Title:      Gazzaniga
Author:     nevdull (nevdull@mailcity.com)
Rating:     R (for violence and language)
Category:   X 
Keywords:   M/S UST
Spoilers:   None.
Archive:    Yes, anywhere.
Thanks:     Jesemie, for the nits, the feed, and the virtual lemon sorbet.
Notes:      At the end of the story.  The complete work is archived
            at http://members.tripod.com/nevdull/gazzaniga.txt
Summary:    The mind is a terrible thing to split.
            


   Nature does not "know" the difference between left and right. 

    - Observer 13 Apr. 2/6 (1969)


FENBORO, MASSACHUSETTS
SEPTEMBER 10
9:30 PM

"Oh man, I can just _not_ look at this screen any longer."

Gopher-like, a head appeared from the cubicle maze and turned in the
direction of the voice.

"John, that you?"

John Amis stood up, wrapped his arm around his head, and pulled. The
resulting crack echoed in the deserted office. "Yeah. I'm fucking wiped.
You need a ride home? I'm outta here."

The other man squinted and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "Nah. I wanna
finish this module first -- it's supposed to go to Q&A tomorrow and I'd
rather do it now than come back at the crack of dawn." He blinked and
glanced at his computer clock. "I'll catch the 10:30 train."

"Heh. Sucks to be you."

"Tell me about it."

Amis slid into his jacket. "Well, I offered. Later, Pat."

"'Night."

With a casual wave, Amis started towards the door, then hesitated near
another island of light in the otherwise dark office. "G'night, Dan," he
said reluctantly.

Dan Lynx was, as usual, bent over his computer terminal, typing furiously.
He neither looked up to Amis nor responded to him.

Amis shrugged and clapped Dan on the back. "Charmer as always."

Pat Warner watched the exchange with an ironic grin, finally turning back
to his monitor when Amis disappeared down the hall. He rubbed his eyes
again, sighed, and tried to remember what this function was supposed to do.

Wait, this was entirely the wrong function call. "You motherfucker," he
whispered, and checked the time again. At 9:46, he was never going to fix
this and make the train in time. "Shit! I should've taken the ride from--"

He heard then the terrible screams from outside, and a cool, distant part
of himself thought that no, he wouldn't be taking the train tonight either.



WASHINGTON, D.C.
SEPTEMBER 14
10:25 AM

"Came to bring you a present and you weren't even here."

Mulder breezed into the office, dropping his coat on an extra chair. "My
birthday's not for another month so I took my time coming in. What'd you
get me?"

Scully crossed over to the desk and sat on a corner of it. She tossed a
file in front of him as he leaned back in his seat.

"A corpse."

Mulder glanced at the file, but didn't open it. "Straight from a
pathologist's heart. I'm touched."

"Specifically," she continued, "an X-File."

He sat up. "Now you're talking the talk. Lay it on me."

Scully sat down across from him, reading from her own copy of the file.
"While you were busy doing who-knows-what, a call came in from the
Fenboro, Massachusetts PD about the murder last Thursday of a Mr. John
Amis --"

"I'll have you know I was having the apartment repainted this morning, but
the painters were late."

Scully lowered her file briefly and gazed at him. "Congratulations on your
recent flurry of redecorating. May I continue?"

Mulder gestured grandly.

"A Mr. John Amis, 25, computer programmer for TPJ Consulting located in
Fenboro. At exactly 9:46 Thursday evening, Mr. Amis was fatally stabbed
outside the TPJ office on his way home from work. The weapon, a jagged
piece of metal, was recovered at the scene."

She looked up briefly. Mulder's file was still unopened, but he at least
appeared to be listening.

"Prints were found on the weapon," she continued, "most of which were
clearly marked in the victim's blood. A positive match was found almost
immediately, because the perp was local -- Ben Suskind, convicted in 1962
of assault at the age of 17."

Scully paused again. Mulder was flipping through the file himself. "But it
says here Ben Suskind dropped off the face of the earth in 1969."

"Suskind was convicted but was also clearly insane. His victim was a random
stranger on the street whom he believed 'knew everything about him' and was
plotting 'to take away his life force'. He was given a psych eval and his
psychosis was found to have an biological cause -- temporal lobe epilepsy."

Mulder shuffled pages around for a minute, frowned, and then finally tossed
the file onto his desk. "Bring it on home, Scully."

She smiled faintly. "Temporal lobe epilepsy is a difficult diagnosis. It
involves seizures, but is characterized by 'silent seizures' which have no
outward motor symptoms but instead produce vivid hallucinations and mood
swings. The only way to know for sure is to take readings of electrical
brain activity, and I've got copies of his EEGs that look like they were
scribbled by a hyperactive four-year old.

"Now here's where it gets interesting. Suskind's condition was so severe
that he was given a 'commissurotomy', often called split-brain surgery. It
effectively separates the right half of the brain from the left and reduces
the severity of epileptic seizures. The procedure had its height of
popularity in the 1960's but has declined in use since then because of its
invasiveness."

Mulder was twirling a pencil. "Ouch. What effects does it have on the
patient?"

Scully put the file on her lap and lectured from memory. "Surprisingly few.
In fact, conventional wisdom for many years was that there were no side
effects at all -- hence the frequent use of the procedure. Eventually, more
advanced neurological tests demonstrated that in many ways the brain no
longer operated as a single mind, but instead was split into independent
entities, neither privy to the experiences of the other." Scully paused and
stared at him. "You're wondering what this has to do with anything."

"Oh, I'm interested. But yes."

She looked back at the file. "Suskind underwent the procedure and several
years of rehabilitation, until in 1969 he simply walked out of the
institution and vanished."

"Until..."

"Until last Thursday when a TPJ manager positively identified a photo of
Suskind as one of his own employees -- now called Dan Lynx."

"Glad Mom didn't marry into that family."

Scully closed the file and stared passively at him.

"What, that's it? Where's the X-File?" he said.

"I thought you'd never ask. The X-File is that Dan Lynx couldn't have
committed the murder -- he was in the office the entire time, as verified
by the same employee who discovered the body. The cleaning crew, which
arrived seconds later, also confirm that Lynx was safely inside. Yet his
prints were on the weapon, over the blood of the victim."

Mulder put his hands behind the back of his head. "A twin, then."

"What do you think I've been doing with my morning? While you were sniffing
paint fumes I was going through the birth records for our Mr. Suskind --
that was the reason the Fenboro PD contacted us in the first place. They
were looking for a twin."

"Lemmie guess -- there was no twin."

"There was no twin."

"Huh," he said.

"And even if there were, identical twins don't have identical fingerprints,
although they're often similar."

They gazed at each other in companionable silence for a moment. Then Mulder
stood up. "So there's no choice but to --"

"Go to Boston right away." Scully slapped an envelope full of plane tickets
on the desk.

He reached for his coat. "Looks like my birthday came early this year."





FENBORO POLICE DEPARTMENT
SEPTEMBER 14
3:40PM

"And Mr. Warner, you're certain that Dan Lynx was in the office from the
time that John Amis left the room to the time you heard his scream?"

Pat Warner nodded. He had the haunted look of a man who'd recently seen
violence, and the slight unease anyone felt spending time in a police
station, but he was answering their questions clearly and calmly. "It was
only a matter of a few seconds. And if he had gotten up and run for the
door, I absolutely would've heard him."

Mulder thought for a moment and changed direction. "Tell us more about him.
About Lynx."

"Dan's the kind of guy who gives computer people a bad reputation. In the
three years I've been at TPJ, I never once heard him make more than a few
words of small talk. He never looks people in the eye, never laughs at any
jokes, never wanted to really get to know anyone else in the office.

"But as an employee, he's a dream. Comes in on time, stays late, never
complains, does meticulous work. He's not like an idiot savant or anything
-- he _can_ express himself, even fluently. But only about work -- never
about anything personal."

The agents nodded, and looked at each other. Mulder jerked his head to one
side, and they moved to the other end of the interrogation room.

"Scully, does this sound like temporal lobe epilepsy to you?"

She shook her head. "Not at all. If his symptoms were re-occurring, it's
likely they would've shown up on his personnel records. Or the police
records -- people with severe temporal lobe epilepsy are notoriously
unstable. Mulder, look at what he did to that man in 1962."

Mulder took the evidence photograph from her and stared at it. The victim's
face had been pulverized.

"And you're sure he wasn't convicted of murder?"

"Even if the seizures had returned, this wouldn't help to explain how he
stabbed John Amis." Mulder was looking at her. "Or you think it would," she
said sourly.

He blinked. "No. I mean, I don't know."

"Really? No theory at all? You remember to open the windows while you were
painting?"

He smirked and opened his mouth, but Warner interrupted. "Do you need
anything else from me? I've already given my full statement to the police."

Mulder handed him a business card. "No, Mr. Warner, but we may need to call
you again with further questions."

Warner shrugged. "Sure. I'm usually at the office until late." He assessed
the two of them and smiled. "The computer industry is pretty unforgiving
compared to government jobs. Most people can't believe the hours I work."

Mulder smiled ruefully. "You'd be surprised."




NEW ENGLAND INSTITUTE FOR MENTAL HEALTH
WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
5:20PM

In the hospital lobby, Mulder flipped the cell phone closed. "Fenboro PD
say we won't get to interview Lynx until tomorrow -- they're backed up all
day and weren't expecting us until then anyway."

Checking her watch and yawning simultaneously, Scully said, "That's fine --
after this I'm dead to the world."

The nurse who approached them looked about twice as exhausted. "Agent
Mulder, Agent Scully, Dr. Flannery will see you now."

The agents rose and followed her from the lobby through the low-ceilinged
corridors. Some time in the building's history a few more windows had been
knocked out, rooms had been enlarged, the walls repainted with soothing,
modern colors, but it nevertheless retained its oppressive, institutional
character. Rocking or mumbling patients passing through the halls only
reinforced its undeniably tragic atmosphere.

The nurse stopped at the end of one of the hallways and gestured. "Here you
go." She smiled unexpectedly and added, "Good luck."

Mulder entered, leaving Scully to mutter, "Thanks." Then she blinked in
surprise.

The office was a mess, as if a particularly unruly patient had gone off his
meds at the wrong time of the lunar calendar. Papers, files, and books were
piled on the floor, cascading from the shelves, nearly spilling out into
the hallway. A tower of charts had even been thrown on top of a unlucky
(and quite yellow) potted plant.

Yet when she studied the arrangement more carefully, Scully decided that
her initial impression of disaster was unfair. There was an order to it
all: in one pile of books, "The Cognitive Neurosciences", "Foundations of
Cellular Neurophysiology", "Large-Scale Neuronal Theories of the Brain"; in
another, "Issues in Clinical Psychology", "Case Studies in Abnormal
Psychology", "Clinical Neuropsychology: A Handbook for Assessment".
Amusingly, a sagging pile of well-worn mystery novels dominated one corner.

Dr. Flannery was seated in front of an aging computer, hunting-and-pecking
with admirable speed. She did not turn to greet them or even acknowledge
their presence.

"Dr. Jackie Flannery," Mulder said hesitantly.

"Wait just one second. Mmm. Okay... there!" A brief email icon appeared on
the screen, and then disappeared. Dr. Flannery turned, at last, to face
them.

Although she was seated, she was clearly a small woman. Scully imagined she
might look down on her, even without heels. 

"Isn't email just wonderful!" Flannery enthused. "I just sent some to my
husband, and he's in Africa -- can you imagine? They don't even have
toilets, but he can send me email. Amazing." Wearing a faded tank top
and non-matching slacks, she was dressed more casually than the average 
fifty year-old doctor, and her exaggerated arm movements similarly
belied her age and position.

Scully started to say something, but had been completely derailed. Instead
she looked for somewhere to sit; every surface was covered in books and
papers.

Dr. Flannery stood up and began shoving piles carelessly. "I'm so sorry - I
need an office about eight times as big and it'd probably still end up like
this. And I've only been here a few weeks. Please sit down." They did.
"I've never met FBI agents before. I understand one of you is a doctor,
too?" Her eyes flicked to Mulder.

Scully said, "I'm a medical doctor with a specialization in forensic
medicine." She shifted uncomfortably on the hard seat.

"Good, then you can translate for the other one -- sometimes I forget to
speak like a normal person. So, what can I--" The phone rang, and Flannery
held up one finger. On the phone, her voice softened. "Dr. Flannery." She
began speaking in a low, soothing voice, as if to a child.

Mulder looked at Scully with his eyebrows raised. Scully shrugged and 
then frowned to herself. Her chair was really quite unpleasant.

Flannery hung up and turned back to them. "Evan's a darling, but
he never gives me a moment's peace." Scully assumed she referred
to a patient. "So what was I saying?"

Mulder said, a bit harshly, "_We_ were saying that we were here to discuss
com... split-brain patients."

"We understand you're considered an expert on the subject in the
neuropsychological community," Scully added. She jumped up briefly
to discover the source of her discomfort -- a necklace made from
macaroni.

"Ah, commissurotomy," Dr. Flannery began. She leaned back, with one hand idly
scratching her short, curly hair. Scully's eyes fluttered and looked down
in embarrassment; the neuropsychologist was flashing her armpit in a
disturbing but unself-conscious way, and Scully was now burdened with
the knowledge that the other woman used a copious amount of deoderant.
Even Mulder glanced away.

Flannery was continuing, oblivious to the effect she had on the agents.
"Whole careers have been forged from that little procedure," she
mused. "Mine included."

Scully said, "I know what's covered in standard medical texts, but it's
really outside my area of expertise. Can you give us a quick overview, in
layman's terms?" She surreptiously slid the necklace to the floor,
where it disappeared into the debris.

Dr. Flannery sighed and put down her arm, much to Scully's relief. Flannery
turned to Mulder. "You know that the brain has two halves, or 
hemispheres -- a right and a left." He nodded. "Then you probably also
know that they specialize in different tasks. For most people,
language and logic is located in the left hemisphere, and non-verbal
tasks like art or music or spatial skills or recognition of emotion
are located in the right hemisphere. These hemispheres are connected
by a large, fibrous tract of neurons -- the corpus callosum. 

"In the 1920's it was discovered that severing the corpus callosum relieved
or eliminated the symptoms of severe epilepsy, but the procedure didn't
pick up until the 1960's." Dr. Flannery's eyes began to sparkle. "But the
really _sexy_ work wasn't done until Sperry's group. They proved that
disconnecting the brain actually disconnected the mind. Sperry won the
Nobel Prize. Extraordinary stuff."

Mulder absorbed this. "I understand there are no obvious side effects to
the procedure?"

Flannery shook her head. "None that you or I, well, you or anyone else
would notice. But in controlled conditions, the effects are remarkable."

Scully asked, "Could you describe them?"

"Actually, it'd be a lot better to show you." Without getting up, Flannery
began digging through a seemingly random pile of videotapes, computer disks
(including several ancient black floppies), and papers. "I know it's here
somewhere... I have a film of some of my patients..."

Braving a hail of scientific deitrus, Scully leaned forward to stop her.
"Perhaps you could send it to us later. Could I leave something for you to
look over?"

Flannery kicked ineffectually at the pile. "Yes, of course."

"We're investigating an individual who underwent a commissurotomy in the
1960's. Unfortunately, our records are incomplete, but I've got a brief
case history and some EEGs performed around that time. Can I leave you with
the file? Understand that the identity of the individual needs to be kept
in the strictest of confidence."

"Absolutely, Dr. Scully." She took the file and stared at the blank cover.
"This is so exciting, really. I'm so pleased you called."

Scully smiled tightly and stood. "I'm very sorry to drop this on you and
leave, but we're quite exhausted. Would tomorrow morning be okay to come
back?"

"Mmm," Flannery replied in assent. She had already placed the file on her
desk, shoving aside other papers to make room.

"Thank you again, Doctor," Mulder said, moving towards the door. When they
were out of earshot he added, "Nutty professor, hmm?"

Scully bowed her head and smiled. She whispered back, "I can barely keep my
eyes open."

They were a few steps down hall when Flannery sprung out of her office.
"Wait, wait please. How did you get this data on a patient of mine?"

The agents turned. "What?" Mulder said.

Flannery held up the file photo of Dan Lynx. "He lives here."

Scully echoed, "What?"

"This photo. This is Alan Rhect, and he's been under my care for the last
15 years."


   
   The whole body separates into two similar and symmetrical parts,
   the right and left halves called counterparts, or antimera.

    - Ernst Haeckel, _The Evolution of Man_ 257 (1879)

FENBORO POLICE DEPARTMENT
6:05 PM

Officer Billy Barber glanced one last time at the prisoner in cell 4A
before gathering his keys and coat. In one way, 4A had been a model 
inmate -- quiet, well-behaved, not anything like the rest of the
fuckheads he had to babysit. Still, there was something comforting
about their protests of innocence, the illiterate, pornographic
scribblings on the walls, the creative comments about the other
prisoners' genitals. It was all part of a ritual. They were guilty --
you knew it, they knew it, it was just a big fucking game that
everyone played. 

The guy in 4A didn't want to play. He'd been held for two days and hadn't
said shit except when asked. It was okay that he wasn't pissing his pants
every five minutes, but there was something just not right about the way he
acted. He wasn't even crazy calm, like the real psychos they got once in
awhile. He was normal calm, like he was lying on his couch watching TV
instead of sitting on a bunk staring out the 2-by-2 barred window at
nothing.

Shit's just not right, Barber thought. Unconsciously, he stepped away as he
walked by the cell. Thank fucking God I'm off 'till Thursday, and thank
fucking God Barb and the kids are gone until next week. He passed by other
cells in relative silence -- even the criminals couldn't be bothered to
harass him tonight.

Yeah, he thought, a couple of night alone. This had been a wicked lousy
month and he needed time to do nothing but sit in his own goddamned house
and scratch his fucking balls in peace.

"Hey Williams," Barber called as he passed around the metal detector at the
department entrance. The security guard was getting off shift, too.

"Barber. Hear I won't have to see your ugly fucking face for a few days.
How'd I get so lucky?"

"You didn't get nearly as lucky as I did with your mother last night."

"My mother's in Florida, asshole. You fucked my dog."

"Huh. Couldn't tell the difference."

Williams conceded defeat by laughing. "Alright, tough guy. Take care of
yourself."

"You too."

Another ritual among many. Barber pushed open the doors of the station,
with a smile that quickly faded.

Goddamned New England, he thought. 6pm and it's already dark.

Most of the other guys had already headed out, and the new shift hadn't
come in yet, so it was easy to spot his car even though the city couldn't
spring for a simple street lamp near the parking lot.

Wait, that's not my car, he thought. That's O'Conner's. Where the fuck did
I park?

He remembered driving in a few minutes late, and shit, the lot had been
full. "Oh man, it's all the way down near the Pike," he said aloud.

Glenville Road was nearly as dark as the parking lot, sloping down towards
the highway onramp. There were only a few houses here, none visible from
the street as the ground rose up sharply on either side. Only faint lights
above and the odor of a burning fireplace suggested occupation.

The air was cooling rapidly -- New England autumn getting into full 
swing -- but Barber's physiology and sheer bulk ensured that he
overheated during any exercise, even a short walk. He took off his
jacket and let it swing beside him as he headed in the direction of
his car. 

And stopped. "What the fuck?" he muttered.

Leaves and other debris were trickling down the slope and gathering at his
feet. He craned his head up, expecting a deer.

Instead, at the top of the hill, a man was silhouetted in the sallow porch
light of an unseen home. He was edging forward slowly, disturbing the fall
underbrush and sending it cascading down the hill.

"Is there a problem, sir?" Barber called up. Was it some kid trying to fuck
with his head?

There was no reply. Instead, the figured crouched down, only barely visible
set against the wooded hill. It began moving back and forth slowly, as if
gauging something.

"I said," Barber growled, in his best law enforcement voice, "is there a
problem?"

The figure waited.

Never taking his eyes from it, Barber stepped towards his car.

The figure moved.

Impossibly fast, it came down the hill in a series of short jumps, dancing
through the trees and underbrush effortlessly. Not once did it hesitate or
lose footing.

It would have taken Barber ten minutes to clamber down the slope, and
probably would've earned a few hundred scrapes along the way. The dark
figure did in it seconds. When it emerged from the underbrush at the
bottom, something in its hand glinted in the moonlight.

Billy Barber, a 220-pound armed police offer, ran.





NEW ENGLAND INSTITUTE FOR MENTAL HEALTH
6:10PM

Flannery pressed the elevator button repeatedly.

"I don't see how this could be possible," she said curtly. "I have been
working with Alan for fifteen years and he has never exhibited any type of
violent behavior. Not to mention that he's never left the grounds of the
Institute in all that time. How could he make his way to Fenboro?"

Scully glanced at Mulder, and said, "Perhaps it would help if you told us
more about him."

Flannery stabbed the lit button again, and then sighed. "Fifteen years ago
I was working in a clinic in Amherst, several hours west of here. The local
police picked up a transient they found wandering through a park, and when
they found his behavior to be somewhat... erratic, and that he would not
speak, they brought him to me."

"Erratic how?" asked Mulder.

"His humming, for one thing. He hums all the time, both lines of music that
he's heard, and music that he's created in his mind. And then there's his
drawing. He'll grab at objects he can use for art -- pencils, pens, paint,
coffee, anything that can produce a mark. And he'll draw indiscriminately.
The police left him alone for ten minutes while booking him for vagrancy,
and he covered a lieutenant's desk in paisley swirls made entirely out of
the condiment packets left over from the man's lunch." Flannery laughed to
herself.

"Eventually he was sent to my clinic for evaluation. My initial thought
upon reading the case file was autism, but that changed the moment I met
him."

"Why?" Scully asked.

"The hallmark of autism is an inability to relate socially or to want to
relate socially. Alan exhibits none of the social dysfunctions
characteristic of the disorder, other than his lack of discrimination about
where to express his creativity. He likes physical contact. He laughs at
jokes, albeit slapstick ones. He enjoys being among people. No, no, he was
clearly not autistic."

Finally, the elevator arrived. The three stepped inside, Flannery pressing
the third floor button over and over. Mulder tried not to look annoyed.

The doctor was continuing, "After eliminating the obvious diagnosis, I gave
him a cursory physical exam to look for my next step. That's when I found
the scar."

The agents looked at her sharply, until realization crossed Scully's face.
"The scar from the surgery. On his head."

"Exactly. We didn't know what it was, but we knew he'd had some kind of
invasive brain surgery. Through a combination of CT scans and
neuropsychological tests I was able to conclude that he'd had a
commissurotomy performed some time in his life. But without a real name or
any relatives, we've never known exactly why the procedure was performed,
or by whom, or when."

The elevator opened.

Mulder was frowning. "But you do have a name for him." The three stepped
into the hall.

Flannery made a kind of sneezing sound and waved her arm at him. "That's
not his real name. Alan is the name I made up, but Rhect is his own
contribution. He's managed to speak about a half-dozen words in those
fifteen years -- that what he said when I asked about his background once.
I don't know how it's supposed to be spelled, or if it's even his name."

Mulder hummed thoughtfully. "Why was he never taught sign language?"

Flannery smiled. "Why would you ask?"

"Sign language is a visual-spatial task, is it not?"

"Sign language is a _language_, and language, in whatever form it takes, is
mediated by the left hemisphere. There have been many, many studies on the
deaf to prove this."

They were passing down the hall of what appeared to be private rooms. All
of the doors were closed; some were decorated with artwork. The majority of
the drawings were childlike, but a few were meticulous and strange. Mulder
stared at them with interest; Scully, whose attention was flagging due to
fatigue, continually suppressed a yawn.

"What's puzzling is that we don't know _why_ the commisurotomy was
performed," Flannery continued. "He exhibits no seizure-like behavior,
although that's to be expected if the operation was a success. But I doubt
any doctor would have recommended the procedure if his present language
difficulties and idiosynchricies were present. I've often wondered if the
surgery were botched, whether it caused him to lose his language faculties,
but that really gives me nightmares. One of these days I've got to get him
in an MRI. Oh, we're here."

They rounded a corner and Flannery began gently knocking on an unmarked
door. Scully said, "Well, it's possible we can shed some light on why the
procedure might have been performed." There was no answer; Flannery fished
for keys and unlocked the door. "Although we still don't know how Dan Lynx
fits into this."

"Well, I don't either, but I can assure you that Alan could not have
left the Institute, run the ten miles out to Fenboro, and come back again on
Thursday night without my knowing it--" She stopped when she swung open
the door.

"Oh dear," Flannery said. Alan Rhect was gone.



FENBORO POLICE DEPARTMENT
6:32PM

The sound of pants and a shirt dropping from the barred window went
completely unnoticed amid the other sounds of evening in the wooded area.
The rustle of feet in dried leaves was lost in the similar noises of foot
traffic from the parking lot.

The absence of these sounds was equally unremarked-upon, as a shadowy
figure clad in a prisoner's clothing crouched silently and waited for the
last of the evening shift to enter the police station.




"Evening, Andy."

From his seat next to the metal detector, the night shift guard waved
casually. "Good to see ya, Jimmy."

It was true. Jimmy was a good guy, and a damn fine officer. But it was
especially good to see him because Jimmy's locker had some really nice
pictures in it.

Jimmy took his set of the cell block keys from his locker, and folded up
his jacket to hang inside. Andy tried to look around him to catch a glimpse
at the door.

"Jimmy, is that a new one?"

The officer turned and smiled, stepping aside and gesturing to the magazine
page he'd taped up. "Nice, isn't she?"

The guard leaned forward on his desk, peering. "Yeah," he answered, almost
breathlessly.

Jimmy laughed and shut the door. "Now don't tell your mom I showed it to
you."

"Course not."

"Later. You know where I am if you need me." Jimmy disappeared down the
corridor.

Andy, thinking of the photo one last time, sighed, and reached for his
magazine. Just before picking it up, movement outside the station caught
his eye.

"What the hell?" he whispered.

Standing clear as day, just outside the glass doors, was the prisoner from
4A. He wasn't doing anything -- just standing there -- although Andy
thought he could hear a faint humming.

The guard slammed his palm on the station-wide intercom, and began yelling
in a voice much older than his 19 years:

"All officers report to the station entrance. A prisoner has escaped. I
repeat -- a prisoner has escaped."


Alan Rhect passed unnoticed through the crisscrossed beams of light
surrounding the police station. Harried officers shouted orders and reports
through the woods, but no one commented on the unknown man moving with
determination towards the station entrance. Perhaps it was the police
uniform he wore, but more likely his success was in his ability to step
just out of gaze before drawing attention. A pair of eyes would focus on
him and in seconds he would pass behind a tree, into shrubs, into darkness.

Andy Christiansen, the sole man left behind (as it was highly improbable
that the escapee would return to the station), barely had time to register
the unfamiliarity of the new officer before his throat was cut.



Upon hearing the scream of the guard, the rattle of the locker, the
jingling of keys, Dan Lynx knew it was safe to come out from under his pile
of sheets. Not a perfect hiding place, but there was no other in the cell,
and it had sufficed when every officer in the station was convinced he had
already escaped.

He stood up and listened. There were four others being held in the precinct
that night. There were four gunshots. There were a few determined
footsteps, before the bars of his cell melted away, and became like a
perfect mirror.



OUTSIDE FENBORO, MASSACHUSETTS
7:05PM

Scully closed her eyes and leaned back into the headrest. "I can't keep
this straight anymore."

Mulder glanced away from the road at her. "Last time. I swear."

When she opened her eyes again, she was still not in a bed somewhere. Damn,
she thought.

"Okay, one more review. We have one dead man, and three living men who all
look the same."

"Two living men," Mulder amended. "One of those two must be Ben Suskind."

"Right, two," she sighed.

"Or both of them are Ben Suskind." He glanced at her again, and caught her
glare. "Well, is there any way he could be living a double life?"

"As a mental patient under constant surveillance _and_ a computer
programmer who works 20-hour days?" Scully asked.

"I'm just being methodical."

"First time for everything."

He ignored the slight. "Well, obviously not constant surveillance, or Alan
Rhect wouldn't be missing and presumed crazy."

Flannery had claimed she'd seen Rhect earlier that day, but admitted that
his particular section of the ward wasn't entirely secure. He was a
high-functioning voluntary admittance, not considered to be a threat to
himself or anyone else. At least, not until now.

Scully remembered something she'd meant to ask. "What did you tell the
Worcester police when you asked for the APB on Rhect?"

She'd mispronounced the town name but Mulder didn't bother to correct her.
Instead he answered, "I said that he matched the physical description of a
subject in an FBI murder case."

"Even though we have someone with that physical description already in
custody?"

"Sure, in Fenboro. The Worcester police didn't have to know that."

She blinked. "Wooster?"

"It's a New England thing."

Another wave of fatigue hit her, and she leaned back again. Mulder heard
her sigh.

"You okay?"

Without opening her eyes, she said, "I'm just tired. The guy in the
apartment next to mine was... entertaining until five o'clock in the
morning. His bedroom is apparently next to mine."

Mulder smirked. "You and I don't have much luck with --"

Scully looked at him.

"--neighbors. Do we?"

She snorted. "No, we don't."

He peered over the steering wheel at the dark streets around them, trying
to gauge their location. "We've got another twenty minutes or so to go
before we hit the motel. Take a nap -- I'll wake you when we get there."

"Thanks," she said, already drifting off.

She was out so deeply and so quickly that she didn't hear his cell phone
ring minutes later. One-handed, he flipped it open and answered quietly.

He listened for a moment and then said in a low voice, "We'll be right
there." Mulder slipped the phone into his coat pocket, and looked over at
his partner.

Bringing the car around in a U-turn he whispered, "Think of it this way,
Scully. You get a longer nap."




    Ouer and vnder, right and left, 
    In this compas godd all has left.

     - Unknown, _Cursor Mundi_ 21639 (A. 1300)


FENBORO POLICE STATION
7:40PM

"Dana honey, put your shoes on. We're at grandma's house."

Scully's eyes fluttered open. She was briefly dazed, and then took stock of
their surroundings. Unhappily.

"Mulder, my grandmother was not a cop."

"I thought you came from a long line of law-enforcing Scullys."

Now fully awake, she looked annoyed. "Why are we back at the station?"

While he was formulating his answer, a bulky police officer jogged to their
car and began waving at them. The agents opened their doors and stared at
him in the headlights. They'd never seen a cop look so rattled.

"Thanks for coming down here again," he said breathlessly. "What an awful
fucking mess."

Mulder said, largely for Scully's benefit, "The call we received was a
little unclear. Can you tell us again what happened?"

The officer put his hand out, first to Scully. In the bright light of the
headlights, it was clearly trembling.

"I'm Officer Dixon, but everyone calls me Jimmy. Come on inside."




All three of them set off the metal detector to no one's concern. "We don't
know how to explain it," Jimmy said. "Somehow, he got out, then he came
back, killed Andy our night guard, and shot all the prisoners. Then he
disappeared again." He glanced at the guard station. "Andy was just a kid,
really."

Then he gestured to the open locker. "We're assuming he was looking for a
gun from here; otherwise he'd have had no reason to open it. Officer Barber
just kept his second weapon, the cell keys and a few personal effects in
there. It's the first locker on the end, so it was probably a natural
choice."

Mulder inspected the door. "These are kept locked, right?"

"Of course."

"And the cell keys? They open all the prisoner's cells?"

Jimmy's reddish face frowned. "Well, sure. But the only cell that was open
was his. He didn't need to escape twice."

Mulder hummed cryptically.

Jimmy looked in confusion from Mulder's face to Scully's, but she simply
walked ahead towards the cell-lined corridor.

And into a sea of blood.

The sheer quantity suggested dozens of victims, not four. There was no way
to traverse the hall without ending up ankle-deep in it. So much blood that
Scully realized she could detect the characteristic metallic smell,
something she encountered only while hunched inches away from the mortally
wounded.

She hesitated at the edge of the red pool but heard Jimmy's voice behind
her. "Go ahead, Agent Scully -- the photographers have been through
already."

Sighing, she kicked off her pumps and pulled two pairs of latex gloves from
her coat. One pair she snapped on her hands, the other she slipped over her
stockinged feet and waded into the hallway.

Her duck feet would've been comical had they not been bathed in blood.
Mulder said nothing.

"Victims were shot at close range, one bullet each," Scully was saying, as
she stepped into each cell in turn. "The wounds appear consistent with a
shot fired from the hall." She disappeared into the last cell and was
silent for a moment. "Oh, that makes sense now."

"What?" asked Mulder.

"The reason there's so much blood. They were all gut-shot." She stepped
back into the hall. "And I couldn't say for sure without an autopsy, but it
appears that the wounds are in more or less the same place on each victim."

"Must have a hell of an aim."

Jimmy moved back several inches; the pool was widening as Scully moved
through the blood towards them. "Why would he do that -- make it so they
died slow? You think he wanted them to hurt?"

Scully answered Jimmy, but she was looking only at Mulder. "I don't think
it was about making pain. I think it was about making blood." She jerked
her head towards the second cell on their right -- cell 4A.

Mulder craned his neck around the corner, and gazed impassively at the
riotous, swirling red designs painted across the cell walls. "It was about
making art," he said.



Rhect and Lynx listened to the police scanner in Billy Barber's car for a
full hour before turning on the engine. No connection had been made yet to
Barber; his body had not been found. It was safe.

Rhect drove east unhesitatingly, his left hand on the steering wheel. The
car was silent, except when passing highway signs; Lynx read those aloud.
Between the two of them lay a pair of joined hands.





FENBORO, MASSACHUSETTS
SEPTEMBER 15
7:05AM

In her dream, the thudding was the sound of loose moorings on a ship. It
was her job to keep everything sailing smoothly, but there was something
she'd forgotten, some critical piece that had been torn away in the storm.
She scrambled around the perimeter of the deck, gripping the damp handrails
to avoid tumbling away as the ship keeled hard to port.

It wasn't the thudding that finally woke her -- it was the sound of the
case file on her lap hitting the floor as a dream wave caused her to jerk
in her chair.

"Ah!" she yelled incoherently. The thudding resolved itself into knocking,
and then stopped.

"Scully, you all right?" asked Mulder, through the motel door.

She sat up and blinked as a few more files slid down to the floor. "Yeah. I
was, uh, asleep. What time is it?"

"Seven. We should get down to the Institute right away. The good Doctor
Flannery called me four times already wanting to talk about the case, and
I'm inclined to agree with her enthusiasm." He paused. "Even if it's a
little much for this hour."

Scully stood up uncertainly and made her way to the door. She'd fallen
asleep in her clothes and her hair was a mess, but it was only Mulder.

They'd been up until ridiculous hours the night before, digesting the
details of Rhect's case and trying to integrate them with the murder, and
with the patient's inexplicable resemblance to Dan Lynx. Who were these
men, and what connection did they have to Ben Suskind, the vanished
epilepsy patient with the penchant for assault?

They didn't get far on that particular question, but they did learn a great
deal about split-brain patients. Dr. Flannery's notes and documentation
were copious, if somewhat haphazard, but the most instructive section of
the file was the videotape the neuroscientist had finally excavated from
her office. It was part of the work which earned her a Ph.D. and a
prestigious teaching position in Amherst, in western Massachusetts.

On the tape, a thinner and bigger-haired Dr. Flannery conducted one of the
classic split-brain tasks on a young male who'd had a commissurotomy
several years before. He was seated in front of a video screen, and told to
stare straight ahead. Images would be flashed briefly on the right or left
sides of the screen -- so quickly, in fact, that it was impossible for him
to turn his head or eyes in time to fully fixate on the image. Flannery the
younger explained to the camera that this was called "tachistiscopic
presentation", and was used to present visual images to only the right or
left hemispheres selectively.

Scully had stopped the tape at this point to review basic neural anatomy
for Mulder's sake. The brain controlled the body in a crossed-over 
fashion -- the right half of the body was controlled by the left half
of the brain, and vice versa. This was also true for the senses --
sounds in the right ear were "heard" by the left hemisphere, and
images appearing in the right half of space were "seen" by the left
hemisphere. 

"Of course," she'd said, "in normal humans this has no significant
consequences. Even though the left hemisphere 'hears' sounds from the right
ear first, the corpus callosum allows this information to be shared by both
hemispheres almost instantaneously. In the commissurotomy patients, it
_still_ has almost no consequences, because rarely do we experience stimuli
_only_ in the right side of space -- we turn our heads if we hear a noise,
for example."

In a split-brain patient under controlled conditions, though, there was an
"extraordinary" effect (as Flannery said on the tape). If the image of a
pencil was flashed on the right side of space (and thus seen by the
language-able left hemisphere), when asked if he had seen anything, the
patient would reply, "Yes, a pencil." If the same image was flashed on the
left side of space (and thus seen by the language-poor right hemisphere),
the patient would say, "I saw nothing." However, if in this case the
patient were then asked to _draw_ what he had seen, the patient (using his
left hand) would draw a pencil.

At this point, the two-dimensional Flannery leaned across the table and
asked softly, "Why did you draw that pencil?"

With a look of completely unfeigned innocence, the patient said, "I have
absolutely no idea."

Mulder, at this point, had become a fount of increasingly wild hypotheses,
until Scully had insisted that they both get some sleep and had ejected him
from her room. She was beyond exhausted and would be incapable of
functioning unless she went promptly to bed, she'd said.

Instead, she'd sat up several more hours reviewing the cases, until her
eyes had closed of their own accord.

"Morning, sunshine," Mulder said when she finally made it to the door. She
was irrationally annoyed to find him in a suit as worn and wrinkled as her
own. Just because she didn't listen to her own advice didn't mean he could
get away with it. She scowled.

Mulder looked down at himself, and then at her. "The fun never starts, does
it?"

"I'm taking a shower," she said. "I suggest you do the same. Flannery can
wait." She closed the door and stalked towards her suitcase.



   The Corpus Callosum is nothing but a Contexture of small Fibres.

    - Phil. Trans. II. 491 (1667)


NEW ENGLAND INSTITUTE FOR MENTAL HEALTH
9:01AM

"I just couldn't wait for you to get here," Dr. Flannery said, her hands
fluttering. Mulder raised his eyebrows at Scully but said nothing.

The doctor was leading them back to Rhect's room. This time, the corridors
were full of patients moving with surprising purposefulness. "The
higher-functioning residents have activities in the morning," Flannery
explained.

The agents brought her up to date on the events of the previous evening,
omitting the gorier details and concentrating on the inconsistencies in the
police reports. Mulder added what he had learned that morning; that the
naked body of Officer Billy Barber had been found several hundred yards from
the station.

"It seems," Scully said, "that the only reasonable explanation is that
Rhect lured the police out to make infiltration into the station easier,
then re-entered, perhaps wearing Officer Barber's uniform, acquired the cell
keys, murdered the guard and inmates, and escaped with Dan Lynx."

Flannery was shaking her head. "That does not sound like Alan. How would he
even know about the Lynx person?"

"He could've seen news coverage of the TPJ murder," Scully offered.

"He never watched television. I think the images in his own mind interest
him more."

"Perhaps there was some psychic connection between them. A mental or
spiritual analog to the physical similarity they share," Mulder said.

He was amazed that a pair of short female scientists could look so suddenly
intimidating.

"No, listen, hear me out. We have a single person -- Ben Suskind. He
undergoes a surgical procedure that severs the connections between the
halves of his brain. What if, somehow, one became two? Except each is only
one half of a whole -- Alan Rhect cannot speak and Dan Lynx has no
emotional life. Lynx is calculating, methodical, where Rhect is pure id..."

Flannery interrupted. "Agent Mulder, what do you know about psychology?"

"I studied it in Oxford."

"I don't know what they taught you in school, Agent Mulder, but modern
neuroscientists think very little of Freud's contributions to the field. A
lot of exciting work is being done in consciousness research, and none of
it involves anthropomorphized "id", "ego" and "superego" demons battling
for control of our inner selves.

"There is nothing inherently primitive or uncontrolled about the right
hemisphere. It is the seat of our creativity, our artistic sensibilities. It
allows us not only to see the forest for the trees, but to appreciate the
beauty of that forest. Just as we are less than human without language, we
are less than human without our sense of wonder."

"Fine," Mulder snapped. "The point I'm trying to make here..."

Flannery stopped him as they reached Rhect's door. "Agent Mulder, I am a
woman of science. For too many people, that is equated with rigidity of
thought, with a lack of creativity, with an absence of that very sense of
wonder."

Mulder shifted uncomfortably. Flannery stepped closer, peering over the
rims of her glasses. "I've seen facets of the human mind that you would
believe supernatural. A person with blindsight can see nothing, but shine a
point of light on the wall and ask them to guess where it is, and they'll
think you're an idiot for presenting the question but guess correctly every
time. These people have documented cortical blindness; they're not
pretending. If a bus barreled down on them they would really never see it.
But unconsciously, they have some visual ability. Does this mean they're
psychic?"

She was warming up to her topic. "Or let's take someone supposedly normal,
like yourself. If I show you a series of stationary dots lighting up in
succession, you'll think you see motion -- like on a marquee." She pointed
out four spots in space:

		      []      []      []      []

Then she drew a line in space underneath this, to indicate the apparent
motion:

		       ----------------------->

"Let's say the first two dots are green, and the second two are red. When I
flash them in succession, you'll see a green line changing to a red line.
But when does the color change occur?" She looked encouragingly at Scully,
who only stared.

"We actually know the answer to this from years of cognitive psychology
studies. It appears to happen right _here_." She pointed to a spot halfway
between the second and third points.

		     []      []      []      []

                                 ^
                                 |

"There is no dot here -- the brain has made it up as part of the apparent
motion phenomenon. But it made up the color change before it saw the _real_
red dot. How did the brain know the line would change colors? How did it
know the new color would be red? What is that if not precognition -- proof
that we humans can see into the future, if only briefly?"

Mulder, whose attention had been flagging, perked up. "You believe in
precognition?"

"No."

Scully noted that Mulder appeared almost grotesquely tall next to the
neuroscientist. In his agitation, he was looming over her, unconsciously
using his height as a weapon in their debate. Is this what we look like
when we argue? she thought.

He fluttered his eyes and said with an air of exasperation, "Then what was
the purpose of that demonstration?"

"Apparent motion, blindsight, these are documented phenomena," Dr. Flannery
said. "They teach us not that people have supernatural abilities, but that
our understanding of consciousness is woefully poor. We're progressing;
there are accepted scientific explanations for these phenomena, but they
require some nimble thinking.

"_Having said that_, I am not ready to accept any undocumented phenomenon
as truth just because the brain is a complex organ. And I warn you that any
rampant speculation in my presence will be met with derision."

"Don't worry," Mulder said sourly. "I'm used to it."

"Just so we're clear. Now, there's something I need to show you." Flannery
reached for Rhect's door.

Mulder's cell phone rang, aborting his potential retort.

Flannery let go of the handle and turned to Scully; Mulder had slunk away
in conversation. "I don't suppose you studied much about consciousness in
medical school," the doctor said. It was not a question, and the delivery
was faintly arrogant.

Scully bristled. "I can't say I did. It's difficult to keep up with the
journals when you're arresting terrorists or investigating cults." She
pursed her lips. "Or tracking murderers."

Flannery sighed. "Touché, I suppose. Look Dr. Scully, I'm sorry. I didn't
mean to denigrate your work as an investigator or," she paused, "as a
scientist. You've got your hands full there, in the latter category." She
nodded to Mulder.

Scully said quietly, "Agent Mulder's theories are often more...
substantiated than I'd prefer. We investigate some highly unusual cases."

Mulder's voice had risen to a yell. "Yes, Alan Rhect. No, not R-E-C-H-T,
it's R-H-E-C-T. Yes, and if they haven't been found by now, they must've
left the area. Expand the search. Yes... no, oh, just forget it. I'll be
right down." He slammed the phone shut. "Idiots!"

Scully touched his arm gently. "What is it?" She was concerned about the
case, but something else had begun gnawing at the back of her mind.

"Officer Barber's car. It was parked near the station, and now it's
missing. How could it take an organized search 14 hours to find a body a
few hundred yards from the scene? Rhect and Lynx could be anywhere by
now -- Barber drove his own vehicle, not a cruiser."

Rhect and Lynx, Scully thought, for no reason. Rhect and Lynx, Rhect and
Lynx.

"I'm not going to sit around here doing _nothing_," and here he glanced at
Flannery, "while the local PD fuck this up. I'm going back down to the
station. You stay here and find out more about Rhect."

"Sure," Scully said quietly.

Mulder nodded his head at Flannery. "Doctor..."

She smirked. "Likewise."

Mulder stalked away.

Whatever thought had temporarily seized Scully's attention, it was gone
now. She sighed and turned to the doctor. "What did you want to show us?"



MASSACHUSETTS TURNPIKE
9:10am

"Will there be anything else?" the clerk asked, ringing up the gas
purchase.

The owlish, middle-aged man scanned the counter briefly. "Could I have
those?" he asked, politely.

The clerk followed his gaze to the chain hanging from his wallet. It
dangled down and swung back up to his belt, where his set of keys were
clipped to one of the belt loops. He blinked. "Huh?"

"Those, please," the man said. "Your keys."

Nervously, the clerk stuck out his tongue and bit down on the metal bar
which pierced it. It was a habit he'd found helped him quit smoking, and
also helped him to think.

"Are you holding me up?" he asked nervously. "Because the keys to the
register are under the counter, man, just take 'em."

The man said nothing but continued to stare at him.

"No, here," the clerk said. He reached for the keys, slowly, and placed
them on the countertop with a shaking hand.

"You know," the man stated matter-of-factly. "You want to separate me
again. This time, my life force is stronger. We will be one."

"I dunno what you're talking about, man. Just take the keys--"

The door chime rang. It was the most beautiful sound the clerk had ever
heard, and yet he couldn't turn away from the man before him. The would-be
robber's eyes had suddenly begun to flutter. After a moment, they rolled
back and for one revolting second the clerk saw only whites.

Then he turned to look at the entrance, to yell a warning.

And saw the same man, humming.

Approaching.




   The perception of an object and the recognition that it is a
   tree involve a poise in the sensory system concerned, a certain
   completeness or `closure'. 

    - I. A. Richards, _Principles of Literary Criticism_ 107 (1925)


NEW ENGLAND INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
10:14am

Scully flipped through the series of drawings. "What am I looking at here?"

Dr. Flannery crossed Rhect's room to look down at them. "Alan's artwork. As
I said, he drew constantly, sometimes dozens of these per day." She smiled
a little. "Our budget can't really accommodate his creative output, but he
seems not to mind reusing his materials -- drawing on the backs of old
work, or sometimes even over it. I wanted to show them to you. I was hoping
you would be able to find something in them I couldn't; something relevant
to the case."

Scully examined the drawings carefully at first, but then began flipping
quickly, looking for some kind of pattern. There were all extremely
realistic landscapes, some in pastels, others in crayon. After awhile, they
blended together.

"He'd probably produce some amazing detail if he used pen or pencil, but
for obvious reasons we try to keep those out of the patient population.
Even in this wing."

"Mmm," Scully said. She dropped the drawings on the bed next to her, and
stood thoughtfully.

She was surrounded on all sides by similar landscapes -- they were taped to
the walls, to the ceiling, even over parts of the tiny window. A few
littered the floor, their designs smeared by footprints. Over and over
again, she saw trees.

"Mmm," she said again.

Flannery looked at her suspiciously -- as if she were Mulder. "What are you
looking for?"

Scully frowned. "I'm not sure." She turned in circles, considering each
wall.

She started to speak again, stopped, and then began anyway. "Let's suppose
for a second that Mulder's right." She glanced at Flannery briefly. "Just
suppose. Why is it that Lynx was able to survive in the real world, to
succeed, where Rhect failed?"

Flannery considered the question. "Do you think that's really true? Until
this, Alan seemed content. He drew. He painted. He played the piano,
although don't ask him to tune it. He took long walks in the gardens. He
could not communicate with us with language, but he had no reason to
do so -- his life was ordered just as he wished.

"I read the report on Dan Lynx -- he is trapped in a world of details. He
remembers to pay his bills whenever he is sent a late notice, because he
can't comprehend the _idea_ that money is owed every month. He can function
at work, but the actions of his co-workers are incomprehensible to him. He
has emotions, but he cannot express them, and cannot understand when they
are expressed to him by anyone else.

"Lynx is seen as the 'success' because of only one thing -- language. Human
society is based entirely on language, and Alan doesn't have it. But
neither one of them is really complete." Flannery stopped, aware that she'd
reasoned into Mulder's thesis.

Scully nodded, and looked up at the ceiling again.

Flannery followed her gaze. "I never thought there was any rhyme or reason
in which pictures he chose to put up. These recent ones have all been the
same."

"They haven't always been landscapes?"

"Usually, but his style has evolved over time."

"Does he ever draw something from life?"

"Just this place."

Scully turned to her in surprise. "The Institute?"

"Yes, that's how we came to transfer here. I was considering a move from
Amherst anyway, and one day Alan came in and handed me a drawing of this
building. He'd probably overheard me discussing it."

"How would he know what it looked like?"

Flannery frowned. "The only logical assumption is that he'd been here at
some point."

Scully considered this. "Did the Institute ever perform commissurotomies?"

"Of course not -- this isn't a hospital. But it could have been where he
recovered." Flannery stared at her for a moment. "Where did what's his name
recuperate?"

"We only know that Ben Suskind was treated in the Boston area."

Flannery expected her to ask to see the Institute's files. Instead, apropos
of nothing, Scully said, "What kind of a name is Suskind, do you suppose?"

"German, isn't it?"

"That's what I thought."

Flannery cleared her throat and stood. "Should I check if we have any
records for Ben Suskind?"

"Of course," Scully said faintly. "We should've done that right away, but
things have been moving rather quickly."

"Right," Flannery answered. "Feel free to, er, stay here. This shouldn't
take more than a few minutes." She left the room, glancing back quizzically
for just a moment.

Scully remained, letting her random thoughts coalesce. She closed her eyes,
then opened them slowly, allowing the thousands of trees around her to come
into focus.

It was in that half-unfocussed gaze that the three-dimensional pattern
suddenly leapt out from the drawings on the wall. Scully gasped.

I know where they're going, she thought wildly, and ran from the room.




FENBORO POLICE STATION
CRIME LAB
10:40am

"Where do they come in?" Mulder asked.

"Right here," Jimmy said, stopping the fast-forward. The security camera
over the clerk's head showed a fisheye view of the gas station entrance and
counter, and a bit of the clerk himself.

A spectacled man entered the station and spoke to the clerk. Mulder stood
close to the monitor, trying to make out the pixilated, black-and-white
image.

"It's definitely one of them," he concluded.

Jimmy, who knew only that Dan Lynx had had an accomplice in his jailbreak
who resembled him closely, nodded. "Of course, there's no audio, but it's
safe to say here that they weren't just discussing the sale."

"I want to know what they're saying." Mulder nodded to the onscreen
figures. "Can you get someone in here who can read lips?"

Jimmy frowned. "We're a small operation here. It might take some time."

"I think it's important."

"Sure, then."

On-screen, the clerk could be seen to freeze. Then he turned to look at the
store entrance, as a second customer, almost identical to the first,
entered.

"Wow," Jimmy said. "They must be twins."

Mulder said nothing. As the second man approached, the first man began to
look around with sudden animation. Finally, he spotted the camera, and
pointed Officer Barber's weapon at it. The camera abruptly cut to static.

"When did they find the clerk?" Mulder asked.

"Probably not long after it happened, but we won't know until the autopsy.
He was cut up pretty badly but still alive when he was found. Died on the
way to the hospital, though." He reached forward to stop the tape.

"No, wait," Mulder said, taking the remote. He rewound.

"What?"

"There." He had stopped the tape at the point in which the second man
entered the gas station. "Look at the first guy."

The resolution on the tape was poor, but they could both clearly see his
faint shuddering, his eyes rolling back.

"What is that?" Jimmy said, squinting at the image.

"It's a seizure. I've got to call my partner."

Mulder reached into his coat for his cell phone, which rung in his hand. He
started at it dumbly for a second, and then answered.

"Mulder, it's me. I know where they're going."

"Where?" he asked, glancing at Jimmy.

"Boston. I'll get Dr. Flannery to drive me over to where you are." She
paused. "Where are you?"

"With the Fenboro PD. Rhect and Lynx bagged a gas station attendant on
the turnpike and we've been going over the tape from the security camera."

"Were they heading east? Towards the city?"

Mulder pulled the phone away. To Jimmy, he asked, "Which direction were
they heading?"

"East," the officer said.

"Congratulations, Scully -- you get to move on to our bonus round."

"Mmm," she answered. Her voice sounded far away. "I'll see you there."

"Wait, what happened there? Did you find something in Rhect's room?"

"You could say that," she answered. "Or perhaps you could say I finally
saw the forest for the trees."



ARLINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS
ALEWIFE SUBWAY STATION
10:50am

Two identical men passed through the glass and steel canopy of the station
entrance. Largely bereft of commuters, it was populated only by a few
mothers with young children and students shuttling to or from classes
downtown. The men drew a few curious glances, but no more.

One of them boarded an inbound train. The other sat on a bench near the
rest rooms, and waited. A cleaning woman who passed into the women's room
noted that as she heard the sound of the train departing, the quiet,
well-dressed man shuddered briefly.



OUTSIDE OF FENBORO
11:03am

"And you're _sure_ it was a stereogram?" Flannery asked. There was more
than a hint of incredulity.

"Absolutely," Scully said.

"Those 3D pictures from the mall? Usually of dolphins or unicorns."

"Yes."

"But that's impossible. No one could draw one of those from their heads.
It's a complex algorithm." Large blobs of rain began to splatter the
windshield haphazardly; Flannery turned on the wipers.

"Actually, the simplest stereogram is just a series of vertical lines."

"But according to you, this was a vivid, detailed, three-dimensional image
of the river and the city skyline."

"I don't know how he did it," Scully said, watching the trees pass by.
"I just know that he did, because I saw it."

"Well, I didn't."

Scully glanced at the neuroscientist.

"But then, I've never been able to see them," she admitted.

They drove on in silence as the rain picked up. The wipers were shifted
into high gear to compensate.

"And it was clear enough for you to identify it as Boston?"

"Mmm-hmm," Scully answered.

Flannery shook her head. "Extraordinary."

The rain stopped for no apparent reason, and within seconds the car was
driving through bright sunshine. "New England," Scully snorted quietly.

After another moment of thought, she added, "What do you think of all this,
Dr. Flannery? Is any of this consistent with Alan's behavior?"

"What, jailbreak? Murder? I don't know what to say. He was a gentle, quiet
man, but also a greatly disturbed one." She tapped one nail on the file
folder that sat between him. "And it seems there's considerable evidence to
suggest that he was a repeat visitor to the Institute."

Ben Suskind had, it turned out, undergone rehabilitation at the Institute
after his surgery. His files had been there all along, buried in the
basement archives where thousands of cases waited to be entered into a
modern database. There were simply no funds available to hire someone to
perform this monumental task.

"It says in the file that the commissurotomy surgeons described his brain
structure as 'exceedingly atypical'," Flannery said quietly. She turned on
the wipers again in response to a few drops.

"I know," Scully answered.

"It also says that the night he was transferred to the Institute, someone
matching his description wearing nothing but a hospital gown was seen
wandering through town, but he was later discovered to be lying undisturbed
in his room."

"I know."

Flannery looked at her seriously. "Dr. Scully, what do _you_ think of all
this?"

Scully stared straight ahead. "This is our exit," she said, pointing.

Mulder was waiting for them at the base of the road. He looked drenched,
although it had ceased raining again. "I've alerted the Boston field
office -- we're to head down there," he said, and climbed awkwardly
into the back seat. He looked at the two of them expectantly.

Flannery stared back. "I'm driving?"

"You know Rhect best."

"This isn't against FBI policy or something?"

Neither of them answered. Flannery sighed and put the car into gear.

"Let's go," she said.




   At times, the non-dominant hand may "go off on its own" and have to be
   restricted by the dominant hand. One begins to doubt whether a split
   brain man is singular or plural.

    - Passmore & Robson, _A Companion to Medical Studies_ I. xxiv. (1968)



ARLINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS
ALEWIFE SUBWAY STATION
12:30pm

From somewhere high above in the gridwork of the subway station, a clock
chimed the half-hour. Still seated near the rest rooms, a man got up calmly
and walked towards an inbound train.

No one noticed him; he was exceedingly inconspicuous.




BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
ESPLANADE PARK
12:41pm

Stacey Summers leapt for the frisbee, but reached just under its arc. The
wobbling, airborne piece of plastic sailed unmolested over her head, and,
predictably, into an innocent passer-by.

"Oh shit!" Stacey exclaimed, covering her mouth. To the unintended victim,
she said, "I'm so sorry."

The man in the button-down shirt and slacks rubbed his head briefly, and
looked at the frisbee now lying the grass.

Sarah Dantz, Stacey's dormmate with the lousy aim, jogged over. "Are you
okay?" she asked, retrieving the disc.

He answered with another question. "Where is Massachusetts General
Hospital?"

The girls looked at each other briefly. Stacey said, "Um, I think that's it
right there." She pointed to a tall building along the river, a few hundred
yards away.

The man looked at the building uncuriously. "How do I get there?"

Sarah raised her eyebrows. "Um, it's right there." He looked at her
blankly. "Just follow the footpath along the river. The one we're standing
on."

He looked down at the footpath, and then at the hospital. "What time is
it?" he asked.

Both girls had backed away from him somewhat, and moved closer together.
Stacey answered hesitantly. "About twelve-thirty." She jerked her
thumb towards the river. "If you're here for the regatta, the boats
don't start racing until two o'clock."

Without thanking them or nodding or in any way acknowledging their help,
the man turned and followed the path away from the hospital. For just a
second, his eyes seemed to catch on something, but then he was gone.

Sarah automatically began to call out, "Sir, that's the wrong way!", but
Stacey slapped her on the arm.

"Shut up!" Stacey said. "What a freak," she added.

Sarah nudged her arm. "Speaking of freaks," she whispered, and nodded to
the gangly man in glasses who was sprinting towards them.

"Hey," he said, out of breath and leaning on his knees. "Where'd he go?"

"What are we, 411 here?" Stacey muttered.

Sarah shrugged. "I dunno. He just walked off. Is he a friend of yours?"

The man laughed hollowly. "No, although we did work together. Did he say
where he was going? Did he say anything?"

"He asked where the hospital was," Sarah answered carefully.

"Mass General?"

"Yeah."

"Thanks," he said. He pulled a business card from his wallet. Sarah peered
at it curiously -- she couldn't read the name on it, but she could clearly
make out the letters "FBI". "I'm Pat," the man said, putting out his hand.
"Now, do either one of you have a cellphone?"



BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MOTHER CHURCH
1:15pm

A silent man moved confidently along the tree-lined edge of the grounds of
the Christian Science Center. The Center owned several blocks of property,
and had converted these into a free space for city residents to gaze into
the reflecting pool, look up at the neoclassical dome of the Church itself,
or to simply relax on the patches of grass near Massachusetts Avenue.
Today, a murderer walked among the faithful and the merely curious.

The man found a place to sit near the densest conglomeration of people.
They happened to be young skateboarders, who flocked to the Center to
exploit its paved, open space. He did not know what a skateboarder was;
simply that he should camouflage himself in the crowd as best he could
while he waited for the church bell to chime the appropriate number of
times.

He did not see the police officer who had been called by the Church's
security for the purpose of removing the skateboarding youths. He would
have seen her if the officer had told the boys to leave as she had
intended; instead, she paused some distance away when she recognized the
adult sitting incongruously in their midst. His face had been plastered all
over the precinct in twenty dithered copies of a late-breaking FAX.

The officer stepped back cautiously to her bicycle, and called into her
station.



    His broken fragments will reunite more glibly than the head and
    neck of Orrilo. 

     - James Russell Lowell, _Fireside Travels_ 196 (1864)


BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
FBI FIELD OFFICE
1:50pm

When Mulder turned around, Flannery and Scully were gone again.
"Goddammit," he said aloud.

"Can I help you, agent?" The clerk's accent was amusingly pronounced.

"I keep losing my partner. What's going on around here? This place is a zoo
today."

"Head of the Charles," the clerk explained, shifting the weight of the
files in his arms. Someone in a hurry jostled him, and sent loose notecards
spiraling up into the air. "The regatta. Boat races."

"Ah hell," Mulder said. He spun around and tried to look over the heads of
the throngs of people in the common area.

The clerk continued, speaking to the floor as he bent down and snaked out
his hands to grasp at the fallen cards. "The city's just overrun with
people, so it's about a thousand times harder to get anything done. We've
pulled in everyone we could."

"Great," Mulder said. He pushed his hair back and sighed, just as his
cellphone buzzed.

Standing, the clerk nodded towards an alcove in the hall. "It's quieter in
there," he advised, and disappeared into the crowds.

Mulder ducked into the space and pressed his ear into the phone. "Mulder,"
he answered loudly. He expected it to be Scully, calling from some other
noisy hallway.

Instead, it was the witness to the first murder, Pat Warner. "Agent Mulder,
I'm guessing you haven't caught Dan Lynx yet?"

Suppressing annoyance, Mulder said, "No, why is that, Mr. Warner?"

"He's in Boston. He's on the Esplanade -- near the river."

"You're sure it was him?"

"Of course. I worked with him for years."

"You'd be surprised."

Static interrupted the line. "What?" Warner said.

"Nothing," Mulder yelled. "When did you see him?"

"About an hour ago, talking to some girls. He took off when he saw me, I
think. It's been tough finding a working phone here. He was on the
Esplanade, near the Hatch Shell Amphitheater. I'm there now."

"Yeah, I know it." Mulder poked his head out into the hall, and spotted
Scully pushing her way through the crowd of taller agents. Flannery was in
tow.

"Listen Mr. Warner, stay there. I'll be over in about 10 minutes."

In the background, Mulder could hear cheering. The regatta must have
started. "Great -- you're in town. Come over, but don't try to park."

Mulder hung up on Warner's laughter. "Scully," he said, stepping into the
hallway and grabbing her arm.

"They found Rhect," she said unexpectedly. He stared at her. "Or maybe
Lynx," she added. "There's no way to be sure."

"Where?"

"The Christian Science Mother Church," Scully answered. "About 15 blocks
west of here. I advised the officer on duty to hold her position until we
got there."

"Fine, you take him. The other one is along the river -- Pat Warner just
spotted him."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

"That's amazing luck."

"Does this always happen?" Flannery interrupted. She had jostled a position
close to them, mainly to avoid being swept away by the crowd of harried
agents. "I thought real detective work was mostly filling out papers and
sitting around."

Mulder glared at her. "I thought real science was mostly staring into a
microscope in a lab somewhere."

"Real science involves observation of facts, which I'd think we could be
better served doing rather than standing here arguing," Scully snapped. She
turned to Flannery. "Let's go -- if our luck holds, the one I'm after will
be Rhect."

"I'm sure it is," said Mulder. "Warner saw my Wonder Twin speaking to some
girls, so that had to be Lynx." He paused. "Scully, are you sure it's wise
to take her with you?"

She raised an eyebrow, but simply turned to Flannery. "You ready for this?"

Flannery hesitated, then nodded. "I think so. But I have to say, I'm
concerned about a possible shoot-first-ask-questions-never scenario. This
is someone I've spent a considerable number of years trying to work with."
The three of them began to move towards the entrance.

Mulder's eyes narrowed. "He also happens to be entirely responsible for
your professional standing, correct?"

"I'd like to think at least one other person was responsible for my
professional standing."

"But now," he insisted. "After all of this. There's about a hundred papers
waiting to be published on this guy's activities in the last twenty-four
hours. As a psychiatrist, he's not much good to you dead."

"As a _neuroscientist_, I'm curious as to the cause of his dysfunctional
behavior. As a person, I'd like to see a murderer put away." She pushed
through the rotating glass doors of the field office and stepped into the
sharply-angled fall sunlight. Raising her voice over the downtown traffic,
she continued, "As an _FBI agent_, I would think taking them down would be
quite a feather in your professional cap."

Mulder would've laughed, but Scully beat him to it. "There's no danger of
me advancing up the bureau ladder at this point in my career," he said.

"But if you could substantiate some of your wilder theories, that _would_
be of some value, wouldn't it? Even if it's at the expense of the truth."

Mulder looked as if he'd be slapped in the face.

"There's no danger of that, either," Scully said quietly. Mulder glanced at
her with surprised gratitude.



THE ESPLANADE
2:15pm

Pat Warner wondered if he was simply lost amid the gathering crowd
alongside the river. "Excuse me," he said to the air in front of him, and
pushed his way through anonymous spectators to one of the more climbable
trees in the area.

This was stupid, he thought, scrambling up the tree like an oversized
fifteen-year-old. I never should've gotten involved again.

"Ow, shit! Watch what you're doing!"

Warner pulled his foot away from the offended bystander; he'd inadvertently
kicked someone in the head. "Sorry," he called down.

From his improved vantage about ten feet up from the ground, he could see
the entirety of the crowd, stretching west along the river as the
brownstones and skyscrapers of the city faded into blocky student housing,
and then into suburbs. Across the river, identical crowds formed the base
of the much lower-profile Cambridge skyline, notable only for a few MIT
buildings and a ziggurat-shaped hotel.

He could just barely make out the scullers racing towards them. He could've
pinpointed their location just as well with his eyes closed; the sound of
the crowd cheering rolled east-to-west along with the lead boat.

Back on land, he peered through browning leaves at the assembled masses,
looking for one tallish, solemn man in a suit amid the t-shirted students
and families.

Then he saw them -- a dozen or so police officers swarming in from all
directions. He looked towards the most concentrated area of blue, and
there, at the nucleus, he could make out Agent Mulder's form.

Thank God, Warner thought, just as a hand reached up and grabbed his ankle,
yanking hard.



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE CENTER
2:15pm

"Why do you think he came here?" Flannery said, gasping for breath. Scully
wasn't much taller, but she was infinitely more fit than the older woman.
Flannery had been jogging behind for blocks.

The answer was accompanied by an air of distraction. "He probably wanted to
hide in crowds, like Dan Lynx in the regatta."

"Does it strike you as particularly crowded here? I see a few kids, some
couples."

"Mmm," Scully said. She scanned the courtyard. "Where's my goddamned
backup?"

The pair were at one end of the fifties-era auxiliary building that ran
alongside the signature reflecting pool and terminated in the dome-topped
Mother Church itself. Rhect (or whoever) had been spotted on the far side
of the Church, but with Flannery in tow they were reluctant to expose
themselves.

"Maybe you should wait here," Scully said, motioning into one of the many
identical alcoves along the building.

Flannery ignored her. "Is that the cop, there?" She pointed to the other side
of the pool, to the figure in blue standing amid a small grove of trees
that had been planted near the pool. A bicycle leaned against one of the
trees.

"I thought it was a female officer," Scully mused. "Well, whatever. Wait
here."

Flannery stepped back into the shadows and watched the young agent move
confidently across the concrete courtyard. She looked especially small now,
orphaned by open space and dwarfed by the church buildings on all sides.

Looks like a De Chirico painting, Flannery thought. All emptiness and long
shadows.

She flashed back to an afternoon with Alan, many years ago. She'd wanted to
work with his artistic interests, expose him to modern painters -- perhaps
draw him out more. His favorites had been the surrealists, but none had
captured his attention like De Chirico. The Italian painter's landscapes
seemed to haunt him -- scenes of abandoned Classical towers and statues,
always with suggestive shadows and furtive, lone residents starting just
off the frame.

Did he come to this place because he loved the paintings, or did he love
the paintings because he had once been to this place? Did he draw the
Institute because he'd been there, or because he wanted to go there? Was he
Alan Rhect or Dan Lynx or Ben Suskind? Flannery's thoughts spun round and
round.

In the Church courtyard, Scully was passing along one side of the reflecting
pool. The pool itself was raised about a foot off the ground; from this
distance, her feet were not visible and she seemed to be gliding along the
surface. Flannery had always wondered if the walking-on-water illusion
had been a deliberate design choice.

The water, the tall white buildings, even the shadowy figure under the 
tree -- these were classic De Chirico. The only anomaly was the FBI
agent, with her riotous red hair and her severe black suit.

Suddenly, everything began to happen very slowly.

That figure, Flannery thought. I know that shape.

Scully glided closer to the trees. It was unlikely that in this late
afternoon glare she could see into the shadows any better than Flannery
could, but the doctor was looking for an outline, not a face. It seemed to
take forever for her guess to coalesce into certainty; it actually
happened in a matter of seconds.

The sun flickered behind the Mother Church dome, and the glare was gone.
Flannery suddenly knew.

She stepped out of the alcove, intending to cry out a warning to Dr.
Scully. Instead, she heard herself scream, "Alan!"

The figure, which had begun to step forward out of the trees, hesitated.
Scully too froze, and seemed to glance around searching for cover.
Realizing she was in a vulnerable position, she reached for her gun.

"No!" Flannery screamed, and ran into the square.

Scully turned for just a second -- enough time for the figure, now clearly
Alan-shaped, to jump back into the trees and begin sprinting deeper into
the city. Flannery noted crazily that he seemed to move with almost
inhuman velocity and precision.

Scully had no hesitation this time; she started after him immediately with
her own supernatural speed on heels.

Alan passed through the trees at a breakneck pace, heading towards the
parking garage that ran under Boston's second-tallest skyscraper. Flannery
screamed again as the first of many police cruisers careened off of
Huntington Avenue and over curbs, stopping one after the other in Alan's
path, but he leapt over and around them with effortless grace.

He was, however, no match for the bullet from Scully's gun.

Flannery would've liked to think that the agent had deliberately aimed low,
but she'd seen Scully slam into the hood of the nearest cruiser and only
barely take aim before firing. It was sheer luck that the bullet exploded
into his upper thigh and not into his chest.

He crumpled to the ground instantly. Flannery choked back an unexpected sob
as he struggled to an awkward crawl, and slouched towards the parking
garage. Within seconds, he was swallowed up by police.

The doctor caught up with Scully just in time to be on the receiving end of
a withering glare. "I..." she started, with no idea how she would finish
the sentence.

"Forget it," Scully said, breaking into a sprint. "I'm a medical doctor,"
she yelled as she plunged into the ring of taller bodies.

Badly winded, Flannery bent over and put her hands on her knees. She closed
her eyes and tried to fight off a wave of powerful nausea. Her ears were
filled with the sound of blood rushing in her head, and the increasingly
loud howl of an approaching ambulance.

After several minutes, there was a hesitant touch on her shoulder. Flannery
opened her eyes and stood.

"Do you want to see him before we take him to the hospital?" Scully asked
gently. "They've got him stabilized."

Flannery stared at her uncomprehendingly. Scully's tailored suit was a
mess, and covered in barely-visible dark splotches. "I don't imagine white
is a good color in your profession," she said, randomly.

"No, it's not," the agent admitted.

Flannery sighed. "They say personal attachment isn't a good quality in 
mine. I always thought that rule was for people weaker than me."

"Extraordinary circumstances have a way of making all of us feel... small."

Flannery smiled without humor. She recognized both the deliberate irony,
and the dark, personal undercurrent. If she'd sensed at all that the other
woman wanted her statement to be further mined, she would've probed -- even
now. She knew instead that Scully was just reassuring her in the best way
she could, and that the darkness colored not just her words but every
fabric of her life. A life she had chosen.

Alan had that choice taken away from him, Flannery thought, nodding to
Scully and moving towards the figure on the gurney. Taken away by his
illness, and by whatever was done to him in 1962.

What do I think they did? she added.

The scene that was developing around Alan revealed itself to be a kind of
absurd comedy. Not one but two ambulances had arrived on scene, from
different hospitals, and both were claiming "ownership" of the patient.

"The guinea pig that lays the golden eggs," Flannery whispered, touching
his forehead. His eyes were far away, his leg heavily bandaged. "I'm
sorry," she added.

220 pounds of meat shoehorned into a police uniform suddenly imposed itself
between her and the gurney. "I'm sorry ma'am, I need you to step back," the
officer said sternly.

"I'm his doctor," she answered. Behind him, EMTs were debating just that
fact.

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

"Alan! I'll meet you there!" she called from around the policeman. Wherever
"there" turned out to be.

To her relief, Alan turned his head and met her gaze. He seemed to
recognize her, in his old serene way.

"He's going to Mass General trauma!" someone declared, and the decision was
implemented as suddenly as it was made. Two technicians lifted up his
gurney, folding up its wheels.

Just before he was packed away, Flannery saw his expression change. The
placidity melted away when the hospital was named, to be replaced by a
terrible new intelligence. She felt her throat constrict.

"Let's go," Scully said, suddenly at her side. "We can ride in one of the
cruisers."

"This isn't over," Flannery said.

Scully frowned. "Mulder's team has a high likelihood of catching Lynx..."

"That's not what I mean. Alan's not finished yet."

"How do you know?"

Flannery started to answer, considered the nature of her response, and bit
her lip. Then she sighed. "I don't know. I just do."



THE ESPLANADE
2:40pm

"Make way!" Mulder screamed. He was tossing gawking students and unwitting
joggers aside with abandon. "Police, coming through!"

By the time he'd pushed his way into the small circle surrounding the body,
the EMTs had already arrived and begun the machinations of medicine. Even
the ambulance had trundled awkwardly across the grass and moved into
position.

"What's his condition?" Mulder barked, and waved his badge.

One of the EMTs stepped away from the body. "He's alive, but only barely.
He suffered what looks like a broken neck from the fall, but it's the knife
wound we're concerned about."

"Knife wound?" Mulder asked incredulously. He'd watched the body -- Warner
-- plummet suddenly from the tree, but seen nothing else before he'd
started running.

"Quick, around the neck, through the carotid." The EMT made a gruesome
gesture. "Everyone saw him fall, but no one saw him get cut. It must've
happened so fast, and right in front of one of the park officers. Took
balls."

Mulder, nodded, and then frowned. "Officer?" he asked.

"Yeah, he was right here," the EMT answered, glancing around. Someone in
his team whistled; they were ready to move Warner out. "Look, I gotta go."

"Wait, which hospital?"

"Huh?"

"Which hospital are you taking him to?" Mulder felt a sudden sense of deja
vu, and became slightly nauseous.

"Mass General," the EMT yelled, as he lifted up the gurney.

One of the Boston agents had been listening to the exchange. "It's right
there," he said. Mulder followed the direction of his head nod to the tall
brick building farther along the river. He could just make out the words on
the side: "Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary."

"That's just one of the buildings," the agent continued. "Do you need a
ride back to the field office?"

"No," Mulder said, thoughtfully. He was watching a cadre of policemen
gather around the ambulance as it prepared to depart. "I think I'll be
catching a ride with them."

The agent shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Mulder nodded and started down the path towards the hospital. He kept one
eye on the swarm of officers, never finding anything unusual but
increasingly certain of his guess. After a minute, he began to run.




     A reuniting movement set in motion and prevailed.

      - Robert Rainy _Lect. Ch. Scotland_ i. (1883)

MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL
2:40pm

Scully moved through the hallways with an air of resigned familiarity. For
a non-practicing doctor, she thought grimly, I log an awful lot of hours in
these places.

The doctor at her side, on the other hand, was completely out of her
element. Not in control, emotionally overinvolved, Flannery felt more and
more like a liability. It had been a mistake to bring her, Scully thought,
even if she had spotted Rhect first.

"You can wait here," she said, gently pushing the other woman into a molded
plastic seat. She added with a smile, "But feel free to yell out anything
important again."

Flannery exhaled and sat. "Thank you, Dr. Scully. I'm not sure why I'm such
a wreck over this."

"Dana," Scully said. "And it's not hard to develop an affinity for the
insane. Trust me."

They both laughed a little, and the tension eased. Scully felt comfortable
leaving her in the small waiting room -- really just a storage space for
vending machines and bolted televisions -- and left her, intending to find
information on Rhect's condition.

True to form, Flannery immediately called out a name that stopped Scully
cold. This time, it was "Mulder."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, as he sailed into the room. He looked
like he'd been running; his tie was flipped back over his shoulder.

"Scully," he gasped. "I think he's here." He leaned on her for support as
he panted.

Scully blinked. "Rhect? Yeah, we brought him in. He's still in ICU..."

"No, Lynx. I think he set all this up, orchestrated Warner's injury to
insure he could get in here."

"Mulder! Stop. What _are_ you talking about?" She stepped out from under
his grasp.

"Pat Warner had his throat slashed just as I got to the Esplanade. There
was a cop _right there_ when it happened. I think it was Lynx; he probably
had the Fenboro officer's uniform on and I'm sure no one looked closely
enough."

Scully shook her head, and glanced at Flannery. The other woman was
listening intently.

Mulder was seized by another thought. "Wait, Rhect is at Mass General too?"

"Why do you think _we're_ here? I took him down at the Christian Science
Center. He'll live, though -- the wound entered at thigh level."

"That couldn't have been part of the plan," Mulder whispered aloud. "He was
probably just looking for a place to wait, to wait until Lynx found a way
to get inside."

"I think he'd been there before," Flannery said suddenly. The agents looked
back at her, stepped into the waiting room.

"He was fascinated by a certain painter -- De Chirico. We looked at dozens
of his paintings. Today at the church, I was strongly reminded of it."

Mulder raised his eyebrows in approval. "Okay, let's go over this. They
come to Boston. They split up, because..."

"Because identical twins attract attention," Scully offered.

Mulder and Flannery nodded in response. "Lynx is higher-functioning, so
it's his job to figure out a way to... do whatever they're doing. Rhect can
just cool his heels, so he goes to a place that has a particular
significance, for whatever reason."

"My God," Scully blurted out. She reached into her bag, scrambling for the
case file. After a second of frantic page flipping, she looked up and said,
"Ben Suskind's assault in 1961. It was at the Christian Science Center."

Mulder proceeded carefully. She made a mental note to cut him some slack
for doing so. "That may be significant. Either way, fate intervenes. Lynx
spots Warner on the river, disappears to change into his police uniform,
then blends with the riverside crowd."

Scully nodded encouragingly.

"He kills Warner," Mulder continued, "in such a way that no one seems to
see him do it. But he's there, as a cop. He probably appeared to administer
help, call for backup. But by the time the real cavalry arrive, he's gone."

"On his way to the hospital," Scully added, with a slight questioning lift
to her voice.

"Where Rhect is already en route, although probably not in the condition
they'd planned."

Flannery spoke up again, relating the expression change she'd seen on
Rhect's face when he'd learned of his destination.

"Great," Scully said, exasperated. "And this tells us exactly what? Why
here? Why the elaborate ruse?"

"Well," Mulder considered, "You can't just walk through a city hospital
without being questioned, police uniform or not." Sourly, he added,
"Believe me, I know."

Scully ducked her head down, and then continued. "So he needed to come in
with a trauma team, as part of a crime. If it hadn't been Warner, it might
have been anyone."

"He was talking to two girls when Warner spotted him," suggested Mulder.

"So he's here," Flannery concluded.

Mulder and Scully looked at each other for a moment. "I think so," he said.

"Why?" Flannery asked, in a matter-of-fact tone.

He bit his lip. "If you were -- if you _believed_ that you had been
disconnected somehow, split into two, what would you want more than
anything?"

There was a protracted length of silence. Scully said, reluctantly, "To be
reunited?"

"Fenboro PD's got a guy they claim could read Lynx's lips on the
security camera tape. It was low-res, but he says uses words like, 
'separate' and 'be one'."

Flannery's voice behind them: "Oh, I don't know about that..."

"I talked to the Gunmen," he continued. "I had them analyze all the
software Lynx had written over the past few months. Once they stopped
gushing over how they were 'works of art', they discovered that
feeding any one into another produced the same text over and
over again: 'Massachusetts General Hospital'. It's just like 
Rhect's art, Scully, except left-hemisphere Lynx concealed his
obsession in the logic of computer code."

Flannery tried to interrupt again. "But --"

Mulder stepped towards Scully, invading her space. He tapped the closed
folder. "I guarantee that Ben Suskind's commissurotomy was performed at
Massachusetts General. They've come back here, _right back here_, to undo
the damage." He paused. "That they believe was done to them," he amended.

Scully said nothing for some time. The sound of intercoms, of soft shoes on
linoleum, of life-monitoring equipment filled the space of their silence.

She then smiled a little, and put the folders away unread. "Mulder, do you
know how to say 'left' in German?"

He suppressed a smile in return. Instead, his hand moved from where the
folder had been to her forearm. "No, Scully. How do you say 'left' in
German?"

"'Links'", she said.

He nodded with almost mocking solemnity. "And how do you say 'right' in
German, Scully?"

"'Recht'", she said.

"Suskind sounds like a German name to me," he added, quietly.

"It does," she agreed.

"Funny how these things come together at the end."

"Sometimes it's just a matter of looking at them from a new perspective."

"Mmm," he replied. He seemed fascinated by the fabric of her blouse.

"I have to..." she suddenly stuttered. "I have to go check on Rhect's
condition."

Mulder demurred and stepped back. Flannery, who had just recently taken an
interest in the floor, approached. "I'd like to go with you," she said
quietly.

"If you leave when I ask you to," Scully answered. "I have the feeling 
this will get dangerous soon." She looked up at Mulder expressionlessly.

"I'll talk to the admitting nurses; see if they saw anyone resembling Lynx.
I don't want to start a sweep until we're sure."

"Why Mulder, that's almost downright conscientious."

"Things change," he replied, and walked down the corridor.

When Scully turned back to Flannery, the doctor's pained expression was now
also slightly amused. She said nothing, but nodded her head towards the ICU
nurse's station.




Mulder honestly meant to interview the nurses. He walked downstairs with
every intention of performing a methodical survey of everyone in trauma, of
pulling in more local enforcement, of updating the field office of their
progress.

Instead, when he reached the entrance to the walk-in clinic on the ground
floor, he spotted the hospital directory.

      NEUROSCIENCE CARE UNITS 5

Under that, a list of divisions:

      Neurovascular Surgery Center
      Cranial Base Center
      NeuroGenetics Center

And the last in the list:

      Epilepsy Surgery Unit

He was up to the 3rd floor when the power in the hospital cut out, and
everything went black.




"Yes, I have him here. 'Rhect, Alan.' On this floor, actually -- room 204D,
near the end of the hall."

"Thank you, Nurse," Scully said hurriedly. She nodded to Flannery.

"Are you relieving the other officer already?" the nurse asked.

Scully turned back around. "What did you say?"

He blinked in surprise. "A police officer just came to replace the last
guard -- that's three in twenty minutes, is all."

"Shit," said Flannery, after a beat. That seemed to cover the situation 
nicely, so Scully simply drew her weapon next to her side and ran down 
the hallway.

"Excuse me," she gasped, dodging slow-moving patients rolling their IVs,
and concerned hospital staff who stepped in her path. "Coming through!"

Flannery's mention of a surrealist painting must have implanted an image in
her mind; the hallway seemed to stretch further and further away as she ran
towards the end. When she closed her eyes for just a second, she expected
the find the sterile walls covered in the swirling, angry red patterns of
the Fenboro police station.

Instead, when she opened them, she saw nothing. The world had gone utterly
black.




But only for a second, when the emergency lighting kicked in. The stairwell
was bathed in a sickly, jaundiced glow. At least he could see.

Mulder took the last few steps two at a time, then three at time.

Even a practiced runner couldn't keep up the pace. He was still winded from
his dash along the river towards the hospital. When he reached the door of
the fifth floor, his muscles were screaming and he was gasping for breath.

Damn, he thought. Damn damn damn damn.

He withdrew his gun from his holster, and pulled carefully on the door
handle.



Opening the door revealed someone in the hospital bed, but it clearly
wasn't Rhect. Scully hesitated only for a second before crossing to the bed
and grabbing the limp wrist.

"Is it the guard? Is he dead?" Flannery's voice asked, from the hallway.

"Yes," Scully said tonelessly. The sounds of panic began to rise up in the
rest of the hospital, as it became clear the power wasn't immediately
returning.

"What I don't understand," she continued, "is why they would cut off the
power."

"To start a panic? To plunge us into semi-darkness?" Flannery stepped
carefully into the room, trying not to look directly at the body on the
hospital bed.

"Yes," Scully answered patiently, "but Rhect has a serious leg injury. He
can't move without a wheelchair, and with the power out, the elevators
won't operate. He's trapped somewhere on this floor."

"But there's emergency power," Flannery said. She had drifted to the
bedside table.

"That's for lights and critical medical equipment only. The hospital is on
emergency alert now; the elevators are deliberately shut down in case of
fire."

Flannery picked up a clear glass bottle from the table and read it with
surprise. "I doubt he's feeling much of anything right now," she said, and
shook the container to illustrate its emptiness.

Scully snatched the bottle from her. "Morphine," she read. "This entire
amount should drop a man to the floor."

Flannery looked suddenly wistful, as if she'd lost something. "I'm not sure
we're dealing with a man anymore," she admitted.

Scully recognized that look. She'd lost something similar a long time ago,
although she often pretended to have never given it up.

She also realized there was no way she'd keep this woman from following
her into danger.

"Oh!" Scully exclaimed suddenly, looking with surprise at the door to the
room.

"What?" Flannery said. Automatically, she turned around.

"Sorry," the agent said, and in an instant had clapped handcuffs around the
neuroscientist's wrist.

Flannery jerked her hand up instinctively, but Scully anticipated her move
and yanked the arm towards the bed. There was an audible "clink" as the
second cuff was secured to the bed railing.

"Goddammit!" Flannery cried, enraged. Scully danced outside her range and
moved towards the door.

"It's for your own good," she explained. "Now, I've got to find
neurosurgery. There's no other place they would be."



Mulder couldn't find neurosurgery. He was running too fast, and the halls
were too underlit. Most of the doors were closed; these were research labs,
not patient care, and he guessed that the researchers in question had
kicked off work to watch the regatta.

Finally, at the end of a long hallway, a pair of swinging doors with a
visible sign.

	EPILEPSY SURGERY UNIT

As he put his hand tentatively on one door, his cell phone rang. It sounded
very, very loud.

He answered without a greeting. "Someday, Scully," he whispered, "we
need to invest in phones with a 'vibrate' option. And this is not a slight
at our sex lives."

"Where are you?" she barked. Behind her voice, he could hear the sounds of
scared patients and unattended alarms. He realized how abnormally quiet
this floor was.

He tried to peer through the smoky glass of the swinging door, but saw
nothing but more shadow. "I'm in the neurology wing. They're here Scully, I
know it."

"I know it too." In a less stressful situation, he would've called her on
her agreement; instead he said nothing. "Where's neurology?" she asked.

"Fifth floor, almost directly above ICU."

"I'm on our way up. Mulder, be careful -- Rhect's probably with him and
he's doped to the gills. He may not even be aware he's been shot."

"You bet," he said, and stuffed the phone away. Mulder crouched low, and
swung the doors forward, slowly.



Scully burst through the swinging doors and skidded to an uncertain halt,
arms outstretched around her pistol. There was no sound but the soft swish
of the doors closing behind her, and her own heavy breathing.

In darkness, humans can see movement more clearly than color or detail.
Even in the dim yellow light, she could make out the swing of the identical
doors far down the hall.

In between, there was nothing.

Automatically, she stepped to one side, her back to the mustard-colored wall.
She took a few hesitant steps forward, and then hissed, "Mulder!"

No response. The doors ahead ceased their motion.

She'd expected to know immediately where to go; this curious silence left
her with nowhere to even begin.

Each office was slightly inset from the hallway, and from her current
vantage point she could see nothing but darkened doorways. She stepped into
one at random.

And straight into Mulder.

Startled screams, guns drawn up but not quite aimed, they repelled each
other suddenly as two like electrical charges. Mulder recognized her first
and put his hands on her shoulders in relief. She could feel the cool
barrel brushing her neck as a contrast to the heat from his hands.

"Mulder," she breathed, lowering her head. She looked up, and whispered, "I
can't see a thing."

"It's darker here than in the rest of hospital," he whispered back. "You'll
adjust."

"Where are they?"

"I don't know. I've been trying to read the doors one by --" They both
started as a crash of metal sounded from the other side of the hall.

"This way," he nodded. They stepped lightly to the source of the sound and
together read the plaque on the door:

	 Functional and Stereotactic Neurosurgery
	 OPERATING ROOM
	 Authorized Staff Only!

Mulder looked at Scully, and wiggled his gun. "I'm authorized."

She smiled, and then her face set in determination. "Ready?"

"Ready."

They took positions on the right and left side of the doorway, and kicked.



   Love is a desire of the whole being to be united to some thing, or
   some being, felt necessary to its completeness.

    - Coleridge, _Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton_ (1856) 



Mulder swung his gun wildly in       Scully shuffled to the right,
front of him, scanning the           searching for the immediate
operating room. No one grabbed for   threat. None was apparent; the
his gun, or for Scully. This was     only movement was Mulder next to
almost unexpected.                   her, sizing up the room.

His vision adjusted the gloom, here  She swung her weapon up slowly,
lit solely by the swing-arm          pointing it at the halogen surgery
spotlight over a pair of metal       light. It had been hurriedly set
operating tables in the center of    up over two hydraulic operating
the room. If the hallway had seemed  tables, and spilled a pool of
unusually quiet, this place was a    directed light in the otherwise
virtual tomb. One table was          pitch-black operating room. Baking
occupied, but the figure was still.  in the light was a draped figure.

Mulder glanced quickly at Scully     Scully waited for Mulder to catch
and nodded, circling along the edge  her eye, and, on his nod, began to
of the lit area to the left.         move off further to the right.

This is why they came, he thought.   What monstrous thing, she thought,
To be reunited by the same force     is being perpetrated here in the
that had torn them apart.            name of medicine?

As he crept slowly, Mulder tried to  Scully took one hesitant step
peer at the body on the table.       towards the tables, to look into
Instead, a figure stepped out from   the face of the "patient." Without
the darkness behind the table and    warning, the patient turned to
faced him.                           look at her.

Wearing a police uniform and         Revealing a massive yet precise
holding a scalpel.                   head wound, on the left side.

Lynx.                                Rhect.

Links.                               Recht.

Left.                                Right.

He spoke, and the voice was not      He spoke, and the voice did not
that of a forty year-old man, but    match his face, but seemed to have
of a fifteen year-old boy.           the timbre of youth.

Ben Suskind's voice, Mulder          Of this man in 1962, Scully
realized.                            thought wildly.

"I've come too far," Lynx/Suskind    "I've come too far," the young
said, and the curious stereo effect  Rhect said. The voice sounded out
sounded as if he'd said, "We've"     of phase, like miswired stereo
simultaneously.                      speakers.

"Tonight it will be finished,"       "Tonight it will be finished," he
he/they continued. "I will be whole  continued. "I will be whole
again."                              again."

His/their face trembled with a       Pressed up against the table, his
terrible contortion.                 face spasmed suddenly.

He's losing control, Mulder          The seizures are spreading, Scully
thought.                             thought.

The rippling muscles calmed, and     The muscle tics subsided, and his
his/their face looked almost sad,    expressed softened. His eyes
almost wistful.                      looked suddenly far away.

"It's an unspeakable fate to be      "It's an unspeakable fate to be
incomplete," he said.                incomplete," he said.

Mulder thought to fire his gun, to   Scully couldn't fire; Rhect wasn't
pull out his handcuffs to call for   an immediate threat, and her
help -- anything. Instead he         handcuffs were securing Flannery.
suddenly found himself unable to     She was paralyzed by
move or look away.                   uncharacteristic indecision.

Lynx was drawing his scalpel around  And then horror. Rhect was sitting
the perimeter of the left half of    up, reaching behind him, and
his head. Blood streamed down his    pulling out a massive bone saw. He
face in a solid sheet.               flicked a switch on its handle.

Lynx began to hum.                   The saw began to hum.

He reached out for Rhect.            He reached out for Lynx.



Mulder and Scully fired.

The bodies collapsed together, indistinguishably tangled atop the tables.

Still running, the bone saw clattered to the linoleum floor, and vibrated
with such force that it began to glide noisily toward them.

Scully was reminded crazily of those ice rink cleaners. With the funny
name.

"Zamboni," Mulder supplied.

Right. Zamboni.

"Let's go," she said quietly. On cue, the hospital lighting came back up,
and they were bathed in white.

The sudden surge in power was too much for the bone saw, which emitted a
final whir and stopped.

Mulder held out a hand to her. His left, she noted.

He smiled and switched, offering her his right.

She grasped both hands in both of hers and squeezed. 

"Let's _go_," she said, with quiet insistence.






   Thus, when Ibn Batuta, the old Arabian traveller, tells us that he 
   saw the famous rope-trick performed in India -- men climbing a rope 
   thrown into the air, and cutting each other up, while the bodies 
   revive and reunite -- he very candidly adds that his companion,
   standing by, saw nothing out of the way, and declared that nothing
   occurred. 
 
      -- Andrew Lang, _Cock Lane and Common-Sense_ 106 (1894)


BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
PUBLIC GARDENS
September 16
12:21pm

Scully tossed the last bits of her sandwich to the swirling ducks below the
footbridge. They quacked appreciatively, until a overfed swan paddled with
determination into their midst and swallowed the bloated clump of pita
bread whole.

"So much for grace," she said to the swan.

"You know we have a whole ward for people who talk to strange animals."

Scully turned and smiled warmly. The noon sun beat down on her face and
returned the favor.

"Dr. Flannery, I'd nearly given up on you." She looked around briefly.
"Although, not on this beautiful spot."

"Enjoy it now," the shorter woman advised. "We've got a few more nice weeks
to go, and then it's snow for seven months." Flannery was patting the small
blonde head of a boy who bore more than a passing resemblance to her. "And 
really, Dana, call me Jackie," she added.

Scully couldn't conceal a hint of surprise. "Jackie, is this your son?"

The boy looked up at his mother briefly, as if to verify that he was, in
fact, her son. She ruffled his hair. "This is Evan all right."

Evan seemed pleased with the answer, but was nevertheless overwhelmed by
the encounter and dashed off the footbridge. He descended the winding stone
steps on one end in a few leaps, and ran along the bank of the pond, 
trailing a long macaroni necklace behind him. Scully was alarmed until
she saw him run into the arms of a balding, spectacled man who, she
realized, was waving at them.  

"That's Bill, my husband," Flannery explained. She waved back, but he was
already bent over the edge of the pond, talking into Evan's ear and
pointing into the water. "He's a fish guy -- a biologist. He just got back
today from a four month study of Lake Victoria. Did you know new species of
fish evolve there almost as quickly as they become extinct? We can actually
_witness_ the process of evolution; it's not some abstract theory there.
It's extraordinary."

"I find the line between science and magic to be increasingly blurred."

"That sounds more like something your partner would say."

Scully only smiled.

Flannery looked back at her husband, who had moved the science lesson into
the trees. Evan was on his shoulders, pointing upward. "Dana, have you ever
thought of going back to medicine? Or into research?"

Scully hesitated before answering. "The topic's come up before," she said,
with deliberate vagueness. "Things are... okay now. Better than they've
been. Besides," she paused again, searching for the right words, "it's not
really about just me. I'm a part of something else... now."

"So was Alan."

At what price, Scully thought, this sense of completeness?

"I just can't. This is where I want to be."

Flannery impatiently waved away the question of what Scully wanted.
"Really," she said, "we need more people like you. My colleagues are all
too anemic. They study the brain, but they've probably never put their
hands in one. They formulate theories about madness, but they've never
looked a real crazy person in the eye. Or down the barrel of a gun."

"They should be so lucky," Scully laughed.

Flannery looked at her pointedly. "So should you."

Riding his father's shoulders, Evan cackled with delight.









---

Notes:

Information presented about commissurotomy and temporal lobe epilepsy
and other neuroscience facts are accurate to the best of my ability
to explain.  Well, except the part about people splitting into
different entities.  If you needed me to tell you that, Dr. Flannery
has a wing for you, too. 

Massachusetts General is a real hospital that still performs 
commissurotomies to this day, although infrequently, and only in
extreme cases is the corpus callosum completely severed.  The 
procedure is performed in an actual place called Epilepsy Surgery Unit;
however, the internal geography of the hospital is entirely fictional.

Fenboro is fictional, but other Massachusetts placenames are not.
There is no New England Institute of Mental Health.

For more information on the split brain procedure and its non-fictional
after-effects, visit your local library.  Or these web sites (but your
library could probably use the late fees):

http://design.otago.ac.nz:801/grant/psyc/TWOBRAIN.HTML
http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/UBNRP/Split_Brain/Pioneers.html
http://neurosurgery.mgh.harvard.edu/ep-sxtre.htm

--nev
  http://members.tripod.com/nevdull/