Immortality, part 2/2
EKHashet@hotmail.com

*    *    *
In the next few months I didn't hear from Will or
Claudia, which wasn't
surprising because I hadn't given them a number. But
one October day, a week ago, I got the most unexpected
phone call of
my life."

"Hello?"

"Is this Jack?"

"Yes." The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite
place it.

"This is Allison." She mistook my shocked silence for
confusion and
clarified, "You know, we met in the bar. I told you about
Mulder and Scully. . ."

"Allison. How- how. . ." I meant to say, "How are you?" or
"How have you
been?" but what came out was, "How did you get my
phone number?"

"You're in the book," she answered.

"How, uh. . .how have you been, Allison?"

"Never better," she said, and she did sound happy. I tried
to imagine what
she would look like happy. She did have that
beautiful smile, but it had been a sad smile when I had last
seen her. It
must be a million times more beautiful when she
was happy, I thought.

"Why's that?" I asked.

"The memorial is set!" she exclaimed.

I didn't think I'd heard right. "Wh-what?" The last I'd heard,
it wasn't
going to happen at all, and now it was all set?

"Your column!" she continued. "Enough people who read
your column
sent money so that we had enough to purchase the land
*and* the memorial!"

Stunned, I sat down in a chair. "Are you kidding me?" I
truly hadn't
expected anything to come out of the column. I'd just
written it because I felt I had to.

"The ribbon-cutting's a week from today," she replied.
"I wouldn't kid
about a thing like this."

I didn't know what to say.

"Can you be there?" she asked me. "At the ribbon-
cutting?"

I struggled to piece my thoughts together. "I, uh. . .
that's a Saturday.
What time. . .?"

"It's in the morning. Ten o'clock."

"So, uh. . .I'd have to take a train the day before."

"I'm taking the day off work," Allison informed me,
"so I'm taking the
morning train. But if you take the afternoon train on
Friday you can go to work and still be there in time.
Think you'll do that?"

"Uh. . .yeah," I replied, brightening at the thought of
seeing Allison
again, her tears dried and her smile wide. "I'll do
that."

"I'll be there to meet your train," she said.

"All right."

"I'll see you later, Jack," she said.

*    *    *
And here I am, standing with her in a Washington
train station.

"Want to go for a cup of coffee?" she asks.

"All right," I reply, and we go to a coffee shop not far
from the station.
It's a cute little place, cozy. There are only
two other people there. We order our drinks and sit
down at a table for two.

Allison stirs her coffee absently. She is quiet for a long
time. Finally, she
says, "My father loved my mother so much."
She keeps on stirring. "She died, of a heart attack, and
afterward my
father just. . .stopped functioning. At first I thought
he was just upset about my mother, but. . .it was deeper
than that. He
started having doubts about his entire life. . .his
entire existence." She looks deep into my eyes. "He seemed so
melancholy. He started saying he'd wasted his whole life on
a selfish quest. 'Everything I've ever done has been for my
own benefit, and mine alone,'he said." She bites her lip. "He
said he was a horrible, selfish person who'd never done
anything to make the world a better place. He said he'd
never helped anyone, never made life easier for anyone."
Her voice becomes quiet. "He had a stroke and died less than
a year after my mother. In *one year* I lost both my parents,
and my father died thinking he was a useless failure." Her
voice is hinging on teariness. "I loved my father so much,
Jack. It hurt me so much
to see him like that, and nothing I said could make him
feel better." She blinks, as if she is trying to prevent
tears. "That's why I wanted this memorial so badly. I
thought that
if. . .if I could memorialize them, it would be like keeping
them alive, in
a small way, and telling them just how much they
were worth." Her voice wavers. "Jack, I can never repay
you for
what you did," she says, very sincerely. "You have no idea
how much this means to me."

"It was my pleasure, Ms. Mulder."

We sit in silence for some moments, sipping our coffee.
Then I say,
"You know, you could have told me your last name the
first time we met."

"You could have told me yours," she returns with a
smile.

"I didn't want you to hate me for being a newspaper
columnist," I tell her.

"I didn't want you to think I was just a girl who loved
her parents," she replies. "I wanted you to see them
for who they were."

"Well, I think now I'm starting to."

The bill comes and we split the tab. Allison gets up and
throws on her fall coat. "You know, I always knew my
parents named my brother William after our grandfather,"
she says. "But I was
never sure why they named me Allison, until one day when I
looked it up in a baby book. It said there that Allison means
'truth.'"  She smiles. "Then I knew."

*    *    *
In the morning Allison picks me up at my hotel in her rental
car and
drives me to the site of the ribbon-cutting. I'm not
sure what I'm expecting. A plaque, maybe, or a little tree. It
can't be
much, I know. The land and the memorial have been
purchased, and that's expensive. Sure, Allison got some
donations
from a few UFO fanatics who read my column, but even
though *USA Today* reaches a national audience, how many
people could have
had the faintest idea what I was talking about? I
don't think there'll be many people there besides me, Allison,
and the William Mulder's.

I am wrong about everything.

We pull up at a little park, with a gazebo, not one but
several trees and a very large plaque. At the park's
entrance there is a wooden structure with something
encased in glass. And there are indeed people there- so
many, in fact, that I have absolutely no doubts about
where the money to finance this park came from.

"All these people read your column, Jack," Allison
whispers excitedly. "All of them donated money for
this memorial!"

I look at the glass case near the entrance. It houses
my newspaper column, now laminated and framed in
glass.

I travel further and read the plaque, which is located
right outside the gazebo. It reads:

                  Dedicated to the memory of
                         Fox William Mulder
                                   1961-2040
                                           and
                       Dana Katherine Scully
                                    1964-2039
       FBI Agents who sought and found the truth
                          by their children
                      William Scully Mulder
                                          and
                      Allison Samantha Mulder
and those whose lives they touched in their brief time on Earth.

I am awed by the number of people here. I can't imagine all
of the reasons that they are here. How did they know
Mulder and Scully? What drove them to come here? I
approach the nearest
person I see, a man in his fifties. "Excuse me, sir," I
begin, and he looks at me with interest, "what's your name?"

"Kevin West," he answers.

"Did you know Fox Mulder and Dana Scully?" I ask him.

"I knew them both," he tells me, smiling fondly. "Dana Scully
saved my life."

"Really?"

"My name used to be Kevin Kryder," he explains. "When I
was ten, my mother died. My father was in an institution,
and. . .another man was trying to kill me. I won't go into it.
But Dana Scully," he continues. "She was wonderful. After
my mother died, she took me back to her
motel with her so that I wouldn't have to go back to the
shelter. And when the man tried to kill me, she got there in
time and saved my life." He smiles again. "Later I was
adopted, and she and I kept in touch for
awhile afterward. She was so good to me. . .the least I could
do for her was donate money for this memorial."

The next person I see is a woman. She is dark-haired with
bangs and looks
to be in her thirties. I wonder how Mulder and Scully
knew her- she
doesn't look much older than Allison.

"Hi," I say to her, extending my hand. "I'm Jack Martin."

She smiles at me, shaking my hand. "You can call me Jenn,"
she says. "Agent Mulder did."

"How did you know him?" I ask.

"He freed me," she replies. "On his third wish."

My jaw drops. "You're the- the- the genie!" I exclaim. "I read
about you in the X-files!"

"Oh, yes," she replies. "You know that when Mulder
could have wished for anything in the world, anything
at all, he wished for peace on Earth?"

I'm still staring at her in confusion. "But-but that was
years ago. And you're. . ."

Her eyes twinkle mischievously. "He didn't specify
aging."

People here have all kinds of stories about Mulder
and Scully.
There are people who say their lives were saved by
Mulder and Scully. There's a man in his early fifties
named Richie Lupone, who
says he almost died of hepatitis. "If they hadn't
followed their
instincts," he says, "I never would have gotten that
liver transplant." There's a woman of about sixty
named Amy, who says,
"When I was fifteen, I was kidnapped. The man almost
killed me, and
it was Agents Mulder and Scully who found me."

There's an elderly couple named Holman and Sheila
Hardt. "If it wasn't
for Mulder and Scully," says Holman, "I never would
have gotten up
the nerve to marry the love of my life."

"Now our weather is always bright and
sunny," Sheila adds, throwing an arm around her
husband.

Some people remember Mulder and Scully as heroes;
others simply
consider them good people. A woman from Oregon named
Teresa Hoese remembers their concern for her when they
worked on her case years ago.
A retired FBI Agent from California named Kresge
remembers working on a case with Scully and how much
he liked her. One old
woman named Mary Northern says she met Agent Scully
only once, at her sister Penny's funeral, but that meeting
left a lasting impression.
"Penny had spoken of Dana to me so fondly," she says in a
soft, gentle voice. "After I met her, I was so glad that she
was the one with my sister when she died."

An old woman named Susanne is here with her grown
children. "My husband was a great friend of Mulder and
Scully," she says. "He and his two
partners, they're all gone now. But they were always proud
to help out Mulder and Scully in any way they could. Great
people, they were."

One man named Trent says that Dana Scully was his
godmother. "She and my mother were best friends," he says.
"She was a great woman. I always used
to wish she was my mother." Another woman named Leyla,
who is here with her
husband Gabe, seems to have more stories about Mulder
and Scully than
anybody. "I used to work in accounting," she tells me. "I
knew all about
all their cases. I was their biggest fan."

So many people, so many stories. I make up my mind to write
another column, this time about all these people, and not to
care what anyone
in the office thinks. But apparently, somebody else had the
same idea.
This ribbon-cutting is enough of a big deal so that a reporter
from the *Washington Post* has showed up and is
interviewing Will.

"Yes, the X-files are closed down right now," he says. He
catches my gaze
and throws me a smile. "But not for long."

When it is time for the ribbon-cutting, Will and Allison make
a little speech. "I want to thank all of you for coming here
today," Will begins. "I also want to thank you for your
generous contributions that made this beautiful
park possible."

"A special thanks to Jack Martin," Allison adds, "for
helping to spread awareness through his newspaper
column."

"Our parents were very special people," Will continues,
"who worked hard and
risked ridicule, unemployment, and even death to uncover
the truth. And along
the way they made a difference in the lives of many people.
You are all here today because you know that." This prompts
a large burst of applause from the
crowd. "I am proud," he goes on, "to follow in their footsteps,
and to join
them in investigating their life's work. And like them," he says,
smiling at
Claudia in the audience, "I have found my soul mate through
that work, and that
is the greatest truth I will ever know." More applause, and a
few "Awww's. . ."

"We hope," Allison conclues, "to keep their memory alive,
and that their kindness and determination will inspire others
to become seekers of the
truth." She raises the scissors and cuts the ribbon in front
of the gazebo,
and the crowd cheers and claps.

After the ribbon-cutting, there are refreshments- cookies
and punch that
frankly don't taste very good- and lots of chitchat. Several
adults are exclaiming over little Caroline Mulder.

Allison and I stand together, silently looking at my article
in the glass case.

"Tell me, Jack," she says finally, "why did you listen to me?
I must have sounded like an idiot in the bar that day, with my
stories. . ." She shook
her head in amazement. "How in the world did we end up here?"

I try to think of an appropriate, truthful answer. "Well," I
reply, "I knew
it was a crazy story, but I thought that you really believed it.
And, well. . .
I wanted to believe it, too."

Allison grins at me. "My parents would have loved you," she
says. Before I know
what's happening, we're leaning in toward each other, and
our lips are touching.
As we come out of the kiss, Allison smiles a huge, genuine
smile. I have seen her
completely happy now, and she is indeed absolutely beautiful.

"Jack," she whispers, "I'm going to make sure nobody ever
forgets you."

The End

Hope you liked it! Whatever you thought, please tell me.
EKHashet@hotmail.com. I
want to know for better or worse. Regardless of what you
thought, though, I had
fun writing this story, so I hope you enjoyed reading it.