull or the part where you swore continuously until we arrived back home?”
“Uhh...all of the above.”
“Oh. Well. I’m sorry too.” She held out a large paper cup with a plastic lid and straw. “I brought you a shake. It’s cookies and cream. I thought you might like that.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Mulder took the shake.
Shrugging off her coat, Scully walked further into the apartment and sat down on the couch.
“I was feeling badly for you because you were onto something there for a moment. What it was, I’m not exactly sure, but...it was something.”
“Rebecca Framer was a house-stealing cow-thieving skull-burying alien. That’s what I was on to.”
“Yeah, well, whatever. In any case, everything disappeared again as usual, so I thought a shake might cheer you up.”
“A shake? Just a shake?”
“Well yeah.” she sipped her own. “I mean, it is cookies and cream, after all.”
“....Good point.” said Mulder and sat down beside her. “I, uh, I got you something to...for dealing with this whole fiasco like so many others.” He handed her a small velvet box.
“Mulder?”
“Go on, open it.”
Scully did so, and found a lovely pair of diamond earring glinting up at her from the black fuzzy interior.
“Oh my...Mulder, when I said...I didn’t really think...”
“Yeah, well, I knew you wouldn’t expect it. So thanks for coming to Canada with me....Keeboo.”
“Keeboo?” she raised her eyebrow just once more for this story.
Mulder smiled.
And then they made out like crazy people.
Notes:
This story a documentary, and the events were filmed in real time. To wit:
1-My mom grew up on a farm in western Nebraska. After her family moved away and sold the house it was taken off its foundations and moved about 50 miles away.
2- They raised Hereford cows on said farm. Hereford cows have white faces and reddish bodies.
3-There really are diamond mines in Canada. The Ekati Mine really does exist.
Credit is due to my mom for suggesting the moving house idea, to
donburi for telling me I should write about diamond mines in Canada and finding aliens therein, and to my college roommate for being psychotic and providing the model for Rebecca Framer. I love her dearly, but I would not put it past her to beat people with cow skulls.Mulder and Scully belong to Chris Carter and the Fox Network.
A Finished at 11:38 Production
I MADE THIS! ME!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 02:20 am (UTC)I MADE THIS! ME!
I didn't read the fic, because I don't know the fandom well enough, but these last lines made me very happy. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 03:32 am (UTC)I love you.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-22 05:30 am (UTC)...and I don't even know where to start on how much I love this.
Goddamn it, where is that stupid truth?
YOUR DIALOGUE. IT IS AWESOME.
“Slow down, boys, there’s a what in a where?”
“I can’t wait until you die.”
How the hell did she run in those heels?
THIS, MY DEAR FRIEND MULDER, IS A QUESTION ASKED ROUND THE WORLD.
“Hey, you watched The Dick Van Dyke Show, I watched Happy Days. Now move your butt.”
Okay it's not like I really get the reference, but this is how good this dialogue is--I don't NEED to get the reference, the rhythm and cadence makes it funny ANYWAY.
Imagine a diamond mine. Good. Because I don’t know how to describe one.
I AM A LITTLE IN LOVE WITH YOU RIGHT NOW. DON'T WORRY, YOU DON'T HAVE TO PUT OUT.
“I ran a battery of tests,” he declared, “All of them are very scientific and only Agent Scully would understand them, upon which she would respond with other scientific jargon. However, we’ll spare you that this one time.
OKAY MORE THAN A LITTLE FDAJKLFD;SAJKL;
Your face is really close, freaking me out.
HAHAH SO MULDER YESSS.
okay and IDEC but the ending was cute SO THERE.
Yeah, you should write more. You should write Kirk/McCoy. You should let me beta it. And then you should BASK IN THE GLORY IT WOULD BRING YOU. Or at least the two comments from me and Julie.
fdjakl;fdjaskl; <33333333333